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Thanks for all the thoughts, Plukragar!
I'm glad you're giving thoughts to the potential perils of any mass-influx of
new players we might experiene in Genesis. Your question to me - do I know what
this means? I think I do, yes, but of course all of us are limited to
speculation and estimates at this point. There is no getting around the fact
that, at some point, the game would choke if faced with certain levels of
player volume.
I think we are probably likely to expect most of the madness to occur in the
tutorial itself. That always weeds out many people who have no real potential
to like the sort of game that Genesis is. They try it, see it, and instantly
don't want to continue. That's fine. We aren't for everyone. I've done some
math in my head ... let's just go with the twitter feed of PC Gamer, which
has around 2 million subscribers. A thought experiment:
- Assume that 1% click on the story = 20,000 clicks.
- Assume that 1% of those try the game = 200
- Assume half quit immediately seeing no graphics = 100
- Assume 10% make it through the tutorial = 10
These are very pessimistic estimaes, but you can see that we could very
quickly weed out a lot of people who aren't likely to try it beyond the
curious glimpse. I'd love to be wrong about that, and be flooded with players,
of course, but I am keeping my expectations very tightly clamped down. I like
the phrase, "Expect nothing, but prepare for everything."
If find we are in a situation where players do not have resources to compete
for at adequate levels, it would not be too hard to work on instancing areas
of the game which need it, which Cotillion has already found effective ways to
accomplish.
So, worst (or shall we say BEST) case scenareo - we make adjustments to
compensate for things as we find chokepoints. For now, we are looking at the
likely chokeponints and trying to anticipate those problems.
And, if the SU suddenly feels like allowing 40 newbies to join their guild,
then I suspect it will be not just you who are drunk. ;-)
G.