Guild Wars 2

Anyone else realize that the technical forums just got renamed into being in german on the english forums?

Rshipley.8194:

They delete all posts that have a complaint. There is no phone number to call them I wonder why.

maybe because its being fixed and if you kept calling them it would slow them down?

inb4cleenexing, on a serious note, merging isnt a bad idea. And those following these forums, know there are about 2 pages of deleted threads about 2 issues, and 2 more pages whos been merged into that 1000 post long fps thread.

Daish, no need to be offensive. I have PERSONALLY had at least one post CENSORED, calling it a rant, ok? I have the PM to prove it and who it was that censored it. I admitted I was ranting in another post but explained why. You are no one to tell me or anyone else what we should or not say. If you don’t like what you are reading DON’T READ IT ANY FURTHER. Simple, right? And Mistbooster is absolutely right, instead of spending so many resources moderating the forums, they should just fix the problems the game has. My two cents.

@OP, you don’t like how they teased the game infront of us for the longest time telling us it’d release when it was done and then releasing it in shambles with numerous problems no different then other common botched mmo releases? And not just technical issues but gameplay, balance, and even billing issues? That’s totally unreasonable. And you wonder why complaint posts get censored.

Chewie.7389:

@OP, you don’t like how they teased the game infront of us for the longest time telling us it’d release when it was done and then releasing it in shambles with numerous problems no different then other common botched mmo releases? And not just technical issues but gameplay, balance, and even billing issues? That’s totally unreasonable. And you wonder why complaint posts get censored.

^This. Exactly this.

They could have done it so right. It can’t be that difficult to arrange. There’s so many examples of bad releases to learn from. Maybe that’s the problem.

It appears that the censoring of negative feedback seems to be common of all major developers’ fora at the moment. Which isn’t right at all. We need to be able to complain.

Hide the complaints and it won’t make the problem go away, it’ll only exacerbate it.

As long as it’s warranted, coherent and not overly-ranty (definitely no swearing, think of the kittens!!).

Anyway, this post stuck, reinforcing the point that ANet might be willing to listen.

All I wanted to do is to give my experience from my first 36 hours and explain that if others are having a similar experience it could be very damaging for the game.

I’m an old hand at this and I can see what the devs. are trying to do. I think it’s excellent and there’s so much brilliantly right with this game.

However, the newer gamer has a tendency to be much more fickle. ANet runs the risk of losing a lot of people this way.

On reflection, it appears I was a victim of coincidence with the server maintenance issues.

That still does not answer 3 of my other points in the OP. All of which are really glaring problems IMO.

The biggest of which is having a message that states that OUR “router” or “firewall” is to blame for any downtime on their servers.

That’s very wrong. Not because it’s not correct or true, mainly because it’ll make lots of uninitiated users actually try to mess around with their routers and/or firewall.

And we all know where that leads!

(At least some IT guys will make some bank from that!)

That’s really the biggest point I want to put across.

You can’t keep blaming us, when it’s not us. It’ll lead to some serious issues.

Ronin.8095:

1.) I could not access the forums, I tried to accept the T&C’s but I got a “rare” error accusing me of being a bot. Great.

I had those same issues on my first attempt to get in the game. That’s a PITA and the forums can definitely use some work. The only thing I can say is that I am happy they are addressing some of those issues by making live changes to the forums. But I work in IT, we frequently adopt new technology in our environment and it gets tested a lot. It seems that these forums could have done with more testing IMHO.

Ronin.8095:

2.) Maintenance today and the extreme problems that are following it.
It would make sense to me to take MORE time than you anticipate to fix a problem. Take 2-3 hours, make it right, check that it’s right and then make the game live again.
You clearly broke something, didn’t check and re-opened the game anyway.
Now we suffer as a result.
The most annoying aspect of this is that you give NO warning prior to the servers going down for emergency maintenance. You just switch them off. The connection error messages tell us that it’s our router’s or firewall’s fault. I know it’s not, but there’ll be loads of people out there that have tried to mess with the router. Almost definitely in a detrimental manner.
Having that connection error is irresponsible and not factually correct in any way. That needs to be changed.
Say the servers are down. If they are. Do not blame us or our equipment.

Really, there was no warning? I mean, I’ve been online a few times when maintenance is needed and get some form of heads up. I am going to have to ‘fanboi’ here and say they must have had a good reason to not give a heads up and just shut it down.

I do agree with the error message though. They should code some better messages to appear since they are often misleading or non-existant. Try to install the game with a computer that does not have a proper videocard; the installer quits without a prompt, error or logfile.

Ronin.8095:

3.) I constantly have to authenticate my IP address via e-mail, the first 6 digits in my IP never change. I have a dynamic IP. The latter digits in my IP are going to change every day. I should not be prompted for an authentication every time this happens. My ISP sometimes change my IP 7-8 times a day.

Well, I will be blamed for being a fanboi here, but an ISP that changes your IP 7 to 8 times a day? That is ridiculous and frankly, unacceptable unless you are on a 3G wireless internet stick.

Ronin.8095:

4.) The Trading Post and Mail function broke down on me several times.

Yeah, the trading company has seen a lot of downtime. One could argue that it is the real money part that has them very concerned but still; I would again have expected better testing and stability.

Ronin.8095:

I’ve had such an incredibly lack-lustre start to this game.
It’s incredibly disappointing and to be frank, D3’s well-documented nightmare of a release was much much smoother than this.
Your ardent fanboy will say it’s teething problems and it’s to be expected. Give it some time. Give them some leeway.
I bought the CE, with the PDF guide for a pretty penny.
I’m the customer paying ANet money, not the other way around.
You have Alpha, Closed Beta, Open Beta for a reason. They’re not play time.
There’s so many fails in my first 1 and half days, it’s really really taken me aback. I never thought any game could be this incompetent.
There’s so many things that need fixing.

I understand you have been a part of previous launches of MMO’s and ARPG’s. Not to pick a side here, but why do you then insist on playing day 1? I have also been part of various launches. And I bought the game and chose not to play for the first week.

Is that my decision? Yes.
Am I forced by Anet because of technical difficulties? No.

And I understand that is your problem, that you cannot play on the day you were promised to play. And while that is not good, and not something any of us really want, those are issues one can expect. I like the new iPhone 5, but I am not upgrading until the second wave of hardware hits. Give it a month or two before I get one, because those first iterations will likely have hardware failures and software issues aplenty! Again, maybe as a consumer I should not be content with that. But I do know that it is the cold hard reality and that my idealistic “I want this product to perform as advertised since day 1” attitude won’t actually make it so.

Ronin.8095:

/snip

I hear your frustration. Trust me, I had to troubleshoot my own computer before I could play as well (And I am still not happy about that). We’re here for you, and we will listen to you. But don’t shoot me down for voicing my own opinion as well!

No I won’t shoot at anyone who makes a very coherent and sensible argument like you have.

I don’t suffer fools gladly, but you’re obviously not a fool!

1.) Yes, there really was no warning about emergency maintenance. Irrespective of how important it is, a 5 minute warning isn’t a difficult thing to do. There’s no real excuse for this. Nor the messages they give us regarding installation or connectivity problems and errors.

2.) I don’t insist on being there at day 1. Infact I haven’t even been in GW2 since day one. Of the MMOs I have played (and it’s a lot) I’ve been there for the release of 6 of them. I was only really saying this to say that I’ve seen a lot of releases and from my own personal experience GW2 was the worst for the reasons I gave in my OP.

All those problems happened within a 30 hour period. 36 hours includes my posting to the forums and getting my forum account active.

3.) I’m not demanding anything and you’re right; it’d be foolish of me to expect an MMO to be totally perfect when I open it. I’d be content if it were only gameplay issues of some nature. I didn’t experience that. I experienced quite serious faults that prevented me from having any play time in my first 30 hours.

I had to find workarounds for these, some unofficial and some using 3rd party software like CCleaner to make the game work. I’m an advanced software and hardware technician so that wasn’t really too arduous, others won’t have the same background in computing like we have.

That would really put other people off. That’s my main point there. New gamers are fickle and that can be detrimental to a company like ANet who aren’t top dog in this market.

4) What my ISP choose to do with my IP is their decision and if I didn’t say upto 7-8 times, then I meant up to 7-8 times. Still I re-iterate the point that even for 1 change of IP, very often the first 3 octets will stay the same and it’s the last octet (the last 1, 2 or 3 numbers depending) that changes. This forces authentication.

That’s overly aggressive and totally unnecessary. I can’t tell which octect number I’m going to get so I have to just save them all in the hope that all numbers from 1-255 will be saved? That’s just silly.

I could just be very unfortunate and had a combination of things happen to me at the same time, but still, of the 4 points I outlined in the original post, only the emergency maintenance downtime can I really brush off as “that kind of thing just happens in MMOs.”

The other points are glaring faults, IMO. Alright, maybe not the IP thing! It’s only trying to keep us secure and that’s a good thing. I don’t need the enhanced security, but I can see why users on shared units or those who are forgetful and abuse their computers, might need it.

Thanks for putting over a coherent point-of-view, much appreciated and I hope I answered your questions.

See, this is what a forum is for!

The fact is I can play now. I’ve found workarounds for the TP/Mail and Forum issues, thankfully. I can live with the authentication issue.

As a game, when you’re in, it’s fantastic and I basically love every aspect of it. It’s very well thought out and put together. It’s what I’ve wanted an MMO to be. It negates all the nefarious actions of previous games and that is to be applauded.

The problem is, I very nearly never got to the stage of trying it. A more fickle person would have refunded a long time before I did.

And that’s the real shame here. That’s the main point I’m making.

I still believe there are issues within the game, big bugs, that are detrimental to the game’s ability to maintain a large amount of players. That’s what we all want isn’t it?

I know I do.