Bethesda has promised players of The Elder Scrolls Online a "lag-free" experience at launch with overflow servers being readied in order to avoid the issues which often plague such game releases.
In an update on the game's website, Bethesda said the game's beta testing had allowed the publisher to optimise its online architecture to allow "millions of players from Europe (and beyond)… play on our North American server and experience ESO as it was designed—without latency or lag problems."
Bethesda continued:
"We will make sure that no matter where you live, every player in North America, Europe, Oceania and many places beyond, will have a polished, lag-free launch experience. Based on the existing number of our beta signups and because we anticipate that the ESO community will continue to grow after launch, we plan to add capacity to keep up with demand in both our North American and European datacenters.
"The North American and European megaservers will first be hosted in North America. This gives us a more efficient way to address any platform issues that may arise at launch. After the initial launch phase is over, we will move the European megaserver to the European datacenter – but this will be a seamless migration for users, without additional downloads, logins or action required.
"And just to be fully prepared, we are adding overflow servers in the event we get even more players on day one than we are now forecasting. If player demand overwhelms our planned capacity and a queue has to be formed, we will offer waiting players the option to begin playing right away on an overflow server. The overflow server is meant to be a temporary place where you can begin your adventure as you normally would – gain experience, items, achievements, etc. The character you create and everything gained as you temporarily play on an overflow server will transfer back with you when you log in the next time on the main megaserver.
"While you’ll still be able to group on the overflow servers, other social features like PvP or access to your friends list and guild will be unavailable during that play session – but we want to offer this option to allow players to get into the game quickly, create a character and start to enjoy ESO without delay. This way, you can log in and play, and when the queue shrinks, you can switch to the megaserver and continue to play with the character you created."
It seems the company is determined to avoid the problems faced by titles such as SimCity, which will soon be getting an offline mode, and Diablo 3 when they launched and players were unable to gain access due to overloaded servers.
The Elder Scrolls Online is set for release on PC on April 4th with the PS4 and Xbox One editions coming in June; the game's final round of beta testing begins today and the title will cost $60 with a monthly $15 subscription fee after a 30 day free trial.
