In this thread I'll try to bring the information gathered from several official posts into a timeline. Maybe this helps to clear up a few things, shows why things happened the way they did. I shortened it a bit and spiced it up a little, otherwise it would have been only a boring collection of facts. It became a huge wall of text anyway. I hope you like it and it entertains you, if not, well...  You won't get your money back from me, that much is for sure!



Beta 3

At this point the developers know that the netcode still needs improvement. Many of the beta testers can play but the connectivity is not at 99%. 99% is the goal Frogboy wants to achieve.

Most of the beta testers are from North America (the Chosen Continent as far as gaming I s concerned) and connectivity works for most of them. The few active players from Europe are per chance mostly those lucky few who can connect without a problem. (Sure, if you can afford to preorder to get into the beta and to download over 1 gigabyte every now and then, chances are you can afford an above average internet connection too.)

The remaining flaky connections are solved by additional servers, connectivity improves greatly. The netcode looks okay and seems to be doing its job for most of the players. Stardock is confident the day-0 patch will improve connectivity further, stress tests on the servers run successfully. The gold version ships.



Easter, 3 days to release

Gamestop begins selling Demigod early. Demigod has no streetdate attached to it in Gamestops database so the employees start selling it. Stardock is caught by surprise and they are calling people back into the office to get the servers up and the day-0 patch out as fast as possible. Since Gamestop only had a the preordered copies and a handful of extras on the shelves the servers are empty, no surprise there. Some Impulse customers magically mutate into storks and try to eat Froggy alive because they have to wait till Tuesday to play Demigod.

Meanwhile the game is cracked, finds it's way into the Bittorrent channels and a whole different distribution process starts.



One day before release

I'm downloading the RC just hours before the official release, my connection is maxed out. One hour and the game is downloaded, Impulse starts unpacking and installing, everything is looking good. The sun is coming up, I go to bed. Great, in 2 hours I have to get up and go to work - I love Mondays!



Release day and the first week

Every version of Demigod, pirated or legit is trying to establish a connection to Stardock to check for updates. The servers are sifting through the requests, looking for the honest customers to allow them to download updates. Demigod sold far more copies than expected. Frogboy and his team are scrambling to add more servers to compensate. Meanwhile the servers are running hot with requests, legitimate customers are experiencing massive delays. Stardock adds new servers to isolate the pirates. I think: Send ninjas or Navy Seals, it's the only way to deal with pirates!

More and more customers can register Demigod and download the updates. Frogboy posts daily status reports, telling us what's going on. At least I have something to read while I wait for my first game over Impulse. And believe me, it's a hell of a lot more interesting than 'Syllabus of Certain Topics of Logic'! That's what I'm supposed to read...

People from all over the world are trying to play online, the servers are confronted with at least twice the number of customers Stardock anticipated. One player with connectivity problems is enough to delay or stop an online game from being created successfully. The problem from the beta, caused by high server load, is back.

Players who can't connect try again and again, stressing the already saturated servers further, disrupting custom games, basically killing Pantheon and online Skirmish. I'm one of them. I learn things about my software firewall in the process I didn't want to know - like EVAR! At least I'm confident now that my neighbors can't access the pics of that cute little kitten with red hair on my PC, Rarrrr!
Geez, I love LOLcats, don't judge me you hypocrite!



The week after release

The seemingly small number with connection problems outside the USA and Canada becomes a Hydra and is disrupting online gaming further. The Hydra is growing new heads by the minute. Kill it with fire, I say. It worked for Heracles! Wait – one of those heads is mine! Change in plans: Try to appease it with virgins!

Error messages are cryptic, missing or the connection screen just hangs. Players trying to join a game that already has reached the maximum number of players see the 'connecting' instead of 'game already full' message. Many players get errors which seem to point to a connection problem to the NAT Facilitator. Who is this NAT? Can I bribe him to let me in or threaten him?

GPG is working on new builds with additional error messages and bugfixes. This will give Stardock a much better chance to track down the problems. Players have a new and shiny tool, the connectivity window which allows them to see who can connect to whom. It seems I can't connect to anyone, meh. Feels a lot like Saturday, when I tried connecting to that cute brunette. Well, at least this time I didn't made a fool out of myself in public. Oh wait...

Some custom games seem to work now though and more and more players report successful matches. It takes very long to get a game going , at least it works for a slowly increasing number of players. Everything except connectivity troubleshooting has to wait. Every engineering cycle goes into improving the connectivity. Stardock decides to set up proxy servers for players from Asia, Australia and Europe.

I get kicked from two games I tried to join, I'm full of joy! At least I know now that my data packets go somewhere, even if I can't connect. That's an improvement. I wonder what the cute brunette is doing right now, maybe...

Two friends and I play over Hamachi as we did in the beta. Demigod is incredibly addicting and fun, I lose badly though. Time to go back to the drawing board with my tactics. Wait, what is this item doing? Filling up life and mana in seconds! That's like beer with caffeine, the best idea since Irish Coffee!



Week two

Still no joy online, the new patch and servers improved things for a lot of people but not me. Venting my frustration on the Stardock forum is no solution and there are enough frustrated customers posting already. A new development though, an increasing number of players answer in threads of complaining customers - but they are not joining the chorus. Instead they tell the unsatisfied buyers to close their food receptacles, play in dense traffic, eat human waste products and quit spoiling the air by breathing - in not so subtle terms.

Great, connectivity must be improving! Otherwise the small number of narcissistic, self-centered forum bullies - who can play online - wouldn't stick their head out that far. They only feel strong in the crowd. I just assume that over half of the player pool can successfully join online games by now. Good, there is light at the end of the tunnel! Let's hope it's not one of Torchy's fireballs.

Yesterday

Frogboy posts a new journal entry. It seems they have isolated the problem, it's not the NAT facilitator but the UDP packages sent from the NAT facilitator to the Impulse Reactor. UDP is a fast protocol but there is no guaranty that the transferred data is coherent or even complete. The cute brunette from Saturday comes to mind again, what went wrong? Of course the Impulse Reactor will not react if it receives no or completely garbled data. Ah, that solves Saturday's mystery too! /facedesk

YAY, they found the problem! Now the net engineers can Indiana Jones their way into the catacombs of digital signals and search for the Holy Grail. The team is confident and they have a plan. The proxy servers are being prepared and scheduled to go up rather in days than weeks. Thankfully Stardock has connections to ISPs all over the world and they can set up new servers quickly. Maybe I should stop writing this useless diary and start practicing!



I hope you enjoyed my little diary, maybe it answered some of your questions. It might be a little blurry on the technical details (and details about Saturday) and the precise timeline.

The idea however was to explain roughly what happened in the off-chance you didn't lurk on Stardocks forum all day long but more importantly to entertain you while you wait for the next patch. (Today according to Frogboy!)
Feel free to point out any mistakes on my side, I'll try to ignore you to the full extend of my abilities.  And English is not my first language, but I'm sure you have figured that out for yourself by now.

Have a great day!