Installing AO on a new machine

[Tommara3]

I have a new machine, and finally decided to put AO on it, even though I haven't played for awhile, just in case I felt like playing.

I started with a disk I received when I signed up for a second account, having loaned my original disk to a friend to try out.

Of course, I ran into a problem with patching (infinite looping) but despite knowing darn well the work around, I wasn't interested enough at that time to fool with it.

I'm downloading the manual patches now, but still not sure if I'm interested in playing.

Just a thought, but if the patching problems wasn't worth fooling with for me, even though I knew the answer, how do brand new players feel when it happens to them? How many give up and move on to something else?

BTW, I haven't seen my friend in AO (if he'd made it, he would have called me and asked me where in the heck I was). He's an avid gamer who was feeling desperately bored with EQ, so desparate he came to my house looking for a copy of the first Warcraft.

I think you may be losing a lot of potential customers with this type of thing.

[____________Dominata]

There is never a time when you are as forgiving with a games problems as at the beginning, while you are still looking forward to playing. If you quit once out of boredom it is much less likely that you have the patience and forgiveness to do it all over again.
I do not think anyone buys a game and never plays it if they do not have it up and running in two minutes.

Even so, it gives a bad first impression of the game and it should be fixed. The best way would probably be to let the player know that there is a better way of patching then the autopatcher. This could easily be done through a pop-up window offering both ways but still letting us know that there is a faster and more secure way than the default.