f13.net

Wow... not too cool to have all your servers down for hours at a time at primetime on a Friday night... I'm impressed!

Hi. WoW's servers go down more than a Vegas hooker on a friday night. People just don't notice because there are 19324019823 of them.

Eh... it's a little deeper than that tonight in EQ2land.  The entire game (all servers) has been down for like 7 or 8 hours at this point.  From the devboards:

Devboards. (http://eqiiforums.station.sony.com/eq2/board/message?board.id=news_announcements&message.id=47#M47)

A couple of days ago the WoW Login server went down for about 6 hours locking out *all* servers thanks to Blizzard's wonderful server architecture.

This isn't exactly unknown in the world of SOE serverdom.

Lessee...Shadows of Luclin release springs to mind.

My last tenure in EQlive had at least two major patch screwups that lasted many hours. That was in about 8 months. And that's an old game.

Hardly a surprise. It happens.

Although, if your point is EQ2 was released unfinished...then an obvious coookie is yours.

Only 6 hours ?

EQ2 servers have been down for 14 hours now and they STILL haven't been fixed. Data corrupted apparently ...

There is somewhat of a difference between WOW login servers being down for 6 hours (but not the actual servers being down) and EQ2 entirely being down for 15 hours+ with threats of rollback...

Yeah back when I played (release through SoL) you were pretty much guarenteed that within 48 hours after a major patch there would be "emergency maintenance" to fix all the problems introduced by the patch.

the hell?

EQ2 crashes and your first response is "Blizzard sucks."?  Good lord, man.

Went to a party last night so this is the first I'm hearing of this.  Kinda sucks as I was looking forward to killing the hangover with coffee and EQ2.

I hope there is no rollback I was kind of busy with my main character the last few days doing the Fallen Gate Armor quests.

In other news, here (http://eqiiforums.station.sony.com/eq2/board/message?board.id=tup&message.id=4) are the upcoming patch details.

Monster patch.

posted at 11:08 pst



posted at 11:35 pst


So 12 hour rollbacks and unknown hardware issues.

I don't know who thier vendor is but our contract with Dell at work has a 4 hour max time guarantee for getting a new server out the door and headed to our server farm, which they will hand deliver and install.

Crazy Bob's House o' Servers does the best they can. You cannot interrupt a heated cockfighting event just because a tech needs to go out and install a server.

I don't play EQ2, but I am impressed by the patch notes. Just looking at the number of quests added is impressive. Nice job.

Schild has had a hate on for WoW since it was first announced. Why act surprised now?

Schild's Blizzard-hate is a given.   Its the magnitude and the transparency of it that surprises.

SoE broke EQ2 really bad.

My character didn't get rolled back.  I beleive I logged out 8 hours before the Patch That Broke It All.

Every EQ2 subscriber gets 3 free days (renewal date pushed back 3 days).

Early next week (Monday I hope, I have mondays off) they will be having an increased XP gain day.

My first response is to compare the 2 biggest MMOG releases since Everquest, ya bunch of nut sacks. Maybe you aren't quite grasping it. I bought Diablo 2 on three seperate occasions. I've bought warcraft III AND the battle chest. I've bought Warcraft II MULTIPLE times. I had no faith in them making an MMOG. Turns out I was right.

What the fuck is the problem here? A staunch supporter of the company doesn't want them to stray into grounds that traditionally lead to a coffin?

Get over yourselves.

The problem is that you were so, as another poster put it, transparently against it from the start that you couldn't help but hate it. You painted yourself into a corner. You had to think it was a failure, you'd already put so much energy into believing it'd be so.

Fact is, alot of people enjoy it and like it quite alot. Maybe you don't like it, but under the circumstances your opinion of it is largely suspect.

If schild was so against it and hoping for failure, why did he drop $85 on the collector's edition and another $25 on the strategy guide? He gave the game a chance and perhaps the chance was smaller due to some previous conceptions about it, but He Did Try.

To hate it.  Theres only so much trolling you can do without a CD in your hand.  I don't care, I just thought his immediate response was funny.

The game was down for ~36 hours.

Difference between SOE and Blizzard?

Blizzard - Hey, our bad. You play now, rabid fanboi's.

SOE - Okay, you can play now.  Also, we're giving you 3 days free, and 2 days when exp for adventuring and crafting will be 50% higher than normal.

I remember when WoW first launched there were some capacity issues, lots of times where people had to wait in queues, and people were upset.  IIRC, they got jack from Blizzard for it.

Alkiera

That's funny, I recall receiving 4 days added on to my free trial because of the issues at launch time.  Maybe I'm special?

This is what you get when you court the wrong element, schild.  I tried to warn ya.

Bruce

Yes that's true but what Blizzard gave their customers, I would consider the absolute bare minimum while I feel SOE is going beyond that. And as schild said, the WoW servers continue to go down on a regular basis, with tonight being no exception. Yes those are not major outages like EQ2's was but if that was only time you could play then it's effectively the same thing.

So SOE puts out a patch that makes the servers explode, EQ2 goes completely fucking dark for a day and a half, and you're bringing up Blizzard's initial-release overcrowding issues and the day their login server went wonky for six hours?

Cry more newbs?

Oh, but EQ2 is gonna make the hamster wheel spin a bit faster for a couple days by way of apology.  Color me impressed.  I have no idea what a WoW queue looks like, and my server has been unexpectedly down a whopping total of once in my experience.

Shut the fuck up and get back to killing your 500 gnolls.  Also, quit pissing into those Mountain Dew bottles and get up to use the bathroom, we wouldn't want you to die of bloodclots like that one catasser.

OOOOOOOOOooooooohhhh, SNAP!!11!!!1

or something.

OH NO HE DI'ENT!!!

Let me end this argument real quick.

They both suck ginormous buckets of monkey balls.

Not balls made of monkeys. But actual monkey testicles. Neither can claim the moral high ground for making Everquest Version 1.5. Neither can claim the moral high ground for good releases, nor of unfucked patches. Blizzard's last patch broke EVERY FUCKING USER-MADE UI IN EXISTENCE, and that was just to remove the region pages from the fucking server screen. EQ2 was just down for almost 2 straight fucking days.

Stop being fucking retarded.

You first. Seriously. 2 minutes on the forum. My UI was working again.

OHHHH NOES.

So could the Blizzard devs, who have put support for custom UI's in their game, but couldn't be bothered to make sure they didn't fuckup the game with the patch.

Sure, I could fix it by wading in the swill that is the official forums, but if Blizzard wants to be serious about allowing custom UI's they have to not do what EQ did, that is, don't break custom UI's with every patch.

All I'm saying is they both suck.

Well it's kind of retarded in the way it breaks the UIs.  You have to change a single number in a file for each module in the UI.   But still, anyone that can bother to figure out how to install a UI mod can probably figure out how to navigate easily the least putrid of all of forums.  

They both suck, but 2 minutes of text editting is a bit less shitty than 2 days of downtime a month into your release.  Remember, there is a sliding scale for suck.  On one end you have a random LD, on the other, you have AO's 12.6 patch.

But hey, I wouldn't be arguing this if I wasn't the token WoW fanboi staff member.

And in a few months, all except the most masochistic of the readers here will agree with you.

All it takes is for that one thing to *click* and you realize the game is another treadmill with new graphics but all the same old shit.

Fucking Christ-on-a-kebob.  This attitude GETS US NOWHERE. NADA. Not one inch forward.  You can go into these games, enjoy them until they suck, and then part.  Or, you can throw up your arms that a game is going to suck, buy it (what what WHAT?), and then chide all of those that haven't seen the light.  Look, these games are progress.  You may not like it, but they do offer something different than what a good deal of us haven't burned out on the past.  Probably most of us will be gone in 2-3 months anyhow, but really, is that such a horrible thing.  FFXI couldn't hold me for 2 weeks and CoH barely got its month out of me.  

Maybe it's the fact that I got one of the worst meals I've ever eaten today at work (chimichanga was sheet metal hard and made with pork I wouldn't feed a starving dog, I've been in the bathroom for most of the past hour) and someone bitched me out of on the phone for about 5 minutes before I could lean in and say "you know, I already fixed that.  Check your email", but all I'm seeing here is useless negativity. Teh Hate, per se.

Now if you'll excuse me, the porcelain god beckons.

You can call it a treadmill, a hamster wheel, or an electronic dog walking machine, it doesn't matter. All that matter is if you enjoy it or not. EVERY GAME EVER MADE IS NOTHING BUT A TIMESINK that nets you nothing but the enjoyment you had in the process. It doesn't matter if you're shooting zombies, fighting ninjas, or taking down gnolls, whatever, it's all a timesink. The ONLY difference is that MMO's don't tell you when to stop. If you really need that closure, when you can "officially" put the game away or sell it back to Gamestop with a feeling of completion, then no MMO will ever fulfill you. Otherwise, you can treat it like any other game and just stop playing when it's not fun anymore.

The issue is not the timesink, the issue is the skill-less repitition. Most games either are not extremely repetitive, or require some skill that counteracts the repetition.

MMORPGs are more like Final Fight, just the same thing over and over again. (I can zone out playing FF for a couple hours no problem by the way, but not hours a week for months)

Of course they're repetitious. These games are expected to last for months to years. It's simply not possible to generate enough content that you can have constant novelty and those sort of durations. The trick is stretching out the content you have without diluting the fun too much.

Content is only part of the answer. There are many games that are very low on the content scale (any sports game, any fighting game) but can be played for long periods of time. Once you play a game of video football for example you've seen basically all the content - all that's left is different stadium graphics, different stats on some guys, etc.

Challenge, skill and competition are all ways to stretch a game without relying on content.

I'm still waiting for the content publish for chess.

That was Battle Chess, and it came out 15 years ago or so :)

I'd argue that football is at least as repetitive as MMOG combat...  Soloing in most MMOGs is a matter of pulling a single enemy, and pressing the winning sequence of attacks and hoping to not miss/get resisted.  The average offense play in football requires that you get the ball to the quarterback, and then have him either throw it to a guy who tries to run, or hand it to a guy who tries to run.  On defense, you're just trying to stop all this throwing and running.  Really, how is this different?

You might say that football offers different 'plays' and teams have different play choices...  but there are generally several different mob AIs, as fighter mobs and rogue mobs are fairly similar, but with a few differences, while fighting priest mobs or mage mobs is rather different both from each other and from the melee types.  And while MMOs label the different types, you can also predict what kind of plays a given team is going to use.

Really, it's not different.  Having a star player pull a hamstring and miss a few games?  Gee, sounds like stat loss/exp debt, you're not as good while you've got it, and only time will get rid of it... at least in RPGs it only happens when you lose badly.

Fun is largely attitude and expectations.  If you go into it thinking, 'Gee, this should provide endless orgasmic pleasure, even tho I know games of type are generally repetitive and make me want to pierce myself with an icepick' you really are not going to have fun.  The fact that people here seem to try to play these games as soloists probably doesn't help... it's like firing up a CounterStrike server and logging into it with no other players...  Without the other people, the point of the game is kinda missing.  Unreal Tournament has had bots for ages, but the game 'solo' with bots isn't nearly the fun it is with other real players.

Alkiera

In football you have maybe 15 or so formations and each one has a dozen plays or so. Then there is the whole 2 player aspect. Football against the computer often is just about exploiting the AI. (Same with fighting games) But add in another player and suddenly you have a lot of depth.

Whereas, when you add a second player to an MMOG, assuming they aren't the same class as you, you get an entirely new set of abilities, which lets you take on additional challenges.  How you conquer those challenges varies based on the classes of the group members.  If you have a tank and a healer, it's pretty straightforward.  Similar if you have tank and rogue.  But rogue/healer groups are doable, and mage/rogue groups have ways of killing things that require the players to be a bit inventive.

Really, adding humans to any game increases the fun, and often the complexity.

Alkiera

I'd argue that sex is pretty damn repetitive - that doesn't stop most people from wanting to do it over and over again and yet still enjoying it.

Thanks to millions of years of evolution in design.  Give computer game designers a little more time.

Bruce

But the second player in football or chess is competitive. The second player in a group is still just fighting the same AI the single player was. An opponent that can react intelligently to different situations adds a ton of depth. Another team-mate to gang bang the computer with does not add nearly as much.

You might conclude that PvP could then be a way to extend life without content. I would say that is true, depending on the nature of PvP in the game.

Err, my point was just saying some thing has repetition doesn't mean it's not enjoyable.