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.

Just a quick note for those of you who don’t spend much time on the forums. Patch maintenance has been extended, which is why everything is still down and the downloads haven’t started yet. I am a little concerned about the lack of download, though. I’ve been able to patch as far as four hours in advance, so we could be seeing, uh, extended extended maintenance today.

If you tried to log in yesterday, chances are you were met by a menacing image of Blitzcrank before you even logged in. Shortly after the patch went live, Riot had to set the server to ‘Busy’ to manage the traffic when the servers popped up.

That’s how things stayed for the rest of the day. I followed the Server Status forums hoping for a fix, but nothing came until 1AM EST when they shut the servers down for a full restart. Yesterday also marked the first time I’ve seen Riot completely shut down a matchmaking queue. I wasn’t able to queue for 5v5s for a couple hours, which meant queueing in 3s with a pack of players unfamiliar with the map. It was…interesting. I actually saw something other than the usual 5-8 characters on that map, so that was kind of nice.

Everything seem to be working properly today, though, which is good. Can you imagine the backlash if servers were down for the two days directly after a patch?

I made a post yesterday about my patch day woes, specifically the fact that I had to do a complete reinstall for the patch. It was a long process, impeded by thousands of other players with the same problem. I was talking to a friend who said, “You know, I kinda wish this was a crappier game.” If the game weren’t so good, it would be easy to write off all the technical issues. The game is good, though, great even, so the technical issues are all the more frustrating.

Once I got my game back up and running I hopped into a quick game over lunch. Everything was going splendidly until the other team’s Veigar ran up and dropped Event Horizon. Not typically a problem, but this time it stunned for eight seconds. Eight. Obviously I died, as most people would in an eight second stun. A hotfix came later in the day along with some more server downtime. I figured the worst was over.

I jumped in a game this evening and, low and behold, the server crashed. A post on the forums reveals that a portion of the game servers experienced a power failure, brining matches down for a slew of players. Obviously I don’t blame Riot for this, but it can be hard to keep a level head when so much goes wrong in such a short period of time.

On the one hand, I have to be sympathetic to these guys. They’ve made a great game, so great that they’re growing beyond their means. On the other, I really can’t wait for them to get the hiring process going.

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.