Stand:
Before the release of Path of Exile 2, a developer talks about the servers at launch and it sounds a little like you shouldn't try to log in right away.
Update December 6th:Now the developers themselves have warned of possible queues this weekend. Game Director Jonathan Rogers speaks to the community in the video:
Accordingly, they did not expect so many sales of supporter packs. They are already in the process of increasing capacities, but cannot rule out that there could be queues and unforeseen problems with the server architecture on release day and the weekend..
Original message: and those responsible are on a big interview tour. Game director Jonathan Rogers in particular answers the many questions from the press and content creators. In a stream he was asked about the servers and capacities for the release. Although Path of Exile 2 is well prepared, he couldn't really convince anyone that everything was going smoothly.
Path of Exile 2 expects a lot of players when it is released: Or not
Why shouldn't you play on release day?Rogers spoke with content creator “Zizaran” on YouTube (via youtube.com). The conversation revolved around softcore and hardcore characters and which Zizaran should start with. On the recommendation, he probably starts with a softcore character, because such a release is often accompanied by server problems. A slightly longer lag and the character is finished, which in hardcore means deletion. Rogers didn't want to rule out such problems. Ziraran probes and asks how confident Rogers is about the release:
Apparently not so much. I just have no idea how many people log in on the first day.
Since Path of Exile 2 is not yet a Free2Play title at the time of release, you can roughly see how many players could go online based on the sales of the supporter packs. But there are so many factors that are difficult to predict in advance. It is difficult to be really confident in the current situation. At least he is not confident enough to resolve serious issues for release.
A lot of testing has been done, but something unexpected can happen at any time. For example, it is difficult to release it on the consoles at the same time. The launcher on PC is also an uncertainty:
It's a new game. You never know what will happen. For example, launchers are notorious for causing unknown errors.
Rogers makes it clear: An instance capacity of 1 million was built up for the release. However, that cannot be equated with 1 million players. In addition, we are constantly in contact with server capacity providers in order to make additional instances available at short notice. In order to simulate the player roster for the release, bots were created that are supposed to behave like players. But they are programmed according to certain guidelines and cannot completely replicate the often unpredictable behavior of the players.
You have to think about special situations or a bottleneck in the server beforehand: It's impossible to think about everything in advance. Rogers gave the release as an example: All players log in for the release at 8 p.m. and are on the same instance. This is all done via an instance manager. However, these players will also move to the next instance at a similar time, which results in a large computational requirement. So the developers plan in advance that this computing effort will occur when changing instances shortly after release. The further players advance, the more difficult it is to plan for such situations. But Rogers also says:
I think the chance of getting over [the 1 million] is pretty slim. Because it costs something. […] At full release, when it's free, I think the numbers will be a lot higher than 1 million. Absurdly high. But for paid early access, I think the 1 million would be a gigantic achievement. That would be crazy.
So Rogers is not particularly confident about the servers for release, but at the same time finds it quite unlikely that the capacity of 1 million instances will be exhausted. We recommend that you wait out the release day and only start Path of Exile on Saturday. Maybe you use Friday,.
