Microsoft starts rolling out Windows 11's biggest update for 2023 today. The Copilot artificial intelligence sidebar gets top billing, but there’s plenty more to pore over in the release.
06.09.2023 - 20:27 / mmorpg.com
For a quirky MMO that nobody had heard of until The Game Awards 2022, Wayfinder has done something exceptional. The title from Austin developers Airship Syndicate and publisher Digital Extremes slipped into Early Access on 15 August. After a brief hiatus between beta tests and something of a social media storm, the colorful adventure set out to blow us all away. It then proceeded to break in spectacular fashion.
We got a chance to talk to AJ Lasaracina, Director of Marketing and Engagement at Airship Syndicate, while at Gamescom 2023. We talked about what exactly happened, how you handle a launch that nobody predicted, and how the crew behind this title felt about the first few days of the launch.
AJ confirmed, as if it’s news, that the team is feeling, well:
“Bad. Yeah. So, we responded to the launch challenges that happened immediately. As of 5 days after Early Access launch, we’ve been non-stop working with Digital Extremes in terms of servers, infrastructure logging in. There are so many issues that we have to overcome.”
Wayfinder hit Early Access on 15 August 2023 and pretty much instantly broke servers. While the team behind this well liked MMO did perform beta tests and were definitely watching the social storm, they had no idea quite how popular Wayfinder would be. Despite the fact that it will eventually come to storefronts in a full free-to-play form, players seemed to want to pay and play early.
“ Yes, it comes with being a studio that's new, but it also comes with being a studio that just didn't understand the demand,” AJ tells us. Even after the first few days of demand and constant server queues, AJ estimated players levels to be something around, “20,000 to 25,000 people looking to play.” The game might have made a bunch of noise online, but MMOs tend to make assumptions based on a range of measurements. AJ confirmed that Airship did, “have launch models and you have projections, you have ideas and like those were out the window 15 seconds into the game.”
One of those models comes from preregistrations or pre purchases. With Early Access, Wayfinder didn’t have an opportunity to understand how many people were ready to put up and play, meaning Airship Syndicate only found out about the problems when their servers face a torrent of requests. The number of players wasn’t the only issue according to AJ.
“We were basically requesting too much player data at the same time, which was talking back to the server, and it was just being bogged down and slowed down.”
Not all the issues Wayfinder hit were entirely down to the Early Access rush, however. Some were a consequence of design decisions taken by the team, and still the overwhelming player demand.
“One of the things we want to do
Microsoft starts rolling out Windows 11's biggest update for 2023 today. The Copilot artificial intelligence sidebar gets top billing, but there’s plenty more to pore over in the release.
Microsoft announced that the Xbox Digital Broadcast is returning for Tokyo Game Show 2023 after last year's debut. The Xbox Digital Broadcast is set to air on Tokyo Game Show’s official YouTube channel and select Xbox social channels in Japanese, English, Korean, Simplified Chinese, Traditional Chinese, Malay, Thai, Vietnamese, Indonesian, French, German, and Castilian Spanish starting September 21st at 6 PM JST / 9 AM UTC / 2 AM PDT. The broadcast will also be available with Japanese Sign Language (JSL), Australian Sign Language (AusLan), and audio descriptions in both Japanese and English.
Hereditary is no longer A24's highest-grossing horror movie, now that Talk to Me, Danny and Michael Philippou's feature-length debut, has overtaken Ari Aster's creepy chiller at the US box-office.
Frankfurt, GERMANY – Friday, August 25, 2023 – Game development studio Gunzilla Games has unveiled its first gameplay trailer for its upcoming game, Off The Grid. The gameplay trailer, which made its debut at Gamescom 2023, gives players a first-hand look at the ground-breaking mechanics, stunning environments, and unforgettable characters behind the next-generation battle royale game masterminded by visionary filmmaker Neill Blomkamp.
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Earlier this week, we learned that Ice-T himself will be making an appearance in Payday 3, courtesy of a reveal during gamescom Opening Night Live 2023. But the extent of his involvement in the game was still a little murky…until we sat down with the Payday 3 team at gamescom to clear things up.
It has been 16 years since STALKER: Shadow of Chernobyl. That means it’s also been 16 years since I last played a STALKER game. I admired the original but never loved its wonky, ambitious heart enough to explore its two follow-ups. But despite that decade-plus time away from the series, when I sat down to play STALKER 2: Heart of Chornobyl at gamescom 2023 it felt like I’d never been away. As if reactivating a long-dormant muscle, I found its creeping pace and scrappy gunfights instantly familiar. That’s good news for devout fans of the cult PC series, but perhaps more of a challenge for the potential legion of newcomers that will arrive at launch via Game Pass.
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Apple's iPhone 15 and iPhone 15 Pro launch is less than a month away and details related to the flagship models keep pouring in. Apple is yet to send out press invites for its special event but we have previously heard that the announcement could take place in the first half of September. It was initially coined by Mark Gurman that Apple could host its event on September 12 or 13. The analyst later pointed to a September 12 launch ahead of Apple's official statement. Now, another leaker corroborates earlier rumors of the event.
Remedy Entertainment has come a long way since the original Alan Wake released on Xbox 360 way back in 2010. In the intervening 13 years, Remedy has released Control, built up a universe, and fully established itself as one of gaming's sharpest and most ambitious big-budget developers.
PAYDAY 3 won two awards at Gamescom 2023 in the Best PC Game and Most Entertaining Game categories. Almir Listo, Global Brand Director and Head of Community at Starbreeze, said: