The thing I don't understand is if this is a cloud setup, shouldn't they be able to spin up a few more servers than lets say the 3 they have in america? Run them for a bit until the load dies off and then move those save files back to the permanent servers and turn off the ones not needed anymore?
Or using a proven cloud scaling system like AWS, but that would have been more expensive in the short term than trying to do it in house and it may be part of their business model to learn how to do it properly in the long run in house. Of course Valve has had many similar problems with popular new releases, item servers, etc.
I don't get why they didn't at least allow pre-loading. Sure, that's one more thing for them to figure out how to do, but seems like it would have reduced load quite a bit.
I think I am going to sell my soul and buy the game tonight. It sounds like they support Private Regions, do we want/have a IC Private Region for all of us?
I'm reminded of trying to get Steam-patched copies of Half Life on 12 PCs circa 2004 (the game was old by then, we had it on CD). It took 2 days of cursing and frustration. I think I ended up resorting to getting 1 good install and trying to clone it to the others to avoid using Steam more than once. It was horrific, and this was on my college's unrestricted Internet.
Needless to say, I didn't install Steam myself for years afterward.
EA wants everything in-house, relearning old lessons (and user experience) be damned. I'm sure I'll have the patience for their bullshit by 2016.
The item servers in TF2 generally go down during large events (remember the Pyro update, frequent problems during holiday events). Steam content servers have also ate it when major popular releases hit. This happened with Skyrim I remember, it was more than 24 hours before I could play the game because their content servers were being hammered and the game is huge. Downloading it just dropped off for a long time.
Although pretty infrequently, I sometimes have to clean game caches to get games to work because something goes wrong.
I think everyone who has been using Steam for the last 8ish years has had problems. However, nobody really cares because everyone LOVES Valve. Myself included.
It's the same with game ownership, EULAs, DRM, and licensing. People generally do not understand this stuff, but DRM is a keyword for mad. If you think you own your games on Steam, you are wrong about that too. Here is a case study and actual example of Valve enforcing the fact that you do not as someone basically attempted to sell his Steam games: http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2012/02/01/thought-do-we-own-our-steam-games/
=== Now take EA who has similar problems and licensing. EVERYONE MAD. Typical EA bullshit, miright? They are so evil.
...
Both Valve and EA make good games and have a "good enough" content distribution system.
My wife bought SimCity yesterday. It installed, she played for a good 4 hours. There was not a single problem. She is getting a lot of entertainment for $50. I'll be joining her in my ongoing enjoyment of both Origin and Steam which are both great and I never have to go to the store, buy a optical disk, and install a game the "hard way" ever again.
I'm looking forward to buying SimCity and I hope Icrontic gets their own region. I'll be in there as soon as it happens
I had a lot of fun with the time I was able to get in yesterday. Starting after work I was able to jump on and played for a good 3 hours without problem. I then experienced one crash, losing a small amount of a new city, and then played for another hour before it crashed again.
All in all I'm really not too upset. The game is very fun and I could see having some private regions with others being awesome.
There are 10 different region types. Each region has a set number of places for cities and great works locations. The regions range from 2 cities to 16 cities.
When a region is created it can be set as public, so anyone can join and claim a city spot, or private, requiring an invite from the creator before someone can claim a city.
Cool, thanks for the info. Since people seem to be enjoying this, and it seems there will be IC play, I might go ahead and dive in.
Thinking the same thing myself. Still leery of the online-all-the-time requirements, though, so the jury is still out.
0
midga"There's so much hot dog in Rome" ~digi(> ^.(> O_o)>Icrontian
Alright, I bit. Picked it up on Gamefly with that coupon code. Then had to download and install the Gamefly PC client to get the key. Uninstalled that and installed Origin to enter the key, then uninstalled it. Now, hopefully, when I get home I'll just have to install Origin and download the game.
Well, if the community is getting into it, that sells me, even at full price. I was figuring I'll get just as much out of it if I wait a year for it to go on sale, but if that would mean missing out on IC-Nation, forget it.
0
midga"There's so much hot dog in Rome" ~digi(> ^.(> O_o)>Icrontian
Awesome. The momentum is building.
If no one else does tonight, I'll set up a region. I just don't know what it entails and what sort of upkeep it needs.
Comments
In which, we witness TotalBiscuit's steady descent into madness.
50 bucks for the game if anyone is interested.
Of course Valve has had many similar problems with popular new releases, item servers, etc.
It's not easy.
Needless to say, I didn't install Steam myself for years afterward.
EA wants everything in-house, relearning old lessons (and user experience) be damned. I'm sure I'll have the patience for their bullshit by 2016.
http://forums.steampowered.com/forums/showthread.php?t=784745
The item servers in TF2 generally go down during large events (remember the Pyro update, frequent problems during holiday events). Steam content servers have also ate it when major popular releases hit. This happened with Skyrim I remember, it was more than 24 hours before I could play the game because their content servers were being hammered and the game is huge. Downloading it just dropped off for a long time.
Although pretty infrequently, I sometimes have to clean game caches to get games to work because something goes wrong.
I think everyone who has been using Steam for the last 8ish years has had problems. However, nobody really cares because everyone LOVES Valve. Myself included.
It's the same with game ownership, EULAs, DRM, and licensing. People generally do not understand this stuff, but DRM is a keyword for mad. If you think you own your games on Steam, you are wrong about that too. Here is a case study and actual example of Valve enforcing the fact that you do not as someone basically attempted to sell his Steam games:
http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2012/02/01/thought-do-we-own-our-steam-games/
===
Now take EA who has similar problems and licensing. EVERYONE MAD. Typical EA bullshit, miright? They are so evil.
...
Both Valve and EA make good games and have a "good enough" content distribution system.
My wife bought SimCity yesterday. It installed, she played for a good 4 hours. There was not a single problem. She is getting a lot of entertainment for $50. I'll be joining her in my ongoing enjoyment of both Origin and Steam which are both great and I never have to go to the store, buy a optical disk, and install a game the "hard way" ever again.
I'm looking forward to buying SimCity and I hope Icrontic gets their own region. I'll be in there as soon as it happens
All in all I'm really not too upset. The game is very fun and I could see having some private regions with others being awesome.
When a region is created it can be set as public, so anyone can join and claim a city spot, or private, requiring an invite from the creator before someone can claim a city.
Time to start posting Origin names again!
EMT -> strotlog
Woo.
Someone should start an IC region tonight
If no one else does tonight, I'll set up a region. I just don't know what it entails and what sort of upkeep it needs.
By the way, I'm hippi3j00 on Origin.
...Just need to get the game first xD
Origin name Zanthian.