• @SaintNicster Bless, no; the voicework was just the final lure. in reply to SaintNicster 17:37:41
• @Saraphina_Marie better than swallowing Queen Latifah's voice in omgwtf chorus and loopy melody. in reply to Saraphina_Marie 17:40:04
• oh, GAWD. WTF these commercials?! I mean, at least Doritoes TRIED, but still no. #superbowl 17:47:25

• for the first time in a long time, the game appears to be more exciting than the commercials. #superbowl #fb 20:42:16
• @Saraphina_Marie what they just did to that Colts player. in reply to Saraphina_Marie 20:43:38

• @cyberpilate need your #STO username! mine is naienko 22:29:14

talking to: Dr. Aeon
music: STO
mood: cold
tagme: geekgirl, gaming, introspection, rants
758 words

When I pre-ordered Aion, participating in the beta and the headstart, I stayed away from the forums; I toodled along and did my own thing.

Now I’m participating in the Star Trek Online headstart, and Cryptic has set up an irc channel on the coldfront network, providing non-irc-savvy folk with a java-powered applet to access it via the website. (It’s quite nifty, actually.) This provides me with an entertaining opportunity to witness the wide range of stupid created by intersecting two groups with high percentages of nerdrage, instant gratification mode, and entitlement: Trekkies, and MMO gamers.

Mind you, these traits appear most prominently when the server(s) go down. Like Champions Online, STO operates on a single-shard, multiserver environment, permitting everyone to interact together all the time. Duplicate names are prevented by appending one’s global username to the character name. Thus, when the server(s) go down, everybody’s shit out of luck.

Those who make their way into the irc channel tend to have some computer/internet knowledge — enough to look like prime idiots as they speculate on when the servers will come back, why they’re down, and why Cryptic isn’t giving us the blow-by-blow of every single thing they’re doing to get the server(s) back up. For instance, here’s the most common statement: “I paid for headstart!”

Actually, no, you didn’t. None of the purchase locations charge you /more/ to pre-order the game; in fact, at some places, you may pay less than the full cost to pre-order, paying the remainder when the physical game comes in and you receive your copy. Regardless of how much money you laid out, be it $5, $50, or $80 (the collector’s deluxe with actual figurines and com badge replicas), headstart is a privilege you were granted in return for your support of the game before it even launched. Thus, like all privileges, it can be taken away.

Here’s number two: “I hope they don’t plan to launch with the game/product not working!”

This is just a stupid misrepresentation of what the problem really is. The code’s fine. The game’s fine. The product’s fine. Whatever term you want to use, it’s fine; it works. We’re not getting booted out because of a game bug. In fact, the problem is an interruption of service. Although complaining about that might be a valid complaint, it’s still absurd. No new service being offered is ever offered completely smoothly; there will always be issues that could not have been planned or tested for. In this case, the service that’s being interrupted is access to the server(s), and the issue at hand is the inability to stresstest said server(s) for the load of people attempting to access them at one go or continually. Therefore, access — a service — is interrupted.

Then there’s number three: “They’re taking too long! They should just reboot the server(s)!”

Again, this represents a serious misunderstanding of the issues. In the first place, the game server(s) are not running on windows; ‘just’ rebooting them is not guaranteed to fix anything. In the second place, once again, the problem is the server(s) being unprepared to handle the load of people attempting to access them at one go. Several Cryptic folk have stated that the solution to the issue is in the software operating the servers; it’s not a hardware issue. Patching or altering the software is inevitably going to take longer than a ’simple’ reboot.

As for taking too long, most of headstart took place over a weekend — while Cryptic may have had staff watching over the server all weekend, I would be surprised if they were there 24 hours a day, which means that contact and travel time must factor into any attempt to get the server(s) back up. Even if someone /was/ watching the server(s) up close and personal all weekend 24 hours a day, that person was not necessarily a person who could make any changes to the server(s) — in the jargon, a NOC monkey — and that leads right back to contact and travel time.

There are other frequent complaints, but those are the ones that make me headdesk the most. Personally, as long as I don’t hear anything from or regarding Jack Emmert, I’m willing to say that STO is a good solid game that’s likely to last for some time, and I am certainly glad I bought it.

I’m Rivka@Naienko in the Federation, flying the Basilikya. Come look me up sometime!

• yay, walk in the snow to buy milk and bread! #fb 18:00:21