Aventurine suffers some serious launch day blues.
MMOG launches are often rough for popular games, simply because they are like rush hour traffic. Not only is the volume of traffic forcing everything to go at a snails pace, but the smallest hitch or accident can grind everything to a halt. For years haters called Darkfall Online a vaporware game, that it would never be released, that the company didn't exist etc. Well they were proved wrong, the game launched, but billing bugs and overwhelming demand resulted in some unfortunate SNAFUs.
Avoiding rush hour
The developers, Aventurine, knew that rush hour traffic was coming, so they made the rather rare decision to launch with a limited release. Even though it was a digital download they limited the number of copies that would be made available at launch. The goal was to make that sure that the game was stable and that the first wave of gamers were having fun. This way they could populate the game in waves and better control the traffic. Sounded good on paper I'm sure, but in practice events turned out quite different.
You can play... tomorrow... we think...
For starters, the Feb 25th launch did not happen. Last minute problems forced the developer to delay the launch by about 12 hours. Even with the limited launch, the games billing and account management systems strained from the load. Many could not complete the process and would get timed out forcing them to try again. Being unable to process your pre-order and create your account is always a very frustrating experience, especially if you have been anxiously awaiting the game. Some even got billed for their pre-orders but weren't assigned an account to play with. The limited launch also created an unfortunate but an obviously foreseeable problem. Everyone who wanted to play the game but couldn't get a copy would keep visiting the site hoping that sales would resume. Without knowing concretely when that would happen coupled with excitement and anxiety and it is no surprise that these fans would be hammering the site.
The fans brought their friends, and the kitchen sink
The games forums saw a doubling of traffic from their previous record highs. This should have been foreseen as game launches garner the attention of the curious that want to see what the hype is about. Forum stability and operations ground to a halt and the developer was forced to turn them off entirely to allow people to at least see their announcement posts. This way they could keep people informed and keep tempers in check. With the forums down the fans poured into the games official IRC channel for some live chat. The extreme volume of activity caused stability issues for the entire IRC network and the channel was shut down, albeit just like the forums the action was temporary. It is apparent that Aventurine was caught unprepared for how much attention their "niche" hardcore game would receive.
Playing fair is for losers
However all of this wasn't the beginning and end of Aventurine's launch headaches. Unscrupulous gamers figured out how to cheat using hacks and macros. Apparently playing fair is just not fair enough. Aventurine was quick to acknowledge these issues and in no uncertain terms made their policies clear. Anyone caught cheating would be kicked out of the game and would risk having their account banned, permanently. That unfortunately wasn't enough to dissuade some and reports of cheating such as speed and teleport hacks were plenty.
Aventurine however stayed on top of all these issues and gave everyone a 3 day extension to their 30 free days included in their purchase as compensation for these headaches. This was an honorable act and similar to what Blizzard did during WoW's launch. The company learned some valuable lessons and will hopefully be better prepared for future launches.
Sylvester "Annex" Rozylo
Executive Editor
