I think the thing that's getting under my skin is the apparent instability of the client I'm experiencing. I wholly expected very slow dl speeds, so that came as no surprise. However, I'm getting repetitive client crashes. I started dl'ing shortly after it went live, knew it would be slow, so just let it sit and dl and its leisure. I came back 3 hours later, the client had crashed at 100MB. Started over, an hour later it crashed again at just over 250MB. Wiped everything, reinstalled the client, crashed again at 300, and again at 658MB. Started it up again a last time and it crashed at 670MB. So, 12 hours later, I've dl'ed 670MB and that wouldn't bother me if I knew it was solely a speed issue; eventually it would speed up and I could reasonably expect to just go to bed and have the full game in 12 hours when I'm ready to play. It becomes an issue when no dl'ing will happen in those 12 hours unless I'm constantly monitoring and restarting my dl.
Yeah its just the constant crashes whereby I have to restart my computer to get the beamdog client working again and lose all my progress. Its beyond a joke now. I have been trying to update/download for 12 hours now and Id say less than 30 minutes of that time has been spent trying to download SoD. The other 11 hours and 30 minutes are downloadig and redownloading and redownloading AGAIN bgee.
You have it good, I've been restarting the download every time it crashed since the release and i'm at 30MB. I've had awesome download speeds of 1b/s.
I actually understand that Beamdog isn't geared to provide the game to so many people but I do expect them to have some back up solutions like send a Steam Key to all people who bought it on BeamDog via mail or put alternate downloads methods in place. Anything would be better than waiting without official comment on it.
So the download is still not working, but it's hard to complain when Trent Oster personally answers a request you sent in to customer service about getting a steam code at 1 AM.
So the download is still not working, but it's hard to complain when Trent Oster personally answers a request you sent in to customer service about getting a steam code at 1 AM.
Haha, that's hilarious. I'm sure they're all, "**** guys, get ready for the emails."
I realize there is frustration happening in the community, I'm going to remind people that this is a PG-13 site, please watch the gratuitous cursing.
No, I have no information on the download client. I do, however, wish to keep you guys from an even more frustrating experience of having a forum rep speak to you about forum rules.
As our friend Jon says: "The pain should only be passing, you will survive the process."
Not trying to make light of a frustrating situation Ladies and Gents, but please keep the forum rules in mind.
I know, I get what you're saying and my apologies... The atrocious download speed couple with it freezing twice, the second time right as it's supposed to have finished, is leaving me boiling with frustration that feeding right into a headache/migraine that's not making my frustration any easier to deal with.
Good morning! Having played BG since 1998 and been waiting for this to happen since the release of ToB, I can't wait to play "Siege of Dragonspear" either. But I guess a few more hours of waiting won't matter too much. Just remember Gorion's wise words: "You must learn to be patient, child!"
I sat through the release of WoW after alpha and beta testing with them for almost 4 years prior to it's release. I was there when WOW Took down the internet for 3 days (there was so much traffic it flooded the AT&T Backbones to both east and west coast, it was actually affecting standard internet traffic).
I sat through the release of Diablo 3 where the download went painfully slow and then for almost 24 hours afterword the dredded error 83 (I think?) message kept coming up.
Skyrim release (painfullly slow download), Starcraft II (couldn't log in, couldn't download), Diablo 3, World of Warcraft...
The list goes on and on. It's as frustrating to me as it is to any of you...I'm a gamer myself and I get just as angry and just as upset when I can't play the games I've been looking forward to for months and years as well.
I feel for you, I feel for all of you.
The only light at the end of the tunnel is that eventually you will have what you want...WoW got people onto their servers 72 hours later...and 7 years after that I was still playing. Diablo 3's fiasco was lost to the world 48 hours after release...when everyone was in playing a game the fans enjoyed as much as the first.
All of us who've worked on this game would like to think the wait will be worth it. It's not my place to either apologize or explain, though I can sympathize...as I know can many others.
Still, try to keep some perspective...we've designed a game that we hope will span the bounds of time just as well as the original 2 games have done.
After all, we've all waited 17 years for this thing...what's another 24 or 48 hours in the grand scheme of things?
Nostalgia. This is what downloading felt like in 1998 when Baldur's Gate first came out. ^^ I just remembered playing BG to occupy me while the files were downloading. And then hours later I would realize that Download Accelerator has crashed.
I hear you, been through some howlers as well. Having aspergers frustration is something that can get wildly out of control. But, I am trying to keep some perspective, I'm not howling for anyone's head on a plate or a refund or hurling abuse at anyone at Beamdog... my emotional circuitry is short circuiting leaving me rather volatile and inflammatory.
I offer this not as an excuse, but simply an explanation... if there's a need for posts to be removed, then by all means do so.
I think we're all fine, I'll let the forum mods determine if they think anything needs to be edited or removed. Till that point, thanks very much for the understanding on the cursing.
I hope you get your game shortly and I hope you enjoy every minute of it.
The slow downloading rates are one thing... the crashes are other. I have been trying to download the game since yesterday from the time of release, with no success. I understand that the company may have issues due to the number of players downloading the game but now it starts to be a little too much inmy opinion.
So, you're saying that BG:SoD release is comparable to WoW, D3, SC2 and Skyrim releases in server load?
What baffles my mind is that this happens every release even on smaller games like BG:SoD. The problems are as predictable and inevitable as the preparation for them is lacking. There's not even a queue system put in place. It's like game companies took several years of experience in bad releases and did nothing to alleviate the problems.
I even had the interesting experience that BG:EE was finally done downloading again (as it was somehow deleted...). Then, after the pop-up saying it has installed, I clicked on SoD to download. Lo and behold! BG:EE was once again completely removed
@Avari As I said in my initial post, I posted here tonight to help people stay out of the line of sight of the moderators with the rampant cursing, not to provide explanation, excuse or apology for what you all are experiencing. It's not my area of expertise nor my area of control. I further stated that I sympathized with the community having sat through other releases that brought frustration to me personally.
I am not attempting to compare this release to that of WoW or Diablo 3 or any other game. If there's one thing I have recognized within the industry every release is it's own experience and the challenges each company face in releasing their games are unique.
I return you your thread. Please keep the cursing to a minimum and the thread to PG-13 levels.
The speed has been really slow, but what it got a bit to my nerves was that I left the beamdog client downloading for the night and it froze without downloading more than a 10%.
Yesterday it froze as well several times. Again, not complaining for the speed, that's understandable, but the download client should be more stable.
Get the whole "Hey your download is done, but not really" thing with the standalone launcher where it says 3,7/3,7GB is downloaded with a pitiful 30B/s to occasional 300ishB/S download rate that doesn't seem to actually finish. So I've started a download from the Beamdog client as well, which seems to at least do something, with a very variable download speed. I'm hoping that one will either finish or have whatever files the launcher install is missing so I can just copy-paste them and restart it. Which brings me to my next point:
To those of you installing using the Beamdog client, if crashes wipes your progress, are the files still present while whatever "application has crashed!" message is hovering on the screen? If so, and you have the spare space for it, try copy-pasting the downloaded files elsewhere before clicking through the crash. Then move them back before restarting the Beamdog client. With any luck it should just progress from wherever it previously was.
If you hit the issue with the download speed dropping to almost nothing and staying there for several minutes (don't do this every time your download speed drops, only if it stays there), ESPECIALLY if it happens close to the end of the download and/or for long periods of time, try pausing the download, letting it sit paused for 60 seconds, and then starting the download back up.
That typically kicks it enough to download the last little bit it needs.
After 11 hours of slow downloading the download speed suddenly jumped to 700 kb/s and I managed to finish my download in 30 minutes. To bad I had to go to work 30 minutes after that
I've been trying on and off for 14 hours now and still only got 1.3GB downloaded - I really wish today wasn't April Fools Day because that's what I'm starting to feel like.
Hello guys I am a long time veteran rper like most here and just wanted to stress my disappointment because my missus got me beer and snacks for last night and I am still not only 1.5in to download for dragonpear so still cant play but I downloaded bg and now it is saying I need to do it all over again been trying since last night and speed is so unstable
I managed to finally get the standalone installer to finish downloading, only to have it give me an error message about an illegal character near line 180, followed by a generic message that gave an option for more info which linked to a 404 page on the beamdog support site.
I reopened the standalone installer, and did a repair, and now it's downloading an apparently missing 600mb -again-.
This is beyond ridiculous. There has been an easily accessible PIRATED version of this on the internet for the past 13 hours, and I can't even get my legitimate copy that I PAID FOR to finish downloading.
edit: I suppose I should count my blessings that these last few hundred megs are actually downloading at an internet speed that wasn't considered cutting edge in the early 90's. But drawing attention to it will probably be enough to make it start going at 45 B/sec again.
Comments
I actually understand that Beamdog isn't geared to provide the game to so many people but I do expect them to have some back up solutions like send a Steam Key to all people who bought it on BeamDog via mail or put alternate downloads methods in place. Anything would be better than waiting without official comment on it.
Edited for language. Keep it PG-13, folks.
Edited for language. Keep it PG-13, folks.
No, I have no information on the download client. I do, however, wish to keep you guys from an even more frustrating experience of having a forum rep speak to you about forum rules.
As our friend Jon says: "The pain should only be passing, you will survive the process."
Not trying to make light of a frustrating situation Ladies and Gents, but please keep the forum rules in mind.
I know, I get what you're saying and my apologies... The atrocious download speed couple with it freezing twice, the second time right as it's supposed to have finished, is leaving me boiling with frustration that feeding right into a headache/migraine that's not making my frustration any easier to deal with.
I sat through the release of WoW after alpha and beta testing with them for almost 4 years prior to it's release. I was there when WOW Took down the internet for 3 days (there was so much traffic it flooded the AT&T Backbones to both east and west coast, it was actually affecting standard internet traffic).
I sat through the release of Diablo 3 where the download went painfully slow and then for almost 24 hours afterword the dredded error 83 (I think?) message kept coming up.
Skyrim release (painfullly slow download), Starcraft II (couldn't log in, couldn't download), Diablo 3, World of Warcraft...
The list goes on and on. It's as frustrating to me as it is to any of you...I'm a gamer myself and I get just as angry and just as upset when I can't play the games I've been looking forward to for months and years as well.
I feel for you, I feel for all of you.
The only light at the end of the tunnel is that eventually you will have what you want...WoW got people onto their servers 72 hours later...and 7 years after that I was still playing. Diablo 3's fiasco was lost to the world 48 hours after release...when everyone was in playing a game the fans enjoyed as much as the first.
All of us who've worked on this game would like to think the wait will be worth it. It's not my place to either apologize or explain, though I can sympathize...as I know can many others.
Still, try to keep some perspective...we've designed a game that we hope will span the bounds of time just as well as the original 2 games have done.
After all, we've all waited 17 years for this thing...what's another 24 or 48 hours in the grand scheme of things?
I just remembered playing BG to occupy me while the files were downloading. And then hours later I would realize that Download Accelerator has crashed.
I hear you, been through some howlers as well. Having aspergers frustration is something that can get wildly out of control. But, I am trying to keep some perspective, I'm not howling for anyone's head on a plate or a refund or hurling abuse at anyone at Beamdog... my emotional circuitry is short circuiting leaving me rather volatile and inflammatory.
I offer this not as an excuse, but simply an explanation... if there's a need for posts to be removed, then by all means do so.
I hope you get your game shortly and I hope you enjoy every minute of it.
So, you're saying that BG:SoD release is comparable to WoW, D3, SC2 and Skyrim releases in server load?
What baffles my mind is that this happens every release even on smaller games like BG:SoD. The problems are as predictable and inevitable as the preparation for them is lacking. There's not even a queue system put in place. It's like game companies took several years of experience in bad releases and did nothing to alleviate the problems.
I am not attempting to compare this release to that of WoW or Diablo 3 or any other game. If there's one thing I have recognized within the industry every release is it's own experience and the challenges each company face in releasing their games are unique.
I return you your thread. Please keep the cursing to a minimum and the thread to PG-13 levels.
Yesterday it froze as well several times. Again, not complaining for the speed, that's understandable, but the download client should be more stable.
To those of you installing using the Beamdog client, if crashes wipes your progress, are the files still present while whatever "application has crashed!" message is hovering on the screen? If so, and you have the spare space for it, try copy-pasting the downloaded files elsewhere before clicking through the crash. Then move them back before restarting the Beamdog client. With any luck it should just progress from wherever it previously was.
That typically kicks it enough to download the last little bit it needs.
The beamdog client keeps crashing and then It has to recheck all the downloaded data which takes a while, downloads another 5 % and crashes again....
This last time I was downloading at 2mb/s and it only had to last for another 15 minutess, but of course it crashes as always.
I reopened the standalone installer, and did a repair, and now it's downloading an apparently missing 600mb -again-.
This is beyond ridiculous. There has been an easily accessible PIRATED version of this on the internet for the past 13 hours, and I can't even get my legitimate copy that I PAID FOR to finish downloading.
edit:
I suppose I should count my blessings that these last few hundred megs are actually downloading at an internet speed that wasn't considered cutting edge in the early 90's. But drawing attention to it will probably be enough to make it start going at 45 B/sec again.