FFXIV's subscriber base may never hit the heights World of Warcraft did in its heyday, but you'll never have to wait too long to group up with strangers.
Even though I started at the crack of dawn on the West Coast, it only took ten minutes and forty seconds for Final Fantasy XIV to group me together with three other people for the sake of running a dungeon. Selecting this option essentially drops you into a random dungeon you've already completed, and scales you down appropriately so many options are available. (I've had to wait upwards of two hours to take on some of the post-game challenges as a Dragoon, for instance.) So, for this experiment, I chose "Duty Roulette - Leveling" as my multiplayer mode of choice. If, like me, you're playing a DPS role, the sheer number of other players doing the same means you're not really in demand. If you want to jump into a Final Fantasy XIV multiplayer session, many more variables come into play. Consumers must be getting a lot more savvier, though, since not even the connection to a popular mega-franchise can give Umbrella Corps enough of an audience to function as intended-on the PC, at least.įinal Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn (PC) - 00:10:40 It's not entirely surprising, given Umbrella Corps' poor word of mouth, but I assumed the whole Resident Evil connection would at least lead to a single roomful of poor souls who purchased it outright. That's not to say it was totally dead, though: Over the course of those 120 minutes, three or four people trickled in, but eventually trickled back out as soon as it was evident the room wasn't likely to fill before sundown. Even after playing all of the tutorials, I can't actually tell you how Umbrella Corps holds up, since two hours of waiting in a public lobby yielded not a single multiplayer session. Unfortunately, we have to start with the saddest entry. Umbrella Corps (PC) - 2:00:00 (No Results) Granted, this might not be the most scientifically sound experiment, but it should prove that, just a little over a week after releasing, Umbrella Corps is essentially D.O.A.īetter get used to staring at this screen, since it's essentially the core Umbrella Corps experience. And, for the sake of fairness, I opted for the most instant, potentially populous online mode with each game. With my stopwatch app at the ready, I timed how long it took from the point where I triggered online functionality to when I could actually begin controlling my character. This morning, I jumped into all of the multiplayer games I currently have installed-new and old-to test just how dead Umbrella Corps truly is. So, I decided to conduct a little experiment after waiting in an empty lobby for 30 minutes last night. Unfortunately, for an online multiplayer game to work, other people kinda have to be playing it. To cap off this week, I originally planned to write up some impressions of the recently released Umbrella Corps.