An open question to GOA

[Nate]

Would be nice if he could do summaries of the post in bold at the end or something like that I tend to skip them.

 

[Phantomby]

I bet if you would care to use your brain the novelty will eventually wear off.

good come back, im well and truely put in my place :worthy:

but seriously, do you think you have been treated well in this game? do you think that your money has recieved the proper support?

Because to me, the overall performance has been lacking. Not everything effected me or my alts but problems went on for way too long before being addressed, which smacked of not caring or not competent enough. Hense my lack of confidence in GOA. What sparkling light did they cast on your play time?

 

[Adari]

but seriously, do you think you have been treated well in this game? do you think that your money has recieved the proper support?

Because to me, the overall performance has been lacking. Not everything effected me or my alts but problems went on for way too long before being addressed, which smacked of not caring or not competent enough. Hense my lack of confidence in GOA. What sparkling light did they cast on your play time?

I do honestly - but having been an E&E for years I have a better understanding of what's going on behind the scenes and how well they are organised / work. Keeping in mind that unhappy customers are 100 times more likely to spread negative publicity than happy customers are to spread positive views, I think they did well.

 

[Esselinithia]

Adari: I don't care even if GOA would be run by two mentally disabled and how big achivement for them is to learn to read and write, and how as an E&E their friends seen the improvements behind the scenes.

I care only for one thing. When I pay this amount of money for a service elsewhere, I get a stable service, and polite, honest support, good response times, and I see they are prepared for most things and act quickly. The service ran by GOA isn't cheaper, isn't more complex, so if what the customers see are weaker, then they are weaker.

Pointing to number of people, their problems, their improvements (meaning they were even worse), saying that they lose so many customers so they don't have money to improve won't change it.

Blizzard, Turbine, Mythic on the same market runs better service.
When I buy software products for similar price (for work) I get far better support. Even for vBulletin, cPanel.
For games without monthly fees, I can say the same.
In some cases you can pay less for your DSL than you pay for 1 account of daoc (and compare for 2) and yet, I don't have to deal with slow support, lots of issues and explanations.

I can look at hosting plans, where the support has to deal with problematic questions (how to make this or that software work on your server) and even if they deal with previously unknown software, they are faster that GOA, and they are prepared for most of the things.

When Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans, some people stayed in local datacenters. Why? To make sure some services run in the middle of a hurricane. If they provide your name servers from there they should run. Why?

Because the customer isn't in New Orleans, and for them it shouln't be important where the provider has its datacenter. We seen some nice blogs from the people who had to stay for this reason.

GOA on the other hand delayed stuff because they moved to a LAN party and played CS instead of advertising daoc.

You were an E&E and you made friends, understand their excuses.
Other people seen other providers, and know how to compare.

When a player buys a game, daoc or war, he wants the value of his money, and wants to have fun, and not annoying bugs, slow and bad support making him unhappy. And GOA sells a service, if they can't provide it they shouldn't sell it. If they sell it there should be no excuses, buts, ifs, whens, but good service. Customer paid for fun and good service, customer should get it. It is this simple. How they do it isn't important. If players get as good service as they can get elsewhere, or better, and have fun it is good. If they deal with bugs, crashes, slow response, annoying problems, etc. it is bad.

Who runs it, how they do it, how much they improve internally is entirely unimportant.

And as of now, I cannot recomment any GOA run service to my friends, when War is about to get released it will be discussed, they will want oppinions from people who played with Mythic / GOA games. You are either loyal to them, and tell them to Avoid GOA, or betray them. Same is true for each and every player or explayer. GOA should make sure they don't speak about problems, about why they left, but about good service, and why they can play GOA games again and have better fun than in other games. If it doesn't happen, GOA can make only its own staff for the problems.

 

[Redflower]

Blizzard, Turbine, Mythic on the same market runs better service.

I played WoW for about 2 years and on more than one occasion I thought to myself "Jeez, GOA service was much better than this Blizzard crap."

Grass is always greener over there.

The way Blizzard distribute patches is appalling, it works like a torrent client, only that their implementation sucks as hell, it's not unusual to spend like 10 hours in front of the Blizzard downloader. In the end you almost invariably download the full patch from some obscure website.

During my time in WoW the login server broke down on a regular basis, like once or twice a month minimum, you couldn't log on for hours. If the login server is down you can't post on WoW forums, because seemingly they use the same login server for the game *and* the forum. So instead of seeing hundreds of complains you'll see just a handful of them (from people who happened to be logged in when the login server crashed) - I find that very convenient.

Maintenance is almost never on schedule, 9 out of ten times they have to extend maintenance by a few hours.

That is just what I can tell off the top of my head, there's more trouble in paradise than that.

 

[Adari]

Adari: I don't care even if GOA would be run by two mentally disabled and how big achivement for them is to learn to read and write, and how as an E&E their friends seen the improvements behind the scenes.

I care only for one thing. When I pay this amount of money for a service elsewhere, I get a stable service, and polite, honest support, good response times, and I see they are prepared for most things and act quickly. The service ran by GOA isn't cheaper, isn't more complex, so if what the customers see are weaker, then they are weaker.

Pointing to number of people, their problems, their improvements (meaning they were even worse), saying that they lose so many customers so they don't have money to improve won't change it.

Blizzard, Turbine, Mythic on the same market runs better service.
When I buy software products for similar price (for work) I get far better support. Even for vBulletin, cPanel.
For games without monthly fees, I can say the same.
In some cases you can pay less for your DSL than you pay for 1 account of daoc (and compare for 2) and yet, I don't have to deal with slow support, lots of issues and explanations.

I can look at hosting plans, where the support has to deal with problematic questions (how to make this or that software work on your server) and even if they deal with previously unknown software, they are faster that GOA, and they are prepared for most of the things.

When Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans, some people stayed in local datacenters. Why? To make sure some services run in the middle of a hurricane. If they provide your name servers from there they should run. Why?

Because the customer isn't in New Orleans, and for them it shouln't be important where the provider has its datacenter. We seen some nice blogs from the people who had to stay for this reason.

GOA on the other hand delayed stuff because they moved to a LAN party and played CS instead of advertising daoc.

You were an E&E and you made friends, understand their excuses.
Other people seen other providers, and know how to compare.

When a player buys a game, daoc or war, he wants the value of his money, and wants to have fun, and not annoying bugs, slow and bad support making him unhappy. And GOA sells a service, if they can't provide it they shouldn't sell it. If they sell it there should be no excuses, buts, ifs, whens, but good service. Customer paid for fun and good service, customer should get it. It is this simple. How they do it isn't important. If players get as good service as they can get elsewhere, or better, and have fun it is good. If they deal with bugs, crashes, slow response, annoying problems, etc. it is bad.

Who runs it, how they do it, how much they improve internally is entirely unimportant.

And as of now, I cannot recomment any GOA run service to my friends, when War is about to get released it will be discussed, they will want oppinions from people who played with Mythic / GOA games. You are either loyal to them, and tell them to Avoid GOA, or betray them. Same is true for each and every player or explayer. GOA should make sure they don't speak about problems, about why they left, but about good service, and why they can play GOA games again and have better fun than in other games. If it doesn't happen, GOA can make only its own staff for the problems.

Me being E&E does not cloud my judgement nor make me a fanboy - if anything, they encourage criticism.

You are too convinced of your own opinion there is no point in talking to you. Long winded comparisons that make utterly no sense, hear-say and whatnot in pointless 500 word posts.

GOA have always provided a stable service, apart from when the prydwen crash occured. It happens, deal with it. I have never in my life had to wait for more than 24 hours for a reply, nor have any of my guildmates. Requiel is the most polite and honest GM you will ever find, and I have known many to compare him to.

But whatever you say kiddo.

 

[disdain]

imo, the biggest negative part about GOA is their appearance. for me they handle daoc in a not-so-open-to-the-community knid of way. aka, we wont tell you shit because we dont know if it will work/if we can find a solution/if we are competent enough. this 'covering our asses' policy has been bad in the long run i think.

 

[Esselinithia]

Redflower: Response times on tickets tends to be well within hours, things are discussed.

It is easy to get the patch from other sources, and I never had problems with patch, not even with their new prepatch background downloads. Even the biggest patches download way faster for me compared to GOA times. Yes, torrent without ability to set up max upload hurts badly on DSL but there are plenty of mirrors, and in my case even torrent based system works at acceptable speed. BUt

Downtime extensions: Can happen, but it isn't a problem. Patchdays, maintenance downtimes are often extended by other companies too.

Login server: From what they said about the problem, it looked like an almost impossible to fix propblem, yet it is fixed now. But yes, it was annoying, but that isn't up to support.

And you speak about possible downtime on official forums: they at least have some official forums, not the best, but they have it. And you can wait with posting a bit, or can use any other support tool, or any unofficial forums.

 

[Redflower]

Redflower: Response times on tickets tends to be well within hours, things are discussed.

Same as with Blizzard, encounter bugged in an instance usually means the raid has to be cancelled at that point, that's 40 pissed off players right there.

It is easy to get the patch from other sources, and I never had problems with patch, not even with their new prepatch background downloads. Even the biggest patches download way faster for me compared to GOA times. Yes, torrent without ability to set up max upload hurts badly on DSL but there are plenty of mirrors, and in my case even torrent based system works at acceptable speed. BUt

I knew plenty of people who had the exact same problem with the downloader. The thing here is that there is no other way to get the patch from Blizzard directly. Yes, you can download the patch from somewhere else, but how do you know it hasn't been tampered with? You don't.

Downtime extensions: Can happen, but it isn't a problem. Patchdays, maintenance downtimes are often extended by other companies too.

A maintenance run that starts at 3am, supposed to be finished at 11am which is then extended by 3 hours a couple of times (finally finishing at 9pm with login servers hopelessly clogged) - that is something I've only experienced with Blizzard. To add insult to injury, they don't keep players posted most of the time, never seen a more appalling service than from Blizzard. Not a single month went by they didn't have problems like those (and they hardly ever admitted there was indeed a problem).

And you speak about possible downtime on official forums: they at least have some official forums, not the best, but they have it. And you can wait with posting a bit, or can use any other support tool, or any unofficial forums.

What good is an official forum if you can't reach it when you actually need it? How many players/Blizzard officials do you think will watch unofficial forums if there is an official forum? Hardly anyone. You got a guild forum where you can flame Blizzard for their ineptitude, that's about it.

 

[Sollers]

You are too convinced of your own opinion there is no point in talking to you.

Requiel is the most polite and honest GM you will ever find, and I have known many to compare him to. But whatever you say kiddo.

That's an interesting thing to say after you just flamed someone for sticking so close to their opinion there's no point talking to them.

I would at the same time argue that statement, but I would just be stating the obvious so therefore my efforts would be futile.

 

[IainC]

Alrighty, I've been on holiday for the last week which is why you've been spared my presence recently.

To answer the original post, yes we are working on a proper solution to the low population servers/clusters. I'm going to try and explain why we aren't being more upfront about this and why I really can't say any more than 'we are working on it' without giving any ETA's or even vague details.

Essentially we have two solutions in mind. One will definitely work but will be unpopular (with you and with us), the other will be (hopefully) popular but has a chance of not being possible to get working. If our plan A proves to be impossible to implement then we'll have to fall back on plan B - at which point if we've even suggested that plan A was on the cards we'll be in for unprecedented amounts of abuse and complaints of bait and switch etc. Work is being done to try and make plan A happen, unfortunately as it may not work and as it also necessarily involves Mythic, we can't give an ETA on it. We'll keep at it until either it works or we come to an insurmountable obstacle. At that point we'll be able to announce what is happening.

 

[ilaya]

Essentially we have two solutions in mind. One will definitely work but will be unpopular (with you and with us), the other will be (hopefully) popular but has a chance of not being possible to get working. If our plan A proves to be impossible to implement then we'll have to fall back on plan B - at which point if we've even suggested that plan A was on the cards we'll be in for unprecedented amounts of abuse and complaints of bait and switch etc. Work is being done to try and make plan A happen, unfortunately as it may not work and as it also necessarily involves Mythic, we can't give an ETA on it. We'll keep at it until either it works or we come to an insurmountable obstacle. At that point we'll be able to announce what is happening.

EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEHHHH????!!

 

[Gahn]

EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEHHHH????!!

Translated they are working with Mythic to be able to Cluster NF zones of different language servers, if it doesn't work/Mythic hasn't time/they screw up summat, they'll cluster Dyvet with either German or French Clusters and the Uk speaking community will have to put up with same solution as Classic.
[Freely interpreted]
Bookmark this post for future reference oO

 

[ilaya]

oh hang on i think i get it now. Plan A is the 2nd plan and Plan B is the 1st?

crystal clear that is

 

[Ingafgrinn Macabre]

oh hang on i think i get it now. Plan A is the 2nd plan and Plan B is the 1st?

crystal clear that is

Not entirely I think. It seems that the first A is the second option, second A is the first option, and the third A is the second option again

let's break it down:
Option 1: Will work but highly unpopular.
Option 2: Might not work, but very preferable; Mythic needed.

A1: If plan proves to be impossible, meaning they try this first, so this would be Option 2.
B1: Fallback for plan A1, so should be Option 1.
A2: Results in a lot of complaints, so probably Option 1.
A3: Trying to make this happen, so Option 2 again.

[edit]
but thanks for your reply Req. Seems by your post that you're indeed fresh back from your holiday

 

[Svartmetall]

imo, the biggest negative part about GOA is their appearance. for me they handle daoc in a not-so-open-to-the-community knid of way

Blizzard are exactly the same though, to be honest. I'd lay good money that if you checked out the forums of any game that's been around as long as this one*, you'd find mainly whines and complaints.





*'cos then you don't get the "Oooh! New! Shiny!" contingent posting, just the lifers.

 

[IainC]

Yeah, just to clarify and prevent rampant speculation. Plan A is the option that may not be possible but would be our first choice, Plan B is the one that will not be popular with anyone but will certainly work.

Nerf posting while trying to catch up on a week of missed emails.

 

[Gamah]

Both these plans are rolled in glue and moving uphill I assume, because no one understands why its taking so freakin' long.

Plan A = Merging of RVR zones whilst keeping English Language
Plan B = Full Merge / Char transfer

 

[Bahumat]

Is Plan A...a free respec?

 

[Gamah]

Nerf posting while trying to catch up on a week of missed forwards.

Fixed !

 

[old.Whoodoo]

Plan A: Closing the servers down and selling FH on ebay
Plan B: Merging Dyvet with a WOW server and going home.

 

[Phantomby]

Yeah, just to clarify and prevent rampant speculation. Plan A is the option that may not be possible but would be our first choice, Plan B is the one that will not be popular with anyone but will certainly work.

Nerf posting while trying to catch up on a week of missed emails.

Top, we have two plans, one ok(ish) but might not work the other is vastly unpopular.

Everyone glad they waited 5 months for this info to come out? :touch:


Anyway ill get off the GOA bashing, its too easy a target and doesnt affect me anymore. Goodybye and good riddence.

 

[Ingafgrinn Macabre]

Top, we have two plans, one ok(ish) but might not work the other is vastly unpopular.

Everyone glad they waited 5 months for this info to come out? :touch:


Anyway ill get off the GOA bashing, its too easy a target and doesnt affect me anymore. Goodybye and good riddence.

This info was already known... Requiel said already that they are working on a plan that needed the cooperation and effort of EA, and that it was uncertain if it would actually be possible, but that they were working on it.

 

[Aiteal]

This info was already known... Requiel said already that they are working on a plan that needed the cooperation and effort of EA, and that it was uncertain if it would actually be possible, but that they were working on it.

That's your kicker

I've designed and coded software systems from the ground up that had internationalisation/localisation considered from the get go.
It can be a long and tedious task (especially when dealing with the welsh language )

Rewriting a system to support localisation for a few hundred people in the twilight of that sytems profitability would have my business/service delivery manager laughing till his leg fell off.

I dare say my manager isn't as ruthless as EA.

Everything is possible...

Profitable is a different matter.

I've been wrong in the past, and will be wrong again in the future I dare say

But its probably a safe bet to say it will pan out as

numbers drop further
excal/pryd goes German
English speaking monoglots become rarer on the new cluster than Dob is in the bog of cullen.

I hope I'm wrong, for the sake of those that still enjoy the Dyvet community.

 

[scorge]

Yeah, just to clarify and prevent rampant speculation. Plan A is the option that may not be possible but would be our first choice, Plan B is the one that will not be popular with anyone but will certainly work.

Nerf posting while trying to catch up on a week of missed emails.

Plan A - EU/US cluster

Plan B - french/german language cluster


that about right Req? after all its the only options you have...

 

[Phantomby]

This info was already known... Requiel said already that they are working on a plan that needed the cooperation and effort of EA, and that it was uncertain if it would actually be possible, but that they were working on it.

What info? all ive seen is a vague post saying we're working on something.

That isnt information thats another stalling tactic so the few remaining faithful keep paying their subs being promised a light at the end of the tunnel (which may turn out to be a train from the sounds of it).

 

[Flimgoblin]

Plan A: Make us all play Pangya instead (club vs club - it's a vicious vicious world)
Plan B: From outer space.

 

[disdain]

plan A - make dyvet a PvP server.

plan B - make dyvet a co-op server.

 

[Thadius]

plan A - make dyvet a PvP server.

plan B - make dyvet a co-op server.

Make Dyvet a server with noone on!



Oh wait.....

 

[Raven]

Alrighty, I've been on holiday for the last week which is why you've been spared my presence recently.

To answer the original post, yes we are working on a proper solution to the low population servers/clusters. I'm going to try and explain why we aren't being more upfront about this and why I really can't say any more than 'we are working on it' without giving any ETA's or even vague details.

Essentially we have two solutions in mind. One will definitely work but will be unpopular (with you and with us), the other will be (hopefully) popular but has a chance of not being possible to get working. If our plan A proves to be impossible to implement then we'll have to fall back on plan B - at which point if we've even suggested that plan A was on the cards we'll be in for unprecedented amounts of abuse and complaints of bait and switch etc. Work is being done to try and make plan A happen, unfortunately as it may not work and as it also necessarily involves Mythic, we can't give an ETA on it. We'll keep at it until either it works or we come to an insurmountable obstacle. At that point we'll be able to announce what is happening.

well its nice of you to respond and i can understand why you would want to keep it under wraps until you know what you will eventually do, however (most) people aren't children any more, i really dont think it could do any more damage (telling us your real plans) than just keeping everyone in the dark and facing huge player losses due to inaction.

If your plan is to cluster the PVP zones with a German/French server then fine, that would probably be populer (though i imagine technically difficult)
If your plan is to cluster fully (including a language change) then you are right, it probably wouldnt be populer but without a transfer/cluster to US server its the only real option.
If you plan on doing what would amount to a account split to the US (even if it cost people the game+expansions again, roughly £15) i think quite a few would do it though ofc there would be objections.

Either way you would face objections, you cant please everyone at the end of the day but saying nothing is certainly not helping.