UFC Undisputed 3 Online Problems Continue

Though still hoping to get enough opportunity to craft full online impressions for Friday the servers for UFC Undisputed 3 are making that a difficult proposition. Online play has been completely down at times whether on the Xbox 360 or PS3 – and as detailed yesterday many other problems have been encountered even when online has been accessible. 

The latest statement from THQ: 

We are fully aware of the intermittent server crashes being experienced online right now, our team is working steadfast to address. We hope to have some resolve shortly here.

ONLINE MODES ARE UP AND RUNNING, GET IN THERE!

Thank you for your patience in the first 24-hours of our launch. We’ve successfully re-enabled all online modes and features including Ranked Play, Fight Camps, Leaderboards, and all Content Sharing. In short – everything is open and should be working successfully for you on both XBOX 360 and PS3. Please be aware, as is always the case with a new online system and increased player load throughout this week and the days ahead, there is potential for intermittent online issues to occur. We have a team monitoring 24/7 and will be keeping a sharp eye to ensure a great online experience for everyone. Thank you for your understanding of this.Specifically for DISCONNECTS, here is the current situation:

– We fully recognize this is a growing issue within ranked play and are currently working on a solution. If you experience persistent disconnects or loss of connection to your opponent, we strongly recommend you reboot your console. This will decrease the likelihood of encountering consecutive disconnects. In the meantime, we are working on a fix to address. In regards to further issues we are currently addressing, please note:

– With our new online platform and the high traffic load we anticipate hitting the online Octagon this week and the weeks ahead, we will be constantly tuning our servers to accomodate. In light of this, when you are attempting to access anything related to content sharing, fight camps, or leaderboards, you may experience 10-20% of the time a “server is unavailable” message. As we continue to improve our load balance, this will as well. Ranked play and custom matches should function near 100%. If in the event you encounter this message, please retry. We do not anticipate this issue being consistent with your experience, but will keep you updated and monitor the traffic and content sharing load in order to keep our server balance effective.

Depending on perspective there is reason to be either optimistic or pessimistic. On the plus side is that communication has drastically improved from UFC 2010 where disastrous online (and a cover-up of an ‘Online Pass’ program) was met with silence from THQ that forced gamers to tweet Dana White out of desperation. The online beta hopefully helped to better prepare them for this situation and they did invest in their own servers which was long overdue.

THQ absolutely has to deliver a positive experience with UFC 3 as they can’t afford to have a core franchise tarnished and its likely the UFC will be on them hard behind the scenes to get things up to par. However some will remain discouraged because online really didn’t improve with the first two UFC titles and neither have the servers with WWE 12 following months of problems and unfulfilled promises of them being rectified.

Unfortunately this coming about was completely predictable. The question is how much better will things get in the coming days. If it takes longer than that to see significant improvement providing true stability it may simply be too late for a franchise and company that can’t afford to lose the faith of any more consumers.