Age of Conan: message from the Database Administrator

It appears that the poor performance of todays technical test was intended. Posted by the Database Administrator on the Age of Conan Beta forums:

"Just a heads up, today's tech test was anything but normal. So the server lag you experienced, while not normal, was useful to Funcom.

I appreciate everyone taking the time to log in and test out the tradepost functionality. This test identified a bottleneck with how the searches are performed which will be addressed in the coming days.

If it were not for everyone, participating and stressing the searches this issue would not have been found until after launch. The test environments you were all working with were intentionally configured to simulate 3, 2 and 1 years worth of production data all in one go. As a result, the searches could generate a hang condition with the database which resulted in server lag, the inability to log in and the inability to create a character.

Please, understand that the performance problems are not typical and are not within the current beta builds."

When i had first received my beta invite the first thing i had told myself was "Don't expect this to work for you". While in truth the game really did not work for me, I'm pretty content with what i got out of this beta. The most obvious reason for being happy about it is that i now know where my computer stands in relation to this game and what sort of hard-ware i will need to purchase, the other being that, hey, i helped them make a better game.

And chances are this will not be the last test i will get to participate in.