Staggering, worst or best tactic for a MMO this day and age?

[Solar]

It beats a million lowbies going for the same quest mob at once. By a large margin.

 

^So true.

 

And if it happened, like it did in *some* beta phases, the people here complaining would be here ....

 

wait 4 it ...

 

complaining.

[Karniel]

Honestly I expect a rocky start to an MMO, servers down, queue times sometimes, lag.. And I accept it as patches roll out pretty fast. Not being ablet o play for unknown amount of days, just deperessing. If they had done EGA over 2 days then I wouldnt feel this way, but right now they are splitting people from leveling with friends/guildies, Which is the reason to play MMO with other people, for me preferably people I know.

 

Yes yes I didnt get my preorder codefor weeks due to Ebgames canada, Sorry for preordering CE on first day and not just saying screw it and going with DDE to make sure I have ega as I thought the staggered launch would be something that this is not.

[imtrick]

Won't happen in this game. The zones get instanced.

 

In academic circles, we call what I did "exaggeration."

 

And if you don't think there'd be competition for quest objectives, you're kidding yourself. Some of them were rough in beta even with the instancing.

[Smurfsauce]

I played Aion at launch, longest queue I ever sat in was probably 15 minutes, and it was rare.

 

You didn't play when everyone else was playing. Or by the time you got in queue, everyone got tired and turned off the game, significantly lowering the queue.

 

I'm not doubting your experience, but I was one of those Aion followers who even played during the Betas. The early access for Aion was bad, and then when the game was released, it was way worse that very evening.

 

It wasn't 15 minutes for me. I'd sit down and play Disgaea 2 for at least an hour; then turn back to my computer screen and see that I'd still be in queue. =(

 

God forbid anyone get dc'd during the wait. They'd have to restart the entire client and get back in line (at any point in the game, be it in queue or actually playing).

[Skoobie]

And the same people would be here accusing those persons of having done something wrong, no?

 

No.

 

Because this was something that the players could have avoided, server crashes are not.

[Rhinoplat]

Staggering is fine if they do it over a short period of time, say 24 hours. But to actually drag it out over 7 days is ludicrous.

 

I fully expected everyone to get at least 4 days solid play time when it was originally 5 days.

 

BioWare should allow all pre-orders EA tomorrow.

[FMLDestroyer]

People that got in "This is the best and smoothest launch ever."

 

People that didn't "This is the worst launch ever."

 

 

As soon as they get in the whiners will be all happy and too busy enjoying the game to QQ on the forums.

 

Only true complaints should be if there are any + 40s at this point due to some bug/exploit that people are mentioning,

 

and my personal favorite, friends not getting to play at the same time. Deployed guilds should have gotten in at the same time in my honest opinion, but no butthurt here. Staggering was a great idea and even if they were overcautious today it's still day 7 of happy free gaming time that we are not entitled to, and is a nice gift on BW's part.

 

To bad the ratio is 1/10 for people getting in ouch bio u hurt... stop

[Kalfear]

Just trying to get an understanding of the way that bioware does things, considering i MAY be spending quite a few years with them if this game is a success...

 

I hear that the queues would be long and dreadful, but at least those queues would tell you an estimate on when you could play. Unlike the current queue were in with an unknown wait time.

 

I also hear that the servers would lag and crash but... What lag would there be if there were queues that prevented too many people to be on the server thus causing lag?

 

And the word on the street is that there would be ghost town servers, and server mergers would have to occur. But couldnt that happen now anyway?

 

When I read it I honestly thought it was a great idea

 

Course I could give a flying beep who hits 50 first and who does what first, none of that matters to me 1 bit.

 

But now ive read the replies, read the ranting, and read the massively arrogent and ego driven troll sessions by posters who got in acting all superior and what not.

 

I gotta say this is one of the worst launchs Ive seen in 21 years.

AND THIS IS LAUNCH!

You only get in by agreeing to buy the product,

THIS IS LAUNCH nop matter what PR statements saying otherwise say!

 

This is APART OF YOUR PURCHASED GAME

 

And once I realized that I understood how unfair and unbalanced and REALLY DUMB a staggered launch is.

 

They say

-they want the servers to be stablie.

ummmm, why exactly did I beta test then? Serversshould already be stable

- they say they dont want to have to many servers

until the 3-6 month mark after the normal bleed off, your going to have to make those servers anyways, right now your just pissing people off by making them wait for whats going to happen regardless.

- they say first come first server

Ummmmm, did a pre order in Juky pay more then a Pre order in Nov? No they didnt so first come first serve is just more arrogent B Wipes being obnoxious in their gloating

 

Fact is I havent heard a single valid reason to support the staggered launch. Nothing is gained but planty already has been lost.

 

In the end it comes down to, Dec 13, 2011 was the official launch day for the pre orders, dec 20 is the official launch day for non pre orders. Yet Bioware is making people who paid just as much money (full price) for their pre orders into 2nd class citizens who are already veiwed as and spoken to as LESS THEN OTHERS.

 

Bioware has promoted Elitism in their launch

 

I been around for every single launch but oNWN on AOL and this is by far the worst.

Love the game,

hate the launch

Hate the elitism BS

 

Time to just let all the pre orders in, make the servers required and par down when the bleeding off period has ended.

 

This 2nd and 3rd class citizenship is beyond out of control and is going to cause issues in game

[Romiz]

Same as other way it has good and bad points. At least launch day will not be staggered.

[Raximillian]

Sheez... You used the word in the title, but apparently do not know what it means. Staggered launch, we all knew it was coming, there are no surprises here. Why do people act so surprised now? They have been telling us the launch was going to be staggered since they started the pre-orders.

[Kalfear]

should i expect two hour q's when i get in game!

 

on launch day, YES you should!

 

but you should expect to get into the queue

[Sol-Ra]

I know some people are po'd over this launch because they didn't get in today. But I'm kinda in favor of it. I've been in a few launches that were terrible due to crashes, massive lag and tech issues galore.

[Fifelaw]

Oh look, a guy who doesn't know what a launch is in name and in function.

 

Yeah there's a lot of those around here.

 

The servers are up + people are in game levelling + they get to keep their characters = L A U N C H

 

Semantics like "early game access" are there for legality and to confuse the herd...

[Jarlathe]

Pretty much. I haven't seen anyone that actually got in on day 1 saying that this is a failed launch. Just a bunch of people that didn't get in.

 

Do you really expect anyone that got in today to say that? Really? It's more along the lines of "screw you buddy, I got mine!".

 

OT: I wouldn't say it's a failed launch, but the lack of communication is really bothersome.

[HangmanBones]

theres a word in computers called "sharding" you partition players on the same server into different "shards" on the server to keep area populations at managable levels. using this approach they can run 10 shards of each starting area if their server populations get to high.

 

this is basic computer science and every mmo player has seen it used, the fact that ea/bioware isn't using this to push more players into ega means only one thing to people that know this. that ea/bw is lazy and is playing favorites on who they let in.

[jontyld]

I actually like the idea, I don't like how they chose to do it though. I think they should have used open betas to make sure everything was good to go, and KNOWN on the opening of pre-launch how to go about things, and rolled people in via steady waves rather than in huge chunks like they did.

 

Theres just too many things going poorly this way. the only things that bother me personally are potential difficulties getting together with friends if servers keep showing up full, and I'll be pretty annoyed if I can't get at least a few of my planned character names.

Edited December 14, 2011 by jontyld
removed quote I mistakenly added

[Ashkelon]

Oh look, a guy who doesn't know what a launch is in name and in function.

 

I do know what a launch is. And this isn't a "launch" in name OR function.

 

It's been referred to by Bioware as a "staggered Early Access" for some time now. And functions as such.

 

Bioware has been pretty clear about how this would go down. Could they be a little better about letting people know when they can expect to get in? Maybe. But, that would not only be somewhat difficult, since they're likely playing most of this situation by ear, based on server stability. But also, if something did go slightly awry and people's entry dates had to be pushed back a day or so, the QQ storm would likely be even bigger than this mess.

Edited December 14, 2011 by Ashkelon

[rastaah]

To me, worst. I would rather Q up and know how much time I approx have (for instance Q box might say I am 3000 in line....approx 2 hours wait) etc.

 

Much better than this dog pile.

[harrisonxxi]

Worst. It does nothing but irritate your pre-order base, and tbh if devs aren't certain their servers can handle PRE-ORDERS, who's quantity is finite and known, they sure as hell WILL NOT survive launch, where quantity is not finite and unknown.

[Sheneria]

worst release of an mmorpg i have witnessed (even if i would be playing right now, hearing from some friends already playing on eu servers its more like a static and empty single player game with coop) Edited December 14, 2011 by Sheneria

[Aora]

Almost everything said in this thread is effectively moot, because the game hasn't actually "launched" yet. The game releases on the 20th.

 

If you get in early, awesome for you. If you don't, oh well, you would've had to wait till the 20th anyways.

 

Everything in your post is moot as per the statement released by Ray and Greg this morning. Please read the stickies. The official release may be the 20th, but it has launched.

 

Welcome Message from Ray Muzyka & Greg Zeschuk | Today , 07:16 AM

 

This is a big day for us; we are launching Star Wars: The Old Republic, BioWare’s largest and most ambitious project to date, and we’re very proud that you’ve been able to join us. It’s an honor to be able to share this game with you.

[imtrick]

theres a word in computers called "sharding" you partition players on the same server into different "shards" on the server to keep area populations at managable levels. using this approach they can run 10 shards of each starting area if their server populations get to high.

 

this is basic computer science and every mmo player has seen it used, the fact that ea/bioware isn't using this to push more players into ega means only one thing to people that know this. that ea/bw is lazy and is playing favorites on who they let in.

 

You weren't in the beta, were you? If you were, you'd probably know that you're 100% wrong.

[BadgeredMushroom]

well it seems to be working just fine. No server crashs health populations on the servers. I wil take this anytime over the norm of lag servers crashes and long hour+ ques

 

If you barely let anyone into the game you won't have these issues. Nobody should be surprised that the servers are running well when a fraction of people who paid BioWare $60-150 are in the game.

 

All they did was take potential instability and queues and replaced with a massive queue that has no estimated wait time and no indication of how many people are in front of you. Then to make matters worse, they only allow that queue to move for half a day. Completely idiotic. This may be the worst MMO launch I've ever seen.

[Suldra]

The early game access issue has been clear from the beginning. Granted everyone has a right to question the motives here but, really some of the questions thus far have not really been thought through.

 

Hmm....odd reasons to be concerned.

 

Playing with friends.

This is easily remedied by simple planning. Not a valid gripe really.

 

Being the first to 50.

If this is your motivation might I suggest you play FPS? That crowed is more empathetic to such goals. In an MMO its a bit counter productive to enjoying the game.

 

Any server firsts.

Again, this is something carried over from FPS and really means nothing to the MMO community as a whole. No one really cares that you are a server first....honestly its over rated and means you didn't really care about the rest of the game.

 

Getting the name you wanted.

Yeah l337jones was my favorite too...i think they should band anyone who cannot create a character name that refuses to refrain from multiple lowercase first letters and multiple-consecutive pre and post consonants like xXl337jonesXx or sammy (not the lack of proper capitalization. Be original and make up a decent name for your characters. The script kiddie era is old and faded and just not cool anymore.

 

Taking time off work to play hard the first few days.

Again this is just a matter of planning.

 

Not being pissed off at prelaunch.

Considering this has been known since the first publication of the games pre-order service you should be over it by now. If your not might I suggest professional help about those anger issues?

 

Not getting ganked by others who launched first.

You won't be. The open PvP in this game is not as open as you think and its just a matter of paying attention to where you are and what your doing.

 

One of the main benefits of the staggering invites is pretty simple to understand. Its like turning on a water faucet to fill a tube. You turn on the hot water to get it hot and then add cold to get it warm. Once the water is just right you fill the tube. In this metaphoric example young Padawans, the hot and cold running water is represented by the demographics of the player base. Many factors such as where you are logging in from, what faction you finally decide to play, what servers and server types fill up the quickest, etc...and many other variables beyond the scope of this forum need to be considered. By launch there should be enough data to bring in the thousands of non-pre-orders that will be flowing on starting the 20th. So, no; this is not the worst launch ever...its just the most practical and what makes it unusual is that this is your first time experiencing it.

 

Patience! Discipline! You will get there....may the force be with you all.

[Shredding]

5 hour Q every time you log in for a month or 2-5 day Q once.

 

 

HMMMMMM.

 

What makes you think there will not be ques after the 20th because there most probably will be.