I was stuck in the very long queue for an upcoming online game (like a few thousands in front of me) and the reasoning for that is they need to stress the server so they can optimise it and the queue and then have servers ready for the release date. It’s always like that during betas, stress events and release dates. Before the release day, any queue is justified by ‘we need players to test the server for us’ and after the release day the justification is that ‘we didn’t expect so many players’.
Buy why do you need real people to connect to your server? If DDoS can overwhelm the server then why can’t you use it to test it and treat it as fake players that stress your server?
In: Technology
DDoS is very different from legitimate traffic and will not reveal bottlenecks or performance issues that legitimate traffic may encounter.
There are other methods of creating simulated traffic but it is dependent on the developer accurately predicting what the user traffic will be like and things can easily be overlooked.
So, to make sure that they haven’t missed anything, after many tests behind closed doors using simulated traffic, the developers will invite the public in for a stress test with real user traffic.
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Launch day is different too. The resources the developer allocates are based on what they predict they’ll need and not much more because more costs money. If the playerbase greatly exceeds that prediction they often cannot just “press button for more servers” to solve it, especially if the launch day rush uncovers a new bottleneck that even the stress test was too small to find.
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