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Wednesday, October 01, 2008
Queues are back in WAR
The guys from Mythic had this idea which sounded so good to make the server queues more bearable: If you were logged in and somehow left the game, voluntarily or involuntarily, game crashing, or just your internet connection having a problem, you wouldn't have to wait in queue to get back into the game. You would have a reserved spot and could log on and play immediately. Marvelous, isn't it?
Until you think of the consequences: Everyone leaving the game, whether he wants to come back soon or not, has this reserved spot. And the reserved spot is taking up a slot on the server, so no other player can play instead. Result: On my server, where due to cloning the server queues had shrunk from 300 to nearly zero the queues are back with a vengeance. Last night I was number 508 in line, and, also due to the changes, the queue advanced much slower. Took me an hour and a half before I was in.
Of course I didn't sit 90 minutes in front of my computer watching the queue, I went off and watched TV with Mrs. Tobold. Came back 2 hours later, and apparently had logged in and been kicked back out for being afk. But no problem, now that I *had* been in, I was able to log in immediately, and skip the queue. And then I had to test something: I exited the game via the menu in the regular fashion, and then restarted it. Bingo, I got back in again, although the server queue was still at over 300 people at 10:30 pm. So apparently even people logging out for the night have a reserved spot blocking other people from playing. And the reservation period seems to be rather long, not just a few minutes.
So what sounded like a good idea just made the problem worse. The law of unintended consequences. I think the reservation period has to be shortened to 5 minutes maximum, which should be enough to reboot a crashed computer and restart the game if the leaving was really involuntarily. Letting lots of people reserve spots for long periods just results in there being too many people with an option to play directly, and too few people actually playing, because the others are stuck in the queue. Bad idea, really; or at least a bad implementation.
- posted by Tobold @ 6:30 AM Permanent Link
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are you having queues on Euro servers as well? Are they as bad? You didn't say which sides servers it was, so I assumed US, cos I know they've had worse queues...
Same here: position 545 which is over 2 hours estimated waiting time (German server).
Just went right back to wow....
This makes the decision a lot easier!
Just went right back to wow....
This makes the decision a lot easier!
# posted by 
: 1/10/08 07:41
: 1/10/08 07:41
Also on Euro, no queues whatsoever. It apparently depends on which server you are on.
Enjoying the game so far. People are friendly and there is more roleplaying (im on a normal server) in comparison to WoW (last fantasy MMORPG I played), which I really enjoy. Ofcourse also enough nubs in game, join a scenario and even before you have done anything a BO stands in your face and shouts " Heal, noob! " (playing a shaman). hehe... no heals for Hondo anymore :p
Enjoying the game so far. People are friendly and there is more roleplaying (im on a normal server) in comparison to WoW (last fantasy MMORPG I played), which I really enjoy. Ofcourse also enough nubs in game, join a scenario and even before you have done anything a BO stands in your face and shouts " Heal, noob! " (playing a shaman). hehe... no heals for Hondo anymore :p
About going back to WoW, some people tend to forget that WoW had the exact same problems in the beginning. Or has everyone really forgotten the famous queue dance already?
5min might be a little too low, I know my old PC may take 10min until I am really back in (yes, I really need to reformat it), but shouldn't be more than 15min for sure.
5min might be a little too low, I know my old PC may take 10min until I am really back in (yes, I really need to reformat it), but shouldn't be more than 15min for sure.
Yes, good idea, but the implementation needs some tweaking. One of our guild friends logged out for 20 minutes and skipped the queue entirely on relog. I think 5 minutes us ample, and 10 minutes would be pushing it. If your PC can't boot in that time, well then it's your responsibility to clean and fix it so it can ;)
As one of the leaders of our guild, I think that WAR (unlike WoW) has the ability to allow both the casual (read people with only an hour here and there to spare) and hardcore (those of us that play 3+ hours a night) to participate in the "end game" (term used loosely). Once everyone hit's 30, we can all go bash on a keep door together. None of this messing about with 25 places reserved to those with X number of EPIX and 4 or more hours of time.
But now it takes up to an hour for people to log into our server, those "casuals" are not logging in - they don't have the time to queue AND play (or get in the queue in advance). That means only the hardcore of our guild, those with hours to spare, are logging in. Which makes our guild less able.
Now why don't we move server? We did get a clone after all. Well there has been much debate about that, and in comes down to whether whether we want to be on a server that has great RvR, or one where we have a hard time finding opposition to fight! Most people felt that moving to the clone, would result in a poorer RvR experiance, and thus few (even many of the casuals) thought that in the long run moving would be a good idea. Maybe hindsight will prove us wrong!
As one of the leaders of our guild, I think that WAR (unlike WoW) has the ability to allow both the casual (read people with only an hour here and there to spare) and hardcore (those of us that play 3+ hours a night) to participate in the "end game" (term used loosely). Once everyone hit's 30, we can all go bash on a keep door together. None of this messing about with 25 places reserved to those with X number of EPIX and 4 or more hours of time.
But now it takes up to an hour for people to log into our server, those "casuals" are not logging in - they don't have the time to queue AND play (or get in the queue in advance). That means only the hardcore of our guild, those with hours to spare, are logging in. Which makes our guild less able.
Now why don't we move server? We did get a clone after all. Well there has been much debate about that, and in comes down to whether whether we want to be on a server that has great RvR, or one where we have a hard time finding opposition to fight! Most people felt that moving to the clone, would result in a poorer RvR experiance, and thus few (even many of the casuals) thought that in the long run moving would be a good idea. Maybe hindsight will prove us wrong!
I don't think shortening the grace period is the best solution.
When you think about it, simply increasing the maximum number of simultaneous players to compensate for the "zombie" players would largely counteract this effect, since the zombies effectively lower the population cap.
It wouldn't be absolutely perfect, since people log off and on at different rates throughout the day. You'd have times where the number of zombies was higher and the effective population cap would be lower than it was originally, and times where the number of zombies was lower and the effective cap would be higher than it was originally.
But currently the effective population cap is *always* lower, and this would generally address that.
When you think about it, simply increasing the maximum number of simultaneous players to compensate for the "zombie" players would largely counteract this effect, since the zombies effectively lower the population cap.
It wouldn't be absolutely perfect, since people log off and on at different rates throughout the day. You'd have times where the number of zombies was higher and the effective population cap would be lower than it was originally, and times where the number of zombies was lower and the effective cap would be higher than it was originally.
But currently the effective population cap is *always* lower, and this would generally address that.
Ha, I totally called this one in your last post about it. The queue jumping was flawed from the very beginning, and the exploit was obvious. I hope Mythic takes your advice, though maybe 10 minutes would be more fair.
My new laptop is peppy, but I know some folks have old computers. My old laptop used to take nearly 5 minutes just to shut down, let alone booting back up.
My new laptop is peppy, but I know some folks have old computers. My old laptop used to take nearly 5 minutes just to shut down, let alone booting back up.
# posted by : 1/10/08 19:23
: 1/10/08 19:23
Yeah, queues are not only back but they process considerably slower I noticed. I was thinking it wouldn't take long at all to get in with only 36 people in front of me but it was much longer than I expected.
I agree with 5 minutes that should be long enough. Also, they should free up slots as soon as a person switches servers or logs out of the game completely. It is nice to be able to switch toons without re-queuing, but a voluntary disconnect should indicate the spot is not wanted.
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I agree with 5 minutes that should be long enough. Also, they should free up slots as soon as a person switches servers or logs out of the game completely. It is nice to be able to switch toons without re-queuing, but a voluntary disconnect should indicate the spot is not wanted.
# posted by : 1/10/08 23:29
: 1/10/08 23:29<< Home
