I have to say I didn’t think that Epic’s grand plan for launching the Fortnite rocket would be to simply say “WE ARE LAUNCHING THE ROCKET NOW,” but that’s precisely what’s happened.

Yesterday, Fortnite players were greeted with a message that conveys that “blast off” will take place today in a one-time-only-don’t-miss-it event at 10:30 AM PT/1:30 PM ET where the rocket will launch across every game simultaneously. After that? It’s anyone’s guess, but I’m guessing it won’t nuke an area or come back with aliens in tow right away.

I am still trying to wrap my head around exactly how Epic is doing this, launching a rocket at a specific time across every single live match of the game, no matter the phase of the game. I’m not a developer, but this strikes me as a fairly difficult prospect to pull off.

I’m also worried about it going terribly wrong. First, there are the obvious concerns that you might be either A) dying, B) in the fight of your life, C) very, very far away from the skull base, D) stuck in the pre-lobby or E) forget about this tiny window of time entirely, given that it’s going to be what, probably a minute at most for this thing to launch?

And then there are technical concerns as well. Epic is telling pretty much its entire 125 million strong Fortnite playerbase that they should all be logging in and all be in a game at one specific moment in time, a moment they cannot miss or they’ll never get to see it again (minus YouTube highlights). That strikes me as something that seems destined to crash the servers in a game that has been, shall we say, less than stable as of late, and I’d put more money on servers melting down than this rocket actually making it airborne when it’s supposed to.

Epic
Fortnite

Clearly, the ideal way to watch the rocket launch would have been in a private Playground match where you don’t have to worry about fighting or dying if you don’t want to. I am pretty sure that was Epic’s original plan, yet they have shelved Playground until at least next week, so now that can’t happen. As such, I’m probably just going to play it safe and watch the rocket launch via Ninja’s stream, as I’d say there’s a better chance of him being alive and not screwing this up than me doing it in my own game.

If you do want to watch it live? Clearly in a perfect world it would be sick to watch it from inside/on top of the base itself. But I have to imagine that area is going to be positively swarming with people for this spectacle, which means there’s a good chance you could end up dying and missing the launch. You might want to try to position yourself on one of the hills to the south, north and east of the base. Or I suppose you could camp out on a Snobby rooftop. Get too much further out, and I’m not sure what the view is going to be like. Better safe than sorry, though I suppose, better alive than dead. This is a very…strange set of decisions to try to make, I have to say.

Given all the issues lately I really cannot imagine this is going to go off without a hitch, but hopefully it’s smooth sailing and we get to witness something historic. I’m probably going to play it safe by watching a stream, though that won’t save me from server woes. Get ready, and don’t forget it’s at 10:30 AM PT/1:30 PM ET. Watch the skies