Overflow Issues
Isende
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Last night, four of us in my guild were running Banished Cells. Shortly into the dungeon, we started noticing guild chat lag. Since this isn't unusual (sadly) in the least, we assumed it WAS guild chat lag. We then started to notice that whisper was not working, nor was mail.
Got out of the dungeon, and ZOMG! we're in overflow!
Now, this is not working as my understanding of the overflow system is supposed to work. Per my understanding, we're supposed to 1) receive notification that our server is full and 2) be given a choice whether we wish to be placed in overflow, or wait in a queue. It was not my understanding that we would be arbitrarily moved to overflow, once in game. I suppose it could be argued that our time in BC indicated that we weren't, at that moment, "on the server." This is poor game design, and should be addressed. If we're logged in, if we've begun on the server, we should not be penalized for going into a dungeon because we might end up in overflow at the completion of the dungeon run.
Further, you guys REALLY need to rethink this whole "no social outlets" thing in overflow. I reiterate -- your gamers are playing an MMO. This means Massively Multiplayer Online. Why am I repeating this? Because we're in an MMO environment/game for a reason. We LIKE socializing. We LIKE being able to hang out with friends/family/etc in the game world. We do NOT like being arbitrarily tossed into overflow and having all social features disconnected. When it happens to the guild leader and two of his officers, it's more pronounced. Why? We're the ones the guild asks questions of, looks to for direction.
If your "megaserver" cannot handle REGULAR AND USUAL traffic on weekend nights, you need to fix that. Being arbitrarily tossed into overflow because you're not set up to handle the amounts of players on any given server during the weekend busy times should not become your customers' -- your PLAYERS' -- problem, it should be resolved.
I'm going to reiterate something else I've said. I love this game. I wish this game to succeed. This game will not succeed, in the model you've set (subscription fee-based) if you guys do not carefully watch the things that will alienate your average player. I realize this is a new launch, I realize there are a lot of issues with new launches. This, however, is both a bug and a design issue that need to be looked at very hard. The bug is the no notification/no choice, the design is the overflow at the current level of activity which exists, and the disconnection from social services. I'm very afraid that if you guys don't get a lock on this, and quickly, you'll find yourself going the way of Star Wars: The Old Repbublic and Rift -- being forced to change from a sub model to a F2P model. And if you do that, you're going to lose and alienate even more players.
Got out of the dungeon, and ZOMG! we're in overflow!
Now, this is not working as my understanding of the overflow system is supposed to work. Per my understanding, we're supposed to 1) receive notification that our server is full and 2) be given a choice whether we wish to be placed in overflow, or wait in a queue. It was not my understanding that we would be arbitrarily moved to overflow, once in game. I suppose it could be argued that our time in BC indicated that we weren't, at that moment, "on the server." This is poor game design, and should be addressed. If we're logged in, if we've begun on the server, we should not be penalized for going into a dungeon because we might end up in overflow at the completion of the dungeon run.
Further, you guys REALLY need to rethink this whole "no social outlets" thing in overflow. I reiterate -- your gamers are playing an MMO. This means Massively Multiplayer Online. Why am I repeating this? Because we're in an MMO environment/game for a reason. We LIKE socializing. We LIKE being able to hang out with friends/family/etc in the game world. We do NOT like being arbitrarily tossed into overflow and having all social features disconnected. When it happens to the guild leader and two of his officers, it's more pronounced. Why? We're the ones the guild asks questions of, looks to for direction.
If your "megaserver" cannot handle REGULAR AND USUAL traffic on weekend nights, you need to fix that. Being arbitrarily tossed into overflow because you're not set up to handle the amounts of players on any given server during the weekend busy times should not become your customers' -- your PLAYERS' -- problem, it should be resolved.
I'm going to reiterate something else I've said. I love this game. I wish this game to succeed. This game will not succeed, in the model you've set (subscription fee-based) if you guys do not carefully watch the things that will alienate your average player. I realize this is a new launch, I realize there are a lot of issues with new launches. This, however, is both a bug and a design issue that need to be looked at very hard. The bug is the no notification/no choice, the design is the overflow at the current level of activity which exists, and the disconnection from social services. I'm very afraid that if you guys don't get a lock on this, and quickly, you'll find yourself going the way of Star Wars: The Old Repbublic and Rift -- being forced to change from a sub model to a F2P model. And if you do that, you're going to lose and alienate even more players.
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GossiTheDog✭✭✭✭✭Okay, long post, I skipped most of it.
They had an outage yesterday, big chat lag and guild functionality, social functionality and bank functionality crashed. It wasn't overflow.0 -
GossiTheDog✭✭✭✭✭Here's the announcement: http://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/discussion/76190/issues-with-lag-social-systems-resolved0