MU Legend soft launched in South Korea back on March 23rd (the global version soft launches in a week). The initial player population required several servers (4). Webzen took extra steps for their global version (far more challenging in terms of supporting connectivity from wider geographic regions) by running a stress test back in September.
That data along with what they’ve experienced in South Korea will allow them to determine the amount of iron they will need for soft launch (open beta). The open beta moniker gives them breathing room in case they miscalculate (too little). I personally believe they won’t run into much issues with the initial login load (unless all authentication is routed to a centralized location; this is what causes grief for Trion with Glyph authentication since regardless of region, the authentication servers are located in their US data center).
They were slammed during the first CBT (login issues, server stability issues from the load, network latency issues between network equipment and game server) while the hard cap limits they put in place for the recent stress test, played out very well from my point of view where even when they increased that hard limit, there was no discernible impact (unlike the huge bouts of latency that many experienced before the servers crashed).
Getting back to the subject matter, player retention rates in the home country is useful for getting an idea of what could happen with the global version (which will have 3 separate regions: Americas, Europe, and Southeast Asia). As of this writing, it is not clear how many servers will be implemented in each of these regions.
As for South Korea, the player population there has unsurprisingly experienced a sharp population drop off where these 4 separate servers are now like ghost towns. The inevitable server mergers will end up happening. What I will find more interesting is what if any caveats are involved (since some of that will telegraph the amount of contingency planning that occurred; naming collision (characters and guilds for example) being the big one.
The global version will have more challenges in this area (especially the Southeast Asia region) where some players there may opt to utilize a VPN to force their default region to the Americas in order to play with friends there. The more troubling sign though is the rapid population drop off in Korea since that usually means the post questing end game is not compelling enough.
Even just one week out, I’m not getting that “can’t wait for it to launch” feeling. There are just some games that don’t have that early hook and grab (the exact feeling during the first CBT was how generic most things felt, unexciting combat, stiff animations, graphic aesthetics that lacked that creepy hack-n-slash feel). I suppose I’ll need to see how this plays out for myself (and friends who will also be giving it a go) a week from now.
