FAO Roaken

[Bluesky]

You're assuming there is going to be no further intervention of any kind. Now that the situation has changed, things will be reassessed. You can be a part of that process by making your views and preferences known in a calm and constructive manner. Or you can flame and misquote out-of-date information to stir up hysteria. One course of action will give you a better chance of a solution that you will like, the other is just cutting off your nose to spite your face.

Look at it from a normal customers point of view, not a GM's or a GM (who also plays) or even an E&E but a std paying customer.... All suggestions from the player base have either been ignored (the cathal valley idea for one example amongst a few) or simply stated as not possible (char transfer or more clustering) so what are we supposed to think?

We have been kept in the dark for many months while GOA have worked on possible solutions, none of which turned out to be possible. What other "courses of action" are actually possible?

Finally I think its totally understandable for us, the customers to be highly annoyed and frustrated at the poor service and lack of information coming from GOA.

 

[Tesla Monkor]

Thanks for jumping in and providing some feedback, IanC. I've played DAOC for five years, and spoke with Requiel (as an E&E) close to a year ago regarding the server's population issue. At that time I was told that there were several scenarios that were being investigated.

A couple months later I was told that the most likely scenario would be a clustering of RVR zones between multilanguage servers.

After that, nothing. (Except for 'It's being worked on'). For a good eight months, until now when we get told that charcopy isn't happening and clustering isn't going to happen - and we find out that that has been known for a good long time, but never communicated to us.

In the meantime no alternatives have been thought through, and now we get told that we have to work with GOA to resolve this situation and that we have to voice our wishes. People have been voicing their wishes for eight to nine months already.

This isn't a matter of trying to spite anyone, it's a case of your customers being flabberghasted at the way things are handled. It -appears- as one stall-tactic after another, instead of presenting solutions.

The flow of information should be going the other way - GOA figuring out two or three viable ideas and then asking the population of Dyven which of those three they want to see implemented. As it appears now, GOA is trying to bet on all horses at once, and leaves the server to suffer for it. If you don't want/can't charcopy, cluster, say so. Right now it seems like GOA is saying nothing so people -might- stick around for a few months longer. If you -can- provide a solution, but that might scare off bunch of players, then do so. This wishy-washy attitude will kill the server just as surely as anything else.

Remember that most people here didn't even know that GOA was doing any investigating at all - only a few of the E&Es knew that and kept it to themselves. People have been speculating for months about transfers and clustering because of the serious underpopulation issues. They have just been shot out of the sky by Roaken's reply via RightNow. Surely you understand their frustration.

In the end it is GOA through Mythic that needs to work to get this situation resolved, and only GOA has the clout to do that. The ball is firmly in GOA's playing field. A year has passed and we are exactly where we started, but with even less players.

Pull out the whips and get moving. A year has been wasted already. If you are so desperate that you need hints from the players on how to fix this, the future is looking very dire indeed.

 

[Azathrim]

You're assuming there is going to be no further intervention of any kind. Now that the situation has changed, things will be reassessed. You can be a part of that process by making your views and preferences known in a calm and constructive manner. Or you can flame and misquote out-of-date information to stir up hysteria. One course of action will give you a better chance of a solution that you will like, the other is just cutting off your nose to spite your face.

So, are we going to see this news on your official home page for once Requiel?

You know, that site you barely used when being a GM. What was it?

Oh yes, daoc.goa.com

 

[Golena]

You're assuming there is going to be no further intervention of any kind. Now that the situation has changed, things will be reassessed. You can be a part of that process by making your views and preferences known in a calm and constructive manner. Or you can flame and misquote out-of-date information to stir up hysteria. One course of action will give you a better chance of a solution that you will like, the other is just cutting off your nose to spite your face.

So instead of assuming that there's going to be no further intervention of any kind I should assume that there is.. despite zero communication from GOA that they are currently considering any other options? We are customers that pay for this service... Everyone assumes there's nothing being done because generally when you pay for a service you get announcements when the people supplying it are actually doing something from you. No news tends to mean nothing is happening unless your different from every other company in the world regarding customer communication. If you have other plans lets hear what they are.. otherwise it's only natural for us to continue to assume nothing is being done.

I think if one thing was abundantly clear from this thread is that the population of the Dyvet server would rather know what your working on, get their hopes up and then be dissapointed when they found out it wasn't possible than just given a blank screen to look at for 5 months then a well we were looking at it for the last 5 months but it's not possible. At least we would have some visability as to what's happening.

Or do we instead have to guess at solutions and then wait a month to find out you've already talked about it.

If you want the players help solving the issue you HAVE to give something back to them! There's been a few suggestions mentioned here already? Are they things GOA have considered already? Are they completely impossible? Does the agreement with Mythic mean it can't happen? Can we help apply pressure on Mythic ourselves in order to get that agreement altered so you can do stuff? Do you have any other ideas.. i'm sure in the 8 months that have passed someone mentioned, what if it doesn't work, what do we do then? What was the outcome of this conversation around the water cooler?

There's a limit as to how many suggestions your customers will come up with and how long they will keep doing it in a nice polite friendly manner with no visible response from you to even hint that you've read or considered them... That time past a while ago.. It's time for something from your side now, not just more stoney silence for 2 months while you consider it.

8 months is WAY too long no matter what the circumstances were to simply give paying customers zero news. When you admit this and start showing that maybe some of the frustration here isn't completely misplaced and that if it's to go forward a different approach from your side is going to be needed, then your not likely to get any other approach from people here that your not getting at the moment.

 

[Tallen]

Seen many "This is the end megameights!!" scenario's/predictions over the years, but I can't help but wonder if this time it really is the final straw for Dyvet?

 

[Huntingtons]

is actully sad that wow can have 8 mill and daoc reaches 10k :<

 

[Blackdeath]

this might be a stupid question i dont know but you say u cant cluster the german server with the english one becasue the server is in german etc, why cant you cluster them and just put the english traslation below the german? you's wouldnt have to change anything but put english text below german text..... wouldnt be hard to be honest

 

[kivik]

You can be a part of that process by making your views and preferences known in a calm and constructive manner. Or you can flame and misquote out-of-date information to stir up hysteria.

Or you can just abandon the fucking sinking ship.

 

[BaTDiE]

At first, I have no idea how desperated had to be mithyc back in the day, to hire GOA, as their "whatever the fuck you GoA has done, A.K.A. NOTHING or publisher/distribuitor" for this game in Europe.

Also, it's mithyc fault or GoA employers laziness to distribute a game with language server based instead of client based, now the game is in this situation.

It's precisely because they give a crap that it's gone on this long. If no-one cared Dyvet would have been absorbed or closed down a long time ago.

God forbid! if GoA at charge of DaoC in europe give the same threatment to Dyvet cluster like they have to Cumbria. They have created a whole server just to give the NPC a place where to live in peace, without players that can harm them in any way. Just, CLAPs for the amazing idea. (Save the comment of "GoA wants a server of each language". What for? NPCs do learn languages now too?)

Funniest of all this, is that that WoW clon Mythic has in the works will follow the same path as DAoC since day one, but this time, you have already built a haters custommers base in Europe.

PS: 8 Months to translate a fucking patch? This been happening since day one in Europe. What has done GoA to solve this over these long years? NOTHING. Like everything else they were supposed to do.

 

[Ttillub]

Nothing to do with the billing system. Everything to do with accounts. You don't have an English account or a French account or a Camlann account. You pay to access any of the European servers and many people play more than one language or server type. It would be exactly the same if Mythic split part of their playtform off to another provider, you don't have a Bossiney account or a Devon account.

So you could give players the opportunity to move their characters from Dyvet to US and at the same time they would accept that they are dealing with Mythic and have "new" account with them?
Account in Europe would be closed or if player chooses he/she could keep it to play on other GOA servers with other toons.

 

[Shike]

rofl

if the company i work for behaved like this we'd be outta business within a year, no doubt Guess Sweden and France is very different in some ways ;-)

Regarding the databaseissues as a reason to why further isnt possible just shows the level of professionalism within GOA, nothing else =/ most things are possible regarding databases, its just a question of time consumed*cost per hour.

This thread just further build on the reasons to play WAR in US in my eyes. Cheers to Roaken for answering stuff at least although nothing comes as a surprise.

German servers are worth rolling on btw Tesla, irregardless of what chars you already got on Dyvet, those chars will just rot in silence anyhow, try and get some fun outta the game while it still is possible imo, in my book the game isnt about the chars at all, its more about the peeps you spend the time with, both foes and friends. Knowing your playstylee I'd say you'll love it

 

[Access Denied]

Bah if only I had known 2 years ago, I would have rolled US.

I know next to nothing about how databases and servers work so feel free to flame me for coming out with stupid ideas. Clustering clusters is impossible is it? I've seen several replies to this thread that tell me it isn't, GOA just can't be arsed to work on it.

In another thread a while back someon suggested that they make language choice client based instead of server based, to which someone else replied that it would require a re-write of the entire langauge base code. Wouldn't it be worth doing that? Putting aside for a moment that the code "Isn't GOA's to fuck around with" (which could be remedied with some proper communication between Mythic and GOA) if you add up the subs for every account lost on the Dyvet cluster I'm sure it would easily cover the cost of hiring some extra techies to do just that.

If, and "Le God forbid!" GOA could work out a change to the agreement with Mythic to allow such changes to the base code, there would be no need for separate servers and clusters. I also think that the subs from people returning to DAoC would pay for the data entry clerks to do the character transfers to the single "super server"

As far as I can see the population decline on the Dyvet cluster is down to 3 things:

1. Utterly shit customer service from GOA.

2. Almost zero advertising for the game. (There were TV adverts just before LoTM came out but fuck all after)

3. The decline in the population itself. People left and those that stayed got bored with fighting the same people on the same toons every night so they left too.

How many threads have there been about the Dyvet population problem? How many suggestions have been made? Come on GOA get your fingers out. You tell us that this and that are impossible, when, with computers absolutley nothing is impossible. All it takes is time, work. money and the willingness to make these things happen. You're all so good at handing out false promises and vague answers that you should be politicians instead of an MMORPG distributions and server management company.

Me.

 

[kiliarien]

Just wondering, Requiel and Roahken, have you noticed you work for a bunch of clueless c*nts?

You seem decent people - do they REALLY pay you enough to have to put up with our (rightly-founded) moaning?

 

[Aerendur]

You can be a part of that process by making your views and preferences known in a calm and constructive manner.

I have in many of my posts in the past. As I have tried in my post in this thread. Yet never have any of the GOA people bothered to reply to any of my questions or suggestions.

Im sure that just like me there are many other people wondering what GOA is looking into right now for the dyvet cluster. The characters we've worked for a long time are there, if there is a chance we could get something out of the work we've put into those we would like to know. Since as some have said in this thread, no news basically means there is nothing that is happening for us.

So what are you guys looking into now? / which options are being worked on?

Many people have asked if there could be an option to move our dyvet chars to another server, be it a German/French one or a Mythic one. How is the outlook on these questions?

Why havent we had any reports in the last few months? You must be aware of the loss in playerbase on the dyvet cluster, yet no news came to us ever. Tell us the reasons why no reports came from the tests about combining clusters etc.

I hope you can reply to these questions, wether you can answer them directly or not. You've asked for our calm input and questions. And here I give you a few, now show us that you respect our views and inputs and give a reply.

 

[Clive Aminal]

IainC, one thing does remain crystal clear and I think it is something that you and Roaken must accept...

If GoA where doing their job properly, and fulfilling their obligations to their paying customers, 90% of the posts in this thread wouldn't exist.

As such, I think that your customers deserve very regular updates on the situation at the very least, and no more of the whole "We didn't want to say anything, in case it didn't work" policy. Your customers deserve to know what is going on, and they deserve to have their concerns acknowledged on the GoA DAoC site, so at least they can see they are being taken seriously. This really isn't asking much and it is something you have failed to do week after week for the past year.

 

[fawzi]

Just re-roll German or French servers if you don't want to play Dyvet anymore. Believe it or not GoA's support there is really good (just as I imagine it was on Dyvet), I think the attitude of Dyvet's population doesn't let GoA do their job^.

 

[Tallen]

Just re-roll German or French servers if you don't want to play Dyvet anymore. Believe it or not GoA's support there is really good (just as I imagine it was on Dyvet), I think the attitude of Dyvet's population doesn't let GoA do their job^.

Thats all fine if you speak French or German and can be bothered to start again from scratch.

In this case, some players will choose US instead where servers have decent populations and can be further clustered if the population drops. Most I suspect will simply wait for AoC or WAR, then bail-out.

 

[Bluesky]

Just re-roll German or French servers if you don't want to play Dyvet anymore.

ahh ofc why didnt anyone else think of that :kissit:

I'll go reroll now and im sure ill get: over 20 mil of rp's on my various lev50s (including all arti's exp'd and ML's and CL's done), a few mithril's worth of equipment, houses, trophies, multiple capped lgm crafters, and ofc im sure ill get the hundreds of quests ive already done finished in no time at all.

There are ppl here still playing after 5 years who STILL WISH TO PLAY those characters who dont want to simply abandon all that.

I do have chars on other servers but none have the same feeling/background/character as the ones ive spent so long playing which is why I amongst others have come back to teh chars i want to play the most on Dyvet.

 

[Raven]

He wouldn't understand, he has only ever managed level 24

 

[sneakies]

I vote that charcopy be allowed, and an rvr server be erected! Frontiers only \o/

Give it a universal language, something no one speaks... perhaps welsh. Then their can be a universal arguement in regards to said language because its complete jibberish!

This will suit the RVR people, and the PVE people can stay on their servers.

 

[Punishment]

You're assuming there is going to be no further intervention of any kind

Tbh its a fair Assumption Req , many customers such as myself have paid our subs for the last 8-9 months waiting for something thats in the pipeline/In the process of being sorted etc .

Your credibility is becoming about as scarce as your english playerbase im afraid , How about listening to the English playerbase and addressing our concerns ... it would be the best PR job GoA could ever accomplish considering WaR is almost here ...

 

[Punishment]

Thanks for jumping in and providing some feedback, IanC. I've played DAOC for five years, and spoke with Requiel (as an E&E) close to a year ago regarding the server's population issue. At that time I was told that there were several scenarios that were being investigated.

A couple months later I was told that the most likely scenario would be a clustering of RVR zones between multilanguage servers.

After that, nothing. (Except for 'It's being worked on'). For a good eight months, until now when we get told that charcopy isn't happening and clustering isn't going to happen - and we find out that that has been known for a good long time, but never communicated to us.

In the meantime no alternatives have been thought through, and now we get told that we have to work with GOA to resolve this situation and that we have to voice our wishes. People have been voicing their wishes for eight to nine months already.

This isn't a matter of trying to spite anyone, it's a case of your customers being flabberghasted at the way things are handled. It -appears- as one stall-tactic after another, instead of presenting solutions.

The flow of information should be going the other way - GOA figuring out two or three viable ideas and then asking the population of Dyven which of those three they want to see implemented. As it appears now, GOA is trying to bet on all horses at once, and leaves the server to suffer for it. If you don't want/can't charcopy, cluster, say so. Right now it seems like GOA is saying nothing so people -might- stick around for a few months longer. If you -can- provide a solution, but that might scare off bunch of players, then do so. This wishy-washy attitude will kill the server just as surely as anything else.

Remember that most people here didn't even know that GOA was doing any investigating at all - only a few of the E&Es knew that and kept it to themselves. People have been speculating for months about transfers and clustering because of the serious underpopulation issues. They have just been shot out of the sky by Roaken's reply via RightNow. Surely you understand their frustration.

In the end it is GOA through Mythic that needs to work to get this situation resolved, and only GOA has the clout to do that. The ball is firmly in GOA's playing field. A year has passed and we are exactly where we started, but with even less players.

Pull out the whips and get moving. A year has been wasted already. If you are so desperate that you need hints from the players on how to fix this, the future is looking very dire indeed.

Repped

 

[Azathrim]

Remember that most people here didn't even know that GOA was doing any investigating at all - only a few of the E&Es knew that and kept it to themselves. People have been speculating for months about transfers and clustering because of the serious underpopulation issues. They have just been shot out of the sky by Roaken's reply via RightNow. Surely you understand their frustration.

Which is excactly what I have been yelling the last years. GoA needs to improve their information levels, which at the moment is horrible low. One thing is the people on FH that now is shocked by the revelation of GoAs incompetence. Imagine the few people left on the servers that starts picking these rumours up and haven't read FH?

Ofcourse, Requiel and GoA have refused to improve the info level in their usual arrogant attitude. It doesn't bode well for WAR. Remember to go US if you ever want to play that game.

 

[rampant]

oh well with Requiel (iainc) at the helm for WHO in europe (him being community manager) - it looks like we will get the same level of information as to what we get now on DAOC...

 

[Succi]

Having a job very similar to requiel's (although for a much larger company) makes this thread even more amusing

 

[Manisch Depressiv]

Well, at least they tried to make some plans.

Even though that they wouldn't be able to fullfil them anyway, because of a shitty license from Mythic.

I am wondering why GoA's server infrastructure and the database format is different if they are not allowed to change too many things (according to the license)?

 

[Clive Aminal]

.

I am wondering why GoA's server infrastructure and the database format is different if they are not allowed to change too many things (according to the license)?

It does seem like it would be a technical nightmare to have a different infrastructure at GoA given what has been said about the license. It wouldn't make much sense from a mythic > GoA support point of view and sounds like a recipe for disaster with patches that directly affect the database. Surely it would have made more sense to essentiallly clone the mythic servers in the first place at the conception of the game, not try to emulate them with a different infrastructure?

 

[Succi]

more dissatisfied eu customers = more us subscriptions



bad business sense to mythic to make any concessions to goa at this point in the game

 

[Clive Aminal]

One thing that has consistantly bothered me, is that as a UK player, GoA has simply NEVER advertised here. Over the years, I have persuaded many friends to try DAoC, and most of those people played for a minimum of two years, some as long as four. I would imagine that most UK players found DAoC via word of mouth, so imagine what could have been achieved if GoA had actually launched any kind of significant advertising campaign in the UK. Even if it was just a monthly full page spread in a popular gaming magazine.

Talks of clustering for the past year have been all well and good, but a far more effective tool, would have been to let people know the game exists in the first place. Sadly, I think that particular horse has now bolted, given that WAR is now in beta.

 

[Manisch Depressiv]

It does seem like it would be a technical nightmare to have a different infrastructure at GoA given what has been said about the license. It wouldn't make much sense from a mythic > GoA support point of view and sounds like a recipe for disaster with patches that directly affect the database. Surely it would have made more sense to essentiallly clone the mythic servers in the first place at the conception of the game, not try to emulate them with a different infrastructure?

Yes, it's very contradicting.