Dodgeball is live. As of today it's fully available on Solaris Early Access, and this is the update we promised when we pulled it on launch day.
What Happened
When Early Access launched on June 27th, Dodgeball had to be taken down within hours. The matchmaking system was failing to correctly assemble and start matches. Players were queuing but games weren't firing. We caught it quickly, but not quickly enough to fix it before launch, and we weren't willing to leave a broken experience up. So we pulled it.
We know that was frustrating, especially for anyone who was specifically there for Dodgeball. It was not the launch we wanted for it and we're sorry it happened.
What's Changed
The matchmaking logic has been rewritten and tested. The core issue was in how the queue was handling player readiness and team assignment before a match started. Under certain conditions it would stall rather than resolve, which left players sitting in a queue that was never going to go anywhere.
That's fixed. We've also added some additional safeguards so that if something similar occurs in future, it fails gracefully rather than leaving players stuck waiting indefinitely. We're confident in how it's behaving now, but if you run into anything while playing, let us know in Discord.
How It Plays
If you missed the breakdown before launch, here's the quick version.
Dodgeball is team vs team. The queue starts counting down once there are 2 or more players in. Each team can fill up to 8 players, for a full match of 16 players, 8 a side. Get hit and you're out. Last team standing takes the round.
Matches are short and punchy. There's no loot, no loadout, no setup time. You queue, you play, it's over in a few minutes. It's a good break from Cataclysm if you want something more contained and less of a time commitment.
We're still planning modifiers, rule twists on the standard format, for a mid-Early-Access or post-launch update. More on those when they're closer.
Jump in at playsolaris.net.
