metalgearyoda Posted June 13, 2012 Share Posted June 13, 2012 Anyone else feel that these should be a industry standard after this ordeal? Launching the game with 2k server caps caused the need for these transfers. If the server caps had been 5k+ we wouldn't have ended up with 226 servers and we wouldn't have 350 concurrent users per server on average. I think going forward we, the mmo community, should demand super servers BEFORE games launch. That way, population issues will only occur if the game is ACTUALLY empty instead of having almost 80k concurrent. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Zannis Posted June 13, 2012 Share Posted June 13, 2012 The last six months have been educational for Bioware. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
fallenjedi Posted June 13, 2012 Share Posted June 13, 2012 (edited) Except for the fact that IF populations had increased after launch, then having a gazillion servers would not have mattered. The problem is that population (and concurrent players) have decreased which got us to the point of where we are. The real key is that the dev team should have had contingency plans for this from the beginning. I can't defend too many things about Champions Online, but I think they had a good idea. One Server for everyone, the more people that logged in, the more individual shards got created (so that map population was never huge)...and general chat went across all shards. Edited June 13, 2012 by fallenjedi Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mjmcooke Posted June 13, 2012 Share Posted June 13, 2012 Are the caps that low? I'm pretty sure some of the WoW server WAY back in the day had populations over 20k. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
thomasgallant Posted June 13, 2012 Share Posted June 13, 2012 Except for the fact that IF populations had increased after launch, then having a gazillion servers would not have mattered. The problem is that population (and concurrent players) have decreased which got us to the point of where we are. The real key is that the dev team should have had contingency plans for this from the beginning. they should have went with their origional plan of slowly increasing caps for server populations and eventually opened new one when they were needed.. instead of mass opening and letting people go wherever the **** they wanted Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Aelaias Posted June 13, 2012 Share Posted June 13, 2012 Except for the fact that IF populations had increased after launch, then having a gazillion servers would not have mattered. The problem is that population (and concurrent players) have decreased which got us to the point of where we are. The real key is that the dev team should have had contingency plans for this from the beginning. That's basically it. They gambled and lost, and that's that. The industry standard should be preparedness for transfers. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Parkerdude Posted June 13, 2012 Share Posted June 13, 2012 You can't just start with giant caps on launch day. Then you have server crashing and instability. We had one of the smoothest launches in history. It's not as easy as just increasing server caps, they also have to ensure the server is stable. Otherwise you have constant lag and server crashes. In other words, it's easier said then done. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
metalgearyoda Posted June 13, 2012 Author Share Posted June 13, 2012 That's basically it. They gambled and lost, and that's that. The industry standard should be preparedness for transfers. I think its more that they panicked when their forums were flooded with 100+ threads about server queues. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mjmcooke Posted June 13, 2012 Share Posted June 13, 2012 I think its more that they panicked when their forums were flooded with 100+ threads about server queues. ^ This. But also yes, industry standard should be a transfer process worked out, tested, and ready to go in beta before launch. Doesn't mean you open it up right away, but you have it ready to go if needed. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
metalgearyoda Posted June 13, 2012 Author Share Posted June 13, 2012 Are the caps that low? I'm pretty sure some of the WoW server WAY back in the day had populations over 20k. Yeah, those were census of characters, not players or concurrent users. You probably saw charts like "12k horde : 15k alliance" and 6k Night elves, 4k humans, ect. I remember those. That was not concurrent player data. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nyoro Posted June 13, 2012 Share Posted June 13, 2012 The last six months have been educational for Bioware. The question is, have they learned anything from it? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
islander Posted June 13, 2012 Share Posted June 13, 2012 The last six months have been educational for Bioware. Nice one sentence summary, LOL. I'm pretty sure they'll have a bit better foresight moving forward, in general Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JoZenRain Posted June 13, 2012 Share Posted June 13, 2012 Except for the fact that IF populations had increased after launch, then having a gazillion servers would not have mattered. The problem is that population (and concurrent players) have decreased which got us to the point of where we are. The real key is that the dev team should have had contingency plans for this from the beginning. I can't defend too many things about Champions Online, but I think they had a good idea. One Server for everyone, the more people that logged in, the more individual shards got created (so that map population was never huge)...and general chat went across all shards. I don't think the Hero Engine is capable of that technology. You'd think though, that that would be the future of server handling. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Stovokor Posted June 13, 2012 Share Posted June 13, 2012 I brought this up many times in past few months ... on why the launch servers had such low caps compared to the norm. Ironically the game would never have taken such a huge hit if not for issues directly or indirectly correlated to population. Much of the player comments attributed the issue to limitation in Hero engine. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TUXs Posted June 13, 2012 Share Posted June 13, 2012 LOL! Dude, the term "Super Servers" is just code for "server closures" and "declining populations". Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Celebrus Posted June 13, 2012 Share Posted June 13, 2012 (edited) The last six months have been educational for Bioware. You're assuming they've learned something from the last six months of repeated failure. Based on the current situation and (very little) announcements of things to come, I'm going to have to disagree, and assume they are simply going to stay the course. Edited June 13, 2012 by Celebrus Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Arkerus Posted June 13, 2012 Share Posted June 13, 2012 I think its more that they panicked when their forums were flooded with 100+ threads about server queues. The biggest mistake Bioware made was creating way too many servers at launch. As the servers began to thin out (because they were never heavily populated) it caused a death spiral effect of more people cancelling. If they had just raised the server cap and kept a smaller amount of servers they would have saved the subs of the folks who only quit because of population issues. They made a mistake. Its over. Now they are trying to fix it. They are finally doing the right thing. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Celebrus Posted June 13, 2012 Share Posted June 13, 2012 (edited) They made a mistake. Its over. Now they are trying to fix it. They are finally doing the right thing. The right thing is apparently to funnel everyone onto the Fatman and let us start ************ about queues all over again. Problem solved. *dusts off hands* Edited June 13, 2012 by Celebrus Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Brodysmith Posted June 13, 2012 Share Posted June 13, 2012 I believe they didn't expect the game to be so big when it first came out. Although, they should have been ready for the unexpected. Super servers would be great. This game is perfect for it, tons of planets in this game to fill....and in the areas where its very populated, it just splits into 2 phases. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Darth_Bond Posted June 13, 2012 Share Posted June 13, 2012 The last six months have been educational for Bioware. this hopefully they learned their lessons well. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Brodysmith Posted June 13, 2012 Share Posted June 13, 2012 The right thing is apparently to funnel everyone onto the Fatman and let us start ************ about queues all over again. Problem solved. *dusts off hands* They are only funneling the very dead servers that have next to no one on them. It bet it will barely make a difference, unless a bunch of people come back to the game, and re-roll there. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kthx Posted June 13, 2012 Share Posted June 13, 2012 I think going forward we, the mmo community, should demand super servers BEFORE games launch. The irony, of course, is that at least part of the problem today was caused by the demands of the mmo community before launch. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kthx Posted June 13, 2012 Share Posted June 13, 2012 (edited) They are only funneling the very dead servers that have next to no one on them. It bet it will barely make a difference, unless a bunch of people come back to the game, and re-roll there. There are a number of reports that server transfers are working well and that population levels on the destination servers are higher. Also, per Scorpienne's survey, the population is increasing as of the June 13 update: This is the 2nd time since I've been tracking numbers that there has been an increase, and this is the largest increase thus far. Edited June 13, 2012 by Kthx Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Brodysmith Posted June 13, 2012 Share Posted June 13, 2012 There are a number of reports that server transfers are working well and that population levels on the destination servers are higher. Also, per Scorpienne's survey, the population is increasing as of the June 13 update: When I said it will barely make a difference, I meant it will probably barely make a difference on The Fatmans overall population compared to what it already was. I didn't mean it would barely make a difference for the ones that transfer there, it would be a huge difference for them. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TroyN Posted June 13, 2012 Share Posted June 13, 2012 The biggest mistake Bioware made was creating way too many servers at launch. As the servers began to thin out (because they were never heavily populated) it caused a death spiral effect of more people cancelling. If they had just raised the server cap and kept a smaller amount of servers they would have saved the subs of the folks who only quit because of population issues. They made a mistake. Its over. Now they are trying to fix it. They are finally doing the right thing. RIFT Did the same thing, catered to people complaining about ques and made way too many servers. It hurt RIFT horribly. That game has a fraction of the population it deserves because of how they mismanaged their servers. WAR also suffered from this, we're looking at 3 games at different points in their lifespan based on server mismanagement. RIFT has slowly recovered while WAR is for all intents and purposes, dead. TOR needs superservers. They can't keep playing catch up and doing merge after merge. They need to merge everything down until the only servers left are at full capacity with ques, because 6 months from now population will still drop, It's just the lifecycle of an MMO now. No MMO will ever do what WoW did again, so expecting that kind of rampant growth is foolish. Prepare for declining populations and keep as many subs as possible with content and full servers. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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