When Pocketpair announced that they had sold 1 million copies of Palworld within 8 hours of its release, it was a cause for the team to celebrate. It's a wonderful achievement to have as an Indie Developer, but it came as no surprise to me that the servers had difficulty handling the high volume of traffic if they weren't familiar with the territory.
I believe that rigorous testing before releasing the game would have been beneficial in avoiding server overload and ensuring a smoother launch. This is because testing would have allowed the developers to identify and address potential issues before the public got involved. It would have given them a chance to fix any bugs or glitches, optimize the server capacity, and prepare for the large influx of users.
However, it's also worth noting that no amount of testing can completely guarantee that everything will go smoothly on launch day. There will always be unexpected challenges and issues that arise, and it's up to the developers to be prepared for them. In my opinion, testing is just one aspect of the overall process that determines whether or not a game crosses the finish line properly.
While implementing testers may have improved the chances of a smoother launch for Palworld, it's hard to say for sure whether or not it would have completely avoided server overload. Nonetheless, it certainly could've helped iron out a few wrinkles.
