[Post your queue times!]

OK, i was about 2 hours this morning, then had SERVER ERROR come up when the queue finished.. so i sighed and restarted, and it is now 4 hours later, and still in queue.

[Complain about staggering yet now its the Q's]

ROFL.. how in the world does rushing cause this problem? The problem is the amount of servers vs the amount of people who preordered.

 

No amount of waiting means that the queues would be any reduced when you put the people in.

 

They just stuffed up by not working out how many people they could hold on each server vs the amount of servers..

 

Seriously, the w/e betas were there TO stress test the servers, so they know how much they could hold.. so why in the world are they keeping server pops so low? Why wasnt this sorted BEFORE they went live?

[Queue growing and growing and growing...]

ahhh... also on a guild chosen server... 1.5 hour long queue.. finally get to number 1.. and then SERVER error.... restart... you are now 1800th in the queue

 

Errrrr.

[So will we always be shuffled in, in waves?]

Yeah except that Stephen Reid specifically said that it was not done as a stress test, and indeed that was the purpose of the previous beta weekends...

 

The actual reason was so they could launch with the minimum amount of game servers needed, to prevent server merges in the future.

 

This is pretty insane reasoning, as surely they can estimate how many preorders they have sold? It shows more that they perhaps have no faith that their product will be good enough in the medium term to keep their playerbase.

 

Hello cost cutting as your main priority!

[So will we always be shuffled in, in waves?]

They seem to have failed to achieve their goals with the wave system anyway. I'm hearing reports of large server population imbalances. Also overcrowding of the noob zone is not an issue in a game that has instanced zones. There could be 1000 people in the start area and you will only be playing with 49 of them. In fact there is no reason for them to have servers at all with that system, they should just have a massive rack of computers that dynamically allocates resources where needed to each instance as EVE does.

 

All in all the goal was achieved if the goal was to give some people an advantage, split up groups of friends and frustrate those waiting to get in.

 

I am getting in to play today. I won't forget about this launch though, it went exactly to plan. Problem is the plan was bad.

 

Well said.

[So will we always be shuffled in, in waves?]

Then why not just launch the prelaunch with more instances on starting areas?

[So will we always be shuffled in, in waves?]

And if they had have let everyone know in advance which wave they were going to be in..

[Those calling "worst launch ever", probably never played any other mmo`s at launch]

I agree, the only way the launch could have gone smoother is if they had have let Noone in.. would have saved server costs and customer support as well!

[The way Bioware should have handled the early access launch]

More so, the only advantage that staggering gives you is to stifle the flood of servers opening, and to spread out the population... As Stephen Reid just put into the wave launch info.. there will be queues, so this launch hasn't solved the normal issues anyway.

[So will we always be shuffled in, in waves?]

Yep, the only thing staggered launch allows you to do is separate people from overpopulating areas in the beginning.. It just delays all other problems.

[The way Bioware should have handled the early access launch]

Stupid rotten meat comment really. Although the OP might have a point, there are a lot of factors I do not know to be able, even as IT Engineer that I am, to judge if it has been handled in the best POSSIBLE fashion or not. Different approaches to a launch surely exist, but this discussion would have been heated at BioWare. Leave it with them. And please keep one thing in mind: They are almost godlike in game design IMO, however that does not make them network gods - you can surely follow my logic here. I simply think there are not a whole lot of engineers out there with massive experience to build on to have s server farm running with millions of users. And the pressure of success.......GIVE THEM A BREAK FOR CHRIST'S SAKE!!!!

 

Still 'pre-order earlier' is plain rubbish! LOL

 

Peace!

 

Yes I think there biggest concern was keeping costs down from the size of it, driven by the Marketing department (based on previous stickies and Stephen Reid).

[The way Bioware should have handled the early access launch]

...

 

Okay, go back, read my post.

 

I think you'll have to explicitely state what you mean, as i see no conflict. Yes more instances are more resource hungry, and yes your Master Server or however you handle coordinating the instances will have to have enough juice to run the amount of people , but that is not that hard to overcome depending on how you build the server client.

 

Look at EvE for instance... they have done very well at managing having huge amounts of population spread across a single game server.. in fact they had to rethink a lot of traditionally server techniques to do that.

[The way Bioware should have handled the early access launch]

wait wait wait. lets highlight whats wrong with this

 

 

 

now lets backtrack:

 

 

 

so what are you trying to say here?

 

K last time i respond to you as you have no idea.

 

Server resources = servers x power (very simple for you) As such, to add more resources in your server farm you obviously need ..... <blank>

 

I'll let you fill that one in.

 

What I meant was not to open up new GAME servers, but have a dynamic use of server resources to create more instances.

[The way Bioware should have handled the early access launch]

You don't know the difference between server and shard.

 

Hint, think of the shard as a terminal, and that will make it very clear why adding more shards does not work.

 

Terminals require a crapton of server resources, mainly enough RAM to service them. I am not saying 1 server = 1 shard at all. I am saying server resources split across shards.

[The way Bioware should have handled the early access launch]

They did as people keep suggesting Bioware do; open the floodgates.

 

 

 

This ignores server load, why I pointed to the guilds wars events.

 

You can add as many shards and instances as you like, if the server gets over-taxed, it buckles. Put too many people into a single area, even if the server population is low, it increases stress.

 

Adding temporary 'servers' (more shards and instances) does not address the problem, and increases costs (okay, not really that big as far as fans may be concerned).

 

It gets overtaxed if the shards are sharing a servers CPU's for sure, so adding servers (depending on the Server infrastructure/client) does fix the problem, and the cost as i said, is an investment.

[The way Bioware should have handled the early access launch]

and they'd still be ************ because they didnt preorder earlier. its been stated for quite some time that early access is given by the order in which pre order codes are registered. its also been stated that bw doesnt want to open up a ******** of servers for launch just to have to close them down and force people to transfer. its a few ****in days, if you cant handle that then you probably wont last long in this game

 

 

Just for you.... Read what i said properly. I am NOT saying to open up new servers, i am saying to dynamically assign the Server resources in opening new INSTANCES as required. At the end of the day, they are oversubscribed on people vs server resources / infrastructure

[The way Bioware should have handled the early access launch]

Why is everyone whining and claiming BW can't launch a game?

 

....

 

Firstly, I work as a project manager, so i do have some idea of what i'm talking about. Secondly, I have been playing MMO's for over 13 years now. The issue I have is not with missing out, although that does suck, it is the way the whole thing has been handled, the lack of certainty, the lack of communication, the dominance of the Marketing Department

 

Launches have been mishandled for various reasons by most MMO's ever launched. This is an alternative way to handle it.

[The way Bioware should have handled the early access launch]

They can handle all the pre-order capacity and then some. It's not hard to open new servers. Your infantile attempt at an argument is incredibly weak to be honest. You think they did not monitor pre-orders? You really have absolutely no clue what you are talking about.

 

Errr.. read my post again, i'm not saying to open up new servers, i'm saying to have a dynamic use of server resources to open more INSTANCES on existing servers as they are required. Perhaps my infantile attempt at an argument would look better if you actually read it.

[The way Bioware should have handled the early access launch]

Okay. Rift.

 

Done.

 

 

Seriously, though. Rift did pretty much what you described and added servers when the existing ones filled. Aside from all the complaints on their forums (related to stability and lag), there has been server mergers since then.

 

While I agree saying pre-order earlier is a little naive (it would have taken longer to get through July), most people are going to get a minimum of 5 days early access and any 'late' pre-orders will be probably getting in as soon as they put in the code.

 

 

 

The problem is they don't want to over commit. There's no point putting 100 servers where 80 will cover it stable and relatively lag free (numbers are not-true, btw, just an example), and staggered launch allows them to do this.

 

Letting everyone in would stress out the starter areas regardless of the number of instances employed. See Guild Wars wiki events pages.

 

Yeah some good points.. in regards to Rift, they didnt have as big a budget, and overall dealt with it OK..

 

And as to not overcommiting, this is why i suggested earlier that the solution would have been to hire the servers that they thought they would only need temporarily until people spread out / natural attrition

[The way Bioware should have handled the early access launch]

Bioware is doing fine ! its the players that didnt pre-order until after the beta , who are not doing fine.

 

You made the mistake. not Bioware

 

Errr.. you do realise that your very comments only validate my argument, and prove that the launch was not perfect?

[The way Bioware should have handled the early access launch]

still waiting for a reply, or do you have nothing to say now?

 

errr.. check again, i certainly responded to your comments..

[The way Bioware should have handled the early access launch]

Lets see...

 

Let everyone in at the same time = DDoSing the login server. NOTE: Not the game server. You wouldn't be able to get past the launcher.

 

 

Then you have not enough network resources, login servers.. and this issue is the only reason a queue would be needed, to process each person. It would not be a DDoS in itself with a queue in place simply to handle the processing of new logins.

[The way Bioware should have handled the early access launch]

At this point, it's not trolling. People are just tired of repeating themselves.

 

Then why would you post? You do realise you dont have to?

 

Again, if everyone preordered earlier, it would not fix the fact that they are oversubscribed on preorders vs their server capacity. Someone disagree with that statement if you can.

[The way Bioware should have handled the early access launch]

"Traiel has not made any friends yet"

 

I wonder why.....

 

Ha... attacking someone personally because you have no rebuttal to the topic does not make you smarter, nor does it counter any arguments raised.

[The way Bioware should have handled the early access launch]

Saying 'have patience' does again not get around the argument that they could have done it better simply by having more server resources.. Try again.