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ArcheAge opens still more servers, promises compensation [Updated]
Trion's Scott Hartsman has delivered a "progress report" following another shaky weekend for ArcheAge's servers. He writes that patron queueing changes and three new North American servers (Ezi and Lucius Saturday and Calleil yesterday) have helped alleviate some though far from all of the login issues and queue times. To Europeans, he issues an apology, saying the new hardware for that region is still in customs and should arrive Tuesday. Daily restarts will also "flush out AFKs clogging the server," and he claims that around 10,000 botters and fraudsters have been recently banned. What about the reportedly long customer service wait times? "Our CS capacity has continuously been increasing even in the short time since launch. Chat wait times are about two thirds faster than what they were last week, even though the weekend's been the busiest time ArcheAge has seen as a whole. We're still pushing hard here to make sure even more people are wanting to help, and the next group of folks ready to help starts work first thing Monday morning." Hartsman notes that players will likely be compensated for last week's problems. "We are continuing to look into ways to make sure that everyone's made good for their troubles during this launch," he wrote. We have reached out to Trion to follow up. [Update #2: Hartsman has spoken to us about the game's launch troubles here.] [Update #1: Trion says the EU hardware has cleared customs early and is currently being set up.]
ArcheAge battles queues with new servers, character creation blocks
In a post on the official ArcheAge site last night, Trion Worlds confirmed that it had opened two new servers and shut down character creation on others to alleviate some of the queue congestion plauging players since the game's head start last weekend. The entry reads, We've added two new worlds to our North American server list: Ezi (NA) and Lucius (NA)! These servers were racked (physically installed) and imaged (updated with ArcheAge server software) in our Texas data center all in the past day. Here you can see Ezi (NA) and Lucius (NA) in their new home with Senior Systems Engineer Jonathan Johnson. These two servers will be on the new Auction House cluster 5 (AH5). These new servers are now online and available to play right now: Friday September 19 at 4:15 PM PDT (GMT-7). Critically, four US servers -- Kyrios, Ollo, Salphira, and Aranzeb -- have been "temporarily closed to new character creation," so we sure hope you aren't trying to join friends there today. The studio also says new European servers are physically en route to the Amsterdam data center. [Thanks, Siphaed.]
ArcheAge endeavors to quell queues, bugs
Following ArcheAge's official launch earlier this week, Trion has continued its work on bugs and queues and other issues affecting the game. Last night, the team said that it planned to increase the total capacity of the North American servers and EU server Kyprosa by 10%. Players have complained of long wait times to log into Kyprosa specifically; one Patron claimed to have waited nine hours in the queue. Other players have taken to calling the game "QueueAge." Trion also says that it is working on fixes for Patron status bugs, having "deployed a fix for accounts that were missing their Patron Time after this morning's NA server maintenance." Community Manager Scapes says a relog after server-up is necessary. EU's fix should be in now as well, tweeted Trion CEO Scott Hartsman.
Free faction changes to begin on Barthilas
One of players' least favorite aspects of play in World of Warcraft is undoubtedly queue times. While people generally seem to understand why they exist, no one really enjoys hanging out in a queue while waiting to hop into a dungeon, raid, or battleground. While there are multiple factors that contribute to queue times, according to Blizzard it's faction interest in PvP queues that tends to be the biggest influence--not just for servers but for entire regions. Thus, in the interest of hopefully shortening queue times, Blizzard is offering free faction changes from Horde to Alliance for the Barthilas server. This small initial offering is just a beginning, meant to test the waters. They intend to expand the offer to other servers for testing as well. Presumably, if the opening of faction transfers successfully manages to reduce queue times, the program will continue to be grow. The free faction transfers for Barthilas will open on Tuesday, May 27th, and continue for about a week. Whole guild transfers are eligible under this program, though guild leaders initiating the Guild Master Faction Change will be charged the initial fee and refunded within 72 hours. It will be interesting to see the potential effect this has on queue times for that server and battlegroup.
Final Fantasy XIV's Yoshida issues an apology to players
Final Fantasy XIV's Early Access period hasn't been a smooth ride if you're playing in North America or Europe. The server cluster dedicated to these players has had to undergo several periods of maintenance and unexpected downtime, with several players entirely unable to log in on Sunday. Producer/director Naoki Yoshida took to the official forums to issue a personal apology to players affected by these issues, explaining the problems faced by the team and the steps being taken to correct them. Yoshida states that several of the load-related issues are still persisting, so the team is currently placing restrictions on logins to try to relieve some congestion and better identify server failure points. He goes on to apologize to players for any wait experienced and asks for patience as the team strives to deliver the best possible experience for all players. There's no word on how long these restrictions will be in place or what form they will take, but with the official launch tomorrow, we can only hope that the issues are largely sorted out soon.
How long are you willing to wait for a group to form?
In the leveling homestretch, I tend to follow a pattern. My main goal is to boost my ilevel as soon as I hit 90 to get in on Raid Finder. Although, once I get there, I end up feeling bitter because waiting in a Raid Finder queue isn't fun. Even if you're not into Raid Finder, WoW presents players with plenty of opportunity to wait around at some point -- battleground and dungeon queues, or even sticking around for a PUG to come together. As a tank on my main, I groan when thinking of entering Raid Finder, mainly because of the wait. There are only two tank roles, after all. With the new loot specialization coming to 5.3, players looking to win tank gear have hope of a less painful wait in a DPS role, at least. Even if you're used to the long wait, everyone has a limit. I remember waiting as a tank in a Raid Finder queue for an hour and forty minutes. I'm not usually willing to wait that long. I'm relatively comfortable with waiting about thirty to forty minutes before moving on. When it comes to PUGs, I'm quite patient, usually waiting longer than I probably should. In a PUG, I tend to have a personal connection to at least one of the other players in the group, so I'm not quick to leave. How long are you willing to wait, whether it be for a dungeon, Raid Finder, battleground, or a PUG? While in queue, how do you pass the time? I usually find myself completing dailies or battling pets. But at what point do you throw up your hands and leave?
Guardians of Middle-Earth: A fun game doomed by its business model
The MOBA genre has exploded in recent years, with global giant League of Legends becoming the most actively played video game in the world and competitive tournaments getting more viewers than some televised sports. Today's MOBAs appeal to casual and competitive gamers alike, but until recently very few had crossed the console barrier. Released on PS3 and XBox 360 last December, Guardians of Middle-Earth took traditional DotA gameplay and made the quite experimental leap onto consoles. I'm not much of a console gamer (you can take my mouse and keyboard away when you pry them from my cold, dead hands), but I couldn't pass up the opportunity to see how Guardians of Middle-Earth stacks up against its PC-based counterparts. Monolith Studios has done great things in adapting MOBA gameplay to a console control scheme and audience, and the core game really is a lot of fun to play. But in charging an initial purchase price for a game that relies on having a large community, publisher Warner Bros. may have accidentally consigned Guardians to the scrapheap. In this hands-on opinion piece, I explore Guardians of Middle-Earth and ask why it's already a ghost town just three months after launch.
Blizzard offering free server transfers to offset Mists of Pandaria queues
Mists of Pandaria queues got you down? Our sister site sussed out the fact that Blizzard is offering free time-limited realm transfers for some North American World of Warcraft servers. If you're on one of eight high-population realms, you can migrate immediately (though you can't choose your destination shard). Blizzard says that guilds may also move as long as the leader purchases a Guild Master Realm Transfer, after which point the remaining member migrations will be free of charge. Head to WoW Insider for full details.
Hyperspace Beacon: Four reasons you should come back to TOR for 1.3
Currently in Star Wars: The Old Republic, I am leveling up a couple of alternate characters. My main is a Sith Marauder, but I felt like trying the other Sith class and at the same time try the Jedi Consular class that I didn't finish during beta, mostly to see for myself whether the story gets any better. (It doesn't.) The mechanics are extremely awesome, though, and that's enough to keep me playing the class. But that's not the only thing that keeps me playing it. In fact, I think I can safely say that I would not still play the class if it weren't for update 1.3, which is just one of the reasons I believe players should consider coming back to SWTOR. Whether you're an altoholic or not, update 1.3 has finally completed the game. If the game had launched with the features that now exist in game, I don't believe we would have seen such a sharp decline in subscriptions after launch. I'm urging you to try the game again, not because I'm being prompted to but because I think these quality-of-life additions really make this game what it should have been all along.
Queue no more thanks to Guild Wars 2's overflow servers
Picture this: You've just come home from a hard day of work and you want to relax by gaming and perhaps responsibly enjoying a delicious beverage. But wait -- there's a queue for your server! What are you going to do? You could reroll and get into the game faster, but then you can't play with your friends on your precious main character. You can also sit it out and just twiddle your thumbs for a bit, but otherwise there's not a lot to be done. Or at least, there wasn't until Guild Wars 2 got into the picture. Martin Kerstein, ArenaNet's community team lead, stopped by the Guild Wars 2 Guru forums to give players a peek at the title's server overflow feature. With this feature, the above scenario plays out a bit differently. When there's too much traffic on one server, your character will be temporarily sent to a different server. Once you've reached the front of the queue, you'll be asked if you want to transfer back to your original server, and voila: home, sweet home. Any progress made on the overflow server will be carried back to the home server, so you can even be productive while you're waiting in a queue. How's that for efficiency?
The Emperor is stuck in a queue? BioWare shall redouble its efforts!
Is it a wonderful problem to have when your MMO is so popular that everyone trying to crush through the door at the same time is causing painful queues? Or is it a problematic wonder? Either way, the BioWare live team has been struggling to keep up with demand for Star Wars: The Old Republic access -- but the team may be getting closer to winning the war on wait time. BioWare's Greg Zeschuk stopped by the forums to assure players that the company is "redoubling its efforts" in tackling the issue. As a result, players should already be seeing quicker access to SWTOR: We've also being doing our best to get every little bit of possible performance on our servers to increase capacity: We've "turned them up to 11" to do our very best to get you in and playing as quickly as possible. As a result - you should now be seeing significant improvement versus waiting times at the end of last week. The team is also working on a way to hold players' places in the wait queue in the event of a disconnect.
Even SWTOR's website has a queue! [Updated]
If you've tried to log in to your Star Wars: The Old Republic account today, you may find yourself faced with an unpleasant note stating: "There is currently no active subscription on this account." This is followed by, "Activate your account here," which would all be fine and dandy except SWTOR's website itself is currently offline due to the high volume of traffic. The irony of launching a game in tiers only to have a forced bottleneck at this point isn't lost on us, but BioWare reassures its players that relief is coming soon: "Due to the high volume of new game codes being redeemed on SWTOR.com, some users may currently be seeing a waiting page. We are intentionally controlling the flow of traffic and letting as many people through as possible." So if you can't play the game because you can't access your account (or read the forums for updates and more info...), you're not alone. As annoying as this may be to players, it's a good problem for BioWare to have. [Update: BioWare set up more info on its Facebook page since their main site is down.]
Stephen Reid addresses SWTOR server load issues
Star Wars: The Old Republic continues to prove itself overwhelmingly popular as the official launch day progresses. Perhaps a little too popular, in fact. Stephen Reid stopped by the official forums today to post a short warning on high-population servers. Many players are experiencing extended queues to log in to their servers, but Reid focuses on a few "consistently high-population servers... [which] are closing in on their absolute population cap." These servers have reached or nearly reached the maximum amount of players the server can handle and "will likely have a queue to enter even at off-peak playtimes." The servers in question, organized by region, are The Harbinger, The Swiftsure, and The Fatman for North America, and Bloodworthy, Frostclaw, Legions of Lettow, The Red Eclipse, Tomb of Freedon Nadd, Darth Revan's Mask, Darth Traya, Jar'Kai Sword, and Hrakert Rift for Europe. Reid adds that server transfers are a common request, but even though the ability to transfer servers is being worked on, "there is no ETA on when it will be available." Also of note is the announcement that SWTOR will be launching in Australia and New Zealand in the spring of 2012. Reid states that right now the team is aiming for March 1st, though that may change. And if you've already imported the game, don't worry. Reid says that "[BioWare] will be investigating solutions to allow you to continue to play on a local server once they come online in March." For the full details, click on over to the SWTOR official forums.
BioWare taking SWTOR queues 'seriously'
Stop us if you've heard this one before: Hugely anticipated MMO struggles to balance lengthy launch queues with long-term server and community stability. Yes, BioWare is slogging down the same slippery supply and demand slope that many AAA MMOs have trod before, and a report at Eurogamer suggests that the lines have only just begun. There were 140 servers open for business this past weekend (a pre-launch period in which BioWare staggered waves of invites to legions of early release customers), and more are being added due to queue times approaching two hours. With Star Wars: The Old Republic's actual launch day looming tomorrow, BioWare's Jeff Hickman did his best to deflect criticism and soothe the impatient rumblings of disgruntled players. "While we can't promise that there won't ever be queues, we can promise you that we are taking this matter seriously and constantly reviewing them to make sure that they are manageable and reasonable," he said.
The Daily Grind: How do you pass the time in a login queue?
So I'd been trying to log in to DC Universe Online (with a legendary account, mind you) for the better part of a week, and I finally managed it at around midnight on Sunday after a 20 minute wait. That may sound annoying, but it's nothing compared to the waits last week after the title went F2P. Afternoon and prime time queues placed me somewhere around the 4,000th spot in line, and I eventually stopped waiting after routinely encountering 45-minute delays and never-ending login screens. It's been quite some time since I had to wait like that for an MMO, and I alternated between reading a book, making dinner, and playing another title to pass the time. What about you, Massively folk? Do you have the patience for MMO login queues and if so, what do you do while you're waiting? Every morning, the Massively bloggers probe the minds of their readers with deep, thought-provoking questions about that most serious of topics: massively online gaming. We crave your opinions, so grab your caffeinated beverage of choice and chime in on today's Daily Grind!
Aion launches paid transfers and new website
Aion server drama (or two-hour dredgion cues) getting you down? Help is theoretically on the way, as NCsoft's previously announced paid character transfer service went into effect today. The Korean MMO giant is rolling out the process in three stages "to make sure that transfers go very smoothly." Balance caps are in effect to keep server faction populations as even as possible, and NCsoft indicates that it is keeping a close eye on the proceedings. In other Aion-related news, the official website is live again after an extreme visual makeover designed to bring social networking functionality and game-related content to the forefront. The site's art assets have also been updated to reflect the game's newest patch, so head over and explore the new digs.
Netflix is in your queues, rearranging your TV shows
If you've noticed TV shows being bumped around in your Netflix queue, that's likely due to its continued reordering and combining of several seasons under one title. While this does streamline the queueing process and makes them easier to sort through on the website, there are drawbacks like trying to pick through 100+ episodes of The Office on your streaming device of choice, and the inability to rate seasons individually (it's not our fault things fell off after Jim & Pam got married.) Hopefully there's UI updates on the way to take care of the first issue, we'll have to wait and see who replaces Michael before coming to a resolution on the second.
RIFT world event fizzles, Trion reevaluates approach [Updated]
What could have gone out with a bang turned out to be a mild whimper. RIFT's first world event, River of Souls, moved into its final phases today but experienced several difficulties. Players in both Europe and North America reported lengthy queue times to access the game. These queues were possibly exacerbated by the additional trial players joining for the weekend, although Trion Worlds claimed that subscribers had priority access. On top of that, some servers saw the second and third phases pass by so quickly that many players simply were not there to see it, while other servers experienced unexpected intermittent outages. As you may expect, player discussion about RIFT's world event has heated up in the forums, blogosphere (NSFW), and elsewhere. In the middle of the event rollout, Scott Hartsman wrote a forum post in which he addressed some of these issues. Hartsman promises that those who missed out on the final portion of the event would be compensated: "Since we are very likely to end up in a situation where we have people queued who could not participate, and people who could not make the finale at all, we're already making sure we have a way to reward people appropriately after the fact." Trion assured players that it is using the lessons from this world event to shape upcoming ones. "We're already taking what we've learned over the last week and today into account as we work on the next set of world events, and will be designing them such that full-server-population flashmobs aren't quite as likely to occur -- both for fun factor and performance," Hartsman said. "Equally importantly for the future, we'll be ensuring there are more phases that each last longer, and a more clear progression, to maximize everyone's chance of participating." Let us know your own experience with this event in the comments below! [Update: Scott Hartsman posted a follow-up to the event as well as a list of compensation rewards for those unable to participate.]
RIFT's head-start is standing room only
To almost no one's surprise, Trion's RIFT head-start was an exercise in multitasking for many would-be players. MMO launch-day veterans are probably familiar with the one-eye-on-the-queue and one-eye-on-something-more-productive routine by now, but for everyone else, the fact that a good portion of the day was spent not playing RIFT was a bit frustrating. In some cases, estimated wait times approached 15 hours (though in fairness to the folks at Trion, the counters did fluctuate quite a bit). Demand was so great that a whopping 13 additional servers were added around noon, with 10 more going up as the day wore on. Tell us about your head-start horror stories in the comments (if you're not too busy playing, that is).
HTC EVO 4G launch day line watch
You've had the day circled on your calendar for nearly a month, you've seen its insides, you've seen it rooted, and you've even witnessed Froyo running on its massive 4.3-inch screen. Now the time has finally come to actually own the EVO. As is our time-honored tradition with galactically significant product launches, we're starting up a little photo essay here showing the progression of lines outside Sprint stores through this most auspicious of days. Only the trick here is that you'll be doing our writing for us, a thousand words at a time. Join us after the break for the pictures and don't forget -- a lot of stores will be opening early to sate demand.
