Wow, this is seriously messed up as it looks like there are some major issues with the servers that were originally slated to be the ones designated as “launch servers” (Seadrift for EU and Asperon for NA). The EU one is the most messed up though due to the loss of actual progress while logins to Asperon (NA) were reduced as a preventative measure.
Prior to head start, Trion was planning to have two head start servers (Segarro for EU and Ravan for NA) and two launch servers. At official launch, the plan was to have the two head start servers also available by anyone for character creation. This information was unveiled during the last day of the open beta (which was just 36 hours prior to head start).
The community however began leaving feedback about how this was going to split the player base since many players where arguing that new players would just end up selecting the “clean” server as opposed to playing on the one with head starters. I myself didn’t get involved in any of that feedback but I already questioned the need for two separate servers at launch to begin with.
Having previously worked in backend IT operations before, it’s not like I don’t understand the rationale for trying to take preventative measures from the get go to reduce the issues of login queues. There are however different approaches to doing that including load balancing (of course, I have no idea how they setup their authentication and login servers) and having additional server(s) kick in once the user limit threshold is being hit.
Per server, the game already automatically spawns new instances once there are too many players in an instance (these are called channels). But based on communication from the production team, the game seems to be designed to not scale that way (thus there isn’t an easy way to have cross server communication and instancing in this manner).
Around 24 hours out ahead of head start, they changed their decision based on the community feedback to launch at head start with all 4 servers. It still wasn’t what I considered optimal because I don’t know if they have that large a player population (but I guess due to the backend limits, this was the system they had to go with).
Again, having worked in this area before, I do know that key decisions with design are formalized and solidified well in advance. There is normally a point of no return where you don’t want to make drastic last minute changes but they made one around 24 hours out from the head start launch. Thus they needed to reconfigure the servers designated as non-head start (Asperon for NA and Seadrift for EU) to be available. Again, I have no idea how their backend is designed and what level of changes would have been needed to be changed to Asperon and Seadrift but I do know from experience that last minute changes can always cause issues.
Myself, I created my main characters on Ravan mainly because that is the server that was originally meant for head starters. I’m not saying there isn’t a deeper systemic problem that cause also end up affecting the other two servers. All I can say is that there is nothing more deflating to have all your progress and gear wiped due to a server side issue. The compensation they are offering is ok but you cannot replace the actual time players put in themselves to get their characters to the point they were at before the data loss occurred. That’s one of the important aspects in the ARPG side of things when progressing a character.
