Creston wrote on May 15, 2012, 14:07:
Verno wrote on May 15, 2012, 13:52:
Blizzard supposedly handled the Cataclysm launch really well, I remember all of my friends telling me how smooth it was. I'm sure they learn and want you to play the game too but it's likely seeing unprecedented demand that will even out in the next day or two. I'm not excusing it but I've seen worse launches.
If you have 2 million pre-orders, and you ship an additional 3 million copies to stores, shouldn't you have launch capacity for 5 million copies? That doesn't seem like it's extremely difficult math.
But Blizzard figures they can easily get away with less, as people will complain, then get in, and keep playing, and stop complaining. And like I said, if you keep accepting that kind of behavior from a developer, don't be surprised if that's what you get.
Creston
As anyone who has worked in a datacenter or in other network operations capacity will tell you, setting up your infrastructure to handle a level of concurrency you will only see for a couple of hours is enormously costly for very little return on investment. There is a good reason no one does it unless their high-concurrency period isn't that high to begin with.
And let's be honest, most developers aren't even in a position where they have enough demand for their titles to even run into this problem.
It's like you said, companies get away with it because it only upsets a few neckbeards in the middle of the night.
Verno wrote on May 15, 2012, 14:09:
NKD wrote on May 15, 2012, 14:01:
Having a blast so far. (Level 20 Wizard, just a little ways into Act 2.) The loots carrot-on-a-stick is as effective as ever.
How are you building out your Wizard? Just curious as I could never come up with something I liked.
I'm focusing on AOE damage. I'm running with another Wizard and we burn stuff down pretty fast. I use Electrocute as my main attack, along with the tornado twister things or the arcane orb at the moment. I use Diamond Skin and uh... the big knockback thing as my defensive "oh shit" buttons.
Do you have a single fact to back that up?