Apex Legends Season 9, Legacy, is in full swing. With it arrived a brand new game mode, the fresh Bocek Bow… and some of the worst server issues the game has experienced for some time.
The server problems have meant the community dialogue has mostly been focused on the poor performance of the game rather than the new content.
To prevent further @playapex issues, we're planning limited (under 30 mins) service downtime starting tonight at 11:30pm PT.
During this period you should be able to matchmake and play, but store and inventory services will appear offline and non-base Legends will appear locked.
— Respawn (@Respawn) May 6, 2021
There were numerous issues over the first three days of the season launch, including total crashes, the “No server found” issue and the removal of player’s items and unlocked legends.
It is by far one of the worst launches to a season Apex has had. There are always problems at the beginning of a season when the player numbers are high, but this time around has been particularly bad.
Season 9 is one of the largest ever for Apex: servers are live on Switch, Xbox, PlayStation, and Steam. The game even hit a massive 300,000 concurrent players on Steam.
Respawn and EA couldn’t have picked a worse time for their servers to collapse. The exact causes of the server outages are not known. Respawn recently went into some detail about their work into improving the server performance, but it seems we’re not quite there yet.
However, at the time of writing, it appears the servers have returned to normal after overnight maintenance. Servers went down for approximately 30 minutes and are now back up.
So far, so good.
Despite the server problems, Season 9 of Apex has generally been well-received. Arenas is a great game mode with massive potential for ranked queues in a few updates time. Once new maps are added into rotation Arenas will become a staple of Apex. Not everyone wants to play Battle Royale all the time.
The Bocek is admittedly very strong. There will be genuine questions about whether the gun will receive a nerf in the next patch. Despite the fact it’s OP, the weapon is great for the game. It’s unique, and a testament to the continual innovation of the Respawn team. Expect a bow to be added to Fortnite in the coming weeks.
Lastly, Season 9 of Apex looks to be filled with more events, limited-time cosmetics, and of course, another Collection Event in the coming weeks. It’s another busy year for the game just doesn’t seem to slow down.
