Effect of staggering on PvP servers

[Shadowkire]

1. This is not a complaint thread, if someone starts complaining please ignore him/er.

 

2. This is a thread for speculation, it is too early to tell what will happen for the game.

 

One of the reasons given for staggering is:

"Two, our plan is to continue to add servers - but carefully, and in response to demand. We need to monitor that demand and roll out servers accordingly. A long-term recipe for MMO failure is to add a lot of servers early on, and then when population decreases, have to close those servers and merge them together." -Stephen Reid, in the dev tracker

 

For the sake of the thread let us assume that this works for most servers.

 

I believe that staggering will ultimately result in a series of PvP servers being closed and/or being merged. My reasons are as follows:

 

Anyone who has been on these forums for more than a few weeks has seen at least one of the dozens of polls asking forum views what side they will choose- Empire or Republic. The results of these polls varies, but only in how many more people will roll for Empire over Republic. The polls vary from 1.5 to 1 in favor of the Empire to as much as 3 to 1.

 

It seems reasonable to assume that the majority of early preorders are from the people who voted in these polls. The method of staggering that places the earliest preorders into the game first would therefore result in PvP servers being filled with Empire players. As the staggering continues these servers will continue to be filled with more and more Empire players, likely resulting in faction populations matching poll numbers from past forum threads. By the end of early access it is not unreasonable to assume these PvP servers will be completely full.

 

Then you have the official launch. In the past MMOs with a good vs evil faction split usually have a lot of early evil faction players and a lot of launch day good faction players. With the staggering ensuring that the earliest of the early access servers are full the tsunami of launch day Republic players will be given little choice but to roll on later, less populated servers.

 

The end result being a lot of PvP servers with large faction population imbalances, which is where the real trouble begins.

The two methods of PvP in the game are open world combat and warzones.

 

In open world PvP the minority faction on a server will have a huge disadvantage. Some members of the minority may tough it out but after a while of being zerged at every turn every day a player will begin to sour to open world PvP.

 

So then that person will turn to warzones. The minority player enjoys quick queue times for entering, as there are more people in the other faction queued up, but the majority player is now being trouble in all aspects of PvP. The minority players are routinely chased out of open world and queue time for warzones are long, leaving the majority player with little to do.

 

As anyone who has played an MMO before knows well, the first time boredom rears its head is the beginning of the end for the enthusiasm that drives a player to spend so much time playing an MMO. I believe the boredom the majority faction members will experience will cause them to cancel their subscriptions earlier than they would have otherwise.

 

TL;DR: Staggering will cause PvP servers to have a faster than average population drop.

[edit] ...which will undo much of the intent behind the staggering.

 

Discuss.

Edited December 14, 2011 by Shadowkire

[bigoldbear]

The main effect of staggering on PVP servers will be that all the characters will look drunk.

[Mettatron]

I'd be more concerned with bored lvl 50's ganking 7 shades of ***** out of me as I lvl if I wasnt in untill the 20th........ we all had the chance to pre-order on the same day..... I wasnt fast enough to get in yesterday....... **** happens...... snooze ya lose........ take your pick

[Samsky]

It doesn't really matter if you stagger or not. Your points should be valid for simultaneous launch also. Bigest issue for PvP I can see is, lv10s being owned by idk lv50s coz of stagger and economic advantage. Population wise, doubt it matters.

[Chomag]

Warriors will dead

[Naghand]

So you might encounter a lot of higher level folks by the 20th, and you might get a spankin....same thing would happen and more for those that start up 1 month, 2 months, 3 months from now...it does not matter, at all.

[McVade]

Yeah. I'm not really following you OP. Yes, more people are going to play Empire than Republic. That's not going to change whether or not they all join at once or trickle in over time.

 

I'd be more concerned with bored lvl 50's ganking 7 shades of ***** out of me as I lvl if I wasnt in untill the 20th........ we all had the chance to pre-order on the same day..... I wasnt fast enough to get in yesterday....... **** happens...... snooze ya lose........ take your pick

 

That's where I thought you were going with this. This is a concern of mine as well, just not a big enough one to cry about.

 

If it turns out that Bioware has done nothing to prevent 7 EGA Sith from camping the second world, slaughtering people 30 levels lower than them, I'll put up with it for exactly 5 minutes then reroll on a PvE server.

Edited December 14, 2011 by McVade

[noctivagus]

Have PVP servers ever been anything but endless griefing?

[Xerda]

Have PVP servers ever been anything but endless griefing?

 

Indeed even in games where everyone was allowed in at the same time you had people staying up for very long hours to out level everyone else and go back and camp.

[Shadowkire]

So you might encounter a lot of higher level folks by the 20th, and you might get a spankin....same thing would happen and more for those that start up 1 month, 2 months, 3 months from now...it does not matter, at all.

 

I intentionally left out any mention of level differences due to players beginning at different times for the reason that it is only a temporary problem for each player. Though at the same time it would also be a reason launch day players will flock to newly opened servers.

[voidsurvivor]

It seems reasonable to assume that the majority of early preorders are from the people who voted in these polls. The method of staggering that places the earliest preorders into the game first would therefore result in PvP servers being filled with Empire players. As the staggering continues these servers will continue to be filled with more and more Empire players, likely resulting in faction populations matching poll numbers from past forum threads.

 

 

The problem is that even less people are willing to roll the outnumbered faction, now that the other side already has so many high level players. Seriously, at this point you have to be a masochist to play Republic. The bored 50s will have nothing better to do than camp us.

 

It's not my first pvp server and I will play Republic. That being said, I consider the piss poor EGA implementation an epic fail.

[csward]

Yeah OP, I have been saying this too. The only saving grace is that we can hopefully roll on a fresh server. If you go on the community promoted PvP servers (i.e. Anchorhead and Fatman) tomorrow or Friday, well, expect mass ganks.