Launches of new MMORPGs or major MMORPG expansions are often significant events accompanied by many players. Here are 10 things that you have definitely experienced during a launch.
Launches of new MMORPGs or major MMORPG expansions are often significant events accompanied by many players. Here are 10 things that you have definitely experienced during a launch.
Some gaming veterans among us have been around for many years and have witnessed many MMORPG or expansion launches. And there are always certain things and patterns that repeat. Whether it’s broken servers or annoying fellow players.
Not all of them happen at the same time, but it is definitely a kind of launch bingo that you can play at every new release.
Servers crash
Aaah… the classic. Rarely in the history of major MMORPGs has the launch or start of a new expansion gone completely smoothly with the servers. It has almost become a tradition.
When the long-awaited start time finally arrives and the floodgates open, thousands of players try to log into the game, hungry for new content. The horrified servers, which until then either had no experience with gamers or were not used to such a load, cannot withstand the influx and collectively give up the ghost.
This is accompanied by countless posts in the forums and on social media, apologies from the developers, and often also a server maintenance that delays the actual launch of the game by hours.
The server problems at launch have impressed themselves so much into the gamer memory that smooth launches are seen as something special. Therefore, clean launches have become real exceptions that are celebrated by the fans.
The launcher causes problems
Imagine this: The game is online, the servers are even quite stable, and there is no maintenance. You enter your login details into the launcher, a loading screen appears… and then BOOM, the game crashes and you get the error message with the number “IJkdh-ge)&§$53kd_s89g93SU”.
Okay, no reason to panic at first. But the next attempt leads to the next error message. Wait, was the error number the same or different? Doesn’t matter. But on the third try, the launcher doesn’t even let you type in your login data and crashes carefully before that.
At that moment you know: You won’t be playing anytime soon, as your launcher is bugged. And thus your quest begins even before you log into the game – The quest for the fix for the launcher, which has an arbitrarily large number of intermediate steps.
With a bit of luck, you might find the answer you’re looking for right in the first Reddit thread. With bad luck… well, with bad luck the fix does not work for you, and no one can tell you why. Or you get more errors that suddenly multiply like rabbits. In any case, you will be kept busy for a while.
“I have no problems”
Although MMORPG and expansion launches are often accompanied by problems, there are always players who seem to have an almost unnatural immunity against them. These server darlings kissed by the gaming goddess dance around crashes and are the first to get into the game.
No bug can harm them, error messages bounce pathetically off their magical shield. They log in and immediately start with the new content, completing quests, dungeons, collecting new armor and cosmetic items, while the rest has to wait outside.
These lucky gamers are, on one hand, a sign of hope for others that it can still work. Maybe, if you click the login button a little longer, you will eventually get in and can join in.
On the other hand, they also occasionally go to social media or the forums to demonstrate how great the MMORPG or expansion actually is and to bask in general envy. And then throw salt in the wound with a “I have no idea what problems you all have. I’ve been playing for 6 hours already!”
Getting up at 4 AM for the launch
In times of globalization, worldwide launches happening at the same time are almost expected by developers. While in the past we had to wait months for release confirmations and localization, today everything usually happens on the same day, if not at the same time. Real luxury, one would think.
But this time is often really poorly placed for us Europeans. While gamers in America or Japan happily come home at 6 PM and fire up their gaming rigs, we are annoyed by impossible launch times.
New MMORPGs or expansions often go online in the middle of the night or early morning, and European gamers drag themselves out of bed half asleep but full of enthusiasm and passion for their hobby.
But hey, what won’t you do to be there for the launch of the highly anticipated game? Fatigue is also not a problem that cannot be solved with liters of coffee or energy drinks.
“I have to work”
As mentioned above, you can’t choose the launch of an MMORPG or expansion. However, even if the start here in Europe is conveniently at 1 PM on a Wednesday, not all gamers can participate.
The culprit is neither server problems nor buggy launchers, but the evil reality and all the obligations included in the complete package. Foremost among them is work.
Thus, many of us can only observe the launch from afar and follow all the cool screenshots and in-game discoveries through news sites or social media. And sometimes we melancholically write in the comments that we would also like to log in, but unfortunately, that won’t happen until after work in the evening.
The joy is all the greater when it finally happens. And with a bit of luck, all the server and login issues have also been resolved by then, and you don’t have to get annoyed about it.
On the next page, we will continue with things that happen during MMORPG and expansion launches.
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