Finally, at approximately 10:04 a.m. (Pacific time) registration started, but it came with another unnecessary stumbling block. “Halo3.com,” where the instructions said to go sign up, did not change at all. You could patiently wait all day, refreshing every 2 seconds, and never know that registration had zoomed past you. Halo3.com kept its stoic flash animation with a link to another page that had “all the facts” on the Halo 3 beta… including the “fact” that Halo3.com was where you should head to register.
The “all the facts” page was the one to inform people that it was time and at first the link to the registration page was in black text… on a black background. I can hardly believe I was lucky enough to head to the information page AND notice that anything had changed.
Regardless, enough people were still paying close enough attention to crash the registration page within 10 minutes. Yes, even Microsoft faces the “Amazon problem” of driving thousands of people to a single page that has to interact with a database only to be completely overwhelmed.
Really, three things should never have happened:
- The time for registration should have been given upfront.
- The page for registering should have been clearly identified.
- The registration page should have been obviously updated when the time came.
- Prepare your servers for the wave of visitors you know is coming (although I’m not sure this is even possible).
Try a little harder next time, please? There’s no reason to inflict any more than the minimum amount of pain on gamers hungry for any taste of Halo 3.
