Anyone who played World of Warcraft in the early days can remember the pangs that came with newly launched expansions and patches. If you weren’t in a seemingly infinite queue line, servers were down for hours and it became better just to try logging back in the next day. Action RPG monster-slayer Dauntless is the latest game to struggle against the demands of popularity. mxdwn Games initially reported on the start of Open Beta hours before servers were set to launch. Players (including myself) were met with the following screen:
This of course happens to every popular game due to immense player bases, with games like WoW nearly reaching 12 million players and more recently PlayerUnkown’s Battlegrounds hitting over 3 million. Both of the aforementioned games required payment; imagine what those player numbers would’ve been if they were free-to-play.
Dauntless is not the first free-to-play game to suffer massive player-based connectivity issues. Remember in February when Fortnite was out for 2 days? These things happen, and it ultimately comes down to how developers and publishers respond to these issues. As you can see here, the Dauntless team has literally been working around the clock since May 24. From accepting DMs for one-on-one player troubleshooting to providing consistent status updates, the developers seem to be rolling quite well with the punches.
Last night, I was able to log in with no wait. When I initially waited through the queue on May 24, the intro cutscenes and gameplay were choppier than a lumberjack before Christmas. At first I thought this was due to my PC needing an overdue CPU upgrade, but as mentioned in the previous coverage, and after last night’s playthrough, the game does indeed “run on potato”, and my initial frame rate issues can be attributed to overloaded server connection.
As the developers clearly state though, queue issues may rise up again. Nevertheless, it’s inspiring and reassuring to see the effort and dedication this team is exerting to make the game playable for the its claimed 1.1 million user base. Surely, the developers are looking forward to the day when the dust settles and these issues are completely resolved.