First thing was how well they pulled off the release; they took the realms down just 3 hours prior to the countdown hitting 0. Within that 3 hour window, they upgraded the servers to the 1.0.0b engine, rolled out the profile updates on their forum, and basically had everything ready to go when that timer hit zero at 10am Pacific time. 2 hours before launch, the 1.1GB client patch was downloading and ready to go on my end within 20 minutes.
Aside from the initial period (30 minutes after launch) where many were disconnecting while in town, the rollout was fairly smooth with just a few glitches (re-logging in during those times; the queue was short and fast; less than 5 seconds with over a hundred queued before me). I do realize their server scale is different compared to Blizzard but it’s also a testament to a more modern backend systems design and operational process that allows them to patch quickly (with that said, Blizzard really has to begin rethinking their outdated approach with how they perform their own maintenance/patches and how none of their games are compartmentalized from the underlying Battle.net layer where maintenance there for just one game, requires taking down all of their other games).
As for game play, I basically started over and re-rolled on the Domination League given that my old standard one didn’t have much hours on it to begin with. The combat mechanics and game play do feel a bit better and I ended up playing for a couple of hours straight without realizing it. Turns out I was having more fun than even I expected (this is important since the game in general is not targeted at folks in my demographic; PoE is unforgivingly designed to cater to the hardcore competitive types).
Thus based on release, I have to change what I wrote earlier about maybe not putting in a lot of hours. I’m now thinking I’m actually going to get more than my supporters pack worth of actual game play. The timing could not have been more perfect given that it is going to be awhile before D3 gets its system level changes and RoS which I’m most likely going to get (and I don’t think I’m going to play much SC2 until LotV is released either).
Again, while the game is free 2 play, the work that went into it took a ton of money (and will continue to take a ton of money for ongoing operations and future development). The fact they were able to raise as much as they did during closed beta (not known yet how well they did with the open beta supporter packs), is an interesting aspect of the microtransaction supported system that many shops are now using. This actually highlights how Blizzard is continually operating in what is quickly going to become an outdated/outmoded business model especially once smaller studios begin to be able to execute larger scale and much higher quality productions that rival the status quo.
