Queues

It’s no secret that long queue times have plagued Rift since the beginning of Head Start. You can’t go to the Official Forums, Rift IRC, or most Rift related Twitter accounts and not read something about the excruciating wait times just to log into the servers. This can be extremely frustrating, especially if you just can’t wait to get in and play with your friends. I know this first hand, as I waited in a 6 hour queue on Thursday in order to join my guild after being Disconnected when my internet went out for a few minutes. Since then, the lines have moved along much faster than they were, but queue times can still be an issue. Don’t fret, though! I hope to shed some light in this post as to why queue times are not necessarily a bad thing, and some of the possible reasons they can get to be so long!

Population Caps

It’s no surprise that only a certain number of people can be logged into a server at a time. Because of this, population caps are the actual reason behind having a queue. What a lot of people don’t realize, is that this can actually be broken down to more than just total server population. When taking into account queues and population caps, you must remember that there are smaller “zone-caps” that also effect how many people can fit into a certain area on a server.

While the total server population cap may be set at a high number, each zone can only hold so many of that set number. During the first week or so after release, the starting areas and the level 10-20 areas are full at almost all times. Anyone that has tried to do the beginning quests the past few days, and especially the first day of head start, definitely saw first hand how crowded the game could get. With all of the players piling into these early zones, the queue wasn’t moving nearly as fast as most would have wanted it to. Think of these zones as the funnel into the game, and the funnel was backed up because they bulk of players were clogging it.

One final thought (and this is pure speculation) about both caps in general, is that they may have been set LOWER than what the server can actually handle comfortably. “Why,” you ask? Easy. The longer the queue, the more likely that someone who is not tied to a guild or group of players will go to a different, less populated server. This helps with distributing the population amongst the servers, and not just onto a few. If we had that many people trying to get all into one server in each day, barely anyone would get to play and the majority of players would leave all-together. If this is what happened, then I think it was a smart move my Trion. Again, this last part is pure speculation and is definitely not confirmed by Trion in any way, shape or form, but when you think about it, it makes a lot of sense.

No One’s Logging Out?

Most of the players did not help the situation. When it was announced by fellow guild and server members that there was a growing queue, players got creative. People were figuring out ways to stay in game while they had to AFK for extended periods of time. This included putting cell phones on the space bar, having a spouse or room mate hit the space bar when they walked by, and even auto-running into a corner.

This problem was quickly solved, though, as Trion patched in fixes for this problem. If you’re not actively pushing buttons at your keyboard, you will be logged out after 15 minutes of being AFK. Sorry folks, these tricks won’t work anymore. The fix couldn’t have been implemented at a better time. The queue sped up significantly after the patch.

The “Ooh…Shiny!” Syndrome

Whenever a new MMO launches, people flock in droves to check it out. With the ability to get into Head Start with as little as $5 down at GameStop, a lot of folks took advantage to see what Rift is all about. While we all hope that most of these people will stay – and I think a majority will – some will never log into the game again. This also goes back to people not wanting to wait in a queue, therefore most who are not tied to a group of players will decide to go to a less-populated server to enjoy the game.

Trion Didn’t Have Enough Servers!!!! /rage!!!!

This is a complaint I’ve been hearing, and I have to disagree. While it is confirmed by Trion themselves that they did not anticipate the sheer amounts of people trying to log in the first day, I don’t feel that they made any mistakes here. Knowing the correct number of servers to have at launch is a crap shoot. If you look at the history of major MMOs, there has been only ONE game to launch with the right amount of servers: Lord of the Rings Online. To this day, they are the only MMO that has not had to add or consolidate servers on Day 1. That’s it. NO ONE has guessed correctly. Remember that before you belittle Trion.

If you look at Warhammer Online, you’ll understand why you don’t want to have too many servers at launch. It is much better to have a queue on the first couple of days and slowly add servers to alleviate the problem, than it is to start with too many. In the case of Warhammer, it was by the end of the first week month (source) that they were consolidating some of their servers together and forcing people off the lower population realms. This caused the community to cry “The game is dead! They’re merging servers!” right off the bat. It was a downward spiral after that. While other factors contributed to their declining population, the need for server mergers right away caused many people to flee in panic. I feel Trion hit the nail on the head when it comes to fixing the problem: add servers slowly and let players even themselves out.

Is It Fixed?

For the most part: Yes. Trion has done everything in their power to lower the Queue times down to almost nothing. Remember, the first few days after launch are always the busiest. People take time off work to play. I know that at least a few of our guild mates actually used vacation time for the beginning of Head Start. As most have started to notice, after this weekend the majority of the Rift population has experienced almost nothing as far as waiting to get into game. This has come with much relief to the players.

I don’t think we’re fully done with seeing queues, though. When prime time hits, we will still see large amounts of people trying to log in at once. If you look at my earlier points though, with Population Caps being the biggest set-back, I don’t think we’ll have many more problems. The playerbase is spreading itself out amongst the zones now, and the zone-caps aren’t being hit as fast. I also believe that if Trion is using an artificially low cap, they will be raising it soon.

I feel all of this, and everything that has been done about it, just proves once more that Trion actually cares about their players. We pay their paychecks and they know it. They have never done anything even once to smite their players, or bite the hand that feeds them. I feel that Trion been the most responsive and caring towards their community than any other MMO company out there. They’ve been giving updates on the situation and what they’re doing to fix it from the get-go.

The queue times actually speak wonders of how the gaming community is viewing Rift. They are not a bad thing. It proves that the amount of players is healthy, and that means a strong future for the game itself. I, for one, was very optimistic as I sat in queue the other day, waiting to get in. It means that my new favorite game was going to be around for a long time to come. Yes, it was excruciating having to wait, especially as long as some of us did, but I trusted in Trion to do everything in their power eliminate, or at least relieve, the pain we were feeling. They delivered, as they always have in the past, and as I trust that they will in the future.

Maps!

Rift Dungeon List

Complete Instance Dungeon List in Rift

Instance Dungeon can shows levels in Rift. Are you looking for complete instance Dungeon list? Do you want to know the entire instance Dungeon in rift? Follow the Rift cheat which will show you the list of dungeons currently available in Rift and some rough difficulty indicators for each one.

Here are the all of the 5-man instances currently available in Rift:

Standard Difficulty Dungeons Available
Realm of the Fae (16-17) - Silverwood
Iron Tomb (18-19) - Freemarch
Darkening Deeps (22-23) - Gloamwood
Deepstrike Mines (25-26) - Stonefield
The Foul Cascade (29-30) - Scarlet Gorge
King's Breach (34-35) - Scarwood Reach
Runic Descent (39-40) - Moonshade Highlands
Fall of Lantern Hook (43-44) - Droughtlands
Abyssal Precipice (49-50) - Iron Pine
Charmer's Caldera (49-50) - Shimmersand

Expert Difficulty Dungeons Available
Realm of the Fae (50+) - Silverwood
Iron Tomb (50+) - Freemarch
The Foul Cascade (50+) - Scarlet Gorge
King's Breach (50+) - Scarwood Reach
Fall of Lantern Hook (50+ - Droughtlands
Darkening Deeps (50++) - Gloamwood
Deepstrike Mines (50++) - Stonefield
Runic Descent (50++) - Moonshade Highlands
Abyssal Precipice (50++) - Iron Pine
Charmer's Caldera (50++) - Shimmersand

Rift

Day 1

So its been a rough adventure here in the land of Rift.  Its a strange new world, things just dont seem like they should.  The world was torn apart, ripped to pieces by the evil Regulous.  I fought through enemies, lots of enemies, I grew stronger and faster, fighting on and on.  Our leader had a plan to tear open a rift in time to send us backwards to stop this all happening, but in order for this to happen, we needed to unleash yet more evil into this world. 

It was a chance we were willing to take. 


We started the machine, not sure what would be coming at us.  A wave of ghouls came through the rift, blood curdling screams leaving their mouths.  It was a bloody battle, guts and gore laying everywhere.  I started to rest when a loud roar came from the rift.  Regulous himself was battling his way through to our time.  I couldnt take him on, not now, i needed more power, more allies.  I looked at the technician, he gave me a nod and I charged straight at the rift, not knowing if our plan would work or not.