To sum up this patch

daemonios · April 2014

- Maintenance during EU prime-time, with only a couple hours' notice;

- Servers are supposed to be up, but client has no new patch and login attempts time out;

- At this time, the forums are all but dead due to people understandably flocking to them to try and solve their issues;

- After patch downloads, game requests new authorization for access, to be sent by email, but because this must have applied to all or a large portion of the player community, the emails aren't sent in a timely fashion, generating more access attempts and more late emails;

- When everything seem to finally be in order, random issues occur. In my case, one character was stuck on a loading screen between zones and I haven't been able to log in since. Another character got duplicates of the digital imperial edition bonus items (maps, pets and rings of Mara). I almost freaked out when I went to the bank on that character because my hundreds of crafting materials had somehow vanished, though I've confirmed that they are accessible to another character.

I'll be waiting for official comments from the devs, but so far this has been one huge mess. I'm afraid to think what customer service will be like when the first wave of players has been goaded into buying the game and the project's at cruise speed.

raglau · April 2014

I think this game is definitely one to hang back for 6 months and see how it fares. I am sad to say it, but I think the sheer amount of cockups of this launch have consigned it to an early grave.

A real shame, as the game is excellent. But the simple fact is, if you are charging AAA price for a game plus a subscription, people expect good service and availability, not service and uptime that's worse than your average F2P game.

Rhian-Skybladeb16_ESO · April 2014

I agree that ESO could have used another couple of month to kick out bugs. Though I have had worse with other MMORPGs (not FTP), so I am not fussed just because I cannot play a day or two. *** happens even to non-FTP. I was able to play through early access, and even could play last weekend.

Considering the magnitude of issues the devs and support has to put up with right now, it is not very surprising they are still cloaked in silence. I think they probably have to find out what exactly is going wrong before making an announcement. I am pretty sure they are working on it right now pretty hard.

And stop bringing in that Free To Play crap. That is the biggest hoax that ever existed. No service like that is really for free, if one wants to really enjoy the game at its fullest without being limited by "hindrances until you pay".
Servers don't run on love and spit, and people who work for that company don't work for free... money makes the world go round...

On top of that most FTP Games are pretty shallow and become very boring very quickly. And former "abo" MMORPGs that turned FTP became pretty ***, because of the FTP-leeches who try to leech from the "old school" gamers who still pay... I left Everquest 2 because of that and also DDO.
Aion which was FTP in the first place bored me very quickly to death and so did LOL. Maple Story has a horrible graphic and also is a typical PTW or waste your time game.
If the only challenge of that game can be found and solved by real-world money, I am not interested.

raglau · April 2014

Rhian-Skybladeb16_ESO wrote: »

On top of that most FTP Games are pretty shallow and become very boring very quickly. And former "abo" MMORPGs that turned FTP became pretty ***, because of the FTP-leeches

I completely agree with your post re subs vs F2P.

I have always supported a sub for ESO, but it cuts both ways. If we're loyal subscribers treat us as such.

This is what my £9 a month sub buys in the real world:

Access to a class leading enterprise email solution
Access to a class leading document management solution
Access to IM and video conferencing
Access to cloud storage

All with a guaranteed uptime of 99.95% and a financially backed SLA and outages planned for my local hours, where ever I am in the world. A human on the end of the phone.

Just because this is a game, it does not mean service levels can be that of a tin-pot outfit on a tiny trading estate.

steveb16_ESO46 · April 2014

I want this game to be a big success. I fear that releasing this game in the state it is in, compounding it with ridiculous EU maintenance scheduling, a complete lack of communication and breathtakingly badly handled updates has already doomed that wish.

As the saying goes - you get one chance to make a good impression.

raglau · April 2014

steveb16_ESO46 wrote: »

I want this game to be a big success. I fear that releasing this game in the state it is in, compounding it with ridiculous EU

Yes, it's very sad. Stunningly designed game, hidden behind a wall of total incompetency when it comes to support. But game buyers are very unforgiving and Zenimax are probably on their last life already.

Certainly any hope they had of getting users of established MMOs to jump ship are dashed now.

Ragnar_Lodbrok · April 2014

I for one am happy about when they do maintenance and the fact that the very few quests Ive had bugged, are fixed within a couple of days.

Rhian-Skybladeb16_ESO · April 2014

Well, as I said. I had worse with other MMORPGs where I could not login for a whole week. And also even lost quite a bit of items, had plenty of Rollbacks (Everquest I, Everquest 2, Ultima Online, DAOC just to name a few).

Some of them handed out thank you goodies for the patience, some didn't...

I know that amount of money pays certain services or things in the real world.
Though, even there I had some "unexpected" downtime... and not always a compensation or even a sorry for that. If I would quit every time issues happen, I would be quitting providers and other stuff very often. I usually only quit and leave, when I really can't use that service most of the time.

Back to ESO...
The bank slot issue is annoying (and yes, I am a dedicated crafter with 7 toons), but nothing that really makes me cry now. I even lost some stuff. But it's not that hard to get it again (in worst case!).
If it keeps happening like over and over again for weeks, without any compensation (e.g. gold back to buy the lost bank slots again) - then I complain.

Same goes for the login issues. I expected that to happen since that game was an "preterm birth". Nothing new here with MMORPGs of that magnitude.
If it keeps happening and keeps me from playing more than just a day or three, then I am going to complain.

For now, I lean back, drink some tea and toy with the creation kit for Skyrim while I can't login to ESO ;-)

Alrighty, sleepy time for me now

have to get up in 5 hours again.

WhiteQueen · April 2014

Ragnar_Lodbrok wrote: »

I for one am happy about when they do maintenance and the fact that the very few quests Ive had bugged, are fixed within a couple of days.

You're lucky you're one of the ones who can actually play then.

daemonios · April 2014

To be honest, and while I do think today has been a huge mess, I don't have that many complaints about the game.

I've run into a couple of bugged quests, all of which have been addressed already, and customer support was surprisingly quick to help me with an issue where I couldn't mount a horse with one of my characters.

For the moment I've put the game aside because of these problems with the patch. Let's see tomorrow if everything's back to normal.