People seem to forget that EverQuest, apart from the servers being overloaded for the first few days, worked better at launch than any MMORPG released since. DAOC worked from the box as well, although a huge portion of the game was unavailable at launch.[/quote]
Yeah, EQ’s problem in that first week was also something to do with their ISP and wasn’t in their control. It looks like Planetside has had a good launch too.
Shadowbane is really borked today. They patched last night, I patched ok and played, but now I can’t get back into the game. Apparently I’m not alone. What makes me grumpy is that Ubi Soft hasn’t said boo about it. They should at least acknowledge it.
Oh well, Planetside came today. Time to play that game.
EverQuest didn’t have a good release. For a long time, zoning meant staring at LOADING…PLEASE WAIT for a long, long time, with no indicator to show that it was actually doing anything. Sometimes you’d zone into the character select screen. Vendors would somehow get onto the roofs of their little huts where you couldn’t talk to them. Lag was very bad, and would drop you all the time. Monsters could attack you through walls. The chat server was up and down. It was this way for quite some time.
I remember like 30-50% packetloss in EQ the whole first month. It was a challenge, to say the least. That was back in the dial up days so it wasn’t very forgiving.
I just played more Tribes until they got their shit together, and I seem to remember us all getting a free month out of it. Good customer service when compared to Wolfpack which only gave us like 4 days of service for weeks(months?) of login server and crash issues.
I’ll never understand why people pay for this kind of punishment. Is it really so hard to wait a month or two to see if the game actually works before plunking down 50 beans on a box and handing over your credit card number for something that may or may not be secure?
What’s exciting about not being able to connect to game servers, having them taken down while you’re playing, having a hacker send you to the bottom of the sea, etc. All while paying for this “privilege”?
I guess I don’t feel like I need to keep up with the Joneses anymore. There’s nothing cool about paying to be a beta tester.
***NOTE: If you cancel within the free month, you will not be billed for your subscription and your EverQuest subscription will remain active until the end of the free month."
Well, it’s been awhile since Sony/989/Verant’s release of their highly anticipated EverQuest and the game seems to be a real hit among fans of massively multiplayer games. Despite some ridiculously bad server problems (supposedly because of a router), players flocked to the game in droves and in a good move on Sony’s part…everyone who registered their copies of EverQuest by a certain date were given an additional 2 weeks free (on top of the first free month).
The loading thing was rare, and didn’t last very long (again, this was tied to the ISP issues mentioned above). The vendors thing was a problem, but noweher near as bad as problems with more recent MMORPG launches. With regard to the chat server, I don’t remember any problems, unless you are referring to the web-based chat server, which was hosed in the beginning. But I don’t recall any problems with the in-game chat.
Its going to continue to happen , especially to companies that are launching their first game of this type. I did’nt mind getting Planetside on release since Verent/Sony Online has had plenty of experience with EQ to at least have stable servers and good net code on release. But when your buying a game from a “first timer” your basically rolling the dice.
Oh I see. Whenever I play Shadowbane I don’t really play, because I can’t connect to the game server, etc.? I wonder how I’ve managed to level 2.5 characters up to the highest rank in the game?
I find the game highly entertaining. I haven’t been sent to the bottom of the sea. I’ve been able to play whenever I wanted to play, with a few exceptions. I’ve only had the game servers come down on me once for an unexpected patch (though the servers have come down on me due to crashes probably a half dozen times or more). Yeah, there have been some problems, more of late for some reason, but the tradeoff I get for putting up with the problems is I get to play a game I enjoy. Is that hard to understand?
If you run a company that sinks $10MM into a massively multiplayer game, and your server trusts the client to do things like create monsters and teleport shit around arbitrarily, then you are negligent. Whoever gave you the $10MM should be suing you for violating the competency clause in your developer/publisher contract.
I think that if I buy some software from someone, I can do whatever I feel like with that software on my own computer. If I want to reverse engineer / hack the network protocol, then hey, I will do so. You have the right to not like what I am doing, and to turn off my account under your terms of service agreement. You however don’t have the right to sue me. (Or actually you do, under purview of crappy laws like the DMCA; but if the USA were reasonable, that would not be the case.)
[Sorry about the antagonistic sounding way in which I used “you” above, I was just following up on the quote above].
Yes, I am a developer, but that doesn’t mean I want the rules of the world to be unfairly slanted so as to make life easier / more profitable for developers. What the hell kind of bias would that be? I value personal freedoms as much as anyone.
I realize that many people in this world hold such biases (the fuckwads at the RIAA being one prime example) but we, as game developers, are smarter than them, and should set a good example.
Actually, you can do all of this with no problem (other than the DMCA issues, I suppose). . . right up until the point where you use your newly hax0red client to exceed your authorized access level. Then it becomes a federal computer crime.
Yeah, I don’t dispute that that’s the way it is. However, I think such a law is wrong in principle, if the access control is embodied in the client. I have the right to modify my possessions however I choose. I own my copy of the client software, I can change it however I want. That freedom should be inalienable. Saying that’s illegal is like saying it’s a federal crime to chip your PS2 or overclock your Athlon. (The fact that one of the two things I just mentioned is technically a crime, does not mean that it should be).
Now, if their access control were implemented in a reasonable and competent way, i.e. with access levels controlled by a server database where I use a password or some private key to identify myself to the server, then that’s a different situation. At that point, raising my access level is not a matter of playing with something I own (the client), but attacking something I don’t own (the server).
I think there is a huge difference between those two situations, and some kind of law that says I can’t attack the server, I am not opposed to.
That’s basically what the law says. It doesn’t matter how you get access to the system, if you are exceeding your authorized access, you’re breaking the law.
Real-world analogy: it doesn’t matter how shitty the lock on the door of my house is, it doesn’t mean you can come in just because it’s trivial to enter.
Actually they did extend the initial free period by two weeks for players that signed up for their accounts during the period when they were having serious server problems. I remember because I was one of them. You are right that it wasn’t a full month, though.
“I think that if I buy some software from someone, I can do whatever I feel like with that software on my own computer. If I want to reverse engineer / hack the network protocol, then hey, I will do so. You have the right to not like what I am doing, and to turn off my account under your terms of service agreement. You however don’t have the right to sue me. (Or actually you do, under purview of crappy laws like the DMCA; but if the USA were reasonable, that would not be the case.)”
But it’s cleary wrong to hack a commericial business and do it harm, which is what the Shadowbane hackers did.
