Do MMOs seem to depend on having good launches?

[PapaSmurf]

And if so, are EA/BioWare creating a potential disaster with the queue times? Sort of shooting themselves in the foot to start the race.

I understand there are problems with low-pop servers later on, but it seems to me server merges are easier to stomach than losing X% of your player base because their first month experience involved as much time in queue as /played.

Then again, I don't know networking and MMO design at all, nor do I know demographics etc. So I'm curious about informed opinions on this.

[Murbella]

No, they do not because basically EVERY MMO ever released has had bad launches filled with problems.

Bioware got around this by limiting entry to the head start in phases and having severe queueing. Annoying, but probably better than server lag and frequent crashes. Ideally it would be possible to both launch without problems that make the game unplayable for the first week(s) AND not severely limit the play time of your customers during that time, but alas, the technology does not appear to be there...

[Razgon]

its not that simple.

Recently, the biggest warning sign you can have of a games impending demise, is the merging of servers. That means, Bioware has to be absolutely certain that this is avoided. IF the result are queues the first week, so be it. People will still play it, and as the numbers level out after the initial rush and "oh god I have to play every day" feeling disappears, you will begin to see more manageable numbers on the servers.

In a week or two, you probably won't be seeing queues, or at least only very low queues, which means people will quickly forget about those issues, in the last two weeks of their subscription. (Yes, I know, some of you hold a grudge like an elephant, but the numbers are stacked against you - not many are like you).

So, of course Bioware aren't completely incompetent or morons - They have a plan(tm).

Of course, this impacts players a bit in the beginning and is annoying (hey, I had 50 minutes lines on my server last night), but it will pass.

(Copied from the SWTOR thread, but it fits here nicely).

In short - no, this will not affect Bioware's game in the least.

[Murbella]

You don't think people might cancel their sub if they are hit with constant 2 hour queues over a long period of time?

I love the game, but I would just not put up with it for longer than a month.

I hate feeling like I can't log out because if i do i will never be able to get back on.

[Mark Asher]

If there are long queues now, won't they be worse once pre-launch is over and absolutely everyone can get in?

I think server consolidation is unavoidable unless some kind of server instancing is used. The MMO audience is so big now due to WoW that hundreds of thousands of players are willing to try a new AAA MMO and there's always going to be a lot of them who will drop after a month or two.

[Teiman]

What mmos are sucessful? Is hard to say. Some people even arguee than a failed mmo with few subscribers and a scheleton team behind is a sucess because supose a constant source of income. Then you have nc soft killing tabula rasa with a lot of subscribers for not having enough subs to kill wow.

[Razgon]

You don't think people might cancel their sub if they are hit with constant 2 hour queues over a long period of time?
.

No, I don't think so but thats also because the queues won't last.


If there are long queues now, won't they be worse once pre-launch is over and absolutely everyone can get in?

Not really - as I said in my previous post, the players will be spread out after the first two weeks, and it will be even more after the first months drop-off.

If the game is fun, and can hook people, like it seems they have done, the game will be a fine success.

[Murbella]

The players will spread out?

Players flock to large servers precisely because they think they will be the place where eveything is happening.

The real question is what happens after that point. Do the queues convince them to abandon their character and start over? Do they stick with it in the hopes it will get better somehow? Do they just quit the game?

I don't see how anyone could realistically say that (without action from bioware) the queues will not get worse as the month progresses. Yes, "eventually" they will get better, but the near future will just see more players getting the game and more people having free time from the holidays.

I do believe if bioware doesn't take "some action" to remedy this, they will start losing players before the month is up. The "some action" part is pretty broad though. They could split the problems servers, give free transfers off, let more people in the servers if they can handle them and/or upgrade the hardware of servers that are currently swamped. Doing nothing is not an option though unless they want the problem to correct itself by people leaving the game.

[Razgon]

I may have expressed this wrongly, if so, apologies but 3rd language and all that ;-)

Anyways, by people spreading out I mean - Yes, today I want to play all day when I get off work, and so will many others...next week? No, I will return to my usual evening stuff and so will many others. This means, that there will be less players on each evening (From the initial rush, that is).

Only the hardcore ones will play every day every week every month.

[Diana Baba]

I think players will quit if the queues last overly long. Though what long is depends on the tipping point of each player. I think queues are a huge nuisance and inconvenience, but ultimately I think most folk will put up with them if its not more than a couple of weeks, and the game is worth it.

I hate queues but I hate being on a deserted server more, so I always tend to go to more populated server. I will quit a MMO faster if my advancement/fun depends on other players being around and I think that will kill a MMO faster than queues. Personally, I find many MMO's wait too long to do server merges if they are required.

That said, I really think what kills MMO's fast other than boring, repetitive gameplay is technical problems. Gamestopping bugs, clients that run like pigs even on supercomputers, constant crashes etc. Players run amok can also hurt MMO's, by this I mean devs turning a blind eye to cheaters, exploiters, and relentless, constant gold spam. Not just gold spam, but too many players paying to win. A game can be harsh, like Eve or even that UO type clone (its name is escaping me, but put out by Adventurine) but if the playing field is even, ie no cheating (gold buying is cheating) I don't think that causes people to quit, other than its not being their type of play. I know I am always happy to hear about bannings, means someone is paying attention. The playing field can be uneven due to bad design, too.

Lots of reasons why a game can fail. Some people will quit over queues, me included but I'm not convinced that queues will make a MMO fail.

[Aceris]

Back in the mists of time the EQ2 launch was much smoother than the WoW launch. WoW had freaky lag, queues, and the loot bug. EQ2 did not. People didn't care because WoW was fun whereas EQ2 wasn't.

So no, launch quality is not the determining factor.

[Oghier]

I think the servers can support more than their current populations. I am playing on what has turned out to be the heaviest-pop server of them all, the East Coast RP-PvP Server Jung Ma. We've been "full" since the second day of early access (queue times get over an hour). In-game, I have experienced not one moment of lag or latency. Performance has been spot-on perfect.

I suspect that pop limits will rise, as they feel their way toward the servers' true capacities.

[Harkonis]

I knew a lot of people who never paid past the free month on Rift due to the queues. I definitely think a bad launch can kill an mmo's chance. WoW is an exception, you can't really compare things to WoW imo.

[LesJarvis]

I knew a lot of people who never paid past the free month on Rift due to the queues. I definitely think a bad launch can kill an mmo's chance. WoW is an exception, you can't really compare things to WoW imo.

If Rift was an excellent game I don't think queues at launch would have mattered. You have to compare things to WoW, because WoW's success is tied directly to its quality and accessibility. FWIW I don't think Rift is a bad game, and I enjoyed it, though I'm one of those people who didn't play it past the first month. I just don't think it offered enough to get people to switch from WoW, which is really where the challenge is for anyone trying to produce a blockbuster MMO these days. If you produce a really excellent MMO, that has minimal bugs and technical issues, great gameplay, great art, lots of high quality content, and so on, I think people will suffer through queues for a few weeks. That's extremely hard to do, though.

[aganazer]

I think its odd that MMOs are still using traditional server design rather than doing what Cryptic does or simply separating the character database from the world database. Its not like this is UO where you need to be on the same world instance every day because that is where you built your house. In these WoW-alikes all you need to do is be in the same world instance as your friends and there is no reason that should be the same world instance every day.

[Slainte Mhath]

I have yet to see a highly anticipated MMO launch in the last 15 years that didn't have login queues in the first weeks of release. It's almost a rite of passage for early adopters.

[Knightsaber]

WoW had queues, constant downtime, sudden disconnects...doesn't anyone else remember that?

That turned out pretty shitty for them in the end didn't it? Bioware better do something or else they might end up with millions of subs!

[Teiman]

WoW had queues, constant downtime, sudden disconnects...doesn't anyone else remember that?

That turned out pretty shitty for them in the end didn't it? Bioware better do something or else they might end up with millions of subs!


You get one post saying exactly the same thing again and again in most forums that talk about mmos. Sometimes reading MMO discussions is like watching TV reruns.

Almost always the reply to your post is along the lines "Back then there where not as much mmos. Now the market is huge, and you can repeat wow mistakes".

[BleedTheFreak]

I don't think anyone can say one word about mmos that is truly original anymore, all mmo discussions are like TV reruns.

EDIT Almost always the reply is along the lines "Back then there where not as much mmos. Now the market is huge, and you can repeat wow mistakes".

EDIT - See you cleaned up the post, so I'll do the same. :)

[Knightsaber]

I don't think anyone can say one word about mmos that is truly original anymore, all mmo discussions are like TV reruns.

I have read one fucking million posts saying exactly what this one say.

Almost always the reply is along the lines "Back then there where not as much mmos. Now the market is huge, and you can repeat wow mistakes".

They aren't repeating WoW's mistakes. That's half the point. So far, TOR is infinitely more stable.

[Murbella]

Yeah, i'd agree. Every other mmorpg i've played has opened the flood gates and had severe technical problems at launch due to it. Swtor picked a different path, heavily restricting entry both to the game and to the servers. Doing so has managed to avoid the typical technical problems you see in mmos. This is just a short term hotfix though that assumes their techs are doing something to correct the problem in the long term.

I have about a 40ms ping to the server and receive absolutely not lag. There was one time i was fighting this boss and i couldn't attack him at all with my sith warrior because he was always out of range though. Also couldn't charge him. I think that was just a bug and not lag though.

[Teiman]

Neverwinter Nights was already a MMO, sorta. Some servers had human dungeon masters spawning creatures and creating fun for the players.

Nobody understand why Bioware never exploited that success. Maybe the people of Bioware decided that his future is not on multiplayer games.

[extarbags]

I knew a lot of people who never paid past the free month on Rift due to the queues. I definitely think a bad launch can kill an mmo's chance. WoW is an exception, you can't really compare things to WoW imo.

WoW wasn't always WoW. It wasn't like they launched it and had all those problems and people were like "well, I've already invested all this time in it and there are ten million subscribers so I might as well stick it out." It had a lot of buzz, but it was still far from a guaranteed success. If massive technical problems at launch were capable of killing a well-designed MMO, big-budget, and well-marketed, they would have killed WoW.

[merryprankster]

Viva La DCUO!

[Teiman]

Now that I think about Neverwinter Nights.

I am the only one that see how the Tiefling (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kNLVJO0GU8o) and Zabrak (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4UqFPujRZWo) are similar?

And how the Neverwinter Winter interface is really ugly (http://i.imgur.com/ypenw.jpg?4542), with the same ugly style as LOTRO?

Theres a conspiracy here, I say.

[Ryslin]

2hr queue to log into loot bugs, lag to heavy I cannot get in combat and skipped chat.
I leave the game

2 hr queue and I get in to a flawless play? I don't mind that much. Yeah I am annoyed but I have stood in line at Disney for longer. (and less of a payoff)


No queue and bugs, loot issues , lag so on? I will keep trying hoping they fix it.

See how that works?

[Aeon221]

Calling time of death for swottor now + six months, calling time of free to play now + 1 year.

[Razgon]

Calling time of death for swottor now + six months, calling time of free to play now + 1 year.

I'll hold you to that! I say that in 1 year, the game is alive and well and thriving and not about to go F2P!

The looser has to apologize publicly (Forum publicly, that is) and eat a digital hat!

[Foxstab]

Queuing is not necessarily a game killer. Hasn't been thus far for certain, despite even WoW's initial murderous queues, and so unlikely to be going forward.

Severe technical problems, balance issues, leveling gaps and lack of updates/dev progression is usually it.

[Telefrog]

A good launch doesn't hurt an MMO, but it's no guarantee of success.

[Joe M.]

WoW wasn't always WoW. It wasn't like they launched it and had all those problems and people were like "well, I've already invested all this time in it and there are ten million subscribers so I might as well stick it out." It had a lot of buzz, but it was still far from a guaranteed success. If massive technical problems at launch were capable of killing a well-designed MMO, big-budget, and well-marketed, they would have killed WoW.

Yes, and there were still massive problems on the higher population servers up until the day I quit (late in WOTLK). While unfortunate, server issues are hardly a harbinger of failure.

[Foxstab]

I'll hold you to that! I say that in 1 year, the game is alive and well and thriving and not about to go F2P!

The looser has to apologize publicly (Forum publicly, that is) and eat a digital hat!

How about he has to write "looser does not equate loser" 100 times and then digi-cam it for all to see?

[Misguided]

There is no way that huge wait times wouldn't impact whether people continue past the initial 30 days. People want to get it in and play not wait on a queue.

There's also not necessarily a need to add more servers when you can scale up the size of the existing servers temporarily. You can have additional instances of overcrowded newbie zones running.