Ubi Online Weakness

[Anonymous]

Last Sunday, the servers dedicated to the H6 Conflux system went down, leaving players without a game to play. An explanation was posted on Facebook the following day:

"Yesterday, some Ubisoft servers were unexpectedly down for a few hours, preventing you from connecting to the Conflux and thus accessing the online services from Might & Magic Heroes VI. As we ensure the technical support of our online services 24/7, our team has been hard at work to resume the service as fast as possible. We apologize for any inconvenience this has caused you."

What Ubisoft call a "few" hours, we call "several". It was in the weekend too - a period when the players usually have time to play. And while I am sure that their team were indeed on the case and fixing the problem as quickly as they could, the flaw in the plan is already evident:

They have tried to create a game with emphasis on the online experience. Instead they have managed to create a game that fails to work if something goes wrong on their end. Because your saved game is connected to the Conflux, it will be unavailable of their servers go down. A plan that seemed good to begin with is therefore in reality ... well, bollocks.

Nicely done ...

If you would like to take a look at the original page visit this link:
https://www.celestialheavens.com/1325696484

[Avonu]

Anyone was hoping it will be different?
Ubisoft forgot that these games are not MMOs and online connection and saves storage should be only an option not obligation.

[Kristo]

I guess it could've been worse. It could have been "Lots" or "Dozens" of hours.

[Angelspit]

The Conflux was Ubi's way of introducing sci-fi elements to the series.

[Avonu]

Sci-Fi elements or SyFy elements?

[Spin]

people really go crazy about not being able to play a game for a few hours every now and then......

[jinxedster]

I may not play a lot of games these days but this connection DRM thing has got to be the worst I have ever seen. I did not dream 5 years ago that this is the sort of thing paying customers will have to put up with.



HoMM VI is completely broken out of the box. In fact, it is a piece of trash. I cannot understand how Ubi or anyone else for that matter thinks that releasing a game in such a state was a good idea. This is only part of the problem though. Conflux. If you loose your internet connection for any reason say goodbye to your HoMM game! Holding peoples savegames hostage while they sort out their server problems is great! Increases longevity of the game.

Why not just cut the crap Ubi and just make it that with every copy of this game sold the clerk at the shop just spits in our face, that way we are done with being belittled and embarrassed right there and then.

Patches? Yeah thanks for making the game remotely playable... Only took you what 4 months? I would post this mini rant at their forum but it's down! And Conflux is down again!

[hellegennes]

@Spin:



Ahem... It was both New Year's and weekend. Many people have jobs and responsibilities and are not able to play whenever they want. Most probably, the problem had to do with the number of people requesting, when the server was not capable of meeting the traffic.

[jinxedster]

I forgot the complete lack of updates about upcoming patches to boot.


Edited on Wed, Jan 04 2012, 21:48 by jinxedster

[CloudRiderX]

The servers were definitely down for at least 18 hours or so, this 'few' term is nonsense.



What irks me the most about the whole online situation is the fact that Ubi is a huge company with tons of resources and many other online games...there is no reason that Heroes VI had to be some guinea pig for a made-from-scratch online management system.

[Torur]

@Kristo

Or zounds...?



But in all seriousness. This is ridiculous. That a not online based game, should be forced to be dependent on internet connections and their crap peasant servers is stupid. Shame on you Ubihole!

[klaymen]

All this makes me happy that I did not buy the game yet.

[JessieLC]

Having played SPORE from EA for a long time now I have played a game with a similar setup. As in every game world there are pluses and minuses. Having servers go down is one of the big minuses. But there are pluses too! Big game worlds, changes can happen within the world etc. Not as much content resides on your system. Jinxedster I feel your pain but get a grip in the not too distance future ALL CONTENT not just games , will be online. If you have a cell phone you must have heard of the Cloud computing. That is a big online server network where content is pushed to your computer and you only have access to it. All programs are on the big Cloud network. This is the future so might as well get used to it and help make the system better, not just complain about it! Avonu this is the future of all computing so maybe a good idea to look around and help make it better. Just my 2 cents!

[Angelspit]

In related news, Big Brother is watching.

[Avonu]

@JessieLC
It's not future, it's a trap.
It's something what game companies are trying to force players. While most of these big one companies are going to secure their profits by binding players to their services, there are small game developers who not use so stupid ideas. And you know what? Their games have better qualities then games from EA or Ubisoft and not force you to play online off-line types of games which HoMM saga is.
Besides I think someone will "sue" these companies because EULA is very often against the law in countries where games are being sold and not allowing players to re-sell what they have legally bought (vide all these binds to online accounts) is also against the law.


I'm playing a MMO, so I know pretty well upsides and downsides of online playing, including patching problems and bad comunication between players, developers and publishers.


Ubisoft, EA, Acti-Blizzard and others forgot one thing: while you can earn cash by publishing not finished games and cut client support to minimum, you can't buy reputation. Not even Marketing Dept. could fix bad reputation and it takes years to rebuild it.

[ShadowLiberal]

Besides I think someone will "sue" these companies because EULA is very often against the law in countries where games are being sold and not allowing players to re-sell what they have legally bought (vide all these binds to online accounts) is also against the law.

I disagree, you can still resell the games, it's just no longer practical to, or if you buy one you have to fork over some cash to the original company that made it to get your own account. It's really stupid I agree, but illegal, no.

Also fans of games like this are unlikely to get far suing over a lot of downtime. A lot of Internet companies and such promise 99% up time, but that works out to over half a week of downtime a year being allowed without the contract being violated. I know this because I work with software.

Ubisoft, EA, Acti-Blizzard and others forgot one thing: while you can earn cash by publishing not finished games and cut client support to minimum, you can't buy reputation. Not even Marketing Dept. could fix bad reputation and it takes years to rebuild it.

I agree, in my opinion that was part of what did 3DO in sometime after M&M7. Their game quality decreased, so less people bought from them, which caused them to go bankrupt eventually. I think Ubisoft has been moving in that direction as well lately for a different reason, spending too much time on DRM that just annoys paying customers (and fails to stop pirating of the game anyway) rather than focusing on making a good game with no/few bugs come release time. It also isn't helping Ubisoft long term either when gaming forums get filled with lots of discussion of people complaining about the DRM and serious bugs in their games.

I got a copy of Heroes 6 for Christmas, but I still haven't opened it. I don't intend to install it on my computer and start playing until I hear people saying that most of the bugs are fixed in the patches.

[HodgePodge]

All this makes me happy that I did not buy the game yet.

Hear, hear! Me too.

Here's what I think should happen to UbiHole!

[klaymen]

Here's what I think should happen to UbiHole!

Angry mob time?
I can bring pitchforks, who has some torches?

Or shall I call J.Slota (Slovak politician openly hating Hungarians (and not only them, but that is besides the point)) to enlist his tank batallion and raze Black Hole's offices? (once he said "let's take tanks and raze Budapest")

[Avonu]

Besides I think someone will "sue" these companies because EULA is very often against the law in countries where games are being sold and not allowing players to re-sell what they have legally bought (vide all these binds to online accounts) is also against the law.

I disagree, you can still resell the games, it's just no longer practical to, or if you buy one you have to fork over some cash to the original company that made it to get your own account. It's really stupid I agree, but illegal, no.

Also fans of games like this are unlikely to get far suing over a lot of downtime. A lot of Internet companies and such promise 99% up time, but that works out to over half a week of downtime a year being allowed without the contract being violated. I know this because I work with software.

The problem is that these game companies sells not fully games. If you need to create account to get to all game fetures, then their product is incompleted and as that, it is against the law. Of course first someone need to put that case in court - as long as there is no verdict about this, you can do nothing.

And I didn't talk about fans sueing companies. I thought more of some consumers agencies who should take this problem before court. Well, at least in EU, where we have so bureaucracy that it could work.

[cher]

I have eagerly awaited each new Might & Magic from way back when I played on my game boy. Boy am I disgusted with this one! Think this has done it for me, time to find a new game, this on line crap sucks and even though I am retired and can play whenever, I feel for those people who work as most of the down time has been on a weekend or holiday.