Henrik, MO's CEO, takes a swipe at Darkfall. Says MO's launch will be better than Darkfall's

osmunda

Originally posted by fox1531


I find it hard to understand how some people here can hold it against Aventurine for the staggered release on DF. They are one of the few companies that seems to be more interested in long term success instead of a quick box sale money grab. It’s strange that we as a community will chastise one company for long queues and server instability, and then turn around and chastise another developer for actively preventing these situations. I’m not saying that the DF release was perfect, or even good for that matter, but at least give credit where credit is due.

"Staggered release" is one of the strangest euphemisms I've heard.  I understand what people mean, but it implies that Aventurine planned it that way. In a staggered release, I would expect "We will be releasing 1000 new accounts next Monday. These will be sent to people randomly selected from those applications we have received.  Please review yourapplication information to ensure that your email and credit card information are correct so that your order can be processed and you can be notified promptly if you are selected.  What they actually had was: some people getting charged twice, some not getting charged, some not receiving their access code, the store opening at unannounced time, the store opening with an unknown number of new accounts, people needing to refresh the order page for hours ( 6hours 19 minutes for keen) when the store first opened, login queues (hours in length) for those people who managed to get accounts.

 

http://www.massively.com/2009/02/25/darkfall-prepares-for-launch-renewed-sales-of-games/  http://www.massively.com/2009/02/26/darkfalls-forums-and-chat-brought-down-due-to-heavy-traffic-se/  http://www.massively.com/2009/03/04/a-copy-of-darkfall-more-evasive-than-a-cheetah-on-speed/

http://www.keenandgraev.com/?p=2012   http://www.keenandgraev.com/?p=2109  http://www.keenandgraev.com/?p=2030

gervaise1

Av could have sold lots of accounts, opened a single server and had huge queues followed by a - deserved - uproar. Which is basically what WAR and AoC didalbeit  on a larger scale.

Then it could have bought new servers - in AV's case paid for by the subs.

Then a few weeks later it could have faced a deluge of posters complaining about the servers being empty and demanding mergers. 

Followed by a posting a hefty loss (Funcom posted hefty losses in the accounts,  we didn't get the WAR breakdown). In AV's case this would have been game over. 

To limit sales however you have to be confident that you have a decent product to sell. Once you have sold a single copy any NDA is finished; people will post gameplay videos - and for WAR, and even AoC, some of them may not have been pretty.

 

Lacking money AV limited sales of the game - yes there were some other issues as well, it wasn't perfect, but limiting sales is what most complainers gripe at. Let me say again that it wasn't perfect but technically etc. it wasn't bad either. There were better ways the 'limited sales' could have been done imo but - overall - this short term type of 'problem' is one a game can - and in DF's case clearly has - survived.  

DF has doubled the number of servers since its launch - not hard but it now has nearly as many servers as WAR / AoC has and is considered a 'thriving' game and not dead in the water due to having cost a fortune in staff (and servers). The phrase: look at us 6 months out springs to mind.

The approach was so good that Aion sort of copied it - except people got to pay to queue, in DF you basically paid to buy it.

I, for one, would understand if MO did something along the same lines. Of course, as I said, you have to be confident of your core product - and maybe they will come up with a better way of selling the limited sales ..... but paying for beta is a bad sign, other games have tried that - and some of them were very bad indeed.

worldspin85

Woa Woa Woa Hold on a minute! MO did not have a better launch. Seriously compare youtube videos of MO and Darkfall and you tell me which looks better !!

furidiam

iammats will you pls stop bring up old posts. You are purposly bringing up posts 6 months to a year old to try and flame the game. (I dont even like the game and I still think this is childish)

davmac22

Originally posted by worldspin85

Woa Woa Woa Hold on a minute! MO did not have a better launch. Seriously compare youtube videos of MO and Darkfall and you tell me which looks better !!

 

I think Darkfalls was better as they had a queue... while Starvault just left their server down for hours at a time?

MikeB

Locked due to necro.