Age of Conan hit its first real day of server-instability today and if you go by the forums you'd think the Titanic sunk or something. Openedge1 has quit the game over it.

I find myself boggled, given that AoC's launch has been more stable than most MMOs by far. Ultima Online went down for 3 days immediately from launch and players were made to disperse any time they collected in one location. Everquest had servers bounce up and down for months, plus lag issues to the extreme. Blizzard stopped selling copies of World of Warcraft for 6 weeks due to server instability and Penny Arcade revoked their game-of-the-year award from WoW for the same reason.

During all of those, there were players freaking out, for sure. For UO there was even a class-action suit, which led to the EULA-disclaimer-heaviness of today's MMOs.

Everyone's entitled to their complaints. They are paying for a service and when it's not there, they get upset. I get upset when my power goes out, it drives me nuts that it happens in a big city. But I lived in a small town for awhile where the power wasn't exactly-- consistent. Whenever there was an outtage, we'd just shrug.

In MMORPG land, expect troubles in the first 6 months, that's just pragmatic.

It feels like there's some new kind of intolerance. Maybe players have had enough, maybe more than a decade of stability issues being 'normal' for MMOs in the first year is just too much for players to take anymore? Maybe it's a generational gap?

I suspect the complaints are more noticeable now that blogging your MMO experience has hit its stride, not to mention the wealth of established MMORPGs that are stable now that you can choose from.

Whatever it is, I think people should be ready for more disappointments, because this sort of thing isn't going to magically disappear anytime soon.

My advice: Don't take it personally, the bugs and downtime aren't tailor made for your frustration. Take a break now and then, have backup plans if your nite of gaming is disrupted.

Or don't play a new MMORPG unless you have a lot of patience, because it's either going to have issues or it's going to be delayed heavily for a cleaner launch (even then it's a crap shoot). Either way, there's waiting involved.

Update: Discussion on the Wiccana forums seems a lot more reasonable than the general Age of Conan forums, as usual. Most players there seem to also be suggesting patience.