PlanetSide 2 completely botches the EU release

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Octorok

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May 28, 2009
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Well, it's that time again, fellow dirty, crawling Euro mongrels. Long-awaited MMOFPS PlanetSide 2 has been delivered to the rest of the world pretty well, with smooth launching and decent server capacity.

(Incidentally, when I say "rest of the world", I mean that in the literal sense. Such notorious gaming hotspots as Vatican City and West Sahara are fine to play through the US Sony Online Entertainment system, but not anywhere like UK, France, Germany, or Luxembourg.)

However, it turns out that a few people dun goofed over here in smelly Europeland. I'll try to summarise this torturous circular madness as well as I can. PlanetSide 2 launched through its own website and through Steam, however Steam has distributed the (not insignificant 10GB size) "US version" to everybody, which is fine if you're reading this from deep in the Congo, but London is a no-go. With this Steam installation, you can try to make an account, but it is linked to the US site, and you can't register there.

So, you go to the inexplicably-separate EU site (assuming it hasn't crashed. the .com address has had a stable day, but .eu has had a fun day rising and falling like a boat in a storm) and register there. So far so good. However, your .eu account isn't tied to the US version. For some reason. It's only 2012, what can you expect from professionals?

Your .eu account is only useful with a Euro launcher. So, you download the launcher from the .eu site, and because you're very clever, you simply replace the US launcher in the Steam folder/you download the entire game outside of Steam. However, the guys over in IT have been living off gin and fish fingers, and this .eu launcher is, in fact, completely borked. You cannot use it to successfully enter PlanetSide 2 (there are reports of some workarounds, however they seem to have a very low success rate). If you're lucky, it will freeze up after you accept the EULA and never open properly again.

Read more wailing over on the EU forums --> http://en.planetside2.eu/forum/support-forum-f3120/

While I am aware that this game is free and therefore not subject to the same rules as Diablo 3 was on its launch day (or more accurately, week), plenty of EU players were in the beta and have been locked out of their accounts by this, and a decent chunk of those had items or a subscription that they have had nicked from them by a bunch of incompetents.

The simple fact of the matter is, I spent a day downloading 10gb of data so that a pointlessly frustrating and old-fashioned system could break down on multiple levels and somewhat ruin my day. Frankly, I'm tired of playing second fiddle to North America. This level of poor communication and enormous oversight would not be tolerated in the US (see Diablo 3), but because developer, publisher, and journalist weight all draws from one continent, it's not considered a big deal.

There is currently no timeframe for a fix, just a vague "we're working on it." Lovely. I'm willing to bet that if this had occured in the US, there'd have been news articles and mass complaint about a grossly mishandled launch, but since we're European we can keep our fucking mouths shut and be grateful they even release in our little backwater.

I suppose we could secede from the Earth itself, but that sounds like effort. Instead, I'd like to make my voice heard. So, here I am.


In all seriousness, I understand that mistakes happen and that people apologise (Sometimes. I'm still waiting for Bioware to say 'sorry' for calling me an idiot because I didn't like ME3's ending. But that's for another time), but these are trivial mistakes that have inconvenienced hundreds of thousands of gamers, and will negatively affect the company. Was nobody watching the EU release at all? Two entirely separate branches of it both managed to fail, simultaneously, in such a way as to lock every European out of the game "until further notice".

You can point at this and call it a First-World Problem if you like, but I know I'm not the only one who took time aside from work or school to download and play the game, and was very disappointed by this rather absurd failure.

*sigh*. Presumably there's no rush. After all, it's only Europe.
 

Vadims Samsinovs

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Nov 21, 2012
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Beautiful post mate, but it's not all that bad. At least we get "Call of Duty" 5-8 hours earlier than NA :) I'm just really hopping for them to fix it before weekend...
 

Thedutchjelle

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Mar 31, 2009
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Uh, I was playing yesterday just fine and I'm from the Netherlands.

I already had an Beta account though, and I made a character on the US based servers ( due to friends wanting to game who live there).

I wasn't aware EU servers were having so much issues.. glad I made a NA account then :p I did see a message pop-up during gaming to inform us all that the EU servers were back online/
 

Bostur

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Mar 14, 2011
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When I played the beta it seemed SOE had turned into a new and better entity. But now it's back to the good old SOE. A mess of multiple launchers, region locks, lack of error messages and a need to use obscure methods to install and log in.

It's never a good sign in MMOs when customers outside the US is served by a different company.

Clear information is the first casualty of an MMO launch.
 

felbot

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May 11, 2011
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thank fully i didn't have these problems, i just downloaded it and saw you needed a pro sieben sat account, then i un-installed it.
 

Ilikemilkshake

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Octorok said:
Your .eu account is only useful with a Euro launcher.
I'm in the UK and I've got friends who are having the exact same problems you are but my EU account which I had from the beta works perfectly fine with the steam version I downloaded last night... So they didn't screw up completely.

felbot said:
thank fully i didn't have these problems, i just downloaded it and saw you needed a pro sieben sat account, then i un-installed it.
What's a pro sieben sat account and why did needing one make you uninstall it?
 

fix-the-spade

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Feb 25, 2008
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Octorok said:
*sigh*. Presumably there's no rush. After all, it's only Europe.
That is a truly bizarre bollocks up.
What's even more bizarre is that I was on the beta, which used just the one launcher and let me pick my region (EU obviously).

I guess it's because now that launch date's been hit, the Sony bigwigs have gotten involved, they will have told everyone how it should be done, which is not how it was being done.
You will obey, because I'm the boss from Japan damnit!

Wouldn't be the first time...
 

sanquin

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Jun 8, 2011
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Thysios said:
If you think you have it bad, trying being an Aussie gamer.
Yea yea Aussie gamers have it bad, we know. Stop beating that dead horse in topics that don't require it.
 

Griffolion

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Aug 18, 2009
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Octorok said:
However, the guys over in IT have been living off gin and fish fingers...
I'm sorry to ruin a very serious post, but that made me seriously laugh out loud for about 5 minutes. I don't know why, but I found the combination of gin and fish fingers hilarious.

OT: Yeah I've no idea what's going on, it seems really irritating to be honest. You'd think they'd get it right first time, for one of the biggest online entertainment corporations out there. It's not like they have an excuse of being "new at it" either. This is the same company that over sighted EQ.

Potential irony, I can't actually get on that forum post you linked, it seems the server is down.
 

Bostur

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Having been able to log in and play for 30 minutes (until the server crashed) it seems the install and login procedure is much simpler than ProSonySat makes it look like. The US version of the launcher can connect to EU and AU servers as well and I think the Prosieben launcher would have the same connectivity if it worked.

So for beta participants it should be easy, just use the steam version, login with your SOE account and play on the EU servers.

Non beta participants may be able to use the Steam version by changing the ini file to refer to the Prosieben login servers as described here:
http://steamcommunity.com/app/218230/discussions/0/882966056588284919/

I'm guessing all of it runs as a centralized system so I wonder why they made several launchers and several account systems. Maybe the lawyers would get a heart attack if it was simple to use ;-)

Edit: Gin and Fish Fingers is a meal worthy of kings.
 

felbot

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May 11, 2011
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Ilikemilkshake said:
Octorok said:
Your .eu account is only useful with a Euro launcher.
I'm in the UK and I've got friends who are having the exact same problems you are but my EU account which I had from the beta works perfectly fine with the steam version I downloaded last night... So they didn't screw up completely.

felbot said:
thank fully i didn't have these problems, i just downloaded it and saw you needed a pro sieben sat account, then i un-installed it.
What's a pro sieben sat account and why did needing one make you uninstall it?
the site where you register told me i needed a account from them, i had met them before when i tried to play dc universe online.

trying to register in that game was a goddamn nightmare from hell, so when i saw i had to try to register to these idiots i immediately went "nope" and uninstalled.
 

Ilikemilkshake

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felbot said:
Ilikemilkshake said:
Octorok said:
Your .eu account is only useful with a Euro launcher.
I'm in the UK and I've got friends who are having the exact same problems you are but my EU account which I had from the beta works perfectly fine with the steam version I downloaded last night... So they didn't screw up completely.

felbot said:
thank fully i didn't have these problems, i just downloaded it and saw you needed a pro sieben sat account, then i un-installed it.
What's a pro sieben sat account and why did needing one make you uninstall it?
the site where you register told me i needed a account from them, i had met them before when i tried to play dc universe online.

trying to register in that game was a goddamn nightmare from hell, so when i saw i had to try to register to these idiots i immediately went "nope" and uninstalled.
I haven't played DCUO but the registration for Planetside was pretty easy. Maybe they suck less now?

Also Captcha wants me to describe Cessna... I have no idea who this brand is so well done =[
 

xDarc

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Feb 19, 2009
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I honestly can't believe people stuck with that game. I started playing after the massive blackout across the north eastern US in 2003, and left some time around 2006/7. The game went to shit, but there were so many unbelievably good times. In 2009 I started dating this tattoo girl and she wanted to get me a tattoo for my birthday, so I made her do a Vanu emblem on my shoulder. Only tattoo I ever got.

Anyway, I hear PS2 is coming out. Of course I am excited.

Within literally hours of playing beta I am disappointed. 2 weeks later, I am done. Like an animal, I can now smell weakness in video games and fear. I'm 30 now and I have been doing games a long time, I know a turd when I smell one. I wasn't the only one either. So rather than stick around on the forums and waste my time posting like usual in some feeble hope of changing anything, I just left. That was a few months back.

Game looks DoA.
 

Octorok

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May 28, 2009
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UPDATE - by embracing the madness and simply registering on a US account, the launcher seems to work now. I would complain about this a lot more, but the reality is a US account is quite useful, since I'll play with plenty of Americans anyway.

I'm still a little angry though.
 

Lucyfer86

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Jun 30, 2011
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Did have some slight problems with launcher crashing earlier, but later it worked like a dream, and the game itself downloaded really fast.
Just used by beta account and everything worked perfect after that.

Oh and does the eu version really need pro sieben sat account? Since i didn't need one for sure so i wonder why some claim different.
 

Andrew Meythaler

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Jan 10, 2013
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Hello everyone! American here to say, you are missing nothing! The game has an excellent concept and runs really well. But the "FREE TO PLAY" element ruins the game. The game by itself is amazing but to unlock weapons you need about 1000 credits which are earned at roughly the speed of grass growing. The only other option is too either play nonstop forever or pay real money. The people who do pay real money have a strange tendancy of destroying entire platoons in one hit. That for me ruined this game.
 

Andrew Meythaler

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Jan 10, 2013
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To all who and worried about playing on EU servers that shouldn't be the case. I was able to play on both EU and US servers. But that might just be because I'm form the US and they seem to value my money more.