I’m in! At last. That only took what, three days? Better part of the week? That’s alright Rockstar. I wouldn’t have had much time to play, it being the week and all. Thank you for getting the ball rolling in time for the weekend. The company just announced a GTA Online patch is live for the PlayStation 3 (confirmed), and that it’s working on getting the Xbox 360 version up “as soon as possible” yet today.
On the PS3 side — and this seems to explain the main problem I was having — the company says it discovered a PlayStation Network server issue “that was limiting the amount of possible concurrent users” and that this “was preventing most players from accessing GTA Online altogether.” I’m now able to access the game repeatedly without problem.
During one of the two or three sessions I had managed to make it into the game earlier this week, those cases being instances of the stripped-down solo mode, the game wouldn’t let me past the tutorial race’s startup GUIs, either cycling a “loading” prompt interminably or disconnecting me. Rockstar acknowledges the problem and says it’s “working on unblocking this for everyone as soon as possible.” Mission accomplished, Rockstar, because I just smoked Franklin’s pal Lamar driving a mediocre Declasse Asea sedan during a three miles race around Vinewood.
Rockstar says that things got a little shaky this morning “across the GTA Online services” and that everyone’s impacted, that it’s working on chasing the problems down and that it hopes “to restore stability for users as soon as possible.”
In the meantime, the company says it’s disabled access to real money purchasable GTA bucks, presumably to prevent glitches that might deprive you of your hard-earned real money bucks. Earning GTA bucks vis-a-vis in-game activities is still possible, however.
I can confirm a few remaining glitches: I don’t look like I should, for starters. For whatever reason, GTA Online has the character I made confused with some gangly short dude I’ve never seen before wearing a pinstripe three-piece. And after finishing GTA Online‘s tutorial race, I re-spawned in a car with another car turned upside down and crashed onto the top of mine, followed by about 30 seconds of eerie texture cutout, the byways and buildings of Los Santos reduced to plain polygons, like Michael drug-tripping an instance of Flight Simulator 4.0.
But okay, at least I can play now. “GTA Online Playable” achievement unlocked!