Population Surge

[Gladeshadow]

Putting this in the suggestions even though it's more of a request to hear of plans or anything at all about the population issues with the server.

Getting straight to the point, the game is a nearly unplayable state in many areas of the game. Not just starting areas. Across all my alts, I've seen beginning to end game zones are now crowded. Some are saying the more the merrier. Unfortunately, this isn't the case. The game (and really any game) is designed with a specific range of players in mind. By analogy, putting 100 players on a basketball court or football field wouldn't make for a better game or make it feel "more alive". That's like saying a crowded mall at Christmas feels more alive than a day in the park simply because there are more people and the population is denser. The reality is that such scenarios would be more chaotic, stressful, and less enjoyable for the vast majority of people. Indeed, respawn times have been decreased in crowded areas and it's getting stressful for players to play in such areas. Particularly the HC players who may be forced to continually fight without any breathing room when mobs respawn nearly as quickly as they are killed.

With it acknowledged that the game is overcrowded, it's nice that we have heard that a separate server will be made to cater to Chinese players. This should help decrease the population to more playable levels. Let's look at this over a very predictable time scale though. By the time the server is out, it's reasonable and perhaps even conservative to say there will be 16,000 players (there are 11,000 online at the time of writing this). So if half migrate to the Chinese server, each server will have 8,000 players. That's still quite crowded.

My question is this: What can we players expect in terms of devs doing something to make the game playable in terms of population over the long term? The rising population is a predictable thing at this point, so it would be a relief to the players to know that there is a plan at all. The addition of a single server for Chinese players is not enough - at this point, the addition is a somewhat late response (currently undelivered) to the current problem. Ideally, the team should have plans for this ahead of time rather than a reactionary response, which is what the addition of the Chinese server appears to be.

Since this is the suggestion forum, I'll offer one. Putting a queue on new accounts might be in order. That would be a way to at least prevent the server from continuing to grow faster than the community can handle. But again, I'd rather that we hear from the development team about plans.