Not complaining about the free week, want that out of the way before people get the wrong idea.
I’ve played official servers a few times; not what I expected. I’ve played a few private servers, 6 people and few times more then 2 on at once and we wont get in to the stacked mods. I’ve probably played 2/3 of my time single player because it was convenient. But when this goes live I want to play on a populated server, tired of playing alone. I’m going to try an official again but “the horror”.
I expect the official servers to be a nightmare with a free week. In a week every noo… new player will have build some sprawling ugly sand stone base and be gone once they have to buy the game. My opinion is this will cause testlive like lag and even server crashes. So I’m not at all sure what to do.
A: Get on an empty official now, get started and hope I’m well north when the invasion hits.
B: Wait till the free week is over and hope I can find a spot to build a temp base till the urban sprawl degrades.
C: Join the invasion and hope my experience gives me a head start in finding a good spot to build.
They almost always do a free week/weekend when they put out big updates as a push to bring in new people. Its nothing new, chill and give it a week, you’ll start seeing a lot of decayed bases and free stuff
Well I’m playstation so I don’t need to worry about noob week but you could always encourage and get more long term players…just saying fresh meat is always good.
Pretty much this. It’s the typical pattern for an update and/or free trial in just about any game. You’ll see a surge in player count, then not long after a steady drop (with plenty of “game is dead” claims to go alongside it) until it settles into a more stable population number.
You could sit back and wait for that initial surge to pass before deciding where to go. Alternatively, you could also join in and try to contribute to creating a more welcoming environment to encourage players to stick around. Even a little kindness can go a long way.
Last night I did some scouting of official servers; actually stumbled in to an old character; 29th level. But every server I was on was the same. All the servers are old, over built, with plenty of lag and latency; hell I got better ping to outer Mongolia then I do the US G-portal servers. Every POI with villagers has half a dozen Alcatraz sized bases around it. And we wont get in to all the blocked off paths in PVE; seems to be far too common.
But good luck on old, over built servers. I expect servers to be crashing by the dozen day 1-10. If funcom wipes a few or starts new servers I’ll jump on one of them. My opinion they will lose more players then they gain simply because of the disaster I expect the release to be. I expect 3 weeks after the update the game will be back to the same hard core players/fans it was 3 weeks before. And not all them.
