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Pathfinder Online gears up for a stress test
The early access period of Pathfinder Online has been delayed a little bit, but the game is still moving forward, and that means opening up for stress testing. On September 20th the game's current alpha client will be receiving an update for a variety of game mechanics; following that, the servers will open their doors on September 22nd for all players who have Open, Early, Explorer, or Alpha access. This means that more people than ever will be allowed to fire up the game and start playing. Access will be provided on a rolling basis, chiefly to prevent a huge rush of people from all attempting to log into the game at the exact same moment. The goal, as with any stress test, is to ensure that the system can handle itself under severe loads. The official update offers more details on what's coming for the 22nd as well as mechanical changes players can look forward to when the test version goes live.
Why WildStar's name reservations were screwed up
So WildStar's name reservation system didn't work quite right. It's working now, but when it went live it wasn't working at all, and for a first-come-first-served thing that's kind of a catastrophic problem. Compensation has been announced, but why did everything go wrong? Carbine's director of operations posted in the forums about how things went from bad to worse and where the breakdowns in communication took place. The short version is that it started when a big information drop introduced a lot of new assets to the site, causing even more load than was expected for the page when the name service went up. After that was handled, however, another problem surfaced with the site's feedback, leading to what is described as the server performing what amounts to a DDoS attack against itself. And once that was fixed, another problem surfaced. If you'd like to see the whole breakdown in detail to understand how everything got messed up, take a look at the full post on the official forums.
