Number of Servers

ArchivedUser

I did a search for this but didn't find anything.  How many servers are they planning to have?

This is a point of concern for me, if there aren't 1000's player on each server it's not going to feel much like a living world.

ArchivedUser

We know each server will have a capacity of 10k people. We also know there will be NA, OCE and EU servers - 
We don't know how many within each zone will be available

ArchivedUser

@Diura's answered your query without question, but don't be worried at this point. From what we know, I think Intrepid will be alert to ghost world's in their game and they'll actively try and avoid it. I doubt they'll do a Bioware and create way too many. Server management post-launch will be just as crucial, if not more important than pre-launch imo.  

ArchivedUser

Intrepid is experienced and I am sure they will be able to estimate how many servers we need based on the amount of higher kickstarter packs as well as the amount of total subscriptions before launch.

We might see login queues for a few days during launch, but we'll just have to deal with it instead of having too many servers that will eventually be dead.

ArchivedUser

The entire testing population will maybe fill the single testing server that is planned. Alpha 1 is looking to be around 5k people. From Alpha 2 is where it gets interesting. If the goal is 10k concurrent then they will most likely be able to fill that single server before launch. The trick is going to be Live launch, when that population from all over the world will then be regionalized.
The problem companies like Blizzard had in the past was they weren't using the cloud. Rumor was that IS was going with Google to host their servers. So it is a fairly easy process taking just a couple days to get a server up and running in a region, unlike companies in the past that had to buy/rent physical server farms, staff them with people to keep them running, all the while losing money on the cost.
What I would be more worried about is the plateau issue that occurs with every subscription based game. At around a year the population stabilizes, servers that are under population stay that way. New people coming in tend to want to go where things are hopping. It will be interesting to see what lore reason they come up with for server merges that are inevitable. Or maybe they will just go the route of "Move it or lose it."

ArchivedUser

Being from Australia my biggest concern is if there are going to be enough people playing to fill servers, there is nothing worse than being on a server that slowly dies. I know there will be servers in our area and that is very important to me as playing with local ping as opposed to US servers is almost like playing a different game. I know its only fractions of seconds but when SWTOR started up oceanic based servers the game became so responsive it was just amazing the difference it made. However the population was not sustained, the servers eventually died, were shut down and merged back into US based servers, which was when I quite.
This is a very real concern I have with AOC that there will be an initial burst of population with a gradual die off and eventual shutting down of servers, I know that is somewhat negative but history has shown all games go through this. While all of us here want AOC to be a roaring success and perhaps it will be, it will not be for everyone there will be an initial influx of people then some will find it not to their taste and stop playing. Lets face it AOC intends to revive some concepts that the I want it now generation are going to find not to their taste. 

ArchivedUser

Concerns are understandable but there is absolutely no evidence that can be shown to alleviate them at this point, it's simply far too early. Rest assured that if they're concerns of ours then I am sure they are concerns for Intrepid also.

ArchivedUser

I think 2to3  Cause there will be a headstart and a normal start for sure. So that are already 2.

ArchivedUser

Fleelix said:

I think 2to3  Cause there will be a headstart and a normal start for sure. So that are already 2.

Are the headstart people being banished to their own server now? 

ArchivedUser

They have been since the beginning to quell the "headstart is p2win" crowd.