The launch is about par, because no MMO is designed with server and network architecture to handle the very abnormal loads of the first week, when every player is trying to play for extended periods at the same time -- not something that is normal after the launch phase, so it isn't how the architecture is designed. The best they can do is throttle and optimize, but it's always going to be rough, really.
This is somewhat exacerbated by the heavy reliance on instances, which is putting pressure on the instance networking architecture -- more pressure than it can bear comfortably, it seems.
Having said that, the game was playing fine until about 15 minutes ago when eastern NA woke up on a Sunday morning and logged in en masse -- causing massive error 90000 messages and people being booted from servers without being able to log in to due to said error. It's par for the course with an MMO launch -- you just have to accept that the game is going to be wonky and difficult to play at times during the first week when everyone wants to play at the same time.
I was able to play at 4:05am (5 minutes after launch my time). Created my character in phase 4 so all I had to do was login and play. Emergency maintenance happens. If you understood the infrastructure involved, then you wouldn't really call this a failure at all.
For ppl that had the chance / had time to play beta 4 it may be smooth.
Others that have not chars to carry on, there are servers where the guild choosed to play that were never available during the last 30h. And i doubt will be available as the launch happends and more ppl carry on. This is the early access, ffs. If now it's not working, when all will pour in, what will happend?
Originally posted by Pewpsockemz You are crazy. Everything worked great when I played yesterday. Get out of here.
The servers were down for maintenance (on launch day - that's bad) twice. And we are talking down for hours, not minutes.
There are people who can't create characters as servers are locked.
These are the things that are taken into account as far as judging how smooth the games launch - they are not judged how well it worked for pewpsockemz.
sorry, the world does not revolve around one user.
This was not a smooth launch, it wasn't a complete failure either. But to say it was problem free would be delusional.
Sorry dude, but I'm gonna have to agree with Pewpsockemz here.
Not because of the content of his post, but because of his name.
I am thoroughly enjoying myself and having been around for many launches I knew problems were to be expected. However, those of you saying Early Access = Beta/Stress Test, you are wrong. Thats what Open Beta is for. If I had to pick out something they did wrong, it was not having Open Beta until a week before the game came out and only having it for 3 days. They should have done it well before launch and after having all the problems that they experienced, they should of done more, to make sure this didnt happen when Early Access started. Unfortunately, they didnt and now those of us who pre ordered are paying for it, quite literally.
Originally posted by Syno23 Guild Wars 2's launch was pretty much flawless.
Um... the servers crapped out quite hard initially and had lots of issues particularly for the first 6 hours or so. Add in the fact the 'market/shop/whatever you want to call it' wasn't actually functioning correctly and working for the first 2 weeks, and entire zones were broken with events not functioning at all getting stuck, I'd far from call it flawless.
Though yeah, FF14 launch is for sure on the rougher side of things. Not the absolute worst but for sure having plenty of issues. Though it is launch and its for an MMo, so its really not THAT much of a shocker for me. While I do think it could be better, I do expect things to go wrong.
I saw that too. I was like what? They had the same issues here. It was a horrible launch.
Sorry tho. But People have such short memories, it´s like you all smoking weed day in day out and got permanent memory damage or something. All forgotten about past and recent MMO launches already? Tjeez!
This launch is actually one of the best launches so far. And we are still in early Access mind you.
They had two emergency maintainances that fixed some Critical issues. They are communicating via various media, including the launcher itself. Which is far better than most other launches recently.
I so far had very little trouble, just last night that I ran into the Duty issue and just logged off, watch some TV and tried again this morning after maintainance and them fixing the Duty finder. All working fine now.
I so far had blast! :-)
This is not one of the best launch, the simple fact that you need to do instances in order to progress in the quests line, and that the Duty Finder is consistently bugged makes it a terrible launch.... and when you say : And we are still in early Access mind you. This is not a good thing, if they are struggling to keep the duty finder up with a limited user base, imagine when the gates open on launch day...
Worst launch in years for sure. I dont seem to recall anything having this bad of a launch since before Rift. I won't say it is the worst launch ever, but the fact that so many people are having problems accessing the game with the numerous errors is not good. The game itself is fine when you get in though from what I understand. I don't buy the "Its normal ,its an MMO launch" though. It is not 'expected" and nor should it be. MMOs are more prone to issues at launch then anything else, but that does not excuse them. If you are going to launch a game you had better have it working properly. I am fine with ques,some minor bugs in the game at launch, and even with balance issues..but the ability to access the game? No way. If you can't atleast reliably get into a que and wait for an hour to get in then there is a huge problem. You paid for the game; it had better work.
On the other hand I would not say the launch is a complete failure. It is most certainly far from it. I would not say it was a successful launch either though.
Originally posted by Syno23 Guild Wars 2's launch was pretty much flawless.
Um... the servers crapped out quite hard initially and had lots of issues particularly for the first 6 hours or so. Add in the fact the 'market/shop/whatever you want to call it' wasn't actually functioning correctly and working for the first 2 weeks, and entire zones were broken with events not functioning at all getting stuck, I'd far from call it flawless.
Though yeah, FF14 launch is for sure on the rougher side of things. Not the absolute worst but for sure having plenty of issues. Though it is launch and its for an MMo, so its really not THAT much of a shocker for me. While I do think it could be better, I do expect things to go wrong.
I saw that too. I was like what? They had the same issues here. It was a horrible launch.
If GW2's launch was horrible, then I dunno what you call the rest of the MMO launches in history. Abysmal? Atrocious? Beyond horrible?
GW2 had issues with the trading post. And it had server ques. Other than that the game was 100% playable, and while I wouldn't go as far as to call it 'flawless', to say / imply that FFXIV is somehow on par with how GW2 (or Rift, or TERA, or name any of the smoother MMO launches) is a downright joke.
FFXIV, is still having massive server problems. Entire regions crashing. Heck, as I'm typing my character just crashed out of east thanalan and is unable to log back in. Error 10102. Not to mention the issues with the Duty Finder (Which are tied to most of the major aspects of the game, even the ones that are soloable). Hell, I wish this game had overflows atm.
This game hasn't even been out a full weekend, and already the servers have gone done about as many times as GW2 has in it's entire existance. That should tell you something.
2. Early Access in general has only one purpose " Stressing the Game, Network and Servers out for Max "
If you really think buying early Access means to get you an advantage I must dissapoint you.
I see by your low post number you didn't get the "there is no middle ground, there is only fail or win" memo.
Hehe. I hear ya.
There are reasons I don't pre-order and "early access" MMOs anymore. These are just 2 of them.
Lol, oh yeah. Early access just means "Last Beta Test" really, even though people don't seem to realize that. I have accepted it and there you go. I just don't expect any MMO launch to be perfect. And I think SE had more people waiting for this game than they thought.
Smooth launches are rare and remembered. In 14 years or so of MMOing I can remember only a couple of launches I would call smooth. If you are not in the mood for hecktic, then dont plan on playing a new MMO 3-6 months after its released.
2. Early Access in general has only one purpose " Stressing the Game, Network and Servers out for Max "
If you really think buying early Access means to get you an advantage I must dissapoint you.
I see by your low post number you didn't get the "there is no middle ground, there is only fail or win" memo.
Hehe. I hear ya.
There are reasons I don't pre-order and "early access" MMOs anymore. These are just 2 of them.
Lol, oh yeah. Early access just means "Last Beta Test" really, even though people don't seem to realize that. I have accepted it and there you go. I just don't expect any MMO launch to be perfect. And I think SE had more people waiting for this game than they thought.
Hell, I just pre-ordered it on a whim.
Early access is not beta, its a reward for buying the game before its released. But a smart person know you have no clue how something as big as an MMO will work when you turn everything on and it goes live. Its not beta but its not outside of the norm.
This is probably the worst launch in recent memory. The logical pretzels that the white knights and other defenders of ineptitude are having to contort themselves into are pretty impressive.
These errors we are seeing today are the same errors that have been around since early beta. SE didn't do anything to fix them as they "fixed" themselves as players stopped trying to log in out of frustration and forgot all about FFXIV. The same thing is going to happen here, only this time we're not in beta. As much as I like the game I am beginning to think they need a very harsh lesson in what failing to prepare does to MMORPGs.
The "Open Beta" was to address and fix this, or at least get it to the point where it isn't like what is going on. I do understand though that this is early access so a bunch of people just crammed in at once. All I can say is I'm glad I'll be getting this next week so it will somewhat be fixed (hopefully) by that time.
This is probably the worst launch in recent memory. The logical pretzels that the white knights and other defenders of ineptitude are having to contort themselves into are pretty impressive.
These errors we are seeing today are the same errors that have been around since early beta. SE didn't do anything to fix them as they "fixed" themselves as players stopped trying to log in out of frustration and forgot all about FFXIV. The same thing is going to happen here, only this time we're not in beta. As much as I like the game I am beginning to think they need a very harsh lesson in what failing to prepare does to MMORPGs.
Pretty much this ^
I really do hope they get their act together, because this would be a pretty stupid reason for a game to fail. That said, I don't think it's quite there yet, but I know quite a few FFXIV fans who are running out of patience for this. They all say the same thing too; 'I'm glad it's a good game that I'm enjoying, because otherwise I'd have stopped putting up with this ages ago'.
However, we have these errors that keep coming back. Errors SE keeps claiming to have fixed. I understand how complex / difficult some of these issues can be to fix, but be thorough about it. Having repeatedly failed to deal with the 90k error, or 10102 does not inspire confidence.
This is probably the worst launch in recent memory. The logical pretzels that the white knights and other defenders of ineptitude are having to contort themselves into are pretty impressive.
These errors we are seeing today are the same errors that have been around since early beta. SE didn't do anything to fix them as they "fixed" themselves as players stopped trying to log in out of frustration and forgot all about FFXIV. The same thing is going to happen here, only this time we're not in beta. As much as I like the game I am beginning to think they need a very harsh lesson in what failing to prepare does to MMORPGs.
usually i wont answer to this kind of posts, just because i have my "dont feed the trolls" rule, however i want to clear out, that "having the same error" doesnt mean "having the same error" - usually there are a bunch of Error Messages you get to see, what goes on behind is another story. I personally know both perspectives. As a user and as a developer. You will NEVER ever get your stuff to be 100% working before release. You only can fix what you see - if you can't seem to find a bug, it's in the software at release. It may be a big one(which usually might be as hard to fix!) and it might be a smaller bug(which could be very difficult to fix also)
I hate the wait, im up for around 8 hours waiting for the servers to run properly, so i can go on with a friend of mine, questin like madmen, but we will simply have to wait till SE fixed stuff up.
Dont understand your rage and hate against a company that tries to deliver a great experience to you. Just stay calm and wait, drink a couple gallons of mountain dew and watch hentai.
edit: last sentence is more meant to be targeted at everyone, not you Badgered
It has been a bit annoying but i had played for 4-5 hours yesterday and had no issues untul my duty quest, then it got a bit annoying.
But its the Early Access, this is why companies do it so they can iron out the last remaining issues before the retail launch date.
If this was an issue with say a smaller dev team then it would be horrendous and probably not get fixed for a week. but i think the current issues will be resolved within the day or definitely by tuesday.
I had more playing time then down time this weekend with the early release compared to any other game at launch. While in game its been smooth, lag free, and has had plenty of mobs to go around. They have responded and kept the public updated as often as Trion did with Rift. With Rift, I got a lot of play time as well during launch but will say I did spend a whole lot of time in queue. FFXIV queue's seem to take less then a couple minutes to get logged on.
Yes FF14:ARR launch is bad. Really bad actually. But I love how people are going back and smoothing over all the other game's launches. Very few have actually had flawless launches. Downplaying how bad it actually was or how many times other game's servers were down during their launch.
Well, whatever. No matter what history this and other game's have, there's nothing to do but wait.
It has been a bit annoying but i had played for 4-5 hours yesterday and had no issues untul my duty quest, then it got a bit annoying.
But its the Early Access, this is why companies do it so they can iron out the last remaining issues before the retail launch date.
If this was an issue with say a smaller dev team then it would be horrendous and probably not get fixed for a week. but i think the current issues will be resolved within the day or definitely by tuesday.
Actually no, that's why they have open betas. Much like the one this game had a week ago (which didn't appear to solve much for them).
Early Access is primarily supposed to be for spreading the population of your game out, and giving people extra insentive to pre-order / buy more expensive boxes.
Comments
The launch is about par, because no MMO is designed with server and network architecture to handle the very abnormal loads of the first week, when every player is trying to play for extended periods at the same time -- not something that is normal after the launch phase, so it isn't how the architecture is designed. The best they can do is throttle and optimize, but it's always going to be rough, really.
This is somewhat exacerbated by the heavy reliance on instances, which is putting pressure on the instance networking architecture -- more pressure than it can bear comfortably, it seems.
Having said that, the game was playing fine until about 15 minutes ago when eastern NA woke up on a Sunday morning and logged in en masse -- causing massive error 90000 messages and people being booted from servers without being able to log in to due to said error. It's par for the course with an MMO launch -- you just have to accept that the game is going to be wonky and difficult to play at times during the first week when everyone wants to play at the same time.
For ppl that had the chance / had time to play beta 4 it may be smooth.
Others that have not chars to carry on, there are servers where the guild choosed to play that were never available during the last 30h. And i doubt will be available as the launch happends and more ppl carry on. This is the early access, ffs. If now it's not working, when all will pour in, what will happend?
Sorry dude, but I'm gonna have to agree with Pewpsockemz here.
Not because of the content of his post, but because of his name.
I am thoroughly enjoying myself and having been around for many launches I knew problems were to be expected. However, those of you saying Early Access = Beta/Stress Test, you are wrong. Thats what Open Beta is for. If I had to pick out something they did wrong, it was not having Open Beta until a week before the game came out and only having it for 3 days. They should have done it well before launch and after having all the problems that they experienced, they should of done more, to make sure this didnt happen when Early Access started. Unfortunately, they didnt and now those of us who pre ordered are paying for it, quite literally.
it's both
This is not a successful launch and it happens all the time. This list of games this didn't happen to is a very short list.
I saw that too. I was like what? They had the same issues here. It was a horrible launch.
This is not one of the best launch, the simple fact that you need to do instances in order to progress in the quests line, and that the Duty Finder is consistently bugged makes it a terrible launch.... and when you say : And we are still in early Access mind you. This is not a good thing, if they are struggling to keep the duty finder up with a limited user base, imagine when the gates open on launch day...
Worst launch in years for sure. I dont seem to recall anything having this bad of a launch since before Rift. I won't say it is the worst launch ever, but the fact that so many people are having problems accessing the game with the numerous errors is not good. The game itself is fine when you get in though from what I understand. I don't buy the "Its normal ,its an MMO launch" though. It is not 'expected" and nor should it be. MMOs are more prone to issues at launch then anything else, but that does not excuse them. If you are going to launch a game you had better have it working properly. I am fine with ques,some minor bugs in the game at launch, and even with balance issues..but the ability to access the game? No way. If you can't atleast reliably get into a que and wait for an hour to get in then there is a huge problem. You paid for the game; it had better work.
On the other hand I would not say the launch is a complete failure. It is most certainly far from it. I would not say it was a successful launch either though.
I see by your low post number you didn't get the "there is no middle ground, there is only fail or win" memo.
Hehe. I hear ya.
There are reasons I don't pre-order and "early access" MMOs anymore. These are just 2 of them.
If GW2's launch was horrible, then I dunno what you call the rest of the MMO launches in history. Abysmal? Atrocious? Beyond horrible?
GW2 had issues with the trading post. And it had server ques. Other than that the game was 100% playable, and while I wouldn't go as far as to call it 'flawless', to say / imply that FFXIV is somehow on par with how GW2 (or Rift, or TERA, or name any of the smoother MMO launches) is a downright joke.
FFXIV, is still having massive server problems. Entire regions crashing. Heck, as I'm typing my character just crashed out of east thanalan and is unable to log back in. Error 10102. Not to mention the issues with the Duty Finder (Which are tied to most of the major aspects of the game, even the ones that are soloable). Hell, I wish this game had overflows atm.
This game hasn't even been out a full weekend, and already the servers have gone done about as many times as GW2 has in it's entire existance. That should tell you something.
Played-Everything
Playing-LoL
Lol, oh yeah. Early access just means "Last Beta Test" really, even though people don't seem to realize that. I have accepted it and there you go. I just don't expect any MMO launch to be perfect. And I think SE had more people waiting for this game than they thought.
Hell, I just pre-ordered it on a whim.
Early access is not beta, its a reward for buying the game before its released. But a smart person know you have no clue how something as big as an MMO will work when you turn everything on and it goes live. Its not beta but its not outside of the norm.
This is probably the worst launch in recent memory. The logical pretzels that the white knights and other defenders of ineptitude are having to contort themselves into are pretty impressive.
These errors we are seeing today are the same errors that have been around since early beta. SE didn't do anything to fix them as they "fixed" themselves as players stopped trying to log in out of frustration and forgot all about FFXIV. The same thing is going to happen here, only this time we're not in beta. As much as I like the game I am beginning to think they need a very harsh lesson in what failing to prepare does to MMORPGs.
Pretty much this ^
I really do hope they get their act together, because this would be a pretty stupid reason for a game to fail. That said, I don't think it's quite there yet, but I know quite a few FFXIV fans who are running out of patience for this. They all say the same thing too; 'I'm glad it's a good game that I'm enjoying, because otherwise I'd have stopped putting up with this ages ago'.
However, we have these errors that keep coming back. Errors SE keeps claiming to have fixed. I understand how complex / difficult some of these issues can be to fix, but be thorough about it. Having repeatedly failed to deal with the 90k error, or 10102 does not inspire confidence.
usually i wont answer to this kind of posts, just because i have my "dont feed the trolls" rule, however i want to clear out, that "having the same error" doesnt mean "having the same error" - usually there are a bunch of Error Messages you get to see, what goes on behind is another story. I personally know both perspectives. As a user and as a developer. You will NEVER ever get your stuff to be 100% working before release. You only can fix what you see - if you can't seem to find a bug, it's in the software at release. It may be a big one(which usually might be as hard to fix!) and it might be a smaller bug(which could be very difficult to fix also)
I hate the wait, im up for around 8 hours waiting for the servers to run properly, so i can go on with a friend of mine, questin like madmen, but we will simply have to wait till SE fixed stuff up.
Dont understand your rage and hate against a company that tries to deliver a great experience to you. Just stay calm and wait, drink a couple gallons of mountain dew and watch hentai.
edit: last sentence is more meant to be targeted at everyone, not you Badgered
It has been a bit annoying but i had played for 4-5 hours yesterday and had no issues untul my duty quest, then it got a bit annoying.
But its the Early Access, this is why companies do it so they can iron out the last remaining issues before the retail launch date.
If this was an issue with say a smaller dev team then it would be horrendous and probably not get fixed for a week. but i think the current issues will be resolved within the day or definitely by tuesday.
Well said. However people, with the 'capability," of learning from and remembering the past should not have expected some buttery smooth launch.
I get a kick out of some of this stuff.
Yes FF14:ARR launch is bad. Really bad actually. But I love how people are going back and smoothing over all the other game's launches. Very few have actually had flawless launches. Downplaying how bad it actually was or how many times other game's servers were down during their launch.
Well, whatever. No matter what history this and other game's have, there's nothing to do but wait.
Actually no, that's why they have open betas. Much like the one this game had a week ago (which didn't appear to solve much for them).
Early Access is primarily supposed to be for spreading the population of your game out, and giving people extra insentive to pre-order / buy more expensive boxes.
-Prior story writer for MMORPG.com