What do you want to know?
- The First Descendant is a brand new MMORPG shooter that is making waves in the video gaming community.
- However, on the second day of its official release, The First Descendant’s servers encountered numerous issues.
- Many players have reported not being able to connect to the game at all, and others have reported sporadic disconnections even in the middle of missions.
- After several outages and two server maintenance periods, it appears that The First Descendant is finally back (and players are being compensated for the inconvenience).
Updated, July 3, 2024 — Updated now that the second round of server maintenance for The First Descendant has completed.
The First Descendant was mostly unplayable for the entirety of its second day, but the server issues have (hopefully) been fully resolved by now. Nexon has completed its second round of server maintenance on the game and The First Descendant is back online. I can confirm that you can connect without any lag or latency.
As compensation for today’s downtime, Nexon is offering all players who log in within the next five days a 3-day bonus collection with 30% gold, Kuiper Shard, Descendant XP, and Weapon XP gains. Players can claim their compensation rewards from the HQ mailbox, and the bonuses will activate immediately after the exchange.
Hopefully, day three will go much better for The First Descendant, who need a solid win to secure a healthy future. If you want to get all the details on the whole situation as it happened, our Original article and updates continue directly below.
Server maintenance has ended and the game is now available. We apologize for the inconvenience caused by the extended maintenance and have prepared compensation. For more details: https://t.co/BIpy88Rx2j■ Maintenance End07/03 (Wed) 20:25 PDT…July 4, 2024
Updated, July 3, 2024 — Updated with The First Descendant server issues reappearing.
If you’re reading this, you’re probably like me: you’re still experiencing server issues with The First Descendant. Nexon has warned that there will be server instability for a while once the game goes live again, but players (including myself) are experiencing more than just instability. The previous server connection issue that prevented players from getting past the main menu is rearing its ugly head once again.
Hopefully this is just a temporary side effect of all the work Nexon had to do on The First Descendant servers today, and that our hours of (unintentional) patience will result in healthier, more stable servers in the future. For now, though, it looks like The First Descendant’s second day is going to be dominated by outages and server issues, with players once again prevented from setting foot in Ingris.
Updated, July 3, 2024 — Updated now that The First Descendant servers are starting to come back online.
The Descendants have been waiting a long time to resume the war against the Vulgus, and it looks like the gates are starting to open again. Nexon’s First Descendant team has confirmed that the servers are back online and players will be able to attempt to log in again, but there is a caveat.
According to Nexon, the issue with Microsoft’s Azure network is still not 100% resolved, so some players may still experience server instability when playing The First Descendant. Thankfully, these issues are rare and will be resolved quickly. Regardless, it looks like we’re finally on the other side of The First Descendant’s first descent into server hell.
(Update) 07/03 (Wednesday) Game Connection Issues Notice # PDT 2024.07.03 (Wednesday) 12:05 – Server is now open. MS network is not fully restored, you may experience unstable server statusJuly 3, 2024
Updated, July 3, 2024 — Updated with a new review from The First Descendant team at Nexon.
A few hours later, we finally have our first update from The First Descendant team at Nexon. According to the update (which you can see below), the server outages that are still affecting the game are “primarily due” to an error in Microsoft’s network. The use of the word “primarily” suggests that there may be other issues that need to be addressed as well.
As for the rest of the update, it stands to reason that The First Descendant uses Microsoft Azure for its server infrastructure (alongside hundreds of other games, companies, and products). Apparently, an external issue there is contributing to The First Descendant’s server going down. The Nexon team is apparently waiting for this issue to be fixed by Microsoft.
It is unclear if this is related to yesterday’s Xbox Network server outage, linked directly below.
(Update) 07/03 (Wednesday) Game Connection Issues Notice# PDT 2024.07.03 (Wednesday) 00:00 – We have found that the connection issue is mainly caused by MS network error and we are waiting for MS to recover. We will inform you once the situation is restored.July 3, 2024
Updated, July 3, 2024 — Updated with the latest development that The First Descendant is going into “maintenance mode”.
Just so you don’t think I’ve abandoned you, here’s a quick update on The First Descendant’s server outage. The game has been in official maintenance mode initiated by the Nexon team for a while now, so you can’t even access the main menu.
This offline maintenance mode is an intentional decision by Nexon, and will likely continue until all back-end server issues have been resolved, at which point the game will return online.
Updated, July 3, 2024 — Updated with response from The First Descendant team.
Time for a quick update! Less than five minutes after this post was published, The First Descendant team at Nexon posted an update on Twitter (or X, whatever) acknowledging the ongoing server issues, so we’re officially not hallucinating the outage. It looks like the team is investigating the cause and working on a fix – hopefully we won’t have to wait long before the servers are back online.
We have noticed that game connections are temporarily unavailable. ■ Details – Game Connection ErrorWe apologize for the inconvenience this error may cause. We are working quickly to identify the cause and resolve it. Once the issue is resolved, we will notify you promptly. pic.twitter.com/Qk98RZUhFBJuly 3, 2024
It seemed, for a moment, that The First Descendant would narrowly avoid the near-inevitable launch-day problems that plague many major multiplayer games, but the effect has only been delayed. We’re now on day two of the co-op shooter’s existence, and the servers have suddenly taken a turn for the worse, rendering many Descendants completely unable to enter Ingris.
To be precise, players who are starting the game for the first time are encountering an endless, repeating error code when trying to connect to the game’s servers for the first time and are unable to get through to the main menu. Players who were in the game, even in the middle of a mission, have been experiencing sudden disconnections, leaving them in the same places as players who were logging in for the first time today. It’s unclear if all players are affected, but the outage is evident on social media (and it’s also affected the Windows Central team).
For now, we’re waiting for either the server issues to resolve themselves, or for The First Descendant team at Nexon to acknowledge the issues and start looking for a solution. So far, neither has happened, and we’re not aware of any workarounds that can bypass the server outage.
We’ll keep you updated on the situation, as we’re also very interested in joining the fray. You can check out some of The First Descendant’s other known issues and launch bugs for other problems players are experiencing, but none are as serious as a full-scale server outage.
Honestly, I expected server issues to arise sooner or later, so as long as The First Descendant team works diligently and transparently to restore the game, it won’t hurt The First Descendant’s chances of becoming one of the best Xbox games. It’s frustrating, though, considering the Xbox network just suffered an outage yesterday.
When The First Descendant goes live again, be sure to check out our guide to setting up cross-play and cross-save in The First Descendant so you can play with your friends. If this is your first time logging in, you might want to check out our The First Descendant character tier list or even our general The First Descendant FAQ.
The servers may be down right now, but The First Descendant is now available on Xbox Series X|S or Xbox One, Windows PC via Steam, or PlayStation 5 or 4, and you can download it for free on the Microsoft Store (Xbox).