General Discussion

To accompany Mathew Reuther's first article on The Anatomy of a Launch, he also had the opportunity to ask a few questions of Funcom's Jorgen Tharaldsen. In this unconventions Q&A, Reuther comments on the questions asked and the answers given.

Mathew

As there are significant overcrowding (queue) issues being experienced on a number of the more popular Early Access PvP servers, have any plans been put into motion (i.e. character transfers) to alleviate the pressure by offloading volunteers to other less populous servers?

Jorgen

We do have server transfer technology in place, but we need to see how things pan out a bit before making hasty decisions. We have the most pre-ordered PC game in gaming history, we have one of the fastest selling PC games ever, and we have sold way more a week after launch than I would have even dreamt of. We have hit well, and "everyone" wants to play Conan, which is great, but prior to shifting people around we need to make informed decisions. I have seen many posts on 'you should have known, you should have prepared', and we have! However, with the popularity we have, we are now facing conditions we never thought would happen. People love Conan, and they tell friends, which is awesome. In the meantime we are doing our best to ensure that we inform on load prior to people entering.

Mathew's Thoughts

While becoming a victim of your own success is tragic in funny way, the fact remains that server load balancing I vital to those players affected by these overcrowding issues. While it is admirable that the company wishes to avoid making any knee-jerk reactions, it is also damaging to allow the status quo to continue on for too long. A number of servers remain queued during prime play hours, and this impacts normal play. It is not fun when every half an hour you lose a groupmate for five minutes due to a crash and queuing. It is also disappointing when you cannot create new characters to join your guildmates after buying the game.

Read the whole thing here.

Nice final words. Ha.

Matt,

As a "news source" you are supposed to be unbias and not jump to conclusions.  Your entire Q/A reads like you're trying to bombard Jorgen since you interlaced your own thought into the article, which is not why he gave you the interview.  He gave you the interview so that you could give a clear picture of what is happening within.

Following the interview article you should have placed a link to your thoughts (ie: The Anatomy of a Launch Article) rather than planting them in between the chat.

Honestly, for any company to see 1 million people signing up launch week is impossible.  Why?  Only 3 MMOs have ever had over 1 million players; even EverQuest has never broken the 1 million mark.  With the industry as is, the most any company would ever expect is probably 500,000 because the vast majority of the marketshare lies in WoW or any of the other wonderful MMOs.

Some people will think I'm a fanboy, however I've never even touched the game.  I won't say the problems aren't present because I know they are from past experience.  I've played many MMOs that have had rough launches because no one anticipated the number of sign-ups or players that would be interested.  In fact, WoW shared many of the problems that you're pointing out in AoC, and occassionally they still experience player queues on some of the servers.

If you're going to take an aggressive stance on one MMO's launch, then you should also target all the other MMOs that have had poor launches.

Originally posted by BlueCadwal

Matt,

As a "news source" you are supposed to be unbias and not jump to conclusions.  Your entire Q/A reads like you're trying to bombard Jorgen since you interlaced your own thought into the article, which is not why he gave you the interview.  He gave you the interview so that you could give a clear picture of what is happening within.

Following the interview article you should have placed a link to your thoughts (ie: The Anatomy of a Launch Article) rather than planting them in between the chat.

Honestly, for any company to see 1 million people signing up launch week is impossible.  Why?  Only 3 MMOs have ever had over 1 million players; even EverQuest has never broken the 1 million mark.  With the industry as is, the most any company would ever expect is probably 500,000 because the vast majority of the marketshare lies in WoW or any of the other wonderful MMOs.

Some people will think I'm a fanboy, however I've never even touched the game.  I won't say the problems aren't present because I know they are from past experience.  I've played many MMOs that have had rough launches because no one anticipated the number of sign-ups or players that would be interested.  In fact, WoW shared many of the problems that you're pointing out in AoC, and occassionally they still experience player queues on some of the servers.

If you're going to take an aggressive stance on one MMO's launch, then you should also target all the other MMOs that have had poor launches.

While I agree with you that many an MMO has had a rough launch and WoW does still have login queues during peak play times.  However I see no reason to need to point any of those out as this article is clearly about AoC and not any other MMO.

Originally posted by AikenDrum

Originally posted by BlueCadwal

Matt,

As a "news source" you are supposed to be unbias and not jump to conclusions.  Your entire Q/A reads like you're trying to bombard Jorgen since you interlaced your own thought into the article, which is not why he gave you the interview.  He gave you the interview so that you could give a clear picture of what is happening within.

Following the interview article you should have placed a link to your thoughts (ie: The Anatomy of a Launch Article) rather than planting them in between the chat.

Honestly, for any company to see 1 million people signing up launch week is impossible.  Why?  Only 3 MMOs have ever had over 1 million players; even EverQuest has never broken the 1 million mark.  With the industry as is, the most any company would ever expect is probably 500,000 because the vast majority of the marketshare lies in WoW or any of the other wonderful MMOs.

Some people will think I'm a fanboy, however I've never even touched the game.  I won't say the problems aren't present because I know they are from past experience.  I've played many MMOs that have had rough launches because no one anticipated the number of sign-ups or players that would be interested.  In fact, WoW shared many of the problems that you're pointing out in AoC, and occassionally they still experience player queues on some of the servers.

If you're going to take an aggressive stance on one MMO's launch, then you should also target all the other MMOs that have had poor launches.

While I agree with you that many an MMO has had a rough launch and WoW does still have login queues during peak play times.  However I see no reason to need to point any of those out as this article is clearly about AoC and not any other MMO.

Matt has written is two articles about AoC that made it seem as though the game were a complete failure.  In the Q&A he establishes his views on Jorgen's responses which for the most part seem overly critical of Funcom's response to the problems.  At the end of the Q&A he seems almost hypocritical though in his Final Word.

However, since his main article is an Editorial, he should point out other flawed launches than just those relating to Funcom.  His article reads as though Funcom cannot possibly launch a good MMO no matter how hard they try because he opens with Anarchy Online's launch.  I won't deny that AO had a bad launch, because I remember running through Newland on a 56k modem ramming into walls or entering buildings by accident because of lag; however, other online games should've been added to point out that very few MMOs have perfect launches. 

Sony, Turbine, Blizzard, and NCSoft have all had their fair share of rough launches and the public has a right to know that it isn't just an isolated incident.

FInal thought from AOCtester....

Ask the dev why Funcom did not be honest about the state of the game at launch.  Ask them why they publicly forced closed beta testers to be under NDA at the same stage that it was obvious that certain features and certain content would not be ingame at launch and would not be bugfree ?

Why fool the gamers ?   Why not beeing honest ?

The closed beta testers knew the state of the game.  And they also knew that this game would be launched at the 20th ready or not.   But they were NOT allowed to say the true state of the game.  Instead they had to listen to Funcom's PR about things testers KNEW was not true.

I didn't know they were having server queue time problems... probably because I chose a server which had the dumbest sounding name to me.

Originally posted by BlueCadwal

 

Originally posted by AikenDrum

Originally posted by BlueCadwal

Matt,

As a "news source" you are supposed to be unbias and not jump to conclusions.  Your entire Q/A reads like you're trying to bombard Jorgen since you interlaced your own thought into the article, which is not why he gave you the interview.  He gave you the interview so that you could give a clear picture of what is happening within.

Following the interview article you should have placed a link to your thoughts (ie: The Anatomy of a Launch Article) rather than planting them in between the chat.

Honestly, for any company to see 1 million people signing up launch week is impossible.  Why?  Only 3 MMOs have ever had over 1 million players; even EverQuest has never broken the 1 million mark.  With the industry as is, the most any company would ever expect is probably 500,000 because the vast majority of the marketshare lies in WoW or any of the other wonderful MMOs.

Some people will think I'm a fanboy, however I've never even touched the game.  I won't say the problems aren't present because I know they are from past experience.  I've played many MMOs that have had rough launches because no one anticipated the number of sign-ups or players that would be interested.  In fact, WoW shared many of the problems that you're pointing out in AoC, and occassionally they still experience player queues on some of the servers.

If you're going to take an aggressive stance on one MMO's launch, then you should also target all the other MMOs that have had poor launches.

While I agree with you that many an MMO has had a rough launch and WoW does still have login queues during peak play times.  However I see no reason to need to point any of those out as this article is clearly about AoC and not any other MMO.

Based off this interview and the Anatomy of a Launch, if I didn't know about other launches, I would believe that Funcom is totally incompetent because they've botched 2 launches.

 

Matt has written is two articles about AoC that made it seem as though the game were a complete failure.  In the Q&A he establishes his views on Jorgen's responses which for the most part seem overly critical of Funcom's response to the problems.  At the end of the Q&A he seems almost hypocritical though in his Final Word.

However, since his main article is an Editorial, he should point out other flawed launches than just those relating to Funcom.  His article reads as though Funcom cannot possibly launch a good MMO no matter how hard they try because he opens with Anarchy Online's launch.  I won't deny that AO had a bad launch, because I remember running through Newland on a 56k modem ramming into walls or entering buildings by accident because of lag; however, other online games should've been added to point out that very few MMOs have perfect launches. 

Sony, Turbine, Blizzard, and NCSoft have all had their fair share of rough launches and the public has a right to know that it isn't just an isolated incident.

The fact is Funcom had a bad launch, and they handled the server situation (and many other situations) poorly.  People all complained when they had bad launches, so why should Funcom get slack?  They deserve absolutely NO slack IMO, and I believe others will believe me.

They released an unfinished game as well as handled the server situation poorly.  They deserve no more slack than other games, and the server situation it just another thing to argue about.  I wouldn't be surprised if Part 2 complaiend  about how they released an unfinished game to the market...

But, my point is, just because others did it doesn;'t mean they deserve the easy way out.