36 replies to this topic

[Lucius Prospero]

Bitslizer, on 11 June 2012 - 09:27 AM, said:

You have obviously not yet seen the Diablo 3 launch fiasco, go google that up, its interesting read, and frustrating for players especially when everybody paid $60 or $100 to buy the game to begin with. Login server crapped out, can't create discrete game due to sever capacity issue, list go on and on

I was actually one of the victims of that terrible evening.
=(
As a resident of southern California, (I actually work across from Blizzard in Irvine) I sometimes run into those guys at lunch. My buddy Rob does the patcher, and apparently the problem was just too many login attempts, and nothing behind that. The way F2P games usually work they have an open beta up until the launch, so people don't have that sort of pent up frenzy like occurred in D3 (Think tribes ascend launch. You barely even noticed the difference between the open beta and the release.)

The long and the short of it is I don't think we'll run into that problem, not least because the popularity of MWO isn't on the same order of magnitude as the best selling PC game ever.

Edited by Lucius Prospero, 11 June 2012 - 09:38 AM.

[CoffiNail]

Attalward, on 11 June 2012 - 09:35 AM, said:

Who is Kyle?

The web admin for MWO.

[Fencer]

This is not a normal MMO, they do not need a cast of tens of thousands to stress test it.
This is a lobby based game, like World of Tanks, Additional shards can be brought on line to handle the load as needed. The beta testing can stress test a shard to see how much load each can handle.
The Founder pack sales will tell them how many people will be playing for sure and then they can add additional shards to cover the rest that may play.
So the only thing they can not stress test yet is the login system, and that will have a stress test on 7/17 when the Final stage of closed beta starts. Early access is still listed as "closed beta" in the write ups.
Keep in mind that they will likely stress test the login servers before that, all they have to do is ask the testers to login and out repeatedly.

[AdamantVallation]

Eximar, on 11 June 2012 - 09:31 AM, said:

A network cable is unplugged...

Hey, I've been in that room, or at least one very much like it. But don't worry now, all that CAT5 is gone, now, they've gone to Fiber, so now the there are 4x as many cables and they are 1/4 the size.

Edited by AdamantVallation, 11 June 2012 - 09:47 AM.

[NoSaucePlz]

Again this game will be a Free To Play...So when it is fully released to everyone and there are minor setbacks at first due to the mass majority of Mech-a-maniacs out there, no need to be upset all the waiting shall be worth it im sure! w00t!

[Crankey]

I would try not to compare number of Beta users now vs quality of the game. Don't get confused between I WANT MY FREE BETA SLOT with OMG not enough Beta users to fully test the game........

I suspect the trickle of greater and greater numbers of Beta keys being released is allowing the developers enough time to jump on and rectify major problems initially, whilst more and more testers over time will start to find the smaller 'niggeldy' bugs as more and more players get stuck on that invisible magnetic rock

Good luck to the Dev's and I hope all the testers are remembering to actually put in their bug reports rather than alt-Tab restart sod the bugs mentality

Edited by Crankey, 11 June 2012 - 09:53 AM.

[Proteaus]

NoSaucePlz, on 11 June 2012 - 09:47 AM, said:

Again this game will be a Free To Play...So when it is fully released to everyone and there are minor setbacks at first due to the mass majority of Mech-a-maniacs out there, no need to be upset all the waiting shall be worth it im sure! w00t!

If this was subscription based I would be less concerned but the fact its free to play means the start of open beta going
to be massive.If they get their paying customers really upset when open beta starts because they cant log in ,Allot of people will think twice before spending any more money.Even if its free to play and you spend real money on it you will be expecting to play.

[Battalia]

What would you do if you were going to release a new game?

A ) Pile everyone in, and when something breaks, have them all whine and complain on the forums?

B ) Slowly add more and more uses testing and re-testing the equipment and if something breaks, you have a small amount of people out?

There is nothing wrong taking 2-8 weeks working you way up to the larger stress tests instead of piling everything you can at it at once.

Edited by Battalia, 11 June 2012 - 10:03 AM.

[TrOn1x]

Fencer, on 11 June 2012 - 09:43 AM, said:

So the only thing they can not stress test yet is the login system, and that will have a stress test on 7/17 when the Final stage of closed beta starts. Early access is still listed as "closed beta" in the write ups.

I think most willing to pay for the pack are more concerned about getting a head start on building units and game strategies than to care about looking for bugs. You would think open beta would happen first. Then a reset of stats and release of founders packs.

I cant imagine having the exp and c-bill bonus and an 4-8 week headstart too...that would be silly for the new people coming into the game to have to compete with.

Edited by TrOn1x, 11 June 2012 - 10:09 AM.

[oohawkoo]

i should think that right now they are trying to just find bugs and fix them ,,, they will fully stress test closer to going open beta .,.. i really think ur worrying too much about it =3 ... and after all open beta is supposed to be the ultimate stress test befor going full version,,,, over all the beta hasnt relly been going all that long =3 it just seems like it cos we all waiting desperatly for beta key =P,,,, and on another not the keys have been getting released on a fairly steady stream......so ppl really try stay calm and dont be panicing about things that havent happened =X

and we all know blizz sucks please dont compare mwo to them =X


actualy the thing bothering me is how we are gonna get hold of the instal files =X what options for downloading well get ..... hope they will have torrent or upload to other download locations or its gonna be hell to get it on release date =X...(thats assumeing it wont be like guild wars and have a cd =X)

Edited by oohawkoo, 11 June 2012 - 10:16 AM.

[Skymech]

Lt muffins, on 11 June 2012 - 09:33 AM, said:

I cried a bit inside at that image, poor network engineer.

I feel worse for the server guys who have to deal with overheating hardware because it doesn't have any airflow.

[Strisk]

Proteaus, on 11 June 2012 - 09:23 AM, said:

With the amount of people that are already signed up the amount in beta does seem to be very low considering how the zerg is going
to hit these servers when open beta starts.Imagine paying for the founders pack and not even getting into the early start because
servers are constantly full.

I paid for collector's edition of WoW and a monthly fee before I could even try to log on, and it had major login/lag issues for the first 2 months at least. I'm just saying it will work itself out, panicking on our end won't help anything anyway. I seriously doubt someone at PGI will see this and suddenly realize they need to order more servers.

[Nairdowell]

Having had to stress test a number of systems at my current company (and no, it s not a gaming or software company so my experience wouldn't help here!), the gradual build up allows you to see where the issues are while they are still small. Piling evrything on at once may give you a max limit, but does nothing for the small issues that lie between the current working limit and that max....
By building up, you can see at what limit lag starts to build, allowing you to program in gradual server increases without affecting the program usage.... just my 2 cents...

[Murphy7]

Eximar, on 11 June 2012 - 09:31 AM, said:

A network cable is unplugged...

"On top of spaghetti / All covered with cheese / I lost my poor Mechwarrior: Online / when somebody sneezed."

[Renan Ruivo]

Proteaus, on 11 June 2012 - 09:08 AM, said:

One thing I thought I would mention is I hope they dont do same thing that happened
when warhammer released. Within a hour servers were full and the majority of players
couldnt log in because of that .It wont be good to have thousands of founder pack
players not able to get into the game because the servers are full.Nothing makes
people more upset than paying for something they dont get.
Only reason I am bringing this up is as close to the early start as it is. there seems
to be a hardware shortage ? Other betas I participated in by this point they were having
massive stress tests this close to open beta.

That will happen. Not even Blizzard could prevent that.

All a developer can do is prepare for it according to expectations, and then double the effort because these expectations always underestimate how many people will try to join.

On MWO's case, by having the founder's pack go on sale one month before they open the floodgates is actually a good thing. They can more or less gauge how many people will try to login once it goes "live".

Edited by Renan Ruivo, 11 June 2012 - 01:00 PM.

[Major Tom]

One potentially big issue with MWO is a paid subscription. Losing a few days of play in Diablo3 wasn't a huge deal, it was free after the initial purchase. But for a founders pack, I am literally paying for every hour of service via the Premium Membership.
PGI needs to get ahead of the game and set our expectations now, so that in the event of server outages. We know if we are going to be reimbersed for our lost time, or if we are SOL. Frankly I would expect to be reimbursed for lost time, but if they state up front that they will not offer reimbursements (or subscription extentions), then I won't expect any if/when there is an outage.

[Dragonsbane]

Lucius Prospero, on 11 June 2012 - 09:20 AM, said:

I don't think that will be quite as much of a problem for MWO, because it's not an MMO where all the players log in and play together. It just hosts many discrete games of 12 on 12 that happen to have some meta tacked onto it. It'll launch quietly in the middle of the night and we'll have some fun.

Say that to Blizzard and the flop that was Diablo 3 launch...