‘Grand Theft Auto Online’ Leaves Me Without Comment

Grand Theft Auto Online

Originally the plan was going to be to come home from the office a little earlier than usual, hop on GTA Online and then when I finally had enough, watch Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. while passing out for the night. Luckily, work got in the way and I wasn’t able to leave early as I saw Twitter exploding with #GTAOnline and #GTAProblems along with not very positive feedback. There was no way it could be that bad, right?

I hop on, choose four random grandparents that result in a character that actually look somewhat like me (and according to this equation, I am 1/4 black which is unexpected) and sign into the game server. Well, I attempted to sign on to the game server. It ended up taking three tries before I finally got in. Once finally in the game, I got the intro cut scene with tutorial messages as a familiar face drove me to the first mission. As I stepped into the first mission, the game got stuck on a “Searching for player” screen that I couldn’t exit. Start, Back, B. All of the go to buttons did nothing. So I hit the home button and went back out to the dashboard and restarted the whole game.

After the traditional Grand Theft Auto V bootup, five minutes later I have entered Online and the exact same error occurs. I decide to give it one last shot and do the full on reset, reload and sign on to not make it into the very first mission of Grand Theft Auto Online on its launch day.

So that whole theory I had has seemingly gone away. It’s pretty impossible for a game to take over my life if I never get to actually play it. To be blunt, this is the first time I have been disappointed in Rockstar. The iFruit app was a joke that I never took seriously and probably the idea of someone in marketing and not the actual development team. But those names that scrolled across the intro scenes when I finally logged in, those are the people I am disappointed in. Don’t get me wrong, there are times I didn’t enjoy a Rockstar game as much as some other people did but this one was a letdown. Four years and $280 million in development and then an influx of $750 million in profit in its first week and they can’t get servers working properly. Now the argument will probably be made that they didn’t know how many people to expect to sign on in its first day to which I call bulls**t.

They knew how many people bought the game. They know how many of those accounts are online. It doesn’t take a genius to figure out a damn high percentage of those plan on playing Grand Theft Auto Online. And if you can’t handle the server load, delay the launch. Make me wait for a good experience than taint my perception with a bad one. Just the fact that I have spent more time writing about Grand Theft Auto Online tonight rather than playing it is a pretty bad way to have a launch.

 

About John Carle

The Definition of “Geek Chic.” Comic books, sci-fi movies, Buffy: The Vampire Slayer, Xbox 360, Nintendo DS, Lord of the Rings and more all rolled up in a Diesel wearing, club going socialite package. Having worked in both advertising and television, John is a lifetime writer always being a part of the creative process. John knows the television world between his experience on being involved with the production process of over two hundred episodes of prime time tv and being a self admitted media whore. Yes he has a weakness for trash tv, Michael Bay-esque action movies and the raunchy teen comedy as well. Never try to debate the Original Star Wars Trilogy versus Star Trek with him because the Holy Trilogy always comes out on top. Having partied with movie stars to Playboy centerfolds, John is somehow always able to find someone’s inner geek. The simplest rules that John lives by is to have fun and doing what makes him happy. There’s no shame in being a geek. Play Halo, read Spider-Man and proudly display the whole series of Neon Genesis: Evangelion on your DVD rack. And most importantly, make sure to read his weekly comic book pull list reviews at The Flickcast.
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4 Responses to ‘Grand Theft Auto Online’ Leaves Me Without Comment

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  3. Anonymous says:

    Wow you all seem like a bunch of whiny bitches, Yeah im stuck on the 1st “waiting for other players” screen too, cant even get into the damn game…but this was expected really for anyone who has a brain. Some people can play, its only a matter of time before everyone can play. Then soon i’ll be wiping you all from under my boot hahaha . Patience is virtue

  4. Yeah, real, viscerally challenging life is in danger of disappearing into the couch pillows. Even I might have to start playing, glitches or no glitches. I’m used to driving fast and wasting a lot of gas, but those days are just about over. Money’s not the issue, but nonetheless it’s starting to not work for me any more, especially since I have a nagging environmental conscience guilting me into taking the subway or riding my bike. Sad that the only way we’ll be getting that kind of thrill any more is tethered to a joystick looking at a screen. Anyway, here’s a song to help me and my fellow sociopaths deal with the last dying days of the internal combustion engine era. You can listen to it while mowing innocent people down in GTA V, if you ever get in: https://soundcloud.com/biff-thuringer/automobile

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