Some of the comments about Evo are a bit inaccurate.
Yes, the date for release was a week earlier than I meant. However, it wouldn't have changed anything. The lobby would not have significantly changed and the problems would have been the same.
The main issue with the evo release was the fact that the lobby system collapsed, not the spring server (although the traffic did bring it down for about 5 minutes), but the lobby system itself.
Weblobby was by far the most equipped lobby to handle the issues as it automated much of the process. Unfortunately, the lobby situation in spring is, at best, ill equipped to handle that sort of traffic.
Games of 50 or 100 specs of people who had no idea how to play emerged, and game rooms were chaos.
Interestingly enough, the game itself was pretty much a-ok. There were a couple of snafus, but nothing major. As I have stated repeatedly, the whole ordeal shone a spotlight on just how bad the spring lobby situation is. Unfortunately, everyone would rather work on their own pet lobby than work on a single lobby that would alleviate the issues.
Another piece of the fail-puzzle was that the spads servers weren't set up for total nubcakes. As a result there was some confusion surrounding that as well. At the time it was also set up for springies (like ZK), but the situation on springie was arguably worse, because springie was/is even more noob unfriendly).
Bottom line is this: If you decide to have "everything" ready before release as
Parzival said, the release will never happen. The important parts are the intimate places where the noob interacts with the UI. Be it the lobby, or the automagical hosts. The game itself is interestingly the least of the issues.
TL;DR - Make your lobby+Hosting the most simple and user friendly experience possible, and you will likely do well.
