by Phaine
Star Trek Offline
February 6, 2010 in Star Trek Online by Phaine
Well most folks in TDK know Im a rather hardcore Sci Fi fan. If its space, has aliens, and some form of lasers then I simply cant get enough.
Due to this I just happen to be a rather big Star Trek fan. I havent up till now purchased the game as my time in beta was rather unimpressive…but…as a trekkie its rather hard to resist the urge of Leonard Nemoy calling to me at night.
Thankfully my problem was solved when a buddy and guildmate (Seires) decided to hook me up with a copy. Man o Man was I excited. Downloaded the game fast as possible from Direct2drive at a blazing 2.2megs a second and in no time was patched and ready to go.
Right as I go to log in, bam server crash. I go to the forums and a Cryptic employee posts about an unexpected downtime…however he copy and pastes an OLD post about a scheduled maintenance…wtf… ok typos happen but usually you fix them when you notice, well not this guy. Its 2 hours later and he still has the wrong notification up.
Oh well no worries servers down for 20 minutes and they patch…wait… how do you have an unscheduled downtime / crash and then follow it with a patch. Come again? Oh well… no worries shit happens.
I create my toon get into game and start the rather lengthy (1 hour plus) tutorial. Its been about 40 minutes since the server crashed and Im almost done with the ground phase of the tutorial when my toon starts rubber banding like mad. Sure enough server goes down. I head to the forums again, still have the same broken announcement about the previous downtime unfixed…and no new announcement. Hopefully someone there knows there was a crash.
After talking to a few of the other rather angry forum denizens it turns out this is the 5th “Unscheduled emergency downtime” for the day. Folks are now calling it Star Trek Offline and apparently Cryptic is trying to get in touch with Guinness Books so they can nock off Funcom with Anarchy Online as the most unstable launch of all time.
Well grats Cryptic, you definitely made one hell of a first impression on me. Something tells me many refunds and charge backs will be springing up over the weekend.
“Its 2 hours later and he still has the wrong notification up.”
only shows you are good at mashing the f5 key and not looking a the thread created not 2mins after the first with the correct information. Also, isn’t some notification better than none??
“wait… how do you have an unscheduled downtime / crash and then follow it with a patch.”
I see you also seem to think that video games are magic and when you change code to the servers to fix a problem or identify a problem in client code you don’t need to patch it. You just reboot the game and hope it doesn’t happen again right?
It should also be noted you decided to have your first STO experience on its first Friday night of live play. Star Trek is attracting numbers of players that are unheard of in a niche mmo. Cryptic has admitted that they just were not prepared for the server load and have been constantly adding machines to fix it. This has actually been one of the smoother launches in recent mmo history, and the only real reason for the downtime is that everyone wants to play it.
Well allow me to retort.
The poster admitted about 5 minutes after the post that he screwed up, however he didnt go and edit his post, he left his post in its original form. I never saw a correction even hours later. Granted its possible I missed it.
As for the patch, I dont think video games are magic. However, if you have an unscheduled downtime that means its not planned as in a surprise. You cant instantly create a 150 meg patch in 5 minutes that fixes said issue. Not sure what your experience is with coding, but as you pointed out it isnt “Black Magic”.
As for smooth launches… Id argue that Global Agenda, Warhammer, Aion, Age of Conan, and many more had better launches. 5 “Crashes” in one day is a bit much IMO and shows they were not ready for launch…
You don’t just change the one or two lines dynamically in the file, most often you have to change the one or two lines and then distribute the entire file with all its original code and the new code added in. So yes, I do believe you can create a 150mb patch in the hour that the servers were down on Friday.
As for the launches you cited.. I wasn’t there for Global Agenda, but Warhammer was rough, first not enough servers, long queues. Then the devs added servers, which turned out to not be needed so they retracted the servers, smooth indeed. Aion was very smooth for a US release, considering the game was live for almost a year and a half in China. Age of Conan was horrid as well until about a month in when they released the “magic patch” that fixed the game. I remember everyone’s beloved WoW release where you would take upwards of five mins to loot a mob, if you could get past queues that is. Point is, no game launches smoothly because once you let the public in all chaos is introduced to the network model.
The dev poster didn’t remove the thread or lock it, which I’m sure was due to him being more interested in getting back online. That’s about the only gaff of the night and it was a small one at that. With a content patch due in just about two weeks I’m sure there will be more code optimization as there always is and as the player base settles down things will get better. Its a shame there are just too many doom sayer bloggers who condemn a game based on its early runnings. I put this game in the category with Lord of the Rings Online, this game isn’t going to die ever because of the IP attached.
Im not dooming the game, Im just criticizing them for launching it early and being unprepared. Im not saying STO is DOOMED! Im not calling it a Tabula Rasa, Im simply pointing out the short comings that they had on my first night playing.
When they do good, Ill point that out as well.
sorry, when I see people write things like…
“Well grats Cryptic, you definitely made one hell of a first impression on me. Something tells me many refunds and charge backs will be springing up over the weekend.”
I tend to see that as doom saying.
Doom saying to me is end of the game… its a fact that most MMO’s hemorrhage about 50% of their player base the month after launch. The more a dev company screws up the more people they lose, I.E. War and AoC
Check out the forums at MMORPG.com quite a few folks are asking for refunds. Thats a bad weekend for Cryptic. Is it Doom for the game? no not yet… but its definitely not good.
unfortunately the vocal minority seems to win in these situations. As always for each person claiming that they want their money back there are at least five still playing and enjoying good time with their fleet.
I Agree. There have been alot of naysayers who aren’t really giving it much of a chance. WAR’s launch was horrible. 2 hour queues were just part of it, there was also the rubber banding, which sto has some of as well though. I dunno. Wasn’t the greatest week for a launch, but not the worst by far.