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.

It’s finally patch day, and for real this time. Unfortunately this patch has one very serious problem – it can completely trash your installation. There are now several posts on the forums filling rapidly with reports of trashed installations after attempting a patch. I’ve experienced the same problem and had to reinstall, a long and painful process with the number of players forced to do the same.

I don’t hesitate to say that I’m a little worried for Riot. The company is having huge scaling issues. Between the server crashes, the large number of bugs/exploits that come with each patch, and the string of nerfs and buffs that seem out of line due to a lack of testing, I can’t help wondering when they’ll catch up. The list of open positions is enormous and shows some gaping holes in current company structure. Here’s a short list of what Riot’s missing: Technical Director, Database Administrator, Director of Operations, System Administrator, Senior Game Designer. That’s a short list, obviously not including junior level positions. All of those gaps are presumably being filled along with other regular duties by the current staff.

As excited as I was for this patch, I can’t help feeling more than a little miffed by all the problems. Oh, did I mention the Jax buff? Yuck.