Most of us have been through multiple mmo releases. Few have gone perfectly according to plan, but some of the luckier ones have managed to pull it off without leaving a bad impression. The first hours the servers come up are usually the rockiest as everyone clammers to get in. Outages, login queues, high load problems that never showed up during regular beta/stress tests. Sometimes the mmo doesn't even become playable until several hours after the time it was scheduled to come online.

As has become recently known, GW2 headstart will be taking off at midnight pacific time. A very unusual time for a release imo. Not because of the schedule of the players -  No matter what time of day that is chosen, there will be some locations in the world that it appeals to and not others. No it seems risky because it leaves little room for error from a technical/support standpoint.

Is ANet going to be able to field the full support staff that the game and the players deserve at this hour and the hours that follow? Are they going to be able to stay up all night as long as it takes to fix any problems? Are they going to be alert enough to do it properly? This would be a trivial thing if it was released in the middle of the day as other mmos have done, when they are fully staffed. So a part of me is concerned that they will only have a skeleton crew to clumsily deal with problems until the morning.

On the positive side, everything about the game so far has been quality, we have seen no major stopping issues in any of the stresstests or beta events, and ANet has a solid track record. Perhaps they are simply very confident in their product and figure support will not be a concern. You only get one chance to make a good first impression though, is it an unneccesary risk?

I would appreciate feedback from players to perhaps ease my fears, and maybe give examples of other mmos im unaware of that went a similar route.

Blizzard does the same thing these days, if I recall (it was for MoP, I know)

I doubt any developer (not just ANet) would leave a "skeleton crew" to cover a launch of a game they've been working on for so long.

12midnight? I thought its 12pm.

Originally posted by Epic1oots

12midnight? I thought its 12pm.

Original timer was wrong, it's confirmed midnight PST according to anet

I'm sure they'll have plenty of people around at night in this special case.

Originally posted by ionxeel
 

I doubt any developer (not just ANet) would leave a "skeleton crew" to cover a launch of a game they've been working on for so long.

As do I. But I also haven't seen many that were well staffed from midnight to 6. Every time ive seen a major issue during such a time period, it typically meant players had to wait until morning for it to be resolved. Thus my concern. I don't want GW2 to get flak for something like that.

Originally posted by Epic1oots

12midnight? I thought its 12pm.

The countdown timer on the website was apparently false, the GW2 twitter identified it was an error and that it was actually 12am midnight.

Im sure they can afford to pay people Night rates to work on launch night. Hell I'd imagine the atmosphere there will be fantastic so im sure they'll have no trouble staying awake either!

Well, during beta weekend 2, 3 I log in right when the event started and I had no problems of any kind, I don't see why the head start day will be any different.

The only thing about launch that concerns me is server capacity. During the beta there were times where me and my friends tried to make characters on the same server at different times of the day and eventually someone would not be able to make a character because the server was full. When they announced overflow servers I kinda figured that this would be part of that, but it seems like it is not the case. Hopefully they do some kinda free transfers at launch or they do what it originally sounded like they would do. (have you go to another server as an overflow temporariliy)

Beyond that, I have no real major concerns. There was occasional lag during the betas (mostly during BWE3 for me) but it was usually fixed pretty quickly.They will be all hands on deck come launch day though, you can trust me on that. They will probably have the whole company working that day from before launch until well into the evening. I am sure they set it up like black friday at a toy store in terms of schedule.

I guess they figure that a lot of people wont stay up to log in as soon as the servers open which means that the servers wont be as congested which in turn means that support wont be overloaded.

Im on EST so I will be there for the 3am start time but probably only for an hour or so.

It'd be funny if the servers crashed 2 minutes in and were down til 8 am, then in the morning there's a MOTD saying:

"SORRY GUYS DIDN'T THINK PEOPLE WOULD BE LOGGING IN ALREADY LOL"

time and 1/2

temporary staff working in shifts along with standard tech staff = 24 hour support.

it's not like there was no support for rift, or swtor or tsw after 6pm.

the start time really makes no difference in the level of support.

Most devs struggle to get the servers up and they are late either 10's of minutes or even hours. Of course many people sit at the login page clicking play over and over, things get chaotic as time passes more and more people arrive and start hitting play.

Anet are fairly radical. They open the servers early (or did in beta) people arrive, get in, start playing, chaos averted (at least partially).

Justified confidence imho.

The devs want a smooth launch which will enhance the reputation of the game.... so they will have plenty of staff on hand to deal with problems.

Originally posted by Grunties

Most of us have been through multiple mmo releases. Few have gone perfectly according to plan, but some of the luckier ones have managed to pull it off without leaving a bad impression. The first hours the servers come up are usually the rockiest as everyone clammers to get in. Outages, login queues, high load problems that never showed up during regular beta/stress tests. Sometimes the mmo doesn't even become playable until several hours after the time it was scheduled to come online.

As has become recently known, GW2 headstart will be taking off at midnight pacific time. A very unusual time for a release imo. Not because of the schedule of the players -  No matter what time of day that is chosen, there will be some locations in the world that it appeals to and not others. No it seems risky because it leaves little room for error from a technical/support standpoint.

Is ANet going to be able to field the full support staff that the game and the players deserve at this hour and the hours that follow? Are they going to be able to stay up all night as long as it takes to fix any problems? Are they going to be alert enough to do it properly? This would be a trivial thing if it was released in the middle of the day as other mmos have done, when they are fully staffed. So a part of me is concerned that they will only have a skeleton crew to clumsily deal with problems until the morning.

On the positive side, everything about the game so far has been quality, we have seen no major stopping issues in any of the stresstests or beta events, and ANet has a solid track record. Perhaps they are simply very confident in their product and figure support will not be a concern. You only get one chance to make a good first impression though, is it an unneccesary risk?

I would appreciate feedback from players to perhaps ease my fears, and maybe give examples of other mmos im unaware of that went a similar route.

No matter what time they releases it will be plenty of overtime for all tech people and programmers. So I don´t really see what it matters, people will work around the clock the first 2 weeks no matter what time the release is.

Early acces Release time overehere in Europe is 9AM on a Saturday morning..

Meaning the servers will be stressed right away and continously for the whole weekend , with a worldwide release time, there will allways be prime time somewhere 

If a million ~ish people stay up late to log into GW2 when the gates first open, Anet will be having one hell of a party.

Unusual for Americans. Europe never get the chance to have a good time like this, we only get the shit times when it comes to releases of new games. Please let us have this.

I think it's a bad time to have a launch. Mainly because it encourages thousands of people to stay up all night.. and we know they will. Glad I'm in the EU and don't have to totally ruin my sleeping pattern.