‘The First Descendant’ Servers Remain Offline for Second Difficult Day

The First Descendant had a pretty decent launch on day one, with minimal server issues compared to the broader market for this type of online release. But day two? It was extremely difficult, and the game was down most of the day. Nexon claims that Microsoft servers are mainly to blame.

As of 8pm ET, The First Descendant has been offline for most of the day, going down in the morning, coming back briefly, and then going offline again. That’s where we’re at right now, with the update going into “maintenance” mode as of 5:30pm ET. Three hours later, we still don’t have an end time. Here’s what Nexon had to say about the server issue:

“We found that the connection issue is mainly due to MS network error and we are waiting for MS to recover the situation. We will inform you as soon as the situation is restored.”

This would be the Microsoft Azure servers, where the game is hosted. Xbox Live recently had a long period of downtime over the last day, and I wonder if this could be related. Four hours ago, Nexon said that the MS issue had been opened but “not fully recovered,” and then the game went into maintenance.

It’s a shame, because it disrupted the game’s really solid launch numbers. The First Descendant was on the verge of surpassing its all-time launch-day record right when the server crashed (which may have had something to do with it), and then it almost recovered to that point after a brief comeback. Today, there seem to be around 30,000 players sitting in front of the title screen waiting for it to work. And that’s just on PC, as the game is also widely played on consoles. It broke into the PS5’s top 10, for starters.

It’s of course not unusual for an online game to have a problematic launch and have it fixed. I’m less worried about the downtime than I am about the latency and stability, as it was much harder to play over the last couple of days than other online shooters due to these issues.

I find it rather amusing that Nexon has been handing out “apology” gifts to players for a somewhat rough launch day. These are bonuses that automatically activate upon claiming, but three days of boosted XP and materials are now reduced to two because of these outages. If they’re giving out these kinds of gifts for this, I wonder what players can get for a full day of downtime.

I hope the game will be available online again soon, and certainly tomorrow, July 4th in the US, where people may have more time to play outside of work or school. I’ll update this article with any news.

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