Even if it’s a niche product within our niche gaming sphere, you still have to feel bad for Embers Adrift and its apparent bouts of random bad luck when it comes to third-party services. And while the MMORPG’s latest SNAFU isn’t nearly as bad as the one that literally screwed the studio out of money, a hardware failure and some subsequent bad news has not been welcome either.
Problems began this past Monday, when the developer announced plans for custom GM events, but a day after, the game was suddenly knocked offline. Thus began a string of updates as Stormhaven Studios attempted to work with its data center staff to brings things back up. “This will likely mark our longest unscheduled outage in the game’s 4 year history. So much for ‘the cloud,’” remarked the devs.
At last, a more concrete announcement was shared later that Tuesday afternoon: The motherboard on a zone server box had died, which took the MMO’s data service provider too long to diagnose, and the provider also didn’t have another mobo they could fit into the machine. That said, the provider did confirm that it was having a new motherboard sent overnight, meaning the game should have been back online by Wednesday.
But then more bad news landed in the lap of Stormhaven and Embers players. “Overnight shipping apparently did not mean what they thought it meant,” the devs announced on Wednesday afternoon. “Motherboard will not arrive until tomorrow, so we have hit worst case scenario of getting the game back up on Thursday.” That day also came and went, again with no word of the MMO’s return.
Finally, this past Friday, Stormhaven gleefully reported that Embers was back. As recompense for the issues, all active subscriptions were granted seven free days, new players who were still in the free trial sub period would also get that trial extended by the same length of time, and every character logging in would be fully rested and have a full ember stone. And, of course, the GM event also went off without a hitch. We do love a happy ending.
