When I reviewed Order & Chaos Online last week, I didn’t beat around the bush – I called it the single best Xbox Windows Phone game. No other game compares in scale, depth, or online multiplayer functionality. But that doesn’t mean it’s a perfect game, either. Like any big game it suffers from an assortment of bugs and glitches.
On Friday, Gameloft published what will hopefully be the first of many Order & Chaos Online updates. This particular update (which requires users to redownload the full 1012 MB game) doesn’t fix all of the known bugs, but at least it’s a start. Head past the break for details!
A ubiquitous patch
Order & Chaos Online is a paid game, but it also contains a shop that sells nothing but premium items. Hey, that’s how you make a game with more content than practically every retail Xbox 360 game and only charge seven bucks for it – you offset it with In-App Purchases. Dedicated players don’t mind the IAPs – they allow them to get special things that casual gamers won’t care about.
The problem at launch was the premium shop, run by a non-player character named Ubiquitous Nick, was broken on multiple levels. After choosing to access the shop by talking to Nick in a town or pressing the Nick’s Shop button from the player menu, the shop front displayed at a gigantic, non-resizable resolution that made browsing extremely difficult. Not only that, but actual purchases were impossible to make out.
Ubiquitous Nick's shop at launch
Considering that Ubiquitous Nick is a major part of the game’s monetization strategy, it should come as no surprise that Gameloft rushed to fix Nick’s shop in the version 1.1 update. The shop now displays at a much more reasonable resolution, and several users have been able to successfully buy Nick’s wares.
Halfway fixed
Ubiquitous Nick's shop after the version 1.1 update
Welcome as it is, the patch appears to have been something of a rush job because Nick’s shop still has issues. The images that make up the shop, including menu items, background, and purchasable items, may or may not actually show up when you visit it. I couldn’t get a screenshot with all images displaying properly for this article. Additionally, the items within the shop are not categorized properly.
Given Gameloft’s track record with updates, it’s hard to say whether they’ll return to Nick’s shop once again and fix it all the way. When Ice Age Village launched with broken social features, Gameloft put out a quick update that kinda-sorta fixed the problem, but not really – and that was the last update we’ve seen for it so far.
However, Order & Chaos Online is a higher profile release than Ice Age Village. Besides, as an MMORPG (Massively Multiplayer Online RPG) Order & Chaos depends on a stream of future updates in order to keep players invested and spending money.
We can reasonably expect that Gameloft will add new content to it someday (such as the update that raises the level cap from 60 to 70). Hopefully at that point (if not much sooner), the publisher will properly fix Nick’s shop, the Relic’s Keep dungeon, and any other issues that continue to vex players.
Back to the adventure
Don’t let the critical nature of this article scare you away from Order & Chaos Online. Nick’s shop is important, but only to a relatively small portion of the user base. The bugs I’ve encountered do nothing to deter my enthusiasm for the game. If you’re an active player too, don’t forget to stop by the WPCentral Guild forum thread and see about joining our guild!
Order & Chaos Online – Windows Phone 8 with 1 GB RAM – 1012 MB - $6.99 – Store Link
