Tiny Tina's Wonderlands multiplayer, including hyped crossplay, busted for weeks

Picture:  Gearbox

Borderlands games are always best enjoyed with friends, so it's a shame players of the latest entry, The wonders of Tiny Tina , had to fly solo, at least if they try to play online or use the ballyhooed crossplay feature. Over the past two weeks, the latest in Gearbox's loot shooter series has been experiencing some serious server issues. 

It’s not exactly a surprise; Launched online multiplayer games in various states of “busted” All the timeand the Borderlands series itself doesn’t have the best track record. But that’s a bit different from your typical case of server issues. For one thing, of course, while the servers are down, they’re not engulfed in a five-alarm fire generating headlines like how launch windows for, say, Riders Where Devil III were famous. On the other hand, while the issues persist, the game’s official channels have been suspiciously quiet on the matter.

The wonders of Tiny Tinawhich released late last month on Xbox, PlayStation and PC, is the first Borderlands game to launch with full crossplay. Like previous Borderlands games, The wonders of Tiny Tina facilitates online groups through Gearbox’s proprietary online service, Change. You can also use the service to redeem “Shift Codes,” single-use tokens that award you a rare piece of in-game gear. (A good soul has assembled a Twitter bot which announces availability and releases Shift codes.) You can monitor the status of Shift through its official Twitter account.

On March 25, Wonderland‘ official launch day, the account Noted how even though players may see a notification that they have been disconnected from Shift, they are fine; it’s just an errant pop-up. Three hours later, Gearbox said it noticed “reports” of “instability” and spent the next few days the Chronicle its efforts to improve functionality. March 29, Gearbox rolled out an update intended to resolve crashes on all platforms. As of March 31, the studio noted that “most players” are in the clear, with “limited instances of disconnections” during the world’s worst vacation.

“We have seen reports of players disconnecting from online play,” bed the account’s most recent tweet, posted on April 2. “If these issues persist, please restart your game!” »

Unfortunately, restarting your game doesn’t always seem to do the trick. In response to the account’s tweet, players say reboots don’t fix connectivity issues, and when they do, it’s only a temporary balm. (Amusing aside: a player even underline how they couldn’t evenn submit a ticket via the Shift support page.) On the game’s subreddit, there is a thread, closing in on 1,000 comments, where players empathize that they can’t play with friends online. Connection issues seem to be more acutely felt during cross-play sessions, but navigation is still not smooth with traditional matchmaking on the same platform.

Earlier this week, for example, I partied with my colleague Zack Zwiezen, we both play on Xbox Series X with wired connections. We got through about 75% of the tutorial segment before Zack vanished into the ether. We couldn’t restart a match for the rest of the evening. Zack also told me how he encountered serious cross-play issues while playing with his fiancée, on PC and Xbox. They often can’t start a match, he said, despite both playing on the same modem. On the rare occasion that they can start one, it’s a lag and out of sync AF. Zack told me how a player would kill enemies, watch them die, and have them respawn as if nothing had happened.

Hey, at least there’s a split screen!

Gearbox representatives declined to answer questions about the case and directed Kotaku to the Change Twitter account status in place.    

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