I was going to be doing today's blog as an overview of recent launch successes and failures...unfortunately, Guild Wars 2's launch has been fail enough to justify me focusing solely on it.
Let's start with a bit of positive...
A LITTLE GOOD NEWS
For the most part, if you're playing solo, the launch hasn't been bad at all. I've hit some latency bumps at launch, and for a couple of other brief occasions, but other than that the game response has been snappy.
Most everything (gamewise) that was good about the betas has been good in launch
The server my guild selected seems to be rather friendly, cooperative, even helpful.
And that's pretty much it for the positive...now we'll start on three debilitating problems...
UNFRIENDLY FRIENDS
The ArenaNet developers and designers made a BIG HUGE DEAL about how they wanted people to be able to play with their friends. They talked about how the "guesting" system would allow people to group up and play, regardless of what server they were playing on.
What an awesome idea!
What a load of crap!
First, the guesting system didn't make it for launch...a fact they announced the day before the headstart began. Don't boast about a feature for months and then stealth-vanish it a day before you launch. It makes you look like a lying douchebag.
And then, with the launch...even better...you can't play with your friends most of the time on the same server!
Let me say that again, in bold, to make it particularly clear:
You can't group up with your friends.
Because the servers are so full, you spend most of your time in "overflow" zones, instanced copies of the main zones. And since these overflows are server-independant, the odds of you ending up in the same overflow as somebody else are vanishingly small.
This was a problem back in beta weekend 1, but was supposedly fixed for BWE 2. Well either it wasn't fixed or they've rebroken it.
But we're not done yet!
A friend and I spent 20 minutes waiting to both get into the "main", real instance of a space so he could help with a storyling quest of mine. After going through all that, we grouped up, both stood on the right spot, I clicked to enter the instanced story space and...he didn't. He didn't get an option to join, he didn't auto-port, the "Join" command on the group portrait didn't appear...nothing.
Of course ArenaNet are "aware of the problem" and are furiously working on it...
NOT REMOTELY GOOD ENOUGH.
Seriously, WTF MMO launches where you can't group up? A basic, necessary function...and it simply doesn't work 95% of the time?
This is a fail so monumental that I could understand someone quitting because of it. A lot of people play with friends exclusively or duo with spouses...and they're screwed.
For some people, this might not matter much, as some of us mostly solo...but even my _one_ attempt to team up to tackle some content summoned up such immense frustration and anger that I'm still fuming.
This simple game process has to work, every time, and it doesn't.
For more than 15 years, MMO players have been able to group up with their friends (on the same server) and play together. But with their groundbreaking new technology in GW2...not anymore!
For grouping up, ArenaNet and Guild Wars 2 gets a grade of...
Big Fat Fucking "F"
NOTHING IN STORE!
Here's another feature that worked in the beta but vanished after a brief appearance on Day One:
The Trading Company (auction house).
I understood when the Gem Store had some issues at launch, as that involves Actual Real Money(tm), and you don't mess around with people's credit cards. But that was working in beta...
But we have another basic, fundamental game function...an auction house...that worked in beta and is now going 4 days in a row turned off. For days it's said "Down for maintenance". No, maintenance is 15 minutes, not 99% downtime.
The Secret World launched without an auction house, but it was announced long before that it wouldn't quite be ready for launch, and it showed up a couple weeks later. I know a lot of people who planned on using the trading company to sell harvested materials and buy cheap weapons to skill up on and so on.
Good luck with that!
I got a rare dye that I assumed would be worth a fistful of gold and wanted to see what the market for that was...and I'm still waiting. I waited so long I ended up using it. I'm fine with getting and using a dye like that, but I'd like to know the opportunity cost involved.
But I can't. "Down for maintenance" you know.
If you advertise an auction house, people will expect it. If it works in beta, people will expect it to work at launch.
For a functioning trading company, ArenaNet and Guild Wars 2 gets a grade of...
Big Dumb Disappointing "D"
(CUE LED ZEP) COMMUNICATION BREAKDOWN
If there's one subject that ALWAYS gets my dander up in dealing with MMOs, it's poor communication by the Powers That Be.
I spent years working in IT in high-tech companies, with my "customers" being everyone from terrifyingly savant engineers to techno-clueless space-wasters. I learned very on the secret to keeping these customers happy wasn't in fixing their problems, it was making them feel informed about the state of things.
Note...I didn't inform them as to the state of things, I made them feel informed. The perception of being "in the loop" kept the customers happy because it prevented them from stewing in their juices in ignorance.
When our $20M dollar computer was down, I'd update the message of the day every 15 minutes, even if just to say "It is being worked on and we still don't have an ETA." And because people would see that the last time-stamp on the message was less than 15 minutes, they'd feel informed and in-the-loop. They'd go do something else and we could continue to work on the problem without interruption.
That's what you get with pre-emptive communication. Make the customer feel in-the-loop and it removes the stress. They won't be happy, but they'll know where they stand, and it makes a HUGE difference.
So how is ArenaNet doing at communications?
Terrible. Bad. Awful. Not good.
Hey! You! MMO makers! Twitter and Facebook are awesome ways to advertise and market your product. They are genuinely shitty ways to keep your customers informed when there are problems.
Twitter and FB are no substitute for real information that gets to your customers in a timely and useful fashion.
The Guild Wars 2 Twitter feed is as useless as tits on a bowling ball. 95% of it consists of cryptic, context-free replies to problem tweets from other users. Even if there's a response that applies to your problem, good luck trying to find that one germ of wheat amidst a field of chaff.
Occasionally they'll tweat some useless bit of obviousness like "We are aware that the trade company is down. We are working on the problem." Hey, thanks!
And the Facebook feed is just as bad. A couple of times a day they'll give an update on "obviously broken things you all know are broken and we're working on", while the rest of their posts are marketing type "look how awesome we are!" blurbs.
Again, almost nothing of use.
And the one, single, reliable source that players should be able to depend on for timely and useful information, the Guild Wars 2 forums.
Turned off.
They turned off the forums. I assume because they would be too busy. And why would they be too busy? Because Twitter and Facebook are really shitty ways of keeping people informed, and people are properly fulminating about things like grouping and the trading company not working!
I can hardly imagine what a shitstorm the forums would look like in the threads for grouping-fail.
So I'm not sure which is the case...the forums are down because they would be overloaded, or the forums are down because the cowards at ArenaNet don't want to face the justifiably angry mob.
For communication breakdowns all over the place, ArenaNet and Guild Wars 2 gets a grade of...
Twitter + Facebook - forums = D-
LETTER GRADES AND TEN-SCALE
(Quick note...it appears the trading company is slowly coming on line as I type this...about goddamned time! We'll see how long before it's actually functional.)
So I've thrown around some letter grades for individual fails...how about the launch overall?
Well, they started 3 hours early, as hoped. They had some instability at launch, and some more lasting issues like login problems for the Euro servers. Servers filled up early, but transfers were available after the caps were raised.
That part went...about average, overall.
The solo play element has been generally good with some occasional hiccups. That part went slightly better than average.
But the problems I've noted above are real and really big.
The last-second appearance of the trading company will give a slight bump to the ten-scale rating.
OVERALL LAUNCH RATING FOR GUILD WARS 2: 3.5/10
I would rate this launch as significantly below the industry average we've seen over the last, say, two years. And if the grouping functions aren't fixed and the communication doesn't improve, this rating could easily go lower.
ArenaNet launch...FAIL.
P.S. The game is still a helluva lot of fun, launch notwithstanding!
EDIT: P.P.S. Mail and the trading post (including the gem store) are down again...
MAKE THAT 3/10
EDIT 9/3/2012: A week and a half in and the trading company is down for most people most of the time. Guild functions are still intermittent. These are Really Big Deals, things that worked in beta (mostly) and need to be available and functional at launch for a major MMO. These failures make GW2's launch the worst AAA MMO launch in years. The game's still really good though! The launch however...
MAKE THAT 2/10
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