Ok. It is "patch day". Never fly on patch day. It's always this way.... so say the sage old Elite Dangerous veterans. Except this time... First Mapped by. Hmmm. More on that in a sec. So patch day turned into a bit of a mess. Not as bad as the NoGosis mess but pretty darn close. Anyway, it all played out on several live streams today.
Yes, First Mapped By. I have read post after post on this and a new perspective perhaps is that this whole issue today is completely intentional. We heard that "the release will create a bit of a gold rush" in the second beta live stream when talking about First Mapped by.
I think that Frontier knew exactly what was going to happen because it played out exactly as they intended. "Utilizing AWS will enable us to meet increased traffic" or so they said. Truth is, with AWS, Frontier could have met demand and then, then, then some. Seriously, server demand for Elite on it's biggest day times 10000 is nothing. I've worked on pretty crappy Apple App Store game releases with substantial (inefficient) gameplay chatty traffic (load) where we peaked with over a million active users. AWS doesn't come close to bending, much less breaking. I'm calling on the unexpected server load issue.
To me, Frontier appears to have created the equivalent of the line at the Apple Store for another Apple new thinner lighter creation. A line that only happens as a result of an intentional temporary supply shortage. It has much less to do with demand.
It looks like there were hundreds of Elite Dangerous players who spent the better part of the day trying to connect so they could achieve the coveted "First Mapped by" tag (gold rush) and Frontier made sure everyone noticed (inadequate server allocation). You know the old saying, "all press is good press as long as they spell your name correctly". What better than a headline about how demand for your new product was so high.
For me, I could only connect a few times for a minute or two so I spent most of the day keeping an eye on a few of the "creators" spending their live streams playing competing games or trying to connect and talking about their favorite color. It was fairly hilarious.
Bottom line is manufacturing false demand for a new product doesn't work. If this was intentional or just poor planning, either way, Frontier's customers are owed yet another apology.
Yes, First Mapped By. I have read post after post on this and a new perspective perhaps is that this whole issue today is completely intentional. We heard that "the release will create a bit of a gold rush" in the second beta live stream when talking about First Mapped by.
I think that Frontier knew exactly what was going to happen because it played out exactly as they intended. "Utilizing AWS will enable us to meet increased traffic" or so they said. Truth is, with AWS, Frontier could have met demand and then, then, then some. Seriously, server demand for Elite on it's biggest day times 10000 is nothing. I've worked on pretty crappy Apple App Store game releases with substantial (inefficient) gameplay chatty traffic (load) where we peaked with over a million active users. AWS doesn't come close to bending, much less breaking. I'm calling on the unexpected server load issue.
To me, Frontier appears to have created the equivalent of the line at the Apple Store for another Apple new thinner lighter creation. A line that only happens as a result of an intentional temporary supply shortage. It has much less to do with demand.
It looks like there were hundreds of Elite Dangerous players who spent the better part of the day trying to connect so they could achieve the coveted "First Mapped by" tag (gold rush) and Frontier made sure everyone noticed (inadequate server allocation). You know the old saying, "all press is good press as long as they spell your name correctly". What better than a headline about how demand for your new product was so high.
For me, I could only connect a few times for a minute or two so I spent most of the day keeping an eye on a few of the "creators" spending their live streams playing competing games or trying to connect and talking about their favorite color. It was fairly hilarious.
Bottom line is manufacturing false demand for a new product doesn't work. If this was intentional or just poor planning, either way, Frontier's customers are owed yet another apology.
