Crashes
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American Airlines will resume Boeing 737 Max passenger flights today
It's the first time a US domestic carrier will fly a 737 Max on a service flight since March 2019.
'Horizon Zero Dawn' devs are investigating problems with the PC version
Shortly after Horizon Zero Dawn arrived on PC last week, players started reporting problems including crashing, freezing and frame rate issues. Now, Guerrilla Games has acknowledged the reports in a Steam post and said that it’s looking into them.
An ArcheAge player found a way to kill the servers at will
It's never a good day when you see players on the forums boasting about causing server crashes. In nearly every single case, it's a matter of someone bragging about doing something with no actual proof as a bit of pointless ego boosting. What's worse, of course, is when a player posts about causing a crash and claiming it can be replicated... and then proceeds to do exactly that, demonstrating that the server can be crashed at will. This is apparently what happened to ArcheAge. User ArchegeDown posted a thread on the forums on Friday, stating that a specific bug was responsible for bringing down the servers and that it needed to be fixed. To prove these claims, the user caused two more server crashes at scheduled times, demonstrating the ability, with the stated intent being to simply get Trion's attention. The thread is currently locked, but it's possible that subsequent server crashes are a result of other players discovering the same method of inciting a server crash. [Thanks to xpactor and Matt for the tip!]
Battlefield 4 PC servers hit by DDOS, while crashes plague PS4 version
This past weekend was a rough one for Battlefield 4, with DDoS attacks hitting the PC game and myriad crashes infesting the newly-launched PS4 version. Over the past few days, it has been nigh-impossible to connect to servers in the PC iteration of Battlefield 4 thanks to an unnamed group attacking EA's Origin servers. Initially the publisher posted a statement to the main page of Battlelog stating that attacks were occurring and that the company was working to mitigate them, but as Kotaku reports, this message has since been removed. Despite this, one of the game's community representatives offers the following in the game's forums: "[W]e are being targeted by a DDOS, but working on fixing it asap. Im sorry somebody is ruining your and my day. Rest assured we are doing our best to mitigate the situation though." The PlayStation 4 game saw even worse issues, with players reporting crashes, a total inability to connect to Battlefield 4's "Conquest" game type and periodically deleted save games. EA's immediate response involved adding a new server and issuing a sizable patch, but as I can personally attest, the crashes and deleted save files continue to be an issue for some players. On Sunday, the publisher posted a message to its Help site pinning the blame on the PS4's recent 1.50 firmware update. Specifically, it claimed that "this update ... results in stability issues while playing games on the system," and that all games are affected, not just Battlefield 4. This message has since been retracted, and in its place you'll now find a simple, "The message on EA's Help site was posted in error."
MacBook Pro tops on best-performing Windows laptop list
Soluto has ranked a few different brands of Windows laptops based on their performance against trouble and crashes, and here's a fun twist: Apple topped the heap. That's right, on a list of laptops that included Acer and Dell, an Apple MacBook Pro running Windows via Boot Camp got Soluto's best rating, the lowest score based on "a combination of crashes, hangs, BSoDs, boot and background processes." Soluto says the reason Apple scored so well is probably because this was a "clean" Windows installation, which means that it didn't have any of the crapware that PC manufacturers usually have to install on their sold devices to try and turn a profit (buying a computer with something installed on it that you don't want -- can you imagine?). But Soluto also says there are obvious issues with running Windows on a Mac, first and foremost that drivers for any accessories (customized keyboards or mice) may not work correctly. Still, if you want a trouble-free Windows experience, Soluto says running it on a Mac is the way to go. Apple showed up on the list twice, once for the 13-inch MacBook Pro and also for the 15-inch MacBook Pro with Retina display. The 15-inch model boasted slightly more crashes than the smaller model -- maybe because of the display? At any rate, it's a sad situation for PC manufacturers when Apple claims two of the industry's most trouble-free spots. [via Lifehacker]
Defiance team prioritizing fixes for crashes, lag
The excitement, fun, chaos, and occasional frustration that swirls around every MMO launch is squarely on Defiance's shoulders this week, so Trion Worlds Executive Producer Nathan Richardsson is back with a follow-up to yesterday's post to discuss what the team is currently addressing. Richardsson says that the team has to be agile and that its priorities change on a daily basis. Because of this, today's critical issues are different from yesterday's; the team is working on game server crashes, lag, patching woes, and client crashes. He promised that yesterday's issues were still being worked on, just that these were more important for the time being. He did say that console account linking with the Arkhunter website should be resolved, and that the team's already put out a couple of patches in the last 24 hours with another one on the way to make the play experience more smooth.
WAR weathers difficult weekend, compensates players
Warhammer Online certainly has seen better weekends than this past one. Because of a nasty bug that caused immense amounts of lag spikes and zone crashes, Mythic was forced to take WAR's servers down while the team worked to isolate and fix the problem. The good news is that the issue has been fixed via a new build and the studio is working on a "compensation package" for those affected. The goodie package includes 10 days of game time, a golden writ, a seven-day XP and RP booster, a special title, and 10 lesser bone wards. The team is still checking some details in regard to the compensation period but will be letting players know when and for whom this package will be available.
New Blizzard Video: How to disable all your addons, hopefully solve lots of issues
Blizzard's Customer Support team have posted the latest addition to their WoW Tutorials site, this time it's a video filling you in on how to solve your WoW technical issues in 60 seconds or less! If you're suffering from high latency, low framerates, disconnections or similar issues, resetting your interface is worth trying before attempting more extreme measures. They're not talking about a simple /reload UI, which can be typed into the chat box, rather about renaming your Cache, Interface and WTF folders. Why rename them? Don't you usually delete them? Well, you can certainly do that, but if the reset doesn't fix your issues, renaming them will mean that your settings can be restored to how they were before. As the video says, exit the game, and open the containing folder of your WoW installation. Rename the Cache, WTF, and Interface folders, to whatever you like. When you next start WoW, the folders will be recreated. If this fixes your problems, reinstall your addons one by one. You could, theoretically, grab installs and profiles from your old folders, but if something has become corrupted you risk replicating the previous issues. A less extreme course of action than the one suggested in the video is to get an addon like Addon Control Panel that allows you to switch your addons on and off without logging out. Disable all your addons, then re-enable them one by one. You may find that one addon is the culprit! If this doesn't work, then your next step is the action recommended by Blizzard's team. As always, keep your addons updated, either at their own sites or via Curse, WoWInterface or WoWAce. These "big three" addon sites are where most addon creators host their work, so other sites may not necessarily have the latest updates or correct versions.
Study: iOS apps crash more than Android apps do
Mobile OS crash analysis firm Crittercism (Really? Who's naming this stuff?) has posted the chart above, which shows that as a percentage of crashes overall, the latest version of iOS claims the highest total. In fact, many versions of iOS show a large percentage of crashes, and clearly iOS overall seems more prone to have an app crash rather than Android. Of course, there are quite a few qualifiers here. This data has been normalized, so we can presume that this isn't just a quirk of the numbers: There are likely more crashes happening on iOS devices than Android devices, and not just because there's more iOS apps being used (Crittercism says it monitored about 215 million app launches across all platforms, and there were three times as many launched on iOS, but again, this chart shows a percentage of all app launches). So why more crashing? Crittercism suggests it's because iOS 5.0.1 had just released, while the latest version of Android had not yet arrived, and the new OS was causing more issues than usual in Apple's system. I would also suggest that iPhone users (who have likely paid more for their phones) tend to overtax their devices -- keep in mind this is just an app crashing, not the full iOS, and we've all done that once or twice, right? And as you can see, there's a fair amount of crashes on older iOS phones, which means customers might be running newer apps on older hardware, almost always a recipe for disaster. At any rate, interesting figures. With so much more usage on iOS devices (both from skilled and not-so-skilled developers, and users of both types as well), it's not that surprising that there are so many more crashes. Have crashes on iOS seriously affected your user experience?
Trials HD trailer displays disasters and triumphs of player-created content
Rather than play that silly old full-motion video arcade game with motorbikes -- you know, that one that only exists in the trailer above? -- the latest video from developer RedLynx encourages you to pick up Trials HD instead and hop right in to the level creation tools. Beyond the initially jarring brutal crashes and eviscerations, the latter half of the clip displays the subtle elegance at players' disposal should they master the physics-based controls to the pixel-perfect precision the game asks of its users (we're especially impressed by the double front flip). And though we haven't seen any DLC for Trials HD since the last one in late December, it's good to see the developer supporting its game so long after release. But let's be honest here -- we'd could always use some more DLC. %Gallery-64987%
Stop the presses! AP News for iPhone is a mess
My, my. Talk about snatching defeat from the jaws of victory. The Associated Press has updated the AP News app for the iPhone and iPod touch. They took a mildly aggravating program and turned it into a mass of bugs, freezes and GUI mistakes. Let's start from the beginning. The iTunes store notified me that AP News 2.0 was available. Great idea. The older version wasn't too stable. I did the update, and it started asking questions, like 'where was I?' so the local news would kick in. I answered the question and went to the next screen. Lockup. I force-quit the app, and tried again. Blank screen, followed by a slow return to the iPhone home screen. Tried again. Same result. And so on. Deleted the app, and then reloaded it again. Got past the location screen, and then was presented with endless options to configure the news I wanted. If the iPhone screen didn't scroll, this list would have extended all the way to the floor. I'll bet I missed some important news while I was fiddling with that screen. Anyway, it's up and running. The GUI is not improved. Instead of getting the top national news stories I get a mixture of national, local, wacky and other stuff that it defaults to. I liked the old way where I got a whole scrollable screen of top national news. Now I get 2 stories before the other stuff shows up. You can change this setting, but no more than 5 stories in any category. Not exactly a tribute to free choice. There are a lot of new features, mostly about customizing this app. You can now see stories in landscape mode, but here's a good one. The story lists won't work in landscape, only the individual stories, so you are constantly changing the orientation of the phone. You can localize the app to crash in Spanish or French, which I guess is an improvement. It also says there are major increases to stability. Really? This thing is a bug-fest. Amazingly, the AP support page notes that many people will have trouble installing the app, and to download it again with WiFi. Hey, how about making a proper installer so I don't have to do that? Gee whiz. I don't think the people who developed this app have much of an idea about how people consume news, or how to make a simple and useful interface for controlling it. Judging from the reviews this new app is getting, it might be time for the AP to go back to the drawing board and start again. Frankly, if you like this update, it will be news to the rest of us.
The Daily Grind: Do you bother playing an MMO on patch day?
Most MMOs have hundreds if not thousands of quests, textures, user-interface elements, statistics, NPCs, zones, instances, skills, and animations. On top of that they try to provide an environment where thousands of players can interact with each other without causing noticeable client or server performance issues. Obviously, there are many complex pieces to an MMO and messing up something small can have huge unforeseen consequences.Ironically, patches are intended to fix game issues but for some reason they often break something else in the process. No developer is immune to this phenomenon. We here at Massively play a wide array of different MMOs and we can all share tales of patches gone horribly wrong. We also know that even though most patches are player-tested before going live, it makes little difference.So, do you play on patch day, even with the knowledge that you're likely to encounter issues like bugs, crashes, exploits, and possible rollbacks? It's a bit of a paradox really. If people avoided playing on patch day, it would simply delay the inevitable problems from turning up. Patch day would become patch week, month, or year. Patch days need mass amounts of players to uncover the issues. Unfortunately, it can be an extremely frustrating experience if the player doesn't have the tolerance for it.
Breakfast Topic: Fun in the 3.0.8 sun
Patch 3.0.8 is here! So welcome to the new patch -- much like the old patch, only with more lag, crashes every 20 minutes, and plenty of other entertaining bugs! (Don't you just love patch day?) You would think that, by now, we'd have learned that patch days tend to be a bust for playing, but most of us at WoW Insider HQ rushed to log in as soon as the realms were back online, ready to enjoy some 3.0.8 goodness. Boy, were we in for a disappointment. (Though as some of you may have noticed, it was a great time to catch up on old world achievements, since the Wintergrasp bug was only crashing Northrend.) For those of you who decided to spend your Tuesday outside of the game, you managed to miss out on plenty of patch day fun -- but you may be just in time to enjoy stable playtime as Blizzard has scrambled to get things working again. (If you haven't picked up the patch already, here are some download mirrors to help you out.) Were you in-game on Tuesday night? If so, what were your experiences? Get any playtime in?
UPDATED: Lake Winterfail crashes Northrend
I love Wintergrasp. I do. I think it's the most fun aspect of the game right now, and I take every chance I get to play it. The first thing I did when I logged on was play some Battlegrounds and headed to Wintergrasp as soon as a game was up. Patch 3.0.8 kicked in earlier today with gameplay changes to the zone, aimed at making it faster-paced, more balanced, and more rewarding. That was the aim. Blizzard, however, seems to have missed terribly. A bug seems to occur every time a faction wins in Wintergrasp, crashing the entire continent of Northrend. Numerous tips have come in noting the same experience.When servers come back online, the tables have turned and the battle begins anew. If players continute to battle and win, the server will continue to crash. The bug prevents Wintergrasp from ever being controlled, and has caused many servers' Northrend to crash repeatedly. It's kind of a bad episode of Twilight Zone. No official word about it on the forums yet, but it's a considerably large bug that disrupts gameplay for a lot of players, so I wouldn't be surprised if Blizzard takes down tall realms for a quick fix. Meanwhile, I'm about to try my luck in Wintergrasp again. Crash notwithstanding, I don't think I've ever had so much silly fun in my life.UPDATE: This just in! Bornakk has stated on the official forums that Blizzard is aware of the issue and is investigating it. They may possibly disable the Battle for Wintergrasp on all realms until the issue is resolved. Players may still enter the zone but will not be able to participate in matches. It remains to be seen under which faction Wintergrasp control will fall under, if any. Stay tuned!UPDATE: The Battle for Wintergrasp has been disabled for all realms until Blizzard can fix the problem. Control of the zone is retained by one faction.
Blame beta crashes on Unholy Blight
The beta realms have been even less stable than normal this weekend, which is a bit inconvenient when everybody is trying to test Naxxramas. Apparently the cause of the crashes has been pinpointed, and it's the Death Knight spell Unholy Blight (specifically Rank 2). It seems that whenever that spell was used, it would bring down the world servers. Perhaps it was mistakenly coded to surround the world servers with a vile swarm of unholy insects, instead of the DK's target. So the devs have hotfix-disabled it; you will still see it in your spellbook, but it will have no effect if you try to cast it. A worthwhile trade-off for the servers staying up for more than five minutes at a time, I'd say. The other ranks, including the level 80 rank 4 version, are still available. The Storm Peaks and Icecrown zones were also causing issues, and will not be able to be hotfixed, so we'll have to continue to do without them until the next patch.
AoC beta: a tale of two clients
Frustrated with the Age of Conan open beta's serious performance problems? Worried that the game won't be ready for retail in just a couple of weeks? Don't worry too much; not it is all as it seems. Word on the virtual street is that the open beta client is an old build with issues long since resolved in the closed beta version.When the IGN beta event finally began on Thursday, thousands of excited gamers ended up more frustrated than entertained. The experience has been marred by low framerates, stuttering, and frequent hard crashes. Admittedly, it's a beta; some of that is to be expected. But it's bad, and since the game's retail release is less than three weeks away, there's an air of concern that Age of Conan will hit retail in an unplayable state. The reality is more complex than that.
New TR patch shoved out the door
Well, that was quick. I'm not too sure why I'm surprised, but players woke up this morning to find that Tabula Rasa's patch 1.5 had snuck out the door last night, and is patiently waiting on player desktops. Players didn't quite have a full week to fully digest the patch notes after they showed up on the public test server before they're going live, which is either helpful or incredibly reckless depending on how much stock you put into the QA process. In this case we're going to go with "reckless" because early reports (confirmed after we ourselves downloaded the patch) show a strange bug where the game resets your resolution every time you load up the game, causing crashes for some (this blogger included).As to the content of the patch itself, we've already talked about some of the neat things that players will find within. One of the changes we didn't get around to talking about are the changes to the Spy class. They've reworked the way Traitor works in PvP to make it more like a traditional Mind Control, in addition to throwing in a new melee attack for Spies that is similar to other players' melee attacks, and takes into account bonuses to damage and knockdown given by putting pumps into hand-to-hand. (Spies are one of only two melee classes in the game, so this new attack is distinguished from their normal blade attacks.) Oddly enough though, Spies do not get a respec. Full patch notes available after the jump.
Urgent Maintenace
Tseric informs us that the realms Aegwynn, Akama, Chromaggus, Draka, Drak'thul, Garithos, Hakkar, Khaz Modan, Jubei'Thos, Kul Tiras, Korgath, Malorne, Mug'thol, Runetotem, and Thorium Brotherhood have been taken down for urgent, but unspecified, maintenance. Further the continent of Kalimdor seems to be having serious technical difficulties - reports in the general forums suggest that the continent may be crashing (or causing player disconnects) as frequently as every thirty seconds. Ouch. Thank goodness there's a lot of cool stuff in the Eastern Kingdoms - just hope you didn't log out in the wrong place...
