Avenger (not verified) on August 28, 2008 - 13:27.
Although I absolutely agree in principle that this is not optimal design I think both you and Ryan at nerfbat are being a bit too purist on the subject of PQs and are looking at it only from developer point of view.
PQs will be awesome at launch from what I hear - everybody agrees on that I think. They will be a great selling point especially when comes to word of mouth immediately after launch - hell they already are :)
After the initial wave of subs there are two things that will keep PQs alive for a decent period of time:
- The population of MMOs does not move forward at the same speed - people level at very different speeds so the population of a server spreads out across levels.
- After the initial launch, assuming WAR is even a moderate success, it will enter a period of growth in population for the first 3 months at least. This will bring new level 1 players moving up the ranks. Everquest II and City of Heroes for both more or less doubled their population in the first 3 months after launch, while WoW eve tripled it. (Ref: mmogchart.com).
Of course after the period of initial growth is over the effect you predict will start to kick in in full force, but by then PQs would have served Mythic very very well. My point is that although you're absolutely correct there really is no reason why Mythic would care about this problem at this stage even if they are aware of it.
Re: The nail in the head of Warhammer
Although I absolutely agree in principle that this is not optimal design I think both you and Ryan at nerfbat are being a bit too purist on the subject of PQs and are looking at it only from developer point of view.
PQs will be awesome at launch from what I hear - everybody agrees on that I think. They will be a great selling point especially when comes to word of mouth immediately after launch - hell they already are :)
After the initial wave of subs there are two things that will keep PQs alive for a decent period of time:
- The population of MMOs does not move forward at the same speed - people level at very different speeds so the population of a server spreads out across levels.
- After the initial launch, assuming WAR is even a moderate success, it will enter a period of growth in population for the first 3 months at least. This will bring new level 1 players moving up the ranks. Everquest II and City of Heroes for both more or less doubled their population in the first 3 months after launch, while WoW eve tripled it. (Ref: mmogchart.com).
Of course after the period of initial growth is over the effect you predict will start to kick in in full force, but by then PQs would have served Mythic very very well. My point is that although you're absolutely correct there really is no reason why Mythic would care about this problem at this stage even if they are aware of it.