Grand Theft Auto V's multiplayer, Grand Theft Auto Online, went live this morning for the PS3 and Xbox 360. Unsurprisingly, the deluge of people trying to play has immediately caused a range of problems that Rockstar Games is trying to fix.
Selecting the bottom character on the character wheel successfully launches GTA Online and the character creation system the first time but it is after your online persona is created that things start to go wrong either with the game crashing out of multiplayer or users getting stuck on a loading screen. Officially, Rockstar Games lists the following as the known issues that it is currently trying to fix with GTA Online.
- Occasional "Rockstar Cloud Servers Unavailable" error message
- Freezing sometimes while loading into first race in GTAO with "waiting for other players" on the screen
- Intermittent "Failed to Host a GTA Online Session" error messages
- Race Corona (start area, marker) occasionally not showing up for first race
Some GTA V players have reported success in starting a "solo" multiplayer game by pressing start to bring up the game's menu and going to the "Online" tab. Once there, select the solo option and then start a multiplayer game by selecting the bottom character on the character wheel.
However, even playing in "solo" multiplayer isn't all peaches and cream as some users are reporting getting kicked out of multiplayer after trying to start a job.
Grand Theft Auto V set sales records when it was released on Sept. 17 and the delay of the multiplayer by two weeks was thought to be a way for Rockstar Games to gauge how much capacity it would need to support for the initial rush of players online. It appears that their best estimates fell well short of the mark which is actually par for the course with online games it seems.
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