Why not open all servers up for headstart?

not everyone in the beta is going to be buying the game

I'd imagine they have more servers on standby and will open them when needed.  There is no need to open too many servers right away.

They want to fill the servers before they open the rest. What you DONT want is too many servers that spread the population too thin.  That breaks games in the long run. 

They're playing it safe, opening only as many as they need to, to keep people together.  I'm sure before the end of day 1 you'll see 4-5 more open up, perhaps more depending on what they need. 

Good move by Trion, shows competence and that they know what they're doing.

IMO giving too many options up front spreads populations unevenly.  By having a few servers up for preorders and then more come up for launch, there will be more population balance (atleast for the launch + a few months).  PLUS, it's awfully embarassing if they have to do server merges within 6 months so I'd play it cautious as well.

Originally posted by Warsaurus

They want to fill the servers before they open the rest. What you DONT want is too many servers that spread the population too thin.  That breaks games in the long run. 

They're playing it safe, opening only as many as they need to, to keep people together.  I'm sure before the end of day 1 you'll see 4-5 more open up, perhaps more depending on what they need. 

Good move by Trion, shows competence and that they know what they're doing.

That's what I was going to say..

/em puts on his tin-foil hat.

No need to follow War, Aion, AoC, insert MMO here that has had to do server mergers because they started with too many. 

Originally posted by Ikeda

IMO giving too many options up front spreads populations unevenly.  By having a few servers up for preorders and then more come up for launch, there will be more population balance (atleast for the launch + a few months).  PLUS, it's awfully embarassing if they have to do server merges within 6 months so I'd play it cautious as well.

I can understand cautious- and it can be seen as VERY positive when a company opens new servers

 I have seen the opposite regarding populations.

1. Headstart servers fill up.

2. On launch day - more servers added while headstart servers are still available.

3. Headstart Servers become even more crowded.

I would like to see all expected servers or at least 80 percent of expected servers open at headstart to aid in wait times and being able to get character names

"Only 29" you say it likes its something really bad. If they release with 29 servers, fill them all to an acceptable level, hell even a medium level, and maintain those numbers, the game will be a huge success. Warhammer, Aion, Final Fantasy 14, and countless other games would probably kill to have 29 well, populated servers at this point.

I think I remember WAR topping out at something like 60 servers.........now I think they have 2 in NA.

Originally posted by bluebacker

I think I remember WAR topping out at something like 60 servers.........now I think they have 2 in NA.

ya I remember when WAR launched scratching my head wondering WTF were they doing.  They kept soft capping their servers forcing people to roll on new servers they were putting online instead of filling their existing ones.  Everything I feared about empty PQ's became very real when I saw that the developers had tunnel vision throughout the entire beta stages and did things their own way.  They strived so hard for balance and in the end thinned out their population and tore apart server communities on the first day of release.

Each server can hold maximum of 5000 player at once or que if greater, which is in WoW and i suppose its the highest quality server.

So, 29 shard means like 150k Rift buyer ,which is a lot in my opinion.

Originally posted by clankyasp

Each server can hold maximum of 5000 player at once or que if greater, which is in WoW and i suppose its the highest quality server.

So, 29 shard means like 150k Rift buyer ,which is a lot in my opinion.

Wrong. And 150k pre-orders isnt much, might be in your opinion but we already know you make up numbers instead of doing some searching. Most servers hold 30-50k People. Because at any given time there is only about 5% of the population on at any given time.

Warhammer Servers held 40k people per server, when I worked there as a Game Tester during the first 6 months into release, til I got a promotion with NetDevil.

If you dig back and search all the MMO sites and other giveaways Rift did, you would know they gave out over 2 million beta keys during their  7 Betas.  They listen and take actual advice (Not whining and complaining) into consideration for the game from the user base, they flooded their better to stress test and work out as many bugs as possible even given they took the chance to tarnish or improve their name since not everyone will like a game, will always draw in haters and fans alike to push their opinons to the public.

So it only makes sense there would be less pre-order headstart servers then what was in beta.

Originally posted by clankyasp

Each server can hold maximum of 5000 player at once or que if greater, which is in WoW and i suppose its the highest quality server.

So, 29 shard means like 150k Rift buyer ,which is a lot in my opinion.

? This calculation is flawed. A server can be home to 10k-30k players/accounts and 5k-10k concurrent users (players simultaneously logged in) depending on what MMORPG we're talking about.

So a capacity number of 300k-600k is probably closer.

Thanks for the clarification, i was wondering that myself too when i just counted the number of WoW servers.

Anyone know which server would be a more oceanic "friendly" server which has better ping catered to people in this location. I mean the normal server are fine, just wondering if there are any sort of oceanic servers.

Originally posted by DeeK3

Originally posted by clankyasp

Each server can hold maximum of 5000 player at once or que if greater, which is in WoW and i suppose its the highest quality server.

So, 29 shard means like 150k Rift buyer ,which is a lot in my opinion.

Most servers hold 30-50k People. Because at any given time there is only about 5% of the population on at any given time.

 

Warhammer Servers held 40k people per server, when I worked there as a Game Tester during the first 6 months into release, til I got a promotion with NetDevil.

Yes but yes but ... The real problem is that at launch a huge % of the player base are on for relatively long hours.  This tails off as little billy realises he really wants to go back to WOW beasue he isnt as great a leveller as he thought he might, the game doesnt meet peoples expectations, the real life pressures kick in and people have to get offline and go to sleep, work, study etc etc ...

Huge queues to log on screw your customers and they nerd rage away until you cant handle the pressure any more and open another server onto which the nerds re roll.

Until techniology advances (or new processes)  sort or the logging on avalanche issues , any mmorpg is going to suffer in the early days , and server mergers are going to be the norm.

Originally posted by kamale

Anyone know which server would be a more oceanic "friendly" server which has better ping catered to people in this location. I mean the normal server are fine, just wondering if there are any sort of oceanic servers.

 I played on Belmont during beta and my latency was around 230ms. i think thats the best or average. Belmont is available for live too probably roll there but its too quite during australian normal times lol, so hard to get a group for any instance without any lfg tool.

Doesn't TRION use cloud computing with the blade server tehcnology? Think they could hold a shit ton? Hell i was fighting with 100+ people against swarms and swarms of NPC's.. Think the servers could hold more accounts, no?

I work not far from Dallas and my company has a very large Australian presence. Round trip times to Perth from Dallas are around 275-290 ms and about 255-270 from New South Wales/Victoria/Queensland. RTT from Perth to London is more variable, ranging from 250-350 due to the cruddy reliability through Central Asia/Mid East. I'm assuming Amsterdam would have similar numbers to London.

Other RTTs for interested parties from Dallas that I usually see are:

75-80 ms to Southern Mexico (D.F. and south)

55-60ms to Western Canada

60-70 ms to Eastern Canada

120 ms to Sao Paulo

135 ms to Bogota (no idea why this is worse than Brazil)

190 ms to Santiago

140 ms to Korea

320 ms to India (use the EU servers!)