I started playing EVE Online last night. It was a very frustrating experience.
1) I signed up for the free 14 day trial and started downloading the client from the EVE site. It was downloading at 30KB/s.
2) I paid around $20 to download the game via Steam. Much better – started downloading at 700-800KB/S.
3) I launched the game….and was told that I don’t have the latest build. I try to download the latest build via the auto updater. I’m having some Mac internet issues. Normally I don’t notice as I lose connection for a few seconds and then it goes back up. Normal games *cough* Guild Wars *cough* attempt to reconnect for a while, if unsuccessful tell you that you’ve been disconnected and take you back to login. Not EVE. As soon as the airport does its thing and I get disconnected for literally a few seconds, I get an updater error message and it has to start all over. I try this three times. Same thing.
4) I get a Mac download manager and download the update manually from the EVE site (again, going at about 30KB/S) Finally the 71MB file downloads.
5) I have problems patching it…this lasts for about another hour…but as I found out this was actually my fault, I wasn’t looking in the right directory when trying to patch with iPatcher.
6) Game is finally patched. I log in. Internet disconnects for a few seconds, I get stuck on the login screen. Client starts flashing. Unable to force quit. Have to restart PC. This happens twice.
7) Get into character creation. Right when I’m done creating a character, game hangs again…Must restart again.
Finally speed through character creation upon relaunching the game. Game seems to get DCed less. Maybe every 30 – 40 mins. All is good.
I know that the disconnection issue is my Mac’s fault…I know that I have to fix it. But a game should be able to handle these things a bit more gracefully, shouldn’t it?! This is completely unacceptable! I ended up spending over FIVE HOURS just downloading the game and creating a character.
Now that I’ve had my rage and the EVE Online Mac installation process – I wanna be a PIRATE!
