Old Republic to be limited a launch

[Zeus]

They're doin' it to ensure the servers don't crash, apparently. So if you insist on having it day 1, pre-order just to make sure

http://gamescom.gamespot.com/story/6330 ... Btitle%3B7

[Don]

It's a marketing gimmick. No game has ever failed because too many people are playing it. Hype is good. Getting slammed with a 10 hour queue is a rite of passage for MMORPG, sort of like the freaks that line up for midnight releases.

If they mean they're actually afraid the server crash even though it is almost certainly going to capped at some population then that means their hardware seriously sucks. I was on the EQ team PvP server when they had 5000 people on it, which is at least twice the amount the server was ever meant to handle, and the game still played okay for a while until it crashed hard 5 hours later. All the people I talked to thought it was totally cool to have 200 guys chase after a giant rat, since if you didn't think that was cool why are you on the server in the first place? Modern MMORPG servers seems to cap at around 2000 people, so there's no excuse to be afraid of the impending population. I can see the login server getting hammered very hard, but that just means people might not be able to login. It shouldn't affect the guys who actually got on the game servers.

They're just creating fake demand by hyping this perceived shortage and then they'll probably suddenly find an extra 150 servers. But I think it might be backfire too because SWTOR is already super hyped anyway, so it's not like people don't know this is supposed to be the MMORPG of the year. So the fake demand might just gets some people angry and go home.

[Eric]

Actually agree with Don here, sounds like bullshit heh.

[Zeus]

Actually agree with Don here, sounds like bullshit heh.

No one has tried that shit since the Nintendo NES days. If they limit it, they don't tell you ahead of time (look at every Atlus release prior to Catherine). I believe they will actually cap it at a certain number (say 500,000) for the first month or so.

[Don]

Even relatively no name MMORPGs can sell 500K copies in the first month. That'd basically be suicide because people will say SWTOR can only pull in as many people as no name MMORPGs. While people complain about not being able to log on or queues, they will complain even more about how the game is dying if there isn't full servers. We're pretty much past the day where server condition can be so bad that it is basically unplayable. If you throw out servers that are just plain bad (i.e. stuff that crash even with nobody on and has nothing to do with how many are playing the game anyway), at worst you might have something is kind of laggy like say the RIFT world events where you can barely click on something before 200 people run over it. As much as people complain about how it sucks, the fact that there are 200 people beating up the first thing that spawned at any given place shows that such events are actually immensely popular. If it was actually frustrating to the point where it'd make you quit, then clearly you wouldn't have that many people participating (they'd have quit!)

Also the people who are likely to fall for these "OMG LIMITED RELEASE" are also going to be the most fickle, so that means a lot of those guys are going to be ragequit at the first sign of trouble. So, out of your initial 500K you should expect much higher attrition since the guys who are more indifferent about MMORPG problems are also not the guys who would just rush out and get this immediately.

If there was actually a limit it's likely to be something like 5 million, i.e. a number where if they hit then they already won as the #1 MMORPG of the market, and at that point they can obviously do whatever they want. It really wouldn't make sense to stop at say 2 million because that's a number where you'd want to try to go for the kill against WoW if you assume WoW is around 5 million NA+Europe. There is absolutely no reason to stop your momentum. Since they didn't actually say what the number is, I fully expect they'll just try to sell as many copies as possible and just say, "Turns out our servers are super awesome, who could've imagined that!"

I think Anarchy Online is the last MMORPG where the launch failed due to hardware issues (I heard the game was actually unplayable). Complaining about a MMORPG launch is basically the same as camping out in front of a Gamestop for a midnight release, and then complain it was cold outside. It's pretty obvious people who do this kind of thing are in it for the experience itself, because there is no sane reason to do so otherwise. It's a huge myth that MMORPG have rough launches. Yes life sucks if you happen to be on the server with faulty hardware, but that server would've died anyway even if it had normal population. Briarcliff in RIFT had a queue of 200 hours or something utterly ridiculous. Ask yourself why would you stick to a completely arbitary server (RIFT has no history, so we're not talking about a Sephiroth server for FF or Archimonde for WoW) and then wait there all day when there are 20 servers with no queue before you even created your character?

[kali o.]

The Pvp limitation really killed it for me...I was really hoping they'd do something interesting with it (since good vs evil is practically built in the game and lore). If I wanted boring PvE, story driven quests, I'd keep playing Dungeons & Dragons Online.

Anyway, I'm sure if you want a copy, you'll get a copy. Sounds like marketing hype to me.

[Don]

The only game that looks to have interesting PvP is Guild Wars 2 where it's going to be 3 entire servers against each other. Like I said in my post I'm skeptical how can ArenaNet possibly deliver everything they say they're doing but it's certainly worth looking forward to and see if they can deliver. I see no reason to believe SWTOR will be any different from the WoW brand of PvP where PvP is a way to put in your time to get great gear. I think the whole notion of PvP for gear just doesn't work, because by definition you should win 50% of the time against a player, whereas your chance of winning, as an average person, against high end PvE encounters is nowhere near 50%. You should get gear that prevent you from being steamrolled by the guys who PvE but the reward should be more along the lines of prestiege. Nobody ever said why play a RTS/FPS since you don't get stuff that makes you more likely to win the next game. I think PvP in MMORPG should be treated like a big round of CTF or whatever model you want. Just winning itself should be the reward, assuming the process is actually fun.

[kali o.]

The only game that looks to have interesting PvP is Guild Wars 2 where it's going to be 3 entire servers against each other. Like I said in my post I'm skeptical how can ArenaNet possibly deliver everything they say they're doing but it's certainly worth looking forward to and see if they can deliver. I see no reason to believe SWTOR will be any different from the WoW brand of PvP where PvP is a way to put in your time to get great gear. I think the whole notion of PvP for gear just doesn't work, because by definition you should win 50% of the time against a player, whereas your chance of winning, as an average person, against high end PvE encounters is nowhere near 50%. You should get gear that prevent you from being steamrolled by the guys who PvE but the reward should be more along the lines of prestiege. Nobody ever said why play a RTS/FPS since you don't get stuff that makes you more likely to win the next game. I think PvP in MMORPG should be treated like a big round of CTF or whatever model you want. Just winning itself should be the reward, assuming the process is actually fun.

You said a bunch of things...I only took two main things away: You obviously don't know how pvp works currently works in SWTOR (limited as it is) and claiming players should win 50% against each other (by definition) is far and away the silliest thing I've ever heard...maybe as theory, but never in practice.

People pvp for all sorts of reasons -- a small percentage do it for bragging rights/griefing fun alone, while the majority need some sort of incentive. But to break that down in simpler terms....a small percentage of good pvpers and a majority of average/below average pvpers.

Basically, you need to bribe the fodder to participate, which makes sense.

[Shrinweck]

As a side note for Anarchy Online, I remember a burst of lag that lasted so long that I literally got up and shaved and came back and almost nothing had happened. Code was so weak that it was impossible to log out/quit via non end tasking methods.

[Oracle]

Artificial scarcity to drive up sales.

[Don]

http://massively.joystiq.com/2011/08/26 ... aunches-e/

There's no way 'one of the biggest launch ever' is going to be limited to 500K, unless their definition of 'biggest launch ever' radically differs from what just about every person thinks of as.

[Shrinweck]

Where are you getting this number? The "profitable" quote in the first article likely has nothing to do with what cap they set. For all we know the cap could be two million, which is feasible. Holiday sales of this game will be incredible to say the least and cutting themselves off from these sales would be foolish. The only people pre-ordering now are die hard fans and people people who don't mind planning ahead and saying bye to $65-$185 months before there's any product in theirs hands. That isn't likely to be a majority. Fact is, I'm betting the cap is a more extravagant number than five hundred thousand.

I guess that's the point of your post. Still, a low cap on a holiday release for a game that will almost certainly break records is not something I see on the horizon.

[Don]

If Bioware hit even 2 million they're well on their way to dominate the MMORPG unless SWTOR turns out to totally suck, given MMORPG market is mostly a zero-sum game (i.e. their gain means someone else's loss). There's no point to set a cap equal to a number that's equivalent of conquering the world. If you hit it, you already won so who cares what the cap is? Given WoW's primary paying population is around 5-6 million (maybe even less now) and that it's clearly not growing, even a million subs at launch can probably dethrone it let alone anything higher.

The only way a cap would be meaningful is if it was actually small. 500K would be my guess too, but of course 500K cannot possibly be 'one of the biggest launch ever'. The next game to sell 2 million will most definitely defeat WoW unless that game has no ability to retain its population, and it'd be a pretty amazing accomplishment to have such a bad game selling so many copies in the first place.

[Shrinweck]

There is a point to setting a high cap if you can't hope to feasibly satisfy anything higher than it in the launch window. They have months to prepare and a low number just to be careful seems foolish to me.

[Don]

EA has experience doing MMORPG (DAoC/WAR). We're not talking about someone shooting for 1K and got totally ovewhelmed if 100K people showed up. Even if 10 million people showed up for SWTOR launch it should be something they can account for very quickly. Yes people will probably complain why there is a 250 hour queue for the "Darth Vader" server but that's nothing new. Since MMORPG market is effectively zero sum a number around 2-3 million (half of WoW's non Asia numbers) is enough to establish itself as #1, and I really don't see what's the point to set a cap that, if reached, will make you the #1 game for sure. I mean you're basically saying we can only sell as many copies as needed to get us to #1, and I'd say that number is no greater than 2 million.

But on the other hand if the cap was say 1 million, then it still wouldn't be anywhere close to one of the biggest game launch ever. I'm pretty sure there are quite a few titles that sold more than a million on the first day, and presumably a cap would at least go for a month.

Again I don't actually think the cap is a low number, but it'd only make sense to have a cap at a low number. Of course I'm of the opinion the cap is hype anyway and doubt it'll ever be announced. My guess is that the cap is going to equal to exactly however many people bought the game after one month, and they'll make a press release about how the game exceeded their wildest expectations and EA is working over time on finding another 150 servers. That way they get a good press release and continue to drive up the hype. Also, in the unlikely event that SWTOR does flop, they can then say 'the cap was actually 200K (or something ridiculously small)' and save face, sort of like how Sqix is still saying FF14 will be launched for PS3 when they're 'satisfied' with the title (which is probably never).

[Eric]

From what I've read so far about it, the solo experience for this game is pretty amazing. each class has their own main story line, and each planet is like a quest hub for levels 1-5, 5-10, etc, and the story is on part for each class with other Bioware games.

I'm curious what the end game is gonna be like, but from what I've heard about the story and gameplay being familiar enough to WoW that you can jump in, I'm pretty much sold on giving it a go.

[Don]

Raids are called Operations. They're for 8/16 people and have multiple difficulties. They showed some video on the first raid instance (Vault of Eternity) and it looks like pretty standard stuff. I think there's going to be 2 Operations at launch or something like that. It's hard to imagine screwing up the single player aspect of a MMORPG so it's definitely worth trying.

[Shrinweck]

I'm mostly only in it for the story and classes. That said, I doubt I'm going to have any trouble making a leap to end game content when I run out of things to do.