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.
But to be fair, another thing that really hurt games like Warhammer and AOC was their failure to merge servers fast enough. Yes, it hurts your reputation when you have to merge servers (look at my quote below).. but another thing that really put the deathblow on AOC and War was that from months 2 to 6, they had a majority of their players playing on very empty servers..... which I think produced a second wave of cancellations. AOC in particular seemed to care more about reputation than their players happiness. There were plenty of players who enjoyed the game who were begging for mergers... and at the same time, you had the devs doing interviews about how great the populations were.. which made those players feel like there was no relief in sight.
Everyone expects a lot of players to quit the first month. They also expect happy players to play less hours after the first hour. I think if you open a lot of servers at launch to lower queues, you have to be ready in the second month to merge servers because you have to know that many players will quit and even your happy players will not be logged in as much.
If the Rift devs were smart, they would announce NOW they they are anticipating merging servers at the end of the 2nd or 3rd month. They could say that they are planning it because they know that the average player will play much less after the first month. This would reduce the negative PR side of it, and at the same time keep servers full after 3 months.
It is much better to have a 2 hour queue the first month, then to run around for 2hours without seeing another player in the third month.
Alright, so far the server activity seems to be on the up, which is a good sign, no more LOW servers on peak times.
The last few days I saw around 14 FULL servers and only 15 medium servers on the EU list, and around 23 FULL servers and 18 medium servers on the US side. So far, so good.
Will be interesting to see how many Rift games they've sold and what peak concurrent players is. Maybe vgchartz will show the sales figures over a few days.
Another remarkable trend, WoW's Xfire figures have taken a dip at its peak days below the 200k hours. In the months before CATA it hovered around 240-270k on weekends most of the time, in the weeks after CATA it even peaked above 300-330k hours. To have it this less than the months before CATA even when CATA has been out for only a few months is surprising.
But maybe the trend will go up again in April and afterwards.
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."
Comments
But to be fair, another thing that really hurt games like Warhammer and AOC was their failure to merge servers fast enough. Yes, it hurts your reputation when you have to merge servers (look at my quote below).. but another thing that really put the deathblow on AOC and War was that from months 2 to 6, they had a majority of their players playing on very empty servers..... which I think produced a second wave of cancellations. AOC in particular seemed to care more about reputation than their players happiness. There were plenty of players who enjoyed the game who were begging for mergers... and at the same time, you had the devs doing interviews about how great the populations were.. which made those players feel like there was no relief in sight.
Everyone expects a lot of players to quit the first month. They also expect happy players to play less hours after the first hour. I think if you open a lot of servers at launch to lower queues, you have to be ready in the second month to merge servers because you have to know that many players will quit and even your happy players will not be logged in as much.
If the Rift devs were smart, they would announce NOW they they are anticipating merging servers at the end of the 2nd or 3rd month. They could say that they are planning it because they know that the average player will play much less after the first month. This would reduce the negative PR side of it, and at the same time keep servers full after 3 months.
It is much better to have a 2 hour queue the first month, then to run around for 2hours without seeing another player in the third month.
Alright, so far the server activity seems to be on the up, which is a good sign, no more LOW servers on peak times.
The last few days I saw around 14 FULL servers and only 15 medium servers on the EU list, and around 23 FULL servers and 18 medium servers on the US side. So far, so good.
Will be interesting to see how many Rift games they've sold and what peak concurrent players is. Maybe vgchartz will show the sales figures over a few days.
Another remarkable trend, WoW's Xfire figures have taken a dip at its peak days below the 200k hours. In the months before CATA it hovered around 240-270k on weekends most of the time, in the weeks after CATA it even peaked above 300-330k hours. To have it this less than the months before CATA even when CATA has been out for only a few months is surprising.
But maybe the trend will go up again in April and afterwards.
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."
Because everyone shares the same opinion as the critics, right?
WAR imo was terrible, I don't care what IGN and Gamespot says.