Good going Square !

[Kes13a]

I think 15,000 people a minute is the root cause.. maybe my thoughts on it, but let just blame QA instead lol

[LianaThorne]

I think 15,000 people a minute is the root cause.. maybe my thoughts on it, but let just blame QA instead lol

They know their game population and how many people usually log on for the release of patches. Yes, 15k people trying to use it at the same time is the cause but that doesn't excuse not taking more measures to stress test the servers properly to account for the high population the game has.

[Jojoya]

They know their game population and how many people usually log on for the release of patches. Yes, 15k people trying to use it at the same time is the cause but that doesn't excuse not taking more measures to stress test the servers properly to account for the high population the game has.

How do you suggest they accomplish such a massive stress test with their available staff and equipment?

Even WoW would fail at identifying problems during their stress tests on their PTR with thousands of users participating.

[LianaThorne]

How do you suggest they accomplish such a massive stress test with their available staff and equipment?

Even WoW would fail at identifying problems during their stress tests on their PTR with thousands of users participating.

I'm not a dev or an expert and won't claim to be or answer anything related to it. Just saying, there should be some way to stress test this stuff. If they can't, put a big warning in bold to warn people that it runs the risk of their characters being stuck in other DCs. That way, no one is shocked or angry that they can't go home or potentially lose access to their characters temporarily. It's a risk they're informed about.

If you'd like to answer your own question though, be my guest.

[Shibi]

How do you suggest they accomplish such a massive stress test with their available staff and equipment?

As well as just using math, capacity tests are usually automated to verify the calculations. You use a daemon that properly simulates a user doing it and you push that to the breaking point. Of course, that means that a 100% valid QA environment is available, something that the zero-bug showed doesn't exist.