Patch Days

Author: stargrace Category: General Tags: down time, game update, live update

Thursday
Apr 16, 2009

What is it about patch days that seem to bring out the worst (or best) in a player. I used to think there was some sort of secret conspiracy going on, World of Warcraft would patch every Tuesday (and still does) and then EverQuest II started patching every Tuesday, and so would Vanguard, and EQ. This left for a very long empty day with nothing to do but read forums and get angry at everyone else who happened to find something to complain about.

Complain they did. Though game forums CAN be exceptionally helpful in finding information there are people there who will complain and comment about EVERYTHING it doesn’t matter how insignificant it is. There is no pleasing everyone no matter how hard you try.

Anyhow, back to patch days.

They happen, especially if a game is alive and well. It’s a sign of growth and change, new content, and fixes. For the most part they’re waited for eagerly and people begin counting down the hours until their servers are back up. When they’re postponed people grow frustrated. When they take longer then the announced time people start to build up into a frenzy. Mob mentality takes over and gamers are reduced to screaming apes. That’s what it seems like at least if you take a peek.

So what do you do during that enormous amount of time when your game is unavailable? Do you have backup games? Do you play one of those ‘regular’ PC games that has been collecting dust on your desk? Maybe play a console game or two?

Or maybe you’re the type to hit the refresh page every 20 seconds waiting to see the green light of servers back online. Browsing the local forums and checking out ever game related site there is out there.

People (most long term gamers in any case) know better then to get too excited on patch day. It is typically a day where servers are brought down numerous times (if it’s a large patch in any case) for hot fixes when bugs prevail, and server stability is next to none. I know a few friends used to take the day off when a large patch was incoming (or an expansion) only to be disappointed as the game would be unavailable for the majority of the day.

We learn eventually.

Guess it’s time for me to grab a book, seeing as the SOE servers are down for maintenance right now..

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