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So-called "Pre-download" was totally worthless

Well, I have very mixed feelings about this. I was so in support of this project.

As of 10:00 p.m. MST, I am nowhere near even getting to start the game. I FINALLY got the authentication to start, after restarting my computer. (Nobody said, anywhere, anytime, that I would need to do that.)

So, the final authentication has started, and after about 10 minutes, the Beamdog client says that it is about 3 percent finished. As in, I need to go to bed, and hold onto a slim HOPE that it might be done by tomorrow morning.

I'm pretty mad at this point. And I was one of the project's biggest supporters. I shudder to think what other buyers-in who were less unconditionally supportive might be thinking.

I'm afraid that I am seeing a Diablo 3 level fail at this point. My current opinion is borne out by the dozens of topics appearing like wildfire complaining about the game stability, from the few people who can actually play on the "release date". Uh-huh.

What would placate me now? An explanation and an apology from the devs, for starters. And, hopefully, this explanation and apology would go along the lines of "Dear supporters, we never in our wildest dreams anticipated the amount of traffic we would have on our servers when we first attempted to release this game..." That would be a good start.

Diablo 3 fans never got that much from Blizzard. Right now, it really pains me to say that the BG:EE devs are looking an awful lot like the Blizzard people.

I hope that, if there are replies to this thread and this post, and that it is not pushed to page 15 or so of the forums by tomorrow morning, as I anticipate, that I will be able to come back to this thread and say "okay, I regret posting this, because the game did come out as promised within a day or two, and it was awesome." But, I have a sinking feeling that I am not going to be able to say this.
groogg24
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Comments

  • DeeDee Member Posts: 10,447
    I'm sorry you've been having issues with the game's release. I know I wasn't expecting anywhere near this level of traffic, which I guess was kind of silly considering that the original baldursgate.com site just about exploded when that timer hit zero back in March. They bought a third server when it was clear that two weren't going to be enough--but it looks like even three wasn't enough to handle the tremendous volume of all-at-once activity.

    I know I'm not an official member of the development team, but I do apologize for what you (and many others) have gone through so far. All I can say is that the developers are working hard to figure out where the current problems are coming from (all bets are currently on "exploding servers" as the culprit), and I hope that it gets resolved soon.
    rdarkenMedullaOblongataDragonspearswnmcmlxi
  • HoratioHoratio Member Posts: 18
    Worked for me, without a hitch.
  • AlexMAlexM Member Posts: 110
    It's frustrating no doubt, but everyone here is working hard for the people who are experiencing difficulties. Check out this thread, it may help you.

    http://forum.baldursgate.com/discussion/7579/regarding-slow-downloads-stuck-in-pre-loading-etc#latest
    BelgarathMTH
  • PinkRosePinkRose Member Posts: 102
    I'm not seeing the "Biggest supporter" either if this makes you DEMAND an apology.
    I'm sorry ti isn't working. It is for me.
    Good luck in the future where everything you want happens the way you want it to always.
  • BelgarathMTHBelgarathMTH Member Posts: 5,653
    Thanks for the "helpful" comments. Welcome to battlenet.com. Goodbye, nice forums. It was fun while it lasted.
  • DolarrahDolarrah Member Posts: 17
    Can I have your stuff ?
    MedullaOblongatamch202
  • BelgarathMTHBelgarathMTH Member Posts: 5,653
    Sure. How do I transfer it to you?
  • junk11junk11 Member Posts: 117
    try to use torrent http://www.beamdog.com/client/beam/00766.torrent
    login Beamdog website and use the above link to download it
    much faster than use launcher..
  • etaglocetagloc Member Posts: 349
    both my computers cant even open the installers now... what is this shit..
  • ForseForse Member Posts: 106
    Come on guys, no reason to humiliate belgarathmth. He is obviously disappointed. And that is understandable. Take a rest, sleep if it's night where you live, and just chill. I believe they are doing what they can to fix it.

    You are right to expect to be able to play on the release date. But it's also true that they are a small company with lotsa customers. Patience is the key here. Not because it's not OK to complain. It is.
    BelgarathMTHneokarny
  • BelgarathMTHBelgarathMTH Member Posts: 5,653
    @junk11, thanks for the helpful advice. I did get it to work, finally. It just took a computer restart, playing another game for several hours, and a whole lot of waiting. Not finally a huge dealbreaker for me. However, I stand by the opinion I raised in my thread title.

    Unless, perhaps, there are people out there who did not pre-order, and who now hopelessly face an impossible situation with downloading the 1.8 gigs for the next several days. In which case, if one of those people would care to chime in, I may retract my statement and give the apology I promised.
  • BelgarathMTHBelgarathMTH Member Posts: 5,653
    @Forse, thank you for the nice comment, and for being the voice of reason.
    Forse
  • TJ_HookerTJ_Hooker Member Posts: 2,438

    My current opinion is borne out by the dozens of topics appearing like wildfire complaining about the game stability

    From what I've been reading, a lot of these problems have been related to compatibility issues with intel chipsets (problems I myself am currently facing). While these problems are unfortunate, they did mention that intel chipsets would not be supported, so this isn't really Beamdog's fault.

    Not to mention that the reason the boards seem rife with people having computer issues is because those are the ones who will take the time to post. People whose games are running well are going to be too busy playing.

    And as far as the servers struggling to keep up, what would you expect? It just really doesn't make sense for Beamdog to spend oodles of money beefing up their infrastructure just to handle a demand that will only last for a couple of days

    Thanks for the "helpful" comments. Welcome to battlenet.com. Goodbye, nice forums. It was fun while it lasted.

    I think you're over-reacting here. I mean so far all that has happened to you is that you have been delayed by playing for one day. It's not the end of the world.

    As of 10:00 p.m. MST

    Also, if you're leaving, can I have your time machine? Because as of the time I'm writing this, it's just after 7:00 PM MST.
  • BelgarathMTHBelgarathMTH Member Posts: 5,653
    @TJ_Hooker, LOL. Whoops. I seem to have added two hours instead of subtracting two hours from my EST, which made that little boo-boo be four hours off!

    And yes, friend, you may have my time machine. A word of caution though - it does the opposite of what you tell it. If you try to go back in time, you will wind up in the future. Caveat emptor.
  • DeeDee Member Posts: 10,447
    @TJ_Hooker I think the "battle.net" comment was in reference to the flood of antagonism that came from people who didn't like the fact that he was complaining--something that's typically something you'd see on battle.net, I assume.
    ForseBelgarathMTH
  • rdarkenrdarken Member Posts: 660


    Unless, perhaps, there are people out there who did not pre-order, and who now hopelessly face an impossible situation with downloading the 1.8 gigs for the next several days. In which case, if one of those people would care to chime in, I may retract my statement and give the apology I promised.

    I doubt downloads will be this slow for very long. Pretty much any time a highly-anticipated game is released that requires some online component, servers are borked for several hours. I am always surprised at the number of people who are surprised when it happens.

    Anyway, I said in another thread I'm a little disappointed I had to download anything at all, and this slowly, given that I preordered and preloaded, but I just did something else while I waited. Preloading DID help you because you did not have to download 1.8 GB today.
    BelgarathMTH
  • junk11junk11 Member Posts: 117
    edited November 2012
    @belgarathmth
    its alrite to be disappointed, but it's their first game launching really. It will have troubles.
    Even Blizzard had error 37 with D3 at the start, I was !^(*$&@#.

    it's not the old "insert CD/DVD then install" anymore for games.
    "cloud systems"/file downloading/user verification, these things adds more problems to the games.
    its convenience that we can download game, but there are more problems to deal with.
    just give them time :P
  • tpowltpowl Member Posts: 35
    You know what, I tried to first download the game via logging onto Beamdog client, but that didn't really turn out well because the download stopped around 90%. So I tried downloading using stand-alone download site and that worked! This gives me P2P download option which helped me download much faster. (But not that fast mind you)
  • BelgarathMTHBelgarathMTH Member Posts: 5,653
    @rdarken, you may be right. Is everyone who currently has a playable game a pre-loader? I should definitely retract my whine, if not even one person comes around and says "I didn't pre-order, and now I can't buy and play the game."
  • TJ_HookerTJ_Hooker Member Posts: 2,438
    Aosaw said:

    @TJ_Hooker I think the "battle.net" comment was in reference to the flood of antagonism that came from people who didn't like the fact that he was complaining--something that's typically something you'd see on battle.net, I assume.

    Ah, I see. Now that you mention it, I realize that my post may in fact be kinda confrontational, and if that is the case then I apologize to @belgarathmth, as responding to a complaint about antagonism with additional antagonism is kind of a dick move.
  • darthchairdarthchair Member Posts: 191
    I had to work for a living today (EST) and when I came home around 7pm or so, I noticed that things were a bit crummy 200/b?!?! But then it kind of went to 300kb and life was good again. I had some dinner and when I came back the 100mb or whatever I needed to appease what I had predownloaded was there. I was then a bit puzzled about how to actually start the game, but clicked around on that nice little orange bar and discovered it had to check the files to make sure that ninjas weren't lurking about.

    It was pretty painless. I started playing the game with a fighter and bought some armor, a helmet, a long sword, the biggest shield I could find...and then went off to kill someone.

    Which...maybe I was just stupid in 1998...but was the Candlekeep Inn always that well stocked? I don't remember wandering the town armed to the teeth before. But maybe I just wasn't playing a fighter. Oh well!

    Please stop comparing these guys to Blizzard. I mean I'm sure they would love to have the bagillions of dollars the Blizzard has. However so far I do not see delays as crazy as Blizzard, and technically isn't this their first game? This game's only failure seems to be in taking us back to the 1998 where gamers still had patience and weren't always so upset all the time.

    Excitement is good. But keep playing, bro. And keep loving games that deserve treatment such as this. Don't be disappointed by a few hiccups. Think of it this way...NO ONE has gone out of their way to try to modernize a classic game like this since the game was released. Oh sure you had some mods and stuff. But I'm talking about the entire game revamped and ready to go without needless installations and files being tossed all over the place in your original game installation from back in the day (OH NO THIS MOD ISN'T COMPATIBILE WITH ANOTHER? AIM FOR THE EYES!)

    So if you can't play it yet, I'm sorry. But it'll be there and it'll be awesome at some point. And then you'll be able to buttkick for goodness.
    BelgarathMTH
  • KukarachaKukaracha Member Posts: 256
    Forse said:

    Come on guys, no reason to humiliate belgarathmth. He is obviously disappointed. And that is understandable. Take a rest, sleep if it's night where you live, and just chill. I believe they are doing what they can to fix it.

    You are right to expect to be able to play on the release date. But it's also true that they are a small company with lotsa customers. Patience is the key here. Not because it's not OK to complain. It is.

    That was just two posts.

    I once asked a game dev why his company didn't have a stronger presence online, to listen to what forumers say. His answer was "if we did, we would've killed ourselves."

    Passion is understandable, but all this lynching and complaining and waiting and yelling is just an annoying dance. It doesn't have anything to do with Battle.net - internet forums, YouTube comments, reddit posts are just a testament of human nature.

    I just believe it is better to not dance at all. (And I say this with no hostility whatsoever)
    TJ_Hooker
  • MedullaOblongataMedullaOblongata Member Posts: 434
    What happened today doesn't surprise me. I've never heard of a game that released bug/error-free. It's something that goes with the territory, and is nothing new. Overhaul is new and small, so I expected server-meltdown. Worse has happened with giants such as Blizzard, Microsoft, and EA. Just take a deep breath...

    image
    darthchairBelgarathMTH
  • MedullaOblongataMedullaOblongata Member Posts: 434
    I'm playing on a laptop with an Intel graphics card, so I began with the white-screen of doom, alt-tab flicker, and mystery-zoom (I don't have a mouse wheel, I have a touch-pad. And I'm too lazy to look for my USB mouse :P )

    I fixed my issue in 15 minutes... and I was pretty slow about it (interwebs distractions).

    I was surprised that this community shared their helpful insights to working around OpenGL's asshattery... I think when Overhaul sought support from Intel or whatever, their heartfelt response was "Play a DirectX game."

    Thanks, Intel. :\

    Meanwhile, the devs are working like crazy to resolve this, and everyone - devs and users - shared their fixes. Pretty fast response imho.

    This really is a great community, and ranks among one of the FRIENDLIEST that I've visited throughout my life.
  • tpowltpowl Member Posts: 35
    @MedullaOblongata // I totally agree with you. Gawd when I think about what happened with Diablo3 when it was released the first few monts, I returned the damn game to the regional country supplier because the game was downright unplayable.

    Compared to arrogant ass tards like Blizzard, Trent and his Beamdog development team are simply angels. They only have 12 ppl (it appears as in the game credits) and they are trying to resolve the download issues anyway they can for $20 per person
    MedullaOblongata
  • MedullaOblongataMedullaOblongata Member Posts: 434
    Doesn't Microsoft charge $35 per call for technical support, after the first free call? You're right @tpowl, the dev team are angels :D
  • kazrobkazrob Member Posts: 18
    I got an email from Nathan Willis telling me they were totally unprepared for the volume of patch downloads today. Seems to be a fairly simple math problem when they already knew how many people had preordered and/or preinstalled and they knew how big the patch was going to be - to figure out how much bandwidth it was going to take.
  • BelgarathMTHBelgarathMTH Member Posts: 5,653
    Patch downloads? I don't know anything about a patch. I just got the game to work. Do you mean the authentication download that was necessary to get the pre-download to work?
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