Arenanet Stop sales to alleviate server loads.

[Rooflesstoofless]

The problem arenanet has now is that they have a lot of players who enjoy spending a lot of time in the game. Which shows that they have a great product on there hands, if I was them I wouldn't increase the number of servers and just increase the number of overflow servers because in 6 months from now the game will lose popularity but the servers will still feel well alive.

They have really been smart about this, so big respect to arenanet and can't wait to see what they bringing for endgame content which is what there devs are focussing on now aswell as putting out fires because of the game being too popular.

Very well stated. QFT (although I don't use/look at xfire).

I can see this being very PR friendly for them as well. "Gaming journalists" will report on the game being so popular they are having to halt sales and it might get a few people (or a few thousand people) who might not have looked into the game to take notice of it.

[Kelesti]

Hang on... so to be a "true" gamer you have to install a third party chat client? OH GOD I'VE BEEN A FALSE GAMER ALL THIS TI-

Oh, wait, I have Steam. Does Steam count?

Yeah, I was gonna say, Steam kind of took over the "cross-gaming PC platform" stick that X-Fire tried to fill, except did it without, I dunno, sucking?

[Deleted]

Yeah, I was gonna say, Steam kind of took over the "cross-gaming PC platform" stick that X-Fire tried to fill, except did it without, I dunno, sucking?

Well, to be frank, Steam's got plenty of issues themselves - but it's still decent enough to make me add GW2 as a non-steam game for the communication.

[Galaddriel]

I remember when WoW use to top that chart back in WotLK week after week after week. Xfire tracked in minutes then, WoW led the pack by a factor of 10.

It's outrageous fun to have so many people to play with after being on a dead server for so long. Loving the game and impressed that ArenaNet is keeping a close eye on server populations for the players.

[BananaInsane]

/tinfoilhat
The largest portion of their sales are undoubtedly from pre-orders and first day purchases. shutting down sales for a day builds extreme amounts of trust, trust which causes the community to willingly buy in game items with beliefs that the company always has their best interests in mind. Don't forget sales have not completely stopped, only the option of buying the game directly from their website has stopped.

I refuse to immediately believe this is for my benefit. If sales are shutdown for over a week then i shall remove my tinfoilhat.

They have to be good to their costumers with those business practices they have. AKA the ingame store. It's not like in WoW when if you don't like the business practices, you have no other choice than to stop playing. In Guild Wars 2 you can keep playing but if you don't like the store, then you can just ignore it.

It's easier to ignore the store than to quit the game completely, especially if you like playing it. That's why it's so crucial that they keep a good reputation among the costumers.

[Kelesti]

Even if someone ignores the store completely, online games are made or broken by their communities. Whether they have your money or not, if you choose to stop playing, that's one less person on their servers. This actually has an impact on the long term, because the more people leave, the less people are on their servers, in which case we have empty/dying realms, no people to get excited for new content being added, or new expansions coming up, whatever.

Even the people that spend $0 in their cash shop, from a game developer's point of view, but still stick around because they like the game, those are people that will not only get their friends to play, but usually be a contributing factor into keeping part of the sense of community around. F2P or not, games need their people.

[Deleted]

A sample is a sample and for all intents and purposes the Xfire numbers are both significant and representative. Nobody cares if you like it or not but their numbers have merit.

[Aurinax]

Well, well, well, look who's wearing the man pants of the gaming industry.

[valliant13]

Amazing the swtor could support a bigger load. Maybe they just had more servers.

SWTOR had about 2 dozen too many servers at launch.

[emesto]

Isn't it possible to design the game/servers in such a way that you could rent additional processing power during the launch and scale it back later on? I don't really understand why that is not possible, but seeing as no companies seem to do this there must be a reason.

[Beazy]

Hell no they didnt quit! Have you guys tried WvW with a organized team yet? No one in their right mind could "QUIT" that. I can say, without a doubt, Doing WvW with an organized team of about 25 people is the most fun Ive had playing a video game since I downed Ragnaros the first time, almost 10 years ago.

Quit my ass. LoL yeah sure.