Patching MMOs and re-attraction

[Venkman]

Just ranted about this in the WoW sub-forum.

Someone said WoW's patching was "miles ahead" of SOEs stuff. For me, I'll not be using something like "miles ahead" until I can take the CD/DVDs I purchased at a game launch, install them, and patch to the full game three years later as a single operation (insert disc, install, patch once). Or once I prove I have those CDs to a website, download the entire game from it (even if I have to patch once thereafter).

This crap about having to watch for in-story/magazine trial game copies and then having to patch/relaunch/patch/relaunch is archaic, and the single biggest thing that has kept me from going back to most MMOs I've had any resurgent interest in checking out.

So I got to wondering, is this something holding other people back as well?

The way I use my PC, I pretty much wipe and reinstall everything once a year. I haven't yet found a complete maintenance package that returns my PC to showroom condition as well as a wipe/reinstall does. So I'm constantly ditching old crap I haven't paid for in years, and never getting back around to reinstalling it. And then when I do get interested in doing so, I look at the discs I purchased three or more years ago, know how much has changed in them, know that even the patching process itself has probably changed, and just say the heck with it and hit whatever I'm currently paying for or whatever beta I'm in.

I don't think I'm alone, but I also don't know how most people think on this. Do people just barrel through it? Do people not pick up old MMOs much? Does this result in a little or a lot of potential lost opportunities for publishers?

Yea, I know, this isn't comparable to any other genre because most non-MMOs don't change nearly as much. But to me, this puts the onus back on the company to continually provide as seamless a process as possible. I wonder if it's worth the expense for them to do so. Given the number of "come back" programs I've seen in the last few years, I rather think it'd be worth them beefing things up on their end.

[shiznitz]

Patching for WoW seems like a nightmare compared to the elegance of SOE games. But that just goes to show that the game is always the thing. People will complain about annoynaces at the margin, but will put up with a lot for a game they love.

[Abelian75]

Don't SOE games pretty much work the way you want?  They're way better than WoW.  The download/install proccess happens together and in one pass, unlike Blizzard's torrented patch file after patch file (admittedly, it's rarely more than two patches, but still, you have to launch the game, get the torrent, download the torrent, patch, launch the game, get the next torrent, etc.)

I'm pretty much as big a WoW fanboi as you can get, but even I must admit their patching is substantially less convenient than SOE's.

As for your question as to whether it bothers people, I doubt there are a lot of people who would explicitly say that that's what keeps them from playing a given MMO again, but I'm sure it does stop some people unconsciously, and/or is one of several things that contributes to them not starting again.

[SnakeCharmer]

SOE's patching system is arguably the best, with NCSoft's coming in a close second. 

However, any game that's been out for a while is going to be a bear to patch due to the sheer amount of data you have to DL.  SOE's system makes it the easiest, with a set it and forget it, but it still makes impromptu replay nigh impossible, since you'll have to wait until the next day (and hope that your 'net doesn't crap out or get a corrupted install) to play.  Until that is solved by bigger download pipes on the user end (I'm limited to 8 GB down, but rarely see that kind of speed), as well as lower bandwidth cost for publishers, it's always going to be an exercise in frustration.

[Draegan]

I think you're bitching about such a small thing.  SOE patching is awful because their server's are ass.  They also get stuck a lot as well.  If you're installing the game from old CD's expect to download a lot before you go to play it.

[Baldrake]

I completely agree with you DQ. But you may have missed the point of my original post in the WoW forum -- with WoW's free trial installer, from click the "download" link to playing is < 10 minutes. The same technology has to make its way to your "three years on" scenario, but it's a step in the right direction.

[Mrbloodworth]

Dosnet SOE have a new patcher in the pipe?Some kind of Xfire like SOE launcher thingy where you can Digitally download games you don't have ETC..

[Ratman_tf]

I utterly despised Blizzard's non-patcher because for a long while, it wouldn't work with my ISP. I tried opening ports and all that shit, and in the end, I just wound up having to reset my hub every 5-15 minutes when the download hung up.

But I changed ISPs last year, and haven't had a problem since.

I'm still not fond of the torrent downloader, but have had to re-install WoW a few times here and there, and have put up with it.

Yeah, patching sucks if you have an older client. I have a CD burned with Anarchy Online patches for when I get bit by the froob bug. :D

[Tmon]

I don't think theDL/patch process has ever made me decide not to return to a game but it is the reason I periodically still log in to GW and MTGO and haven't uninstalled WoW or LoTRO.  I don't think I'll return to any of them but on the odd chance that I do I keep them around.  A far higher bar is knowing that all my characters/equipment/cards are so outdated that I'll be in effect starting over again.  

[Soukyan]

Actually, the SOE patcher essentially does what you want. Of course, that does not mean that you are not in for some long download times. In fact, you can install a launcher file for any of their games and then "patch" the rest of the game in. I know for Pirates of the Burning Sea, you can download an ~100MB launcher file and install it. Run that and it will proceed to patch the remaining 4GB of game in for you at which point you can play. All one patch. Of course, this would take a long time, but you don't mention the time so much as the starting/restarting.

Blizzard does fairly well with rolling the patches into the client releases. I know that if you purchased WoW: Burning Crusade online from them, there will always be a download link available in account management where you can download the installer any time you need it. Of course, that means you have to have the original WoW already installed, so it falls back into the same problem that you mentioned which is "install base game, install expansion, patch, patch, play". That's how I had to do WoW yesterday. Downloaded client from Fileplanet because I didn't want to install from the release DVD. Installed WoW, downloaded BC from my account mgmt., installed expansion, downloaded patch 2.3 from Fileplanet because it was faster than the Blizzard patcher, installed it, allowed Blizzard patcher to download and install the small 5MB 2.3.2 patch, logged in. Kind of a pain in the ass. Good thing I was adamant about playing.

[spiralyguy]

The only game that patching ever prevented me from playing was Guild Wars.  I tried to get back into that game once and it seemed like there were multiple patches all of which required me to push "go" or whatever.  Then I swear to god once I actually got into the game and was looking at my avatar, I zoned, and the damn thing patched again.  That was the last straw for me.

[Soukyan]

The only game that patching ever prevented me from playing was Guild Wars.  I tried to get back into that game once and it seemed like there were multiple patches all of which required me to push "go" or whatever.  Then I swear to god once I actually got into the game and was looking at my avatar, I zoned, and the damn thing patched again.  That was the last straw for me.

Oh yes, the Guild Wars dynamic content patching. Hit a zone you've never been to and wait for it to download. Definitely can be frustrating if the streaming content is not snappy enough.

[shiznitz]

Dosnet SOE have a new patcher in the pipe?Some kind of Xfire like SOE launcher thingy where you can Digitally download games you don't have ETC..

They are working on a launcher that lets you launch any SOE game from one executable. You can get a beta version of right now and I did, but I don't use it because it patches EQ2 at about 1/10th the speed (i.e. slower) than the straight EQ2 client. This doesn't make any sense to me but it is what it is.

[Hutch]

I wonder how much patching City of Heroes would make you do in those circumstances. That is, wipe disk, reinstall OS, reinstall CoH from disks, hit their servers, patch. Would it all come in one big patch? I've never tried this myself.

[Venkman]

Tbh, yea, I actually do think SOE does it better than Blizzard (and the latter's current free trial thing only continues to work if they keep updating it). I was more ranting about a general genre-wide thing, lack of a standard, the sorta thing someone successful doing it so well as to compel emulation. I wish SOE games were more successful. I wish CoH was more successful. A lot of good ideas and (relatively recent) consumer-focused thinking that is getting lost in noise from a game still following old convention.

It's not keeping me from playing new games, just going back to old ones. Which is fine for me personally because retreading old ground only works when a bunch of my friends are doing it too. Most of them never do that, so I'm not missing out.

I wonder how much patching City of Heroes would make you do in those circumstances.

I'd love to know as well. I'd test it but I can't even find my CoV discs much less the old ones I can go from a harddrive wipe to fully-patched WinXP and updated driver in about an hour.

[Chenghiz]

SOE's method is in theory better, but the reason I made that initial statement is because I can spend 30 minutes or whatever, download the patch(es), install them, and be done. With SOE's method, the launcher checks all of my game files every time there's a patch, which takes forever in itself, and then downloads each updated file individually, which takes longer than simply balling them into one patching exe like Blizzard does. Sure, the torrent mechanism is less than ideal for some people, but at the same time when it works (for me, all the time) it's far faster than SOE's. In terms of ideals the only improvement I could wish for is Blizzard keeping an absolutely up to date patch for download, so that when I install WoW classic and then burning crusade, I don't have to download 2.0->2.3 and then 2.3.0->2.3.2.

I'll admit freely that Blizzard's delivery mechanism isn't the greatest, but there's nothing 'elegant' about watching SOE's launcher sift through 15,000 files and then go and download updated versions of 12,000 of those. It's frustrating, annoying, and in my experience when it fucks up and freezes it's an enormous waste of time. I much prefer downloading 400 megs of one file and having it automatically run an installer.

[MaceVanHoffen]

I just recently started playing CoX again after a long break and after a new laptop purchase.  I just installed from my original CD, fired up the app, and let the patcher run.  It took about 2 hours to completely patch, though I'm an Issue 1 player so it probably had more than the usual amount of things to patch.

The patcher gave messages about patching from Issue 2 directly to Issue 9 or whatever it was when I started playing, so I think the patching isn't too naive about what it downloads.

[Akkori]

I too wish the Devs would make available updates ISO files we could download every 6 months that were compacted game disk updates up to that point. It got to the point with SWG that after a few patches, I would burn my entire game folder to a DVD, so if I did have to re-install, all I needed to do then was a blanket drag & drop to copy the updated stuff on top of the fresh installation.

[JoeTF]

I too wish the Devs would make available updates ISO files we could download every 6 months that were compacted game disk updates up to that point. It got to the point with SWG that after a few patches, I would burn my entire game folder to a DVD, so if I did have to re-install, all I needed to do then was a blanket drag & drop to copy the updated stuff on top of the fresh installation.

Go play EVE.
CCP is like light years ahead of everyone in patching department.

They give free installer downloads every patch (and it's a exe file and not an iso, so you can put it on memstick), and their patches are probably breaking maths regarding their compact sizes. Patch that includes two major expansions released over a period of one year takes only 30mb. IF it was POTBS or WOW, it would be 3GB.

[Venkman]

Yea, but most of Eve is between content destinations 

[Sparky]

I too wish the Devs would make available updates ISO files we could download every 6 months that were compacted game disk updates up to that point. It got to the point with SWG that after a few patches, I would burn my entire game folder to a DVD, so if I did have to re-install, all I needed to do then was a blanket drag & drop to copy the updated stuff on top of the fresh installation.

Go play EVE.
CCP is like light years ahead of everyone in patching department.

They give free installer downloads every patch (and it's a exe file and not an iso, so you can put it on memstick), and their patches are probably breaking maths regarding their compact sizes. Patch that includes two major expansions released over a period of one year takes only 30mb. IF it was POTBS or WOW, it would be 3GB.

I'd agree except for that boot.ini unpleasantness

[Koyasha]

NCSoft seems to do pretty good with this, can't speak to SoE's latest changes cause I haven't played EQ in over a year.  When I decided to pick up Lineage II again, I went to their site, downloaded the installer for the full game, installed that, had a bit of patching to do (about 15 minutes or less, can't really recall) and was playing.  I recall having similar experiences when I reupped to CoH/CoV as well.

WoW gets really annoying even if you just stop playing for a few months because then you again have to download a ton of patches to catch up.

One observation with games that allow little to no UI customization is that a major step of 'coming back' is removed.  In EQ and WoW, whenever I go back it takes me a day or more just to get my UI working again, as so much in the UI has changed and needs updating.  Of course, I don't think that's a good reason not to have UI customization, but some sort of middle ground where the developers actually pay attention and take care not to break the goddamn UI every patch would be nice.  EQ wasn't too bad about this, tending to only break every expansion, and sometimes not even then, but WoW sucks as a few dozen mods need updating every single patch.

[bignatz]

CoX: I bought a CoH-key online a good time ago. Since then, I got the latest version of the updater a few times directly from my account page, which patches you directly to the latest version. Fast and reliable.

LOTRO: A clean reinstall from the cd took me through the neverending patching process, one book after the other. A few manual restarts of the patched patcher were also necessary. Last time I tried, I got a corrupt install twice. Won't try again.

[damijin]

I'm not sure why companies don't release updates individually from their website anymore (bandwidth issues?)

World War 2 Online lets all subscribers download the game from their website with the latest patch already plugged in. They also keep updaters on the same page for all the recent patches like:

Version 1.6 to 1.9
Version 1.7 to 1.9
Version 1.8 to 1.9


This is tremendously appreciated. Or you can just use their patcher, but it's nice to have the download option if your internet connection hates the patcher as some people in this thread have pointed out.


I also second the notion that NCSoft and SOE have pretty good patching systems, though I've had more experience with NCSoft. Coming back to L2 after a few months has never been a problem, and doesn't take much effort at all. Download the client for the latest chronicle, install a couple short emergency-mid-chronicle patches, and you're good to go.

[Fordel]

The only game that patching ever prevented me from playing was Guild Wars.  I tried to get back into that game once and it seemed like there were multiple patches all of which required me to push "go" or whatever.  Then I swear to god once I actually got into the game and was looking at my avatar, I zoned, and the damn thing patched again.  That was the last straw for me.

That has been fixed. Or 'fixed'. You can just let the game run at the loading/login screen and it will collect all the data.

[Chenghiz]

One observation with games that allow little to no UI customization is that a major step of 'coming back' is removed.  In EQ and WoW, whenever I go back it takes me a day or more just to get my UI working again, as so much in the UI has changed and needs updating.  Of course, I don't think that's a good reason not to have UI customization, but some sort of middle ground where the developers actually pay attention and take care not to break the goddamn UI every patch would be nice.  EQ wasn't too bad about this, tending to only break every expansion, and sometimes not even then, but WoW sucks as a few dozen mods need updating every single patch.

The reason mods break is because the developers are changing what functions are usable by the UI. It's the necessary result of a responsible dev team making sure that players have the tools they want without giving them tools they shouldn't have.

[Murgos]

I'll echo that Eve was painless.

~600 meg dl and done.  From clicking '14 day free trial' to playing was maybe 2 hours?  2.5?

[Furiously]

For Guildwars edit your shortcut and add -image to it. Run it overnight and it downloads everything.