753 people have beta access

hey, that just makes 753 lucky people :P some may be at work and some may be dupe accounts

I really hope they lower the count downtime seeing it go up with only that many people playing is making really sad. More people playing=more feedback=less time wasted=better over all flow of closed beta at least imo. Unless there servers can't handle it....

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Chris wrote:

There are dozens of systems that can each have bottlenecks. For example, while we could probably handle 30,000 people playing right now, we wouldn't be able to handle many more people patching the game. We're working on fixes to each of these bottlenecks and will add more people as we go.

The goal is to test with restricted hardware and then scale up later. If we know we can fit 500 people on one server, then that's very valuable for when we get more machines.

Don't worry, it's all going according to schedule!

Edit: Also, having 100 people online out of 750 accounts is actually very high. For starters, at least a couple of hundred accounts are completely idle because they're arbitrary journalists, testing accounts or duplicate Alpha test accounts. Secondly, people can't actually play 24/7 - they have jobs, school and sleep. The numbers we're getting at the moment imply a very high rate of concurrency and player addictedness :P

Well, I sir, find their jobs and sleeping highly irresponsible. I plan to forgo all such distractions if and when I get in. For weeks.

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Chris wrote:

There are dozens of systems that can each have bottlenecks. For example, while we could probably handle 30,000 people playing right now, we wouldn't be able to handle many more people patching the game. We're working on fixes to each of these bottlenecks and will add more people as we go.

The goal is to test with restricted hardware and then scale up later. If we know we can fit 500 people on one server, then that's very valuable for when we get more machines.

Don't worry, it's all going according to schedule!

Edit: Also, having 100 people online out of 750 accounts is actually very high. For starters, at least a couple of hundred accounts are completely idle because they're arbitrary journalists, testing accounts or duplicate Alpha test accounts. Secondly, people can't actually play 24/7 - they have jobs, school and sleep. The numbers we're getting at the moment imply a very high rate of concurrency and player addictedness :P

Why don't you guys just set up a server to handle all the downloading/patching needs and all that stuff, another server for the website (so it can actually handle more than 3 people checking a key), and obviously the rest to support the game and all that jazz. I mean sure, you could keep on doing what you're doing, but specializing certain machines for certain things would be more convenient, that way not every server is doing the same thing as the others (and, you know, being lagged if one thing gets loaded too much).

I don't even know if I know the full details on your infrastructure and server architecture but sharing website load with the game is a bit.. strange.

@your edit: The issue is that you remarked over 100 players. We aren't talking about just how many players are playing out of a set amount - we're talking about integers, not percentages. 100 players is not a lot compared to how many actually follow this game, we're just hoping you guys realize this and have met the hardware requirements to accommodate the eventual swarm of fanbois onto your servers in the future.

beta need me

What Chris is saying is that they are running the game on say, one server. This includes the forum, downloads and patches, as well as the game itself. This way, GGG will know how many players 1 server can hold and will be able to predict how many servers they will require to hold everyone.

Actually getting the game is the hard part guys, not playing it. Playing an online game generally doesn't use much bandwidth. However, downloading and patching one takes ALOT.

I have been watching this site for the last 24 hours non stop!!

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Kayze wrote:

What Chris is saying is that they are running the game on say, one server. This includes the forum, downloads and patches, as well as the game itself. This way, GGG will know how many players 1 server can hold and will be able to predict how many servers they will require to hold everyone.

Actually getting the game is the hard part guys, not playing it. Playing an online game generally doesn't use much bandwidth. However, downloading and patching one takes ALOT.

There are methods to find out just how much a server can handle...

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nakieon wrote:

I don't even know if I know the full details on your infrastructure and server architecture but sharing website load with the game is a bit.. strange.

It used to happen all the time, actually. When the developer is flush with cash, they will divorce those sorts of functions across multiple servers, but I can recall plenty of early CBs where the sites and the game shared space. I think that most people have testing experience limited to more recent games, and the most recent, popular CBs were for MMOs developed by companies fairly flush with cash - flush enough to run massive CBs out the starting gate. Or at least, that's my recollection + 2 cents.

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Kayze wrote:

What Chris is saying is that they are running the game on say, one server. This includes the forum, downloads and patches, as well as the game itself. This way, GGG will know how many players 1 server can hold and will be able to predict how many servers they will require to hold everyone.

Actually getting the game is the hard part guys, not playing it. Playing an online game generally doesn't use much bandwidth. However, downloading and patching one takes ALOT.

That's a good point about the downloading and patching being a massive drain. I'm certain that's a significant part of the reason for their throttling down the number of invites tossed out.