NA had 39. They added 19. 19 was too many. Around 8 PM Eastern, we did not even have 50 people on the Defiant side on Carrion.
Were you able to do an accurate player population count? Because so far nobody has managed to find a way and do that.
If so, let us know how you did it
As for servers, it's always easier to add a new server when needed than to remove one when not needed anymore. I guess we'll see how the population numbers develop in the course of the week.
Was only for how many were actually playing - not how many created toons, played, left, etc.
Social.
15-50: 6 people (highest is 17)
14-14: 4 people
13-13: 3 people
12-12: 2 people
Etc, etc, etc. Yep, I did a manual count for each level 1-14, and 15-50.
For a shard with any sort of population, it would obviously not likely work unless the Social feature actually listed every single person of a particular level. It was only because the playing population is so small that what I did was feasible.
I miss the MMORPG genre. Will a developer ever make one again?
Was only for how many were actually playing - not how many created toons, played, left, etc.
For a shard with any sort of population, it would obviously not likely work unless the Social feature actually listed every single person of a particular level. It was only because the playing population is so small that what I did was feasible.
Why wouldn't it work to count the players logged in when the population is sizeable?
Does it randomly show players and randomly leaves players out of the shown lists?
The ease with which predictions are made on these forums: Fratman: "I'm saying Spring 2012 at the earliest [for TOR release]. Anyone still clinging to 2011 is deluding themself at this point."
You guys got to remember cross server LFG in Wow was done because of Low population servers and WoW estimates roughly 12 million players.
I'm not sure but wasn't the lfg cross server tool used just to make finding people to do dungeons easier and not because of low pops? I mean even on a server with a high pop it can be a pain to find all the people you need who want to run the instance you want to run, when you want to run it.
Say you have Bob on Black Server and Bob on White Server.
They decide to merge Black and White into a Grey Server.
Which Bob gets to stay Bob? How will people know which Bob they are dealing with...?
What if one is a GOOD Bob and one is a BAD Bob? The BAD Bob, if he/she got the name, could wreak a little bit of havoc there, no?
Really was surprised that they dropped out 19 more servers for NA. There were already 39 shards. Did they really expect to have half of the people from the pre-order headstart show up today as new accounts?
Given that a 60 some person queue is only around 6 minutes now, there are 20 shards with a queue ranging from 7 to 403 (the top 6 waits are on PvP servers). There are 18 shards with low pops...
...given a 5-10 minute queue, I would see no reason to reroll on a low pop server. The disadvantages simply outweigh the advantages.
If I go back to Reclaimer, there are 182 people in queue with around a 24 minute wait. If I stay on my 4th server, Carrion - there is no queue to login - but the avg wait for a WF is 23 minutes.
I miss the MMORPG genre. Will a developer ever make one again?
Was only for how many were actually playing - not how many created toons, played, left, etc.
For a shard with any sort of population, it would obviously not likely work unless the Social feature actually listed every single person of a particular level. It was only because the playing population is so small that what I did was feasible.
Why wouldn't it work to count the players logged in when the population is sizeable?
Does it randomly show players and randomly leaves players out of the shown lists?
That I do not know. I never really bothered with pop counts before. Many games are capped at how many players they show for a certain level range, so it does not give a true number. I do not know if Trion followed suit with that or not - hence I do not know if it would work for a higher pop server than the pittance that are currently playing on Carrion.
I miss the MMORPG genre. Will a developer ever make one again?
Some peoples logic is so horribly failed sometimes..
Ive seen people in here saying things like server merges causing sub loss, etc. Youve got it all ass backwards. games merge servers because they have ALREADY lost a lot of subs, which is why they are empty and need to be merged in the first place. They are merging servers to give the few left on those servers mor epeople to play with in hopes of KEEPING those subs. Empty server = boredom = more people leaving.
Also, for the person who mentioned some reviews on other sites giving WAR good scores... do you have any idea at all what happened to that game? They lost over half of their subs after just 1 month, resulting in nearly half the servers being shut down 1-2 months later, then mor epeople left, more servers shut down.... now theres IIRC only 3 or 4 NA servers left from what started out as 30ish servers. Regardless of what some reviewer who played WAR a couple hours gave the game for scores, the actual players saw what was really going on with the game. Things like loads of content which was promised at launch not being there, classes not being there, terrible performance & lag issues, constant server/zone crashes anytime you got like 50+ people together for fort raids (in a game advertising to let you battle hundreds or thousands at once) to the point wher ethey had to do a complete overhaul of the system to reduce it to IIRC 24 people), bugged scenario queues, terrible mob AI, extreme class imbalances even between mirrored classes, population imbalances, etc. Most of those issues it took them months to do anything about, and in some cases over a year to get them even decently working & balanced.
Always better to have too much of something than too little. If it gets to the point they need to merge servers, is that really a big deal?
~Miles "Tails" Prower out! Catch me if you can!
server merge tells people the game is dying... whether or not it is true does not matter.
Quotations Those Who make peaceful resolutions impossible, make violent resolutions inevitable. John F. Kennedy
Life... is the shit that happens while you wait for moments that never come - Lester Freeman
Lie to no one. If there 's somebody close to you, you'll ruin it with a lie. If they're a stranger, who the fuck are they you gotta lie to them? - Willy Nelson
Always better to have too much of something than too little. If it gets to the point they need to merge servers, is that really a big deal?
~Miles "Tails" Prower out! Catch me if you can!
yes it is if you have ever been thru something like that...being apart and growing with a main server and then bam! outta nowhere you merded with a strange sever..people who know what im talking about..well knows what im talking about..it sucks
Originally posted by Snaylor47 But saying "Why play x game when its the same as game y" is not a good arguement, simple because if it was we would all still be playing EQ and UO.
When WoW came out, the mechanics were similar to EQ/UO, but the philiosophy behind the game was radically different. EQ sought to make the game challenging and difficult, and actively worked to create a huge rift between those that could spend a lot of time in the game, and those that couldn't.
WoW changed that philosophy, and decided to make the game much easier across the board. Much lower death penalties, faster world traveling, quests that were very defined and easily accessible, clearly marked zones for various level ranges, and the list goes on and on. It really was the first total "theme park" game, and it held your hand from Level 1 all the way up through the highest end raids. No other MMO had really done that before WoW.
The genre that once actively endorsed elitism had shifted overnight to embrace casualism, and the subscriptions totally reflect that fact.
Just because the mechanics are similar does not make it the same game. They weren't even close in the outset. The mechanics of RIFT are clearly nothing new, the question is, is the philosophy different enough to attract and keep players.
Say you have Bob on Black Server and Bob on White Server.
They decide to merge Black and White into a Grey Server.
Which Bob gets to stay Bob? How will people know which Bob they are dealing with...?
What if one is a GOOD Bob and one is a BAD Bob? The BAD Bob, if he/she got the name, could wreak a little bit of havoc there, no?
Really was surprised that they dropped out 19 more servers for NA. There were already 39 shards. Did they really expect to have half of the people from the pre-order headstart show up today as new accounts?
Given that a 60 some person queue is only around 6 minutes now, there are 20 shards with a queue ranging from 7 to 403 (the top 6 waits are on PvP servers). There are 18 shards with low pops...
...given a 5-10 minute queue, I would see no reason to reroll on a low pop server. The disadvantages simply outweigh the advantages.
If I go back to Reclaimer, there are 182 people in queue with around a 24 minute wait. If I stay on my 4th server, Carrion - there is no queue to login - but the avg wait for a WF is 23 minutes.
Hey Bob!
Reporter: What's behind Blizzard success, and how do you make your gamers happy? Blizzard Boss: Making gamers happy is not my concern, making money.. yes!
There WILL BE SERVER MERGES, at some point. Feel free to necro this and throw it back on me later.
Server merges shouldn't automatically spell doom for X game that experiences them. I think all modern MMO's will have an overflux of population at first. It's understanding that it's an overflux, rather than an abandonment later on.
Only 2 games have been an exception. Eve and WoW. 2 out of dozens does not an example make.
There WILL BE SERVER MERGES, at some point. Feel free to necro this and throw it back on me later.
Server merges shouldn't automatically spell doom for X game that experiences them. I think all modern MMO's will have an overflux of population at first. It's understanding that it's an overflux, rather than an abandonment later on.
Only 2 games have been an exception. Eve and WoW. 2 out of dozens does not an example make.
yur right it always comes to that in most mmo's..but it sucks..and they will have to do it even sooner in rift...why do they need that many servers..they dont really think they will fill that many..they wont even be able to fill them all 1/2 way...kinda makes you wonder how stable the servers are..if they expext to be wow thats fine...then add more when needed..its gonna make alota servers emtpy in the long run very sooner than later
a high populated server = a more fun gameplay experience
a low populated server = smaller community and more difficult finding groups and raids = less gaming fun
Bottomline is, when servers are getting low on population, it also causes more people to leave leading to even emptier servers.
Of course, eventually server merges do happen. But you don't want it to happen within the first month, 2 months after launch. Also, you don't want to have players having to cope with ghost town servers too soon after launch for a period of months, because it might cause even more players to leave.
The ease with which predictions are made on these forums: Fratman: "I'm saying Spring 2012 at the earliest [for TOR release]. Anyone still clinging to 2011 is deluding themself at this point."
There WILL BE SERVER MERGES, at some point. Feel free to necro this and throw it back on me later.
Server merges shouldn't automatically spell doom for X game that experiences them. I think all modern MMO's will have an overflux of population at first. It's understanding that it's an overflux, rather than an abandonment later on.
Only 2 games have been an exception. Eve and WoW. 2 out of dozens does not an example make.
Well yes, all MMOs will merge servers eventually. EVE is an exception, not only because it has grown steadily but everyone is technically on the same shard. Champions is like that too.
The issue isn't will it happen but when. It's a really bad sign if a game has to merge servers one year into its inception. I think the general consensus is, it's better for devs to be cautious and release new servers slowly instead of dropping a lot all at once. A bunch of low pop servers makes the game seem like it isn't doing well. Perception = Reality in some cases.
And I haven't played CoH in a long time but have they merged servers?
a high populated server = a more fun gameplay experience
a low populated server = smaller community and more difficult finding groups and raids = less gaming fun
Bottomline is, when servers are getting low on population, it also causes more people to leave leading to even emptier servers.
Of course, eventually server merges do happen. But you don't want it to happen within the first month, 2 months after launch. Also, you don't want to have players having to cope with ghost town servers too soon after launch for a period of months, because it might cause even more players to leave.
Trion is damned if they do, and damned if they don't. Do you leave people in queue...knowing that it might drive people off? Do you have to merge down the road? Knowing it might drive people off? I can tell you right now - that if a game I enjoyed forced me to wait in a queue every night - I wouldn't be subbing to it. I know I'm not alone. I also know for some people this isn't an issue at all. So who does Trion please - since they're going to have trouble pleasing us both.
With how inexpensive it is for server architecture now, I can see most companies taking the risk of server mergers in the future to get as many people in and playing comfortably now - as opposed to looking down the road. Wrong? Right? It's all a matter of perception.
WAR was much more population based than this game, it can contract and expand without damaging it's core game play as much as WAR. WAR needs a population to be it's best, a higher pop in Rift just adds to it.
I completely understand the need to introduce the new servers, and support their decision to introduce additional servers to meet demand. I'm suprised to hear you say there were that many on launch day at low capacity, but it seems that Trion have used the head-start period as a gauge of demand for launch-day, as well as taken notice of the queues, or reports thereof. I'm just glad to see some form of response to the potential capacity requirements.
But, I do agree that there is the risk that they may have introduced too much capacity. If that's the case, I do hope that Trion have a solid plan on how to scale those servers back if necessary. As the OP explains, I think even the biggest fanboi and most optimistic Rift fan will probably admit that it's likely that populations are likely to drop to some degree after the initial hype/launch period. How Trion manages those server consolidations will be revealing. In theory, it may be possible to manage the exercise with minimal impact to customers. If they pro-actively consolidate servers and offer character moves it might not be too painful an exercise, but I certainly hope they don't wait for servers to die completely (as Mythic did) before trying to take any action.
Always better to have too much of something than too little. If it gets to the point they need to merge servers, is that really a big deal?
~Miles "Tails" Prower out! Catch me if you can!
That's actually the least desirable scenario.
To draw from history, WAR and AION are two examples of MMOs that went server happy at release rather than just managed the load and deal with queues. They put themselves in situations where they exacerbated population issues and had to remedy them with drastic measures (server merges).
About hafl the people that buy an MMO retail box don't stay after the first month or so. Almsot everyone that plays during the first month will play more often and for longer periods than they normally will play. Combine those two and you have an excessive load on the servers the first 30 days. If you create servers to accommodate that load, you end up with a heap of dead servers with empty starter zones and sparse populations. So not only do you have the expected reduction in the population, you also have a following of people leaving a 'dead game' because of low player populations.
Turbine did a great job with LOTRO. They weathered out the queues and reasonably predicted what would be needed for healthy servers in months 2 and 3 after release. As a result, they maintained much healthier populations across the board, which in turn leads to better retention and stronger communities.
I can tell you firsthand and I doubt I was the only one but I quit Aion due to 2 weeks of my free 30 day period of me being stuck in a 2+ hour queue every night.When I emailed ncsoft about it asking if they were atleast gonna comp the time they said no.So Queues will drive potential customers away also.Do I think Rift went overboard? Yea I do but they have advertisments all over on tv on tons of websites it is very possible they could fill all those servers to high in a week. Will they lose alot 1-3 months in? Probly but a 1000% way to lose a customer is have them sitting hours in a queue,
If trion thinks this is the best thing to do right now, let them and watch it unfold. Besides they could do worse and if everything runs stable today, they earned a feat in my opinion
(i'm not a player of the game nor a fanboy)
"You resist. You cling to your life as if it actually matters. You will learn."
If trion thinks this is the best thing to do right now, let them and watch it unfold. Besides they could do worse and if everything runs stable today, they earned a feat in my opinion (i'm not a player of the game nor a fanboy)
right now isnt when they will have problems..its a bit later down the road when they start forceing people to servers they dont want to goto..+ to the OP i seriously doubt that they could EVER fill all 99 servers..thats a joke..no matter how many ads they have out there..unless they just cant hold enuff people to begin with
My server got a steady minimum queue of 30+ mins during prime time. It's in EU though and the game is yet to launch here.
As far as I'm concerned, anything bigger than one hour queue is unacceptable. Thing is, I got the hour to wait, others don't. That hour is what they have to game during prime time. I'd say kill the queues and merge when and if necessary. At least the extra servers show some measure of confindence that the game will expand, even if it eventually proves misplaced.
Honestly, Yes... We are in this slump mostly for Pc gamers and MMO's ingeneral where there are no good games with the exception of "WOW" (played for 6 years no longer play due to the fact i put 6 years into the game and its just boring to me now) League of Legends, StarCraft2, Diablo2 LOD, Counter Strike, and Modern WarFare: Black Ops. (just nameing some of the top played PC games.)
But, with MMO's, 90% of the population of people who play started with WOW and have been playing for multiple years. (I myself started with EverQuest the Original. years and years ago.) So with the way with MMO's are being developed people have to try it due the the bored feeling they have in wow. BUT! when they start to play this new mmo, they get this feeling of Meh why level or grind or craft when i can hop on wow and already be done and do something fun.
The problem with MMO's right now is that they are all rehashes of something already out there. so when ppl play they realise ts the same thing they have been playing in "WOW" and say screw it and go back. Yes war was garbage so why even put that in the catagory. Rift is a decent game but they didn't do anything new. I give Rift 2-3 months before people start saying why bother whey i already did they and hop on there 85's in wow.
Wow has been number 1 for so long because they took the raw formula of what i call Generation 2 MMo (1 being UO) and mastered it. so now everyone else is taking that formula and just rehashing it.
When i played the Rift beta like i said i enjoyed it but i played a rogue.... It was the same thing as a wow rogue but i could add to more classes to it. In essense it was the same class. It had the same combo point system same abilities same everything. Why bother leveling when its in essense the same game!
So do i think that Trion is gonna make the same mistake as Mythic. No i dont but i think they are putting all there eggs in to once basic. which in the long run i think will hurt them.
While I personally do not like RIFT, I will defend TRION on this point.
People left EQ because WoW was simple better in most aspects and appealed to a wider audiance. Now whether or not RIFT has done this is yet to be seen. But saying "Why play x game when its the same as game y" is not a good arguement, simple because if it was we would all still be playing EQ and UO.
I agree, but my statement wasn't about leaving a game to play the same game. My statement was why would leave a game A for game B when its the same game but in game A you have alot more time put into it. people quit wow and come back because they go to another game that is made exactly the same when they relaize that they go back to wow because they already have the time invested into it.
They underestimated the number of people in the headstart and overestimated the number of people who were not in the headstart but bought the game. I do not think the servers will ever balance out (the headstart servers will generally always have more people by a wide margin except for the "cool name" new servers like nyx which ran right up to full)
Comments
Was only for how many were actually playing - not how many created toons, played, left, etc.
Social.
15-50: 6 people (highest is 17)
14-14: 4 people
13-13: 3 people
12-12: 2 people
Etc, etc, etc. Yep, I did a manual count for each level 1-14, and 15-50.
For a shard with any sort of population, it would obviously not likely work unless the Social feature actually listed every single person of a particular level. It was only because the playing population is so small that what I did was feasible.
I miss the MMORPG genre. Will a developer ever make one again?
Explorer: 87%, Killer: 67%, Achiever: 27%, Socializer: 20%
Why wouldn't it work to count the players logged in when the population is sizeable?
Does it randomly show players and randomly leaves players out of the shown lists?
The ACTUAL size of MMORPG worlds: a comparison list between MMO's
The ease with which predictions are made on these forums:
Fratman: "I'm saying Spring 2012 at the earliest [for TOR release]. Anyone still clinging to 2011 is deluding themself at this point."
I'm not sure but wasn't the lfg cross server tool used just to make finding people to do dungeons easier and not because of low pops? I mean even on a server with a high pop it can be a pain to find all the people you need who want to run the instance you want to run, when you want to run it.
Names are a problem with merges.
Player names - guild names.
Say you have Bob on Black Server and Bob on White Server.
They decide to merge Black and White into a Grey Server.
Which Bob gets to stay Bob? How will people know which Bob they are dealing with...?
What if one is a GOOD Bob and one is a BAD Bob? The BAD Bob, if he/she got the name, could wreak a little bit of havoc there, no?
Really was surprised that they dropped out 19 more servers for NA. There were already 39 shards. Did they really expect to have half of the people from the pre-order headstart show up today as new accounts?
Given that a 60 some person queue is only around 6 minutes now, there are 20 shards with a queue ranging from 7 to 403 (the top 6 waits are on PvP servers). There are 18 shards with low pops...
...given a 5-10 minute queue, I would see no reason to reroll on a low pop server. The disadvantages simply outweigh the advantages.
If I go back to Reclaimer, there are 182 people in queue with around a 24 minute wait. If I stay on my 4th server, Carrion - there is no queue to login - but the avg wait for a WF is 23 minutes.
I miss the MMORPG genre. Will a developer ever make one again?
Explorer: 87%, Killer: 67%, Achiever: 27%, Socializer: 20%
That I do not know. I never really bothered with pop counts before. Many games are capped at how many players they show for a certain level range, so it does not give a true number. I do not know if Trion followed suit with that or not - hence I do not know if it would work for a higher pop server than the pittance that are currently playing on Carrion.
I miss the MMORPG genre. Will a developer ever make one again?
Explorer: 87%, Killer: 67%, Achiever: 27%, Socializer: 20%
Some peoples logic is so horribly failed sometimes..
Ive seen people in here saying things like server merges causing sub loss, etc. Youve got it all ass backwards. games merge servers because they have ALREADY lost a lot of subs, which is why they are empty and need to be merged in the first place. They are merging servers to give the few left on those servers mor epeople to play with in hopes of KEEPING those subs. Empty server = boredom = more people leaving.
Also, for the person who mentioned some reviews on other sites giving WAR good scores... do you have any idea at all what happened to that game? They lost over half of their subs after just 1 month, resulting in nearly half the servers being shut down 1-2 months later, then mor epeople left, more servers shut down.... now theres IIRC only 3 or 4 NA servers left from what started out as 30ish servers. Regardless of what some reviewer who played WAR a couple hours gave the game for scores, the actual players saw what was really going on with the game. Things like loads of content which was promised at launch not being there, classes not being there, terrible performance & lag issues, constant server/zone crashes anytime you got like 50+ people together for fort raids (in a game advertising to let you battle hundreds or thousands at once) to the point wher ethey had to do a complete overhaul of the system to reduce it to IIRC 24 people), bugged scenario queues, terrible mob AI, extreme class imbalances even between mirrored classes, population imbalances, etc. Most of those issues it took them months to do anything about, and in some cases over a year to get them even decently working & balanced.
server merge tells people the game is dying... whether or not it is true does not matter.
Quotations Those Who make peaceful resolutions impossible, make violent resolutions inevitable. John F. Kennedy
Life... is the shit that happens while you wait for moments that never come - Lester Freeman
Lie to no one. If there 's somebody close to you, you'll ruin it with a lie. If they're a stranger, who the fuck are they you gotta lie to them? - Willy Nelson
yes it is if you have ever been thru something like that...being apart and growing with a main server and then bam! outta nowhere you merded with a strange sever..people who know what im talking about..well knows what im talking about..it sucks
When WoW came out, the mechanics were similar to EQ/UO, but the philiosophy behind the game was radically different. EQ sought to make the game challenging and difficult, and actively worked to create a huge rift between those that could spend a lot of time in the game, and those that couldn't.
WoW changed that philosophy, and decided to make the game much easier across the board. Much lower death penalties, faster world traveling, quests that were very defined and easily accessible, clearly marked zones for various level ranges, and the list goes on and on. It really was the first total "theme park" game, and it held your hand from Level 1 all the way up through the highest end raids. No other MMO had really done that before WoW.
The genre that once actively endorsed elitism had shifted overnight to embrace casualism, and the subscriptions totally reflect that fact.
Just because the mechanics are similar does not make it the same game. They weren't even close in the outset. The mechanics of RIFT are clearly nothing new, the question is, is the philosophy different enough to attract and keep players.
Hey Bob!
Reporter: What's behind Blizzard success, and how do you make your gamers happy?
Blizzard Boss: Making gamers happy is not my concern, making money.. yes!
There WILL BE SERVER MERGES, at some point. Feel free to necro this and throw it back on me later.
Server merges shouldn't automatically spell doom for X game that experiences them. I think all modern MMO's will have an overflux of population at first. It's understanding that it's an overflux, rather than an abandonment later on.
Only 2 games have been an exception. Eve and WoW. 2 out of dozens does not an example make.
yur right it always comes to that in most mmo's..but it sucks..and they will have to do it even sooner in rift...why do they need that many servers..they dont really think they will fill that many..they wont even be able to fill them all 1/2 way...kinda makes you wonder how stable the servers are..if they expext to be wow thats fine...then add more when needed..its gonna make alota servers emtpy in the long run very sooner than later
Also:
a high populated server = a more fun gameplay experience
a low populated server = smaller community and more difficult finding groups and raids = less gaming fun
Bottomline is, when servers are getting low on population, it also causes more people to leave leading to even emptier servers.
Of course, eventually server merges do happen. But you don't want it to happen within the first month, 2 months after launch. Also, you don't want to have players having to cope with ghost town servers too soon after launch for a period of months, because it might cause even more players to leave.
The ACTUAL size of MMORPG worlds: a comparison list between MMO's
The ease with which predictions are made on these forums:
Fratman: "I'm saying Spring 2012 at the earliest [for TOR release]. Anyone still clinging to 2011 is deluding themself at this point."
Well yes, all MMOs will merge servers eventually. EVE is an exception, not only because it has grown steadily but everyone is technically on the same shard. Champions is like that too.
The issue isn't will it happen but when. It's a really bad sign if a game has to merge servers one year into its inception. I think the general consensus is, it's better for devs to be cautious and release new servers slowly instead of dropping a lot all at once. A bunch of low pop servers makes the game seem like it isn't doing well. Perception = Reality in some cases.
And I haven't played CoH in a long time but have they merged servers?
*You glance at the number of full servers and queues*
*You glance at the number of low population servers*
*You cover your face with your palm*
*You lose 100 faith in humanity*
Trion is damned if they do, and damned if they don't. Do you leave people in queue...knowing that it might drive people off? Do you have to merge down the road? Knowing it might drive people off? I can tell you right now - that if a game I enjoyed forced me to wait in a queue every night - I wouldn't be subbing to it. I know I'm not alone. I also know for some people this isn't an issue at all. So who does Trion please - since they're going to have trouble pleasing us both.
With how inexpensive it is for server architecture now, I can see most companies taking the risk of server mergers in the future to get as many people in and playing comfortably now - as opposed to looking down the road. Wrong? Right? It's all a matter of perception.
WAR was much more population based than this game, it can contract and expand without damaging it's core game play as much as WAR. WAR needs a population to be it's best, a higher pop in Rift just adds to it.
I completely understand the need to introduce the new servers, and support their decision to introduce additional servers to meet demand. I'm suprised to hear you say there were that many on launch day at low capacity, but it seems that Trion have used the head-start period as a gauge of demand for launch-day, as well as taken notice of the queues, or reports thereof. I'm just glad to see some form of response to the potential capacity requirements.
But, I do agree that there is the risk that they may have introduced too much capacity. If that's the case, I do hope that Trion have a solid plan on how to scale those servers back if necessary. As the OP explains, I think even the biggest fanboi and most optimistic Rift fan will probably admit that it's likely that populations are likely to drop to some degree after the initial hype/launch period. How Trion manages those server consolidations will be revealing. In theory, it may be possible to manage the exercise with minimal impact to customers. If they pro-actively consolidate servers and offer character moves it might not be too painful an exercise, but I certainly hope they don't wait for servers to die completely (as Mythic did) before trying to take any action.
I can tell you firsthand and I doubt I was the only one but I quit Aion due to 2 weeks of my free 30 day period of me being stuck in a 2+ hour queue every night.When I emailed ncsoft about it asking if they were atleast gonna comp the time they said no.So Queues will drive potential customers away also.Do I think Rift went overboard? Yea I do but they have advertisments all over on tv on tons of websites it is very possible they could fill all those servers to high in a week. Will they lose alot 1-3 months in? Probly but a 1000% way to lose a customer is have them sitting hours in a queue,
Besides they could do worse and if everything runs stable today, they earned a feat in my opinion
(i'm not a player of the game nor a fanboy)
"You resist. You cling to your life as if it actually matters. You will learn."
right now isnt when they will have problems..its a bit later down the road when they start forceing people to servers they dont want to goto..+ to the OP i seriously doubt that they could EVER fill all 99 servers..thats a joke..no matter how many ads they have out there..unless they just cant hold enuff people to begin with
My server got a steady minimum queue of 30+ mins during prime time. It's in EU though and the game is yet to launch here.
As far as I'm concerned, anything bigger than one hour queue is unacceptable. Thing is, I got the hour to wait, others don't. That hour is what they have to game during prime time. I'd say kill the queues and merge when and if necessary. At least the extra servers show some measure of confindence that the game will expand, even if it eventually proves misplaced.
I agree, but my statement wasn't about leaving a game to play the same game. My statement was why would leave a game A for game B when its the same game but in game A you have alot more time put into it. people quit wow and come back because they go to another game that is made exactly the same when they relaize that they go back to wow because they already have the time invested into it.
They underestimated the number of people in the headstart and overestimated the number of people who were not in the headstart but bought the game. I do not think the servers will ever balance out (the headstart servers will generally always have more people by a wide margin except for the "cool name" new servers like nyx which ran right up to full)