Blade and Soul We Need this Game in the States

For the queues, what I did is I bought premium account for 1 week for 5 bucks. I figure all this release craziness should go down within a week.

With premium, it takes only a couple of minutes to get on Poharan, if that.

Yeah, I'm really glad I got premium. The queues look insane -- someone told me Poharan's queue get over 2000 last night. He ended up doing the same thing as you, buying a week of premium access.

It was around 4400 when I tried last night, after eventually getting it installed. I think even premium was around 50 or so in the queue.

PurEvil wrote:

It was around 4400 when I tried last night, after eventually getting it installed. I think even premium was around 50 or so in the queue.

Premium queue had over 150 people at around 8pm EST but it still went by within a few minutes.

OTOH, at the same time, the regular queue had 2500+ people with an estimated time at 200+ minutes. And estimated time was increasing...

[edit] Having said that, my friends and I were very impressed with the actual game. The graphics are nice, the systems are interesting and combat seems very fun.

Kicking idle players out would probably solve the problem.... but they probably see it as a cash cow.

They're working on implementing AFK-kick timers now, and hopefully it'll help the queues.

Why does every MMO launch and not have Idle kicking? That seems like common sense.

Current queue is 3590 non-premium, 782 premium. At least I can play other games while this sits in the background.

Supposedly today's update has AFK kick, but of course you have to log out to update.

Estimated wait time for me is about 7 hours. I'll leave it overnight and see if I'm logged in tomorrow morning.

Brennok wrote:

Supposedly today's update has AFK kick, but of course you have to log out to update.

Yep, AFK kick is in, I was kicked today.

Hopefully they reset servers to disconnect all the current AFKers who hasn't updated yet.

Some screenies please. My bro was hyped for this game esp the pvp. Would love to hear impressions.

I woke up to find myself at the login screen not queued. I must have gotten in, then got kicked. I logged in at about 0630, no queue, only to be greeted with a 30 minute warning for a server reset.

Bfgp wrote:

Some screenies please. My bro was hyped for this game esp the pvp. Would love to hear impressions.

I'll post some screenshots when I get home from work today. I'm having a lot of fun so far -- the combat is really engaging, the PVE is better than I'd expected (although overall it's still mediocre, with the combat really carrying it), and the cross-server dungeon queues are great. I don't PVP myself but my friends who do love it.

I had thought I wouldn't like the game much because of the apparent focus on PVP, but I'm enjoying it quite a bit.

PurEvil wrote:

I woke up to find myself at the login screen not queued. I must have gotten in, then got kicked. I logged in at about 0630, no queue, only to be greeted with a 30 minute warning for a server reset.

I think it was mentioned before, but you can buy a week-long premium subscription for $5 and skip most of the queues. I got on last night and there were over 3500 people in the regular queue, but the premium queue let me in after about 3 minutes. Roughly the same thing happened the previous night, too.

Bfgp wrote:

Some screenies please. My bro was hyped for this game esp the pvp. Would love to hear impressions.

You want screenshots of login queues?

I'll wait a little while for all your premium subs to dry up next week and then give this a go.

Hmm... spend money to wait less time in queue on a game I haven't really been able to try yet? No thanks, not that excited about it.

And they really need to do something about the gold spammers.

Premium helps with queues but it's still brutal during prime time. Yesterday at 9pm EST, premium queue had about 900 people in it and it took about 25 minutes to get in.

PurEvil wrote:

Hmm... spend money to wait less time in queue on a game I haven't really been able to try yet? No thanks, not that excited about it.
And they really need to do something about the gold spammers.

5 bucks seems like reasonable price to check out an MMO for a week, especially since priority queue is not the only thing you are getting.

As for gold spammers, just create your own chat tab and make sure Region channel is not on. Problem solved.

I just quit my job and relocated with my wife due to military orders. My wife would have my hide over that $5. Sorry, just griping. I just feel if a game is free to play, it should be free to be playable, not free to sit in a queue for hours.

PurEvil wrote:

I just quit my job and relocated with my wife due to military orders. My wife would have my hide over that $5. Sorry, just griping. I just feel if a game is free to play, it should be free to be playable, not free to sit in a queue for hours.

It's just release hype. Happens with...well everyone I've seen. No idea why companies haven't figured out how to get around it, seems like an easy solution would be to spool up larger servers during launch then slowly lower them to meet stable numbers. I'm not a server tech though so maybe it's harder than that.

It's not hard, it's a cost thing though. Servers aren't cheap and in a month when the rush calms down they'd probably be useless.

b12n11w00t wrote:
PurEvil wrote:

I just quit my job and relocated with my wife due to military orders. My wife would have my hide over that $5. Sorry, just griping. I just feel if a game is free to play, it should be free to be playable, not free to sit in a queue for hours.

It's just release hype. Happens with...well everyone I've seen. No idea why companies haven't figured out how to get around it, seems like an easy solution would be to spool up larger servers during launch then slowly lower them to meet stable numbers. I'm not a server tech though so maybe it's harder than that.

You just said it, larger server.

Free game open up, wants to make money, but will need to dispose of the server infrastructure? That's more costly. I guess they didn't think player won't log off once they got their spots.

I'm always waiting a few weeks (at least more than 1) for new online games. Diablo3 confirmed that for me, it left a bad taste in my mind so deep, I was not able to continue playing that game as I was seeing bugs everywhere...

Does the level design ever open up? I get that the tiny, linear corridor design is pretty standard for eastern MMO's, but it feels like a huge waste given the movement and traversal in this game. It encourages exploration but I haven't encountered anything to explore yet. I'm in the third quest zone and I can literally run across the entire area at normal speed in less than two minutes.

Oh yeah the infamous D3 launch...all MMOs/server based games have release nightmares. There can be queuing in SWTOR even now although for shorter periods.

Bfgp wrote:

Some screenies please. My bro was hyped for this game esp the pvp. Would love to hear impressions.

Just logged in and took this screenshot at a random location, not really the most scenic. I think the game looks really nice.
IMAGE(http://sarasofia.com/BnS/Screenshot_160121_001.jpg)

Watch out for this tactic now in loot auctions.

I was doing Blackram to try and farm some upgrade pieces for my jewelry. We kept getting loot auctions in the middle of combat and as far as I can tell you have 10 seconds to bid since the counter was going down immediately which is stupid.

One person would bid and then jack it up to 5s and 2c. Since you are in combat you see the 2c and don't realize they jacked the prices up, and if you win all the sudden you wasted all your coins. I just logged off since that was enough for me and I have yet to have a good experience running dungeons so I think I am done with this one.

IMAGE(https://farm2.staticflickr.com/1691/24447617051_81021a4c7e_o.jpg)

IMAGE(https://farm2.staticflickr.com/1681/24529971135_d6ca8c129d_o.jpg)

IMAGE(https://farm2.staticflickr.com/1497/23901794974_16e5c4a9dd_o.jpg)

Brennok wrote:

One person would bid and then jack it up to 5s and 2c. Since you are in combat you see the 2c and don't realize they jacked the prices up, and if you win all the sudden you wasted all your coins. I just logged off since that was enough for me and I have yet to have a good experience running dungeons so I think I am done with this one.

Wow, that stinks. I've had good experiences so far with the cross-server dungeons, but thanks for the heads up.

How have they designed the classes, as in the holy trinity of tank dps healer or is it based on skill or talent points?

If I start then Blade Master or Kung Fu looks like my cuppa whereas I suspect my brother will pick Destroyer.

Blade Master and Kung Fu Master are the tanks. Pretty much everyone else does DPS. Every class has some self-heals and are expected to dodge or block big attacks. Summoners have a group heal but they're not really healers, more of a DPS class with some party support, and their cat is a decent tank.

If you've played Guild Wars 2, the idea is a lot like in that game, where there's a tank to anchor the fight and everyone else basically does DPS and dodges red stuff.