The studio behind Dune: Awakening has reassured players it’s taking precautions to ensure server issues are minimal at launch.
In a lengthy Steam post explaining various aspects of the game, Funcom addressed the possibility that the game could suffer the same fate as other popular MMOs and become overcrowded at launch, leading to players being locked out or game crashes.
The studio noted that it’s handled the launches of numerous MMOs in the past and that it therefore has past experience to draw on, meaning it’s prepared for a possible early surge in players.
“We certainly expect heavy loads at launch, and that is why we are preparing accordingly,” it said. “Servers (Hagga Basins) that fill up are impossible to completely avoid, same as with all games that operate with the populations Dune: Awakening does.
“But, rest assured, there will be thousands of servers grouped together in hundreds of Worlds available at launch. They will be spread out across the globe, offering low-latency connections in North America, South America, Europe, Asia, and Australia … if we see that we’re nearing capacity, we will be able to spin up more.
“This is not our first rodeo, we’ve launched several MMOs and survival games over the past 25 years, and we have a robust set of tools and processes in place, managed by an experienced live operations team.”
The studio stressed that while each Hagga Basin server can support 40 concurrent players, it will support several hundred people picking it as their home, because “the way populations ebb and flow over the course of the day” makes this possible.
“This has been rigorously tested during closed beta, and we have systems in place that will restrict too many characters being created on a server that is becoming too popular, to minimize the chance of servers becoming full,” it explained.
“As with all games operating with populations like this, that doesn’t mean servers will never reach the 40-player concurrency cap. If that happens, you will join a server queue when logging in. The term ‘server queue’ is rarely used in positive context, but to us it’s a quality-of-life addition.
“Commonly, survival games don’t offer this, and you are left having to wait and hope you are able to click fast enough when a slot opens up. By adding a server queue functionality, you can simply click once and rest easy knowing that you will get in when a slot becomes available to you. Again, because of how player populations ebb and flow throughout the day, you should not have to wait long before being let in.”
VGC recently went hands-on with Dune: Awakening for eight hours, saying: “We left our day-long play session with Dune Awakening impressed by its authenticity and ideas, genuinely wanting more. However, as pointed out in our Exoborne hands-on, these sorts of games are always more fun in a bustling preview event environment, and it’s never been more difficult to tell which games are going to succeed in the harsh modern games market.
