Yes, I have been neglecting this blog. You know why?
Stormblood. That's why.
In case you are living under a rock clipping through a tree in South Gustaberg, Stormblood is the new XIV expansion that gave us Samurai and Red Mage. It came out officially on the 20th, but I got to play early access because I'm special and I preordered it a day before early access started :)
As usual, Square Enix took a look back at what made Heavensward a major lag-fest when it first came out, taking into account the amount of people who would be logging on at once, and put special measures into place to ensure a wonderful gaming experience. Stormblood was opened to early access accounts on the 16th and went off without a hitch, no problems whatsoevHAHAHAHAHAHAHA sorry, I couldn't keep that up with a straight face. Fuck you, SE. Fuck you in your dick.
For those of you who don't know, Stormblood has been the WORST expansion release of any game I've ever seen. You'd think a company as big as this behemoth would take numbers into account and provide at least temporary servers to help with the traffic. It's not like the number of people about to jump in was a fucking mystery. They literally have the numbers because they sold the game.
So, that faithful morning of the 16th, which was a Friday, mind you, I woke up exactly two hours before I had to go to work in order to jump on and explore. The queue times weren't that bad. Only about 300 people in front of me, and that was probably due to the fact that I was hovering over my keyboard like a crack addict, waiting for that Play button to light up.
I started doing main story quests because I'll be damned if I'm gonna lag behind in that shit again. After a few missions, I went to Ul'dah and got Samurai. And I had a fucking blast. Samurai is everything that it should be, minus the gay bathrobes. The damage output is incredible, the skills are flashy, and the sword is right good at stabbing.
So after a bit of leveling, I started to go back on story quests, when I started seeing people shouting that stuff wasn't working correctly. Hmmm. Probably bug due to the overflow of people. Oh well, I'll do some main story quests after work.
I worked a long day that Friday. It was long, hot, hard, and sexual innuendo. I was dripping wet when I got home, and all I wanted was some warm meat inside me.
So I logged back on, and the queue times were even more fucked up. 2,000 people ahead of me. Ok, I'll take a shower while the queue goes down.
Disconnected.
3,000 people in queue.
Ok, then. I'll do-
Disconnected.
4,000 people in queue.
Ok, seriously, what the fuck, SE?
When I finally got in, there was a large commotion about a story quest NPC that wasn't working. Apparently there were so many people trying to get to this NPC that he broke, and was only letting one person talk to him at a time. So you know what I did? I played it smart. I fucked off and leveled Samurai hardcore while people were bitching about the MSQ.
I's smart.
So over this entire "early access" period, I was leveling Samurai because no one was progressing in the story. I was forced to do FATEs because the duty finder was broken as well due to people spamming Palace of the Dead. Let me rephrase that. EVERYONE was forced to do FATEs.
So just to make this perfectly clear, here is a TL;DR of the Stormblood early access experience:
Log on, wait in queue.
Do story quest until bugged NPC..
Level in FATES, duty finder broken.
Duty finder fixed, 2hr+ wait times because both new classes are DPS.
Disconnect.
Repeat.
So if you didn't preorder Stormblood and were worried about others getting a head start, please find the nearest door and slam your testicles in it repeatedly. It's the same experience, really.
And to top everything off, I'm playing on PS4, and guess what? There's a funny little glitch where if the power goes off, even for a split second, the launcher thinks you could do with a little break, and makes you re-download everything.
That's right.
Re-downloading 22.7gb of data is fun. I should know. It's happened to me twice since Stormblood because I live in the south, and our main exports are racism and thunderstorms.
Fuck me in the nipple with raw spaghetti.
Now, it isn't all bad. Stormblood is a beautiful expansion. The areas are diverse, the stories are amazing, the gameplay adjustments make everything more enjoyable, and it's all around a good addition to XIV. The new weeaboo city is fun and flashy, the swimming mechanic is cool, and Samurai is bad ass.
But that doesn't erase the fact that SE really dropped the ball when it came to the launch. Early access felt like closed beta testing. Even to this day, I still have to sit in queue because people log on and refuse to log off, even while they're sleeping or pooping, or pooping while they're sleeping. And you know what SE's answer to the congestion is?
Kick everyone off for 10 minutes.
Yep.
Every day, they disconnect everyone for 10 minutes to get everyone who is afk off the game and allow people who actually want to play back on. But you know what the problem with that is?
You have several thousand players trying to log back in AT THE SAME FUCKING TIME.
SE, I love you guys, I really do. But fuck your asses with a spoon. Heavensward didn't teach you shit, and you should be ashamed.
As for me, I'll be posting more. I know I keep saying that, but fuck you. I have this up on my desktop, so expect more to come.
If you'll excuse me, I gotta go level Samurai.
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