Albion E&E's

[psyco]

That means giving them even more power then a simple "macro" and goes into giving them full GM access. Better give them the ability to be immune from damage as well so they can go right into the encounter and make sure that it isnt just something the players doing wrong... as you can see giving them one ability will mean they need most gm abilities to be able to "fix" the problem how it should be. Will cause alot of trouble all round and i can see reports flying in from people accusing them of abusing features.

sorry, i got a little confuced E&E cant do anything cept from get in contact with a GM, but, problem is if an E&E doesn't know about the bug he cant report it, simerally he is not alowd to tell anyone he is in the E&E team

so, how do we tell an E&E that an enc is bugged, we cant, whats the point?

 

[Golena]

simerally he is not alowd to tell anyone he is in the E&E team

so, how do we tell an E&E that an enc is bugged, we cant, whats the point?

E&E's are perfectly allowed to tell you they are in the E&E team. In fact they are encouraged to let people know that they are E&E's whenever possible.

Maybe I missed your point here?

 

[psyco]

E&E's are perfectly allowed to tell you they are in the E&E team. In fact they are encouraged to let people know that they are E&E's whenever possible.

Maybe I missed your point here?

really? where are they then?

 

[Corran]

really? where are they then?

You can look up all the information on the community website. http://daoc.goa.com/en/

Just click the Volunteers tab.

Albion volunteers

Eyes and Ears from Albion who have agreed to have their names listed :

Prydwen
Lamagra - Ulflam - Icklemonkey - Samal - Ulfin - Lamne
Ailish - Ederillan - Ansetha - Ilhara
Sparda - Dryden - Jayce
Chretien - Abelard - Chanticleer - Bieg - Asgaf
Elanoreth - Dhamon - Jadaar - Linsha - Dezzra

Excalibur
Tilda - Tildai
Arod - Ponies
Xroo - Amaru
Fingoniel - Glamis - Fingzor - Frow
Eggy - Thinky - Okey
Phonic




Midgard volunteers

E&E in the realm of Midgard who agreed to have their name listed :

Prydwen
Tesla - Alkone - Kelmon - Lornah - Veerona
Demrog - Ickle - Ickal - Braeden - Baralis


Excalibur
Jerelyn - Kilix - Ambush - Ditzor - Hexachlorbenzen
Barbait
Whoodoo - Ransid - Whoolock - Apophys - Mastaboofs - Putrid
Cavewark - Mistieral - Augwark - Cursiara
Takhasis - Hartraft - Bilbari - Kirvs
Jadar



Hibernian Volunteers

Eyes and Ears from Hibernia who have agreed to have their names listed :

Prydwen
Norcott - Higolath
Ireth - Moriah
Bastilia
Puppethealer - Pricklesprout - Spinesprout - Spikesprout
Selenia - Selyenora - Lelomara
Satyn - Ellenya - Fleece - Latex


Excalibur
Spardie - Esper -Dryen
Adari - Draakje
Elricstormbringer - Elricess - Twinholes

 

[Aeoric]

According to many people in this game your bank should be hiring someone to periodicly look at your account and check it's all ok tho. The difference in how a bank works is you deal with people that come to you with an issue. Most of the people sounding off here have made no attempt to contact the "bank" but feel they have a valid point.

Imagine if someone was making the point that an ATM machine ate their card, they yelled at the ATM machine for 30 minutes and then went to the pub to tell their best mate that the ATM ate their card. 6 weeks later they went into the bank and shouted that the service provided was crap because the bank hadn't worked out the ATM had eaten their card and supplied them with a new one... Would you really have a good look at your process based on the complaints of that customer, or would you laugh at him over lunch.

More along the lines of - traders buy/sell/speculate

They expect the system to produce them correct PnL, they need to know their positions.

There is a bug, the Trader (user) spots this, calls support, shouts at them, their mothers, their mother's mothers.

The bug gets looked at.

... then ...

The bug gets fixed.
Normal service is resumed.

...or...

The bug doesn't get fixed.
Someone gets fired.

Now, DAoC isn't banking, but it is a Service. It's a service the users pay for. The developers are paid to maintain the system and make sure it's in good working order. Night or Day, 24-7. Again - this isn't banking - but it is a service.

Fundamentally - were I to recieve a budget for this service I provided, based on a maintainence or SLA, I would be remiss in my duties should the level of service drop and no-one was at hand to bring things back up. Furthermore - if no-one in my team were available to respond, there would be serious reprocussions. Enter
Goa <stage left>

I think you're assuming that 6 weeks ago, no-one Rightnow'd the problem, and I am assuming at least one person did. Regardless of whether this was the case or not, no-one was at hand to deal with the problem on Sunday afternoon - that is fact.

Perhaps the suggestion that Zeusver or Calaclya should have RightNow'd the GM's a couple of days beforehand to ensure someone was available on the Sunday was 'realistic', though somewhat sad. One doesn't plan to go riding in motorcross on Sunday, and call the Accident and Emergency ward on Thursday to check if any doctors would be on-call then, just in case something happens.


Btw - it isn't feasible for a 1x GM to check all encounters manually.

Welcome to the world of computers. We use computers every day to make our life easier, to do tons on calculations it would normally take a single person a very long time to do. I'm not saying the ability exists to do this within the current DAoC framework, but a set of routines to check the status of each server (by this I mean software server that is handling a particular zone, not cluster of servers like Excal) isn't exactly hard to write, nor is it likely to have been omitted from the QA tools.

Most especially - if bugs have been reported, you _might_ think that _perhaps_ the GM's _might_ keep an eye on those.

 

[rampant]

Most especially - if bugs have been reported, you _might_ think that _perhaps_ the GM's _might_ keep an eye on those.

AaaaaahhhhhH - i recognise that - its called joined_up_thinking

unfortunately GOA have bigger and better fishes to fry! (like drool / promote over the prospect that is WHO) - so bugs DONT get fixed and things DON'T get looked at (i bet the excuse is that they were all off on a 'jolly' to leipzig - smooching sanya).

anyhow lets hope that 1.84 is the golden grail that they are searching for in terms of bug fixes.

 

[Golena]

I think you're assuming that 6 weeks ago, no-one Rightnow'd the problem, and I am assuming at least one person did. Regardless of whether this was the case or not, no-one was at hand to deal with the problem on Sunday afternoon - that is fact.

Given I rightnowed it on the day of the raid, and the response from the GM I talked to seemed to indicate it hadn't been rightnowed earlier, although I didn't ask directly.. I'm fairly sure no-one had bothered to report it.

One doesn't plan to go riding in motorcross on Sunday, and call the Accident and Emergency ward on Thursday to check if any doctors would be on-call then, just in case something happens.

While i'd expect a doctor to be available if I had a motorcross accident, i'm not sure i'd expect them to be actively looking for me in the middle of the woods where i'd crashed however. Someone would have to actually call the hospital service before they would show up to attend to you. A better way of getting in contact with the GM's for "on the spot emergencies" would be nice.. and that was what the E&E program was originally set up to do.. and something that worked very very well in it's early days when 90% of the time raids could get in contact with a GM within 10 minutes of discovering a bug.

Welcome to the world of computers. We use computers every day to make our life easier, to do tons on calculations it would normally take a single person a very long time to do. I'm not saying the ability exists to do this within the current DAoC framework, but a set of routines to check the status of each server (by this I mean software server that is handling a particular zone, not cluster of servers like Excal) isn't exactly hard to write, nor is it likely to have been omitted from the QA tools.

While Q&A tools might well exist to check encounters automatically, they are unlikely to catch all the bugs that can exist. The stuff that bugs and gets caught before it's found by players is obviously unknown to us, so to say this isn't happening would be a rather large assumption. If an encounter bugs in a way the Q&A tools won't spot, then it really has to be up to the player base to report this. It seems weird that we can't spend 2 minutes doing this, but can spend hours bitching about the lack of service on a forum.

 

[psyco]

While i'd expect a doctor to be available if I had a motorcross accident, i'm not sure i'd expect them to be actively looking for me in the middle of the woods where i'd crashed however. Someone would have to actually call the hospital service before they would show up to attend to you. A better way of getting in contact with the GM's for "on the spot emergencies" would be nice.. and that was what the E&E program was originally set up to do.. and something that worked very very well in it's early days when 90% of the time raids could get in contact with a GM within 10 minutes of discovering a bug.

personally if i was motorscrossing i would expect to end up in hospital before the sun down, however, that is a differant story

if i crashed i would expect the on-site medics to come and make sure i was ok, and if i needed specialist attention i would expect them to call the ambulance, IMEDIATELY.

compare this to a ml raid, the raid leader is the on-side paramedic, the bike would be credit and ambulance are the GM or someone who can fix it

if i had a acsidedent motorcrossing that needed specialist attention, i would not expect that just to be looked at for weeks and then to be helped by a jahhova witness 6 weeks later, that i take credit for, and did not realize that there was not regular checks in game

however, from experiance RN is very slow taking upto 3 days for a reply, if this happend in your instance of 'motorcorssing' this would not be exceptible, although its a differant type of exceptance, ie its morally wrong to leave someone in pain, on the other hand, if a non-human test drive for a vehecle went wrong they would asses the situation and try and fix it...

 

[Kinetix]

So your a GM and you "port" to katorii. How do you tell it's bugged..

Please give an explanation of how you would identify this as a bugged encounter within 5 minutes if you were a GM.

Now there's 91 ML steps over 2 servers, that's 182 ML steps. Spending 5 minutes on each one would take a GM 15 hours or 2 full working days simply porting about checking ML steps on one realm.. that's 6 working days or over a week to check them all for the english cluster (there's 3 realms, so 6 places the encounter will be up), not including camlann.. oops we're now upto a week and a half. You want to pay someone a full time wage to simply port about and check ML encounters once every 1.5 weeks so a raid leader can avoid spending 2 minutes using the system they've put in place to inform them that an encounter is bugged.

That's assuming you can tell me how to tell if Katorii is bugged within a 5 minute time frame.. I look forward to your answer.

I guess you failed to think through "not much time" when you started flaming tho?

If a mechanic can look at a engine and say that the engine might have a problem in the near future i would expect GMs to be hable to look at encounter code and see future problems, but if they cant... well they still can make a periodical reset to all encounters.

And i can also say that psyco is right with that bike example, i dont expect that the problem gets insta solved with a GM looking at every thing we do but i do expect a quick answer after reported not 2/3 days after i Right Now it. After we skiped ml7.8 we went to do ml8 wich lasted at least 1.5hour more. if there was a E&E on or GM atm it was found it should have given enought time to report it and while we do ml8 the GM could fix it.

 

[Golena]

if i crashed i would expect the on-site medics to come and make sure i was ok, and if i needed specialist attention i would expect them to call the ambulance, IMEDIATELY.

In this case the on-site medics would be the E&E staff who would call the ambulance (GM). Now If you decided to go do your motocrossing at 3am in the morning.. i'd guess the onsite medics would probably be in bed asleep so you'd expect to lie there in pain until the morning.

If you went Motocrossing through the woods without bothering to tell the medics you were doing it, would you expect someone to come to your aid immediately, or would you expect to have to wait for the next passer by to find you?

Did Zeus bother to tell the GM's he was running a all day ML rush, and could they pay attention to any encounters that were bugged, especially as people on here had told him before hand that encounters had been bugged and he might have difficulties. My guesses are he didn't, so has no real right to complain when the GM wasn't looking out for him. It's been pointed out countless times that FH is NOT how to get information to a GM.

We don't need to come up with pointless new solutions, the E&E scheme was developed and when there was almost constant E&E support in the game (i.e. when the E&E's were active) bugs with ML raids got fixed on the spot, exactly like your requesting happen how. What we need is that level of service restoring again, not 8 new idea's for stuff they can do.

 

[Golena]

If a mechanic can look at a engine and say that the engine might have a problem in the near future i would expect GMs to be hable to look at encounter code and see future problems, but if they cant... well they still can make a periodical reset to all encounters.

As a computer programmer I can assure you that any issues occuring in game are ones that arn't visible in the future. While mechanics can tell you there may be a problem with an engine, it doesn't mean your car won't break down a week after an MOT for some unforseen occurance.

 

[Kinetix]

In this case the on-site medics would be the E&E staff who would call the ambulance (GM). Now If you decided to go do your motocrossing at 3am in the morning.. i'd guess the onsite medics would probably be in bed asleep so you'd expect to lie there in pain until the morning..

Ofc i do, its a 24/7 game i expect a 24/7 service. I dont know in wich country you live on but in mine onsite medics are 24/7 with holidays or National day offs. The average arrival time of a INEM car/ambulance is 30 mins after call wereever you are in this country.

If you went Motocrossing through the woods without bothering to tell the medics you were doing it, would you expect someone to come to your aid immediately, or would you expect to have to wait for the next passer by to find you?

If you consider Pms and Mobile phones and E&E/GMS as ambulances/doctors yes i do expect a quick answer

Did Zeus bother to tell the GM's he was running a all day ML rush, and could they pay attention to any encounters that were bugged, especially as people on here had told him before hand that encounters had been bugged and he might have difficulties. My guesses are he didn't, so has no real right to complain when the GM wasn't looking out for him. It's been pointed out countless times that FH is NOT how to get information to a GM.

There are certains events that dont need to be anounced especiallyin such a small cumunity wich is a Game. Its not unusual to see a GM on FH and surely some knew of this ml raid. IF THEY DIDNT.... well like i said in 1rst and 2nd quote i would still expect a quick answer.

We don't need to come up with pointless new solutions, the E&E scheme was developed and when there was almost constant E&E support in the game (i.e. when the E&E's were active) bugs with ML raids got fixed on the spot, exactly like your requesting happen how. What we need is that level of service restoring again, not 8 new idea's for stuff they can do.

The current E&E solution was presented over a simpler and a more young game with the constant growth of teh game i do expect a higher and better service to keep up with the changes

 

[Corran]

lol at this motocross shite... but lets keep it going

If you go motocross and have an accident at a time in which you know that there are no onsite medics or supervision in the area would you complain when you dont get aid?

You play this game knowing the time the GMs are about. If something is done outside this time and goes wrong you know it wont be fixed quickly.

But i dont care. On one my breaks from the game anyways still but always funny reading here

 

[Thorwyn]

The golden rule of discussing software issues:

Never... never ever use analogies.

 

[Dreamor]

The golden rule of discussing software issues:

Never... never ever use analogies.

Never a truer word spoken... or in this case typed

Motorcross, rofl.


Anyway, on the subject of E&Es... is there a frequent review done of how active they are? just curious, not :touch: at anyone... just wondered...

 

[psyco]

If you go motocross and have an accident at a time in which you know that there are no onsite medics or supervision in the area would you complain when you dont get aid?

i wouldn't have went

 

[Aeoric]

If you go motocross and have an accident at a time in which you know that there are no onsite medics or supervision in the area would you complain when you dont get aid?

Except we aren't talking about on-site aid (which would be a GM floating
around watching the raid). We are talking about going to the Emergency
room where we expect them to be (RightNow).

You play this game knowing the time the GMs are about. If something is done outside this time and goes wrong you know it wont be fixed quickly.

Ermm... Then I must be the only one who has no clue what time the GM's are/aren't about. Perhaps this is all an overestimation on my part, that the service provider actually provides some kind of support during peak hours.

 

[psyco]

Except we aren't talking about on-site aid (which would be a GM floating
around watching the raid). We are talking about going to the Emergency
room where we expect them to be (RightNow).

no, RightNow is doing the job of a GP or doctor, you make an apotment they x-fer you to hospital, for egsactly the treetment as just phoning 999, except the only differance is the 18week waiting time...

 

[Golena]

Ofc i do, its a 24/7 game i expect a 24/7 service.

Are you willing to pay for a 24 hour service. GOA have stated that while the servers are opertional 24 hours a day (well mostly) they will not provide 24 hour support. Would you be willing to pay twice your subscription to have a GM about at 3am.. personally I wouldn't.

For many things having it fixed the next day (i.e. using rightnow) is perfectly acceptable. Lets assume that everything isn't going to be perfect and we arn't all going to have our own personal GM following us about in game to make sure nothing happens ever... it's simply not going to happen.

What we need to ask is how can we avoid constantly having raids of over 100 people stalled during primetime (6pm on a weekend) because there is no way of getting hold of someone that can fix it.
The fairytale everything should work all the time and someone should be available 24/7 to fix all problems within 30 seconds talk is all very well and good for whining with, but it's not going to happen. Lets fix what might actually happen, which is an improvement instead of complaining that some daydream isn't being catered to.

The current E&E solution was presented over a simpler and a more young game with the constant growth of teh game i do expect a higher and better service to keep up with the changes

The game numbers are actually going down, which means less money to support the game. The service is unlikely to get better in terms of having more people or more support time. What needs to be done is applying the support in a more focused way. Big raids need assistance with bugged encounters then and there.. having it fixed the following morning doesn't help the 100 people on the raid at the time. You finding a bugged encounter at 4am on your own is something that could wait until tommorow, given the support isn't 24/7 and isn't going to be.

 

[Esselinithia]

GOA has 3 sources of information:

• The servers...
  • Logfiles
  • Diagnostic tools
• E&E
  • When they are present on raids
  • When they hear about the bugs
  • When the bugs are mentioned on FH
• Reports from players
  • Rightnow
  • In game /send -s (when you see a GM online)
  • Other ways you might use to contact them (if you have them on MSN, etc)

Log files can be checked, and you can see detect and investigate rare events. A bugged encounter can be detected when the players start the encounter, has no success with the encounter, start searching for E&E and GMs online (yes, who commands in log) and in logged chat they use the word bug more often than usual. Not to mention diagnostic tools, etc. they can use.

About the volunteer system, I think many can say: They had good chances to detect the problems and report them. I think we don't have to explain them. Both volunteers and GMs can join the BG for raids, and check for problems...

The last question is about contacting GOA: Some people assume, noone reported it. When you play the game, you don't tend to Alt-Tab, use a site (with lots of flash) then open Rightnow from it, and report it. And a few hours later they might be sleepy, might assume others from the raid already reported the problem, etc. As you see, Rightnow and the GOA web site itself isn't too efficient. Mythic uses in game commands for such reports (this system depends on players ability to log in, so they need an additional system for reports made out of game (when someone can't log in). As you see, web based support and in game support have different advantages and disadvantages, and they work well together in many games.

 

[psyco]

For many things having it fixed the next day (i.e. using rightnow) is perfectly acceptable. Lets assume that everything isn't going to be perfect and we arn't all going to have our own personal GM following us about in game to make sure nothing happens ever... it's simply not going to happen.

a next day fix wouldn't be a problem imo, but however, the only way to get ingame support is doing /who 100 and it ussally throws up nothing... and most are too lazy to open up explorer/firefox and login to goa support service

what i would like to see is an in game email/post service where we can send specific mesage to a specific player, even if they are not online, this could be directly linked to iether housing or actual email adress's
with this it would be very easy to contact a gm even if they are offline as they would get an email in there office and someone could come fix it
i remeber this kinda feature 4years ago when i started playing, but then left for 3 years and came back where i was told this function was non-egsistant

or...

in game bug support it would work something like this:
/fix
a window would pop-up and you could select what encounter you wished to report, there would be a DB of current bugged encounters, and that way they wouldn't get thousands of RN mail saying the same thing

even though this is incredible unlikley to happen, still would like to see some kinda ingame support/bug thing and mail service

most people would assume that it is not there responsibility to report such a bug unless there on a raid, then they do /who 100 for some imediate help, if theres no one online they cannot do that enccouter untill a re-make bacause of the nature of ml's ect

iirc they already increased the sub by 2BPS, british pound sterlings, and would like to know why
there is no global chat we cannot organize such raids off the cuff, that is where the problem lies

 

[Bugz]

RightNow takes too long to oepn also.

Give ingame Rightnow.

Rofl @ motorcross btw xd

 

[Kinetix]

Are you willing to pay for a 24 hour service. GOA have stated that while the servers are opertional 24 hours a day (well mostly) they will not provide 24 hour support. Would you be willing to pay twice your subscription to have a GM about at 3am.. personally I wouldn't.

For many things having it fixed the next day (i.e. using rightnow) is perfectly acceptable. Lets assume that everything isn't going to be perfect and we arn't all going to have our own personal GM following us about in game to make sure nothing happens ever... it's simply not going to happen.

What we need to ask is how can we avoid constantly having raids of over 100 people stalled during primetime (6pm on a weekend) because there is no way of getting hold of someone that can fix it.
The fairytale everything should work all the time and someone should be available 24/7 to fix all problems within 30 seconds talk is all very well and good for whining with, but it's not going to happen. Lets fix what might actually happen, which is an improvement instead of complaining that some daydream isn't being catered to.



The game numbers are actually going down, which means less money to support the game. The service is unlikely to get better in terms of having more people or more support time. What needs to be done is applying the support in a more focused way. Big raids need assistance with bugged encounters then and there.. having it fixed the following morning doesn't help the 100 people on the raid at the time. You finding a bugged encounter at 4am on your own is something that could wait until tommorow, given the support isn't 24/7 and isn't going to be.

Ill resume to one point since i cba to explain it all over again. I said in my previous post that most of ppl are on AFTER 18:00 and thats when GMs leave ( if they are on at all ). I want a 24/7 service yes, dosnet mean GMs have to be ingame 24/7 tho.
I work in a bank and altho im home if something goes wrong i just conect through a VPN using my home internet or a 3G card if im out. The important thing is not to be on all the time its to be able to be present when "the shit hits the fan"

 

[Esselinithia]

Golena: Other MMORPGs have either 24/7 support or something very close to it. Ok, even in World of Warcraft, you have to wait a bit, before a GM repőlies (in game) to your report (you reported it in game)... Depending on a few factors, the wait time can be anywhere from a few minutes to a few hours. They also check forums, etc.

 

[Ging]

Lol @ this thread. Aeoric pretending not to be a dustman


Xroo is inactive due to RL problems with his zip.

Eggy is contracting every STD known to man and some only known to animals.

Tilda is doing missionary work in the outer congo in preperation for his new career as a trolly pushing "weird eye bloke" at tesco's.

Filmgobbler + missus is having a baby atm \o/ (mostly its film doing all the work)

 

[Darzil]

Ill resume to one point since i cba to explain it all over again. I said in my previous post that most of ppl are on AFTER 18:00 and thats when GMs leave ( if they are on at all ).

Unless things have changed, the latest GM shifts finish at 11pm (cet), 10pm (uk time) on weekdays. No idea when they start.

Darzil

 

[Kinetix]

Unless things have changed, the latest GM shifts finish at 11pm (cet), 10pm (uk time) on weekdays. No idea when they start.

Darzil

Must have changed since i daily do /who 100 and no GM up. I even try to PM the 3 GMs in case theyr anon but nothing also

 

[Darzil]

Doesn't mean they'll be in game on your server, just on shift, so answering RN's and doing all the other stuff they have to do on a working day.

 

[Flimgoblin]

I tell you this sympathetic pregnancy lark is a pain... the amount of cream cakes I need to eat to keep up with the belly size...

Thoughts:

24/7 service: You do indeed pay to play a 24/7 game, and the game is (usually) up 24/7... one particular encounter in one tiny part of the game might be down for a bit longer (and not fixed immediately at 3am on a saturday night) but if the servers go down there will be people there to fix them any time of the day, any time of the week. So you _do_ pay for a 24/7 service and you get it. Just not a 24/7 arti-raid fixing service.

Someone did rightnow that katorii was bugged, yes? rather than everyone thinking someone else must have done it?

It's also not been bugged intentionally a few different times by someone trying to sneak past to (say) farm Typhon? In which case it might have been fixed multiple times already.

Regarding E&Es:
As much as I'd like to have the ability to port around at will (it'd make my smiter a dangerous enemy for a change) I don't think giving that sort of powers to anyone not employed by GOA is a good plan.

Incidentally if it were easy to create a "reset switch" for an encounter it'd probably be just as easy to fix the bug in the first place.... and before people go "why don't GOA do that?" - that's entirely up to Mythic. And as the issue with "what if the E&E is out in RvR" shows you'd need to give a lot more powers than just "press a button".... and any sort of extra powers would lead to people accusing E&E of using them to cheat. Moment anyone died to an E&E it'd be because of their encounter-resetting abilities.

So, in order to make the game playable for E&E we get absolutely no abilities other than what everyone else gets.

More E&Es:
Can't be a bad thing - apply it usually takes a while for them to choose new E&E's they need to make sure you've not spent your life exploiting in Avalon City or whatever... or grief emote-spamming people

And since this seems to be made a bit more obvious:

USE RIGHT NOW - USE IT! LOG IN SEND A REPORT, USE RIGHT NOW, IF YOU HAVE A PROBLEM, USE RIGHT NOW.

did I mention to use right now?

GMs don't lurk on servers all that much - but there's someone on RightNow from 11am to 11pm (CET) every day.

 

[Sollac]

GMs don't lurk on servers all that much - but there's someone on RightNow from 11am to 11pm (CET) every day.

yeah metal mickey and his automated reply service......