RIFT's head-start is standing room only

@Macabre 13

agreed, so far so good. I'm certainly keeping an eye on this one as perhaps a future game to play.

@xilr

Thats why I don't understand why New MMOs don't at least start off with a channel server setup. Even if they don't intend to support it in the long run.

Then they can have say 4-5 servers each with a hand full of channels and you scale channels accordingly.

You kill three birds with one stone.
You avoid queues because initially there is enough room for everyone
You avoid massive zone overcrowding (there will still be some)
You avoid the false stigma of failure during your impending server mergers after tourist season.

@Scuffles

This sort of does

The 1st area is basically one giant instance that caps at about 50 people so that the servers don't get bottlenecked right at creation.

Imo quests are a lower priority than rifts if you wanna level at a good pace.

@xilr I DREAD this happening when Guild Wars 2 launches. There will be at least 12-times the amount people on that launch day, and it wil be BRUTAL...

I'll probably buy the game, then shelve it for a week or so.

@xilr The fault here lies entirely with the players. By default everyone is in a public group. If mobs are being killed too quickly, all you have to do is click on another player and click the join public group icon on their portrait and you're now grouped and share credit. Items for collection quests are even available for each player (each player can see/get only one per kill).

Plus I saw some players complaining that people were declining group invites. So some players obviously knew that grouping would make things less painful but others were unwilling to do it for some reason.

@Scuffles

They can't increase capacity without destabilizing servers, so that's not an option. They can add more servers but if they open too many they discover populations slacking after the initial weekend as people get into their normal playing schedule. It depends too much on factors they cant control or don't know yet.

@Duffy
Actually they undoubtedly started off with reduced max populations for each server. This creates a scenario where they can encourage a more even population distribution across all servers while also allowing them to slowly ramp up populations.

Ramping up populations like that has a dual purpose:

1) It allows people to play with their friends even if they couldn't start playing in the first few days or during the head start. If the servers launch at max capacity then once it's full that's it. The people who come later have to abandon their friends or their friends have to abandon the time they've put into the game so far.

2) It allows them to maintain a more distributed player population across the level ranges. As players move out of the starting areas they can increase the cap and let more players into those starting areas. This helps reduce the competition for early level objectives, making the game more fun for all.

@Scuffles

Let's do some simple math.

On a well established MMO, a healthy server might have 2000-3000 concurrent users, out of a total of 15,000-20,000 active users.

That means, if a game has 1m subscribers, they need around 50-75 servers to adequately meet demand.

On launch day, suppose they have 50 servers, which is adequate for 1m players. For video games, the vast majority of sales occurs during launch week, and the month that follows. So Suppose 200k units are sold on first day.

Now, they just all bought the game, so of course most of them are probably eager to play it right away.

200,000 / 50 = 4,000 per server, which is over capacity.

So even though they have enough servers, there is a queue. Understand?

During normal operations, only about 1/8 of the player base is logged on at a time. During launch, 1/2 or more of the player base is logged on, or trying to log on.

@Scuffles They knew how many people there would be ahead of time; the issue has been more that large guilds and guild alliances are trying to go to a select amount of server and are unwilling to go to others. That is where some of the long 8-10 hour ques are coming from.