Remember Shadowrun? If you don't, it's no problem at all, because nobody else does either. Any merits the game had were made completely forgettable by the complete dearth of multiplayer content. Oh, and did I mention, it's a multiplayer-only game? Still, this isn't as bad as the earlier Terminator 3, whose cd key validation servers (required for online play) weren't functioning on launch day. Did I mention this one is a multiplayer-only title, too? (Completely idiotic bots don't count)
Well, well, well. That was in the bad old days. Nowdays, we have Steam, which ensures the bungled multiplayer launch is a thing of the past. Right? Well, kind of. Valve pulled out all of the stops with their own big titles, of course, like Team Fortress 2. However, when they tried to bring some popular mods into the fold, so to speak, such as Age of Chivalry, the results were... well, between slow downloads, no servers available, and random crashes... let's just call it less impressive.
When I tried to download AoC, Steam pulled it down at a "mere" 60K/sec. Granted, that's not exactly slow, but on a cable modem that routinely gets download speeds 10 times that, it's not anything to write home about either. Maybe Valve ought to think about adding BitTorrent capability to their Steam client. Seriously, though, AoC wasn't the only new game made available, and their download servers were probably hammered. It's not as though the demand would have come as a big shock. Free games? Nobody could possibly want those!
Getting into the game, the situation was little better. There were no servers. Well, there were a few servers, but they were all full. There were no official servers, either. I eventually got onto a server, running on someone's overburdened ADSL line. It was a bit laggy, to say the least. Oh, and this is after the game randomly crashed a couple of times before I could even join a server.
All in all, my first impression of AoC wasn't too good. One might say that "you get what you pay for," and that could apply in this case, being free mods. If you own any Source engine game, you can download AoC and other mods off of Steam. That also means that if you own The Orange Box, it increases the number of games available to you from merely "impressive" to "wicked sick." However, I'd also argue the logic of getting what one pays for applies to Valve as well. Their entire point in bringing these mods into the fold and supporting them on Steam was to increase the reach of Steam, the Source Engine, and Valve's empire, essentially.
I'd like to make it clear here, in case it wasn't: none of this (except maybe the random program crashes) is the fault of the authors of AoC. Their goal was to create a gritty, medieval warfare mod for the Source engine, and they seem to have succeeded. I'm not really gong to talk about the gameplay experience in AoC because when you can't get on any decent servers, it's hard to evalulate a multiplayer-only game. Any criticism I directed at the mod's authors would be unfair, at this point.
However, criticism directed at Valve is squarely on the mark, I believe. They vastly increased the reach of the mod without providing appropriate infrastructure (faster downloads, official servers to play on, and whatnot), and this ends up hurting, not helping, AoC's appeal. This negative experience also makes it unlikely I'll download any of the other free mods Valve has made available. (again, through no fault of the authors of those mods) I have to wonder if part of the problem isn't that Valve overreached and tried to unveil, essentially, five new games, when it might have been better to focus on them one at a time. That way, official servers and download capacity could be lavished on one game for a while, and once the hardcore fans have settled in and the gaming public has moved on, Valve could have a new shiny thing to dangle in front of the masses.
Instead, we're stuck with another bungled multiplayer-only launch and a few more games that will probably fade into obscurity. To me, the sad part is that this time they weren't some cookie-cuttered commercial crap, but instead were made by enthusiasts who wanted only to make their mark and thought they were going to get that chance. Maybe they still will, but it will be in spite of, not because of, their new place of prominence on Steam.
