Hi everyone, we'd like to thank you all for being a part of this absolutely massive launch of ArcheAge, Huge archeage gold sale at mmobays.co.
We've heard from a lot of you that ArcheAge has stirred up excitement for an MMO in a way that many of you haven't felt in a long time. When people are in and playing, we hear a lot that the game's the great, exciting experience they were waiting for.
While it's been great for many, it's been uneven for others, most notably if you're stuck waiting. (We know, we wait in the same queues you do.)
Know that we haven't been, and won't be, resting until the experience is great for everyone. We've been talking to you a lot about "patience - which has been extreme in some cases for sure.
I'd like to talk about what we're doing to make sure that all of you can have that same kind of experience.
SERVER CAPACITIES AND YOU
In an ideal world, we have all the hardware we need to host the ideal number of servers, in a way that works best for everyone. We'd strike the perfect balance between launch popularity, when everyone wants to be online 100% of the time, and the settled population of more normal play patterns that will naturally come over time.
In reality, we have to plan capacity months ahead of time, based on things like web site signups, numbers of people who play in alphas and betas, how long they play, and so on. There's a fair amount of science that goes into it, and in general it's pretty accurate. We then include extra for overflow, just in case we need more.
In this case, so many entirely new people showed up that we opened not just all of our launch hardware on the first day, but the overflow hardware soon after as well. Since Head Start, we've expanded both the number of servers and the capacity of all servers steadily. We try to let you know this both on the forums and on Twitter (@ArcheAge]) whenever this occurs.
Inside the business you'll hear people call this "problems of success," but make no mistake - since it negatively affects you, we remain obsessively focused on the "problem" part, not the "success" part. We treat these as high priority problems that we need to solve, as rapidly as possible.
GREAT, THANKS. THAT'S SUPER. WHAT ARE YOU DOING NOW?
Right. There are things going on both in and out of game to make things better:
1) Yes, more hardware is on its way to helping you! We're still aiming to strike the balance between short and long term and we know with certainty that more hardware is needed for both. We've heard both the "more servers" and "no more servers" crowds, and are certain we need to take steps toward more. I'm happy to share that the next round of hardware landed with our team in Texas this morning.
While I do wish that we could violate the laws of space and time to transport physical servers instantly, and help both NA and EU simultaneously, because of the way hardware is shipped out, and factors like "customs," there will be some delay between helping out the two regions. Do note that we're doing everything we can to make sure that delay is as minimal as possible. (We are aiming for days, not weeks, between.)
We'll be talking more about the details here over the coming days, in our Launch FAQ thread.
2) Note that we've been more aggressively sweeping AFKers, even manually when needed. For example, while we had said during beta that we were tentatively tolerant of AFK mount riding, we'd be keeping an eye out to see if it became a problem. Well, it's officially a problem when actual players who will be playing can't get in.
If you're not actively playing, please do be aware that you might not be there when you get back. Of course, while we do appreciate creative justifications such as "I am merely celebrating the excitement of launch by exercising my steed in a circular pattern for an extended period of time," those will still earn a quick trip to desktop.
We're also going to be setting up a more aggressive AFK timer as is suited to an over-popular launch, and ensuring that there are fewer ways to get around it. Again, this is all to create the greatest opportunity to get active human beings into the game.
3) As with any launch where you get massive numbers of new players, we need great people helping out with the typical things that happen as services scale up, which is why I wanted to talk Customer Service. You have wanted to talk with them. You've wanted to talk with them a lot. And they really do want to help.
Trion's CS team has already been expanded pretty massively, with scores of new people coming on board in the weeks leading up to ArcheAge's launch. There's a veritable dedicated army of people wanting to help. We're also happy to announce that we're ramping that up even more. As with all of our CS in the past, we're continuing down the path of natively fluent CS reps in each language we service.
4) Communication is critical during launches - We do get that. I've personally tweeted more during this launch than I think I have since Twitter existed. We're going to be redoubling our efforts, most notably on our forums, with even more people pitching in.
We had been trying to focus our updates into specific known locations, but that's not having the effect that we had hoped. We need to be in more places and threads that you're already discussing, so you can expect more of that beginning today, and in a more visibly 24/7 fashion than it might have appeared previously. We've been continuously working like crazy knocking down the types of launch issues one might expect, but if you don't see evidence of it, then it's not as helpful to you. We get that too.
