Will SOE be ready for 500,000 players? - Page 4

GhettoPrince · 2012-07-19, 08:36 AM

Yeah ,You're forgetting just how fast word of mouth can run around the internet now. World Of Tanks population went from 0 to 100,00 in a month based on nothing but word of mouth, and it's not like you need a thousand dollar PC to run this thing.

There's no $60 price tag keeping people from checking out the game, all you will have to do is download it, and it gives an experience that no other game can, 2000 person fights with base defenses, vehicle , tank and air combat.

And that's just the overall game, you're not even getting into the fact that any single person can decide to be a mini tank like MaserChief , or be a ninja cyborg like Adam Jensen. People that like fast paced combat can jetpack around like the mobile infantry and people that don't like twitch combat can pick up a heal gun and rez or play an engineer and drop turrets, mines, explosive charges and base defense items.

Planetside 1 was way ahead of its time, Planetside 2 is going to be huge.

LazyBonez · 2012-07-19, 09:07 AM

Lets see 500,000 subs

2000 players per continent with 3 continents per server

SOE would need about 84 servers give or take.

SOE can you handle say 85-90 servers?

goneglockin · 2012-07-19, 09:15 AM

If this game only fetches 100K players at launch, that's gonna be worse than PS1 and SOE is just gonna break my heart again with another game that withers and dies.

No one has ever asked SOE what the hell their problem is. Are they prepared for growth and sustainability or are they just looking to make a quick buck? Watching them stumble before was so frustrating it was like watching someone who didn't care run it.

Loco · 2012-07-19, 09:25 AM

Originally Posted by goneglockin

No one has ever asked SOE what the hell their problem is. Are they prepared for growth and sustainability or are they just looking to make a quick buck? Watching them stumble before was so frustrating it was like watching someone who didn't care run it.

I don't know... it seems to me that if they wanted a quick buck they would charge $60 for the game.

They are in it for the micro-transactions. For that you need to have people coming back for more. Sure I'm not paying $15 a month for a subscription... however $5 here.. $15 there... you can easily spend that when some new way to look comes out.

Either way I feel the path of the Micro-transaction is the one of the patient long haul studio... not the get rich quick path.

Landtank · 2012-07-19, 09:47 AM

They are at 431,000 views on the teaser for the trailer after two days, I'd begin to suspect a lot of people might be into this game.

morf · 2012-07-19, 09:48 AM

I don't think the question is whether SoE is ready for 500,000 players, I think the question is whether they are ready for 5,000,000 players. Laugh at me all you want, just like you did in February 2011 when I predicted a Q4 2012 release date (currently, I'm looking spot-on with Higby saying launch "by the end of the year")

I also predicted over a year ago on these boards that millions of people will play this game and my expectations have only gotten higher. I am conservatively predicting 5 million within 3 months of launch, with at least 2 million in the first month.

Take a look at how the launch of another ground-up F2P title went:

Originally Posted by Wikipedia

John Smedley, president of Sony Online Entertainment, revealed that 1 million usershad signed up to Free Realms 18 days after its launch; a month after release Free Realms reached 2 million users, and registrations have continued growing at a steady rate since then. As of July 24, 2009, it had approximately 5 million registered users. [Sony Online Entertainment announced in February 2010 that the game now has 8 million registered users.

In April 2010, it was announced that the game has now 10 million players, with two million players signing up in March 2010

Now sure, free realms has a lower PC requirement than PS2, but the hype surrounding free realms isn't in the same universe with what we are experiencing with PS2. There's a whole huge market of millions of people who play PC shooters and have gaming systems to match whom wouldn't be likely to play free realms, but are almost certain to try PS2. During peak hours, Steam has around 5 million players connected, out of around 40 million registered accounts. Glancing at steam's hardware survey: it looks like over 60 percent of steam users are using machines w/ video cards that should run PS2 - and if anything, this number is low, because I didn't control for the people who are on their i-pads or laptops or otherwise showing up on the survey from something other than their primary gaming machine.

Additionally, EQ2 has around 12 million registered accounts, if I remember correctly. I'm sure many of them have some sort of gaming hardware, even if it's only 25 percent of them, that's still 3 million. Conservatively speaking, SoE could easily conjure up more than 1.5 million people in a very short time just by marketing to their existing playerbase.

This game won't be big, it will be massive. At least 5 million within 3 months of launch - write it down.

wasdie · 2012-07-19, 09:52 AM

That's what beta is for.

They'll probably have a very loose closed beta for a month or two and then have an open beta starting in each major server region a month before "release".

When the game is officially "released" we'll all have been playing it freely for a few weeks.

OnexBigxHebrew · 2012-07-19, 09:57 AM

Originally Posted by SleepyZombie

Yeah I realistically see maybe 100,000 people at start... The game is not as high profile as you may think. More than 80% of my friends have never even heard about planetside let alone planetside 2

"I have a lot of gamer friends"

This. As a non-vet with no life's work at stake, I can tell you that this game is quietly hyping up, but what my gaming friends know of PS2 almost entirely comes from me hyping it. The game is not really as anticipated By the general population as it is by most of the vets and new players in the community like myself. This game hasn't gotten a lot of coverage outside of MMO sites yet. I do, however, expect things to change, and while I don't have the false view that this game will derail the AAA fps market in any way, I do think this game and its F2P model have the potential to spawn an entirely new and large genre of games.

Basically I think PS2 has the potential to be successful and great for the industry and the ball is in SOE's court atm.

Landtank · 2012-07-19, 10:21 AM

Just look at how long it took LoL to get 40 million registered accounts.

I would expect a LOT of people to register for this game and try it out, its gonna be aWeSoMe!!1

Figment · 2012-07-19, 10:24 AM

They should really reduce the amount of servers needed by pre-emptively expanding the size of servers tbh.

6.000 players per server is way too few. Should be around 30.000 capacity IMO with placeholder continents that will eventually be replaced by new continents.

Whether or not they are "doubles", you will have to fight on "doubles" anyway, they'll just be on another server and you'll risk being further removed from your friends.

http://www.planetside-universe.com/s...ad.php?t=41711

Kevin D Lee · 2012-07-19, 10:32 AM

#1 This is going to be a F2P game

That means DROVES of people that would otherwise never give it a chance will be trying it at launch because it only costs them a download to play.

#2 If you don't expect problems at launch with the servers like with any MMO wake up. There will be issues.

Landtank · 2012-07-19, 10:34 AM

Originally Posted by Figment

They should really reduce the amount of servers needed by pre-emptively expanding the size of servers tbh.

6.000 players per server is way too few. Should be around 30.000 capacity IMO with placeholder continents that will eventually be replaced by new continents.

Whether or not they are "doubles", you will have to fight on "doubles" anyway, they'll just be on another server and you'll risk being further removed from your friends.

http://www.planetside-universe.com/s...ad.php?t=41711

Lol that idea is so bad.

I would never, ever. in a million years even suggest making two of the same continent on one server, that thread sums up why it is a terrible idea.

You won't have to fight on doubles anyways, what are you talking about? It's not 6,000 per server, its around 6,500 active and more likely than not 10,000 registered per server.

Anyways, that thread is dead for good reason.

I don't think it will end up being too much of a problem, they know more about this then we do so I'm not worried.

Xyntech · 2012-07-19, 10:39 AM

It depends heavily on hype, but right now I would expect the game to pull in something like 400,000 at start, assuming they can manage to make it play acceptably and still look relatively decent on a 5 year old system.

Since it's F2P, that number could either stay steady for a few years, or grow several times depending on how the game turns out, along with further advertising and word of mouth.

But if the trailer ends up getting a lot of buzz and if the positive coverage keeps ramping up at the rate it's been going at lately, PS2 could surprise us and launch with 1M players or more. It's really tough to call this far from launch. At least SOE is slowly starting to step it up, already giving the game more advertising than the first Planetside ever got (not a hard thing to do).

The original Planetside did pretty well for itself at launch early on, and that was back in the days where internet connections sucked, MMO's were just starting to take off, and video games in general were only just starting to go mainstream. Plus it had all of the pricing barriers to entry. The gaming market is a lot larger now, so I'd say PS2 is almost guaranteed to do at least several times better than the original Planetside at launch.

Originally Posted by Landtank

Just look at how long it took LoL to get 40 million registered accounts.

I would expect a LOT of people to register for this game and try it out, its gonna be aWeSoMe!!1

I hope that Planetside 2 follows suit, and manages to keep getting increasing numbers of players over time thanks to F2P instead of getting a big influx at the start which wanes over time.

If populations do manage to keep rising over time, that's going to be perfect for adding new continents. They'll be able to keep the number of servers relatively constant and accommodate the new players with new contestable land on the same servers. That would be brilliant.

MrBloodworth · 2012-07-19, 11:06 AM

Originally Posted by Bags

Make better threads then. There's no point of this thread.

There's no discussion value.

Goku · 2012-07-19, 11:12 AM

Originally Posted by morf

I don't think the question is whether SoE is ready for 500,000 players, I think the question is whether they are ready for 5,000,000 players. Laugh at me all you want, just like you did in February 2011 when I predicted a Q4 2012 release date (currently, I'm looking spot-on with Higby saying launch "by the end of the year")

Just in regards to the release date. At that point I think SOE was considering just reskinning PS and re-releasing that way. Instead they decided to make a whole new game out of it to make a true sequel. Thats why back then everyone wasn't expecting this to be so long of a wait.

I do however agree on player numbers. I wouldn't be shocked to see this game in the millions of players. Not sure if that will be on at the same time, but active sure.