ESO Justice Bug "Syndrome"

ZOS_TristanK

Hey, @AureateRN. We know that lag and other performance issues are frustrating and we appreciate your reports. There are two things that we can recommend doing when you lag or other issues. The first is to submit a bug report, because that will transmit a lot of vital information to the development team (like your character's exact location, your server, etc.). In the bug report, it's always good to note what character you were playing, what your character was doing/what was going on around her, and what was happening when you lagged (I got kicked for spam, I couldn't fire abilities, other characters weren't moving, etc.).

The second is to reach out with your game consultant file to our Support Team. They can go through some troubleshooting with you to hopefully improve things.

Again, we know that performance issues are frustrating, and we love getting as much information as possible so that we can really get to the heart of the issue.

All that said, we'd like to remind everyone to keep the Code of Conduct in mind when posting. We know that (especially around performance issues) tempers can flare, but please keep all posts constructive. We recommend using the report feature and the ignore feature on the forums if you feel like things are getting out of line instead of replying in the thread. Thank you.

nimander99

Could it be the Champion System? Either way it happened a few times to me right after launch but has not occurred once since the first week...

Woolenthreads

Hmmmm..... I had this happen once, recently. I thought it was a bug relating to the Guar I was riding down the steps in Coldharbour. However, I had a windowed screen and can offer a lot more information than "The screen went black and I couldn't play".
1. Obviously the sound still works, you can hear everything going on around your character.
2. While the screen is black, in Win8.1 you can still access the taskbar and corner data.
3. You cannot see any other windows that are activated from the taskbar, including Task Manager.
4. You can activate a second session of ESO from the taskbar (though that is obscured too) while the first is active.
5. You cannot close your active session of ESO from the taskbar
6. If the sessions of ESO end, the black obscuration is still active.
7. You can access and use "Metro" from the taskbar (something that Metro is finally useful for!) which means you can log out.

While I accept that this may be a Nvidia specific issue, in that endures past killing the ESO session, it is clearly something activated in ESO since I haven't had it happen with Any.Other.Program. (so far). I don't want to suggest that someone has hacked the v1.6 download to add an annoyance app, but it's the only explanation I can see currently. Anyone have another suggestion given the above data?

Edit: Just deleted a 8 words that shouldn't have been there being repetitions of "in that clearly something".

SLy_Kyti

I have a beast of a computer I bought 8 months ago. Top o DA line babee! 32 gigs fast ram, Intel i7 chip, 2 nVidia 820ti's (4gig ea) 4ssds ...yada yada...

...never encountered a problem with it Running ESO until v2.0...

...yes, since Monday before last, 5, count em 5, White pop up message- this program has stopped responding...
...but wait!....were not finished... 4 ESO crash notification pop ups...and I've been not hardly playing at all (root canal)...

So did we call Comcast, reboot our modem, check the connection, wear a tin foil hat? Noooo....
Add on folder **swish** onto desktop, voila' no add ons..still hangs up, lags out, unresponsive....hmmm...
Roll back nVidia driver...nobettah...roll back further...AHA! YES we have liftoff...better...not like before the patch but better...

To the OP:
After rolling back to June 2014 nVidia driver
Rerunning nVidia control panel setting up game optimizations (performance)
Checking your power configuration to be high performance
Turning your view distance doooown to say 45 in game
Running the Windows Resource Monitor while playing (you can see ESO draws nearly 2gigs while playing and just grows) to make sure nothing else is hogging stuff.
You should profit

....that is until this game is ummm tweaked, yeah that's it, tweaked by ZOS to run better to be optimized for Intel i7 64b and nVidia...we have to figure it out ourselves. Good luck.....

....and yeah, the syndrome does exist, since patches v2.0.1/2.0.2, I had to turn down my killer system to be stable... For one game.

AureateRN

ZOS_TristanK wrote: »

Hey, @AureateRN. We know that lag and other performance issues are frustrating and we appreciate your reports. There are two things that we can recommend doing when you lag or other issues. The first is to submit a bug report, because that will transmit a lot of vital information to the development team (like your character's exact location, your server, etc.). In the bug report, it's always good to note what character you were playing, what your character was doing/what was going on around her, and what was happening when you lagged (I got kicked for spam, I couldn't fire abilities, other characters weren't moving, etc.).

The second is to reach out with your game consultant file to our Support Team. They can go through some troubleshooting with you to hopefully improve things.

Again, we know that performance issues are frustrating, and we love getting as much information as possible so that we can really get to the heart of the issue.

All that said, we'd like to remind everyone to keep the Code of Conduct in mind when posting. We know that (especially around performance issues) tempers can flare, but please keep all posts constructive. We recommend using the report feature and the ignore feature on the forums if you feel like things are getting out of line instead of replying in the thread. Thank you.

Thank you very kindly for your response! It is encouraging. I kept a diary over the weekend of all the times it happened, what I was doing, etc. and I will submit it as you suggested. I have submitted bug reports related to this issue to no avail in the past though mostly because I was concerned about the "chat spam" thing, which a fellow player has been nice enough to explain to me here.

Thanks again for your time and attention.

newtinmpls

ZOS_TristanK wrote: »

In the bug report, it's always good to note what character you were playing, what your character was doing/what was going on around her, and what was happening when you lagged (I got kicked for spam, I couldn't fire abilities, other characters weren't moving, etc.)..

This boggles my mind (the idea that a bug report WOULD NOT tell which character I was playing).

I'd really like help with my bug reports - been frustrated as heck with that - so I'll suggest that anything that isn't automatically reported pretty please be listed so we can add it!

coryevans_3b14_ESO

lordrichter wrote: »

Fleshreaper wrote: »

AureateRN wrote: »

3. Many are longtime online gamers; some have played MMORPGs for over two decades. They know their stuff.

You mean back in 1994, when they used Windows 3.1 O_o (MMO Massive Multi-Player Online)????

"Massive" was a lot smaller back then.

Seriously, multiplayer online role playing games existed back in the 1980's and 1990's. Some of them pre-date the internet.

I don't think you understand the online part of MMO

AureateRN

SLy_Kyti wrote: »

I have a beast of a computer I bought 8 months ago. Top o DA line babee! 32 gigs fast ram, Intel i7 chip, 2 nVidia 820ti's (4gig ea) 4ssds ...yada yada...

...never encountered a problem with it Running ESO until v2.0...

...yes, since Monday before last, 5, count em 5, White pop up message- this program has stopped responding...
...but wait!....were not finished... 4 ESO crash notification pop ups...and I've been not hardly playing at all (root canal)...

So did we call Comcast, reboot our modem, check the connection, wear a tin foil hat? Noooo....
Add on folder **swish** onto desktop, voila' no add ons..still hangs up, lags out, unresponsive....hmmm...
Roll back nVidia driver...nobettah...roll back further...AHA! YES we have liftoff...better...not like before the patch but better...

To the OP:
After rolling back to June 2014 nVidia driver
Rerunning nVidia control panel setting up game optimizations (performance)
Checking your power configuration to be high performance
Turning your view distance doooown to say 45 in game
Running the Windows Resource Monitor while playing (you can see ESO draws nearly 2gigs while playing and just grows) to make sure nothing else is hogging stuff.
You should profit

....that is until this game is ummm tweaked, yeah that's it, tweaked by ZOS to run better to be optimized for Intel i7 64b and nVidia...we have to figure it out ourselves. Good luck.....

....and yeah, the syndrome does exist, since patches v2.0.1/2.0.2, I had to turn down my killer system to be stable... For one game.

I could Google Translate "thank you SO much" into every language available and type until my fingers bled and still not find enough ways to say thank you for this post.

Looks like June 2014 (holy HADES!) nVidia it is. Wow (as in the word, not the game) ...just ...wow. I didn't like all those nice new features for watching high def tv with surround sound anyway...nah... I just run my tv off my tower for kicks and giggles.

I just love a 2014-15 game that's intentionally designed for 32 not 64 based systems, oh, and that also doesn't take advantage of or allow for the use of multi-core technology. Just LOVE it.. really. (Please note I said I LOVE it. Hearts, flowers, rainbows.. LOVE it.) Maybe it's a good thing I put off the SSD for now.

I truly do love the game, and I'd like to be able to play it with some reliability again sometime in the near future. I have some ideas about what's actually going on...but it's not worth losing my posting "privileges" to share them.

Speaking of which, if anyone knows where adults go to discuss ...stuff not fluff, including gaming, sans censors I'm all, erm, eyes?

AureateRN

Woolenthreads wrote: »

Hmmmm..... I had this happen once, recently. I thought it was a bug relating to the Guar I was riding down the steps in Coldharbour. However, I had a windowed screen and can offer a lot more information than "The screen went black and I couldn't play".
1. Obviously the sound still works, you can hear everything going on around your character.
2. While the screen is black, in Win8.1 you can still access the taskbar and corner data.
3. You cannot see any other windows that are activated from the taskbar, including Task Manager.
4. You can activate a second session of ESO from the taskbar (though that is obscured too) while the first is active.
5. You cannot close your active session of ESO from the taskbar
6. If the sessions of ESO end, the black obscuration is still active.
7. You can access and use "Metro" from the taskbar (something that Metro is finally useful for!) which means you can log out.

While I accept that this may be a Nvidia specific issue, in that it is clearly something that it is something that endures past killing the ESO session, it is clearly something activated in ESO since I haven't had it happen with Any.Other.Program. (so far). I don't want to suggest that someone has hacked the v1.6 download to add an annoyance app, but it's the only explanation I can see currently. Anyone have another suggestion given the above data?

Thanks. I have plain Win 8 and have learned how to power off the computer in a safer way. I have experienced all the things you've mentioned. Thanks for the more inclusive set of "symptoms". I knew I was forgetting some details! This is absolutely a clearly defined set of issues and it IS happening to a lot of people. Most who play do not even bother coming to the forums and just suffer in silence, so...yeah. Thanks.

Bloodkraft

This has happened allot to me as well - specially since the champion system and new mounts. I have contacted support and we were unable to track it down - since it's to intermittent. I can play for several hours before it does it or sometimes 5 min - it so random.

I have noticed that it does happen more frequently when i choose to ride my quar versus the imperial horse or when I enter a dungeon. When the black screen happens I can still hear sounds from the game and if I crtl-alt-del, sometimes the screen comes back, most times i have to reload the game. When it happens - it a pain because by time you reload if your stealing yo get caught or sometimes in a dungeon your dead . (I have never seen this bug until the recent updates)

I am on a AMD Radeon card so don't think it's Nvidia specific. However the black screen, with sound still working, does lean towards video card/drivers. Also, with my talks with support, they did say that the new updates 1.6, 2.0, there was some graphic changes.

Terminus1

The type of behavior you mentioned is indicative of partial memory error - most likely associated with your graphics card. This "behavior" or action is normally associated with higher end cards that can actually force your PC to shut down in order to "prevent further damage" to your video card.

Does this mean that your card is defective? It may be now. You can still loose miniscule memory clusters on your video card. They are mostly cumulative over the long run but they are also usually so slow to accumulate that it won't make a difference. But sometimes it does.

How do we fix it? You can choose to replace the card etc. I am not sure that is worth the effort though. A far better idea is to adjust your game settings under the video tab. The single most efficient boost I got when playing around with the buttons was turning shadows off. The second biggest boost I got was turning grass off.

My performance more than doubled. I am suddenly able to see resource nodes like I have never seen before. But the single best thing is that I have not had a crash since de-selecting these two buttons.

Sure - I am not playing on Ultimate anymore. But me and my 7 year old computer are able to play just fine now.

Terminus1

Oh yeah - one more thing: UPDATE YOUR DRIVERS REGULARLY, CLEAN YOUR REGISTRY, and CHECK YOUR SYSTEM FOR CONTAMINATES. This last one means "open your case and clean it out". You should be doing this along with memory tools once a month for heavy users and once a quarter for casual users. Think of it as an oil change for PCs.

gard

AureateRN wrote: »

Thymos wrote: »

I had this problem early on after the release of the game. I found out it was that I had a bad module in one of my memory sticks. I removed the bad stick, and the game played fine, even though I was limited to only 4gb of RAM.

I have upgraded back up to 8gb since then, but it did solve the problem.

I have 8 and had no issues during that period, though in fairness I was playing on a different, less nice pc.
I have more pc than the game makes use of which is frustrating, though I'm not starting yet ANOTHER specs thread.
Even my little one upstairs is fine...except for this issue, starting after 1.6/Justice.

Little side note:
If a system has too little ram, the problem will manifest itself as frequent reading and writing to the page file. It should be observable in the resource monitor.

gard

coryevans_3b14_ESO wrote: »

lordrichter wrote: »

Fleshreaper wrote: »

AureateRN wrote: »

3. Many are longtime online gamers; some have played MMORPGs for over two decades. They know their stuff.

You mean back in 1994, when they used Windows 3.1 O_o (MMO Massive Multi-Player Online)????

"Massive" was a lot smaller back then.

Seriously, multiplayer online role playing games existed back in the 1980's and 1990's. Some of them pre-date the internet.

I don't think you understand the online part of MMO

"In the land of the blind, the one eyed man is king"

There were several dialup services available that provided multiplayer games. Compuserve, Genie, Aol, and probably a few more I'm forgetting.
People were playing mulltiplayer games online simultaneously with hundreds of other players long before everyone had access to the "internet".

Which makes me laugh now, thinking about how ESO struggles with too many players in pvp.

PCheuk38b14_ESO

Did you try reinstalling Windows because ZOS never admits it's their fault.

AureateRN

Bloodkraft wrote: »

This has happened allot to me as well - specially since the champion system and new mounts. I have contacted support and we were unable to track it down - since it's to intermittent. I can play for several hours before it does it or sometimes 5 min - it so random.

I have noticed that it does happen more frequently when i choose to ride my quar versus the imperial horse or when I enter a dungeon. When the black screen happens I can still hear sounds from the game and if I crtl-alt-del, sometimes the screen comes back, most times i have to reload the game. When it happens - it a pain because by time you reload if your stealing yo get caught or sometimes in a dungeon your dead . (I have never seen this bug until the recent updates)

I am on a AMD Radeon card so don't think it's Nvidia specific. However the black screen, with sound still working, does lean towards video card/drivers. Also, with my talks with support, they did say that the new updates 1.6, 2.0, there was some graphic changes.

Ahh so finally an admission. Along with what Terminus said and what my own experience tells me...I'm thinking of
.....the DPT vaccine.

Surely you didn't expect something sensible. *wink*

For decades the pharmaceutical industry was well aware that impurities in the P, Pertussis, ie Whooping Cough portion of the DPT shot for infants was causing morbidity and mortality. Sadly for countless families over all these years they deemed all those brain damaged children, who would have been perfectly healthy otherwise, an acceptable loss. Part of doing business. Most of you probably know the rest of the story. The news eventually got out. Parents stopped giving their kids the P part of the DPT vaccine and BAM! Pertussis, once all but eradicated in the US made a huge resurgence, claiming lives along the way. All because of GREED. Suddenly an acellular (safe and pure) Pertussis vaccine, DaPT, became a reality (for a price)...at least in first and some wealthier second world countries. Third world countries are still told how effective the old DwPT is.

The good news...no one is going to die IF those of us having this graphics issue have been deemed an acceptable loss by ZOS. The fact is they probably WOULD be pretty happy to see me go at this point, not that I think for a moment they have flagged certain accounts for bug attacks. As for our graphics cards.. well, I plan to tell mine what a fun and exciting game ESO still is!

(Please understand the above is sardonic humor--nothing more.)

Seriously, thank you VERY much for this information, Bloodkraft, and Terminus also as well as everyone else who offered constructive input. I appreciate your answers and information and suggestions very much! I'll be following up with tech support.

ItsMeToo

Over-clocking your PC can also lead to problems. Get more RAM and launch the game with the .exe file not the ESO Launcher. Only use the ESO Launcher to get the patches.

nerevarine1138

gard wrote: »

coryevans_3b14_ESO wrote: »

lordrichter wrote: »

Fleshreaper wrote: »

AureateRN wrote: »

3. Many are longtime online gamers; some have played MMORPGs for over two decades. They know their stuff.

You mean back in 1994, when they used Windows 3.1 O_o (MMO Massive Multi-Player Online)????

"Massive" was a lot smaller back then.

Seriously, multiplayer online role playing games existed back in the 1980's and 1990's. Some of them pre-date the internet.

I don't think you understand the online part of MMO

"In the land of the blind, the one eyed man is king"

There were several dialup services available that provided multiplayer games. Compuserve, Genie, Aol, and probably a few more I'm forgetting.
People were playing mulltiplayer games online simultaneously with hundreds of other players long before everyone had access to the "internet".

Which makes me laugh now, thinking about how ESO struggles with too many players in pvp.

This is far afield of the OP, but you do realize that AOL, etc. gave you access to the internet, right? Dial-up is still a connection to the internet. So the notion of playing an online multiplayer game before the internet is ridiculous, because there was no way to be "online" in those circumstances.

Jayne_Doe

nerevarine1138 wrote: »

This is far afield of the OP, but you do realize that AOL, etc. gave you access to the internet, right? Dial-up is still a connection to the internet. So the notion of playing an online multiplayer game before the internet is ridiculous, because there was no way to be "online" in those circumstances.

You're confusing "online" with the "internet." People could dial-up on their modems to bulletin boards and connect to other PCs. Someone else who knows way more than I do could better explain it, but I remember dialing a telephone number via my modem to connect to someone else's PC that was set up as a bulletin board or a server. It was before the internet as we all know it now, but it was online. This was before AOL and other internet service providers. It's like saying no one was actually making telephone calls before cell phones.

Back on topic - to the OP. I haven't experienced a black screen but I do sporadically experience screen freezes, wherein the game freezes but I'm still seeing the game. I've always been able to ctrl-alt-delete to access the task manager and close the program. It happens to me regardless of whether I'm running the launcher or just the .exe file. I almost never run the launcher unless I'm patching, as long ago at game launch, I discovered how much better the game ran without the launcher open. I also had to turn my graphic settings down.

Things ran very well for me until update 2.xx. Since that time, I experience sporadic crashes that I mentioned above. Sometimes, it would happen two or three times in an evening, others only once or never. The things I would be doing ranged from being in my bank menu, leaving a building, just riding around town on my mount, working at a crafting table, etc. What's interesting is that this has never happening to me while in combat or out in the wild - only ever in town, which hints at the Justice system. If it isn't the Justice system, then it's something else related to the update, as this has not happened to me before.

Nothing changed with my pc since the update, so something in their update isn't playing nicely with my system. It seems that 2.xx has something in it that's causing an issue with a certain subset of players - it may not be widespread, but it's an issue. That we did not experience anything like this before and then suddenly have it start happening after the update, signals to me that there is an issue. Perhaps it's as simple as just not playing nicely now with some pc setups, which now have to be tweaked. Perhaps there is nothing ZOS can do in that case, but it's still an issue. I haven't been submitting /bug reports, so that's my fault - I will do so in future to give them more data to work with to help them isolate the problem.

Woolenthreads

AureateRN wrote: »

Woolenthreads wrote: »

Hmmmm..... I had this happen once, recently. I thought it was a bug relating to the Guar I was riding down the steps in Coldharbour. However, I had a windowed screen and can offer a lot more information than "The screen went black and I couldn't play".
1. Obviously the sound still works, you can hear everything going on around your character.
2. While the screen is black, in Win8.1 you can still access the taskbar and corner data.
3. You cannot see any other windows that are activated from the taskbar, including Task Manager.
4. You can activate a second session of ESO from the taskbar (though that is obscured too) while the first is active.
5. You cannot close your active session of ESO from the taskbar
6. If the sessions of ESO end, the black obscuration is still active.
7. You can access and use "Metro" from the taskbar (something that Metro is finally useful for!) which means you can log out.

While I accept that this may be a Nvidia specific issue, in that it is clearly something that it is something that endures past killing the ESO session, it is clearly something activated in ESO since I haven't had it happen with Any.Other.Program. (so far). I don't want to suggest that someone has hacked the v1.6 download to add an annoyance app, but it's the only explanation I can see currently. Anyone have another suggestion given the above data?

Thanks. I have plain Win 8

Good Lord! Update to 8.1. I had Win8 on my laptop, it works a lot better with Win8.1. There's apparently a big fat exploit in Win8 that they don't talk about (according to my IT friends). I had trouble with the 8.1 update but it eventually installed.

derpsticks

Happened again:

Description:
A problem caused this program to stop interacting with Windows.

Problem signature:
Problem Event Name: AppHangB1
Application Name: eso.exe
Application Version: 1.0.0.1
Application Timestamp: 5514d8e7
Hang Signature: 2393
Hang Type: 134217728
OS Version: 6.3.9600.2.0.0.256.48
Locale ID: 1033
Additional Hang Signature 1: 2393a98cae0c924078eae5d8b1386553
Additional Hang Signature 2: 9771
Additional Hang Signature 3: 9771493052d36ccab6f83a023bcf86f4
Additional Hang Signature 4: 2393
Additional Hang Signature 5: 2393a98cae0c924078eae5d8b1386553
Additional Hang Signature 6: 9771
Additional Hang Signature 7: 9771493052d36ccab6f83a023bcf86f4

AureateRN

derpsticks wrote: »

Happened again:

Description:
A problem caused this program to stop interacting with Windows.

Problem signature:
Problem Event Name: AppHangB1
Application Name: eso.exe
Application Version: 1.0.0.1
Application Timestamp: 5514d8e7
Hang Signature: 2393
Hang Type: 134217728
OS Version: 6.3.9600.2.0.0.256.48
Locale ID: 1033
Additional Hang Signature 1: 2393a98cae0c924078eae5d8b1386553
Additional Hang Signature 2: 9771
Additional Hang Signature 3: 9771493052d36ccab6f83a023bcf86f4
Additional Hang Signature 4: 2393
Additional Hang Signature 5: 2393a98cae0c924078eae5d8b1386553
Additional Hang Signature 6: 9771
Additional Hang Signature 7: 9771493052d36ccab6f83a023bcf86f4

To derpsticks:

I'm truly sorry to hear that, yet I'm glad people are continuing to respond.

I spent today's high traffic hours doing maintenance and stuff (malwarebytes, Kaspersky's,Norton eraser, etc.) and did some excess program removal I also contacted NVIDIA. My pc is very spiffy and clean, outside and in. Oh, I also re-ran the memory diagnostics; no issues, as usual.

To Woolenthreads:

I will strongly consider the upgrade (?) to Win 8.1. I know it's free *grin* but at this point I'm just trying to get this issue identified and repaired on my current OS, especially since I've come so far deleting excess baggage. This issue has truly become a sliver in my .....toe. My pc is fine in every other way, including playing FFXIV, which has some pretty intense graphics and QUICK game play with no bottle necking, error messages, low FPS, extreme lag, frequent crashing to blank/black desktop as the sound still plays, etc., etc.

It still makes me sad to think my poor GPU may be slowly dying, bit by bit, and trying valiantly to save itself each time the black screen happens. So poignant... Gods as my witness, I shall never yell at it again!

AureateRN

ItsMeToo wrote: »

Over-clocking your PC can also lead to problems. Get more RAM and launch the game with the .exe file not the ESO Launcher. Only use the ESO Launcher to get the patches.

Don't. Have an ABUNDANCE. Do. Do.

As one person has now reported back after tech support responded to a ticket, a ZOS tech support worker has acknowledged, in discussing these issues, that graphics were indeed changed in the Justice System update. (If that post has been taken down since I read it this morning, I apologize.)

This could very well be excellent news for those among us experiencing game play interruption/graphics card damage because if ZOS has identified the issue on their end that means they can try to fix it...unless we are indeed considered dispensable. I choose not to be that cynical...yet.

So, while your good general advice is appreciated, It's not our solution because the issue is NOT something we have been experiencing since we started playing the game. Thank you for taking the time to respond.

bellanca6561n

lordrichter wrote: »

Fleshreaper wrote: »

AureateRN wrote: »

3. Many are longtime online gamers; some have played MMORPGs for over two decades. They know their stuff.

You mean back in 1994, when they used Windows 3.1 O_o (MMO Massive Multi-Player Online)????

"Massive" was a lot smaller back then.

Seriously, multiplayer online role playing games existed back in the 1980's and 1990's. Some of them pre-date the internet.

While they may not predate the existence of the Internet, you could not use that network for commercial purposes until 1995.

Furthermore, those of us making commercial games prior to that time dreaded that option over, say, GEIS or CIS, precisely because the Internet had no control over connection quality the way private networks did. There was no such thing as Internet Customer Support.

And that remains a problem today.

Ironically some of those earlier game were more massive in one sense: number of simultaneous players engaged in the same group activity. Air Warrior's Big Week missions in '95 would have 500 players engaged in the same mission in different roles, some as fighter pilots, bombers pilots, crew members on bombers serving as gunners, all in the same mission sharing the same digital airspace.

It was new and the nature of it was so emotionally moving to those who participated in it that the newsgroup created for bug reporting for Big Week exists today as an online community.

Only part of its impact on players was newness though. Many Big Week players had been playing Air Warrior for 9 years prior to those missions. Most of it was the scale at that time.

And part of it was that the audience would never find a home again in an online game. What was meaningful to them was participating in something, no matter how imperfectly simulated, that was based on something real. Their lore was history. In some cases family history...fathers and grandfathers.

You'd lose them here at the feline and reptile humanoids

The massive shared experience is what few so called MMOs can deliver today. Eve Online does but only occasionally.