In the Sandpark MMO ArcheAge the demand for the servers is, as expected, huge. Fans are waiting in long lines and fear that someone will snatch their building plot or that early starters will gain too great an advantage.
Queue times during the launch of an MMO are nothing unusual. And anyone launching an MMO during prime time in Europe at 7 PM on a Friday night can expect maximum attention, even though the head start is regulated by a founder’s package costing at least 46 euros. But the hype around the Sandpark MMO is great: After all, Archeage is arguably the most important F2P title this year. Some have been waiting for the launch for years.
So it was to be expected that the wait times in the queues would be longer. So why are some fans so upset about it?
Three reasons:
- They paid money to receive a “premium” service that entitled them to log in before free-to-play players. However, since no one is participating in the head start, it is of no benefit to them now. Logically, this makes sense, but psychologically it is difficult to reconcile. While some in World of Warcraft might say, “Why am I paying 13 euros a month if my class is the only one that always gets nerfed?”, right now you hear, “Why am I paying 135 euros just to sit in a queue?”.
- Something seems to be going wrong with the classification of “General” and “Patron”, leaving some fans feeling disadvantaged.
- ArcheAge is launch-heavy, there’s a rush on the building zones, players in the queue feel significantly disadvantaged compared to those who are already making progress.
Fans are demanding more servers in the forum. However, a game like ArcheAge relies on each server being well populated to ensure there is action – even months after the release. MMOs have not always had good experiences in the past with opening new servers to handle the initial rush.
Therefore, Trion Worlds actually stated that no new servers are planned for the head start. Maybe that will change in the coming hours.
Update Saturday 02:00 AM: The launch began quite rocky but was far from the disaster some referred to in the first excitement.
Most founders have not yet received their rewards. This is likely due to server load interrupting the delivery. The issues of misallocated founders in the “normal” queue should be resolved by relogging and closing Glyph, according to a recent statement from Trion Worlds. They also want to keep fans updated on the fixes during the head start. We have linked the forum post in the source.
Update 10:00 AM: There was another update overnight. They are working on the issues with Patron status and the founder packages that have not been delivered. Further servers are not ruled out, but they wanted to be cautious at the beginning because they expected a large influx initially. They also plan to implement a buffer to allow players who are kicked from the game to log back in immediately without having to wait in the queue.
Basically, Trion Worlds says: We are aware of the issues, and we are working to fix them.
