Today was supposed to be scheduled maintenance in order to deploy the build which has the revised (and still buggy) ArchePass which according to Tinen (aka Brian Kenny, the other producer for ArcheAge who was also retained from Trion) on December 4th, was in a state where it could be activated again (the following was sent to me since I don’t use Discord that much anymore).
The above is just another reason why I am (broken record mode) stating just how incompetent these former Trion folks are, and how their handling of this buy to play business model is being done with a status quo mentality like how they’ve been dealing with free to play ArcheAge since its original launch (just push out builds as quickly as possible so long as its functional regardless of bugs just so long as it ties into their backend processing/payment flow when it comes to the marketplace). Basically, ZERO pride in the quality of what is being released. Only in the gaming industry do customers put up with buggy, incomplete, and semi functional (software) products. In many other sectors, this poor level of quality would be unacceptable.
The EU region (being at least 5 hours ahead of the eastern US or 8 hours ahead of the western US) was slated for maintenance first but ended up running into issues (causing what was supposed to be 3 hours of downtime, into one that lasted far longer).
Heya,
Unfortunately, we have to extend the EU maintenance of #AAUnchained by approximately 1 hour.
We’re sorry for the inconvenience it causes.~The ArcheAge Team
— ArcheAge (@ArcheAge) December 5, 2019
Hey all!EU maintenance on both games is now complete.
With this maintenance, not only heroes have returned for both versions, but also the ArchePass is back in its new iteration on #AAUnchained.
Thank you for your patience!— ArcheAge (@ArcheAge) December 5, 2019
And while they did finally manage to get it online, the servers ran into stability issues which required bringing them offline again. The culprit ended up being the ArchePass system which they had to end up disabling on EU in order to bring the servers back online again. In the meantime, NA’s scheduled maintenance was postponed.
Due to the issues that happened earlier this day to the EU servers, we’re postponing the NA Unchained maintenance.
We’ll share more information as soon as we have more solid information on the initial issues and will update again when the NA maintenance will be starting!— ArcheAge (@ArcheAge) December 5, 2019
ArcheAge: Unchained EU servers are back online now.The ArchePass will be disabled due to crashing issues experienced on the EU servers.
The compensation box will be added to the marketplace once the servers are stable. Details: https://t.co/y1Cp7JHExY
— ArcheAge (@ArcheAge) December 5, 2019
And just to add more on top of their already full plate, the NA servers began running into “connectivity” issues.
Hello everyone,
The team is aware and currently working on connectivity issues currently occurring on ArcheAge and ArcheAge: Unchained NA servers. We will keep you updated with any news we receive.
We apologize for the inconvenience.
~The ArcheAge Team pic.twitter.com/TdAo31EJRd— ArcheAge (@ArcheAge) December 5, 2019
Even though I’ve been avoiding using Twitter, I had no choice but to (in order to source this info) since their forums are down due to the above connectivity issue.
So basically, the lack of a proper test environment (one that actually replicates their production environment instead of the one where the PTS build for Unchained is part of the hybrid setup they are using) and the lack of a reasonable testing schedule which includes enough time for player feedback, community management collection/parsing/reporting, production and ops meetings, and enough logistical turnaround with XLGAMES, is why I am being pedantic and beating this dead horse by writing the word INCOMPETENCE in caps and bold. Gamigo would be much better off cutting loose Khrolan, Tinen, and any other management level staff who were retained from Trion because they are a major part of the continued problems on the publishing side.
The following note (also sent to me since it seems to have been only noted on their Discord) mentions XLGAMES is working on a hotfix for the ArchePass crash.
I’m waiting to see how quick they try to rush out this hotfix since the way it is worded gives me the impression they are trying to get this out before the next scheduled maintenance window (which is next Thursday). The proper way to handle this is to plan and schedule the deployment for next Thursday’s maintenance as opposed to trying to haphazardly fit it in before. I know it would also make sense to also have XL tackle the reported issues (like the one I reported about the negative XP) but I don’t believe both publisher (Gamigo) and developer (XLGAMES) are competent enough to manage multiple priorities especially when it comes to actual play testing the build. Let’s see if they prove me wrong.
UPDATE: At least they came to the correct decision to only perform scheduled maintenance on December 6th that was postponed today for NA and will leave the ArchePass disabled this week (while also submitting some of the known issues to XLGAMES). What won’t change is their actually taking the time to play test the build and verify for themselves that all facets of the ArchePass are functioning (since I’m not going to bother reporting all the issues that are associated with the build currently on PTS).
