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How Will AOC Handle Player Surge at Launch?
Xenantaya
Member, Braver of Worlds, Kickstarter, Alpha One
In a past live stream, Steven and/or Jeffrey suggested they might use phasing when the game launches to handle the initial surge of players. But in the recent interview with TimTheTatman, Steven said there would not be any phasing (at least according to the Ashes Post transcript). Did Steven mean no phasing at all, or no phasing after the first few weeks of launch?
If there's not going to any phasing at all, how will AOC handle the initial player surge at launch? Steven recently talked about each server having 50,000 total players, with an expectation of 8,000 to 12,000 concurrent players. Those numbers may very well be accurate six months after launch. But at launch if each server allows 50,000 players, then you'll likely 40,000+ players on concurrently, especially at prime time. Are there just going to be lengthy queues, or does AOC have a different plan for handling player / server capacity at launch? Is the idea that players will be more spread out across the map at launch than in other games, since there are not really starter zones or a standard progression paths through zones? Is there any information about the maximum concurrent capacity each server will have?
If there's not going to any phasing at all, how will AOC handle the initial player surge at launch? Steven recently talked about each server having 50,000 total players, with an expectation of 8,000 to 12,000 concurrent players. Those numbers may very well be accurate six months after launch. But at launch if each server allows 50,000 players, then you'll likely 40,000+ players on concurrently, especially at prime time. Are there just going to be lengthy queues, or does AOC have a different plan for handling player / server capacity at launch? Is the idea that players will be more spread out across the map at launch than in other games, since there are not really starter zones or a standard progression paths through zones? Is there any information about the maximum concurrent capacity each server will have?
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Yep. It will be terrible at launch, you can't really stop this from happening especially with big MMORPGs.
I heard a bird ♫
And the Char Creation that I think they said they might allow us to do early, will allow frew flow into the server that you have already chosen.
That being said it's a launch and usually something comes up a developer didn't expect and won't know until it happens, and there might be small delays.
I'm not expecting Archeage level of queue time which set world records but id assume over an hour to get in the popular servers. So long as they allow people to swap there characters they created on launch day after they reserved there spot on a different server I think it won't be terrible.
I just hoped there would be another solution instead of having hours-long queues at launch, whether phasing or something else. I guess Intrepid still has another two years or so to come up with something. Perhaps they can direct players to travel away from nodes near the divine gateways to spread the population throughout the server map, but I don't think that would completely solve the problems.
I heard a bird ♫
If the server can handle 50k it can handle 50k. Too many in one area is more of a what your computer and connection can handle. I think
Thanks; same here. I thought Steven or Jeffrey said in a livestream that the center of the map would have higher level monsters and dungeons (relative to node development), and so more rewards as well. Assuming that's true, then I'm guessing most "hardcore" / Alpha-Beta guilds will head toward the middle, away from the divine gateways, which would lighten the load in those starting areas.
Spreading out would help, seeing where other players are located and what they are doing, is not done on your own computer, the server has to send out that info to you.
Personally i think they will have a typical launch, phasing might help tho, but with how the node system works it's gonna take a lot of effort for a system they only want running the first couple weeks.
If nothing else, @StevenSharif isn't a big fan of games having major issues at launch. But, like him, I would rather have queues for a while instead of empty servers later.