Tuesday, December 6, 2011

Playing on launch day

It's that time of year again, the launch of a new MMO!  Oh, and it's the holiday season.  In around 9 days, Star Wars: The Old Republic opens up for head start.  I should be able to play on the 15th, but will I?  Absolutely. I'll try to in any case.

A lot of people will tell you to avoid launch day.  Odds are it won't be a smooth experience.  If the servers manage to stay up, you'll just end up staring at a queue indicator.  And even if you get into the game, the starting areas will be jam packed and little progress will be made.  It's hard to argue with those reasons, as they are all true.

I will not be deterred though.  The launch of a new MMO is just a fun and exciting time, despite all of the potential issues.  I think I have been a part of 3 MMO launches:  Warhammer Online, Aion and Rift.  Even though I didn't stay long in the last two, their launches were fun.

I think SWTOR will do pretty well in terms of stability when its doors open.  They have had some pretty big stress tests the last couple of weeks.  During the Thanksgiving Holiday they had 725,000 unique testers log in and play.  I don't think they will have that many on their first day of head start... so they should be able to deal with the traffic.

Sadly, there is no real way to avoid queues.  Some servers are just more popular than others. If you are unattached, you can choose to create a character on that lonely server in the corner.  Still, as BioWare walks the fine line between too many servers and too few there will be queues.

While I do plan on playing when the game launches, I won't be taking any days off from work.  A few hours?  Sure.  That's all part of the fun :)

Need TOR news?  http://www.tornexus.com