Tomorrow the MMO Aion 2 has its Taiwan and South Korean launch. Although global release isn’t for another year that won’t stop the thousands of MMO players who don’t speak the languages and aren’t even in the region from joining the launch, including myself. So, with less than 24 hours before launch what pains am I feeling that I’ve felt during almost all MMO launches before? Servers.
Not every MMO has individual servers that restrict gameplay across server but since the beginning of MMO’s there have usually been servers. The on thing that single server architecture faces and that developers poorly plan for is server capacity. What I mean is they are limiting the number of players per server. As I try to pre-register servers keep getting locked meaning no one else can create characters. Since the major English speaking Discord has decided to play on Taiwan servers, and has posted announcements on which ones to choose, it makes sense for me to try and get in those servers with other English speaking players. I wasn’t able to do that.
First, there was a post with a server to join. Then it was full and restricted so they posted new servers that were stood up you could join. That was full, so I chose one of two new ones that came up that were not listed in the Discord. This locked me to that servers and I can’t join any others. Another announcement, two new servers, both full and locked within 5 hours of the original post.
All these players are trying to play together, to live and breath as one big community, and they can’t. Already split across 6 servers via announcements and people like me in other servers. This is frustrating.
Inevitably there will be a flood of players day 1, people will fall off, now you have the dedicated player base spread across multiple servers that are now just at half capacity, and the game isn’t as good as it could be. Whether it’s down to technical limitations or cost I don’t know but I can’t believe a new game launches in 2025 and we still have the same problems we had two decades ago. Have we not learned anything over that time?
I already know what launch day will be given what I’m seeing now. Login server will be overloaded, if you can get in you’re game will crash and you will get a 1 hour queue to your server if you can log in. Everyone will be trying to AFK while running or something to keep your game up so you don’t have to fight the queues. Typical MMO experience. Even though it’s painful I look forward to tomorrow, as I’ve said before I am always excited about Open Betas and First Day of Betas and a launch day falls right into that category.