Wednesday 22 April 2009

Bollocks... Not again

So after finishing the blog post I decided to pop over to Reikland to see how the battle was progressing there. Upon zoning in from the flight patch I got kicked to the character select screen. Now upon trying to log in with Lokax it kicks me back to the character select screen once the Reikland load screen shows up and after the second time I try it, the client crashes completely.

Ran a file check - no luck.
Disabled addons - no luck.
Can log any other character in fine.

Time to login my choppa and send in one of those appeals again... *sighs*

Update #1 21:26 I found this while waiting on my appeal on the GOA forums, just so anyone else may discover this...
Hello everyone,

We have seen an unusual number of reports regarding players being unable to connect to their characters in-game.

If you are being sent back to the character selection screen after pressing play please contact our Customer Support Team so that they will be able to investigate and rectify the issue.

As this is a character specific issue please log into an alternative character and file a CSR Appeal, ensure it is filed as a "Stuck Issue".

You may also send this appeal via the Help-form.

Thanks guys, we are working on it!


Update #2
Well, got a response from a CSR who believed he had resolved the issue, however this wasn't the case, poor Lok was still stuck in the warp and now so was my Choppa who lodged the appeal. Logged in with my Shaman (yeah.. all my characters are greenskins and pitifully low levels) and the CSR realised straight away there was something not right and found it odd that my Choppa was visiting Gork (or Mork). Still he asked me to log for 5 minutes (about 7 minutes ago) so lets have another look!

Update #3
This is starting to look bad... Can't log into my four characters (bank alt squiggy is now locked out as is my Shaman). CSR was able to logon succesfully onto the characters. Wondering if a pc reboot and router power cycle will do the trick.... Thinking anything is worth a shot right now

Update #4
And Loky is bag in business! Major thanks to CSR Arcalstraaz who waited patiently with me and managed to find my myriad of stupidly named alts to help me through this one. Really nice and polite person.
Orcy Rating:

How many scarabs shall we find in Land of the Dead?

So with shattered confidence in Mythic and GOA at the moment (though damnit.. I still really enjoy the game you gitz!). I started to think about Land of the Dead and how it's going to hold up upon release. Mythic are rightly taking there time with it, but they do have a deadline and they cannot risk delaying it and thus the game being heavily impacted by the inevitable Summer Slow Down that affects all MMO's, and you wonder with the current buggy state that the other instances are in, how many little scarabs (being beetles and being bugs... see wot I did dere?) will creep into the zone.

Zone.. that's the crucial thing to remember, it's not a small patch at all, this isn't 1.2.1 nor even 1.2, but the biggest content patch that will likely hit WAR before an expansion is released. To drum up interest over the summer and tide it through the summer months when people rediscover the outside and beer gardens. Going back to what I said, when I step into Lost Vale, Bloodwrought Enclave or Bilerot Burrow I fight as many bugs and glitches as I do mobs, our goblins get stuck in terrain and down the back of the sofa, mobs warp or reset and encounters are about as balanced as a see-saw with a Black Orc on it. Add the RvR mix, an entry mechanic, lairs, PQ's and Mythics current reputation of publishing buggy content as I think we have to assume that a good portion of the zone won't be working right, or we'll find some busted areas in general.

This isn't a hugely bad thing, I don't think any content patch by any company goes live with no bugs or broken parts, it comes with 30 programmers competing against 500,000 players that want to win (though don't all want to cheat). The real test will be how quickly Mythic can react to the broken parts and fix them without breaking another aspect of the dungeon. Will we see emergency patches and the minor things (buggy PQ mobs, broken tome unlocks) also fixed quickly. Then we still wait for the bugs to be fixed in the existing instances, in the cities, the careers, the professions....

Hope you still have the resource to keep on top of the existing bugs as well as a whole new instance and zones worth Mythic!