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Browsing MMO champ can be down right bad for anyone with much intelligence. So I want the honorable Gaiscioch opinion
What do you think of the prelaunch roughly 12 hours in?
My opinion is it is great? Definitely has some bugs but I understand that is to be expected. The biggest issue I have read is that the EU servers were having some issues.
Also read that the shutdown this morning could have had to do with some ISP issues outside Anets controL. I read this on MMO of course though.
Right now it's buggy. There are issues with guild invites, with joining party members in overflows, with mail. That said, it's headstart. The ANet devs have been up all night working on issues & trying to get them fixed, and I have no doubt that they will. Overall it's been fairly smooth, except for those bugs. No reason to panic at all. :)
Except for some small hiccups like the issues mentioned, the prelaunch was excellent. There was barely any lag most of the time, the servers were always up, and the game was plenty of fun.
I have no complaints on the pre-launch. Some minor bugs, but nothing serious. And I'm having a lot of fun.
Seemed fine to me, the server launched 3 hours early, and getting on when everyone else was trying to was pretty fast, bugs will be smashed so not to much worrying me.
I am totally enjoying playing. Have had no real issues at all. I wasn't on this morning so I don't know about any server issues. I have only noticed a wee bit of lag a couple of times (by "wee" I mean to where it was obvious to me.) I do tend to be a very lenient player so some small things I might not even notice. For me, the launch has been totally successful!
Aside from the perfectly normal and to be expected server hiccups that happened directly at launch time, I've had no problems.
I'm pretty let down, but mainly for non-launch related issues like getting a mean of 10fps on a pc that runs Skyrim with all but shadows on max getting 40+fps or the fact that the UI is a horrid, jumbled mess that explains absolutely nothing about nothing. As for the launch, it is a mixed bag. Many things are broken, mainly guilds and the auction house. However, most MMO launches out there are way worse, so it's been comparatively good. However, I won't delude myself saying "But it's a pre-launch". It is not. It is a launch event, with the simple difference that Anet allowed prepurchasers to log in before people who wanted to buy the box in store (and even then some stores gave out the 3-day headstart). If anyone can point out a difference between a pre-launch and a launch other than allowing a bit less people in, feel free to explain me that. Otherwise it is a launch event, particularly considering servers won't close anytime between pre-launch and launch, it'll go on seamlessly.
The reason that studios do pre-launches (in addition to the marketing reasons) is to have a "soft-launch". MMOs are notorious for having rough starts, especially with so many players logging in for the first time. By saying that launch isn't until 8/28, it gives them time to get the kinks worked out before the "official" launch. It's semantics, sure. But it's also to give them some time to get things working properly. Too many games get bad press & reputations based off of launch problems alone. Giving themselves a grace period helps alleviate some of that.
Hiccups are to be expected. Instead of focusing on ArenaNET, let me share with you my views on the launch in regards to the Guild Elders/Officers/leaders. While things were a bit shaky, our Guild leaders did an OUTSTANDING job herding us sheep into the starting gate. I know with hundreds of us logging into the game and into RaidCall, the same questions were being asked over and over. Instead of getting frustrated, our Guild Leadership kept it together and got us into the game and into the guild the best they could. Most "other" guilds would not have taken the time to put their own game-play on hold, to help out the whole. Kudos on a job well done. *This* is why I belong to Gaiscioch, and this is my view on the launch. :)
As far as launch days go, the servers were up a bit over 2 hours early, and were shaky for the first hour of that, many disconnects, etc, as they got more of their hardware up and going. As far as stability goes, once we hit that midnight PST mark, it was pretty fair. On the first daytime, I have not been disconnected at all and no noticeable server lag. The invite issue for the guild appears to be partly a UI issue, as the invite goes out, it just doesn't always appear on the invited person's list (at least it didn't for mine until I logged all the way out and restarted). Once in, though, you only need that one guild invite for any of your characters. I've been put into overflow several times, but as a solo player today, it hasn't been a big deal for me. It's Atlas Park 4 all over again. No biggie. I haven't run into any bugs, impossible material nodes, points of interest or anything. There are a couple of zone events that I've seen several times (which makes them less interesting than I was hoping for this game, honestly), but others have chained into even more events, and each one earns a little something. The mail doesn't work for me, at all. That makes me sad. That'd really be the only big thing I am unimpressed by. As far as launches go, it's not a bad one at all. I haven't done much but play through the starter instance for each race and worked a charr guardian to 11, with a little weapon and armorsmithing going on. (I still need to find water to play in to open up those skills for the trident and spear I have).
Well from my perspective I'm once again reminded what a launch feels like. 1 part christmas when I was 8 and the rest being the poor security guard in front of the angry mob outside wallmart on black Friday. I just keep telling myself.... this to shall pass :)
For me this was my first MMO launch, for I had always gotten them late even with expansions - Pandaria will, also, likely be the first MMO expansion I get on launch date. Living in Venezuela always meant I got the games roughly 2 weeks after launch, meaning I'd generally come in once servers were stable and population on leveling areas had stopped being a huge mob, yet was still far from a ghost town. Digital distribution has changed that thankfully, though I do wonder if it was better getting to games once launch issues were ironed out.
Its a launch/prelaunch thing. I expected far worse. The login being down for a few hours, and large guilds that invited folks quickly having problems is not much at all. If the trading post and mail are having some problems as well, we can stll break down and bank everything until it gets fixed. All in all I'd say pretty good.
With respect to headstart vs retail launch -- New games, traditionally and/or contractually, debut on Tuesdays throughout the industry. Tuesday would be a lame time to start a MMO. So headstart lets them launch it on a weekend while respecting (or thumbing-nose at, depending on your pov) brick-n-mortar retailers.
I'd say it went off pretty smoothly all things considered though I'm sure if it were completely up to the devs, it would have gone even smoother. Still, short of the unable to get our guildies in, and some on-going issues with mail and the trading company stuff, pretty impressive launch. I've certainly seen far worse launches! There is a bit of a feeling of being lost, particularly if this was your first MMO. However, I assume there's a manual somewhere and I just failed to RTFM.
@ Fog /hugs /valium I think the launch went very well. Bugs and crashes are to be expected. The overflow party issues beat staring at a queue saying "you are 1050 in the queue for Blackrock". At least you can play albeit maybe not with your friends. Mail is sporadic now, and hopefully the g invites will be fixed soon. The bugs are certainly all fixable, what can never be fixed is the overall dynamic/mechanic of a game. This one is a winner, once the kins are ironed out. I feel like I have found my gaming home. Yay!
GW2 is only my third MMO launch, and I can only compare it to RIFT and Aion. But, so far, this is the best launch I've ever had. Mainly because of the overflow severs. I didn't have to wait hours before I could get in and play the game.
I would say it's in the upper 50% of launches I've been involved in. The glaring difficulties would be guild setup issues, Marketplace (many have issues at first with this) and a wide assortment of quest related bugs. I DO believe that the design of this game is very well thought out, sound design and animations are some of the best I've seen. I have no doubt that many of these issues will be resolved in short order. It still has two thumbs up from me.
Technically it hasn't launched yet. We're basically the last group of beta testers before the game goes live. The gaming media will review it based off the state of the game on the 28th, not now.
I'm having a lot of fun for sure. I agree with Onchu about the overall quality of the art. I've always said that GW2 has some of the best art I've ever seen in a game, period. You can tell it has a lot of hard work and love went into the creation of this game. In my eyes, Rift is a huge step below where GW2 is in that department. As are most games.
MMOs are always buggy even at launch. The key is how quickly they recover from it so that people don't go elsewhere. The fact that their players don't have to worry about cancelling a subscription will help them out as far as number of players quitting after the first month. It should even out the "subscription cliffs" that other MMOs experience in that first few months of launch. In Guild Wars 2's case, it's mostly just active players since subscriptions don't exist.
I've always believed that Rift was largely the success that it was simply because the launch went so well. Bad launches have literally killed MMOs in their first year (Tabula Rasa, Auto Assault, and APB come to mind as recent games).
Right now it's still incredibly important that Anet receives feedback from us.
So anyway, I'll wait until about 2 weeks after the 28th to give my honest opinion about the launch of GW2.
» Edited on: 2012-08-26 08:01:45
From my perspective other then the 2-3 Hours on saturday night that I couldnt log on (for you guys from US this was the very early hours of saturday morning for you, im from aus) things have been fantastic. I havent so much noticed the trade post outage as I am hording most things for the moment.
Predictably, there have been a few bugs along the way, but so far it's been a pretty good launch. Trading Post and Mail issues havn't really gotten in the way of playing the game. Guild issues are likewise annoying, but thanks to Ben moving us over to Raidcall early, we can compensate there pretty well. Overflow has been annoying at times as I've been trying my best to help my wife through and get her hooked on the game, but overflow is constantly separating us... but frankly I much prefer this annoyance to the waiting in cues for hours we did in Rift during it's launch. My wife and I may be apart often, but at least we can still play, I can still advise her from the sidelines when she needs it, and there are no shortage of other random players to (sort of) watch her back for me. Pretty much the only major issues so far I've seen were the authentication issues about 7-8 hours in that kept people out of game. I've no idea how long they lasted since it was 10pm for me and a good time to stop anyway, and I didn't log in again for another 9-10 hours.
the launch is pretty good and considering that its still not the official release date they are doing a lot better the diablo 3
