Once upon a time, there was a newly released game.

The balance was great, the graphics were awesome, and all in all the developers agreed they'd done a splendid job.

The players too, actually, until they tried playing online, and... nothing worked.

The developers read and coded, looked over every log they could find, then realized one of the problems was there was large delays processing requests at the server.

After much thinking, one of the developers cried out: "I know, I know, the timestamp differences must come from unsynchronized clocks!". And everyone was happy, because unsynchronized timestamps were nothing they could do anything about.

After much work, some updates and a couple of bee-stings, the system did work, but still people were complaining that starting a match took too long.

So the developers took a second look, and cried out in horror: "Oh no, that really IS a >40 second delay!"

And so they worked, and coded, and it was fixed.

Time passed, and players seemed mostly content, Custom Games working as advertised and matchmaking issues for the most part a thing of the past.

Then one day, someone complained Pantheon wasn't working, uneven teams were made, with people seeming to drop out while loading a game.

The developers read and coded, and looked over every log they could find, then realized there were in fact alot of games starting with less players than their system had originally intended.

After much thinking, one of the developers cried out: "I know, I know, since Pantheon matches players randomly, lots of people must be dropping out so they only end up playing games with those they want to!"

And everyone was happy, because players dropping to get in the right team was nothing they could do anything about...

*** TO BE CONTINUED ***