I've been playing Warhammer for a couple of days now and generally speaking I like it - and I want to like it.
What I find frustrating now is the loading. It takes an age, and every time I have to agree to the terms and conditions! Who is honestly going to trawl their way through all that lot each time they login? It just isn't reasonable to expect that of anyone.
Having got past that there is the main loading screen. On my machine this takes so long I can go away and have a bath, I get so bored waiting that I press the windows key and do something else while I am waiting.
I've done it just now - after "loading" for 20 minutes I checked task manager and saw that Warhammer was using 0% CPU which strongly suggested it had hung yet there is nothing to indicate this, that damn tune still keeps playing, so I have quit the game and restarted but it appeared to do the same again.
I've therefore started the check all files option on the loader. That gives even less idea how long it's likely to take. The little yellow bar says about 50% but the title bar says 0% which doesn't bode well. It may be another overnight job!
I really do want to like this game but it seems to be making it harder and harder for me to do so.
I'm off to play WoW
Wednesday, October 01, 2008
Sunday, September 28, 2008
War relief
Well I finally got into Warhammer Online, more than 24 hours after the initial install. In order to resolve the DirectX 9 dll issue I downloaded the file from the internet. This is fraught with danger, particularly as this is clearly a well known issue. I'm sure hackers are delighted with this.
Having copied the file into the installation folder of the game it went further than previously. The introduction video was nice though it jerked a little, particularly the sound. My machine is not particularly old and some of it is quite highly specced, so this was another dissapointment.
I then got to the terms and condition screen. Nothing happened. I couldn't click on anything. After a while I managed to scroll down one page but that was it, I could do no more. In disgust I pressed the Windows key and eventually got to close the program. As it closed a short error message popped up which suggested there was some sort of authentication issue. This was unlikely as I was running the application as an administrator.
On restarting the game worked - finally. After all that it is very impressive. Easy for a WoW player to get into certainly and there are a lot of nice touches. Still some areas that aren't particularly clear, like the skills. I do however like the public quests they are a lot of fun.
So in summary, a terrible start where I verged on abandoning it in disgust, however it was probably worth persisting
Having copied the file into the installation folder of the game it went further than previously. The introduction video was nice though it jerked a little, particularly the sound. My machine is not particularly old and some of it is quite highly specced, so this was another dissapointment.
I then got to the terms and condition screen. Nothing happened. I couldn't click on anything. After a while I managed to scroll down one page but that was it, I could do no more. In disgust I pressed the Windows key and eventually got to close the program. As it closed a short error message popped up which suggested there was some sort of authentication issue. This was unlikely as I was running the application as an administrator.
On restarting the game worked - finally. After all that it is very impressive. Easy for a WoW player to get into certainly and there are a lot of nice touches. Still some areas that aren't particularly clear, like the skills. I do however like the public quests they are a lot of fun.
So in summary, a terrible start where I verged on abandoning it in disgust, however it was probably worth persisting
Warhammer woes
After eventually patching the game by leaving the PC on overnight. I woke up to excitedly hit the Play button. Straight away I got an error.
The application has failed to start because d3dx9_34.dll was not found. Re-installing the application may fix this problem
Now despite what the message says I seriously doubt that reinstallation will fix the issue. This appears to be a DirectX 9 file and I am using Windows Vista which has DirectX 10 with it.
As this is the sort of thing that you would expect to be resolved after the beta testing I went to look on the Warhammer Online forums only to find there aren't any and that there are no plans for any. They state that there are a number of independent community forums some of which they support. What that surely means in practice is that anyone can say whatever they want on these forums with no regard for the consequences, even if the comments are well meant.
Given that there are no forums I decided to try the technical support, again, surely something like this would have been found in the beta and there will be something in the FAQ. There is a specific section on DirectX however nothing in there suggests that the game needs a specific version or how to resolve my issue. Instead there is some non technical information about DirectX generally. Google couldn't find anything on the site either
This is not a good start at all. One comment I found on the web suggested that someone has installed DirectX9 onto Vista. If this is the only option then I may be looking for a refund as I doubt that my machine will be supported by Microsoft if I downgrade some of the integral software.
Having said all this, I know people with Vista who have the game running, surely they can't all have downgraded DirectX. The search for the fix continues... for now.
The application has failed to start because d3dx9_34.dll was not found. Re-installing the application may fix this problem
Now despite what the message says I seriously doubt that reinstallation will fix the issue. This appears to be a DirectX 9 file and I am using Windows Vista which has DirectX 10 with it.
As this is the sort of thing that you would expect to be resolved after the beta testing I went to look on the Warhammer Online forums only to find there aren't any and that there are no plans for any. They state that there are a number of independent community forums some of which they support. What that surely means in practice is that anyone can say whatever they want on these forums with no regard for the consequences, even if the comments are well meant.
Given that there are no forums I decided to try the technical support, again, surely something like this would have been found in the beta and there will be something in the FAQ. There is a specific section on DirectX however nothing in there suggests that the game needs a specific version or how to resolve my issue. Instead there is some non technical information about DirectX generally. Google couldn't find anything on the site either
This is not a good start at all. One comment I found on the web suggested that someone has installed DirectX9 onto Vista. If this is the only option then I may be looking for a refund as I doubt that my machine will be supported by Microsoft if I downgrade some of the integral software.
Having said all this, I know people with Vista who have the game running, surely they can't all have downgraded DirectX. The search for the fix continues... for now.
Saturday, September 27, 2008
WAR what is it good for
I refer to Warhammer online the MMORPG that was released last week. As a fan of World of warcraft I thought I would give WAR a go. I heard good things about it from a friend - the same one that introduced me to WoW.
As my discs arrived today I thought I would start with first impressions on the installation. Only two discs can be a good or a bad thing. Does it mean the game is light on material?
The two discs installed quickly which I took to be a good sign, then comes the registration process. This has a few minor niggles which I am suprised have not been thrashed out. Some of it seems a little rushed.
The site itself (like the wow site) I find slow to load because of all the pretties on it. Trying to enter personal details was more time consuming that it should perhaps be. Firstly on the drop downs you cannot type the first character to move down the list. That seems to me to be a basic error for any web page, particularly when you have to identify your country. Obviously some of the drop downs only have short lists so this is not really an issue
Then we come to the post code. For anyone living in the UK and possibly other countries too, the entry of this is flawed. I tried a few times to enter my post code in different cases etc and in each time if failed, claiming that it was not a valid zip code!! I could hardly disagree as it is not a zip code at all. However this completely daft error message does provide a clue. I happened to know that zip codes do not have a space in them, it was then that I found that removing the space meant that my post code was accepted.
This again is a relatively minor issue however it did cause unnecessary delay for me and has no doubt resulted in some support calls. The unhelpful error message added insult to injury.
Having finally jumped through these hoops I found I could login to the client but was getting rejected with absolutely no explanation as to why. Earlier in the installation I had seen something that seemed to want me to put the CD code in so I guessed that was the issue, and indeed it turned out that was the case. This took me to the validation pages. This was the worst part of the installation by some significant amount. The web page you go to is confusing at best as it looked to me as though it wanted me to register again, when in fact it turned out that all it was doing was asking for confirmation of your details. The accompanying text was poorly written with some grammatical errors. This just made matters worse and for me it certainly didn't inspire confidence, the style appeared to me to be very similar to some of the phishing emails that I have seen.
At the time of writing I am downloading a large patch - no suprise for a new game though always a little disappointing when you just want to start to play. The patcher simply has a cancel button so it isn't clear what happens if for any reason you have to cancel. Having done only one test it seems that it continues from where it left off however it doesn't make this clear. What it does do is show a lesser amount of data to download.
More to follow
As my discs arrived today I thought I would start with first impressions on the installation. Only two discs can be a good or a bad thing. Does it mean the game is light on material?
The two discs installed quickly which I took to be a good sign, then comes the registration process. This has a few minor niggles which I am suprised have not been thrashed out. Some of it seems a little rushed.
The site itself (like the wow site) I find slow to load because of all the pretties on it. Trying to enter personal details was more time consuming that it should perhaps be. Firstly on the drop downs you cannot type the first character to move down the list. That seems to me to be a basic error for any web page, particularly when you have to identify your country. Obviously some of the drop downs only have short lists so this is not really an issue
Then we come to the post code. For anyone living in the UK and possibly other countries too, the entry of this is flawed. I tried a few times to enter my post code in different cases etc and in each time if failed, claiming that it was not a valid zip code!! I could hardly disagree as it is not a zip code at all. However this completely daft error message does provide a clue. I happened to know that zip codes do not have a space in them, it was then that I found that removing the space meant that my post code was accepted.
This again is a relatively minor issue however it did cause unnecessary delay for me and has no doubt resulted in some support calls. The unhelpful error message added insult to injury.
Having finally jumped through these hoops I found I could login to the client but was getting rejected with absolutely no explanation as to why. Earlier in the installation I had seen something that seemed to want me to put the CD code in so I guessed that was the issue, and indeed it turned out that was the case. This took me to the validation pages. This was the worst part of the installation by some significant amount. The web page you go to is confusing at best as it looked to me as though it wanted me to register again, when in fact it turned out that all it was doing was asking for confirmation of your details. The accompanying text was poorly written with some grammatical errors. This just made matters worse and for me it certainly didn't inspire confidence, the style appeared to me to be very similar to some of the phishing emails that I have seen.
At the time of writing I am downloading a large patch - no suprise for a new game though always a little disappointing when you just want to start to play. The patcher simply has a cancel button so it isn't clear what happens if for any reason you have to cancel. Having done only one test it seems that it continues from where it left off however it doesn't make this clear. What it does do is show a lesser amount of data to download.
More to follow
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