Darkfall "Released"

[Senses]

Perhaps I stated myself wrong.  I will try to clarify my opinion, keeping in mind it is just that.  I meant to say that at the point at which Warhammer released, it has done nothing but lose interest amongst people currently looking for a game to play, while Darkfall, through delay, is actually generating interest, in the form of people talking about, and registering at their site.

[Triforcer]

Games that aren't released (and therefore are perfect in everyone's mind) get more interest than games that are released and do badly?

There is a phrase for that.  Its called "How everything works everywhere."

[UnSub]

I actually think that a scaled launch isn't a bad idea for MMOs. Bring things up more slowly to give your infrastructure to cope, rather than launching big than shutting half your servers ala AoC and WAR.

... not that I think Darkfall are doing it entirely for those reasons. But I think the more MMOs stagger their launch to minimise first day problems, the better the first impressions can be.

[IainC]

I actually think that a scaled launch isn't a bad idea for MMOs. Bring things up more slowly to give your infrastructure to cope, rather than launching big than shutting half your servers ala AoC and WAR.

... not that I think Darkfall are doing it entirely for those reasons. But I think the more MMOs stagger their launch to minimise first day problems, the better the first impressions can be.

Games already do that to an extent, it's why you have headstart periods and 'premium subscriber benefits' etc. From a technical point of view it makes some sense but from a marketing and operational point of view it's horrible. If X number of people want to play your game then you should be ready to let X number of people onto your servers. Turning people away or making them wait for their phase of the launch is not a great idea. From a marketing POV, your launch is a major and discrete event. Dragging it out is underselling it and loses you a lot of it's PR value.

[Senses]

Games that aren't released (and therefore are perfect in everyone's mind) get more interest than games that are released and do badly?

There is a phrase for that.  Its called "How everything works everywhere."

Well, if Warhammer had been better at launch its player base and interest in the product would have continued to grow.  I get where your going, despite trying to dumb it down for yourself to understand.  My point, and this is the last time ill attempt to make it, considering I might even be wrong in the assumption, is that if your game is not ready, you are clearly (as measured by Darkfall's continued and growing popularity of late) better off taking a delay than you are releasing a half finished product.

[IainC]

You are wrong on both assumptions.

[Delmania]

Games that aren't released (and therefore are perfect in everyone's mind) get more interest than games that are released and do badly?

There is a phrase for that.  Its called "How everything works everywhere."

Well, if Warhammer had been better at launch its player base and interest in the product would have continued to grow.  I get where your going, despite trying to dumb it down for yourself to understand.  My point, and this is the last time ill attempt to make it, considering I might even be wrong in the assumption, is that if your game is not ready, you are clearly (as measured by Darkfall's continued and growing popularity of late) better off taking a delay than you are releasing a half finished product.

Thanks, Captain Obvious!   
However, he's not dumbing it down, he's taking your ideas are merely pointing out that they are nothing more than common sense.    As for the state of Warhammer at launch, you are ignoring one fact: Mythic is a part of EA, which is a publicly traded company, and thus slave to the investors who want to see Blizzard/WoW like returns, and the want them yesterday.  They are not going to wait for Mythic to build a decent game, they are going to have them copy the current big game and release it as soon as possible. 

You do realize that your statements about generating interest in Darkfall are exactly what the company was trying to avoid?  Anyone who has played MMOs for any length of time knows that games are overhyped to generate interest, and it's common knowledge that this creates expectations within your playerbase's mind about what your game is.  The problem is, take 100 gamers, ask them to build the best game, you'll get 100 answers.  While trying to avoid overhype and unrealistic expectations, it's best to tell your players exactly what your game is, so that they are aware of what it is.

However, in Darkfall's case, as many have pointed out, the information known indicated that the designers haven't payed much attention to MMO development AND the excuses the company has stated are just more of the "We didn't plan or think" tha seems to be the hallmark of the game's development.  If the company is aimiig for a niche audience and only want to make enough players to make a decent profit on game, that might work.  If they are trying to topple WoW, well, I hear the Titanic is taking reservations again!

[Senses]

This might be the first time I've ever been guilty of both stating the obvious and being completely wrong!

[Signe]

Welcome to F13! 

[UnSub]

I actually think that a scaled launch isn't a bad idea for MMOs. Bring things up more slowly to give your infrastructure to cope, rather than launching big than shutting half your servers ala AoC and WAR.

... not that I think Darkfall are doing it entirely for those reasons. But I think the more MMOs stagger their launch to minimise first day problems, the better the first impressions can be.

Games already do that to an extent, it's why you have headstart periods and 'premium subscriber benefits' etc. From a technical point of view it makes some sense but from a marketing and operational point of view it's horrible. If X number of people want to play your game then you should be ready to let X number of people onto your servers. Turning people away or making them wait for their phase of the launch is not a great idea. From a marketing POV, your launch is a major and discrete event. Dragging it out is underselling it and loses you a lot of it's PR value.

I do understand where are coming from, but exclusivity can be a powerful marketing tool ("Only 100k copies of F13 the MMO went on sale and I got one!") and if the launch experience is smoother you are likely to get better word of mouth. There are risks to a staggered launch, no doubt, but if a competitor isn't going to steal your thunder and you don't screw it up I think it could be a good strategic move (especially on the smaller end of the scale, which is where Darkfall sits).

WAR and AoC shutting half their servers isn't a good PR move either. Also, operations appears to be brought to its needs at every launch due to all the CS requests. Fewer players mean that things like CS don't fall over (quite so quickly  ) when they are getting hammered at launch. We've seen what selling 1million+ boxes does to a launch in 2008; a staggered launch would be a good alternative that I think DAOC used to some extent.

[waffel]

Hopefully darkfall has a pretty solid griefing system in place come the trail. I look forward to destroying the fun of the fanboys in the worst ways possible. 

[Triforcer]

Hopefully darkfall has a pretty solid griefing system in place come the trail.

I am confident that that is the one system they have 100% right.

[waffel]

Good, I sometimes kinda get sort of bored griefing in BF2. There is only so many times you can push someone's jet off the carrier into the water or drive a jeep down the runway before its not funny anymore.

[Triforcer]

The fact that PvP (given that, you know, it was never actually tested for balance with large numbers) will be horribly unbalanced should help you.  Find the most overpowered class and one-shot newbies outside the gates of the capital city.   

[ashrik]

You have to admit though, Darkfall, through almost incessant delay, has garnered more attention and interest than AoC or Warhammer got by releasing a game that clearly could have used more time.

I don't have to admit this because it's not fucking true. I can't think of any MMO that was rushed to release date because they were afraid of people forgetting about them and NOT because they want money.

And while I'm sure there is truth to the statement that a staggered and drawn out launch is counterproductive to the work of a solid PR campaign- how far can we go before the response is "look at AoC and WAR and X and Y and Z and P and Q- stagger the damn launch already!" ?

I wonder how many more subs these games would have if people weren't logging on for days or weeks at a time and finding no one to play with? I'd wager it's a pretty significant amount. Practicality has to count for something at some point, doesn't it?

[UnSub]

For those interested in such things, the MMORPG.com Darkfall forums are entertaining.

[Righ]

You're a member of the Order of the White Border, aren't you?

But just think - if Darkfall never releases, interest in their game will be infinite!

[Murgos]

Perhaps I stated myself wrong.  I will try to clarify my opinion, keeping in mind it is just that.  I meant to say that at the point at which Warhammer released, it has done nothing but lose interest amongst people currently looking for a game to play, while Darkfall, through delay, is actually generating interest, in the form of people talking about, and registering at their site.

One of the problems with this observation is that they need to release the game sometime.  Generating interest is not a source of income.  Anyone who has worked on a complex enough project will tell you that there is always a reason to delay, something else can always be done.  Money is finite and as it starts to get short your options become very limited.

It's all well and good to say that in hindsight some project shouldn't have released in that state but it's just not a practical observation.

[patience]

WAR and AoC shutting half their servers isn't a good PR move either. Also, operations appears to be brought to its needs at every launch due to all the CS requests. Fewer players mean that things like CS don't fall over (quite so quickly  ) when they are getting hammered at launch. We've seen what selling 1million+ boxes does to a launch in 2008; a staggered launch would be a good alternative that I think DAOC used to some extent.

This obviously needs to be reread again. If the general consensus in here is that Darkfall is designed in a way that it can't sustain the subs of EQ size then why release in a manner allowing everyone to get in?

They should stagger it weeding out the people who threatened to quit WoW when players could be zombies prior to wotlk release.

[Signe]

Why did you have to bring zombies into this?   

[Mrbloodworth]

You're a member of the Order of the White Border, aren't you?

But just think - if Darkfall never releases, interest in their game will be infinite!

He can't be, his avatar is lacking the style, and polish of the white border.

[kildorn]

WAR and AoC shutting half their servers isn't a good PR move either. Also, operations appears to be brought to its needs at every launch due to all the CS requests. Fewer players mean that things like CS don't fall over (quite so quickly  ) when they are getting hammered at launch. We've seen what selling 1million+ boxes does to a launch in 2008; a staggered launch would be a good alternative that I think DAOC used to some extent.

This obviously needs to be reread again. If the general consensus in here is that Darkfall is designed in a way that it can't sustain the subs of EQ size then why release in a manner allowing everyone to get in?

They should stagger it weeding out the people who threatened to quit WoW when players could be zombies prior to wotlk release.

Staggering an MMO release is a horrible idea just based on the shit it causes for the playerbase. Half your guild gets in prior to server cap lock, random players will have a week's head start over others, whatnot. It's far better to build your system to scale, and rent CPU time for the release via amazon or anything else that will let you randomly add to a server cloud for X hours on demand. Release hammers your front end hard and your account database. Those need to be shored up but it's not financially useful to Keep them in such a state. Temporary computing (extended clouds, one to one VM the fuckers on servers that will be added into the main clusters for high end content in a week, etc.) Going "waah, we can't actually handle the incoming load, waaah" is some serious little leagues bullshit. I can't imagine rolling out a new application and going "sorry, we can only take on X new customers a week or our registration server would asplode!"

The hard reality of it is that nobody takes the time to make sure their authentication/registration system scales because they're all too busy building the actual world servers. It's the BORING part of game design, and the part that it's really hard to get people to pay for when it comes down to it. Because the industry is so used to colossal fuckups that saying "spend X dollars now for a smooth launch" isn't really accepted versus "so we lose Y players due to a shitty launch, everyone else is too jaded to judge us by it and will play it anyways"

Argh. People need to design their systems with any method of handling sudden burst capacity. We were too popular is a shitty excuse for your entire system collapsing.

[Vehementi]

Argh. People need to design their systems with any method of handling sudden burst capacity. We were too popular is a shitty excuse for your entire system collapsing.

I think what they were getting at is that their game server might get overloaded and make the game unfun/whatever, not that their player database is stored in a 1024 max size integer and they need time to set up amazon cloud computing to increase that so billing more people will work.

[Nonentity]

Why did you have to bring zombies into this?   

With you, there are always zombies invovled.

[Signe]

I'll ignore that. 

Your avatard is awesome.

[cmlancas]

Heh.  I can't believe I'm on the inside of an inside joke at f13!  My day has truly come!

[patience]

Staggering an MMO release is a horrible idea just based on the shit it causes for the playerbase. Half your guild gets in prior to server cap lock, random players will have a week's head start over others, whatnot. It's far better to build your system to scale, and rent CPU time for the release via amazon or anything else that will let you randomly add to a server cloud for X hours on demand. Release hammers your front end hard and your account database. Those need to be shored up but it's not financially useful to Keep them in such a state. Temporary computing (extended clouds, one to one VM the fuckers on servers that will be added into the main clusters for high end content in a week, etc.) Going "waah, we can't actually handle the incoming load, waaah" is some serious little leagues bullshit. I can't imagine rolling out a new application and going "sorry, we can only take on X new customers a week or our registration server would asplode!"

The hard reality of it is that nobody takes the time to make sure their authentication/registration system scales because they're all too busy building the actual world servers. It's the BORING part of game design, and the part that it's really hard to get people to pay for when it comes down to it. Because the industry is so used to colossal fuckups that saying "spend X dollars now for a smooth launch" isn't really accepted versus "so we lose Y players due to a shitty launch, everyone else is too jaded to judge us by it and will play it anyways"

Argh. People need to design their systems with any method of handling sudden burst capacity. We were too popular is a shitty excuse for your entire system collapsing.

YOur point in general is good but your point mostly addresses how much a server should handle.

The darkfall devs already "know" what their server capacity is. They don't want to spend money on 50 servers that can hold 20k people each when they expect to need 10 servers for the players they expect to be there in the long haul.

You have a good idea about renting servers, but correct me if I'm wrong, I don't think you can just rent servers when you have certain specifications in mind.

That could just lead to preorders getting good servers talking about great stability and everyone else bitching about rent-o crap.

Besides their partner for server solutions is GNi an d checking over their website they don't do rentalzz (hopefully I'm just really wrong here) :I


Anyway this watching this launch unfold is beginning to feel like amateur night at the comedy club. You didn't pay for the drinks yet, the jokes are mind numbing but yet you feel compelled to at least crack a smile.

*whistles*

[Lantyssa]

Darkfall is giving you amateur hour vibes?  No.  Say it isn't so.

[Draegan]

I still think it's vaporware.

[patience]

Darkfall is giving you amateur hour vibes?  No.  Say it isn't so.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=symGu9SjxSE




*points* 

[Righ]

I still think it's vaporware.

That would require it to be in an excited state. I prefer to think of it as droolware.

[Redgiant]

Darkfall is giving you amateur hour vibes?  No.  Say it isn't so.

Darkfall, what is best in life?

To crush your enemies , see them driven before you, and to hear the lamentation of the women.

(cue lamentation)

http://www.mmoginfo.com/imagenes/foto_dawn.jpg

If Dawn doesn't  produce an epicac reaction, I can stir in some Dark & Light.

[Nonentity]

I'll ignore that. 

Your avatard is awesome.

Thank you! You change your avatar so much, but I think I'm okay with the one you have now.

Also, it wouldn't be me if I weren't exploiting a running joke that was never very funny in the first place. You know this!

[Simond]

Hype surrounding Darkfall is huge right now, despite our best efforts.

Tasos is now officially the best pr manager in human history.

All the emoticons on the internet could not describe how awesome that is.

How about Awesome Level Event?

[Delmania]

Darkfall is giving you amateur hour vibes?  No.  Say it isn't so.

Darkfall, what is best in life?

To crush your enemies , see them driven before you, and to hear the lamentation of the women.

(cue lamentation)

http://www.mmoginfo.com/imagenes/foto_dawn.jpg


If Dawn doesn't  produce an epicac reaction, I can stir in some Dark & Light.

*cue weird robotic voice
Oh. No. You. Hath. Slain. Me.