Dear Gameforge, announcing OBT launch less than 2 hours before it launches is a TERRIBLE move. That's not how it's supposed to be. The announcement should be made at least 1-2 days ahead of time, so that everyone can start playing at the same time. If you announce it 1 hour before the servers go live, only people who just happened to be online at that time will be able to know about it and start playing as soon as the servers go up. Also, there's the issue of people losing out on the opportunity to snatch unique in-game names because you didn't inform them ahead of time, and just posted the noticed 1-2 hours before the servers went up. I also feel bad for people with slow download, as they will take more time to get online and also lose out on snatching good usernames, and possibly guildname as well.
I won't be playing anyway, so I don't care, but people who will play are gonna be severely disappointed once they find out there was a "ninja" announcement and they lost out on the chance of getting an early start.
Very bad move, Gameforge... I have two theories why you decided to make such a short announcement:
a) You thought "the sooner, the better" without thinking it through,
b) You were afraid that if more people get informed about OBT launch date/time, then there'd be too much traffic for your servers to handle, so you decided to make a short notice to lesses the influx of people right at the start.
Anyway, neither of those are good for the players. You goofed up, Gameforge.
