RoL - With Friends Like Gamespy, Who Needs Enemies?

Well I have to say, I think the cumulative effect of the incredible shittiness of Gamespy is killing RoL online. Numbers of games and players were picking up earlier in the week, but they are now down again. Connectivity problems abound. Stability online is a joke.

It’s very depressing as I find RoL to be the best RTS of the last year or two. And it really shines in multiplayer, when the MP works.

I recall in another thread a bunch of boilerplate from BHG about why they chose Gamespy but man I think Gamespy really let them down. I dunno what the consequence should be, but as a layman and user it sure seems like Gamespy offers a pathetically poor service. I think BHG had until this week (around today) to get things working great for the holiday weekend. With that borked, I am beginning to fear that RoL online will die a sad and pathetic death of connection and stability problems.

Feh.

And I don’t want to hear all about the hardware, ports, firewall boohoohoo crap. I can play dozens of other online games fine and so can everyone I know. Meanwhile on RoL, almost everybody has at least some serious problems. It’s borked. It’s beyond borked given that this is at least a B+ type release backed by Microsoft. What the fuckin’ hell were they thinking?

Amen to that. I’m having problems as well. And I don’t feel like fiddling around with my firewall to try to play one game. Where every other online game I’ve played in the last 8 years I’ve never had to do.

It pisses me off that BFME2, which is done by gamespy, works great, yet Rol doesn’t.

BHG should’ve had the good sense to hire a competent network programmer. They had Microsoft’s resources for fucks sake!!

dawn of war is pretty sucky across the gamespy interface as well. That’s one of the main areas I hope they improve upon in their next expansion.

Man, bring on Live on the PC!

Does it at least allow you to connect direct ip-to-ip? If not, I’ll never touch it.

Hamachi for the win! Works like a charm. (You won’t get to pad your stats, though, if you care about that sort of thing.)

Is there any sort of matchmaking through Hamachi? Or do you have to have friends on to play with?

I’m wondering if Hamachi might be an option for the QT3 folks…

Hamachi+XFire+TeamSpeak+whining on Qt3 is good enough, right? :)

Hamachi fakes a LAN, uses encrypted communication (to some extent,
anyway) and allows simple chat. Dunno if there’s even a groupchat option.
I made an experimental network on it, and saw that it’s limited to 14 people
unless you pay them.

Sharpe, sluggo answered this question when you made practically the same post about Dragonshard:

http://www.quartertothree.com/game-talk/showpost.php?p=494550&postcount=23

I imagine it applies here, too. Don’t you?

Maybe, but I don’t completely buy that. RoL and DoW both need the same 10 ports, and 10 ports is far too many. And this is not a problem with the server browser, the server browser works fine. RoL can’t form connections between computers. That seems like an SDK problem to me.

My bottom line on both RoL and Dragonshard is: despite all the tech-talk, I cannot play them reliably or consistently. Both are borked on Gamespy. And its not just me. For RoL, compared to most of the QT3 players, I seem to have fewer problems. There are a number of QT3 players who simply cannot connect to each other no matter what. I haven’t had that trouble.

Compared what people online are saying about RoL, I’d say my problems are typical to better than typical. And here’s the key thing: I don’t know of any player to whom I’ve chatted that has been entirely problem free. As far as I know, EVERY GAMESPY ROL PLAYER is being affected by connection problems, inability to join some games, lag, instability, and the dreaded “hang on starting” problem.

Plus, rather than Sluggo’s post making me feel good, I’m wondering, given the clear technical knowledge of severe fuckups with Gamespy why another game company would give Gamespy a chance.

I’m pretty frustrated. I feel like Gamespy whould be taken out in the walnut orchard and shot :).

Dan

But wait… does gamespy work just fine with certain games?

If so, it’s not gamespy’s fault… it’s the game developer’s.

If not, it’s open season on gamespy hate.

Simple, right?

Both Nintendo and Sony are using Gamespy tech for their networking back end I believe.

seconded…gamespy does little else than match you to the serving game

Gamespy works well with games that use a client/server networking model, i.e. most FPSs. Gamespy works inconsistently/poorly with most games that use a peer-to-peer networking model, i.e. most RTSs. I think this has something to do with the number of open ports necessary for computers in a peer-to-peer network to communicate with each other successfully vs. the one port necessary for client(s) to communicate with a server.

Out of all the RTSs on Gamespy, only Battle for Middle Earth 2 (and the original?) has been reported to work consistently, and it’s taken 3 years and 3 games for EA to get their Sage engine tech to that point.

It’s incredibly disappointing to watch Rise of Legends suffer Dragonshard’s fate, but that’s what happens when you make poor decisions during development. And unlike Liquid, Big Huge Games can’t fall back on the Atari publisher excuse. Maybe Brian Reynolds will do a Desperate Housewives game to resuscitate his game company, too. Or the inevitable Rise of Nations 2. Whatever.

Rise of Legends deserved better.

OK I don’t care if its Gamespy. Perhaps I should be clearer. I want the online portion of the game, whoever makes it, to work. Period, end of sentence. Maybe Gamespy is totally blameless, but the common thread I see in games with bad online experiences in the last couple of years is Gamespy. Maybe Gamespy is teh ubar and the network programmers at the devs are teh suq - I DON’T CARE. Make the F’ing game work online. Get it done. Fire Gamespy, fire the network guys, whatever.

I am only referring to Gamespy as it appears to be the common locus of the problems. I have no axe to grind with Gamespy per se and don’t care who’s at fault.

I want a functioning online component of this game. The game is fantastic (when it works) and I want to enjoy it online. Make that happen and i’ll shut up :0.

You have an approach that suggests you were alive at some point before 1970. When the obligation to get shit right was on the person selling you goods.

You have apparently not noticed that we are now in the year 2006, when it is your fault that something does not work, you need to put more effort into making the product work as intended, and you have no right to complain to vendors who have made money off of you for any reason.

I am sorry, it’s a brave new world.

Now is the time when I need a devil-smiley.

I’m a little bummed, I really like Rise of Legends but can’t play it on-line. I’m able to connect to Gamespy’s thing but I am never able to connect to any actual games.

I play lots of other games on-line and I opened up the ports they needed but it just won’t let me connect.