Gamescom 2023: Wayfinder Interview - Launch, Transparency, and Tanking Some Big Numbers

mmorpg.com:

For a quirky MMO that nobody had heard of until The Game Awards 2022, Wayfinder has done something exceptional. The title from Austin developers Airship Syndicate and publisher Digital Extremes slipped into Early Access on 15 August. After a brief hiatus between beta tests and something of a social media storm, the colorful adventure set out to blow us all away. It then proceeded to break in spectacular fashion.

We got a chance to talk to AJ Lasaracina, Director of Marketing and Engagement at Airship Syndicate, while at Gamescom 2023. We talked about what exactly happened, how you handle a launch that nobody predicted, and how the crew behind this title felt about the first few days of the launch.

AJ confirmed, as if it’s news, that the team is feeling, well: 

“Bad. Yeah. So, we responded to the launch challenges that happened immediately. As of 5 days after Early Access launch, we’ve been non-stop working with Digital Extremes in terms of servers, infrastructure logging in. There are so many issues that we have to overcome.”

Wayfinder hit Early Access on 15 August 2023 and pretty much instantly broke servers. While the team behind this well liked MMO did perform beta tests and were definitely watching the social storm, they had no idea quite how popular Wayfinder would be. Despite the fact that it will eventually come to storefronts in a full free-to-play form, players seemed to want to pay and play early.

“ Yes, it comes with being a studio that's new, but it also comes with being a studio that just didn't understand the demand,” AJ tells us. Even after the first few days of demand and constant server queues, AJ estimated players levels to be something around, “20,000 to 25,000 people looking to play.” The game might