In case you’re unaware, this year we received a full 3D remake of the first Wizardry game, Wizardry: Proving Grounds of the Mad Overlord, originally released in 1981. I’ve heard very little talk about the game but it sits at ‘very positive’ on Steam and if I had the time, I’d be playing it right now. Luckily, to tide my lust for dungeon crawling and party management over, Studio 2PRO and DRECOM released a Wizardry gacha game called WizardryVariants Daphne. I like gacha games but I really hate gaming in landscape mode on my phone, it’s just not how I want to hold my phone. Wizardry Variants Daphne though, is gacha in portrait mode. Be still my beating heart! On the 15th of October, at 11:30 pm PT, Wizardry Variants Daphne released to over 300,000 pre-registered users, netting some great rewards to those who signed up. Roughly an hour later, connection issues began.
Wizardry Variants Daphne boasts a full 3D environment, five classes, four races, and a familiar story. You know the one, about how every century this horrible abyss opens up and a warlock devours everyone unless the current king goes in and seals the dungeon. But what should happen if the king goes missing in the abyss? Well, I daresay it behooves the local constabulary to hire some local adventurers to get to the bottom of this mystery, as well as the abyssal dungeon. And given the brutal nature of the Wizardry games, it likely won’t be pretty.
I actually got to play a little bit of the game before the connection issues started in earnest. You take on the role of an adventurer who dies in the abyss and is resurrected unceremoniously. Once regaining consciousness you’re told by a girl, who only you can see, that you look like a guul. Soon you learn that you have the power to rebuild things that have been destroyed and resurrect those that have been slain recently. Once out of the abyss, you’re able to use your ability to turn the gacha as it were. By resurrecting people from bones you find in the dungeon and fixing broken gear you’re able to get new adventurers to join your party and new equipment.
By 1:45 AM PT, the Wizardry Variants Daphne X account had announced emergency maintenance. Their claim was simple, they’re ‘addressing a problem.’ Hilariously, most of the responses to this news are about not being able to change the voice language without changing the application language. It’s true, the only option for changing language changes the language throughout the whole application. I’m fine with that, but it feels like there’s a very vocal minority that is not happy with that. True enough, most of the people I know who play Japanese games do so with Japanese voices and English text. It’s a little surprising to see this type of thing get overlooked.
It’s now 5:15 AM PT, and the Wizardry Variants Daphne X account has announced that maintenance is ending soon. So far, not a big deal. Down for about four hours is not really a big deal in the modern age of online gaming. Hell, I spent 3 days rolling new characters and trying to get into servers on the World of Warcraft launch in 2004, my kingdom for a 4-hour downtime. At 5:35 AM PT, maintenance officially ended, and as a token of their appreciation for the wait, 400 Gem of Org. Not gacha currency but the free currency acquired in the game, and worth something. All appears to be well, for about two hours.
7:33 AM PT, another Notice of Emergency Maintenance goes up. We will be conducting another emergency maintenance to address the communication problem. You will not be able to log in during the maintenance. Along with comments addressing the lack of a Japanese dub for English users, people seem generally understanding. I should note that the backend of Wizardry Variants Daphne is handled in Japan, and all of these maintenance notices come with schedules in JST. Worst of all, the period scheduled doesn’t have an end time. By 9:20 AM PT, we received notice that the emergency maintenance was going indefinitely, the end time is currently undetermined, and they apologize for the inconvenience.
As someone invested in playing this game, I was periodically checking throughout the day. I’m an older gamer so I know these things aren’t resolved immediately and it’s not like I don’t have other things I could be doing. But checking throughout the day is a fun little reminder about the trials and tribulations of game development. And as morning turns to evening, the ongoing emergency maintenance is still ongoing. We got an update at 6:02 PM PT, emergency maintenance is still ongoing, and the cause of the error has been identified. I’ll post a link to the tweet here, but it’s fairly transparent if watered down information. Most importantly though, still no end time scheduled.
Finally, at 10:05 PM PT, emergency maintenance ended. The team believes they’ve resolved the issue and the game is now up to play. Nearly 23 hours after launch, Wizardry Variants Daphne can be played. I’m sure some of you have worked through emergencies, whether a product you support had an issue or a critical system was down, maybe a high-profile client was upset and all hands were on deck, it’s not very fun at the moment. Even if you’re one of those people who lives for those moments, it’s pretty hectic while it’s happening. I’m really hopeful that the team behind Wizardry Variants Daphne is getting the rest they deserve after the madness they went through on October 15th.
As for me, I had a very regular day, woke up to see emergency maintenance was over, and got a few hours in early this afternoon. We were given a total of 2400 Gem of Orgs for our trouble and an Adventurer’s Passport, which is an item that gives extra experience gain among various other buffs for 3 days. I’m having a lot of fun playing through Wizardry Variants Daphne and the production quality is top-notch. More importantly, I get a little’ nostalgia bump for free when I’ve got a free few minutes throughout the day. I might hop on and play some right no- oh, darn, the game’s in maintenance again.
