Aradune Update 6/10/20

Discussion in 'News and Announcements' started by dreamweaver, Jun 10, 2020.

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  1. Sakuraba Augur

    I'm in the same boat. Only reason I have had as much playtime as I'd like is that I work from home, and have been doing so even before the quarantine. So I'm used to managing workflow while trying to play too. Playing Aradune partly for the truebox status and partly because of a couple friends I knew.

    But I've still heard people saying that despite the lack of truebox, they believe Riz will end up having the healthier group game even if you choose not to box. Haven't seen proof of this but who knows.
  2. HolyHell New Member


    Please name one industry where you can treat your customer like trash and reply 2 weeks after a problem happens and still be in business? Only gaming man. Based on your post they could reply back "Sorry crap heads, servers suck, we know, we are sure its frustrating, but give us our cash" and you would be happy they at least got back to you. No one is trolling here, we are paying customers who have had weeks of hell and then just got slapped in the face and now we want to voicing our opinions which we are allowed to have after paying $14.95.
    lockjaws and D3C0D3D like this.
  3. wade_watts Augur


    For real? Basically all comm's companies. Cable TV, Internet, Phone services. Government services (at least in USA) would be another - basically any interaction is garbage. Utilities are often that way also. Basically anything where there isn't much competition.

    I'm all for voicing opinions. In fact, that's what I was doing in the post you replied to.
  4. HolyHell New Member

    Cable TV and Internet companies are on their way out friend, for this exact reason. People are sick of being treated like crap and once someone steps up and offers a change they are gone and then these companies are clueless as to what happened. The Government is totally different as I don't pay them for anything, they force me to pay my taxes or I go to jail so I don't think that counts. I personally don't use cable TV (people still do that?) but my Internet company, cell phone provider, and electric company comp me for the days my service is down with free service or no charge on those days. DayBreak could learn from this and be like "We know you guys are frustrated because we suck, here's a free month to make up for us really not caring about you as our customers".
    Sarona, lockjaws and D3C0D3D like this.
  5. Grant Joy New Member

    I get off work at 5 and log in. 90 minute queue. After 1.5 hours of waiting, the game crashes logging in. I try to start the game but my player is already logged in, so I have to force him out. 95 MINUTE QUEUE.

    This is so much worse than before. Last night I had to wait maybe an extra minute or two for zones and it's completely not a problem, now it's unplayable.

    One thing you don't realize is that you are encouraging people to not log out when they need to go AFK. People just stay logged in for ever. You are looking at numbers and thinking you are doing ok but the truth is there are far fewer people actually playing when you do a queue like this. A good number of people are just sitting in game to not lose their spot.

    It's far worse than the numbers you are looking at make it seem. People can not play right now.
    scaethach, D3C0D3D and HolyHell like this.
  6. Xhieron Elder

    I feel like this is a step backward. I appreciate that it's anecdotal, but personally, a significant chat delay, occasional disconnects (followed by more or less immediate reconnects), and some infrequent server lag are far preferable to the, as of moments ago, 98-minute queue.

    Like a lot of players, I delayed renewing because of the server situation. I finally pulled the trigger a few days ago, reasoning that capacity had increased and queues were low enough that I'd actually be able to play--both of which had proven true until tonight. The longest queue I'd experienced prior to today, over the last two or three days, had been 10 minutes. Perfectly manageable, and all it cost me was missing out on the first wave.

    Now I'm confronted with being literally unable to play at all, and frustration doesn't really capture my reaction. I'm not frustrated, and I'm not angry, although I sympathize with those who are. There's certainly plenty of that to go around. But hey, it's 20 year-old hardware, and the cash infusion from a couple weeks ago is basically expected to carry the company until the next round of TLPs this time next year. The reason we're not seeing overflow servers is probably because it's just not cost-effective under any scenario, and whether that's because the additional server cost would be too high to justify, because the inevitable merges would be too demanding for the amount of manpower available, or for any number of other possible reasons is basically rhetorical.

    In the end, this is more of the same--and I don't mean in the sense that each TLP launch seems to be getting progressively rockier; I'm sure that's a little rose-tinted. I mean that now, as with Mangler, and Selo, and Phinny, and Ragefire, and Fippy, we're all waiting for what it's becoming clearer every year is ultimately inevitable: One of these days it's going to be the last time, and we all want to get one more ride out of the old machine before they shut her down for good.

    And we really want that last ride to be a happy one.

    All of which is to say, in a round-about way: If you can't afford to maintain the old girl, maybe you should bite the bullet and sell her to someone who can, because a lot of us would really like to get another nice ride before it's all said and done. Maybe even two.

    If you can, on the other hand, keep her going just a little longer, well that'd be just swell, but you're going to have to actually put some money into it. Otherwise you'll never be remembered as the brand that kept her memory alive under the burning moniker of her creator, but only as the crooks who were so hell-bent on squeezing every last dime out of her that you tarnished a legacy that was never yours to begin with. Worse, you'll have consigned another team, increasingly small, of hard-working programmers, artists, engineers, designers, managers, support personnel, and other professionals to carrying the stigma of having overseen the last days of one of the great engines of ingenuity in gaming and having been unable to wrest a last hurrah from your gold-soaked clutches.

    A little too poetic for a post commiserating some server downtime? Probably, but what else am I going to do? Play EQ?
    Grant Joy and Mesil like this.
  7. Tissat New Member

    May 25, 2020 Activate 2 accounts, super excited to play!
    given up hope June sometime, LOGIN AND CREATE CHAR!!!! WOOT! I MADE IT PAST THE 300 MIN QUEUE WITH A DROP!
    level 4 hell yea! um... naggy killed? wtf? isnt everyone like lvl 20 tops?
    lvl 29 login 89 min queue.

    So... I was so excited to play on this server... I havent touched my 2nd account that I activated to box on my laptop, and I've not been able to login for at least 15 days... what am I paying for? I mean, it was krono, but like, thats 13.99?x2. I miss 25% xp bonus the first time, cant login, and I'm already missing time with 89 min queues when I have an hour or 2 to play... I don't even think giving a free lvl 50 boost would satisfy my EQ addiction since beta?
    I'm not angry, just extremely disappointed. I guess my Lowered Expectaaaations were too high.
    Kastore, Grant Joy and lockjaws like this.
  8. yamawarrior New Member

    I actually am genuinely curious--how does this situation not scream immediately, "split the overpacked server until numbers fall within range of a later re-merging"? Boom, nothing to "figure out" regarding server capacity, both servers would still be packed with plenty of players (auto populate and ONE chance to swap to be with friends if separated) and everyone gets to play. How does this not solve things most quickly AND with the least amount of effort and hardship on DBG and the players both?
    Grant Joy likes this.
  9. Name2 Augur

    Shrug, I haven't been on to see, just been watching the forums while pandemic is happening. I was planning to play on Rizlona with a 6 box but decided to stay away from this game reading about the state of Mangler leading up to launch, and seeing how badly the launch went. Not worth the frustration to play on TLP 15 to me, I started on Combine and each iteration has been more of the same thing, just with more focus on stacking Kronos and a cringier group of players. Meh.

    You have to realize that it just looks people always wanting to complain about how green the grass is on the other side. I wouldn't expect Daybreak to just go back and forth as people complain one way or the other. They tried both ways and made their decision on how they're going to deal with the server instability. Your call if you can stomach that until they fix it.
  10. scaethach Scholar

    I'd have switched to rizlona but I claimed my bags on Aradune already :( Though if they did a transfer from rizlona later I'd probably still suck it up and go over and get my bags back after a merge.
  11. phaeril Augur

    A 90m queue during peak time actually means, that for a large portion of the player base, it is literally unplayable. While I'm glad they aren't pretending like nothing is wrong, lowering the cap isn't likely to do much of anything but keep scheduled raids shorthanded until people ultimately give up forever and the guild mergers begin.
  12. Moforyguy Elder

    I am still confused as to why the TLP got delayed in March? They claimed they were working on updating things for smoother launch but we got the exact opposite. I won't be re subbing till Kunark releases and even then I may just check out these forums before giving DPG my 15 dollars again. I can imagine Kunark will have the same probs.
  13. phaeril Augur

    "best possible move" is a pretty grim analysis. That suggests they couldn't do any of these things to alleviate population pressure:
    • fix their game
    • run their game (ie. GMs policing rules)
    • anything else
    Cutting the population cap isn't even "best" compared to doing nothing. At least without a queue, when you crash, you get back in most of the time. If you lose enough people, with a 90m queue, you just keep losing them and losing them. This queue is not just hurting the solo-scrubs looking to bonus XP so they can ERP more in Felwithe, it's hurting everyone, badly, and "first served basis" is laughable wording when the servers literally stop serving people at random.
    Everything I've seen suggests the server is worse with queue than without it. Bad zone times are better than the bad queue times if every time you zone contains the risk of crashing into the queue. Now factor in that people are RANDOMLY CRASHING ALL THE F TIME and you should be able to do the math on the queue being the absolute wrong solution to this problem.
  14. phaeril Augur

    Some of us made the mistake of bringing people into the game based on the Aradune rule set, have whole guilds set up around the Aradune ruleset, etc. etc. Even a server split with transfers would be a nightmare. I almost feel for them, it's too late for them to really "fix" this. Fresher players are nopeing right out crazy fast, while a few of us are dreading what the Velious and PoP server crashes are gonna be like.

    Abandoning your friends (even if they are just video game friends) over the queue is a ridiculous suggestion... it underscores just how bad this... that that almost seems like a reasonable thing one paying customer of a service would say to another.

    It's not though, so I'll do the more responsible thing and suggest other services...

    I hear Smedly's New World is having a huge genre problem and is probably gonna suck, since we're into crappy games with throwback names attached to them. That hits open beta next month (lol maybe, they pushed once) and is funded as though Amazon gives a crap about it running.

    Phantasy Star Online 2 finally has it's US PC port, I heard. In case anyone is really just into outdated games that lost their chance for mass attention to inept launches.

    My PvP buddy said that Population Zero was good. He's a methed up idiot though so I suspect it's terrible, perfect for EQ players looking to escape the queue for an empty world.

    Point being, EQ is like a food place in an airport, let's call it a Sbarro or other nasty pizza chain. Surrounded by other garbage food, but they have a long line. The guy in line in front of you says "yo, did you know you can order right now if you only want a salad". Is that a person you think has a firm grasp on the reality of the situation? Maybe a better grasp than the cashier saying "hey, just come back at 5am if you want pizza" to a line of hung over, sleepy, angry, people with planes to catch.
  15. phaeril Augur

    Probably at least a little bit because the last server merges broke things and took 10 years for them to finally do, well after some of those servers were dead dead. They don't split them because merging them back when they die isn't something they do well, so the voices of reason that say "two servers" are being crowded out by people getting a worrisome locking feeling in their jaw at the sound of splitting the server. Splitting the server at this point would just be a distraction, they would screw it up, and then would have to have a plan that dates out further than "next TLP" to address the split.

    I definitely seems like the right answer, but also seems like a ton of work that nobody trusts them to be capable of doing (or doing quickly) at this point. It would kind of be great if they just left it alone and let it naturally lose people (the kind of people with sense that aren't just hopeless EQ addicts) so it gets to playable faster.
  16. Pelrond Elder

    If you click on the chat button, you enter chat and that does not time out. I usually just do that and then listen for when the music starts. Once you have music, you are loading into the server. Not ideal but at least I don't have to stare at the screen for however long.
  17. Name2 Augur

    Yeah, it's a pretty grim analysis. I think I probably should have said best move they had available to them. Let's say that the server capacity is capped at 3000. 3000 people aren't repeatedly crashing, hitting queue, getting in for 5 mins, crashing, rinse, repeat, rinse, repeat. If this was truly affecting everyone, there wouldn't be a queue, surely people would walk away. While you may not have done anything to cause the crashes, this is affecting some people. Try deleting your UI files and doing minimum setup once you get in. Try resetting your advanced loot inis. Avoid using chat tabs. The new UI elements are buggy. Yes, Daybreak should fix whatever is causing the crash, but until they can reproduce it they can't. They don't have the ability to snap their fingers and make it all better. You're greatly exaggerating how little of an inconvenience the zone times were with a higher capacity, I was reading about people sitting in zone for 20+ minutes and then crashing. Restart the game every time you zone doesn't sound like a minimal impact to me.
  18. Grok Elder


    This is the best post I have seen in a while. Very good advice...
  19. Sikkun Augur

    There were no TLPs announced in March, nothing was ever delayed. People kept demanding new ones by made....they said ok late summer. People didn’t like late summer answer either. So now they go pushed up to late spring, in the middle of server mergers, hardware migration, and a studio change.

    There were probably not going to be 2020 TLP servers (not like there has actually been a new one every year). But customers demanded, they overstretched to meet that demand and here we are.

    The best thing they could have done was not launched TLPs, handled the mergers, studio, hardware changes...along with the impacts of COVID and adapting a different work environment and let the forums rage, they rage anyway.
  20. Zapford Elder

    Great, so what you're saying is as a PST player, who works full time, I will only be able to actually play if I wake up at 5am on Sat and Sun, just like it was before.

    Unbelievable.
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