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Amazon's New World Launch Woes Were Bound To Happen, But This Time Felt Different | MMORPG.com

SystemSystem Member UncommonPosts: 12,599
edited September 2021 in News & Features Discussion

imageAmazon's New World Launch Woes Were Bound To Happen, But This Time Felt Different | MMORPG.com

Amazon powers much of the internet thanks to its Amazon Web Services offering, which is why it seemed like a surprise its MMO, New World, launched with such widespread server issues. Brradford explores why he felt that this launch felt different than other day one MMO woes.

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Comments

  • blbetablbeta Member UncommonPosts: 144
    edited September 2021
    Well we'll see how it goes for myself and my friends tonight. As I mentioned in another article we almost decided to wait for a week, but instead about 8pm EST we decided to try. I was worried because all the articles about server woes.

    From my perspective, less than twelve hours after launch, it was flawless for us. Over a dozen servers with no que and medium pop. Dozens of no que high pop servers. Probably less than a dozen high pop servers with over 1000 in que.

    If you want to be on a "popular" server I guess you have to wait.

    As launch days go, this seems minuscule compared to most. That is of course unless you expect Amazon should make room for everyone on the server world they chose. Seems like you should be willing to look for other servers if you want to play that bad.
    Mind you this is only from US East server point of view.
    asfaraslarry
  • donzin08donzin08 Member UncommonPosts: 40
    it really has been the best launch ive ever experienced in an mmo, or honestly any game really. No disconnects/crashes/constant restarts. Its optimized really well, great framerate etc Been pleasantly surprised
    mibgeneralMcSleazasfaraslarryKyleranTacticalZombehSensai
  • urriel1970urriel1970 Member UncommonPosts: 120
    lol...new world...old problems..
    mibgeneralSamhael
  • SamhaelSamhael Member RarePosts: 1,495
    Yeah, it seemed as though a good portion of the issues were self-inflicted. I had loads of fun anyway but I took the day off and was in for the NA launch promptly. And though I had expected an announcement at some point during the day about a hotfix and an emergency restart, everything was nice and stable. Stable probably because of a lower-than-expected simultaneous pop cap of 2000. So the worst part of the day for me was finding out shortly before I hit the sack that my guild had decided to re-roll on another server. LFG :)
  • RandomCasualtyRandomCasualty Member UncommonPosts: 327
    Grabbed my name right after servers went live, but haven't been able to get back onto the server during prime time. Will wait until weekend to see which server has the lowest ques and then delete toon (for name) and jump on that one.
  • Slapshot1188Slapshot1188 Member LegendaryPosts: 16,947
    Grabbed my name at 2AM.  Woke up and logged in at 8.  Leveled to 12 in an hour.  Joined faction and company.  Logged out for vacation.

    Sunday night all should be worked out so I can login and enjoy. 

    At least,  that’s the plan!
    KyleranWellspring

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  • NeoyoshiNeoyoshi Member RarePosts: 1,068
    Is character progression account-bound, or server-bound?


    Fishing on Gilgamesh since 2013
  • QuizzicalQuizzical Member LegendaryPosts: 25,347
    I'm not buying it.

    The "not opening enough servers" problem is a problem of having dedicated, physical servers to host a game.  If you buy 100 servers up front, and then in a month, half of your playerbase is gone, then you're stuck with 50 physical servers that you've paid for but don't have any use for.  Publishers could reasonably conclude that having some queues for the first day or week is cheaper than spending two or three times as much on hardware as you actually need longer term.

    That only provides an excuse for Amazon if New World is hosted on dedicated physical servers that can't ever be repurposed to any other use besides hosting New World.  I'd be very surprised if they're actually doing that rather than just using commodity hardware from AWS.  And if it's the latter, then New World traffic is a drop in the bucket for them, so they could easily have spun up twice as many servers as they needed for launch day and then scaled back once it became clear exactly how much they actually needed.

    They didn't do that because they chose not to do it.  One possibility is that the people working on New World are too incompetent to figure out how to scale things to more servers, as that expertise only lies somewhere else within the company.  (Don't assume that everyone who works for a big company is competent at everything that the company does.)  The other possibility is that they intentionally chose to have too few servers for launch day and wanted to have massive queues.  There really isn't a third possibility, unless you count both of those possibilities being simultaneously true.

    There is some degree to which problems are exacerbated by putting a bunch of people into queues and then people in queues doing things that you didn't expect to make the problem worse.  Or alternatively, people in the game refusing to log out when they're done playing because they know that it will take hours to get back in.  Those problems don't show up unless the game doesn't have nearly enough servers to begin with.  If no one is waiting in a queue, then it doesn't matter what the people waiting in queues do.
    BrainyKylerannursomklinic
  • BrainyBrainy Member EpicPosts: 2,026
    Quizzical said:
    I'm not buying it.

    The "not opening enough servers" problem is a problem of having dedicated, physical servers to host a game.  If you buy 100 servers up front, and then in a month, half of your playerbase is gone, then you're stuck with 50 physical servers that you've paid for but don't have any use for.  Publishers could reasonably conclude that having some queues for the first day or week is cheaper than spending two or three times as much on hardware as you actually need longer term.

    That only provides an excuse for Amazon if New World is hosted on dedicated physical servers that can't ever be repurposed to any other use besides hosting New World.  I'd be very surprised if they're actually doing that rather than just using commodity hardware from AWS.  And if it's the latter, then New World traffic is a drop in the bucket for them, so they could easily have spun up twice as many servers as they needed for launch day and then scaled back once it became clear exactly how much they actually needed.

    They didn't do that because they chose not to do it.  One possibility is that the people working on New World are too incompetent to figure out how to scale things to more servers, as that expertise only lies somewhere else within the company.  (Don't assume that everyone who works for a big company is competent at everything that the company does.)  The other possibility is that they intentionally chose to have too few servers for launch day and wanted to have massive queues.  There really isn't a third possibility, unless you count both of those possibilities being simultaneously true.

    There is some degree to which problems are exacerbated by putting a bunch of people into queues and then people in queues doing things that you didn't expect to make the problem worse.  Or alternatively, people in the game refusing to log out when they're done playing because they know that it will take hours to get back in.  Those problems don't show up unless the game doesn't have nearly enough servers to begin with.  If no one is waiting in a queue, then it doesn't matter what the people waiting in queues do.

    Yeah I am going with it was done on purpose to create hype.  But I agree, incompetence runs a very close 2nd option.

    Other problem I have is people saying these servers are only holding 2k people?  Yet they are getting 800k concurrent, which would require at least 400 servers.  Math doesn't seem to work, even if you the people in queue as concurrent, that would still require 300 servers, which I don't see them using.  Maybe I am missing something like the world name has multiple servers attached to it.
  • BrainyBrainy Member EpicPosts: 2,026
    blbeta said:
    Well we'll see how it goes for myself and my friends tonight. As I mentioned in another article we almost decided to wait for a week, but instead about 8pm EST we decided to try. I was worried because all the articles about server woes.

    From my perspective, less than twelve hours after launch, it was flawless for us. Over a dozen servers with no que and medium pop. Dozens of no que high pop servers. Probably less than a dozen high pop servers with over 1000 in que.

    If you want to be on a "popular" server I guess you have to wait.

    As launch days go, this seems minuscule compared to most. That is of course unless you expect Amazon should make room for everyone on the server world they chose. Seems like you should be willing to look for other servers if you want to play that bad.
    Mind you this is only from US East server point of view.

    Yeah this is BS, me and friends purposely picked the lowest pop server available to us.  It wasn't until later they added more servers.  Now our server has 2k+ queue during primetime.

    Its too hard to get all our friends to start a new char on a totally new server and waste time some have put in.  Some are already level 30.

    This is just is not the customers fault.
  • coercer02coercer02 Member UncommonPosts: 51

    donzin08 said:

    it really has been the best launch ive ever experienced in an mmo, or honestly any game really. No disconnects/crashes/constant restarts. Its optimized really well, great framerate etc Been pleasantly surprised



    thank you! had one disconnect today, but I've played for 25 hours already on the most populated server on NA West so wont complain. Game is awesome.
  • Phoenix_HawkPhoenix_Hawk Member UncommonPosts: 289
    At least things are going better than the Genshin anniversary. Little surprised there's no news piece on that, given the huge shitstorm going on with it, and how big that game had become.
  • JeroKaneJeroKane Member EpicPosts: 6,959
    It's the European servers that were affected the worst with horrible queues and it was no different yesterday from what I have seen (according to serverstatus over half the players were sitting in queue again), since no new servers were added.

    This is really baffling, as it almost means they either don't give a darn about EU players again (US company yada yada here we are again) or they literally have no more available capacity in their AWS Frankfurt data center?!

    They had no trouble however, doubling the server capacity within 12 hours in NA East. /shrug

    So there is a lot of incompetence at play here.
  • ScotScot Member LegendaryPosts: 22,818
    edited September 2021
    "the development team at AGS is a talented bunch of industry veterans many of which have gone through MMO launches as a developer before".

    It is that team which gave a pass to global names, staggered world server launches and transfers as a supposed panacea to launch woes. Every bone in their body should have been saying "Don't do it this way!".

    Many posters have spoken of the smooth in game experience, I think that the 2000 players maximum was a deliberate move on AGS's part and a clever one. Would you as the team want to have players on social media complaining about log in queues or the in game experience? But having made that decision, global names and staggered server launches should have seemed barking.
  • SirShindaSirShinda Member UncommonPosts: 8
    its a small company with no cloud servers
    Scot
  • Slapshot1188Slapshot1188 Member LegendaryPosts: 16,947
    Hindsight plan:

    Instead of keeping server names secret as long as possible they should have released them well in advance.  It’s Amazon. They know how to use data better than anyone else.  It’s why I get soap suggested shortly before it runs out...

    They should have incentivized people to signup on a server in advance and published running population totals.

    You signed up for that server pre-launch, you get queue priority.  Others can still join at launch, but folks that pre-selected that server get in at a 4-1 rate. 

    This would go for launch +14 days.

    Scot

    All time classic  MY NEW FAVORITE POST!  (Keep laying those bricks)

    "I should point out that no other company has shipped out a beta on a disc before this." - Official Mortal Online Lead Community Moderator

    Proudly wearing the Harbinger badge since Dec 23, 2017. 

    Coined the phrase "Role-Playing a Development Team" January 2018

    "Oddly Slap is the main reason I stay in these forums." - Mystichaze April 9th 2018

  • KyleranKyleran Member LegendaryPosts: 43,435
    edited September 2021
    Well it's a good thing Jeff's other company Blue Origins got their launch day woes figured out beforehand or...you know.



     :# 

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    Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm

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  • AkulasAkulas Member RarePosts: 3,004
    It's unacceptable out of 30 hours only 20 minutes were spent in game due to 6+ hours queue times that often restart at 5 hours in. Pretty much done with it. This is one example where waiting a month or 2 is the best option. If it was sub based I'd be asking for compensation but since I'm going to play it anyways and it's B2P it can sit there for a week or so doing nothing.

    This isn't a signature, you just think it is.

  • JeroKaneJeroKane Member EpicPosts: 6,959
    SirShinda said:
    its a small company with no cloud servers
    I hope you were being sarcastic. LOL
  • nursonurso Member UncommonPosts: 327
    Brainy said:
    Other problem I have is people saying these servers are only holding 2k people?  Yet they are getting 800k concurrent, which would require at least 400 servers.  Math doesn't seem to work, even if you the people in queue as concurrent, that would still require 300 servers, which I don't see them using.  Maybe I am missing something like the world name has multiple servers attached to it.

    The concurrent numbers are taken from the Steam statistic AFAIK, and Steam doesn't make a difference between players who are ingame and already playing and players who are in the queue.


    And what many forget: If servers have a preferred language, for example Spanish, then those players who speak the language will gather there and not spread out to other servers.
  • Asm0deusAsm0deus Member EpicPosts: 4,389
    edited September 2021
    Logged in right now and only 54 in queue, on a popular streamer server!

    Down to 42 int he time it took to write this post.

    Brenics ~ Just to point out I do believe Chris Roberts is going down as the man who cheated backers and took down crowdfunding for gaming.





  • WellspringWellspring Member EpicPosts: 1,464
    edited September 2021
    I played briefly in the open beta, and actually refunded my pre-order in August. However, a week before launch my old guild put the word out that they were getting the band back together, so I decided to give it another go.

    EQ1 is my favorite style of MMO, so I really didn't think I would enjoy this new combat style MMO. Surprisingly, I'm having a lot of fun! (4 hours in)

    FYI, this is not a bad launch when the ONLY complaint by everyone has nothing to do with the actual game, but that they can't stand waiting in line. Like everything, it has a limited capacity.

    Every other MMORPG I've played at launch has had significant downtime the first week and glaring in-game bugs. Other MMO's wouldn't even have had adequate server caps in place, resulting in a poor in-game experience.

    To me, New World is an example of a great launch. In-game, my 5 year old desktop runs it very smoothly and I haven't encountered any noticeable bugs. No crashes either. I couldn't play last night because of server queues, but no biggie. I've lost track of how many years I've been waiting for a new MMO to play, what's a few more days waiting for them to increase server capacity.
    Kyleran
    --------------------------------------------
  • JeroKaneJeroKane Member EpicPosts: 6,959
    edited September 2021
    Asm0deus said:
    Logged in right now and only 54 in queue, on a popular streamer server!

    Down to 42 int he time it took to write this post.
    I guess in US when everyone is sleeping? No wonder.

    Looking at https://newworldstatus.com/ the lowest queue on EU servers is one and half hour for like 1 or 2 servers. Rest already have 3+ hour queues and rising.
    And it's not even prime time yet in Europe.

    Seems Amazon really doesn't give a damn about EU as usual, haven't added a single extra server since launch.

    225k EU players on servers, from which 199k are sitting in a queue LOL!

  • hupahupa Member UncommonPosts: 156

    Brainy said:



    Yeah I am going with it was done on purpose to create hype.  But I agree, incompetence runs a very close 2nd option.

    Other problem I have is people saying these servers are only holding 2k people?  Yet they are getting 800k concurrent, which would require at least 400 servers.  Math doesn't seem to work, even if you the people in queue as concurrent, that would still require 300 servers, which I don't see them using.  Maybe I am missing something like the world name has multiple servers attached to it.



    According to https://newworldstatus.com/?sort=queue there's over 500 servers, if one world is one server
  • WellspringWellspring Member EpicPosts: 1,464
    edited September 2021
    JeroKane said:
    Asm0deus said:
    Logged in right now and only 54 in queue, on a popular streamer server!

    Down to 42 int he time it took to write this post.
    I guess in US when everyone is sleeping? No wonder.

    Looking at https://newworldstatus.com/ the lowest queue on EU servers is one and half hour for like 1 or 2 servers. Rest already have 3+ hour queues and rising.
    And it's not even prime time yet in Europe.

    Seems Amazon really doesn't give a damn about EU as usual, haven't added a single extra server since launch.

    225k EU players on servers, from which 199k are sitting in a queue LOL!


    "... haven't added a single extra [EU] server since launch."

    Umm, I think you need to get your facts straight...

    They added 24 servers to EU 20 hours ago. As well as more servers to every other region as well...


    From your own link it shows that EU started with 86 servers, now 192.
    --------------------------------------------
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