Escape from Tarkov is more popular than ever, but hardly anyone can get onto the servers. What is behind the huge rush?
If you’ve just had the idea to play Escape From Tarkov again, you’re not alone. The hardcore shooter is currently experiencing its absolute heyday with unprecedented player numbers – for which the server was not prepared. The result: everyone wants to play, but no one can get in. What is behind the huge rush?
Queueing place 86,000
Whoever launches the Escape from Tarkov launcher has been facing incredible queues for days. At peak times, according to (AltChar), there are sometimes 86,713 other players in front of you in the virtual queue. Estimated waiting time? Even the launcher can’t calculate that anymore.
Although the CEO of Battlestate Games said in a developer podcast that a high number of players from old and new fans could be expected with the new patch and asked the community for patience, the rush seemed to be bigger than expected in the end.
Where is the rush coming from?
With the biggest update for Escape from Tarkov so far, the much anticipated map Lighthouse was added to the game on 12 December. You can admire it in action in the trailer for Patch 0.12.12:
At first, the update worked without any major problems – however, the new Lighthouse Map lacked some fine-tuning, which is why numerous bug fixes were added. Around the Christmas holidays, more and more start-up problems, synchronisation errors and crashes occurred.
According to the developers, the complexity of the update and the huge number of players was the deadly mixture – which is why a queue was introduced to let players onto the servers in a controlled manner. Now the developers have taken to Twitter again to announce that they are working on further solutions:
Dear players,
Our servers are currently overloaded, but this is not related to the Twitch Drops event we’re running. On the release of Patch 12.12 we had more CCU and the backend was more overloaded than now EscapefromTarkov
– Battlestate Games (@bstategames) January 2, 2022
The thread states that “just buying more servers” will not solve the problem. Instead, they are currently working on better hardware, software changes and back-end optimisation. It also stresses that the queues are only a temporary solution. Contrary to the assumptions of some players, the problems have nothing to do with the current Twitch drop event. Currently, the waiting times for the European servers are much more humane, but this should change again towards the evening.
Have you been able to play the new Lighthouse map yet? Have you also had to deal with absurdly long waiting times or other problems? Tell us about it in the comments
