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DDO/Turbine sets new standards
kelemvor4
Member Posts: 3
For downtime. I'm just completely floored, most people are totally unable to login to the game since last friday, and for all appearances they haven't done anything about it. I realize most people that play games like this are hobbyists, but the people collecting all our monthly fees seem to be treating availability like a hobby too. I played starwars galaxies for several years, and world of warcraft since it was released, neither of those games has had any downtime on this magnitude (especially bad since swg is pretty well known for being plagued with problems). Ordinarily I'd go gripe on the ddo official forum but it seems they turned those off according to the brief text you get in the launcher when your login fails!
I certianly hope SOMEONE in thier it department lost thier job over this massive outage.
Something interesting I learned throughout all of this, is that they have NO support available outside standard business hours. The only thing you can do is send an email, and wait for someone to come in on monday. There's no number to call for support at all, and they shut the online chat off at night and on weekends (conveniently when most people play).
-Kelemvor
Comments
DDO = Dungeons & Dragons Offline!
yes the patch downtime was bad but it only lasted 24 hours for me, I've played WoW and saying that they don't have downtimes there is ridiculous, sure they may last less but they are a LOT more frequent.
Have played:
UO, WOW, COH/V, EQ2
Currently playing:
Age of Conan (EU)
-Kelemvor
Constant Login issues and waiting in a Que, as well as servers down.
Well ... it happened in WoW right at release. The server I was on basically broke the evening of release, and Blizzard took it offline for almost 4 days, told people it would be several days and advised people to reroll (which I did). So it has happened in other games.
I think what we have here is a combination of (1) new patch messing things up (like the new AH), (2) more people checking out the game with the new patch in and WoW being in a stagnant state with TBC delayed for a few months and (3) low support staff on the weekend. All three of those things made for a perfect storm this past weekend for DDO.
You'll see prolonged downtime in any MMO you play.
What makes the recent DDO downtime so significant:
1. It happened right after the release of the much anticipated yet utterly broken (with glitches) Mod 3.
2. It happened on the eve of NWN2.
To make matters worse, DDO doesn't have a huge playerbase to begin with.
Turbine is looking at some rocky waters in the coming months.
I cannot wait for NWN2. I believe this will be the nail in the coffin for this poorly developed thing they call a game.
DDO is already dead, it's just that Turbine doesn't know it yet.
And yes if you want to play a real D&D style game buy NWN2, that's the real deal, leave this crap to rot.
well.. looks like after a weekend of downtime, then some "planned" maintenance (that was announced at 1am the day of the maintenance) and a patch.... STILL DOWN!
It's actually humorous to me at this point.
-Kelemvor
Kelemvor is right ...I too have played both WoW and SWG for several years and never after the release of either game have I experienced this much continued downtime. Sure WoW at the start had several days of server issues same goes for SWG. DDO has been out for about 9 months now and I am pretty sure not many other games have been down due to "network issues" for several days this long into its life.
Aside from its network issues why is everyone pissing on this game so much? Seems to me to have alot more depth and versatility character wise than some of the other mmo's. Seems to run good and the graphics are nice. The population is fine, I think and I am on one of the least populated servers from what I hear. There is more than enough people to run raids/quests with. The only thing I thought the game was missing was pvp and an auction block and they now have that. I have heard some WoW players complain that everything is instance based ...but isn't anything worth doing in WoW also?
I have heard people complain about there only being 10 levels (now 12) in ddo and you can max out a character in about a week and a half. But isn't it close to the same with Wow? I also like NWN and I am sure NWN2 will be awesome, but how can you hate DDO so bad and think NWN2 is gonna finish DDO off?? Its based off the same system. I guess you could say the same for Diablo 3 is going to kill WoW. Why would they, they are totally different games? Sure I admit I didn't like DDO the first time I played it either but I was expecting something totally different. After I got over that and tried it again several months later, I got it!
I have never seen downtime like this on any official/retail servers for any MMO.
Nor have i ever seen so many critical technical problems actually make it to an official release.
I've seen it in player-run/private servers, but that hardly counts.
The MMO genre has become too competetive for this crap. Players are impatient and demanding. The market is flooded with MMOs, and if players can't play one they'll move to another. It's not that DDO is a bad game, it's just that Turbine is hell bent on fucking it up.
Hopefully once it gets canned (6-12 months from now) a decent gaming company will pick up the franchise.
Because seriously, the D&D system is PERFECT for an MMO. And the fact that Turbine couldn't pull it off says a lot about their company.
"DDO/Turbine sets new standards"
Yep, they sure did. "How to ruin a golden IP that should have been a blockbuster success." Wonder if they would like their trophy, now?
Yeah I think Turbine screwed the pooch, too, but in reality I also don't thinking making D&D work for computers is easy, whether online or offline. It's a hard system to transpose into a computer game, and the more adaptations you make to do that, the more you alienate the D&D crowd. Honestly I think that it's actually harder to make a good D&D MMO than it is to make an MMO based on an existing computer game world, like WoW or Warhammer or whatever. Now that doesn't excuse Turbine and Atari for the design decisions they made for DDO (which would ensure it would not be very popular), but even with different decisions made it would have either been slow and plodding a la the D&D rules or adapt those rules and tick off the D&D base. It's not the best platform ruleset for an MMO, imo.