Despite all our frustrations of actually getting to play Darkfall. I think that their slow approach to letting people play is the way of the future.

By resitricting access it provides a more viable way of predicting future population levels - therefore predicting the exact ammounts of servers needed.

By not purchings too many servers  Darkfall is ensuring its long liveity by controling population to the needs of their servers.

So in short despite the frustration, Darkfall is essentally ensuring its population level will stay high for a long time.

What do you think?

(my last post got locked due to people thinking im trolling...if that happens again im so done lol )

Returned

 I believe it is smart actually, smaller companies don't have the budget to throw around and in a game such as this population is everything since other humans are pretty much 70% of all the content.

Could it roll out a bit faster,  Yes, but ultimately it's far better than opening 50 servers with populations that empty out in a month and waste development dollars doing so.

It's a small company and should be acting like one.

Not releasing it whole heartedly to the public as in anyone who wants one go ahead and buy it, they ramp up there servers so they know they can handle the load.  I know it is frustrating to the every day gamer but in all honesty at least the people who were lucky enough to buy the game don't have to really worry about extended downtimes while the company figures out what to do at each stage of the release.  I was there on release day for WAR and was amazed at how many servers there were, since then they have reduced that to maybe 1/4 of what it once was, in order to facilitate a world that was populated rather then devoid of life.  However even original devs like Aventurine should plan to increase its server capacity by 5 times.  Example if they planed on 2 servers for the world, and each server could hold stabaly 100k people make sure you have the budget and the hardware to have 10 servers online within a week of release.  That way you don't lose customers due to crashing or not being able to buy the game.  Just my thoughts though.

the limited release will put the more interested fans into the game first.   This will probably cause the "fanboy" reviews to be even more positive during the honeymoon period. 

The skeptics will wait longer to buy the game and will limit most negative reviews and those that do come out will be quickly drowned out by repeated comments of "game X is awesome go back to WoW/LOTRO/<hot game of the moment>!"

Therefore people will see awesome praise of a game from its diehard fans, and very little "Meh" or "BLEH" reviews from skeptics or others who just tried it for shits and giggles.

My theory.

The idea of providing limited access to see if your services are able to ramp to demand is called:

BETA

Throttling customers that are willing to pay because you are unprepared to make a service offering that you have hyped is an extremely poor business model.

Slow start. Yep...if AoC or WAR had done this i.e. not release so many damn servers at once, they'd probably have retained many of their customers. WAR was awesome the first week then it got boring when too many servers ended up thinning the herd quite a bit. I think all MMOs should take this route albiet not as bad as Aventurine. I think release a game on limited number of servers but be very prepared to put new ones online if need be.

I dont know....Nintendo Wii seems to be doing pretty good with limited Wii available (Is Wii the plural for Wii, Wiis doesnt sound right)

Basic econ Supply low = High demand. Hmmm maybe I should "vback to school" whatever that means.

I just think maybe this new release style might be a way to avoid all of these games from closing. I applaud Darkfall for paving the way to a better overall MMORPG market with this new "careful" release style.

Returned

There is a difference between starting smartly in order to correctly gauge interest and maintain high population levels, and not having a clue.

They started with 1 single server. That wasn't playing it smart. AoC and WAR had launches with over 800,000 people signing on to create accounts. The majority of the interest appears to have been based on "this isn't WoW". AV didn't have a system in place to handle one one-hundredth of that (Yes, 1/100).

Low supply = high demand

ok you said something half intelligent and now you think your a genius? Do you see many of those 3 whelled thai cars in the us? No, so does that mean they are in high demand among the american pop?

Most people see a shit game run by a shit comp when they see this pityful accound system. This game has less polish than the shoes of the average field worker's in central africa. Most f2P have better scenery / models. Full loot pvp isnt enough to make a game good, thats one thing tasos seems to have forgotten.

Oh and careful realease style? are you serious? You dont seem to realise that many mmos make a shi*load of money at realease by selling a lot of boxes. Whats careful about not making money?

Originally posted by GHOSTOFAUGUS

I dont know....Nintendo Wii seems to be doing pretty good with limited Wii available (Is Wii the plural for Wii, Wiis doesnt sound right)

Basic econ Supply low = High demand. Hmmm maybe I should "vback to school" whatever that means.

I just think maybe this new release style might be a way to avoid all of these games from closing. I applaud Darkfall for paving the way to a better overall MMORPG market with this new "careful" release style.

 

Returned

all of what games from closing?   i'm pretty sure the reason auto assault, hellgate london, and tabula rasa are closed/closing is NOT because they had too many servers, bro.

what other game are you talking about ?   maybe you SHOULD "vback to school" after those statements.

Originally posted by Borkotron

Slow start. Yep...if AoC or WAR had done this i.e. not release so many damn servers at once, they'd probably have retained many of their customers. WAR was awesome the first week then it got boring when too many servers ended up thinning the herd quite a bit. I think all MMOs should take this route albiet not as bad as Aventurine. I think release a game on limited number of servers but be very prepared to put new ones online if need be.

well, if av had release with a limited number of servers (plural) and were even half-assed prepared to put new one online... you'd see a lot more reviews, commentaries, and people playing.

but then again... in a month's time, if everyone who started at release has quit, with the incredibly small release going on from av....

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Originally posted by GHOSTOFAUGUS
I dont know....Nintendo Wii seems to be doing pretty good with limited Wii available (Is Wii the plural for Wii, Wiis doesnt sound right)
Basic econ Supply low = High demand. Hmmm maybe I should "vback to school" whatever that means.

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Actually that is just because Nintendo can't produce more than they already are. They have ramped up production a number of times but demand kept exceeding it.

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Originally posted by GHOSTOFAUGUS
I just think maybe this new release style might be a way to avoid all of these games from closing. I applaud Darkfall for paving the way to a better overall MMORPG market with this new "careful" release style.

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First off, I wouldn't exactly call Darkfall's future certain yet.. and if they DO end up closing, they've never made a lot of money from the initial burst of game sales because it was so throttled.

I agree with you that for a small company (not actually the same as "indie") it's probably best not to overhype an MMO, because they do not have the capacity to increase and decrease their server numbers a lot.

But a dropping in numbers after a good amount of initial subscribers is common for MMOs - people want new but they also want polish and those two don't come together. No MMO that gets released can match the polish of one that has been getting regular patches for a year or two. So once the novelty wears off people return to an older MMO or move on to an even newer MMO, until the game has had some development and then people will start coming back.

Even if you limit the amount of people that you let in initially, the people that are interested in "new" MMOs will still hear about how things are run.. Darkfall may have only a couple thousand players but many more than that will have heard about how the launch went.

Originally posted by GHOSTOFAUGUS

I dont know....Nintendo Wii seems to be doing pretty good with limited Wii available (Is Wii the plural for Wii, Wiis doesnt sound right)

Basic econ Supply low = High demand. Hmmm maybe I should "vback to school" whatever that means.

I just think maybe this new release style might be a way to avoid all of these games from closing. I applaud Darkfall for paving the way to a better overall MMORPG market with this new "careful" release style.

Returned
 

all of what games from closing? i'm pretty sure the reason auto assault, hellgate london, and tabula rasa are closed/closing is NOT because they had too many servers, bro.

what other game are you talking about ? maybe you SHOULD "vback to school" after those statements.
 

Are you really suggesting that I make a list of failed MMOs? Lol thats funny

And you are sure that those games didnt fail becuase of over investment? Hmmmm I would tend to disagree....do you know how much a server costs to open/operate? I dont have an answer but I think its in the tens of thousands... ten servers = 100k+ probly more like 400k...

Originally posted by GHOSTOFAUGUS

Originally posted by GHOSTOFAUGUS

I dont know....Nintendo Wii seems to be doing pretty good with limited Wii available (Is Wii the plural for Wii, Wiis doesnt sound right)

Basic econ Supply low = High demand. Hmmm maybe I should "vback to school" whatever that means.

I just think maybe this new release style might be a way to avoid all of these games from closing. I applaud Darkfall for paving the way to a better overall MMORPG market with this new "careful" release style.

 

Returned
 

all of what games from closing? i'm pretty sure the reason auto assault, hellgate london, and tabula rasa are closed/closing is NOT because they had too many servers, bro.

 

what other game are you talking about ? maybe you SHOULD "vback to school" after those statements.
 

 

 

Are you really suggesting that I make a list of failed MMOs? Lol thats funny

And you are sure that those games didnt fail becuase of over investment? Hmmmm I would tend to disagree....do you know how much a server costs to open/operate? I dont have an answer but I think its in the tens of thousands... ten servers = 100k+ probly more like 400k...

 

 

yes, i am

proof of all these multitude of games that failed because they had too many servers, or STFU.

auto assault? nope

hellgate london? nope

tabula rasa? nope

there, your list has been started for you.  don't el oh el on making outrageous claims without backing them... just because this is a darkfall forum doesn't mean people won't call "bullshit" when you make bullshit statements without backing them.

Care to enlighten me as to why these games failed...I admit I am only specualting that they ended up spending too much money and not

able to support their invesent with a player base. Maybe you have another way of explaining this to us all.

You forgot about Asherons call 2.  And there are many others...I do not care to list them if you want to know go do some figure it out for youself I dont need to do your homework for you.

Returned

its unknown if Darkfall is even a success yet

how can you judge what works ?

Originally posted by Ashrik

There is a difference between starting smartly in order to correctly gauge interest and maintain high population levels, and not having a clue.

They started with 1 single server. That wasn't playing it smart. AoC and WAR had launches with over 800,000 people signing on to create accounts. The majority of the interest appears to have been based on "this isn't WoW". AV didn't have a system in place to handle one one-hundredth of that (Yes, 1/100).

 

Agreed and they should have! What would it have hurt them to have say 5-8 servers? No money? Indie company? took long time to make game? Ppl need to stop making excuses! The game itself is a wait and see but Adventurine is a poorly managed company.

The game will hopefully survive, but if adventurine keeps running things........

I think that ghostfag is right any game that lets more than 500 accounts at launch is bound to fail.

I mean 500 accounts is a lot for mmos, yes rly.

I never said that about 500 accounts...

No.

Staged releases are okay, meaning that you have a few less servers than your initial demand. What's worse than having too few servers is having too many, and then having to merge - and get the "ZOMG THIS GAME IS DYING ROFLPANTS" argument from the trolls as a consequence. But what Aventurine is doing is really 1) Frustrating and 2) Annoying.

And maybe 3) Aggravating.

I understand that this is the way they have to do it, because of certain circumstances, and that will hurt Darkfall and Darkfall alone. Other companies should not follow Aventurine's example. They should start off with, say, 10 servers (if they can afford them, hopefully they'll have money left over from development), and then adjust as necessary.