We're over an hour past the official launch of Tom Clancy's The Division and already things are getting out of control. The Ubisoft servers have been hammered by a huge surge of (expected) demand as thousands of players have looked to get their early start in the shooter RPG.
Issues were common throughout the day as players engaged in early access, but it was the arrival of midnight EST that would trigger armageddon. At present (10:00PM PST), the Ubisoft and UPlay servers are reporting an error with every interaction. The game is simply inaccessible for most players, resulting in widespread reports across gaming forums, social media, and Twitch.
For many the frustration is particularly ripe due to the long period of preparation that Ubisoft had been given. Beta weekends as far back as January showed hot demand for The Division, and along with a release delay its development team was provided ample time to get the game and its infrastructure in-shape for launch.
Yet here we are at the arrival of yet another online-only release that is unable to meet the demand of customers at launch. Games like Diablo 3 and Destiny have shown us in the past what can happen if no offline mode is available, and yet these things continue to happen.
One major issue stems from the fact that reviewers, including yours truly at GameRevolution, had not been granted access to the game until launch day. As a result of this, many game reviewers are sitting around unable to get started on their review. For outlets that consider server reliability an element of the review process, they are unlikely to take kindly to The Division.
Ubisoft is yet to make an official statement, and it is likely that server and network engineers are hard at work trying to get the game's backbone in stable form as Ubisoft's marketing machine pumps millions onto online and TV ad spots.
Me personally? I was more interested in spending my Monday night playing Stardew Valley anyway. I'll try playing The Division again once the coast is clear.
