Originally posted by Vannor

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.

It's called personal responsibility. If folks want to stay up for the launch of a game, that's their choice. It's not like midnight releases are uncommon. Plenty of games, movies, books, etc. have all had midnight releases in the past.

I'll be up....working in the ER..../sigh.

No sub. Just play whenever you can XD

Did we care when diablo or swotor opened?

It's a launch day. No matter at what hour they would start, the staff will be working 24 hours anyway. It's a global launch and people will be loggining in at every point of that day. It's not relaly uncomon in game industry for developers and support to stay extra hours on release. They are most likely prepared for it and they all know how it works and what kind of attention it requires.    

I bet they will have a launch party at their office at Friday evening and after a few hours of having fun, something good to eat and congratulating themselfes for the good work done so far they just start up the servers at midnight.

The headstart will have less players than BWE 3, because it will be populated only by pre-purchasers. In the beta event, they handed out keys like candy, every single server was full, and still we had no login issues.

I don't get people complaining about the time. They were complaining when they thought it was 12pm (blah blah we'll be getting 12 hours less), now they're complaining it's 12am (you got your hours back, didn't you?). If that time is not good for you, big deal, there's no need to rush. After that day, you'll have the game forever anyways.

Also, this is not the release, this is the pre-purchase headstart. Save your release worries for the 28th.

I do have a fair bit of confidence in ArenaNet to be able to handle the pre-release and launch. Three beta weekends, two stress tests, and another stress test today - it does seem like they're trying to do a fair bit of testing and practice to make sure things go smooth on launch day. To me this looks like they're at least aiming to be very prepared.

It's a dumb time, but it seems that Arenanet needs to feel they are the center of the universe.  Midnight Eastern time would have been better for the largest percentage of players in US and EU time zones. It would have put the 1AM to 5AM start times out over the Atlantic Ocean, Giving all of the EU dawn time or later starts and all of the NA time zones no later than a 1AM start. Fine for Oceana as well.

On the plus side, it's a true 3 day head start, not 2 1/2 days like most games pull, but the entire eastern half of the US/Canada and most of South America are completely screwed. (I'm going to make an educated guess that we are talking about 30% of all the pre-purchase customers of the game will be in a time zone where the start time will be between 2AM and 4AM local time).

I think the Arenanet tech and CSR staff would probably prefer a 9PM PST start time as well, as the first few hours are typically the roughest.

Midnight Pacific time should be just about the time of the day with the least amount of players logging in during the first couple hours, so I'm not sure what this thread is about to be honest.

Obviously some people will stay up in the Americas and some will set their alarm clock early in Europe, but it would be worse at pretty much every other hour of the 24 they could pick.

hey dont forget about us asians here, we always got around midnight time every bwe

Originally posted by Loke666

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.

fully agree

Originally posted by fiontar

It's a dumb time, but it seems that Arenanet needs to feel they are the center of the universe.  Midnight Eastern time would have been better for the largest percentage of players in US and EU time zones. It would have put the 1AM to 5AM start times out over the Atlantic Ocean, Giving all of the EU dawn time or later starts and all of the NA time zones no later than a 1AM start. Fine for Oceana as well.

On the plus side, it's a true 3 day head start, not 2 1/2 days like most games pull, but the entire eastern half of the US/Canada and most of South America are completely screwed. (I'm going to make an educated guess that we are talking about 30% of all the pre-purchase customers of the game will be in a time zone where the start time will be between 2AM and 4AM local time).

I think the Arenanet tech and CSR staff would probably prefer a 9PM PST start time as well, as the first few hours are typically the roughest.

Actually it's great for EU. It's 9 am Saturday morning for most of Europe, meaning we can sit down after a good nigth sleep on weekend and create our characters while eating breakfast. Much prefer it over evening time, since then I would have less time over weekend to play around with. 

Same tme, midnight release for games never really stopped anyone from playing. People who really care about being "first" are capable of staying up all night if that's what they want. They will camp pout at shop for hours before the launch for singleplayer games. 

To be perfectly honest, does not being able to play for first 6-8 hours really sets you back all that much? I mean, you will make up for that time at evening while we, EU people, go to bed. You aren't loosing anything.

Of course it's a good time. They said they'd go live on the 25th for the pre-purchase, and that's exactly what they're doing, right down to the very first minute in their time zone. There will be full staff available or course, these guys aren't amateurs. It may not be prime time here on the east coast of the U.S., but like the legendary Asura Alan and Jimmy say, It's Five O'Clock Somewhere.

Ahhh its gooooood to be living in Australia...

-Leans back on the chair, stretches his arms back, makes a big grin, and holds the back of his head ;) - 

Originally posted by Vaultar

Ahhh its gooooood to be living in Australia...

-Leans back on the chair, stretches his arms back, makes a big grin, and holds the back of his head ;) - 

Absolutely!  We have a nice 5pm Saturday start, kind of makes up for all the down time and maintenance we will get at prime time almost every evening during the initial launch.

For me, better sooner than later.  I prefer midnight PST over noon PST on the same day.  I would think they will have more than enough staff on hand for launch.  You don't work on a large project this long just to have a skeleton crew at launch.

Cheers!

Originally posted by Vaultar

Ahhh its gooooood to be living in Australia...

-Leans back on the chair, stretches his arms back, makes a big grin, and holds the back of his head ;) - 

Bout time you guys had a release that worked out for you.

Also, you're jerks. But I will be going to bed early the day before so I can be up at 3am. Because, of course, I have no life.

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Originally posted by Salt_AU

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Originally posted by Vaultar Ahhh its gooooood to be living in Australia... -Leans back on the chair, stretches his arms back, makes a big grin, and holds the back of his head ;) - 

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Absolutely!  We have a nice 5pm Saturday start, kind of makes up for all the down time and maintenance we will get at prime time almost every evening during the initial launch.

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Expect very little downtime as ANet doesn't need to take down the servers in order to patch the game.

They have patented technology allowing them to stream updates to the servers.
Link.

If I had to make a wager, Anet'll be fine.  GW1 was easily in my top five for 'smooth launch'.  Betas gave no reason to doubt; their server stability has always been excellent, even under heavy loads.

If I had to make a cynical headline, it'd be "GW2 opens ten minutes too late to save a lot of fans from having strokes because it was ten minutes late".

Originally posted by Ezhae

Originally posted by fiontar

It's a dumb time, but it seems that Arenanet needs to feel they are the center of the universe.  Midnight Eastern time would have been better for the largest percentage of players in US and EU time zones. It would have put the 1AM to 5AM start times out over the Atlantic Ocean, Giving all of the EU dawn time or later starts and all of the NA time zones no later than a 1AM start. Fine for Oceana as well.

On the plus side, it's a true 3 day head start, not 2 1/2 days like most games pull, but the entire eastern half of the US/Canada and most of South America are completely screwed. (I'm going to make an educated guess that we are talking about 30% of all the pre-purchase customers of the game will be in a time zone where the start time will be between 2AM and 4AM local time).

I think the Arenanet tech and CSR staff would probably prefer a 9PM PST start time as well, as the first few hours are typically the roughest.

Actually it's great for EU. It's 9 am Saturday morning for most of Europe, meaning we can sit down after a good nigth sleep on weekend and create our characters while eating breakfast. Much prefer it over evening time, since then I would have less time over weekend to play around with. 

Same tme, midnight release for games never really stopped anyone from playing. People who really care about being "first" are capable of staying up all night if that's what they want. They will camp pout at shop for hours before the launch for singleplayer games. 

To be perfectly honest, does not being able to play for first 6-8 hours really sets you back all that much? I mean, you will make up for that time at evening while we, EU people, go to bed. You aren't loosing anything.

^^ I really like this start, even though I need to wake up at 2am to make sure im ready for the start. Anet catering to EU and those Aussies = kudos that someone finally stepped up and did that! :D Not only that, but ill be able to make the most of the 2 or 3 sick days ill be using during the weekend :P