Testing the network includes the network not working
After weeks of waiting, players around the world were excited to finally get their hands on FromSoftware's The Duskbloods today. Well, that didn't happen. The first of several planned network test sessions has already been closed after it was plagued by server issues that kept players from logging in.
Players began their attempts to log in to The Duskbloods at 6:00 a.m. EDT this morning. Rather than getting past the title screen, they were met with an error message that read, “Failed to log in to The Duskbloods game server. Select OK to attempt to log in again.” Selecting OK as suggested by the message caused the screen to load for a couple of minutes before it inevitably repeated the same error message. Nearly two hours after the network test session began, FromSoftware posted on its official X account to announce that the session had been closed early due to server issues.
While there has been some frustration among players over the first network test's problems, this could be seen as a success for FromSoftware. Network tests are not primarily being held to give players a first taste of The Duskbloods, rather to let the developer stress test a game's servers prior to launch and make necessary fixes. As this is the very first session, the servers failing tells FromSoftware something important — they don't work!
FromSoftware originally scheduled another session for later today, though it has not clearly addressed whether that will still occur given the current server issues. The second session was slated to begin at 7:00 p.m. EDT. That gives FromSoftware the better part of the day to try and make some fixes to the servers and retest. Players should look out for any official updates on FromSoftware's social media. If today is completely a bust, players should hope for better luck during the remaining sessions from Aug 22-24.