Rant: The More Things Change . . .

I hadn't expected to make another post to the blog quite this early.  Nor had I expected to be touching back on my "Raving Rant" roots from The Armchair Empire quite so soon.  Unfortunately, it happened in a way that I really could not let pass.

For the last six months or so, I've been casually following news about an upcoming title from Ubisoft titled For Honor.  In what appears to borrow heavily from the Dynasty Warriors series, players take control of Vikings, samurai, and knights to see who the ultimate badass is in a strange and mysterious land beyond time and space.  Being a fan of Dynasty Warriors, and being a history buff, I was mildly interested in this title and wanted to see how it would turn out.  That interest died today when I came across an article from Kyle Orland over at Ars Technica describing a forum response from an Ubisoft community manager indicating that the game would require a persistent Internet connection when playing as a single player.



It no longer surprises me that a publisher or a developer tries this sort of crap.  It only amazes me that anybody by this point in time can honestly expect it to be a good idea which will be embraced enthusiastically by gamers without reservation.  Let's take a trip back through some recent history, shall we?

• Ubisoft historically has not had a great track record using Internet-connectivity-as-DRM.  Players will recall that the PC version of Assassin's Creed was practically unplayable upon initial release because the DRM kept trying to phone home to Ubisoft servers.
• The less that's said about their "uPlay" shenanigans, the better.
• More recent players will no doubt recall with painful clarity the sort of stability issues that plagued The Division and Rainbow Six: Siege during the early days with regards to getting booted from single player games because the servers decided to crap out momentarily.
• Lest this be construed as merely a slam against Ubisoft, I have two words for you: Diablo III.  Two more words in supplement: Error 37.  Trust me, I got more than a few unkind words hurled at me in the comments section when I wrote that review for The Armchair Empire, and it still stands as the only negative review on Metacritic.  But I also got a lot more words of support from gamers who recognized the bullshit when they saw it (Never did hear anything from Mike Morhaime).
• And for those who weren't paying attention, EA managed to screw up even harder than Blizzard when they released the last Sim City game.  Again, the "always on connection is required" failed.  Worse, not only was it a catastrophic failure, reports surfaced that the reason why it was insisted upon was a flat out lie.  Purportedly, it was required to perform all sorts of calculations about players' cities interacting with each other through EA's Mirrorbox servers, but turns out that it didn't do anything of the sort.

So what precisely is going to happen here?  I can make a pretty educated guess and it is not going to be pretty.

1. Assuming that the last minute marketing push gets people to buy the game despite this ridiculous scheme, you're going to get waves of players smashing servers flatter than a crepe.  I give it about an hour from the moment the first players on the East Coast start getting "unable to connect to server" messages for Ubisoft's forums to become inundated with a wave of "WTF?!"
2. The diehards who love the idea of the game will struggle mightily to connect, or maintain a connection if they manage to log in.
1. Meanwhile, the diehard hackers who want to follow the example of the Sim City offline hack will fire up their hex editors and port scanners, trying to figure out a way around.
3.  Major sites will release their reviews, partially based on pre-release builds at press events, but mostly off the final release version.  They will point out the idiocy of the persistent connection requirement, but precisely damn all will happen except maybe some dank memes being posted on Cheezburger.
4. A few months in, Ubisoft will express disappointment at the sales numbers of their new IP at a quarterly meeting, completely glossing over the fact that the poor numbers were entirely self-inflicted.
1. Meanwhile, the hackers will probably have the first initial test patches out which allow for at least some offline play.
5. Six months down the line, Ubisoft will release patches, probably a DLC pack, but completely ignore any requests to let the game go offline.
1. The hackers will have managed to get a stable patch allowing for unlimited offline play, making Ubisoft look stupid.
2. Ubisoft will strongly condemn the existence of the patch, making noises about "piracy" and "maintaining the integrity of the experience."
6. A year or so after release, when most people have stopped giving a damn about it, Ubisoft will try to win players back, inevitably releasing their own offline patch.  At the same time, they'll bemoan the way that the game turned out to be such a "disappointment."  Again, completely ignoring their own role in making it that way.

You'd think that the people at Ubisoft Montreal would know the old saying, "The more things change, the more they stay the same."  Despite Yannis Mallat's veiled hints that gamers would embrace always on connections if they had "tangible benefits," those benefits have never appeared and they are unlikely to do so in this instance.  Because those benefits do not apply to players.  The only entity that would benefit from such a scheme is Ubisoft, and they're not quite brazen enough to openly admit that fact.  I hate to turn away from what could be a good game, but until the big publishers actually wake up and smell the coffee, we are going to repeat this scene over and over again.