On March 20 at 21:00 UTC, the counter on Earth2 went to zero, thus enabling all users to purchase tiles from an otherwise locked country. Well, at least that was the intention. In reality, the launch left many frustrated and irritated, with some losing faith in the entire project.
These people were ready to hit the buy button at the exact moment of the launch, but then nothing happened. The servers were completely overloaded, and many could not even log into the system.
To let the servers cool down, the developers decided to launch a new timer an hour later, but alas, the same situation occured. A new timer this time set for 30 min. But still, the servers could not handle all the traffic.
One of the problems with this approach was, that people were confused over the many timers. What would happen after the timer reached zero? Would some of the bought tiles be cancelled? Why did the developers set so many timers in motion without informing users beforehand? How did some people actually manage to buy tiles in this period.
The community manager of Thomas Marcon did state, that they indeed were overwhelmed by the response. And he apologized for the server issues, stating that regarding next launch, they would do things a lot differently. Maybe they would allow people to buy tiles for 24 hours at the same price. And they might hand out special perks for those that did not get the chance to buy due to the server isues.
As time passed, the servers became functional, and prices started exploding. 24 hours later the prices had gone up more than 1000%. 1,66 million tiles were purchased within the first two minutes.
How will the problems of the Dubai Launch affect Earth2 going forward
The Dubai Launch has shown how massive the interest in Earth2 is becoming. So many people buying so many tiles, is extraordinary. Hopefully, the developers will learn from their mistakes, and give its users a better experience the next time.
Its detrimental to the succes of the platform that people don’t go away disappointed and angry, having anticipated this launch so much, having stayed up all night and deposited a lot of their hard-owned money into the Earth2 eco-system. These people deserve a better experience.
On the other hand, Earth2 is still early in development, and the team is in a tremendous learning proces. Few would be able handle this amount of server stress. It is understandable that mistakes will be made and that the team is overwhelmed by the magnitude of interest.
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