Monday, August 9, 2010

Runes of Massive Patching.

Here's a tip to those companies that are F2P or have a free trail - have the latest version of the client for your game to download. Nothings more frustrating than having to spend about an hour and a half downloading a client only to turn around and spend the next half hour to forty five minutes patching, not a good first impression.

For anyone wondering I have decided to try out Runes of Magic. Since I have no active subs at the moment and Fallen Earth still has free time remaining, I thought I would try out RoM to see what it's like.

2 comments:

Marty Runyon said...

I've always wondered if there is something inherently difficult about building a new full install. I greatly prefer games that have a tiny install and they patch down the full game. If you're going to make me do that patch anyway, you might as well make the upfront process more reasonable.

mbp said...

Here here. In fact please do this even whether or not your game has a free trial. Some of us are in the habit of taking long breaks from a game and perhaps even un-installing it. I am willing to do an overnight download to grab a big client but nothing dampens the ardour to resubscribe to a game than trying to log in to a newly downloaded game the next morning and having to wait another four hours while it patches itself.

Worst example I have ever seen was surprisingly not an mmo but Company of Heroes Opposing Fronts. On first install the client proceeded to update itself one large patch at time through over a dozen revisions.

Best example probably Guild Wars. I don't know how they do it but their lightweight client always seems to update itself within minutes even after an absence of more than a year.