so, if you are at all interested in Warhammer online, it's possible that you may have been witness to the colossal meltdown that happened yesterday.
let me outline a few things, so people don't argue about the facts:
from the top.
Mythic, the company responsible for this promising MMO, gave the European reigns to a company called GOA, who are responsible for the european website, servers, and registration systems. they are in effect Mythic's ambassador for europe.
for a long time (months), Mythic and GOA have been selling 'collector's editions' and 'standard editions' of their games, as a pre-order, through retail outlets and websites..... the main incentive for pre-ordering the £39.99 box set was a product key which allowed you "guaranteed access to the open beta".
thus, the Beta was marketed differently from a normal one.... more of a mass 'headstart'... a way for keen players to get the first look-in, and play before anyone else.
the collector's editions (and later the standard editions) sold out completely from every retailer, in a short space of time, in both Europe and America. that's a LOT of beta testers with guaranteed access.
leading up to the opening day of the Open Beta, Mythic and GOA also gave out a load of Beta Keys for free as promotions and to guilds and the like (something which made the people who had stumped up £40 a bit grumpy). this added to the number of testers who wanted in.
yesterday was supposed to mark the simultaneous start of the Open Beta. at *.30am (GMT) and in the afternoon in america, all beta servers were scheduled to go live. the American servers under Mythic went up without a hitch. the European side descended into chaos.
here's how it panned out very simply. GOA had left the beta key registration until the day of the fact, so rather than letting people register ahead of time, everyone was registering and wanting to play all at once, at 8.30am. i should add at this point that PEOPLE HAD TAKEN WEEKS OFF WORK FOR THIS. lol.
within minutes it was obvious there was a problem. the registration part of the website was down. this prevented anyone with a 'guaranteed access' key from playing.
also, at this point, the patching tool for updating your game client to Open Beta was broken.
anyone who had participated in the CLOSED beta (weeks earlier) was able to get into the game without any problems, as they already had accounts and didn't need to register through the broken website.
so, with over 200,000 people unable to play, chaos descended upon the poor forums.
the irony is, while GOA were completely unable to fix their website problems and registration servers (meaning people who PAID for access to the beta were unable to play), for the entire day, the privately run forums for the game were able to cope with 200,000 angry people and actually *upgraded their servers* on the fly, to cope with the increased traffic.
what people are bound to start discussing is GOA's lack of communication for almost all of the day. no ETA was given as to when the problems would be fixed, so thousands.... THOUSANDS of people sat at home doing nothing except pressing the 'refresh' key, to see if the problems had been fixed.
this was coupled with the strange nature of the faults with the registration part of the website, which did occasionally let someone in... needless to say, this person would then post on the forum, thus inciting the thousands of people to stay there, endlessly refreshing on the offchance that they might bizarrely bypass the problem.
i was round a friend's house yesterday, who had the Open Beta client, and a Key (which he had purchaced a collector's edition for).... and it was a bit of a running gag throughout the day, going back every few minutes and checking for updates or to see if he could log on..... at 2 in the morning though, we were still there. the website had let him log in numerous times, but each time, he was thrown out of the registration at a different stage. at one point he was at the confirmation stage, when all that was required was the click of an 'OK' button, and an email would be sent to him. no such luck though.... click and ..... error 414.
as it stands right now, one day and several hours later, the registration servers are completely down, and will supposedly be put back up at 3pm (GMT) today. not only that, but apparantly the 5000 closed beta testers who managed to get into the game (for free, i might add) were thrown out of the game in the early hours of the morning because the GAME servers had a system-wide shutdown too..... is it me or are GOA not passing the ball like they should?
i have no doubt that "error 414" will go down in the annals of Warhammer online history. that, and the whirly hypnotic loading-screen of DEATH.
discuss your experiences and/or gripes!
let me outline a few things, so people don't argue about the facts:
from the top.
Mythic, the company responsible for this promising MMO, gave the European reigns to a company called GOA, who are responsible for the european website, servers, and registration systems. they are in effect Mythic's ambassador for europe.
for a long time (months), Mythic and GOA have been selling 'collector's editions' and 'standard editions' of their games, as a pre-order, through retail outlets and websites..... the main incentive for pre-ordering the £39.99 box set was a product key which allowed you "guaranteed access to the open beta".
thus, the Beta was marketed differently from a normal one.... more of a mass 'headstart'... a way for keen players to get the first look-in, and play before anyone else.
the collector's editions (and later the standard editions) sold out completely from every retailer, in a short space of time, in both Europe and America. that's a LOT of beta testers with guaranteed access.
leading up to the opening day of the Open Beta, Mythic and GOA also gave out a load of Beta Keys for free as promotions and to guilds and the like (something which made the people who had stumped up £40 a bit grumpy). this added to the number of testers who wanted in.
yesterday was supposed to mark the simultaneous start of the Open Beta. at *.30am (GMT) and in the afternoon in america, all beta servers were scheduled to go live. the American servers under Mythic went up without a hitch. the European side descended into chaos.
here's how it panned out very simply. GOA had left the beta key registration until the day of the fact, so rather than letting people register ahead of time, everyone was registering and wanting to play all at once, at 8.30am. i should add at this point that PEOPLE HAD TAKEN WEEKS OFF WORK FOR THIS. lol.
within minutes it was obvious there was a problem. the registration part of the website was down. this prevented anyone with a 'guaranteed access' key from playing.
also, at this point, the patching tool for updating your game client to Open Beta was broken.
anyone who had participated in the CLOSED beta (weeks earlier) was able to get into the game without any problems, as they already had accounts and didn't need to register through the broken website.
so, with over 200,000 people unable to play, chaos descended upon the poor forums.
the irony is, while GOA were completely unable to fix their website problems and registration servers (meaning people who PAID for access to the beta were unable to play), for the entire day, the privately run forums for the game were able to cope with 200,000 angry people and actually *upgraded their servers* on the fly, to cope with the increased traffic.
what people are bound to start discussing is GOA's lack of communication for almost all of the day. no ETA was given as to when the problems would be fixed, so thousands.... THOUSANDS of people sat at home doing nothing except pressing the 'refresh' key, to see if the problems had been fixed.
this was coupled with the strange nature of the faults with the registration part of the website, which did occasionally let someone in... needless to say, this person would then post on the forum, thus inciting the thousands of people to stay there, endlessly refreshing on the offchance that they might bizarrely bypass the problem.
i was round a friend's house yesterday, who had the Open Beta client, and a Key (which he had purchaced a collector's edition for).... and it was a bit of a running gag throughout the day, going back every few minutes and checking for updates or to see if he could log on..... at 2 in the morning though, we were still there. the website had let him log in numerous times, but each time, he was thrown out of the registration at a different stage. at one point he was at the confirmation stage, when all that was required was the click of an 'OK' button, and an email would be sent to him. no such luck though.... click and ..... error 414.
as it stands right now, one day and several hours later, the registration servers are completely down, and will supposedly be put back up at 3pm (GMT) today. not only that, but apparantly the 5000 closed beta testers who managed to get into the game (for free, i might add) were thrown out of the game in the early hours of the morning because the GAME servers had a system-wide shutdown too..... is it me or are GOA not passing the ball like they should?
i have no doubt that "error 414" will go down in the annals of Warhammer online history. that, and the whirly hypnotic loading-screen of DEATH.
discuss your experiences and/or gripes!
