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GTA Online is a shambles. And that's not always a criticism. The disorder is part of what makes it so entertaining; you've played better driving games and better shooters, but everything in Los Santos is so gloriously chaotic and unpredictable that it's no surprise many people are persevering with it - despite myriad issues that would bulldoze just about any other online game. When it works, it's often a joy.The problem is that most of the time, it doesn't work. I'm not sure I've spent any 48-hour period of my life tutting and sighing as often as I did during my first two days with the PS3 version. Half the time I was completely unable to get in. The other half saw the game hang while loading the tutorial mission or kick me out as my character approached the car you're supposed to complete it in. When I finally connected, I was forced to repeat the tutorial missions three times and had to sit through the intro seven times. I've lost six characters to date, tens of thousands of dollars of in-game cash, and it's corrupted my single-player save twice (an issue that, thankfully, seems to have been resolved).
I can deal with the connection problems. Those are to be expected in the early online days of a game that is already one of the biggest sellers of all time. The lost progress? Not so much. There's been a weird reluctance in some quarters to take Rockstar to task over this, the problems written off as 'hitches' and 'niggles'. But I've spoken to people who've ploughed dozens of hours into the game and have lost their progress entirely. Level 40 characters: gone. $150,000 savings: vanished. No one should be losing hours of effort like this, but sadly it's to be expected when a developer launches an online game of this scale and scope without extensive beta testing.
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