Id Software's web-based
Quake Live opened its beta yesterday to a rush at the door. So "overwhelming" was demand, according to a team rep, that users who hope to get in have had to queue up.
"Tens of thousands" of users must now wait in line for the game while the team ensures the game can accommodate all players. "We apologize for the frustration a line causes, but it will be in place until we can scale and optimize our back-end to accommodate 'everyone',"
reads a community post on the
Quake Live site. "This is our top priority right now and when we get to that point, there will be no queue."
"There are so many things that can affect traffic to a site, and like many online games or services during launch, we got slammed."
The high-volume response to
Quake Live has also caused a few bugs -- some players found themselves kicked back into the queue once downloading a plug-in, and others got looped into repeating necessary starting missions, for example.
As a temporary solution, the team disabled reporting of games other than training games into the ranking database, one of
Quake Live's social features. The team aims to return the full reporting as soon as possible.
"We're trying to walk a fine line with this project, in that we're running a backend system more like an MMO than a FPS; but we're not charging you $60 up front to help offset our costs or charging a monthly fee to play," says the community post.
"Hopefully, it then makes sense to everyone that we need to be responsible with the costs of our infrastructure and grow or optimize as demand warrants. We're in this process now."
