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Anatomy of a Launch Q&A

By Jon Wood on Jun 10, 2008

To accompany Mathew Reuther's first article on The Anatomy of a Launch, he also had the opportunity to ask a few questions of Funcom's Jorgen Tharaldsen. In this unconventions Q&A, Reuther comments on the questions asked and the answers given.

Mathew

As there are significant overcrowding (queue) issues being experienced on a number of the more popular Early Access PvP servers, have any plans been put into motion (i.e. character transfers) to alleviate the pressure by offloading volunteers to other less populous servers?

Jorgen

We do have server transfer technology in place, but we need to see how things pan out a bit before making hasty decisions. We have the most pre-ordered PC game in gaming history, we have one of the fastest selling PC games ever, and we have sold way more a week after launch than I would have even dreamt of. We have hit well, and "everyone" wants to play Conan, which is great, but prior to shifting people around we need to make informed decisions. I have seen many posts on 'you should have known, you should have prepared', and we have! However, with the popularity we have, we are now facing conditions we never thought would happen. People love Conan, and they tell friends, which is awesome. In the meantime we are doing our best to ensure that we inform on load prior to people entering.

Mathew's Thoughts

While becoming a victim of your own success is tragic in funny way, the fact remains that server load balancing I vital to those players affected by these overcrowding issues. While it is admirable that the company wishes to avoid making any knee-jerk reactions, it is also damaging to allow the status quo to continue on for too long. A number of servers remain queued during prime play hours, and this impacts normal play. It is not fun when every half an hour you lose a groupmate for five minutes due to a crash and queuing. It is also disappointing when you cannot create new characters to join your guildmates after buying the game.

Read the whole thing here.

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