Server Stability

Since I’ve returned to the game last week, STO’s server stability has been a bit… spotty. The game was down several times last weekend, and apparently this morning Tribble collapsed under the weight of the open Romulan beta. Worse yet, when one of Cryptic’s games — STO, CO, or Neverwinter — goes down, they all go down. Cryptic has repeatedly stated that all of their games aren’t on “one server”, and independent from that, I’m pretty certain that the hardware mainframe needed to support STO, CO, and Neverwinter probably can’t be summed in “server,” singular. That said, it’s clear that each game’s stability is nonetheless influenced by the stability of its sister games. There were suspicions that STO’s downtime last weekend was brought about by Neverwinter’s soft launch, and there’s a general humming and hawing on the forums that May 21st will see STO crash yet again.

For me, all of this is neither here nor there. I’ve been minimizing my time in STO, and plan to do so through the release of LoR. I figure I’ll try to get a leg up on all of my real-life work, thus ensuring an unadulterated day of enjoyment. So server crashes in the here-and-now mean litte to me; it’s server stability on the 21st that I’m eyeing wearily.

I sometimes spelunck into STO’s official forums. Like all official forums for any game, ever, they are filled with terrible people saying terrible things. I’ve learned that Science captains are terribly gimped; I’ve learned that Engineers are terribly gimped; I’ve learned that the game is now “Escorts Online”; I’ve learned that PvE is so easy that the previous three claims are moot. But, again, like all official forums, there are some really informative threads, and there are some really good jokes. I personally liked this one: