Video Game Tuesday: Launch Day Madness

Hey all for this week’s Video Game Tuesday I’m going to cover a topic most of you will probably be familiar with after last week. It’s all about Launch Day Madness!

What’s Launch Day Madness?: Well it’s just a made up term I use when talking about a launch of a particular game and the breaking of various things that occur on that day.

Like what?: Well, for one and probably the one most people are familiar with after last week’s launch of Pokemon GO, the servers are down, or busy. The reason behind this is fairly obvious, too many people at one time. Even if some people get in just fine it’s more due to their own luck, or foresightedness at logging in early, rather than you just being unlucky. If a game can’t handle the massive amount of people logging in when brand new content launches than the IT team behind the game has severely miscalculated the anticipated user base, or it’s increased influx. That was the case with Pokemon GO for most people that I know, and myself personally. I still haven’t caught a single ‘Mon myself yet. The server went down before I could catch my first one.

What else?: Well it could also be the website used to register users can be down, another thing people are probably familiar with after last week’s launch of GO. Sane reasoning, although not to the same extent, probably only up to 80% of the user base if it’s a new game. It can also be that certain parts of the game don’t work, like Instances in World of Warcraft’s The Burning Crusade or Wrath of the Lich King expansion launches.

Even if it’s not people having issue logging in, the servers might be unable to handle a certain amount of players in one area and that area’s server might go down. Like the Eastern Kingdoms going down during the Wrath launch.  Or it may cause server restarts causing people to quit the game and stop playing for up to a few hours.

That’s it for this week’s Video Game Tuesday! Do you have a favorite Launch Day Madness story? Share it below!

 

Video Game Tuesday: Proper Interactions

This week for Video Game Tuesday I’m talking about something I participated in last week. It’s all about Proper Interactions!

Background: An In-Game Event started on August 27th this year to commemorate the 2nd Anniversary of the launch of Final Fantasy 14: A Realm Reborn. This was the relaunch of a game that was universally criticized so badly that the director was replaced and the new director, Naoki Yoshida, strove to remake the game to be so much better.

What Makes This Event Special: Normally this would be a great time to show off some things, hint about upcoming things and just have fun with your player base. Instead Naoki Yoshida, or as he’s affectionately called by the FF14 community Yoshi-P, and his team at Square Enix took the time to not only do all that, but included an incredibly heartfelt letter to each player in the form of a special room where key staff members are all NPCs and talk to you about what they do and how they interact with you specifically. There are also lots of cool little in game nods to upcoming things, and teasers to unannounced content. However at the end of your time in this room you are treated to a scene where your character is surrounded by each of these staff members, including Yoshi-P, and they all thank you for continuing to give them the support and criticism that made A Realm Reborn so successful. This isn’t the first time I’ve been made to feel like the center of the story instead of some hapless lunk who get’s told to do the dirty work for NPC leaders too lazy or weak to do it themselves. However it’s the first time I’ve ever been treated this way by a game developer and been made to feel special not only in the continuing storyline of the game itself, but in the making of the storyline and many other things as well. It made me and many other’s cry at the simple honesty that we as a consumer so rarely get from the developers.

Why make a big deal about this?: Because it’s all too often that a game developer loses their connection with their player-base and starts to lose their faith. It’s been steadily happening to even giants in the field like Blizzard, who I still can’t believe is being this stupid about flying in their upcoming World of Warcraft expansion. Despite all this Yoshi-P and his team at Square Enix continue to make their customer’s feel appreciated in countless tiny and smaller ways and that’s why they’ll be getting my business for the foreseeable future.  It’s why they’ve almost reached the same subscriber amount as World of Warcraft, who has continuously been losing subscriptions for years at this point.

Thank you Yoshi-P and your team for making us as the player feel special.

 

Video Game Tuesday: Gamescom Reactions

This week for Video Game Tuesday I’m covering my shock at a couple news items from last week. It’s all about my Gamescom Reactions!

Big Shockers: We got a release window (sorta) for Final Fantasy XV and World of Warcraft: Legion was revealed.

Final Fantasy XV: Well according to one of the higher ups at Square Enix, Final Fantasy XV will be out before 2017, so it’ll probably release sometime in 2016, probably either in spring or fall. Finally, as this game’s been in development for ages. Naysayer’s can denounce recent Final Fantasies as not being true JRPGs, well I’d like to point you to the excellent JRPG series called Tales of. Maybe you’ve heard of it. I don’t mind them becoming more action based instead of turn based things. Leave turn based combat to Pokemon.

World of Warcraft Legion: Wow (pun totally intended) didn’t see that coming. Even more surprising was the fact that I heard nothing about this expansion prior to the announcement. Which is highly surprising considering the last 3 were all leaked in massive amounts of detail ahead of time.  Another Hero Class will be nice, and they aren’t opening it to all races leaving it just to the elves. Even better is that it’s the class of my favorite Warcraft 3 Hero unit, the Demon Hunter. Double Jumping? Metamorph into a Demon and use your wings to swoop down onto enemies? Hell yes, that sounds fun. Even better is the fact that Artifact weapons, think Relic Weapons from Final Fantasy XIV, will be coming. We get to use Doomhammer or Ashbringer? Reforging Frostmourne?. And finally we aren’t having an Orc heavy expansion in like 6 years.  Yea that sounds like lots of fun, but it needs to be releasing this fall if Blizzard doesn’t want an even greater loss in Subscriptions. From the pictures of the announcement’s presentation slideshow it’s possible. But this is Blizzard we are talking about, so don’t count on it. I’d totally jump back into WoW just to have some fun time with the Demon Hunter, a class I always wanted to be (I farmed for those freaking Warglaives forever). However as I don’t have a computer capable of running the game anymore I’ll have to live with not playing it.

Which will release first?: Honestly I’d not be surprised if they release within a month of each other, and if that is the case it’ll be in the fall of next year.

That’s it for this week’s Video Game Tuesday!