Edited and Agree Jimmi

[Jardar]

You forget one thing. Normal companies, small, medium or big, that act in this part of the market use SLA's (Service Level Agreements) to make sure the other party does what they pay for. In a SLA for a game like Daoc there would be things like "time it takes to fix things" "performance" and "time it takes to find out and communicate whats wrong" According to your story you bring a big bag of money to OT and then just hope they do something nice with it. 1 I cant believe that and 2. if you guys really managed to get screwed by a company with the same owner then it might be time to stop doing business at all. Using SLA's gives you enough material to demand good service and go to court if they dont give you service over a long (i.e. months like with Daoc) period of time....

And even besides all the SLA-stuff. You "produce" a service, if you cant live up to normal standards (whatever the reason may be, i.e. I dont care if the janitor made a hot carl on the power supply of your server room) you are the one responsible....you are the one that make deals with other companies....if you fail to give normal service you should make up for that to your customers...and not by giving 1 or 2 free days, but by giving something close to a month...

Exactly, i totaly agree.
(I was trying to explain that in my previous post)

 

[Thorwyn]

Conditions on the internet and problems with other company's kit cannot be our responsibility. It's like asking Ford for a refund because the roads are poorly surfaced and your car isn't as comfortable.

So... consequently spoken: if OT decides to cut off GoA from their Service (refusing to transfer all data from your company), it´s still not your responsibility and you can keep charging people for your service because your servers are running just fine and everything "outside" GoA isn´t your responsibility?

Problems with your 3rd party suppliers are not your fault, but they are your responsibility. If you´re delivering a machine and your screw merchant fails to deliver the four screws that are neccessary to assemble the machine, it´s your responsibility. You can´t say "hey, this dude didn´t deliver the screws, blame him... but pay me anyways".
I know that this is a worst case situation for you and there´s not much you can do respectively that things like this are taking some time to sort out. Still, you´re part of the service you´re offering is not fullfilled as soon as your servers are running.

 

[IainC]

To the last three posters. Your examples aren't accurate. Opentransit is not just our ISP, they are the owners of all the commercial internet backbone in France. It doesn't matter who we pay money to for hosting/bandwidth etc, we'd still be reliant on Opentransit's hubs and routers. We pay Opentransit for server hosting and bandwidth, we have SLA's in place regarding server uptime, monitoring and bandwidth allocation. The problems people were having were outside that arrangement in the hubs that ISPs route international internet traffic through. The bit that we were paying for and that was covered by contract was fine. We were getting everything we were paying for - Servers up? Check. Sufficient bandwidth to lobby server to handle all the simultaneous connections? Check. Connection to wider internet open? Check.

As far as the example with the laptop is concerned, it's another inaccurate analogy. We don't sell the game as a package like that. In your case Dell have supplied the graphics card and are responsible for it. We don't provide 'Game+connection' packages. You are responsible for your internet connection and we are responsible for the servers being up and able to accept connections. If there's a problem in the middle part, then we try to resolve it but it isn't in any way our responsibility to sort it out.

For example, recently there was a fairly large problem in a UK router causing many UK players to go LD and suffer very bad lag. The company who owned the router in question had no connection with us whatsoever. We don't pay them a penny and nor do we have any kind of contract with them (which is much the same as the situation with OT international hubs). If our customers from the UK can't play for a few hours as a result of that is it still 'our fault'?

 

[Jardar]

To the last three posters. Your examples aren't accurate. Opentransit is not just our ISP, they are the owners of all the commercial internet backbone in France. It doesn't matter who we pay money to for hosting/bandwidth etc, we'd still be reliant on Opentransit's hubs and routers. We pay Opentransit for server hosting and bandwidth, we have SLA's in place regarding server uptime, monitoring and bandwidth allocation. The problems people were having were outside that arrangement in the hubs that ISPs route international internet traffic through. The bit that we were paying for and that was covered by contract was fine. We were getting everything we were paying for - Servers up? Check. Sufficient bandwidth to lobby server to handle all the simultaneous connections? Check. Connection to wider internet open? Check.

As far as the example with the laptop is concerned, it's another inaccurate analogy. We don't sell the game as a package like that. In your case Dell have supplied the graphics card and are responsible for it. We don't provide 'Game+connection' packages. You are responsible for your internet connection and we are responsible for the servers being up and able to accept connections. If there's a problem in the middle part, then we try to resolve it but it isn't in any way our responsibility to sort it out.

For example, recently there was a fairly large problem in a UK router causing many UK players to go LD and suffer very bad lag. The company who owned the router in question had no connection with us whatsoever. We don't pay them a penny and nor do we have any kind of contract with them (which is much the same as the situation with OT international hubs). If our customers from the UK can't play for a few hours as a result of that is it still 'our fault'?

Well, put all the "specific" problems aside. Dont you just agree on that GOA wants a good reputation and to be known for being able to handle their customers well? I mean you want to keep the customers, not lose them. And sometimes you need to sacrifice for the better.

Show your good face GOA, and blow away all other competition, do what's right and you will win in the end.

Cos when you think about it, an ONLINE Game that dont even work properly ONLINE = No gain, and No Gain = No jobs, and No Jobs = Bad service, Bad Service = No game etc. I think you understand what im saying, it applies to all companies, its a circle of trust

We pay you, to pay the ISP so we can play and then pay you the next month.

 

[Thorwyn]

Requiel, I understand that. However, you must admit that this is a pretty undesirable situation because apparently, there´s a "grey" area where nobody seems to feel responsible. And as soon as there´s a problem (or total netsplit) in this area, we´ve reached a situation where a. the players can´t do anything to trace/fix the problem and b. GoA says everything is fine on our side, keep paying us for our service.
I know that OT isn´t your ISP and that you can´t avoid using their network. But it´s still part of the infrastructure that your service is based on.

 

[Bloodaxe_Springskalle]

You suffered two days of lag as a direct result of a failure at our end. We are giving you two free days as compensation. Conditions on the internet and problems with other company's kit cannot be our responsibility. It's like asking Ford for a refund because the roads are poorly surfaced and your car isn't as comfortable.

wrong, you provide a service over internet that we PAY for, i have had lots of lag lately and i've consulted my ISP and they tell me there's nothing wrong with my line. I can confirm as i have no lag when playing other games online.

as long as there is nothing wrong with my line there is obviously something wrong with either your servers or somewhere in between my PC and your server.
if the problem is somewhere in the middle (for example OT or any other issue) the responsibility is yours to ensure the quality of your product.
if not it would be like selling mobile phone abonnements without any coverage.

if GOA don't agree to this then they arent service minded enough to sell hot dogs at your kids soccer games and should let someone capable of providing good service take over.

 

[IainC]

as long as there is nothing wrong with my line there is obviously something wrong with either your servers or somewhere in between my PC and your server.

Exactly. However due to the way the internet works, you may be routed through kit belonging to many different companies on the way to our servers. We have no arrangements with any of those companies. Neither will your ISP.

if the problem is somewhere in the middle (for example OT or any other issue) the responsibility is yours to ensure the quality of your product.
if not it would be like selling mobile phone abonnements without any coverage.

Nope because as I've said, those companies have no relationship with us at all. Your mobile phone provider sells you a handset and a network, they are responsible for your connectivity at every step. We can only be responsible for our servers and our network. Beyond that we can't be responsible. You are paying for us to operate servers and and keep them connected to the internet. The connection all the way up until it reaches our network is your own responsibility.

if GOA don't agree to this then they arent service minded enough to sell hot dogs at your kids soccer games and should let someone capable of providing good service take over.

I doubt very much that you'd find any provider of any online service that was prepared to take responsibility for the entire internet. It would be like buying a car and the dealer telling you that if you found any bumpy roads, he'd give you a refund.

 

[Jardar]

Well mister Requiel, your obviously ignoring me

You keep going back to the ISP issue, i think you know what i mean and what im trying to say, but due to legal reasons/avoiding lawsuits etc, you are keeping the topic focused on the internet provider and not GOA itself.

I man's gotta do what he's gotta do, the world is all about $$$.

Anyway, i hope GOA comes to their senses and solve this problem soon enough, before they lose all their customers. They already lost me and aprox 30 of my friends. (Thats nothing to them, i know).

 

[Jimmi]

if he worked for a decent publication like PC Gamer or PC Format his arguments might hold sway with GOA, but tbh he works for a part-time rag/online .dk website.. which tbh probably has about as much influence as me farting at a rugby game and hoping the ball veers ofcourse when

Listen little one. First of all, Gamereactor is a PRINTED MAGAZINE. The biggest in Scandinavia. We have a PRINTED magazine AND a online website. Secondly I am NOT english, which explains why I spell like a 6yr old british school kid.

And I am NOT going to argue with you. This is about the LAG in DAOC, NOT about my job. So lay off.

 

[IainC]

Well mister Requiel, your obviously ignoring me

You keep going back to the ISP issue, i think you know what i mean and what im trying to say, but due to legal reasons/avoiding lawsuits etc, you are keeping the topic focused on the internet provider and not GOA itself.

I man's gotta do what he's gotta do, the world is all about $$$.

Anyway, i hope GOA comes to their senses and solve this problem soon enough, before they lose all their customers. They already lost me and aprox 30 of my friends. (Thats nothing to them, i know).

I thougt I had replied to you when I mentioned that your analogy with the Dell computer that you gave wasn't accurate?

It's the same thing really, we pay you to deliver us a game so we can play it ONLINE, we dont pay you so you can make excuses that your ISP is bad or that our computers/connections are shitty and for us to send you logs so you can take 3-6 weeks to reply to them (You buy time to solve the real issue).

In that case the real issue was the routing through Opentransit. Not something that we can be directly responsible for and not something that is in our power to fix directly. This is something that has been explained again and again in countless posts. There was no 'buying time', there was no 'passing the buck'. The problem was outside of our network, outside of our responsibility and was down to Opentransit to fix. Eventually they did. At no point were our own servers or network the cause of any failures. When we did have a failure in our own network over the last weekend, we fixed it as soon as possible and credited everyone with two days in compensation as we'd failed to provide the service we'd agreed to. As it was our failure in our network we were responsible. The other lag issues previous to that were not.

As I've said you are responsible for connecting to our servers. We are responsible for everything that happens after that point. If you can't connect to our server because the wind has blown down your telephone lines, a router somewhere between your ISP and our network has blown up or your ISP has just suffered a DDOS attack, it's not our responsibility to sort out. We don't and can't guarantee that every single customer will always be able to reach our servers as we have no way to guarantee that there will never be issues affecting connectivity or that there will never be problems with general connectivity caused by excessive load on main hubs or failed equipment in other people's networks. We can promise that the servers will always be connected to the internet except for unavoidable downtime such as patching or maintenance, but we can't guarantee how good your connection will be to our servers. ISPs have routes of escalation to deal with poor routing issues, service providers (such as us) generally do not. Eventually we did manage to get OT to listen and take action but it would have been 100% easier for an ISP to do it.

What you are suggesting is that Goa should be solely responsible for every aspect of your connection from your ISP to our network and that simply isn't reasonable or realistic.

 

[fang]

Without this information we are effectively in the dark...

In ... DARK AGE of CAMELOT that is! Hahahaaa .. i kill myself...


Seriously .. u all suck *








*With the possible exception of Teh Seel! ... And Arceons chat thingy ...

 

[Bloodaxe_Springskalle]

I doubt very much that you'd find any provider of any online service that was prepared to take responsibility for the entire internet. It would be like buying a car and the dealer telling you that if you found any bumpy roads, he'd give you a refund.

that's what i mean about "service minded" mate, isnt it in your best interest to make sure that the customers are fairly happy at least?
if your companies customer support is thinking
"pffff so what if Bloodaxe and most other scandinavians leave the game due to lag, the lag aint our responsibility legally."

seriously, i have almost no lag when connecting to US servers.
GOA aint actually famous for good customer service as it is so imo it's in your best interests of making a decent effort wether it's legally your responsibility or not... i've actually paid 3 accounts for 2 months i havent hardly played.. use those money to pay 1 guy to investigate the lag matter, worst case scenario is that u tried and failed.
it's all we ask, at least try cos if it's hard for you as a small company to call the "big cohones" and ask about latency problems how do u suppose it is for me to call em?
i would probably not even find out who to call and what to say even hehe.

i know u guys are in it for the money first and foremost, but to make money u need customers on a long term basis, happy customers stay while unhappy leave, pretty basic stuff this, u know the drill

ps. it's a big + for GOA that you appear on these forums btw Requiel, at least it gives us an illusionary hope that your company do care.
we know you aint the one to blame for everything bad in the world tho it might seem like it from time to time

 

[Bracken]

Some of you don't 'arf keep banging on Just accept there are some things GOA can do something about and some things they can't. The opentransit problem they can influence (through their SLA) but can't actually solve. Internet issues outside of opentransit they have absolutely no influence over at all. Just gotta accept it

 

[Gesta]

If GOA have a SLA with Opentransit then I should think that Opentransit would be compensating GOA and in turn should compensate the customers in some way.
How many months have Openteransit provided a wholly unsatisfactory service to GOA and their customers?
I would think that GOA management would (should) be furious or is it that theyre all part of the same company and don't want to cause any of their teams giref?

 

[Gesta]

Some of you don't 'arf keep banging on Just accept there are some things GOA can do something about and some things they can't. The opentransit problem they can influence (through their SLA) but can't actually solve. Internet issues outside of opentransit they have absolutely no influence over at all. Just gotta accept it

BTW How many times is it that we've beaten you in the premiership now? I just though I'd remind you of that fact as you're so keen to put crap in your signature.

 

[Bracken]

BTW How many times is it that we've beaten you in the premiership now? I just though I'd remind you of that fact as you're so keen to put crap in your signature.

3.

As for my sig, wish I could fit the rest of it in but too many chars.

New one from the Holt against Norwich last week, to the tune of Que Sera Sera...

"Savage has left the scum, he's going home to his mum..."

Made me chuckle