A few days ago I made a post regarding the recent instability issues with Riot servers, a post that seemed to resonate with a lot of you. In case you missed it, RiotChris dropped by this very blog to respond to some of those concerns, and he was followed shortly by Marc Merrill, the president of Riot Games, who linked his own response to the situation from the League of Legends forums.

Here’s what RiotChris (who is Chris Enock, the company’s Director of Marketing) had to say:

We are sorry that we have been having server stability issues and growing pains recently. Fixing them and making a better player experience is our company’s top priority.

We are as frustrated by the server issues, and we will be taking time to bring everyone up to speed on what we are doing to make the issues better. I know it doesn’t help you play the game, but I can tell you that all the problems are due to the growth – if it was just a matter of buying more servers we would do so instantly – and the cause of the problem is rarely the same issue twice because we fix the problems. Of course none of that makes LoL available to play, but our top men are also working on improving the server stability night and day.

- RiotChris

First of all, I want offer my thanks for your response, Chris. On the official forums it’s one thing – players either go there or they don’t, and it doesn’t exactly feel personal when that’s the only place we see an official response. You guys (meaning the readers, not Riot) have chosen this blog and continually choose to come back, which has made the time I spend writing here infinitely worthwhile and interesting, and the fact that Chris not only reads here, but decided to comment does feel personal, sounds informed, and seems empathetic. Despite a few blunders, I do think Riot is among best developers around in terms of community involvement and outreach, and anyone who has spent time in the customer service industry knows what a horrible, mad bitch of a task it is to keep people happy.

President Marc Merrill’s response further edified the good vibrations RiotChris delivered with a detailed look at the source of the recent issues and the efforts currently underway to resolve those issues (make sure you read his post as well as the service post he links). I had a good feeling that LoL was growing fast. I had no idea it was more than doubling the game’s audience every three months (which could mean a lot of things, but empirically means the game is exploding). That kind of growth would be hard for any young developer to keep up with, and it would be unfair to Riot to not bear in mind the company’s youth.

The takeaway message here is “stick with it.” I think we can all agree that the game is a lot of fun – it’s complex, exhilarating, and interesting enough that I can write about it every single day, and often in a positive light. Though the current stability issues are frustrating, even infuriating at times, there are “top men” working on them, and those top men really are invested and interested in what we, as a community, have to say.

N.B. – I’m really sorry about the delays on posts this past week. Moving in North Carolina in late August is horrible, but it will be done by the middle of next week. Things will return to normal. I will be my typically witty, charming, and timely self, soon.

Yesterday afternoon we lost servers for a brief restart period, which is kind of expected after a decent patch day. Tonight, though, they’re down again, and I don’t know how you feel about it, but I’m fed up.

One of the most infuriating pieces of the server instability is Riot’s constant crowing about the quality of the free game they provide. For me, the game isn’t free – I’ve paid more than retail price for an average game for skins over the past nine months – and it’s a big slap in the face to say that the game is good for being free. It’s also frustrating that there’s been no word about the leaves people get from server disconnects. On a macro level, I think it’s safe to say most players don’t experience those problems. On an individual level, though, I think Riot isn’t delivering a quality experience. For every five players with a fine experience I’d bet you can find one with a terrible experience at some point during a given week.

The worst part of it all, of course, is that Riot has made a great game. It’s so good that it will likely continue to grow at the pace that’s causing the problems – it’s just more players than the servers can handle. For now, I’m here to stay. It would actually take a lot to pull me away from a game I enjoy so immensely when it’s working. For a lot of players, though, I can see the downtime and Riot’s attitude regarding it as the final straw.

A few months back, Riot announced that it was developing a Mac OS X client for League of Legends. Why don’t we have it yet?

This isn’t a, “why are you ruining my life, Riot?” post, but rather a “please, please, please make this a reality,” post. I committed to avoid buying a gaming laptop some time ago, mostly because it isn’t truly a laptop. I don’t want a 17-inch screen, I don’t want it to weigh 11 pounds. I want portability and functionality without egregious size. That said, LoL isn’t exactly a taxing game, and it would be nice to log in when the night is winding down and try to pick up a quick game with the new champions and features when I’m not at my home machine.

I’m guessing it will come some time in late fall, though it wouldn’t be a huge surprise to see it pushed to the holiday season.

I understand that the crew at Riot is probably a little miffed at all the negative feedback surrounding the launch of Season One. Despite the problems, LoL is still a free game with an impressive feature list, and I’d probably be a bit peeved if people were constantly bitching about this thing I was offering up for free. But trolling isn’t the way to deal with that frustration, and it’s probably going to make things a whole lot worse.

Take this most recent troll post from Zileas, the game’s design director wherein he claims they’ll be making Xin Zhao’s ultimate refresh any time he gets a kill or an assist. It’s a joke, but if you weren’t reading the forums regularly and didn’t know that they were planning to nerf Xin’s ultimate you might easily assume this is real and get fairly pissed off.

Now, some would say it’s the responsibility of the reader to find out what’s real and what’s not – can’t trust everything you read on the internet. I would say, though, that it falls to Riot to keep its forums safe and enjoyable for old and new members alike, and making troll threads just to get a laugh out of the council and the forum regulars doesn’t do any good for the community. If Riot wants new players to get involved in the game and the community on the forums, it has to put an end to this crap.

On the whole, I have always been impressed with Riot and its outreach to the community around League of Legends. Riot does an awesome job promoting third-party tournaments and supporting them with Riot Point sponsorships. The company also hosts a load of community events and interviews, which goes a long way toward giving the community a sense of involvement with the continued development.

The Exiled Morgana skin is just another step in the right direction. If you aren’t a regular forum-goer, you might not know about the huge custom skin community. A lot of their creations are incredible, and though other players can’t see them, it’s pretty cool to have Iron Man Blitzcrank stomping around the Fields of Justice. The new Exiled Morgana skin was actually the brainchild of a summoner by the name Pawige, who originally created “Fallen Angel” Morgana for the community to use. Riot liked the skin enough that they decided to make it official, and created their own version of the skin, crediting Pawige and offering him some Riot Points for his work.

I don’t think I can overstate how much this makes me like Riot (as if I wasn’t already a huge fan).

I really enjoy my Test Realm account. It’s a nice way to see what’s coming up in the game, and it has helped me plan some rune purchases based on changes to mechanics. Unfortunately, it seems TR content has produced a bit of a shit storm for Riot, so it’s starting to crack down on people sharing TR information.

For that reason, I will no longer be posting regarding Test Realm features/changes/heroes/etc. All posts here will now be with regard to live content or content that Riot has officially announced as fit for public consumption.

Trust me, I’m not happy about this. I understand Riot’s position, but having a public Test Realm forum (albeit, this will be changing) has made an NDA a bit pointless. I also think there is valuable feedback to be had even from people who haven’t played with the new changes. Some people are excellent at game analysis, even if the vast majority of people are not.

Ah well, they didn’t ask me. I’m still happy for the TR account and I’d hate to lose those privileges.

The long wait is finally over. Facebook Tristana is now available for free to anyone willing to become a fan of League of Legends on Facebook. It’s a completely painless process for what is actually a pretty cool skin.

Here’s the official post from the Riot forums:

It is my privilege to announce to all of you that, as of today, not being a fan of League of Legends on Facebook will constitute a tactical error! And do you know why that is? Because if you’re not a fan on Facebook, you’re going to be stricken with envy when you see all of your friends playing with their brand new Riot Girl Tristana skin!

That’s right, Runeterrans! You’ve waited patiently, and now your long wait is over! And all you need to do to get your very own gun slinging, rapid firing, rocket jumping yordle lady all punked out with a pink dye job is follow this link! Click here to become a League of Legends Fan and claim your very own Tristana Champion and Riot Girl Tristana skin!

That’s really all you have to do. And yeah, the skin rocks.

The patch a few days back brought along one of the most undesirable things I’ve seen in League of Legends: queue dodge penalties. I’ve written enough about the semantics that you should have a feel for how it works. As a quick overview, your first dodge gets you an advertised 3-minute ban from joining queue. The next dodge is 10 minutes, with a reset 8 hours from the initial ban. Here’s how it really works.

This afternoon I queued up with a friend for a quick game. For whatever reason he didn’t join queue when I did. Instead, he was stuck at the invite screen for Arranged Team. By the time he asked if I was in queue, the game had popped. It showed him at champ select but on his screen he was still at the AT invite screen. He hit cancel and got dumped back to the home page. Instead of staying in queue and forcing him to relog, reconnect, and deal with whatever random hero he got, I dodged.

On relog we tried to queue only to be greeted by the new leaver screen that pops up over the client with a timer that counts down your penalty. Our timer? 5:14. I haven’t take math since my freshman year of college but that seems like slightly more than three minutes. Luckily we didn’t have the same problem, but I will say, I’m fairly annoyed by the fact that this isn’t functioning as advertised and that I was penalized because of a client error over which I had zero control. The more interaction I have with this new system, including the fact that dodging is till extremely common, the harder it is to believe that Riot actually pushed this through. There are so many reasons for a game to fall apart in queue that penalizing the process seems arbitrary and absurd.

I hope to god Riot realizes just how bad this system is and fixes it soon, but my guess is they won’t. It took a poll in the forums about Champ Select AFKers for someone from Riot to take interest in any opinion that doesn’t penalize queue dodging. This could have easily been considered prior to the patch. Now we get to sit back and watch as the company tries to clean up. It’s going to be a rough couple of weeks.

On the whole, I’ve been pretty impressed with Riot for its support. The servers are rarely down, and when they are, it’s typically for short periods of time. Until recently, anyway. It’s no secret that there’s been a lot of server trouble since the last patch. I won’t blame today’s issues on the patch, not in full anyway, but there have been red posts confirming that the latest patch included at least one crash bug. Couple the server-crippling problems with glitches like double spell casting and I have to ask, did they patch too soon?

My answer is yes. Absolutely. Frankly, I don’t know why it wasn’t broken into to two patches. There was so much content that something was bound to go wrong, particularly on a rushed schedule. Granted, the community was getting restless for Pantheon and Gragas, but both in one patch? Why? Pantheon was obviously ready – the only complaint I see about him is his ultimate, which needs very little change in my mind – but Gragas is a confused mess of AP, physical damage, and tanking skills. He doesn’t scale well and fits poorly into most team comps. Why not save him for a later patch.

I wouldn’t bother writing this if it didn’t have me worried about later patches. My hope is that the Twisted Treeline patch will get plenty of testing before it flies through. On the whole, I’d be much happier with six hours of scheduled maintenance each week to roll out small patches than the 10+ hours we’ve had this week to fix the blunders of the latest patch.