How The Game Is Played

Matrix Online: Conclusion Disaster

Okay,

In one of my last posts on my experiences in this game I said that at some point frustration might get higher then enjoyment and I'd quit.

Well, I am just about there. Since I last wrote on this game, the Marketplace on my server has stopped working for me and in fact makes the client hang if I even try to access it. Now that in game economy is probably half the total game-play value-- at least it is to me. But I valiently strove on and tried to make do while I awaited a response to my customer service ticket on it.

The tonight it stopped letting me log in at all. The server selection screen shows my character but when I select it, the load screens tell me "The character you are trying to log in with does not exist."

I am quietly praying that they havent managed to garbage my file and completely lose my last few weeks of work.

This is the buggiest online game launch I have seen in a long time. Comapre that to my comments in my old blog on the CoH launch and how smoothly it went and there really is no excuse. There are many poential explainations, but no excuses.

Short conclusion, unless you are SO desperate to play The Matrix that you are willing to endure high levels of frustration, stay away for now. Which is a shame because I really do like the basic design of the game.

Maybe they will get their act together. Maybe they won't.

ADDL POSTSCRIPT -- How to make a bad situation worse 103

Now I haven't experenced this personally, yet, but I've heard this report from multiple users:

Calling in may put you on a 20-30 minute hold time just to get through to talk to a guy who ask you a dozen questions and then tries to talk you into staying. It is done this way to make less people cancel. When you can just click cancel, yes, didn't enjoy the game, it is too easy. Having to call might keep some people from canceling, and the ones that call might get talked into staying.

If this is at all true, then I have a prediction-- Warner/Monoloith are going to be the second online game in history to have to face a class action law-suit. (The first was EA/Origins over down-time in Ultima Online.)

Posted at 09:43PM Apr 03, 2005 by gameguy in General  |  Comments[0]

More Matrix Online Problems

Well lately Ive been having a LOt of p[roblem with Matrix Online.

I cannot seem to go into the "marketplace" at all without hanging. Additionally I hung in a "coding" (think crafting) action and lost all the peices I was using. I then did it again, it told me it succeeded, told me it upload to my "code store" and then when i went looking for the thing I had made it had vanished.

This is a great game-design that I am really begining to believe will die for purely technical reasons. My frustration level is starting to reach my fun level. When it passes it, they will have lost another customer.

This is ofcourse another good example of how our project, the SUN Game Sever, could have saved them by offloading all the server technology they obviously messed up and just let them concentrate on game-play. It makes me more convinced then ever that we have the right answer, if we can just mobilize and execute to get it to market.

Posted at 12:06AM Apr 03, 2005 by gameguy in General  |  Comments[0]