MISSION IMPOSSIBLE [Author: Eldin]

The latest 12.6 patch, albeit pretty on paper, was little more than napalm in code form. I give you the patch message detailing the changes, sans the exploits, pet and chat channel changes, for space’s sake. They seem… rather tame, don’t they?

First off, let me take an obligatory swing at the Aimed Shot bug of old. How do you screw something up which allows a certain attack to do TWENTY TIMES normal damage, and then leave it for a month or so? Did Funcom not see it? Did they think the attack was supposed to do that? Or was it not even a bug… It was simply working as intended?

Now. The explosion. For some odd reason, even though this patch was in testing for awhile, when it went live, countless new bugs cropped up, and a few old favorites decided to make a comeback, this time armed with sub-machine guns and hollow rounds.

Mission enemies are not only harder, they are invisible, invulnerable, not there and still attacking, not there and NOT attacking, attacking through walls, buffing with unlimited nano, and even attacking above or below their ‘colored’ difficulty.

Chests are broken. Crashes are not broken, they’ve actually been re-implemented, intentionally or otherwise. Rubberband lag is once again in style. Graphic glitches have found a new home.

I could go on, but I think you get the point. The 12.6 patch is doing pretty much everything under the sun except for causing cancer and emotionally scarring small children.

OK, the emotional scarring is debatable. I sure as hell wouldn’t let my seven year old at this mess.

‘Why did you die again, Daddy?’

‘Insta-death bug.’

‘…There’s evil people who can kill you without trying?!’

‘Shut up and go watch Blue’s Clues.’

The ‘BUMP if u want 12.5 again !!’ thread on the official boards has hit 1600 replies. I’m sure mass account deletions will soon follow.

There’s not much more I can say. I always thought of myself as one of the prime defenders of Anarchy Online, but this… is insane. There are less bugs in the DaoC BETA. Jesus.

Funcom put up a ‘daily update’ addressing the issues, which did little to console me. Hey, they usually don’t put those up on weekends! They did this weekend, however. Should I feel special? Yes. Do I? Hardly. The game, if it wasn’t broken before, is broken now. Will people pay to play a broken game? That’s a question I don’t want to answer. Yet, at least.

My last bit of comfort is I’m sure Funcom isn’t purposely screwing over gamers. As my good colleague Shepherd (yes, the Whamadoodles guy) said, Funcom isn’t evil.

Serial killers are evil. Dictators are evil. Verant is evil.

Funcom is merely inexperienced and incompetent. And yet they insist on beginning work on a SECOND game. I don’t care if I can hunt moose and pick berries in it. I want you to learn how to properly run your first MMORPG before you start diving into a new one.

In conclusion, you all have my deepest apologies for my releasing this update without actually being able to log in and play the aforementioned gory mess.

I haven’t been able to get around to spending some time playing.

I can’t get the patcher to stop crashing.