yeah this is no different from any game launch in any way, though they knew they needed more servers weeks ago and they should have been preping for this by getting even more of them. Even WoW crashed on launch day a few times, I really think all the people shouting epic fail need to read up on mmo history. when you get to many people trying to do one thing at once anything will crash. Give them a bit to fix it, if it's not better by tomorrow then you can shout fail.
I dont care about other MMO's I care about this one. I paid for a lifetime sub and cryptic in typical cryptic fashion dropped the ball AGAIN. And you would think they would learn a thing a two from the past but they do not.
And for people calling me a troll--whatever i paid the same amount for a lifetime sub and Retail box purchase so i will complain all i damn well please. I defended this game vigourously but i will defend it no more.
yeah this is no different from any game launch in any way, though they knew they needed more servers weeks ago and they should have been preping for this by getting even more of them. Even WoW crashed on launch day a few times, I really think all the people shouting epic fail need to read up on mmo history. when you get to many people trying to do one thing at once anything will crash. Give them a bit to fix it, if it's not better by tomorrow then you can shout fail.
I dont care about other MMO's I care about this one. I paid for a lifetime sub and cryptic in typical cryptic fashion dropped the ball AGAIN. And you would think they would learn a thing a two from the past but they do not.
And for people calling me a troll--whatever i paid the same amount for a lifetime sub and Retail box purchase so i will complain all i damn well please. I defended this game vigourously but i will defend it no more.
You're ready to drop the game because they had had an issue RIGHT when the game launched? What if the rest of headstart goes smoothly with only minor issues? Will you be back ardently defending the game and how "smooth" launch was with only 1 hiccup? Seriously, get some perspective. Also, MMO's are made with the long run in mind, and we generally play them that way as well. Who buys and MMO with the idea that they only want to play for a month and then quit? Just chill out.
Now, if they take the server down for 5 -6 hours during headstart or have a massive issue that causes major downtime, you can flip out then. =p
I was logged on, then decided to log off to recreate my character, bad idea. I believe their account server went boom. That is why you cant authenticate and why there are still players online playing. And jeez it didnt take long for the annoying whiners to start posting, pathetic.
Yup, got into the tutorial, crashed and now can't authenticate. Like no one saw this coming. I anticipate about 6 hours of emergency maintenance today, and tomorrow and every day of the head start.
Yeah, same thing happened to me, and I agree with you. Who did not see this one coming? I agree with the FAIL Cryptic gets from this.
so what do you propose to solve it?
buy more account servers JUST for launch, that will be used probably just this once due to high influx?
wow you really dont seem to understand server infrastructure and demands
Not for nothing, but if Cryptic didn't want to buy the hardware to support the game because they felt they will lose most of the subscribers in only a couple months, the solution is really quite simple.
Have your servers hosted professionally at a datacenter. You can ramp up hardware and bandwidth dynamically and as needed by renting it, and these days it is really quite a cost effective and efficient means of doing so.
yeah this is no different from any game launch in any way, though they knew they needed more servers weeks ago and they should have been preping for this by getting even more of them. Even WoW crashed on launch day a few times, I really think all the people shouting epic fail need to read up on mmo history. when you get to many people trying to do one thing at once anything will crash. Give them a bit to fix it, if it's not better by tomorrow then you can shout fail.
I dont care about other MMO's I care about this one. I paid for a lifetime sub and cryptic in typical cryptic fashion dropped the ball AGAIN. And you would think they would learn a thing a two from the past but they do not.
And for people calling me a troll--whatever i paid the same amount for a lifetime sub and Retail box purchase so i will complain all i damn well please. I defended this game vigourously but i will defend it no more.
You only have seven posts under you Avatar, where have you defended it?
I actually am home sick today with a bad cold, so i was looking forward to getting in a full day of STO. Feeling better before I logged in, but the shock of not getting in to play has now made me relapse. So I will probably have to call in this weekend too.
yeah this is no different from any game launch in any way, though they knew they needed more servers weeks ago and they should have been preping for this by getting even more of them. Even WoW crashed on launch day a few times, I really think all the people shouting epic fail need to read up on mmo history. when you get to many people trying to do one thing at once anything will crash. Give them a bit to fix it, if it's not better by tomorrow then you can shout fail.
I dont care about other MMO's I care about this one. I paid for a lifetime sub and cryptic in typical cryptic fashion dropped the ball AGAIN. And you would think they would learn a thing a two from the past but they do not.
And for people calling me a troll--whatever i paid the same amount for a lifetime sub and Retail box purchase so i will complain all i damn well please. I defended this game vigourously but i will defend it no more.
You only have seven posts under you Avatar, where have you defended it?
And for pete's sake, the day isn't even over yet.
On the Official site. I only come here to rant in my alter ego....helps me relive stress
Have your servers hosted professionally at a datacenter. You can ramp up hardware and bandwidth dynamically and as needed by renting it, and these days it is really quite a cost effective and efficient means of doing so.
Intelligent posts and posters are forbidden at MMORPG.com. Please dumb it down, or see your way out. Thank you.
You only have seven posts under you Avatar, where have you defended it?
And for pete's sake, the day isn't even over yet.
On the Official site. I only come here to rant in my alter ego....helps me relive stress
Well then you did a good job of passing yourself off as one of the naysayers on this board
Hope you get in before the end of the day and keep us posted on how it plays. I pre-ordered the Collectors Edition from Amazon.com and will wait until the box arrives.
I was logged on, then decided to log off to recreate my character, bad idea. I believe their account server went boom. That is why you cant authenticate and why there are still players online playing. And jeez it didnt take long for the annoying whiners to start posting, pathetic.
Yup, got into the tutorial, crashed and now can't authenticate. Like no one saw this coming. I anticipate about 6 hours of emergency maintenance today, and tomorrow and every day of the head start.
Yeah, same thing happened to me, and I agree with you. Who did not see this one coming? I agree with the FAIL Cryptic gets from this.
so what do you propose to solve it?
buy more account servers JUST for launch, that will be used probably just this once due to high influx?
wow you really dont seem to understand server infrastructure and demands
For some-one that claims to be an IT administrator ......you REALLY seem to have a blind spot here. I happen to be an infrastructure manager for an ASP serving fortune 500 clients. That's what I do for a living...and if I evinced that sort of an attitude I would be out of a job tomorrow. Cryptics infrastructure people in NO WAY deserve any sort of pass for this.
Firstly....this is head-start so it's only for people who bought pre-order....so absolutely no excuse to claim they didn't have any idea what sort of traffic demands to anticipate...they know EXACTLY how many pre-orders they sold. Stress testing the infrastructure is not some impossible figure out mystery....it may be as much art as science....but it is a very basic part of QA-ing a new application launch. It SHOULD have been part of the BETA event (that's part of what Open Beta is...getting as many people on FREE accounts to pound on the infrastructure as possible)...you can even buy automated tools...or hire automated services that will do it for you...if you can't figure it out yourself.
As far as ways to address a large but perdictable spike in demand it...there are MANY different ways. Here are a few options they could have pursued...off the top of my head.
1) Could computing services are built for this sort of thing.... with advances in that technology....alot of solutions to spike based demand exist now that haven't in the past. Even if you don't want to put your entire application into a cloud..... you MOST certainly can plan to provision a number of virtual servers for EXPECTED spike events to address bottlenecks in server resources. You pay for these services pretty much as you use them.
This should be part of any modern Service Providers plan to deal with spikes (if you are in a high volume vertical) as long as regulatory issues don't prevent it (and they wouldn't for a game...i.e. no HIPAA, FISA, GLB)
2) You could deal with it in the application layer itself by implimenting a que system for accessing the servers and some basic resource throttling to make sure the servers themselves don't "crash" due to volume of requests. That might mean people waiting "in line" to get in...but at least they would get in at the rate that the infrastructure could accomodate them.
3) I don't know where Cryptic is hosting.... whether they are using a Managed Hosting Company or running on thier own HW out of thier own Data Center. For companies that aren't huge..and can't justify the expense of thier own Tier 1 Data Center it makes alot of sense to go with a Managed Hosting Provider. Pretty much every half-way decent Managed Hosting provider can/will indeed provide you extra server infrastructure for EXPECTED short term spikes. You can pretty much always work out a deal with them to increase your server capacity for a week or two...and then pull those servers afterwards. There will be some setup fee's...and it might be more then your regular pro-rated rate would be....but it's not that much more.
4) If Cryptics hosting on thier own HW...then yes indeed... they COULD purchase additional servers to put on for events like this. If you are in the SaS business then you WANT to plan to have enough spare capacity to deal with spikes. For an operation like this HW costs are typicaly the SMALLEST portion of your operating budget...mostly it's personnel. Purchasing a few extra servers doesn't cost alot. A company that is running on it's own hardware SHOULD have extra servers around anyways in hot/warm spare capacity.....in case one or more of the servers you have in production take a hit. Those hot/warm spares can be pressed into service to provide extra capacity in EXPECTED spike situation. They should already be configured to be brought into service in short order, in case of existing servers taking a hit....and these systems should behind a load-balancer or in a cluster anyways...so it shouldn't be that big of a deal to bring them online when needed.
There really is no excuse for this sort of thing today....other the incompetency...or simply being cheap at you customers expense.
This isn't 20 years ago...when people were first dealing with the issue of demand spikes...and no one had any prior experience in dealing with it.
Originally posted by GrumpyMel2 3) I don't know where Cryptic is hosting.... whether they are using a Managed Hosting Company or running on thier own HW out of thier own Data Center. For companies that aren't huge..and can't justify the expense of thier own Tier 1 Data Center it makes alot of sense to go with a Managed Hosting Provider. Pretty much every half-way decent Managed Hosting provider can/will indeed provide you extra server infrastructure for EXPECTED short term spikes. You can pretty much always work out a deal with them to increase your server capacity for a week or two...and then pull those servers afterwards. There will be some setup fee's...and it might be more then your regular pro-rated rate would be....but it's not that much more. Your insider analysis was interesting to read. Cryptic is located in California and the servers are in a hosting center in Boston. I get the feeling that they have done the homework to see that they could theoretically accomodate all users, and that the problems are caused by errant bits of code (these guys like to rush without proper QA). Anyway, you might want to apply another /facepalm for the fact that Champions Online seems to share these STO servers, and we are having borked servers several times a day the last few days (after months of relative stability).
yep thats what we live in!a lot say they can make mmo but the real thing is there are not many can because often they think about everything like in a solo game then as an after thot try to hook their game to the network without calling microsoft ,amd,intel,nvidia or any other it on the globe then they re like mm!houston we got a problem
THE FIRST THING TO DO BEFORE YOU EVEN BEGIN THE GAME IS THINK ABOUT HOW YOU LL SUPPLY YOUR GAME
will you go easy route a la ONLIVE!
will you go the much less expensive but lot harder ,ms donnybrook
is it a massive multiplayer or just a multiplayer game
Made it past login and created my first character only to spend the last 45 minutes stuck on a loading screen ::Sigh:: I give up for now going back to LOTRO.
I've been in since the server opened and had zero issues, other than some minor lag at times.
Hardly a "fail" imho. Seems like your average headstart to me, and I've participated in plenty of them over the last few years, so my experience with the subject is far from limited.
Nice to see my new "wait for a game to be out for a week or two before buying" let's me sit back, relax and laugh. No interest in this game, but had heard today was the big day.
Honestly, I'm sorry y'all are having trouble getting in. It totally sucks! Good luck to all of you!
Nice to see my new "wait for a game to be out for a week or two before buying" let's me sit back, relax and laugh. No interest in this game, but had heard today was the big day. Honestly, I'm sorry y'all are having trouble getting in. It totally sucks! Good luck to all of you!
Gotta agree, it is humorous in a way from the outside looking in. Though it probably does suck for those truly excited about getting in to play.
I stopped playing games at launch back in 03 with galaxies. Well I played that one at launch, though I will never do so again, whether reports are good or bad. There's more to it than simple stability and bug issues to. The biggest thing is the community on day one is not the community you will see 6 months after release. Day one communities are filled to the brim with people who simply ruin the experience, spamming chat and causing any kind of commotion they can. God forbid they find a way to create area lag (SWG CU era vehicle lag anyone?) <--- It actually crashed servers.
I wait usually at least a month now (the initial 30 days), after that those who hate the game are usually long gone. Though some stragglers still insist on letting everyone know how much they hate the game, and how much better game x is. Never understood this logic, doh, you're paying to be there?!?!?!
If you think forums are bad at launch in this day and age , imagine the in-game communities.
For every minute you are angry , you lose 60 seconds of happiness."-Emerson
Comments
Ah...My boyfriend managed to log in some seconds ago. GO GO GO!
------------------------------------------------
Playing: Final Fantasy Online: ARR, Destiny
Most memorable games for me: UO, GW1, LoTRO
I dont care about other MMO's I care about this one. I paid for a lifetime sub and cryptic in typical cryptic fashion dropped the ball AGAIN. And you would think they would learn a thing a two from the past but they do not.
And for people calling me a troll--whatever i paid the same amount for a lifetime sub and Retail box purchase so i will complain all i damn well please. I defended this game vigourously but i will defend it no more.
I dont care about other MMO's I care about this one. I paid for a lifetime sub and cryptic in typical cryptic fashion dropped the ball AGAIN. And you would think they would learn a thing a two from the past but they do not.
And for people calling me a troll--whatever i paid the same amount for a lifetime sub and Retail box purchase so i will complain all i damn well please. I defended this game vigourously but i will defend it no more.
You're ready to drop the game because they had had an issue RIGHT when the game launched? What if the rest of headstart goes smoothly with only minor issues? Will you be back ardently defending the game and how "smooth" launch was with only 1 hiccup? Seriously, get some perspective. Also, MMO's are made with the long run in mind, and we generally play them that way as well. Who buys and MMO with the idea that they only want to play for a month and then quit? Just chill out.
Now, if they take the server down for 5 -6 hours during headstart or have a massive issue that causes major downtime, you can flip out then. =p
Hahahaha Bioware knows when to strike. Just as I was waiting got my TOR update of "new timeline entry released" in email to read.
You better play an aggressive game in this market Cryptic.
The Liberated Borg Race is temporarily unavailable in Star Trek Online. We are aware of this issue, and working on a resolution.
NNNoooOOOOooOOOOooOOOOOOOooOooooooOOOoo
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/a/ab/Norsefire-logo.png
Gah so I got in got past the intro movie stuck in the loading screen moving snail slow lol.
Yup, got into the tutorial, crashed and now can't authenticate. Like no one saw this coming. I anticipate about 6 hours of emergency maintenance today, and tomorrow and every day of the head start.
Yeah, same thing happened to me, and I agree with you. Who did not see this one coming? I agree with the FAIL Cryptic gets from this.
so what do you propose to solve it?
buy more account servers JUST for launch, that will be used probably just this once due to high influx?
wow you really dont seem to understand server infrastructure and demands
Not for nothing, but if Cryptic didn't want to buy the hardware to support the game because they felt they will lose most of the subscribers in only a couple months, the solution is really quite simple.
Have your servers hosted professionally at a datacenter. You can ramp up hardware and bandwidth dynamically and as needed by renting it, and these days it is really quite a cost effective and efficient means of doing so.
I dont care about other MMO's I care about this one. I paid for a lifetime sub and cryptic in typical cryptic fashion dropped the ball AGAIN. And you would think they would learn a thing a two from the past but they do not.
And for people calling me a troll--whatever i paid the same amount for a lifetime sub and Retail box purchase so i will complain all i damn well please. I defended this game vigourously but i will defend it no more.
You only have seven posts under you Avatar, where have you defended it?
And for pete's sake, the day isn't even over yet.
Currently Playing: World of Warcraft
I actually am home sick today with a bad cold, so i was looking forward to getting in a full day of STO. Feeling better before I logged in, but the shock of not getting in to play has now made me relapse. So I will probably have to call in this weekend too.
Hopefully the servers are up this weekend...
Try it now guys, I just got past the log in screen.
I dont care about other MMO's I care about this one. I paid for a lifetime sub and cryptic in typical cryptic fashion dropped the ball AGAIN. And you would think they would learn a thing a two from the past but they do not.
And for people calling me a troll--whatever i paid the same amount for a lifetime sub and Retail box purchase so i will complain all i damn well please. I defended this game vigourously but i will defend it no more.
You only have seven posts under you Avatar, where have you defended it?
And for pete's sake, the day isn't even over yet.
On the Official site. I only come here to rant in my alter ego....helps me relive stress
This was an added feature for you, our loyal fans. There will be no additional charge for this feature.
Intelligent posts and posters are forbidden at MMORPG.com. Please dumb it down, or see your way out. Thank you.
In addition to the STO debacle today, they also managed to deep six their other product.... Champions.
They share the same authentication server.
Cryptic sure shares the same stupidity again and again.
Stream users just got the shaft, Steam has deleted the STO files on users HDD's and is now redownloading the entire game
Expresso gave me a Hearthstone beta key.....I'm so happy
Hooboy... wonder where all that new hardware they were getting went.
So many folks get to hurry up and wait, today. I feel for ya, folks, but it was hard to not see it comin'...
On the Official site. I only come here to rant in my alter ego....helps me relive stress
Well then you did a good job of passing yourself off as one of the naysayers on this board
Hope you get in before the end of the day and keep us posted on how it plays. I pre-ordered the Collectors Edition from Amazon.com and will wait until the box arrives.
Currently Playing: World of Warcraft
I got in, created my toon, logged back out to spend time with my other half, gonna wait for the borg to be repelled from the C-Store
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/a/ab/Norsefire-logo.png
Yup, got into the tutorial, crashed and now can't authenticate. Like no one saw this coming. I anticipate about 6 hours of emergency maintenance today, and tomorrow and every day of the head start.
Yeah, same thing happened to me, and I agree with you. Who did not see this one coming? I agree with the FAIL Cryptic gets from this.
so what do you propose to solve it?
buy more account servers JUST for launch, that will be used probably just this once due to high influx?
wow you really dont seem to understand server infrastructure and demands
For some-one that claims to be an IT administrator ......you REALLY seem to have a blind spot here. I happen to be an infrastructure manager for an ASP serving fortune 500 clients. That's what I do for a living...and if I evinced that sort of an attitude I would be out of a job tomorrow. Cryptics infrastructure people in NO WAY deserve any sort of pass for this.
Firstly....this is head-start so it's only for people who bought pre-order....so absolutely no excuse to claim they didn't have any idea what sort of traffic demands to anticipate...they know EXACTLY how many pre-orders they sold. Stress testing the infrastructure is not some impossible figure out mystery....it may be as much art as science....but it is a very basic part of QA-ing a new application launch. It SHOULD have been part of the BETA event (that's part of what Open Beta is...getting as many people on FREE accounts to pound on the infrastructure as possible)...you can even buy automated tools...or hire automated services that will do it for you...if you can't figure it out yourself.
As far as ways to address a large but perdictable spike in demand it...there are MANY different ways. Here are a few options they could have pursued...off the top of my head.
1) Could computing services are built for this sort of thing.... with advances in that technology....alot of solutions to spike based demand exist now that haven't in the past. Even if you don't want to put your entire application into a cloud..... you MOST certainly can plan to provision a number of virtual servers for EXPECTED spike events to address bottlenecks in server resources. You pay for these services pretty much as you use them.
This should be part of any modern Service Providers plan to deal with spikes (if you are in a high volume vertical) as long as regulatory issues don't prevent it (and they wouldn't for a game...i.e. no HIPAA, FISA, GLB)
2) You could deal with it in the application layer itself by implimenting a que system for accessing the servers and some basic resource throttling to make sure the servers themselves don't "crash" due to volume of requests. That might mean people waiting "in line" to get in...but at least they would get in at the rate that the infrastructure could accomodate them.
3) I don't know where Cryptic is hosting.... whether they are using a Managed Hosting Company or running on thier own HW out of thier own Data Center. For companies that aren't huge..and can't justify the expense of thier own Tier 1 Data Center it makes alot of sense to go with a Managed Hosting Provider. Pretty much every half-way decent Managed Hosting provider can/will indeed provide you extra server infrastructure for EXPECTED short term spikes. You can pretty much always work out a deal with them to increase your server capacity for a week or two...and then pull those servers afterwards. There will be some setup fee's...and it might be more then your regular pro-rated rate would be....but it's not that much more.
4) If Cryptics hosting on thier own HW...then yes indeed... they COULD purchase additional servers to put on for events like this. If you are in the SaS business then you WANT to plan to have enough spare capacity to deal with spikes. For an operation like this HW costs are typicaly the SMALLEST portion of your operating budget...mostly it's personnel. Purchasing a few extra servers doesn't cost alot. A company that is running on it's own hardware SHOULD have extra servers around anyways in hot/warm spare capacity.....in case one or more of the servers you have in production take a hit. Those hot/warm spares can be pressed into service to provide extra capacity in EXPECTED spike situation. They should already be configured to be brought into service in short order, in case of existing servers taking a hit....and these systems should behind a load-balancer or in a cluster anyways...so it shouldn't be that big of a deal to bring them online when needed.
There really is no excuse for this sort of thing today....other the incompetency...or simply being cheap at you customers expense.
This isn't 20 years ago...when people were first dealing with the issue of demand spikes...and no one had any prior experience in dealing with it.
Cryptic is trying a Customer Development approach to MMO creation.
yep thats what we live in!a lot say they can make mmo but the real thing is there are not many can because often they think about everything like in a solo game then as an after thot try to hook their game to the network without calling microsoft ,amd,intel,nvidia or any other it on the globe then they re like mm!houston we got a problem
THE FIRST THING TO DO BEFORE YOU EVEN BEGIN THE GAME IS THINK ABOUT HOW YOU LL SUPPLY YOUR GAME
will you go easy route a la ONLIVE!
will you go the much less expensive but lot harder ,ms donnybrook
is it a massive multiplayer or just a multiplayer game
lol!
Made it past login and created my first character only to spend the last 45 minutes stuck on a loading screen ::Sigh:: I give up for now going back to LOTRO.
"Onward to adventure".
I've been in since the server opened and had zero issues, other than some minor lag at times.
Hardly a "fail" imho. Seems like your average headstart to me, and I've participated in plenty of them over the last few years, so my experience with the subject is far from limited.
Nice to see my new "wait for a game to be out for a week or two before buying" let's me sit back, relax and laugh. No interest in this game, but had heard today was the big day.
Honestly, I'm sorry y'all are having trouble getting in. It totally sucks! Good luck to all of you!
Gotta agree, it is humorous in a way from the outside looking in. Though it probably does suck for those truly excited about getting in to play.
I stopped playing games at launch back in 03 with galaxies. Well I played that one at launch, though I will never do so again, whether reports are good or bad. There's more to it than simple stability and bug issues to. The biggest thing is the community on day one is not the community you will see 6 months after release. Day one communities are filled to the brim with people who simply ruin the experience, spamming chat and causing any kind of commotion they can. God forbid they find a way to create area lag (SWG CU era vehicle lag anyone?) <--- It actually crashed servers.
I wait usually at least a month now (the initial 30 days), after that those who hate the game are usually long gone. Though some stragglers still insist on letting everyone know how much they hate the game, and how much better game x is. Never understood this logic, doh, you're paying to be there?!?!?!
If you think forums are bad at launch in this day and age , imagine the in-game communities.
For every minute you are angry , you lose 60 seconds of happiness."-Emerson