f13.net

Yeah, it's already over.  :awesome_for_real:

Gigantic queue's and apparently phase 2-3 were just some bosses which were killed within an hour of the even starting.  Several weeks culminating into something most people never saw, good job Trion! Also the rift community is hilarious atm with people trying to defend shitty event design.

Yeah I'm reading about this and holy fuck really?

 :why_so_serious:

That's about it. Trion RickRolled everyone.

On seastone it hadn't spawned yet and now server crashed.

I'm on Faeblight; I got in past the queues ok, phase 2 starts and we kill all the bosses in less than an hour, lag is horrifically bad (5000+ latency), phase 3 the entire server converges to RoS entrance (had to be 500+ people all in about a 50 square meter radius), some RP event happens with no actual fighting, everyone gets achievements and we all agree this event was stupid. I think that's a point in its favor at this point since you can just tell anyone that missed it that no, it was pretty horrible and you didn't miss much.

The RP event was kind of interesting I guess.. it made me ask the question, why do Defiants get this hawt Asha babe and we get stuck with holy paladin virtue guy Cyril?

... and so Trion learns exacly WHY EQ stopped doing these years ago.

Well at least they set the bar incredibly low for future events?

Honestly, we made the mistake of running a dungeon right before it started, and so our group came out of the dungeon 10 minutes into the event. Which turned out to be half the running time of the part of the event in which you could actually participate. I spent the remaining time teleporting from zone to zone only to arrive just in time to see that I had missed the event boss -- then my machine hard crashed at a porticulum due to there being so many people around.

As a result, despite actually being on the server and actively trying to participate during most of the time the event was happening -- which presumably puts me one up on almost everyone who did not schedule their day around that 20 minute window -- I nonetheless failed to encounter a single event-specific mob or earn any of the 'good job for being there' achievements.

Then there was Phase 3, which I can charitably describe as 'like playing in a D&D campaign run by an incompetent 13 year old.' Watching NPCs who are all more important than you -- and completely unwilling to interact with you -- solve your problems for you and bicker amongst themselves is certainly the height of RPG storytelling techniques.

Ashtone server didn't have too many issues - fights were laggy but playable.

From what I saw it was just a major invasion in every zone at once, and there's nothing stopping them doing that more often..if major invasions ever happened outside of Freemarch. The fights between Guardians and Defiant were fun and amusing - sometimes we won, sometimes they did.

Having part III it at the back end of a level 50 zone was stupid - I died 4 times trying to cross it and never made it. My rewards were a quest for a ring that's crappier than what I have now.  Apparently if you made it you did some some nice items. I liked the idea of it not being combat related, so everyone who could make it had a chance, but then sticking out the ass end of nowhere stopped that from happening.

We need more unannounced planetary invasions.

Well I do feel a bit better in that I did have a hand in downing all three 52 elite bosses in Stillmoor and 1 in Scarlet Gorge and got a shot or two off on the last boss in Scarwood. The phase 3 thing... meh. They could have extended phase 2 to all weekend and had those same boss mobs respawn a few more times and left the phase 3 until tomorrow afternoon, but what do I know. Still no god damn purples from them. Shards are one thing but something other than an achievement would have been kinda cool. Then again... since so many people got bent over, it's probably best this way.

I will say this, I was very surprised in the RoS raid zone that those raid mobs did not have true sight. I roamed around the zone - up to the first gate - for a good 20 minutes just sightseeing. Even tried sapping a few here and there. Not surprisingly, I got the IMMUNE warning, but yeah, stealthing around without even a chirp alert was shocking. Only left because I was trying to glitch my way past the first gate and fell off the bridge into the river.

There were epic items from p2? I know there was a shot at a mount but I killed all 4 stillmoor bosses and the last shimmersand boss and got nothing but more sourcestone. P3 gave me absolutely nothing. I didn't think there really was any reward, it was just an event.

I liked the part where the server went down for some 'last-minue stability fixes' ~30 mins before th event. I logged in when it came back up, and was placed in a 4-hour queue (along with some other guildies). One of my guildies managed to get in, and kept us informed via IRC (this was at 11pm my time due to timezones). One hour later the event was over and we were still in queue; I just said fuck it and went to sleep.

Great Success!  :why_so_serious:


Edit: to be a bit less negative, it looks like they aren't leaving all of us out in the cold after all.

Miissed phase 2 completely. Tried to get to phase 3, but couldn't make it past the elite mobs. Went and leveled an alt.

Yay. Disappointing.

Live, one-off world events suck in every game - hell, even Blizzard gave up post-AQ and changed to "dailies + small-scale repeated scripted events + instance runs spread over a couple of weeks". Not quite sure why anyone was expecting Rift to do any better.

Man, everyone's wookie is bent out of shape on this.  My experience was the three bosses spawned in Droughtlands.  I rode there and helped kill them.  Got some loot I haven't had time to sift through.  Didn't go to Phase 3 because I didn't know where it was.  Book it.  Done.

World events always suck, mainly due to technicial limitations.  Everyone who reads this board should know this by now.

Everyone who designs games should know better than to design a game around events, too, but here we are.

Personally I think world events are goddamn awesome even with the problems they often have.  Yeah, there's problems and limitations, but for the people that do get to participate, it's still goddamn amazing and not something we should lose.  I was there at the Battle of Kithicor, I saw the Sleeper wake, and I fought in the War of the Shifting Sands, and each one of those events was an incredible experience I'll always remember.

I missed this one, since I've been playing DA2 so much.  I've missed other events, and it's sad, but it doesn't mean that these kinds of events should be removed from these games entirely.  Now, rewards should really not be linked to the events, I think.  They should be there for the experience, not the loot or the titles.  Either that or handle it like Rift is doing - I actually kind of like the 'all subscribers get the prizes' thing they're doing.  But to eliminate them entirely, like WoW has done, to remove the ability for people to go 'yeah man...I was there, and it was glorious' really isn't what's needed, I don't think.

Eh, I think Undercity and Wrathgate is the way to do it.  You have Thrall, Jainia, etc. show up and of course ask the legendary hero AssrapOrz to aid them.
No lag problems, everyone eventually gets there and feels part of history. 

I say Trion should have an event "Last of the Ascended" where the hero is alone in an instanced world, no mail, chat or anything that connects him to the main server. Then he has to accomplish the goal to exit the instance (with it getting easier and easier to solve if the player is a mungo).   

Devs, if you're reading this, you have my permission to use this idea.  You're welcome.  :drill:

I've been feeling meh about the whole world event due to past experience.  Nothing yesterday changed that.  But I hope Trion surprises me down the line.

I'm in the same camp with Koyasha, the world events don't really hurt anything except for folks who's feeling are hurt too easily.  I especially like how Rift is handing the rewards on this event - everyone gets a chance to open presents!  And the event itself wasn't particularly awesome so if you missed it, no big deal.

Yes, it was disappointing.  However, the response from Hartsman is more than sufficient to make up for it.

I would rather that MMO companies take a chance on something new even if it fails than continue with tried and true.

I salute Trion for their outstanding attitude toward the players.  (Blizzard started that way, but then we got Ghostcrawler.)

Funny how throwing people loot makes everything better.

 I personally have no problem with one time events but there was zero indication that if you didn't log in exactly at 12pst on saturday that you'd miss both phase 2 and 3 of the invasion, especially not after phase 1 lasted weeks.  The fact that they are responding by just giving everyone loot and achievements shows they know they fucked up and went straight into damage control mode.


This strikes me as particularly funny because nothing about this event was new in any way.

You're right.  I misstated it.  What I ought to have said was

"I would rather that MMO companies take a chance on doing something risky even if it fails than continue with tried and true."

I like that Trion attempted to do a world event with a massive number of players, putting the "massive" into MMO.  I like that they took the risk knowing the limitations would very likely end in disappointment.  I like that Trion is attempting to mollify the players for a dissatisfying experience.

I don't want game companies to simply do what is safe and practical forever more, and never try anything else that might end up being disappointing.  I want them to push the limits.  I enjoy interesting new experiences in games even if they prove to be a let down.

There was information all over their forums, the exact date and time was listed in game on the special event window you could have clicked on for information. It was that gigantic screen message you got when ever logging on, and you could have clicked on the icon that shows up in your quest tracker for more exact information. During the phase 2 part of the event there was also detailed information about which zones still had bosses to kill, and guess what for phase three it said exactly where to be as well. There were also server broadcasts and a special forum post made detailing even more helpful information in the hours leading up to the event. Quit hating just to hate, because they didn't give you exactly the game you wanted from them.

Oh fuck right off.

"Phase two starts at exactly 12pm PST" does not mean the same thing as .....


"Phase two is going to last all of 30min while we spawn half a dozen bosses which will all be killed"
"Phase three will begin IMMEDIATELY after phase two and last an even shorter duration."

I have to agree with  Lakov this time, i assumed phase 2 would last as long as phase 1.

Technically the quest text DID give you the exact location. However, it gave the name of the place which was not anywhere marked on the map. They could have said at the apex of the endless citadel or given the name of that landmark on the map or something. Unless you already been there and plowed through the elite mobs, you really had no clue where exactly it was located. Granted, I followed the crowd, but had they instanced that part to eliminate or even lvl matched the mobs to the player, I still would have been hard pressed not to ask in general.

Waste of time.  I wish Trion had used its resources elsewhere. 

Maybe I'm not remembering correctly, but during the first (aborted) attempt, they said that phase 2 + phase 3 would be over within a matter of hours.  I took that to mean two or three hours.  They also explained pretty clearly that the purpose of this event was to open the well of souls instance.  It all seemed pretty clear to me, but maybe I just got lucky and saw that forum post.

I thought they would be longer as well. They do seem to have realized that this wasn't a success though. So that at least is a good sign.

All through beta I kept saying the strength of Rift was the soul system. I kept hearing PR about the dynamic real-time event system. Which I pretty much dismissed.

They kind of backed off on a lot of the promise of the soul system and really pushed the event system.

I am now laughing.

I do admit Trion is pretty good about manning up to their shortcomings on things like this and will work to improve things. Just not sure how much can realistically be done, and the more popular the game gets, the less realistic this kind of thing becomes. I just wish they'd put more time into polishing the soul system and improving roles. Ah, well.

And how trivial would it have been to have it last several days, with these large events spawning on a timer or whatever.

I have no prior experience with world events on other MMOs, and I am not all upset because I had huge expectations -- but I certainly had expectations of basic competence regarding how to manage the scope and pacing of the events. If someone can explain why it would be so difficult to design similar events that lasted longer than 20-30 minutes, please feel free. Meanwhile, I will continue to feel like the whole thing was basically disappointing and, from where I stand, lacking in ambition rather than some expression of Trion's great willingness to take risks.

IMO, I think herding an entire server into a small area is a bad thing in general, but I don't think that this world event was poorly done either. It showed that servers can actually stay up with that many people in the zone (think of previous events on other games similar to this, I can't remember a game herding an entire server into one spot and not crashing over and over again - WoW's AQ opening anyone? Yeah, fuck that). Hell, I wasn't really experiencing much delay in using abilities when pvp'ing waiting for Alsbeth to spawn. The max person on screen was reached and as a result it phased in guardians and defiants (making pvp fun and weird) and kept the game playable in what would normally be an unplayable situation. That's why I think it was a good place to see how well their servers did and get some ideas of what they can do for world events moving forward.

The fact that they are tossing out boxes of goodies I think is nice, but not even needed.

I'm wondering what happened here, because this was basically a modernized version of the Asheron's Call 1 Shadow Invasion world events from 2000, and we found solutions for these problems back then.

Storm you guys did wonderful world events, I'm glad I went to AC from UO, that way I could enjoy the world and monthly events instead of the headaches that EQ'ers had to deal with  ;D

Would love to hear what those solutions were?  Apparently nobody since has been able to repeat them.

As to this event, I will say that I want more, not less... though fighting through a queue to log in was not the best, and having the server crash (along with our whole grouping apparently) in the middle of Phase 3 was less than stellar; I love the fact that our server is still full with hundreds of high level players active after a month in game.  Phase 2 actually went pretty well except for how fast it was over.  More bosses over more time seems like it should work out.  I don't know if they EVER need to have a final, one-time-location event, though... not until they can handle 400 people standing on top of each other at least.

For the last hour we were killing people I never saw... tab-target attack and assume people are dying as you watch the Prestige roll across the screen.

Then a big Boss starts talking, and I can target her but never saw her materialize on my screen :).

Didn't Asheron's Call have that thing where if too many people got into one area, random people would be teleported away?

Yeah. They were called portal storms. They frequently went off in places like Arwic, monthy event or no monthy event.

My dim hazy memories of the Shadow Invasions are dominated by lag, latency, rubber-banding, and disconnections. Granted, it was the year 2000, so I was still on a dial up, and using the sort of PC hardware that was available in 2000. I can't recall whether portal storms were part of the game before the Shadow Invasions, or if they were invented as a response.

Bottom line, I don't know if anyone has yet invented a tech that can allow hundreds of players to congregate together online *without* lag, latency, disconnects, etc. It might not be possible with current hardware.

I didn't get to play in the event, I had to get married instead.

It's nothing special - just common sense. If you're relying on technology to solve hotspot problems, you've already failed.

Don't have the capstone event occur in one location a single time. That flat-out doesn't work in MMGs. Run multiple copies of the event over the course of a couple weeks.

Spread out the events to run at all hours of the day. Not everyone plays at the same time, and not everyone lives in the same time zone.

Try to have aspects of the event occur in multiple locations at the same time. Cast a broad net and players will clump up into smaller and more manageable local groups. (I felt the Rift team utterly grokked this one, until the final event proved that everyone makes mistakes.)

Have content for all levels. A level 50 boss isn't content for anyone below level 45.

Make an effort to synergize cooperation between levels. A bone-stick-stone crude example: keys from events areas limited to <20 characters are needed in areas limited to 20+ characters.

Know where your players congregate outside of towns. It is all right to run events in areas that are already crowded, but only if they're not locations that many people can teleport to. Places people can run to in dribs and drabs tax the server less than places people can press a button and all pop to instantly.

Never announce start times and event locations beforehand or out-of-game. Always announce in-game when the event begins.

If you're using GM/dev ops, have clear pre-defined rules of engagement, and make sure everyone understands them beforehand. Rule #1 is, players must be allowed to opt-in. For example, if you're playing a hostile god who can crushinate any PC, don't smite anyone who hasn't attacked you first.

About the AC portal storms, they were always in the game, though rarely seen in beta due to the low population. The system was designed such that the person who'd been in the area longest would be the first to be teleported away (although for some time - I don't remember how long - long it was bugged so the last person in would be the first teleported out). They were a tech band-aid over what was essentially a design problem of population control.

Eh, much the same... forced grouping...general confusion...lots of standing around waiting for other people to do things...lights, music, costumes...a few people crash and you don't see them the rest of the time....(if its a Dothraki event/wedding - then a few dead people) and when it is all over, neither your nor your wife can really remember any details of why it was so awesome.

Plus, you get lots of boxes of "gifts" that will enhance your character about 1 in 3 times.  The rest you sell for plat.

Occasionally, you get a formal apology from someone who should have known better.

Now why'd you go and schedule it for the same time as a one-off event?  Some RIFT fanboy you are.

Also congrats! ;D

Congratulations!

Bah, technically it was planned for the week before!

And thanks :)

So, the way AC solved problems with having massive events was to not have massive events?   :oh_i_see:

Don't get me wrong.  I loved AC probably more than any other MMO yet, and the orbital laser strike (or whatever it was) wiping out Arwic still ties the seasonal terrain changes for best world changing events in an MMO EVAR.

But AC had some serious problems that lessened the overall experience (and duration of my subscription) chief among them being the killer rubberbanding due to SERVER lag.  Not client lag, not network latency (I generally ran with sub-100ms pings to the servers), but definitely server lag due to Turbine and/or Microsoft refusing to provide the server hardware muscle the game needed.  That combined with the revamp of the Direlands which increased the random mob density such that you could not possibly travel move more than 100 yards without getting attacked no matter how carefully you tried to split the difference between the farthest separated mobs pretty much ruined what was otherwise an explorer's dream game that has not been matched since.  :heartbreak:

I'd define it more as recognizing that a "massive event" in an MMORPG should be something that the largest possible number of people can get involved with, rather than a one-time, one-place deal. You want to put on a war that affects a whole country, not a rock concert in one city (with the attendant traffic jams).

A lot of good a polished soul system is with nothing to do in-game to use them on.  I applaud them for doing live events. It feels more like paper and pencil gaming and less stiff even if it failed. 

Congrats Draegan! As a thirteen year veteran of marriage I say the best way to get your wife to con gray is use caution and a ten foot pole.

Sorry it's late Draeg, but congratulations.