Character creation and name reservations began first in EU on Saturday (local time) where technical issues (client crashing to desktop) delayed things for around 90 minutes. Those issues were resolved with EU-Alexander reaching capacity first (it is currently locked for character creation) since there were players from NA who created characters there (EU players designated Tyrenos on NA to play there) as a way to play during maintenance (or in the case of streamers and content producers, to play with their communities on both regions). There also seems to be a faction imbalance across all 3 servers favoring the Nuian (west) so Gamigo has locked character creation for Nuian’s on EU-Halnaak and EU-Belstrom.
NA followed several hours later again with technical issues (CTD) which was resolved in around 30 minutes (the solution was to run Glyph as admin). Another technical issue occurred where players were unable to name characters (unable to use name pending deletion error message). This was also resolved (may have been load related). NA-Wynn reached capacity first followed by NA-Tyrenos. Faction distribution is currently more evenly distributed on NA so players will have a chance to create characters on both when the next unlock takes place. NA-Denistrious remains open for both factions.
Myself, I decided to take the plunge and purchased an Archeum Chainbreaker pack yesterday. I managed to snag the names I wanted on Wynn; sort of the community designated “casual/RP” server (where SEA and Oceania players also intended to roll) which won’t really matter since I fully expect there to be at least one server merge down the road. There was no singular reason for deciding to give Gamigo a chance (despite all of my skepticism that I have expressed) except it did come down to how things went on the public PTS (not the long queued shit show that I was expecting, not the disconnect plagued one I was expecting) which included some of the staff putting in long hours (including getting the Fluffy chat bot working where players could get stuff to level up their characters and progress their gear). Plus while I didn’t have an issue with the ability to gift items from the credit shop, the largely negative feedback resulted in a quick decision to disable it at launch.
Given the amount of time I spent on the public PTS, I’ll end up getting more than $80 worth of entertainment from this version of the game via just casual play. This, TERA and Guild Wars 2 will be the games I alternate in between for the next few months.
