(08-25-2013, 01:33 PM)jheld Wrote: Just as an addendum, I don't think this happens with every MMO launch; Old Republic didn't experience any major connectivity or downtime when it came out. Â I think Guild Wars 2 was fairly stable as well.
It's a popular 'defense' to say that every MMO experiences outages on release day, but in my experience that was primarily a WoW thing and due in no small part to a far bigger population. Â
I'm not saying that they're not 'justified' in experiencing some problems, but I think in their case with prior working knowledge of what an MMO release takes (FFXI and FFXIV before ARR) they have less of an excuse. Â Bringing down a server once is fine, bringing it down repeatedly for the same issue becomes problematic. Â This stage is critical for Square-Enix to prove that they've learned the mistakes of the past and corrected for them, even more so because there will be a subscription involved. Â Companies such as IGN, Gamespot, and others are playing right now as well and these problems will be reflected in their reviews. Â
Even the legendary issues of Diablo 3 were corrected after a few hours of maintenance. Â I would rather FFXIV be down for one large, six hour chunk than down 3-4 times at 1-2 hours each time.
LOL what?
You're joking right?
I was in the SWTOR Beta, and I played Early Access and then played the game afterward for several months. Â I suppose no one here remembers the Taris Bug that struck during Early Access? Â I didn't get to play at all for most of it because my character was stuck in a bunker on Taris (which was, what, a level 30ish zone for Sith?) for the bulk of the Early Access time. Â My mistake in taking her inside a building to log out (for the rested XP) resulted in my game chain crashing repeatedly when I would try to log back into her. Â I couldn't even stay connected long enough to hit her Emergency Fleet Pass.
But the best part of it was Bioware/EA's response. Â First they denied that it was even occurring, and deleted and locked any threads that asked for help or complained. Â They also closed any and all tickets from players asking to be moved off the planet. Â Then they acknowledged that it was an issue, and told players to resubmit the tickets, but with special keywords to get them moved. Â Then after that happened, those tickets were closed with canned responses from "droids" and the characters still weren't moved. Â The only reason why I was able to save my character is that several players banded together and figured out a quick and dirty fix - that is, log in and inch your character towards the door as you repeatedly crash. Â Just keep at it. Â Because once your character was no longer inside, you'd be okay. Â And it worked for me (after spending an hour chain crashing in between tiny bits of connected play where I'd nudge my character towards the door using the w key), but for thousands of other players, they completely missed out on Early Access because Bioware didn't fix the bug until the very end of it.
They also had servers go down and high queues. Â Not to this extent, but they anticipated the high interest where Square has not. Â But at least Square acknowledges when they have fucked up. Â Bioware/EA simply ignored players who had issues.
Rift had problems. Â There were graphical bugs even during Early Access (one that stands out in particular to me was a problem with a particular vegetation/bush placeable that was fairly common in the Guardian starting area. Â If you zoomed in too close while playing on a system with a Radeon card, your computer would freak out and slow to a crawl as the bush spiraled into infinity and beyond!). Â There were connection issues, and servers did crash. Â The difference between EA/Bioware and Trion is that Trion bent over backwards to help their players, were always super nice and made you feel like they cared. Â So even though the engine is badly optimized for my computer (it's really hard for me to play for long periods because it hurts my eyes, the FPS is so low) and I find it really grindy, I still have better memories of that game than I do of SWTOR.
And let's not forget WoW. Â WoW's servers weren't stable for months after launch. Â Thank god there were no raids starting out (I mean, unless you count Scholo, UBRS, and Strat, which you shouldn't) or things would have been even crazier. Â And the bugs...my god the bugs...I've only heard about them second-hand. Â Things like the zeppelins and boats dropping you in the middle of the trip between continents, and you either fell through the world repeatedly or landed in some random zone. Â Even later, during expansion periods, there were issues. Â When Wrath dropped, server stability was so bad that I made a habit of logging out in Silvermoon on my Priest (which was on the Outland world server) instead of in Orgrimmar or Undercity because the world server would crash repeatedly. Â Later on, during ICC, the instance servers crashed repeatedly during high population times because so many people were trying to do the raid.
I'll grant you that Cata's launch was fairly smooth, but since it will forever have my hate, I don't really care. Â That expansion was horrible. Â May it die in a fire.
MoP has had all kinds of issues. Â The launch itself was fairly smooth, but quests didn't work (so you'd be stuck and couldn't progress further in the storyline), and man..you should see the bugs on the PTR. Â Every time we test something, there's an issue.
Please don't take this to mean that I'm not upset and angry. Â I am really fucking frustrated right now. Â But it's unfair to say that no other MMO launch has had issues. Â Every one that I've been a part of has had issues.
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