I'd like to draw attention to the launch (or lack thereof) of Planetside 2 in Europe. I traveled four hours to Gamescom and played the game - it was only second to Hitman of the games that I played. Got a cool shirt and an even cooler key chain from them, too. I was really excited about the game. But PSG (the European distributor) had another idea. TLDR: many people in EU can't install, login or play the game, or post on their forums, and we are not getting any progress updates on fixes. For those who don't know PSG, it's actually a German satellite TV company (!) SOE has sold the PS2 EU rights to. I was really concerned when I heard about the atrocious customer experience with past SOE games admined by PSG. My fears were proven right, and nothing appears to have changed. They seem to have some updates on Facebook (which I don't have) and Twitter (which I don't use) to make it look like something is actually being done. But the PSG PS2 EU forums are full of people with similar on-going issues. There was a patch which didn't address any of them. My experience, which has been re-lived by numerous others on PSG and Steam forums: If you download the Steam client from an EU country, it doesn't work. It is advertised on Steam, but there's no mention of this issue. You only find out when you end up in a never-ending account creation loop pissing contest with PSG and SOE. Workaround which works for some is to create an SOE account and play with the US client - but it's highly questionable whether there will be the possibility to transfer your char to EU if/when these issues are fixed. The solution PSG offers (when you google it) is to download the 7GB client again from their website, and create a new login on PSG's site. Another two hours later the installation is done. Got tired of waiting and played Red Dead Redemption. Today, after re-starting the client it doesn't do anything - no "Play" button etc. After re-starting yet again, it starts installing a patch. Gets stuck at 98% due to insufficient rights (Win 7). Rinse, repeat. And no, I'm not giving admin access to this POS software. Quit in disgust, go play Diablo 3 Launch of the game is critical, and for a F2P people have zero monetary investment in it so they have little reason to come back. The game is being badmouthed all over Europe already. Many gamers are not as patient as I am, and will not return when/if the above issues are fixed. It is in SOE's and our interest that these are addressed ASAP. I'm writing here because I (and many others) can't login and create posts on planetside2.eu forums. I have an account but there's another never-ending login query loop. Tried with Firefox and Opera.
It surprises me there aren't any other threads about this. On the evening of the launch, me and 8 friends were trying to get the game running... 3 of us already had a beta account and were able to install and login with the US client just fine (EU servers were overloaded tho). The others needed an EU account, and were simply not able to even make one, let alone getting the launcher to install properly. We screwed around for 4 hours before the majority gave up. A day later most of the issues seemed to be resolved, we played the whole evening with a squad of 8-10 and had a blast (apart from the HEAVY fps issues). So yeah, the initial EU launch was completely screwed. But it is fixed (right??). Sony and PSG should be blamed for this, but to be honest... Every sane person should avoid the initial launch of -any- MMO. I haven't seen a single one were the launch was spotless.
Thank you for posting this. I have tried to make a European account since launch but I get a message telling me that I need to be redirected to the US site (I am located in Greece)... Then when on the US site I hit the download (play free) I get a message that tells because I am located in Greece I need to be redirected to the EU PS2 site ...... End this goes on looping . I have a beta account so I can play from the US side but I don't want to do that because it could cause future problems . The European launch is disaster, and its a pity for a game with such a potential ...
PSG was an awful choice for SOE to make for their EU games to be launched with, there was such an outcry when everquest2 was going to PSG, THAT should have given them a clue, they are just terrible, at everything they have touched from a customers point of view, i wont have anything to do them, ever, if im ever forced to go to them it will be bye bye PS2, they just arent worth it
Agree 100%, PSG is a horrible company, has horrible tv programm, and should not be worked with if possible. I was releaved when soe said beta users can stay with soe, because i do NOT want to be a customer of PSG..
No, no fix in sight, not for me and not for many others. Steam and PSG clients are failing one way or the other. To add epicness to failure, even their uninstaller doesn't work (from control panel or running it from explorer). I really wanted to play and like the game, but thanks to PSG it's not happening.
If you don't want to give it admin access to install an update then you're not gonna be able to play. All programs that install to program files in windows 7 require admin access, that's not SOE or PSG's fault. ...and the uninstall failure blame lies with SOE, not PSG... PSG only run the European marketing and accounts (read: money), everything else (software, servers etc.) comes from SOE.
I allowed access during installing, that's fine. But it's happening after the game is installed, and is doing self-patching. It's not requesting admin access, it just says that an error happened with a physx dll when installing in-game patch update, which I assume means it requires admin access. Friend tried the Steam install, it worked. I re-downloaded (for the third time) and now it seems to work - at least I got to char creation screen. It'll be a while until I trust PSG with my money, though, given the above debacle, and # of complaints about people losing their money and not getting their credits transferred over.
This is serious, I encourage people to bump this. PSG sucks, luckily I have an SOE account, but I made a PSG account and having login issues, can't post on the forums, their website is still using the old design etc. Why does EU need a seperate website/twitter/facebook etc anyways? Why not keep everything under one account/website? Ugh. Edit: Okay their forums work now, I went into the new and announcement section, then tried to go back (return to board index), and it takes me to http://en.alaplaya.net/forum/ - what is this?????????? Edit: Looking at some of their admins posts their English is.... kinda bad <_< "Hi together"... who says that? I'm pretty sure they mean "Hi all!" oh lol. Edit: Oh my... they are looking for GM's on their forums.... looks like we'll have some players running around as GM's soon.. that's never a good thing.
