A troublesome introduction to Fallen Earth

I think I chose a bad night to splurge on a game. I finally broke and decided to buy FE. First, I went to Direct 2 Drive, transferred money online from my bank and went to make the purchase. Transaction failed, contact customer support. I decide that, hm, it was pretty quick after the transfer, maybe the bank’s system isn’t reflecting for purchases yet. I wait a few minutes and try again. Same thing.

Frustrated, I check their help files. Apparantly, my first guess was right. It took a minute for the bank to update; however, even though the funds weren’t there for D2D to complete the purchase, they were apparantly there to hold the funds on. Twice. I saw this kind of thing happen a lot when I worked for Chase. For the next 72 hours, D2D will be holding $108 of my money without providing any form of service. Lame.

So, I go right to the Fallen Earth website and buy directly from them using my PayPal account. Alright, good. Download, download, download, patch, and I’m in. I make the character just fine, then change my mind and decide to make a different one with my usual name, Syeric. All goes well for about the next five minutes. I go through the tutorial, powering along, up until the point where I have to loot the rifle from the first enemy NPC.

And loot I did but for some reason the game didn’t realize it. Alright, I said. Let’s log out, delete the character and try again. I logged out, made the character again and proceeded to get stuck at the “initiating character session” part of the login process. I close the client and reload. Same thing. I close the client, check the forums, and reload. This time, no characters appeared at all! As my dad said from time to time, got dern it!

Maybe it was just bad timing. With my luck today, it’s possible I just logged in right as they were having some problem with the server. I went through Darkfall’s launch, so I’m used to the little quirks indie MMOs tend to have. Still, I have to admit I’m pretty disappointed that I can’t play tonight.

I splurged and everything. 🙁

Ah well. No class until 3:00PM tomorrow, so hopefully I’ll make up that playtime in the morning.

Also, be sure to check back for our next Community Spotlight in the morning!