There are 2 alternatives to launching this many servers. Having everyone waiting for hours before they can log in or by restricting the number of copies you sell (Wow and DF both did this).
No solution is good.
Agreed. So far there really haven't been any good solutions to the flood of users durng the first month or so, however the best solution I have seen so far has been Turbine's handling of LOTRO - long-term thinking pays off.
There isn't a "right" or "wrong" way to play, if you want to use a screwdriver to put nails into wood, have at it, simply don't complain when the guy next to you with the hammer is doing it much better and easier. - Allein "Graphics are often supplied by Engines that (some) MMORPG's are built in" - Spuffyre
the main problem was using server name from the beta, many ppl join that server because are used whit the name and may join because of guilds, ppl wont change servers because they have to move all the guild and some guild play on a server because a rival guild is on the enemy faction the only solution is to increase server caps
I am not sure the servers can handle that. There was problems in the beta whenever it started and too manby players were in the same zone. Increasing the server cap would increase the lag a lot, at least unless you let people in in waves with a day in between and that would also lead to a lot of frustration.
the main problem was using server name from the beta, many ppl join that server because are used whit the name and may join because of guilds, ppl wont change servers because they have to move all the guild and some guild play on a server because a rival guild is on the enemy faction the only solution is to increase server caps
I am not sure the servers can handle that. There was problems in the beta whenever it started and too manby players were in the same zone. Increasing the server cap would increase the lag a lot, at least unless you let people in in waves with a day in between and that would also lead to a lot of frustration.
But yes, they should have reneamed all servers.
Wouldn't that make it really hard to coordinate getting together if all the server names were changed at the last moment?
That's why I'm a strong fan of either games that use single-world design (like EVE) or make it so easy to switch servers (GW2) that there's no problem with joining your friends (or finding your rivals) no matter where they might be.
The problem isn't the opening of additional servers to handle the queues, but the opening of too many additional servers, more than are needed to handle the queues.
Which shows if you have 15-20 servers on 'low' status at the time when a peak is expected.
I think WAR and Aion showed that there should be a balance, add enough servers that people who don't want to be in a queue can have a choice - there'll always be people who'll opt queues to be on their preferred server as servers with a queue showed when there were 15+ 'low' servers - but don't add so many that within a few weeks a lot of servers become ghost towns.
Because people will leave when their side has only 100-200 at peak times and even less outside of it. Players will experience problems with finding groups, forming raids or joining Warfronts if the population is low, also a small, dwindling community is less attractive than an active, sizeable community.
The ease with which predictions are made on these forums: Fratman: "I'm saying Spring 2012 at the earliest [for TOR release]. Anyone still clinging to 2011 is deluding themself at this point."
There are 2 alternatives to launching this many servers. Having everyone waiting for hours before they can log in or by restricting the number of copies you sell (Wow and DF both did this).
No solution is good.
I agree, however is either of those 2 bad solutions better or worse than the potential damage done in the future from the negative perceptions of potential players and current players and negative impact on current player from large server merges?
The problem isn't the opening of additional servers to handle the queues, but the opening of too many additional servers, more than are needed to handle the queues.
Why do you think they open more than they need? Publicity? Marketing?
Disclaimer: Not a subscriber and don't plan on being one. This answer applies to any MMO like this I'd play...
I don't really see much choice. Personally, I'm not going to wait in multi-hour queues to play a game...especially one I pay monthly to play. Would you wait in a queue to be able to watch a TV show when you pay for cable? I'd rather worry about needing a server merge in 6 months and being able to play the game than not being able to play because the couple hours a night I have time to play I'm sitting in a queue. I guarantee I'd be cancelling if this happened.
A game like this you can't really have a million people all on the same server, and most MMOers hate multiple instances of the same zones (like Cryptic games), so it seems to me having a ton servers is really the only way to go. Maybe they'll buck the trend of losing 50-75% of their players after a few months...who knows? If not, they can merge servers and worry about the negative PR this action brings if it comes down to doing that. I know a lot of people would use this to say the game "failed", but even if they only have 250k subs in 6-12 months...not bad for a first time MMO dev, and that's still a lot of money coming in every month.
Had Mythic delivered the goods, it wouldn't have been too many. Rift delivers the goods...
I can show you three or four game review sites (Good reputable sites like IGN and GameSpot) that gave WAR a great score.
Those sites are reputable?
Review sites judge the quality and content of the game for a week or so the reviewers play it. They don't review the end game content and its ability to retain subscribers after the one free month. WAR was a good game but the problem was it had many flaws including failure in part of devs to have clear vision of end game, while PvP was fun the game's PvE was lackluster leading to many getting bored and quiting, in later levels too many zones and BGs ended up diluting population resulting in empty PQs (which reviews never experianced)
I don't really see much choice. Personally, I'm not going to wait in multi-hour queues to play a game...especially one I pay monthly to play.
Well, the choice is simple, at least how it seems to me.
Add servers gradually, instead as a batch: it's better to have 2-3 new servers with a medium to high population than 15-16 with a 'low' population in peak hours.
The ease with which predictions are made on these forums: Fratman: "I'm saying Spring 2012 at the earliest [for TOR release]. Anyone still clinging to 2011 is deluding themself at this point."
It was certainly a bad idea for so many servers. Feels like a WAR mistake all over again. The newer headstart servers (the 2nd batch) is only like 200 person queues. They really should've just added like 2 PvP 2 PvE and 1 PvP/PvE RP each. Anyone that was interested in the game really already was in head start.
Correlation is not causation. The reason that those games didn't keep their servers full is because they weren't very good. You're going to lose a lot more frustrated players from not being able to play, than you are from server mergers.
Also, murders increase in the summer, which happens to coincide with ice cream sales (I wonder why). Pick a random correlation and it certainly becomes meaningless. So does the argument.
Both cause you to lose players. Full servers will lose more players in the short term, while desolate server population and merges make the game have a bad image, which will probably affect them more in the long-term. Which one will have more ultimate affect?
They added too many servers and overshot demand. I think they were surprised at head start, but in this age of digital distribution and how easy it was to get a pre-order key for free, most people who were interested in RIFT already came in at head start.
They added too many servers for launch, there are 10-20 more shards than needed. No one is going to join a lower population server due to fears of it being merged later anyway. There are 5 servers which still have ridiculous queues (Briarcliff seems to be the worst) at peak.
At the time of posting, 17 EU servers are on low, and most of the US ones, since it's just early in the morning.
We'll see during the weekend after the 4th when the EU launch hits, but i doubt all the EU servers are suddenly going to shoot up to full.
They should have added 5 new shards for launch and went from there... This many servers is risky, because some of the players will leave after the first "free" month.
Maybe all these shards are warranted, we don't have any pre-order data, they do, and a lot of people are locked out right now waiting for their retail box key. (there is no grace period for retail keys like WAR had) Some stores probably did not put RIFT out for sale unless you pre-ordered until today. (1 day after ship date, pretty normal)
It's easy to criticize on the outside looking in, but maybe TRION knows what they're doing. I would have went with 5 new shards and had shards ready to add on demand, though. Hopefully this isn't WAR server mess version 2.0.
It was certainly a bad idea for so many servers. Feels like a WAR mistake all over again. The newer headstart servers (the 2nd batch) is only like 200 person queues. They really should've just added like 2 PvP 2 PvE and 1 PvP/PvE RP each. Anyone that was interested in the game really already was in head start.
First thing I haven't been happy with about Rift.
All three itterations of Rift are still top 10 in steam. The most popular is third below Dragon age and the new warhammer game as we speak. People are still buying the game.
19 new servers may *sound* like too many, but I don't know how many copies they've sold and how many concurrent users each server can really (not what they tell you) handle. I have to think they know these two factors better than we do, but hey...other devs still release barely beta state games despite knowing that's the fastest way to crash and burn, so who knows?
They added too many servers and overshot demand. I think they were surprised at head start, but in this age of digital distrubution and how easy it was to get a pre-order key for free, most people who were interested in RIFT already came in at head start.
They added too many servers for launch, there are 10-20 more shards than needed. No one is going to join a lower population server due to fears of it being merged later anyway. There are 5 servers which still have ridiculous queues (Briarcliff seems to be the worst) at peak.
At the time of posting, 17 EU servers are on low, and most of the US ones, since it's just early in the morning.
We'll see during the weekend after the 4th when the EU launch hits, but i doubt all the EU servers are suddenly going to shoot up to full.
They should have added 5 new shards for launch and went from there... This many servers is risky, because some of the players will leave after the first "free" month.
Maybe all these shards are warranted, we don't have any pre-order data, they do, and a lot of people are locked out right now waiting for their retail box key. (there is no grace period for retail keys like WAR had) Some stores probably did not put RIFT out for sale unless you pre-ordered until today. (1 day after ship date, pretty normal)
It's easy to criticize on the outside looking in, but maybe TRION knows what they're doing. I would have went with 5 new shards and had shards ready to add on demand, though. Hopefully this isn't WAR server mess version 2.0.
All good points. 30 more servers does seem like overkill, but they're in a better position to know than we are. Still, they have no way of knowing how many boxes will sell in the next few days. There's not really any incentive to wait til' launch day to buy.
Actually this could still work out either way depending on one major wildcard.
There are probably a lot of people who had pre-orders with gamestop, walmart, or somewhere else that either cancelled their pre-orders after the data was sent to trion. These players generally figured out (like myself -- I had a pre-order with gamestop that went out because I did NOT want to lose half a day(at best) of play until they got their shipment in. I also wanted the 4 extra slots and mount during the head-start. Hence I did the digital even though I had already put $5 down at a gamestop which they let you swap out at some time in the future.
There is one other wildcard that could work in their favor. There are tons of walmart pre-orders and other pre-orders that still havent reached the hands of people. Those people could end up on any server.
Although there is the phenomenon that people do tend to avoid low population servers anyway making sure you end up full/low.
It was certainly a bad idea for so many servers. Feels like a WAR mistake all over again. The newer headstart servers (the 2nd batch) is only like 200 person queues. They really should've just added like 2 PvP 2 PvE and 1 PvP/PvE RP each. Anyone that was interested in the game really already was in head start.
First thing I haven't been happy with about Rift.
All three itterations of Rift are still top 10 in steam. The most popular is third below Dragon age and the new warhammer game as we speak. People are still buying the game.
I was in my local eb games yesterday picking up the new sharpshooter for my ps3. I asked the 2 working there, how many pre orders did you have of Rift. He said 1 and it s been cancelled. I said how many people just bought it off the street. He said you re the first person to even mention the game. He said the price will drop here fast, because theres absolutely no interest in it at all. Now this is just one town, but I can t see it selling alot more copies. I think the people who were going to play it already got their copy, or almost all of them.
Although there is the phenomenon that people do tend to avoid low population servers anyway making sure you end up full/low.
Quite right. If you were just starting the game and you looked at the shard list and saw 10+ shards that were on low during prime time and a bunch of other Full/High ones, you would probably join the High/Medium one if you were going into a game without guilds/friends. At least I would, to get the best experience.. since this is the type of game that flourishes with more people.
Don't want to be playing a "single player" game on a low population server and hope people choose your one lonely low population shard over the 9+ other low ones and countless medium ones.
But the CM put it best, "We can add as many servers as we can, but we can't control which shard people choose." or something along those lines. Well they could, just lock servers that have hit population cap, but that would spawn an insurrection on the forums in this day and age.
I'm sure people are still joining Briarcliff and other ridiculous queue servers, especially if they join at offpeak hours. Especially if they're new and don't know how bad the queue is until they try to login during prime time.
The servers to watch right now are the NA ones to see if those low pop servers start to pick
up. EU is not a concern until the game is actually released in EU.
I agree. There are only six servers on medium population but most people are at work now and those with no jobs sleep until noon at least. They were pretty full last night when I tried logging on again but time will tell.
It's a Jeep thing. . . _______ |___| \_______/ = |||||| = |X| \*........*/ |X| |X|_________|X| You wouldn't understand
Although there is the phenomenon that people do tend to avoid low population servers anyway making sure you end up full/low.
Quite right. If you were just starting the game and you looked at the shard list and saw 10+ shards that were on low during prime time and a bunch of other Full/High ones, you would probably join the High/Medium one if you were going into a game without guilds/friends. At least I would, to get the best experience.. since this is the type of game that flourishes with more people.
Don't want to be playing a "single player" game on a low population server and hope people choose your one lonely low population shard over the 9+ other low ones and countless medium ones.
But the CM put it best, "We can add as many servers as we can, but we can't control which shard people choose." or something along those lines. Well they could, just lock servers that have hit population cap, but that would spawn an insurrection on the forums in this day and age.
I'm sure people are still joining Briarcliff and other ridiculous queue servers, especially if they join at offpeak hours. If they're new and don't know how bad the queue is until they try to login during prime time.
Especially at launch. I'd choose to wait in a queue to get on a popular server (and I will have researched this) then get onto a newer lower pop server that may be merged 6mos to a year down the road.
It does make me wonder if mmo's ever manipulate the server load indicators for load balancing purposes. Like mark the lowest pop server as 'high'.
Comments
Agreed. So far there really haven't been any good solutions to the flood of users durng the first month or so, however the best solution I have seen so far has been Turbine's handling of LOTRO - long-term thinking pays off.
There isn't a "right" or "wrong" way to play, if you want to use a screwdriver to put nails into wood, have at it, simply don't complain when the guy next to you with the hammer is doing it much better and easier. - Allein
"Graphics are often supplied by Engines that (some) MMORPG's are built in" - Spuffyre
I am not sure the servers can handle that. There was problems in the beta whenever it started and too manby players were in the same zone. Increasing the server cap would increase the lag a lot, at least unless you let people in in waves with a day in between and that would also lead to a lot of frustration.
But yes, they should have reneamed all servers.
sholo and strat were 15 and 10 man back then
just sayin
Mortal in body
Eternal In Will
You're wrong right there.
Did anyone read an article where Trion said they bought the servers? I didn't.
As far as I know they are working with a Data centre, which means they might be renting the servers and not buying them.
Wouldn't that make it really hard to coordinate getting together if all the server names were changed at the last moment?
That's why I'm a strong fan of either games that use single-world design (like EVE) or make it so easy to switch servers (GW2) that there's no problem with joining your friends (or finding your rivals) no matter where they might be.
People are confusing the issue here.
The problem isn't the opening of additional servers to handle the queues, but the opening of too many additional servers, more than are needed to handle the queues.
Which shows if you have 15-20 servers on 'low' status at the time when a peak is expected.
I think WAR and Aion showed that there should be a balance, add enough servers that people who don't want to be in a queue can have a choice - there'll always be people who'll opt queues to be on their preferred server as servers with a queue showed when there were 15+ 'low' servers - but don't add so many that within a few weeks a lot of servers become ghost towns.
Because people will leave when their side has only 100-200 at peak times and even less outside of it. Players will experience problems with finding groups, forming raids or joining Warfronts if the population is low, also a small, dwindling community is less attractive than an active, sizeable community.
The ACTUAL size of MMORPG worlds: a comparison list between MMO's
The ease with which predictions are made on these forums:
Fratman: "I'm saying Spring 2012 at the earliest [for TOR release]. Anyone still clinging to 2011 is deluding themself at this point."
I agree, however is either of those 2 bad solutions better or worse than the potential damage done in the future from the negative perceptions of potential players and current players and negative impact on current player from large server merges?
Why do you think they open more than they need? Publicity? Marketing?
Disclaimer: Not a subscriber and don't plan on being one. This answer applies to any MMO like this I'd play...
I don't really see much choice. Personally, I'm not going to wait in multi-hour queues to play a game...especially one I pay monthly to play. Would you wait in a queue to be able to watch a TV show when you pay for cable? I'd rather worry about needing a server merge in 6 months and being able to play the game than not being able to play because the couple hours a night I have time to play I'm sitting in a queue. I guarantee I'd be cancelling if this happened.
A game like this you can't really have a million people all on the same server, and most MMOers hate multiple instances of the same zones (like Cryptic games), so it seems to me having a ton servers is really the only way to go. Maybe they'll buck the trend of losing 50-75% of their players after a few months...who knows? If not, they can merge servers and worry about the negative PR this action brings if it comes down to doing that. I know a lot of people would use this to say the game "failed", but even if they only have 250k subs in 6-12 months...not bad for a first time MMO dev, and that's still a lot of money coming in every month.
Those sites are reputable?
Review sites judge the quality and content of the game for a week or so the reviewers play it. They don't review the end game content and its ability to retain subscribers after the one free month. WAR was a good game but the problem was it had many flaws including failure in part of devs to have clear vision of end game, while PvP was fun the game's PvE was lackluster leading to many getting bored and quiting, in later levels too many zones and BGs ended up diluting population resulting in empty PQs (which reviews never experianced)
Well, the choice is simple, at least how it seems to me.
Add servers gradually, instead as a batch: it's better to have 2-3 new servers with a medium to high population than 15-16 with a 'low' population in peak hours.
The ACTUAL size of MMORPG worlds: a comparison list between MMO's
The ease with which predictions are made on these forums:
Fratman: "I'm saying Spring 2012 at the earliest [for TOR release]. Anyone still clinging to 2011 is deluding themself at this point."
It was certainly a bad idea for so many servers. Feels like a WAR mistake all over again. The newer headstart servers (the 2nd batch) is only like 200 person queues. They really should've just added like 2 PvP 2 PvE and 1 PvP/PvE RP each. Anyone that was interested in the game really already was in head start.
First thing I haven't been happy with about Rift.
Also, murders increase in the summer, which happens to coincide with ice cream sales (I wonder why). Pick a random correlation and it certainly becomes meaningless. So does the argument.
Both cause you to lose players. Full servers will lose more players in the short term, while desolate server population and merges make the game have a bad image, which will probably affect them more in the long-term. Which one will have more ultimate affect?
They added too many servers and overshot demand. I think they were surprised at head start, but in this age of digital distribution and how easy it was to get a pre-order key for free, most people who were interested in RIFT already came in at head start.
They added too many servers for launch, there are 10-20 more shards than needed. No one is going to join a lower population server due to fears of it being merged later anyway. There are 5 servers which still have ridiculous queues (Briarcliff seems to be the worst) at peak.
At the time of posting, 17 EU servers are on low, and most of the US ones, since it's just early in the morning.
We'll see during the weekend after the 4th when the EU launch hits, but i doubt all the EU servers are suddenly going to shoot up to full.
They should have added 5 new shards for launch and went from there... This many servers is risky, because some of the players will leave after the first "free" month.
Maybe all these shards are warranted, we don't have any pre-order data, they do, and a lot of people are locked out right now waiting for their retail box key. (there is no grace period for retail keys like WAR had) Some stores probably did not put RIFT out for sale unless you pre-ordered until today. (1 day after ship date, pretty normal)
It's easy to criticize on the outside looking in, but maybe TRION knows what they're doing. I would have went with 5 new shards and had shards ready to add on demand, though. Hopefully this isn't WAR server mess version 2.0.
All three itterations of Rift are still top 10 in steam. The most popular is third below Dragon age and the new warhammer game as we speak. People are still buying the game.
EU has not launched yet. Launch is on Friday, thus the low populated servers.
19 new servers may *sound* like too many, but I don't know how many copies they've sold and how many concurrent users each server can really (not what they tell you) handle. I have to think they know these two factors better than we do, but hey...other devs still release barely beta state games despite knowing that's the fastest way to crash and burn, so who knows?
All good points. 30 more servers does seem like overkill, but they're in a better position to know than we are. Still, they have no way of knowing how many boxes will sell in the next few days. There's not really any incentive to wait til' launch day to buy.
Actually this could still work out either way depending on one major wildcard.
There are probably a lot of people who had pre-orders with gamestop, walmart, or somewhere else that either cancelled their pre-orders after the data was sent to trion. These players generally figured out (like myself -- I had a pre-order with gamestop that went out because I did NOT want to lose half a day(at best) of play until they got their shipment in. I also wanted the 4 extra slots and mount during the head-start. Hence I did the digital even though I had already put $5 down at a gamestop which they let you swap out at some time in the future.
There is one other wildcard that could work in their favor. There are tons of walmart pre-orders and other pre-orders that still havent reached the hands of people. Those people could end up on any server.
Although there is the phenomenon that people do tend to avoid low population servers anyway making sure you end up full/low.
I was in my local eb games yesterday picking up the new sharpshooter for my ps3. I asked the 2 working there, how many pre orders did you have of Rift. He said 1 and it s been cancelled. I said how many people just bought it off the street. He said you re the first person to even mention the game. He said the price will drop here fast, because theres absolutely no interest in it at all. Now this is just one town, but I can t see it selling alot more copies. I think the people who were going to play it already got their copy, or almost all of them.
Quite right. If you were just starting the game and you looked at the shard list and saw 10+ shards that were on low during prime time and a bunch of other Full/High ones, you would probably join the High/Medium one if you were going into a game without guilds/friends. At least I would, to get the best experience.. since this is the type of game that flourishes with more people.
Don't want to be playing a "single player" game on a low population server and hope people choose your one lonely low population shard over the 9+ other low ones and countless medium ones.
But the CM put it best, "We can add as many servers as we can, but we can't control which shard people choose." or something along those lines. Well they could, just lock servers that have hit population cap, but that would spawn an insurrection on the forums in this day and age.
I'm sure people are still joining Briarcliff and other ridiculous queue servers, especially if they join at offpeak hours. Especially if they're new and don't know how bad the queue is until they try to login during prime time.
The servers to watch right now are the NA ones to see if those low pop servers start to pick
up. EU is not a concern until the game is actually released in EU.
I agree. There are only six servers on medium population but most people are at work now and those with no jobs sleep until noon at least. They were pretty full last night when I tried logging on again but time will tell.
_______
|___
\_______/
=
|X| \*........*/ |X|
|X|_________|X|
You wouldn't understand
Especially at launch. I'd choose to wait in a queue to get on a popular server (and I will have researched this) then get onto a newer lower pop server that may be merged 6mos to a year down the road.
It does make me wonder if mmo's ever manipulate the server load indicators for load balancing purposes. Like mark the lowest pop server as 'high'.