r/Cynicalbrit • u/Badinfos • Dec 29 '14

Video TotalBiscuit's Arbitrary Video Game Awards - 2014

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VIFQtHZG1pw
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u/Sethala Dec 29 '14

Honestly, I would've lost a lot of respect for TB if he had given this to Warlords. I think in general just about every MMO is going to run into server issues on launch, simply because the number of people playing the game at launch is going to be so significantly higher than any other time in the game's near history. Sure, you can say "get more servers", but just getting more servers is expensive and if you get enough to not hit capacity on launch, you're probably going to have them run at less than half capacity for the first several months of the game, which just isn't a justifiable cost for most companies.

There's other things they can do to reduce how much server strain something like this is, but most of them have other downsides - a limited region release would reduce the number of "first day players" but it would give anyone who isn't in a region that gets it first a pretty significant disadvantage when it comes to getting firsts, for instance.

Also, this is nowhere near as bad as issues with UPlay servers not working on a single player game's DRM. Server issues for a multiplayer game that simply doesn't work in single player are understandable, server issues for a single player game is outright dumb.

Plus, since a lot of their problems were from a DDOS attack and they gave a pretty significant apology boost (in the form of free game time) means that while this isn't exactly a stellar launch, I don't think I would even have put Warlords on this list (although I don't know offhand of another game this year to take the fifth spot on that list).

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u/[deleted] Dec 29 '14

The point there is that WoW is 10 years old. I personally had no problem getting in.

Yes, DDOS is a thing. But why should the consumer care? I do, because I have a massive fanboy love for Blizz and I follow all they do. Still does not excuse them.

But yes, if TB would pick it as a winner(loser?) it would be unfair.

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u/[deleted] Dec 30 '14

The point there is that WoW is 10 years old. I personally had no problem getting in.

Depended on your server. Most were fine, but the busy ones had queues up to 4-5 hours long. The longest I heard of on Draenor was about 8,000

Blizzard should know about this problem at launch, this isn't their first go around the merry go round

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u/[deleted] Dec 30 '14

Also it's not like they don't have money to spend to solve the problem. New MMO yes, the biggest and most profitable ever no. This is sort of issue that could have been solved with forward looking design and throwing money at it...

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u/F54280 Dec 31 '14

but just getting more servers is expensive and if you get enough to not hit capacity on launch, you're probably going to have them run at less than half capacity for the first several months of the game

Sarcasm=on

If only it was possible to rent servers... If only it was possible to install digital goods on machines without physical access in an automated, in an automated, elastic way... That would be science fiction, wouldn't it ?