What's going right/wrong with launch...

[01101010]

The forum rage is approaching critical mass.  Frankly, don't blame em.  You get thrown into a 3-day emailed early access queue for a guild assigned server only to be met with 3+ hr. queue times a week after "launch" and no possibility of transfer.   BW couldn't be tasked with installing a reconnect feature either... so if you crash, have fun with the queue again.  
To top it all off, there's little to no CS interaction ingame save for the occasional "server comin down" let alone any forum interaction.  So those who'd like to know wtf is goin on so they can make an informed decision, cant.

Why is it these same problems keep creeping up at these launches and some studios just dont seem to learn? (Trion was fairly learned though)  maddening

I always found the announcement "servers are coming down in 2 minutes for 4 hour maintenance. Please see log into the forums for details" hilarious.

[Merusk]

If folks are leveling just to level for the endgame, yeah, I can see dying out in a month or two.  That's part of why I'm taking it slower. 

However, if you want to see all the class story lines it'll be a bit more.

[VainEldritch]

If folks are leveling just to level for the endgame, yeah, I can see dying out in a month or two.  That's part of why I'm taking it slower.  

However, if you want to see all the class story lines it'll be a bit more.

They seem to be countering this by pointing out that the entire development team (including voice actors) will continue to work on the SWTOR and nothing else, and the launch-beardy Danno Erickson (honestly, that beard of his looks like one of inspector Clouseau's less convincing disguises...) pushed the point in their launch video - basically more content is coming and fast.

I'll be intested to see how much and how fast.

[sam, an eggplant]

The entire game is fully instanced, including common areas. Why couldn't they just allocate more blades to each server? In fact, why do they need to have separate servers at all, why doesn't it just work like Guild Wars with one mega-server per geographical region? There must be some technical reason.

[Ratman_tf]

So I am trying to log into Shien and sitting in a queue.  20 minutes or so.  GO TO WORK PEOPLE. 

Seriously though, that is strange.  I wouldn't think it would be Full at this time of the day.  Something wierd going on.

Wookie hookey.

[Lucas]

Server count, launch day (EU+US): 214

U.S.: 123
E.U. : 91

[Sky]

Wookie hookey.

Do not taunt Happy Fun Lantyssa. 

[eldaec]

The entire game is fully instanced, including common areas. Why couldn't they just allocate more blades to each server? In fact, why do they need to have separate servers at all, why doesn't it just work like Guild Wars with one mega-server per geographical region? There must be some technical reason.

Because wow didn't do that.

[sam, an eggplant]

I just wish they chose to copy WoW's auction house UI and not its antiquated server architecture.

[Sky]

I just wish they chose to copy WoW's auction house UI EQ2's broker

[Surlyboi]

I just wish they chose to copy WoW's auction house UI EQ2's broker

This. So much better.

That said, queue? Really? Get the fuck off my lawn, you goddamn late starters.

[01101010]

I just wish they chose to copy WoW's auction house UI EQ2's broker

This. So much better.

That said, queue? Really? Get the fuck off my lawn, you goddamn late starters.

edit: and what is the hold up with an Android App security feature? sheesh... iPods/Pads/Phones got it already, RAAAAAAAAGGGGGGGGGGGEEEEEEEE!!!!!!!!

Might be time to roll a Republic toon on a different server for me, until the tide washes back.

[Viin]

The entire game is fully instanced, including common areas. Why couldn't they just allocate more blades to each server? In fact, why do they need to have separate servers at all, why doesn't it just work like Guild Wars with one mega-server per geographical region? There must be some technical reason.

Because wow didn't do that.

This is what I've been asking too - I don't see how the amount of hardware changes by having a few big servers with lotsa instances instead of lotsa servers with few instances .. though I guess it'd be really big chat servers too unless they restrict General/etc to instance only.

[Ghambit]

Yah, I'll probably taste a low pop. pvp server tonite just for something different.  Time to dig up some ol' guildies and find out where they are.

In re. server architecture, you've gotta remember they're using Heroengine.  Though, I'm not sure if their frontend is Hero-based or not, let alone the architecture.  It's a tool that comes with everything, albeit in a fairly simplistic, vanilla package (pretty much WoW 1.0 as they say).  NOTHING like Trion's setup, which is likely the most robust of any MMO to date.

This has to be the reason things seem a bit antiquated nuts 'n bolts wise.  It's kinda like polishing a turd rather than innovating.

[sam, an eggplant]

Megaservers allow for more efficient resource utilization, too. Right now you've got a bunch of popular shards sitting full with hour-long queues and a bunch that are completely open with low usage. If they were replaced with a megaserver, more people could actually play the game. There are other benefits, too-- you can always play with your friends, the auction house economy is much larger, it's easier to find groups (assuming some sort of LFG or LFD tool is implemented) and so on and so forth. The whole concept of separate shards is simply unnecessary once you start instancing everything ala Guild Wars or SWTOR.

There are arguments against megaservers too, shard identity, smaller communities, etc. But those are really arguments against instancing too-- once you cross that line and instance everything, and players aren't in the same physical gamespace, you're putting up walls between players anyway. Might as well have the conviction to go all the way. Otherwise you get all the negatives and none of the positives.

[Merusk]

The entire game is fully instanced, including common areas. Why couldn't they just allocate more blades to each server? In fact, why do they need to have separate servers at all, why doesn't it just work like Guild Wars with one mega-server per geographical region? There must be some technical reason.

Because wow didn't do that.

This is what I've been asking too - I don't see how the amount of hardware changes by having a few big servers with lotsa instances instead of lotsa servers with few instances .. though I guess it'd be really big chat servers too unless they restrict General/etc to instance only.

What happens to large databases like the AH when they get even larger?  That's the only reason I could come up with.

That and someone still wants to promote the e-peen "Server First!" culture.

[Miasma]

When warhammer came out they pulled the trigger on an option to buy enough hardware to double the number of servers they had to fix queue times, then they had to start merging and shutting them down a few months later because so many people left.  They're probably not going to make that same mistake twice.

[amiable]

When warhammer came out they pulled the trigger on an option to buy enough hardware to double the number of servers they had to fix queue times, then they had to start merging and shutting them down a few months later because so many people left.  They're probably not going to make that same mistake twice.

Of course not, they have opted to make the entirely new mistake of having casual players (like my wife) just quit the game because they aren't going to put up with a queue.

[Ingmar]

As far as magnitude of mistakes go that one isn't anywhere NEAR as big as a giant capital expenditure failure.

EDIT: Also the PR implications of this issue are wildly different. "This game is so popular there are queues on every server!" vs "This game is so unpopular they had to close 100 servers!"

[luckton]

Something that's been bothering me as I wrap up my agent's time on Nar Shaddaa is the difficulty ramp-up of quests and such.

Starting out on Hutta, there was a handful of quests that were marked as Heroic+2.  Didn't take long for people to figure out that these quests could be 'soloed' with you and your companion.

Now on Nar Shaddaa, that's certainly no longer the case.  In fact, the Heroic+4 missions are basically micro-dungeons, in that if you're not packing 'the trinity' in your group and/or group with some fail people, expect to either not finish or take a long f'ing time to do.

While I understand your companion doesn't count as a full PC, I think allowing people to do it from the start and then beating them over the head later gives a bad impression of PC/companion mechanics.  

[Miasma]

When warhammer came out they pulled the trigger on an option to buy enough hardware to double the number of servers they had to fix queue times, then they had to start merging and shutting them down a few months later because so many people left.  They're probably not going to make that same mistake twice.

Of course not, they have opted to make the entirely new mistake of having casual players (like my wife) just quit the game because they aren't going to put up with a queue.

They are hoping casuals won't ragequit on day one and come back in a few days when queue times aren't as bad.  They have no good options really.  Maybe a future game will use something akin to amazon services where resources can be easily scaled up and down with demand but that tech was too new and unstable when coding started on swtor.

[sam, an eggplant]

What happens to large databases like the AH when they get even larger?  That's the only reason I could come up with.

The auctionhouse isn't a great example; WoW allows players to straight-up download the entire auctionhouse for their faction, and it's never over 200-300KB or so. There are other datastores that are much larger, containing character-specific data, customized items, quest states, etc, but instancing means you don't need to access all of them simultaneously, and the vast majority of transactions would be reads anyway, allowing for a great deal of scalability. Of course the game would have to be architected with a megaserver in mind-- if you started your game looking to clone WoW and decided to instance common areas later on, it would be a huge undertaking. And that's probably what happened.

[amiable]

As far as magnitude of mistakes go that one isn't anywhere NEAR as big as a giant capital expenditure failure.

EDIT: Also the PR implications of this issue are wildly different. "This game is so popular there are queues on every server!" vs "This game is so unpopular they had to close 100 servers!"

Meh. Maybe.  But I imagine the optics of paying 60 dollar to spend 2 hours in a virtual amusement park line simulator every night isn't going to win them too many PR points either.  With the amount of money they are raking in would it be so terrible to allow free server transfers for folks who want off high pop servers?

[01101010]

Meh. Maybe.  But I imagine the optics of paying 60 dollar to spend 2 hours in a virtual amusement park line simulator every night isn't going to win them too many PR points either.  With the amount of money they are raking in would it be so terrible to allow free server transfers for folks who want off high pop servers?

That is fucking crazy talk. Don't you know server transfers market the first step to the destruction of the game....?? Unless they are paid transfers, then it is ok. 

But yeah, I am still trying to figure out this huge push to Shien. All I can assume is the rest of the guild members from the megaguilds finally got in automatically because I fail to see why anyone new to the game or the genre would see WAIT TIME and click anyway with the huge amount of servers on the LIGHT end of the scale.

[amiable]

That is fucking crazy talk. Don't you know server transfers market the first step to the destruction of the game....?? Unless they are paid transfers, then it is ok. 

Do companies really believe this?  FFS WoW Vanilla did this to address this very problem!  (Maybe that argument could convince them because they are so uppity to be WoW all over again...)

[kildorn]

Everyone just loved my Slap recruitment threads on swtor.com, sorry. :(

[Ghambit]

I posit that since SWTOR is such a story-based heroic themepark that they didnt want to muddy the waters with large omniservers.  You cant get that special snowflake feeling if you've got gamewide AH, chat, instances, etc.

Where they fail is their execution, control, and UI.  It's almost like they really dont have much flexibility at all with what they have.  No dynamic events, no real ingame CS, no real feedback, etc.  Then they roll out servers too late even though they KNOW they've got "x" amount of players waiting in the wings.

Someone's head should roll if you've essentially got to double or triple your server farm come launch day.  Those blades should've been ready to go from pre-order day 1, otherwise what's the godamned point in having them since no one will populate them a week later.  I dunno, common sense does not exist in Austin I guess.  It is Texas after all eh?   

[kildorn]

If servers were coming live on launch day, it means they're ordered them 3-4 weeks ago. One does not simply buy servers at the local big box store. Running power/extending your datacenter and actually getting the hardware in takes a lot of lead time. Someone's head should only roll if the initial numbers said "holy shit lots of players incoming." If they said nothing and it just turns out everyone bought it without a preorder, there's very little they could have done beyond buy servers for every physical box shipped and pray they didn't just spend an extra million on hardware they're just going to ebay next week.

All that said, they should have been designing a server migration plan when ordering all this new hardware so there was an orderly way of making sure everyone had a place to play. I dislike the idea of "you've only been playing for a week, pick up and move!" I mean sure, it wouldn't be more than a week's investment lost but I don't think many people will actually migrate servers without a server transfer option.

[Ghambit]

Well, let's see.  Each server holds what?  2000 players?  They had like 80-100 at EA day 1?  Do that math and that doesnt even cover the amount of preorders they had in the 1st week preorders became available.    

Doubling your infrastructure 1 day after launch with the retail numbers they had is dumb.  There's just no reasoning not to have that stuff in place during early access unless you're so skimp you wanna save a few days leasetime.

[Wolf]

That is fucking crazy talk. Don't you know server transfers market the first step to the destruction of the game....?? Unless they are paid transfers, then it is ok.  

Do companies really believe this?  FFS WoW Vanilla did this to address this very problem!  (Maybe that argument could convince them because they are so uppity to be WoW all over again...)

Also they let us off the ruskies server. Warsong. Never forget.

Although I have to admit to treasuring the memory of chasing after a druid telling him in very broken russian to remove my disease  

[kildorn]

Well, let's see.  Each server holds what?  2000 players?  They had like 80-100 at EA day 1?  Do that math and that doesnt even cover the amount of preorders they had in the 1st week preorders became available.    

Doubling your infrastructure 1 day after launch with the retail numbers they had is dumb.  There's just no reasoning not to have that stuff in place during early access unless you're so skimp you wanna save a few days leasetime.

Have they confirmed 2,000 is the server count of active connections? If so, that's really odd back end infrastructure.

But what I'm saying is "hey, this is the hardware we'll wind up needing per current numbers + growth projections" plays better with your boss than "So anyways, I bought us a 45T SAN, and it turns out we only have 2T of data and about 10G growth a month. Hey, why are you looking at me like that?"

Having to double your systems on launch pisses a few players off, and statistically doesn't seem to impact your retention much at all. But it generates AWESOME PR. Having 2,000 ghost town servers on launch has the opposite effect.

edit: Looking at the status page, the entire problem seems to be summed up as "we didn't think RP servers would be that popular." They seem to have a pretty normal percentage breakdown of pvp/pve/RP-pve, but the RP-pve servers are all heavy/full while the pve servers are about balanced between high loads and light loads. Turns out a game with a heavy story emphasis may pull RPers out of the woodwork. Or they're all people named MalReynolds who want to avoid servers with stupid player names.

[Mrbloodworth]

2,000 is extremely low, especially considering phasing and instancing.

 

No dynamic events, no real ingame CS, no real feedback, etc.

What.

Also the ability to toss up 90 so servers in a 5 hour window really throws your armcharing right out the window.

[Murgos]

2,000 is extremely low, especially considering phasing and instancing.

 

No dynamic events, no real ingame CS, no real feedback, etc.

What.

You haven't noticed he's been pulling doom & gloom stuff out of his ass for a week?  It's like he's only going to feel validated if the whole thing collapses.

Anyway, 200+ servers up and stable at launch is no mean feat.  I gotta give them credit for a job well done even if there are day 1 queues.

[ajax34i]

Googling "WoW realm capacity" seems to indicate 3000 / server (in 2008), so I would guess the full realms could probably be 5000+ with today's improved hardware.  My estimates are they have approx 4+ million subscribers, but I guess nothing will be confirmed until they announce something.

[Sobelius]

One of my ways of dealing with this for now is creating only one or two classes per server instead of all classes on the same server.

When I get home tonight if the server with my Jedi Knight is full, I'll hope there's a Light load server on which I can launch a new class (BH, here I come!). If not, /shrug.