It's been approximately one week since I've been able to play without login queues, lag, disconnections and the like. I thought I'd weigh in on the topic.
Obviously as a player being unable to play the game is disappointing. I want to play on my schedule, and if the game is consistently unavailable I'm bound to grow restless. I personally will stick around regardless because I'm heavily invested in the game, but other players might take the opportunity to find something else to play.
Situations such as these represent a significant problem for companies looking to use the Internet itself as a form of DRM. Any time there is unexpected or inconvenient downtime player retention and opinion will suffer. Convincing players that they, and not the company's interests, are being served by games being online only is as of yet an unfulfilled challenge.
Riot isn't the only company that grapples with this issue; Blizzard has faced significant criticism for the extremely shaky launch of Diablo 3. Riot, however, has the advantage of a game which all but requires other people to play. So long as Riot resolves this problem soon it's unlikely they'll have any long term problems as a result.
Still, for a patch to cause such severe problems twice is a bad sign. It will be interesting an infuriating to see how much longer these matters take to resolve.
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