Wolcen had what can only be described as a rough launch week. This is a game that has been in early access for roughly two years, but was also in what I would term as a “very alpha” state for much of that time period. Throughout the early access period it had a peak concurrency in the ballpark of 1000 players. Immediately after launching on Thursday this shot up rapidly to a peak concurrency in the range of 65,000 players and Steam Spy now lists 67,375 as the current peak. There is a massive difference between balancing a server for 1000 connections and balancing one for over 60,000 connections and as a result not surprisingly the game cratered hard under the crush of this traffic.
Gamers as the masters of hyperbole as we are, jumped straight to 11 and started thrashing Wolcen in every possible venue. For me as a grizzled veteran of bad game launches sat back realizing that they were dealing with “some shit” right now and the ship would right itself in time. The only place where they failed in my eyes is that they should have communicated the depth of the problem immediately. Yesterday morning the above message showed up on the steam forums explaining what was going on and what they were trying to do in order to fix it. I probably would have lead with this message on Friday, but that is also coming from someone with management experience in situations where projects have gone south quickly. The instinct is to batten down the hatches and rush into “fix all the things” mode, but the real first step should be formulating a message to get out to your customers.
There is also a scale thing going on here with this launch and my reaction to it. When you have someone like a Blizzard, UbiSoft or Electronic Arts and they botch the launch of a game, I have way less forgiveness in my heart because “they should know better”. They are AAA publishers that have been through more than one bit “massively multiplayer” launch and also have the resources that they can bring into play in order to rapidly scale their solution. The eponymous Wolcen Studio at least at the time of writing their “meet the team” piece is a group of 13 people working out of what looks like a house. My reaction as such is commensurate to the staggering effort it is for a first time team to publish a game like this and while they could potentially learn from the sidelines, the best laid plans are discarded when your servers suddenly have a 6500% increase in traffic.
The silver lining to all of this however is that unlike most ARPGs there is a way to play the game offline without needing to care about the servers burning down around the team. As such I spent a good chunk of the weekend running around with a brand new character on the offline mode and catching up to where I was in the progress in the online mode. This is my biggest complaint right now is the inability to flip characters between these two modes. I mean I get it from a “wanting to stop cheating” standpoint, but especially in the eyes of the bad launch we are dealing with it becomes frustrating to try and keep two different characters in sync with each other. Between the various late stage beta game-play and these multiple characters I have created I more or less determined what sort of build I wanted to go with.
I’ve been focused on a tanky build with high block and resistance and then I essentially leap into battle which gives me some initial rage and then spin to win. Bladestorm is specked out so that it doesn’t cost that much rage and each time I hit something I gain rage back allowing me to keep this reaction going for quite some time. I’ve also poured some points into Rage Conservation allowing me to take a bit of time to move between packs of mobs and also took the ability that allows me to gain rage while being hit. All combined allows me to spin around the battlefield in relative safety while chewing up encounters. I am sure I could probably make a more effective version of this build if I focused on bruiser gear and maybe dual wielded onehanders… but I am me and I have a sword and shield fetish.
Last night I managed to connect with Grace who has also been playing this when the servers came back online and were more or less stable. There seems to be a hefty group xp bonus and a bit of a catch up curve because when we started playing there were 3 levels difference between us and by the end of the night we were dinging within a few minutes of each other sitting at the same level. The teleport to friend system seems to work more or less like you would expect from Diablo 3. I am not sure what the restrictions on trade are but I seemed to be able to trade pretty much anything that I got as a drop as I was funneling Grace some spells that might be useful for her “Demon Hunter” build. The biggest thing we both noticed was how much loot the game seemed to drop in group mode because we were constantly running back to town to sell. I would love to see some sort of a sell all button to speed this process up.
In the grand scheme of things I am still very happy with this game and it is effectively the thing that I have wanted for quite some time. Wolcen is a game that takes the best bits of Diablo 3 and combines them with the best bits of Path of Exile, creating a hybrid that is more enjoyable at times than either of its predecessors. Time will tell if they can grow the game into something truly amazing, and I have yet to see what the end game is like. My hope is that all of the hyperbole surrounding this game will fade as people actually get access in order to play it. Wolcen is absolutely worth picking up especially for its sub $60 price tag. Here is hoping that they can nurture the game for the long run and keep making tweaks and additions in order to keep the content fresh.
Featuring: Ammo, Ashgar, Belghast, Grace, Kodra, Tamrielo and Thalen
The release of this show was delayed a bit this morning because I tried really hard to apparently release the show from two weeks ago all over again due to my gross incompetence. However now that I have righted that particular ship… please enjoy the show!
After having to miss last week we had more topics than realistically could fit into a show and only actually made it through three of them. The first is the launch of Wolcen: Lords of Mayhem and how maybe early access isn’t actually a game launch in certain circumstances. We talk about the myriad problems with the online components of the game and the struggles with an indie trying to buy server capacity for high volume bursty connections. Thankfully there is an offline mode which allows us to talk a bit about why the game is worth the struggle. From there we talk about the impending Final Fantasy XIV 5.2 patch and the most recent live letter previewing features coming up for the game. Lastly we talk about returning to an alternate future where the NGE didn’t kill Star Wars Galaxies as Tam convinces Belghast to play Star Wars Legends.
Topics Discussed:
Wolcen: Lords of Mayhem
High Capacity Launches are Hard for Indies
Going from 1000 to 65,000 concurrent users in a day
As I wrote yesterday, Wolcen finally released and I have to say it has improved significantly even from when I last played it. It has been interesting to see game evolve from something that felt very ramshackle and sandboxy to what we have today. Wolcen feels like the love child of Diablo 3 and Path of Exile, having points that fans of both series would ultimately enjoy. From Diablo 3 it gained gorgeous animations and a fast pace style of combat that isn’t just hitting things with a broken chunk of wood for 10 levels. From Path of Exile it gained the sphere grid, albeit a way more sane and rational version of it. Each pick on the sphere grid feels like it is significant, rather than just having an excessive number of picks that felt so incremental that it was hard to notice any difference.
Something I noticed that I did not on previous play time was how much the Diablo 3 style of encounters seemed to be infused with them game. The path you are taking as part of the quest is littered with mini-dungeons that allow you to venture forth and take down what is likely a mini-boss for some loot opportunities. These are like the shacks and caves that you encounter in D3 and are roughly the same length with a warp at the end that takes you back outside. I also encountered my first version of this games Treasure Goblin, which was effectively a glowing beetle that scurried around dropping gold and trying to get away from me. When I finally did manage to kill it, it dropped about the same amount of loot that you would expect from a Goblin with a similar spread of rarities.
I also noticed the game had a bunch of little mini-games out in the world like kill these monsters that just spawned in order to unlock a treasure chest. I’m not really sure the breadth of these but so far the one or two I encountered felt more like Path of Exile shrines than they did Diablo style cursed chests. Another thing that I don’t think I remember from before is that you can learn all of the abilities that you encounter, not just the ones that you can currently equip. This allowed me to fill my bar early on and get some levels in the starter abilities for other builds not just the ones that matched the equipment setup that I happened to be using. The spell vendor seems to more expensive than I remember it being before, but thankfully the game was pretty generous with dropping ones that were usable by me. I now have a full bar worth of abilities that are usable and one or two alternates to swap to as I see fit.
One thing that I did not get to play with but I noticed was happening was the collection of items for the cosmetic system. Apparently you access this in game by hitting the B key and it brings up the interface shown in the above cosmetic preview video. While roaming around the world I kept noticing that every time I picked up an item I had not encountered before it was telling me that I was collecting its appearance. Then when taking down bosses in the game occasionally they would drop a dye pot, which unlocks that color permanently. So already they are on the right foot because I would rather build up a stable of armor tint options than having to keep around a bunch of expendable items to dye my armor. Additionally I love systems that collect appearances as I play the game without having to put a focus on specifically doing something else to override an items appearance.
I saw reports from friends that they were encountering issues playing last night, and thankfully I personally didn’t have any of these. That said I also didn’t really get settled in to play until around 8 pm last night, so potentially after any initial problems that they might have had. I know that they patched a few times, and this morning I attempted to pop in for a screenshot or two of the cosmetic system and I am getting game service timeout errors. You can check out the official Twitter to see the random problems they encountered throughout the night so it is in fact an MMORPG launch fraught with the same sort of issues that you have with those. You can play in offline mode but apparently there are issues with playing in Offline mode if you don’t have the latest version of the game, so I have just been sticking to online personally.
I did not make it super far last night, because the maps themselves are rather large when it comes to traversing them. Again this is one of those things that I would connect more to Path of Exile than Diablo 3. Still however I didn’t find myself getting frustrated by the slog and looking like a dirty hermit like I do with PoE. All in all I am digging what I am experiencing and I think this might be the game that scratches that “waiting for Diablo 4” itch for me. I’m actually looking forward to getting home tonight and playing some more which is usually a good sign for me and a game. So the question is… did you manage to get in last night? What are your own thoughts? Drop me a line in the comments below.
I didn’t think I had a post for today and then suddenly I did. Today is the day that Wolcen: Lords of Mayhem leaves Steam Early Access and officially releases. This has been a day that I have been waiting for and quite honestly it snuck up on me. I’ve talked about Wolcen before, but for the uninitiated it is an ARPG in the style of Diablo 3 from the eponymous Wolcen Studio from Nice, France. It began its life as a Kickstarter for a game called Umbra, which shifted into the game that has been available on Steam in Early Access for the last few years. In the time it has been on my radar it has changed significantly and morphed into a really enjoyable gameplay experience. It is a game where you more or less “build your own class”, and the initial decision that you make on character creation can be undone and changed at pretty much any point during the process.
Your character is effectively made of up three components, the first being the gear that you wear. This gear gives you specific stats that will ultimately dictate whether or not you can equip specific abilities. Through gearing you can choose to go all in on a more melee tanky warrior build like I have, or split down the middle and maybe focus on Strength and Agility both to do more of a tricksy light fighter with some ranged abilities. The third component is a complicated sphere grid style talent tree which allows you to rotate sections of it to match up what is your ideal build. I would say it is less complicated than Path of Exile, but definitely less straight forward than Diablo 3 skills.
The biggest change since I first started playing back in February of 2018, is that the game has a proper story line with what appears to be a rich and interesting world. I admit to date I have purposefully limited my play time with the thought of wanting to be able to experience the game proper once it finally and officially releases. At first glance though the storyline has deep undercurrents of feeling similar to that of Tyranny, which ranks among my favorite RPGs. You start out potentially not one of the good guys, and through actions completely out of your control are branded a pariah by your own people. You travel your path with two companions and I am curious to see how the intertwining story arcs play out in the end.
Since release appears to have come with a character wipe, I plan on playing around tonight and restarting the mostly tanky character that I had been playing previously. This means likely my adventures in Star Wars Galaxies and my play through of Mars: War Logs will be put on hold for a bit. In my experience in playing a lot of the games waiting in the wings all vying for the Diablo crown, this is the one that was the most promising. Others like Last Epoch are on fundamentally flawed ground and still more like Torchlight III formerly Frontiers are still gestating. For the time being however this is probably the best new Diablo game we are going to get at least until the release of Diablo 4. I know Grace has access to Wolcen as well and I am hoping to see how good or bad the group play is at some point once she finally gets internet again.
Yesterday a brand new trailer arrived in honor of the release day and it hints at some of the story elements. The game itself is roughly $30 on Steam and in my humble opinion well worth picking up if you like Action Role-playing Games.
