It astonishes me that the two biggest multiplayer games of the year have been released and marred with server and service problems.
Battlefield 3 was released on October 25th, 2011. As of Sunday evening(the last time I played the game with friends) it was still having issues getting people who are in the same squad on the loading screen, into the same squad in a match. My issue is this: Battlefield 3 had a beta. In said beta, squad issues were a problem. This problem carried over from the beta to the actual release.
Why bother having a beta if you aren't going to fix one of the most restrictive bugs in the multiplayer experience? Battlefield has been known, since day one, as a multiplayer game. Single player campaigns weren't seriously added on until Bad Company in 2008. Building this awesome reputation with the PC crowd really bolstered their legacy, but as they started to make their way into the console area, it seems that they are playing on the success that has yet to be found.
Battlefield 3 had the potential to take down Call of Duty as the major FPS for the year. But the fact that squads can't play together has killed that ambition. It really is a shame because I honestly feel as though it had the chance.
Another example is the aforementioned Call of Duty Modern Warfare 3. After the lackluster experience in BF3, I was really hoping the MW3 was going to kill it. As it turns out, the game itself is one of the most enjoyable games in the franchise thus far. The problem that I am having right now(outside of a long wait for games) is the add-on service, Call of Duty Elite.
Activision had planned on making bank on an application geared toward the professional player. Giving stats and on hand values to things such as heat maps and breakdown of performance was originally marketed to the person playing MLG matches. A beta was released and 250,000 or so took part.
Problem: Those 250,000 showed their friends, so showed their friends, who showed their friends. Now, the beta was rendered useless because of the overwhelming support for the product. The premium service costs 49.99, has been available since Midnight on Tuesday November 8th, 2011 and has yet to work. Claiming that their servers just can't handle the load that has come in, more than half of the people trying to register for the service have been met with a screen saying the an internal server error has occured.
Problem: Those 250,000 showed their friends, so showed their friends, who showed their friends. Now, the beta was rendered useless because of the overwhelming support for the product. The premium service costs 49.99, has been available since Midnight on Tuesday November 8th, 2011 and has yet to work. Claiming that their servers just can't handle the load that has come in, more than half of the people trying to register for the service have been met with a screen saying the an internal server error has occured.
For, this is a problem. I spent money on a service that runs for a year. Am I going to be compensated for the time that the service was unavailable? No. Is there a time line for how long it will take for the service to be activated and fully functional? No. Yet another beta that has been rendered useless because quality control died.
I understand that cost effectiveness is something the businesses have to look at, but what ever happened to preparing for the worst? This was obviously not on Activision's to do as their overly hyped up premium service is dying at their feet.
One shining example of a game that has the quality control that seems to be lost on everyone else is Batman: Arkham City. I have been playing for 3 weeks now and have yet to find a bug. That is simply incredible. If more companies would simply set their sights on something better, or perhaps if the consumer were a little more demanding, then the overall quality of all things would increase.
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