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Limited Servers = not good for the casual gamer?
I'm someone who will only get 2 hours max on a normal day to get on my PC at home, and with wait times as they are it looks like I will get little to no play time with the size of the queues except on a day where i can get home early from work and 'book my slot' well in advance of wanting to play.
I appreciate this is its opening days and all but with the limited server choice and all of them seemingly very full i don't like the fact you have no choice but to wait for hours. Of course i could ask for a refund on my preorder. But i bought the game because i like it. I saw no queueing at all in the OB so am confused as to why the queues are so big now...
One final note: ive seen people saying spatalos was the official server of choice for most people in the UK, and on top of that the unofficial choice for russia and other euro countries. Shouldn't there be a couple of dedicated multi language servers, freeing up the UK servers for people in the UK?
As a casual player i would much prefer having to wait to find a group to quest with rather than wait for hours of my limited time to even get in the game. Can someone with experience on MMO's explain whether these queues wont be around for long?
Thanks.
Comments
This is going to be an interesting game of Push - pull.
NCsoft wants everyone to play their game, but they dont want to make too many servers, because they know they will lose population after the first month (every MMO does). Aion is a PvP game and is very population dependent, they cannot have too few players on any server after the population stabilizes following the 'bum rush' of release. Server mergers is seen as a 'Failure' by the MMO pundits on the forums ...NCSoft doesnt want that kind of message
I expect the number of servers to increase but slowly
Torrential: DAOC (Pendragon)
Awned: World of Warcraft (Lothar)
Torren: Warhammer Online (Praag)
Thanks for the reply, the problem i see here that is by limiting the servers, they are going to force people that were on the fence to decide against staying. The open beta was so slick and polished that I thought handing all preorder players reasonable access and an enjoyable 'headstart' without silly 4 hour queues would be a good idea as word of mouth from them would generate more sales and subs. But because of the way it has happened the word out will be very sceptical and make new players hesitate before trying Aion. i dont see why they would argue that they are doing it because of what other MMOs did, most of them were bugged to hell and had many other problems...
A bad choice by NCsoft in my opinion, but again im pretty new to MMO launches...
An increase in servers cant come soon enough in my opinion given this initial success, but I doubt the 3000 too many players on my server are going to want to migrate after putting in the time on this server so i can only see long queues continue for now...
I see the problem as being the 30 day subscription model. You are charged based on when you apply your monthly renewal, and it starts ticking 30 days from when you apply it.
How about - you only pay for the time you are connected and playing on the server? And so, if I'm waiting in a queue, that shouldn't be using up my game time. If I can't log on the server, that shouldn't be using up my game time.
And to me, this would really make sense. Someone that is connected 16 hours a day, they should pay more than someone that plays 12 hours in an entire month. They are using more server resources. And at the same time, a person that only plays two days a week, now their subscription last for an actual "30 days" of game play.
just be patient and let them figure out what the pop will be after the first free month -- everyone jusmped down Mythics throat for too many servers and went on and on about the game being dead and lacking people -- I wont play an MMO that doesnt have healthy server pop -- doesnt it go without saying they will add servers if the game grows after the initial push ? be patient and please have enough sense to know they dont want to have EMPTY servers. you could also wait a few weeks/months until things settle down as you dont have the time really anyways.
By the hour payment is popular in the East. For the most part, via this method people would be paying less than subscriptions (provided the fees per hour were transferred intact in the west), especially for the casual crowd. From my understanding, in order for a western subscription model to equate in prices with the eastern per hour, one must play roughly ten hours per day (please correct me if wrong).
I wouldn't mind this model, but since it's less revenue for subscription based MMOs, I don't see it getting transferred. Instead, we'll probably see more companies trying to squeeze their subscription base by introducing RMT item malls into their subscription based MMOs.
I fear however that this discussion is not relevant to the OP.
I believe that server balance is ultimately more important than the initial launch pains of an MMO. I will see how things go, but for now it seems that the queue times have drastically fallen since Sunday. Then again, it was the first day and it was Sunday. During Sunday I experienced average queues of 1.5hrs. During Monday the queues seems to fall to the 3-10mins margin. A very definite improvement. I'll keep on monitoring the queue of course.
I have the feeling that it would be wrong to open servers just to accommodate the initial rush. Then when people would return to their normal daily schedules the load would fall, but the population would be more spread out. Then after the first month, when roughly half the MMO players would be gone (a number I have no idea if it's true, but the retention rate is usually low), the servers would be ghost towns. That was the main problem with WAR in Europe. Too many servers so no queues were witnessed, although almost all servers were on high. Then once the box month was over the servers dropped to medium or low. Since that game kept on bleeding players, even the second most populated server at launch reached critical minimum and the fun was gone due to lack of people.
So limited servers = healthy population once the box month is over = good for the remaining players, casual or not.
Ii wish they did make the payment system the same as Asia, surely if you only pay for how much you play then many people would stick with it? They could even give that time a 60 day expiry or something. That would appeal to the casual gamer and would prevent NCsoft from losing too much revenue.
I heard in Asia 8 hours of play would work out as a day as 8 hours is the in-game day cycle...
My opinion is that 1-2 additional servers wouldn't too change much at all in the scheme of things, but it would make a lot of casual players happy as although it wouldn't fully remove the queues; it would certainly reduce them to a more manageable size...
If I had 10 minutes in a queue or even 30 I could handle it, but 2 nights in a row I have had no play time (except about 35mins last night after a 2h 30m+ wait).. Staying up later than i would have prefered but I wanted to at least experience a bit of the game after all that waiting! At least there aren't queues at 7am!
Most people are saying that the queues will die down in a few weeks to a month or so, I'll just have to keep an eye on it and see I guess.
Your experience during Monday was the same as Sunday? Also did you try a couple of servers to check on the queue times or all your friends are on a specific one?
I am aware that this is the busiest server for the UK, and yes the queues have been that big (2000+) both days.... I do have some friends on it, and the missus got a character to level 10 on there. I still could consider picking the lowest population one instead as queues are horrible, is there anyway to find out which is the lowest? Although, if in a few weeks it will die down like people say i don't mind waiting till then really, as long as it does actually die down...
I feel your pain, but what i do is i just tell myself if i dont have the time to wait than i wont log in.
It happen to me on WoW and War. And sometimes i just goes a few days without it, esp weekday. But once weekend arrive i'll wake up earlier and log in to queue.
Maybe you can try watching "The Universe" series on you tube. Its very good!
Trust us when we say its better to queue than having a dead server at the end...
RIP Orc Choppa
The way I would do it is by connecting to all the servers that might interest me at the time I would normally start playing and check the queue times for a couple of days, just to get the feeling on the population differences.
Chocolates, flowers and in-game presents should do the trick
That will be a must! lol.. if she says no then end of, we are staying on Spatalos! :P
Day 3, 7h 30m queue... looks like no play time today either lol... That's it I'm giving up on my preselect characters, thanks for nothing NCsoft :P
sunday night 5 minutes past official launch time i log in first time no problem or delay.
monday night i log in around 6pm UK time first time no problem or delay.
tonight, i log in at 6pm again, no problems at all.
telemachus EU server asmodian side
how come everyone on here is waiting 3/9/15/247 hours+ to log on except me? am i the chosen one or something? i feel special
The funny thing will be which faction would be overpopulated? Is there limit on the number of population?
I recall Pirates of The Burning Sea has both server and faction population limit.
This morning I logged in instantly but d/c few minutes ago and there a queue of 2k+ people now (7h+ queue) well atleast I played 5h + :P
The title of this thread is about as logical as saying bacon is not good for your car.
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Yes there's a system on the servers when one of the faction is getting higher then it should i think it was 40 to 60 (percent) it locks the server and can create only new characters of the race that is low.
This was/is one of the causes of the queues.
I was originally recommended Spatalos as a few of my mates went there. If you havent started playing yet don't pick spatalos! Crazy queues on there!
Bacon is NOT good for your car. Where have you been?
I'll be honest, I've tried a couple of other servers today and no queues! So thats good im just gonna write off my preselects. But i'll leave the thread title as that was how the thread started out...
Maybe they also saw the darkfall released and got some dumb ideas in their head. I can see their reasoning, but still it is just gonna piss people off. Might as well let people just buy the game and get on a server and merge servers later.
i've found the same thing. i only get an hour or two at a time to play, but there's a five hour wait on the server i picked first, and no wait at all on starting a new character elsewhere. frustrating to have to start over, though.
The issue I see at this point causing such high queues goes back to the fact of so many gamers leaving their toons logged in under their private store. All they are required to do is leave one item in there and list for an absurd amount that noone will buy and it keeps them logged in. Meanwhile the casual gamer who as stated before does not get to log on. It would be nice if this could be fixed in the upcoming month. I enjoy the game thus far and would like to be able to play more than an hour here or there due to the queues.
I do agree things will eventually balance out, however with over 400k pre-orders and more to come from those who didnt, one would expect they might prepare the servers a little better for it.