Off Peak Play

akabear

I have played on US hosted servers for most of my MMO playing time. Initially, because the divide was option a) Euro or b) US servers. But later I continued to choose US based servers due to experience of local servers being less flourishing, predominant language in chat and/or region blocked, preferring to contend with some minor lag but have greater population and in predominant language in english.

The down side has been often playing during off peak population density and missing some prime-time events.

The division of the community to node based orientation is a concern for meaningful play during off peak.

How do you think off peak game play will be?

Azherae

I expect it to be fine based on the implications they've given for their netcode/latency solutions.

People do like to play in different regions quite often, and while some people with poor internet would have to play on the server near them, others probably won't.

Ludullu

akabear wrote: »

The division of the community to node based orientation is a concern for meaningful play during off peak.

How do you think off peak game play will be?

A ton of stuff is meant to happen during prime time. I really dunno how "meaningful" the off-hours will be. Obviously every player determines their own meaning in the game they play, but all the big events will be primetime-based and most guilds/parties/raids will be happening at those times too.

There's obviously a benefit to not playing during primetime, mainly in the form of easier escapes from PKing punishments and bigger availability of resource farming/transit, so if you're mainly interested in those things - I do think off-time gameplay would be just fine. But outside of that, I dunno really.

akabear

I do hope some events occur during off peak too! But weekends here and there, will be ok

L2 had a quest to be part of a top boss raid to complete in order to complete one`s class.. the raid boss came up once every 2-4 weeks and was killed within 30min of popping up.. It took me 7 months of waiting due to time zone difference and work commitments to be on the server at a time that was possible.

I hope that there is nothing like that in AoC

tautau

Off-peak play will have some advantages. For example:

- I am going to run my caravans in off-peak hours since there is a much lower possibility of them being attacked.
- I will do much of my gathering during off-peak hours since the gankers/reds are less likely to see me then.
- I'll do caverns, bosses and other 'high return' activities during off-peak hours.

During prime time I can do my crafting, chatting in taverns, helping new players, having guild meetings and so forth since the people will all be available.

So yeah, it helps if you plan on playing 16 hours a day, too.

Scarbeus

I think prime time and off peak time will affect what players are more likely to be doing. More PvP and world events doing prime time and more PvE and resource gathering during off peak hours are my guesses as that's what I'd be doing.

Decidendi

Think about it this way: Would I rather transport my good during peak hours or when everyone's sleeping? In any case, I don't think you'll have a completely empty server at any point in the day.

BaSkA_9x2

It's a double edged sword, really.

I don't know what region you're from, but if you absolutely can never be online for prime time, then you'll need to adjust your playstyle accordingly.

However, lower population might also mean less competition, so what you really need is to find a group of players who will be online when you are.