In terms of how our rollout plan looks like, here are some more details:
1) On day one, our population cap on each server will start at 1/3 of its total cap and then move up to ½ on a rolling basis. We can raise that number any time, no restart of the servers are necessary.
2) As a server approaches cap, we will either raise the cap again or deploy another server of that type. Deployment of a server takes only 30 minutes and our intention is that there are no server queues during the CE/SE period.
3) By day 2, we will raise the server cap of all servers to 2/3.
4) By day 3, we will raise the server cap of all servers to its full cap.
5) Each server’s cap is a bit soft and even our top cap is less than the servers can handle.
6) Depending on how many of our CE/SE players take advantage of the head start, we will add more servers as necessary throughout the entire process.
Once again, our plan (not our goal, but our plan) is to deploy servers as needed to *avoid* long server queues whether it is in the Head Start or beyond. Please keep in mind we needed to have some queuing in Open Beta so we could test the code before launch.
Here’s the list of the next servers of each type that are queued up so that guilds can start making their plans.
We will not open all the CE/SE servers at launch for a number of reasons, one of which is that doing so would be unfair to the SE players who might also want to come into a “fresh” server just like our CE people. We also will not open all the servers we have racked at SE launch as the same reasoning applies to people who didn’t pre-order the game. We will not open all our servers at launch as well since that could lead to servers with too few people in the beginning if people spread out too much.
If this plan doesn’t work, you can expect us to make changes on the fly and/or after launch including free transfers as necessary.
Mark
