The SAGA Doesn’t Really Begin

Posted by Stropp on March 12, 2008

One of the big game genres that I used to play was the old RTS game. I spent many hours in Warcraft, C&C, Red Alert and various other RTS games. C&C and RA were favorites. I loved the sound of tanks rolling over infantry. Talk about squishy!

Understandably, there aren’t all that many MMORTS games around. Ironic considering World of Warcraft is based on a RTS. It’s far easier to adapt role playing and first person shooter games to the MMO style. Persistence is hard when most RTS games dictate that there’s only one player standing at the end of the game.

So tonight when I came across a post about a MMORTS called SAGA I had to have a look. SAGA is a free to play game, with subscriber extras. Subscribing will give players access to the market and to guilds, and possibly some other features I didn’t see. Players can also buy Booster packs, though again I’m not sure what these do yet.

The game is set in a fantasy world where the player develops a city or cities. As is normal with most RTS games, the goal is to gather resources, build up armies, and conquer territory. There are quests and campaigns to do, and I suspect a certain amount of free play where the players sets their own goals.

The client is a free download, and reasonably sized at 398 MB. It took me all of 15 minutes to download, and installed in less time than that.

Unfortunately, my desire to have a quick play of SAGA tonight stopped there.

For some reason, the patcher kept crashing at one particular spot in the process. I restarted several times with the same result.

Pity.

A quick look at the forums tells me that people are experiencing problems with the game and also with getting it started. The solution is to reinstall.

Well, it’s too late to do that tonight and I’m tired and frankly, running short of patience. So time for a bit of a rant…

I also just realized Vanguard: SAGA of Heroes…

Developers, I know software is hard to do. I do it for a living myself, I’ve worked in Aerospace, Telecoms, and Business Systems. None of these is intrinsically harder than game development, each provide unique challenges. But if I released software in the state that some games are released in, I’d be fired - and rightly so.

Why do we as consumers put up with this?

I’m not done with SAGA yet, for all my grumpiness tonight. I’ll spend some time this weekend, reinstall or download the client from another provider and have another go. I’ll let you know what happens.

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