Things that can go wrong at launch

[Gisli]

Yeah sure, the game can be buggy, servers can crash, yadda yadda yadda. That's not the point of this post. I'm much more concerned with how launch can impact us as a community. I'm driven largely by the bad experience we had with the WoW launch.

The first mistake that Blizzard made was not specifying RP servers. And the RP community was either not sufficiently organized, or (more likely) our own community wasn't plugged in well enough to them to know where the "unofficial" RP servers might be. So we were effectively going in with no guidance or predisposition on servers. We did decide that we wanted a "PvP" server, but no more than that.

We are way ahead in some ways in this situation. Mythic will have RP (core rules) servers. And our previous discussion makes it clear that our community wants to go to one of those. So that narrows the choices considerably. I think we are also a little better organized than we were pre-WoW, and I hope that over the next six weeks that we will be come better organized yet.

OK, so when launch of WoW was imminent, Blizzard released the names of about four servers. Nobody (including Blizzard) realized how big the initial response was going to be. We were all scrambling around trying to decide on insufficient information where to go. We were trying to guess what the communities of the named servers might be like. For whatever reason we did pick some server, and started there.

Then, about 2-3 days into launch, in short order several things happened. Everyone realized how big the population was becoming. Blizzard launched a ton of new servers. And then, they decided to replace the hardware on most of the initial servers, including ours. That meant after about 2 days of sporadic playtime, we were facing an estimated 3 days of downtime.

As a community, that is when things fell apart. My guild decided to switch to one of the new servers. Fist of the North decided to stay on the original one. Other guilds we knew had never been with us in the first place. The bottom line is that we ended up not being together at all.

One thing we need to think about is how we want to go about choosing *which* RP server we want to pick. I'll mention here that there is an entity called Open-WAR, which is a fairly large community of RP-oriented guilds. I'm guessing they will pick a server to go to. Their big debate is RP (core) vs. open PvP (non-RP). That is not our concern, but the choice by their guilds that go for the RP/core server might or might not be a consideration for us.

Does anyone have an opinion about the Open-WAR group?

[stroadt]

I don't know enough about the Only?-WAR group to have a position either way. Are they coming from other Camelot servers, other games, or where do they hail from? Do they share similar values that we shared in the Percival/Midgard community?

I do think we need to come up with a unified plan for picking our primary server and a contingency plan if that server explodes.

The Mal'Ganis server incident in WoW really did split alot of us.

Also, it would be nice if we could avoid the Goon Squad :p


An issue: Should we plan on planting our banners on a head-start realm or not?

On one side, picking a head start realm would allow the people who have pre-ordered to not have "wasted" their bonus. And, it would allow their guilds to snag their namesakes. On the other side, the head start servers might fill up quickly because of everyone wanting to join their friends or other communities like ours flocking to the same servers because of "established" players. The early servers in WoW were flooded due to Blizzard's shortsightedness on the launch demands.

[Slaight]

I believe Gisli meant "Only-WAR" not Open-WAR.

[LeMieux]

Personally I think we should pick a early release RP server, anyone who is pre ordering should have the early access. And I doubt there will be more than one or two RP servers on early release, which will make the choice even easier.

[Aoann]

If someone can toss up a list of server types, ill make a poll :)

[Athelstaine]

I will go wherever ravens go. I will admit though,i did cancel my collector's edition of the game in favor of regular pre-order from EB Games due to monetary issues,the bills have added up bigtime this month due to various reasons.

Hopefully the head start servers wont fill up too much by the time i get my copy.

[LeMieux]

I think we've already landed on Core RP for server type?

[Slaight]

I guess it would go Core, Open RvR, Core RP, Open RvR RP but i don't know if they are all confirmed as being available at launch. I think we already had a poll on this?

[Aoann]

just a conversation. (http://war.magnitudeweb.com/forum/showthread.php?p=1813#post1813)

[Gisli]

I think we definitely want a head start server. We've got a good number of people with the CE. The population being high is generally a good thing. It is only bad during the initial surge -- and Mythic looks to be doing something smart by letting the CEs program spread out the population a bit.

[Dall dies to much]

well.. from the launch of AoC.. the number of head start severs was 15 (3 types)

CE just got one more day of head start... so looks like sunday the 14th for CE's

I have no idea what reckoning is doing right now, so I might be joining you on whatever server you choose with the core of the reckoning 8 man you folks knew after the cluster (the 3 support and myself, go figure)

(no one seems to know who is incharge over there, and it isn't me :huh: )

[Drakhon]

Also, it would be nice if we could avoid the Goon Squad :p

They will definitely go Open RvR and wouldn't go RP even of there was an Open RP choice.

[Boltinheigmer]

Just have to hope they have a large amount of servers for launch compared to wow. Like already said.

was there even a RP server at launch of wow?


I know my guild was looking for one but we ended up on one of the first PvP servers. While many people later did leave for lower population servers, our guild stuck it out and very much liked our decision I mean other than playing alliance. Hate the good guys!

If things get a little crowded try and stick it out. Queues and things are generally frustrate the impaitent. Things could really pay off if a a good community can stick togeather through the turbulant begining.

WoW it didn't matter so much is so much about yourself in that game. WaR seems more about your realm (odviously) so the need of a good community may be crucial especially with so many people coming from WoW and having no idea of how a great community functions.

If Chaos isn't overpopulated my guild will probably stay with its first choice. Some of their fears in beta is the amount of choas there is vs empire.

You can only tell people it's beta so many times. lol

[ScarDar]

This is Darlini btw. I changed my name to Scar type acronyms in WoW cause I hated the name Darlini. Anywho... I'm in touch with a few old Perc guys. Hopefully I can convince them to go where Perc goes.

And yes, Argent Dawn (RP) for the EST and I forget the PST (RP) server, but WoW definitely had RP servers up at the start. They were just all PvE servers and non PvP-RP. PvP-RP didnt show up for a year. I remember Blizzard stating at the beginning "Our analysis shows there just isn't enough demand for RP servers" when the game was originally released. Now something like 5% of their servers is RP. They had to quickly add 2-3 RP servers during the initial launch.

I plan on playing the least populated side. White Lion if it's good guys, and if it's bad guys those dudes with swords for arms or some mage class.

[Wazdakka]

I'm hitting wherever the ravens go. I am in a sure minority in that I'd kinda like to play order, but <BLAH BLAH NDA>.

As for things that could go wrong: Only two capital cities and missing classes are pretty wrong to me, though I understand the business decision aspect of getting the thing out at last. That said, if they could have managed those things with another month, I wish they would have done so.

[Drakhon]

That said, if they could have managed those things with another month, I wish they would have done so.

That's the thing: they did not think they could have done so in a reasonable time frame. I'm not going to say that part of it wasn't to get the game out there as they would imply, but that doesn't mean that it was their primary goal.

They say that they consolidated the content from 6 cities into 2. I think that's actually better off but I expect them to eventually add the other 4 cities back in in some way, whether it be cycling which cities are available or getting back to the original plan.