Will Collector Edition Members ? DEV or Community Rep!

[Validas]

Antipika is right. They will start with a small group in alpha, add a few more in early beta, and slowly thottle up the number of concurrent logins as they get closer to open beta...

This does sound like standard procedure, but I think I recall reading they intended to use the alpha period for stress testing the servers. Wouldn't that require a large number of players? Just curious.

[Molly_Millions]

This does sound like standard procedure, but I think I recall reading they intended to use the alpha period for stress testing the servers. Wouldn't that require a large number of players? Just curious.

not really. they have a couple routes they could take. they could, as you point out, just open the flood gates right off the bat. have all the servers open and let everyone try them out. But they'd do so at the risk of pissing of everyone in the alpha that end up having log in trouble. In that case, SE would end up with a large number of frustrated alpha testers. They could also have a large number of alpha servers open, and limit the areas you can go to, which would require fewer alpha testers. Most likely though, they'll limit the number of servers and the number of areas you can go to, thus requiring even fewer alpha testers. This way if things go bad there are less frustrated alpha testers and less people to spread bad press.