News about Excalibur and some other things.

Hi everyone,

I can't create a new account on Barrysworld so I'll have to post any information I get here. If people can tell everyone else that this will be the place where I'll be posting last minute news then that would be great.

Excalibur is now back up and Zargar is posting a news on the homepage about it. Later on this afternoon we'll post another news explaining what exactly has happened but most importantly what is being done to make sure that it doesn't happen again.

I now have all the phone numbers that I need to be able to keep the community up to date with any developments and am working on ways in which I can be informed immediately of any problems on the English speaking servers. This will most likely be by handing out my phone number to the members of the E&E team so they can call me at anytime. I'm only human and can't be monitoring both servers 24/7. The admins will also have my number but often the players will know of problems before they do.

I hope this helps put some of your concerns at rest, but rest assured that you are not alone now and that I will do my utmost best to keep you informed and the servers running as smoothly as possible.



Now some information about me, as I think it's necessary for you to see me as a real person and not just another faceless image from GOA. I'm 23 years old, I live in France (was born there too) but I did all my education in England from the age of 7 onwards. I have a degree in Computer Science and was hired by GOA several months ago to be part of the Storyline team. It is only recently (read: yesterday) that I have asked to be able to post news on the official homepage and be in contact with the server admins. It is not my official job, I don't get paid anything extra and I work from home out of office hours.

I love DAoC, I play it every day as I have done since the beta and I will continue to do so until either it or me goes down finally. I play on Excalibur almost exclusively though I do have characters on Prydwen too. If some of you have realised who I play through the information I've given you, I'd appreciate that you keep it to yourself. When I'm I play I'm just like any other player and I don't want to be burried under hundreds of questions and complaints. I am NOT a GM and so do not interfere with the day to day running of the servers, that's Kemor's and Zargar's jobs.

If you do have questions you wished answered then don't hesitate to post them here. You can also contact me at erivoss@goa.com and I'll answer any "sensible" questions you have. Whines and flames will just get you puton /ignore. Remember, there are some things that I'm simply not allowed to tell you, for security reasons (like the exact architecture of our system for example) and some things that I simply do not know (like the exact architecture of our system infact).

That about sums it up for the moment, again if you could tell people on barrysworld and any other forums that this will be my home I'd appreciate it.

Thanks for your time reading this, watch the official webpage for the news about Excalibur.

[GOA]Erivoss said:

I'm only human and can't be monitoring both servers 24/7.

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This is a big point, up until now all we get is the odd two line message explaining/apologising away whatever recent problem has been created. It is this that disgruntles the majority of people, not the actual problem.

If we will be seeing more of a human side to GOA then this will be a huge step in the right direction.

Welcome to Freddyshouse

EDIT: Also I'd PM a mod here, to see about getting you an official title instead of 'pawn'. Anyone can come here and claim to be from GOA...

What he said^^. Its not realy the problem, Well it is to some degree. But the little info we are given lead us to think we are being ignored.


On a side note. You seem to be the shot in the arse the GoA front needs, GoA Pay this man NOW!!! (double ) If you can survive the standard whines, flames, and genral bitching, You'll find some of us nice poeple. (honest )

GL and Welcome to FH

appreciate it, Erivoss
happy to see some info at last =)

Edit:

[GOA]Erivoss said:

If some of you have realised who I play through the information I've given you, I'd appreciate that you keep it to yourself.

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I'd just like to ask everyone to respect that. Seems to me Erivoss is doing a community service, and should be honored for that (if not by GOA, then at least by us).

woot our very own Tweety

Welcome to Freddy's House - trying to sort you out a custom title/mod status like kemor/zargar or something

A quick update (not about Excal unfortunately).

The E&E team can now contact me instantly wherever I am. Response time for server problems should be much faster now.

nice one

Very Much appreciated ^^

nice knowing someone cares about what we pay for...

<promises not to spam your mail>

=)

/ Cheer

[GOA]Erivoss said:

The E&E team can now contact me instantly wherever I am.

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Just a quick question - what does E&E stand for?

Eyes and Ears

they're our spies on the servers

Thanks for the information Erivoss and welcome to FH.

So far not too much whiney cobblers here (yet). Guess that'll change when BW shuts down for good though, worse luck.

i agree that alot of the anger people have felt is when confronted with a faceless beurocracy ... Erivos i hope will help sort alot of these feelings out ... but man .... wouldnt want your job for whatever they are or are not paying you lol.

As a final note .. i have played ALOT of MMORPGS .. and 3 crashes in 6 months ... LoL you guys dont know how good you have it .

Of all MMORPGS i played .. this one seems to be the most reliable and have the greatest depth ... however it is true that many recent entries into the genre have died an early death due to bad coding or bad hardware. The fact that DaoC is still here is a testement to the fact that 99 % of the time it works ..... but how often do you email GOA to tell em what a great Job they been doing

[GOA]Erivoss said:

Eyes and Ears

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I would never have thought of that =]
But then again, I am merely a Norsewoman Healer...

Welcome to FH Erivos and kudos for the information

P.s. Dont let the whiny ones get you down... They just dont know better

Welcome to FH. :touch:

Welcome, and thank you for the information. Seems we will have to find something else to whine about now

Its freezing cold here in london .. i mean cant GOA do something about that .... tch

welcome ^^

Welcome

delay said:

I would never have thought of that =]
But then again, I am merely a Norsewoman Healer...

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sometimes called Volunteers too

Welcome Eriovos You will no doubt get a lot of questions sent your way, complete with whines and flames... But welcome!

Definitely what GOA needs - a "face" for us lot - give the man a payrise for wanting to help us out! Would be nice for us to be kept updated and not have to Babelfish the german page to figure what is going on.. If I recall - the servers were upgraded to Bi-Xenon to prevent numbers crashing the server, correct?

Anyways - welcome aboard mate

My 2cents...

What you're doing is great and i really appreciate it... BUT... this represents VERY badly on GOA and especially Kemor and Zargar. Kemor and Zargar's job is to be GM's for both English servers which means they're supposed to keep the community informed at all times, organise events and keep the community happy, they're doing NONE of this. But you e.g. someone that is not being paid for doing this is keeping the community informed.

I seriously think it's time GOA reconsider who they put in as a GM as imo Kemor and Zargar do not deserve their jobs!

welcome Erivoss.

good to see finally someone from GOA is trying to communicate with us

Very nice to hear from you m8,nice to hear from anyone at GOA tbh.And it's very much appreciated that you will take time to keep us informed.
This will go some way to taking the frustration out of server crashes long may it last.

The GMs already have a lot of work on their hands, they handle animations for the players (which involve hours of coding beforehand), they handle RightNow reports specific to the community (harrassment reports, bug abusing reports etc etc), they organise the E&E teams for their servers and generally have plenty more important things to do to keep each server running as smoothly as possible.

I'm just here to help them out the best I can and hopefully reduce the pressure they are under. I'm not doing this because I think they are incapable of doing their jobs but simply because I want to. In my opinion Kemor and Zargar do a very hard job very well and there should be no question about whether or not they are the right people for it.

Like I said in my original post, constructive criticism is more than welcome, mindless flames are not. Oh, and occasionally saying something nice is also very welcome as it boosts our moral and makes us work better.

I'll be posting a news in the next few hours about the general situation of Excalibur so keep an eye on the official homepage.

[GOA]Erivoss said:

The GMs already have a lot of work on their hands, they handle animations for the players (which involve hours of coding beforehand), they handle RightNow reports specific to the community (harrassment reports, bug abusing reports etc etc), they organise the E&E teams for their servers and generally have plenty more important things to do to keep each server running as smoothly as possible.

I'm just here to help them out the best I can and hopefully reduce the pressure they are under. I'm not doing this because I think they are incapable of doing their jobs but simply because I want to. In my opinion Kemor and Zargar do a very hard job very well and there should be no question about whether or not they are the right people for it.

Like I said in my original post, constructive criticism is more than welcome, mindless flames are not. Oh, and occasionally saying something nice is also very welcome as it boosts our moral and makes us work better.

I'll be posting a news in the next few hours about the general situation of Excalibur so keep an eye on the official homepage.

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First off, welcome to FH...
You (read: infomation) have been so very missed for fare to long... Dont know if to much damage have been done allready to correct this... I can live with the missing informations, if you (GOA) have learnt something from it, and are willing to be (/can be) better at it...

DAoC is imo the greatest game iwe played in the genre, GOA's handling of the servers, uptime, patches and support i never had any problems with either... So thanks for all of that...
But imo all that means very little if I dont get any official information when something do go wrong... Please stick to your promis and keep me (and the community) informed... Im not exspecting miracles, but that you will continue at it, even when everything is going greate...

To sum it all up: Givf Info plz !

[GOA]Erivoss said:

Hi everyone,

I can't create a new account on Barrysworld so I'll have to post any information I get here. If people can tell everyone else that this will be the place where I'll be posting last minute news then that would be great.

Click to expand...

Well, as a serious contender of argumentative git of 2003 (I used a diff name on BW) I must say I'm pleased by your post, I hope that we continue to get updates on the status of Xcal.

All the majority of us want is a reliable server, I'm prepared to accept downtime for fixes etc as long as were told about it, my biggest critism of GOA so far is the way the whole "crashing" incidents has been handled, first and foremost you must let people know what is going on.

I'll hang on to other feelings/ideas I have until I can make an education comment, but from this post alone I feel that at least some of the answers are forthcoming.

Welcome.

This is certainly good, and giving bit more personality to the news is something I've been waiting for. Well, not exactly waiting for but thinking about and it's nice to have more of that.

Since sometime ago, Zargar and later Kemor too have started signing the news they post, even small thing like that makes news that much more nicer somehow

Hope E&E's won't wake you up every time loot from some big mob goes under rock in middle of night raid

Erivoss.......this is absolutely a step in the right direction!
Im sure all the current EuroDAoC players welcome this. The kind of info we have gotten today sure beats the hell out of the prior experiences we have from the GOA system. Keep up the good work

/salute

Welcome.

This is certainly A step in the right direction (even if it should have been taken 18 months ago).