How Will AOC Handle Player Surge at Launch?

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?

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Frostduck

It probably wont. After 20 years we learned to live with it. Just expect the worst and you will be plesantly surprised.

Talents

Frostduck wrote: »

It probably wont. After 20 years we learned to live with it. Just expect the worst and you will be plesantly surprised.

Yep. It will be terrible at launch, you can't really stop this from happening especially with big MMORPGs.

Valento92

Tech isn't the same from 10-20 years ago. Still, expect latency as numbers are (and will) be adjusted eventually.

phdmonster

I bet we will have pure stress tests to see how their distributed server tech works to handle server load, lag etc.

HiddenDaggerInn

one of the things Steven talked about was guild's applying together to be on a server I think this will help take care of some of the congestion. I know personally I have no interest in being on the streamers servers for I worry about que times.

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.

Wiplasher

Expect long server queues. Annoyingly there really is no way to solve it unless they make the game to be able to handle an insane amount of players online at a time.

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.

WMC51

Probably ques. If they add to many servers they have to be merged later which is an issue due to the node system

hapy

Steven mentioned somewhere that they would prefer queues than more servers that would be empty.

Xenantaya

I completely agree with queues at launch rather than having empty servers 3 months after launch, especially since server mergers will be very difficult with the node system.

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.

WMC51

Afk auto log out, que priority based on how little you've gotten to play.

Valento92

GW2 managed to skip queues with megaservers but that's not possible given how worlds will be built in AoC. Let's see what they come up with.

darthaden

It wont eliminate the headache but the head starts for kickstarter backers should help a little. I know I plan on heading to a node far away from the starting zone before launch to avoid the overpopulation

WMC51

Don't think spreading out will help.
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

Kaban

Maybe Layering like in WoW Classic? With system integrating node status across all layers.

Xenantaya

darthaden wrote: »

It wont eliminate the headache but the head starts for kickstarter backers should help a little. I know I plan on heading to a node far away from the starting zone before launch to avoid the overpopulation

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.

WMC51

how does that help with server capacity?

Naxxaz

WMC51 wrote: »

Don't think spreading out will help.
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

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.

Undead Canuck

Hopefully they will handle launch well. They seem to have a good handle on the issues.

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.

HiddenDaggerInn

que's are ok, however I remmeber classic WOW wait for 7 hours get in for a bit get kicked and have another 7 hour wait. Hoping they have some kind of reconnect que free if the server dumps you.

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