Outside Looking In

Game Launches

This is going to end up sounding like a strange topic for me to talk about, especially since I have raged at length on this blog before about bad game launches.  However that said, it seems odd to be on the outside looking in at a game launch going horribly awry.  For the first little bit I could fall back on the statement of “have these people never seen a game launch before?” but at some point we crossed the threshold into silly territory.  There was a report on twitter that I read earlier about someone waiting in a 10 hour non-subscriber queue and waking up this morning to find they were still 115 in line.  Then when the queue finally ticked down to 1 person remaining, they got disconnected.  Similarly I have heard all sorts of nightmares about the amount of Patron time for a game showing at one moment that they have a full year of paid time, and then the next moment showing that they have 30-60 days.

Of course this is all anecdotal evidence since I am not playing the actual game.  I feel like this launch however has a whole host of issues that may or may not be entirely Trion’s fault.  The thing that folks need to keep in the back of their head is that ArcheAge is not their game.  They might be promoting it, and bringing a localized version to America…  but they didn’t build the game and there are lots of things that are quite simply out of their control.  I feel like there is a bit of a massive cultural disconnect between Trion and XL Games that likely only exacerbates any issues that might be happening.  Similarly there seems to be this new trend of Denial of Service attacks against companies servers when they launch a new game.  It happened with Wildstar to some extent, and over the last few months has been happening regularly to various game providers.  Reports have Trion fighting off a DDoS while trying to launch this new game… and quite frankly as someone who has experienced one of these… there is often times little that can be done other than hoping the perpetrator gets bored and moves on.

Outside Looking In

The strangest experience is watching this all unfold as a spectator.  Generally speaking I am almost always on the front lines as a new game launches.  I’ve got my limited edition collectors deluxe vip section seat ready to go and have already explored the world during the head start.  So generally speaking I view these launches through the eyes of someone having to deal with the issues, and getting frustrated with the folks parroting “just play something else for a bit”.  Now I feel like I am on the verge of being one of those folks to spread the same wisdom.  After a weeks time, the servers will stabilize either through a obsessive interest or because Trion has added a good bit of resources.  In either case life will return to a normal pattern in relatively short time.

As a gamer I would always fall back on the argument that a game company had “sold access” to the game, so they should know just how many people would be playing.  That is like me saying that I know a Tornado is coming, so my house should be prepared to brace for impact when it actually hits.  Game launches are this industry’s version of natural disasters.  Players are this insane wave that comes crashing down on the servers hard and fast and with relentless and obsessive repetition.  When Final Fantasy XIV launched we resorted to making hardware macros to try and log into the game, and as a programmer I KNEW that I was essentially adding to the weight of the problem by constantly spamming the servers…  but as a gamer I didn’t give a shit, I just wanted to play my shiny new toy that I rightfully purchased.

Were I interested in ArcheAge I would likely be right there with all of you gnashing my teeth and rattling my sabers about the bullshit situation we were having to endure.  As an outsider, the whole ballet feels very predictable.  All of this said I am not trying to be apologetic for Trion, because at some point a company needs to learn from the mistakes of their peers.  That said when a game launches blissfully smoothly like The Elder Scrolls Online, we tend to not even notice.  We only seem to care when we are inconvenienced from playing the game.  While a bad launch might signal doom for a game, if it goes beyond a certain threshold… a good launch doesn’t actually really predict long term success.  As such it likely doesn’t really benefit a company to over prepare for a launch, when they can just ride out the first few days and the relatively short attention span of the internet zeitgeist will have forgotten about the rough spots.

Hoping for Better

I have lots of friends playing this game, as I always seem to have lots of friends playing every new game.  For their sake I hope things improve by the weekend so that they can enjoy some relaxing game time.  I played quite a bit of this game in Alpha and later Beta and it has so many interesting ideas.  The problem for me more than anything else was the toxic community, and the griefer culture that seemed to evolve around various aspects of the game.  Go afk in a relatively safe town, and when you walk back to the screen you might end up dead on the battlefield somewhere because a player thought it was funny to push you out of town with a tractor.  That sort of game play is not compelling to me other than the fact that I find it interesting that someone, somewhere thought that was a good idea.

At my heart I am a Care Bear and at its heart ArcheAge is a serious open world player versus player game.  So while it was interest to experience, just like with Eve Online… I don’t feel like this game was really designed for me.  Had Trion created a Co-Operative server I would have been there with the rest of you on day one being frustrated by the events.  However from my understanding it was XL Games that was completely against the concept of a non-pvp realm.  The game has a lot to offer for those willing to put up with the other players, and put up with these issues at launch.  It has one of the most interesting and detailed crafting systems I have experienced in any game.  The biggest strike against the game for me personally however is its almost complete and total lack of proper beards.  Thankfully I was able to get around this problem in Destiny by playing an awesome looking robot, ArcheAge sadly has no robots.

#ArcheAge