Worried about fresh start world opening times

[Strutter]

Now, I’ll preface this by noting that we don’t know exactly what their plans are but I wanna get this out there anyway.

I was watching the dev video today and it was mentioned that fresh start servers would open at different times. While this is not necessarily a bad thing and could be valid, I can’t help but remember one of, if not the first big issue with New World’s launch.

Cast your minds back to launch and to everyone’s surprise, the announcement came that EU servers would open first and other regions would open later on that day. Anyone following the game at the time saw it coming, EU servers would be flooded with people from other regions who just want to play the game and have nowhere else to go. This caused servers to be full much quicker than they needed to be and left the players either stranded on EU servers or rerolling when USA opened and they could get a server. Almost certainly this contributed to the number of EU servers required and made the dwindling playerbase feel worse since there were more servers than there might have otherwise been. The fact that transfers weren’t available has been solved on the main servers but by their nature, fresh start servers won’t be offering transfers so this is something they need to think about.

So, my plea is this. Sure, make a plan to open servers at specific times so people can plan which server they will be on based on when they open and their availability, this is potentially a great way to spread the server load. However, please learn from the previous mistake and make sure that every region has their first batch of servers open at the same time. Please also be ready to open more servers as soon as the first ones fill so people aren’t having to wait in massive queues or needing to abandon their characters to try and play with their friends.

The game is in a much better place now and I really want fresh start to be AGS’ chance to show the world how much has improved, so I feel it’s important to point out where they might be falling into an old trap.

Of course, if my worries are unfounded then great!

[Kay]

Thanks for the comments. We are looking forward to the Fresh Start release, and Community Managers are working on the communication now that addresses much of what you’ve called out.

In addition, you have to remember that a world wide rollout would be a bummer for one of our regions, so we have to consider a time that isn’t middle of the night for them, while also making it work for the remaining regions. Hence the rollout. It will be different from launch, but it as considerate as possible for all regions.

We also, always have additional worlds on standby.

[Smoochie]

That’s great to hear. Thanks.

[Strutter]

That’s so great to hear. I totally understand the need for some difference thanks to your reply, as long as we don’t have lots of people from one region ready to play and their only option being another region that seems reasonable. It’s great to hear that the team is learning from their experiences, it’s not like running an mmo is easy!

Thanks for the reply, I am very much reassured by it and will keep an eye out for more details when you release them!