GOA general discussion

[Tilda]

Ok, lets have a nice sensible non-flaming discussion.

Do you think GOA are capable of running the EU servers and why?

Flaming will be stomped on.
If you say no they cant, give reasons and evidence.
Bearing in mind that there are a lot of rumours flying about, base your arguments on what is fact, not on what you think happened etc.

 

[svartmetall]

My biggest reason for saying "no" is because of their appalling (read: non-existent) customer support.

I know I'm not privy to all the facts about this hack or whatever it is, but there have been murmurings that suggest this is GOA's, not Mythic's, fault vis-a-vis security holes/dev tool availability.

I would be more than happy to see the licenece stripped from GOA and given to a company with proven good security and customer service.

 

[freeq]

yup i do, servers are up 90% of the time(generally speaking of coarse), thats enough for me.
CS could be a bit sharper, but hey...

besides IF goa lost the contract or whatever, what happens to our chars when another company takes over? they get whiped and we have to start over?

just a thought.

 

[the_fnord]

I think they're capable to run the servers allright.
The problem I think lies in customer support and information...

My 2 cents for what it's worth.

 

[hillem]

I think they are doing a great job but the information to the public could be improved. Often while big changes are done on servers information about estimated time of downtime and estimated time of shutdown and so forth so the general public know what where going on.

 

[old.Tohtori]

*lifts his feet on the desk, takes a sip of coke and shrugs*

Meh, it's GOA, they do a'ight. Sure it rains shit some days but that's only expected.

 

[Kharok Svark]

Yes, I think they do a good job keeping the servers running smoothly.

As already said though, sharing information is where they are badly lacking.

 

[Keogh]

I think they can generally run the servers, but this incident has proven they don't seem to have a clue about customer service.

If account details, passwords etc, were compromised then maybe the way it's been handled was the correct way even though they could have given us more info during yesterday, but if account details were not compromised then they fucked up royaly with how they handled it.

What would have made more sense to me is they could have disabled all game passwords, then re-enabled the subscription system to allow us all to change our paswords ourselves. If this had been done, maybe there would be more than 198 people in albion at 13:08.

Also some may say that the GOA webby may have stumbled with the flood of people going to change their passwords, but I doubt that all the subscribers they have would all have been online all day yesterday trying to see when the servers would be up so I don't think this would have been a problem.

 

[Draylor]

In the last 18 months GOA have proven time and time again theyre not capable of getting even the simple things right.

Answer should be obvious

 

[uglymug]

imo the servers aren't the problem, in that when they're up they run okay (for me) .. except when i'm on a raid/retake/whatever with 100 odd mids facing a similarly large opposition ... then the lag is truly too bad for words

it's the 'service' they provide apart from running the servers that is the problem.

any promisse they make/have made is/has been broken.

delays are a way of life for GOA

deadlines, set by them, are never reached

information of any kind on their day to day operations, what they are working on/trying to fix, is hard to come by. if we get told anything ... 99% of the time it's after the fact

 

[Tilda]

Originally posted by svartmetall
My biggest reason for saying "no" is because of their appalling (read: non-existent) customer support.

I know I'm not privy to all the facts about this hack or whatever it is, but there have been murmurings that suggest this is GOA's, not Mythic's, fault vis-a-vis security holes/dev tool availability.

See, i would disagree.

Personally I think they do a damm good job with limited resources. The servers are up 99% of the time and are stable, there arn't daily reboots etc.

Personally I have found their CS very good, the longest ive had to wait was 3 days and the shortest, 2 hours. I'm not sure weather you have had bad experiences or have just been unlucky but i think ive one about 30 rightnow queries and had no problems.

I voted yes because they seem to me to be doing a good job, hell atleast there acknoleging(sp) that theres been a problem and doing something about it.
For all we know they last week they have spent talking to the Police and dong other things to secure the servers befor they announce it. Imo if they had announced it and then gone to fix it there would have been a rush of hackings and other occurences befor they could fix it.

 

[Flimgoblin]

Originally posted by uglymug
imo the servers aren't the problem, in that when they're up they run okay (for me) .. except when i'm on a raid/retake/whatever with 100 odd mids facing a similarly large opposition ... then the lag is truly too bad for words

the 100 odd mids facing a similarly large opposition creates client-side lag ... you just can't render that many people quickly unless you have a silly-fast machine (Belomar what sort of evil machine do you run to be able to film relic raids? )

there used to be server-side problems when there were upwards of 400 people in the same zone but it seems to be smooth now

I think GOA have been doing well enough running things. Not perfect, and this latest hacking thing is a bit worrying - but until we know more details we can't really judge them on that.

More info would be nice when things do go wrong admittedly, but I'm still a "yes"

 

[mib666]

More than capable of maintaining servers hence good uptime, their communication on the other hand is atrocious.

 

[Sibanac]

Originally posted by Keogh
I think they can generally run the servers, but this incident has proven they don't seem to have a clue about customer service.

If account details, passwords etc, were compromised then maybe the way it's been handled was the correct way even though they could have given us more info during yesterday, but if account details were not compromised then they fucked up royaly with how they handled it.

What would have made more sense to me is they could have disabled all game passwords, then re-enabled the subscription system to allow us all to change our paswords ourselves. If this had been done, maybe there would be more than 198 people in albion at 13:08.

Also some may say that the GOA webby may have stumbled with the flood of people going to change their passwords, but I doubt that all the subscribers they have would all have been online all day yesterday trying to see when the servers would be up so I don't think this would have been a problem.

Well if there was even the slightest chance that any of the acounts where compromised then it is standard security procedure to repassword everything.

As for not letting people chose their own password. lost off companies do that for high security stuff, it takes away the chance of users making easy to guess passwords. where i work i can change any off my passwords except high security/risk stuff, for that i get a new pass every so oftend snail mailed to me

 

[Stormm]

If you had needed help form GOA customer support as one of my friends did, who eventually gave up and left the game due to thier complete lack of response im sure you would also wish GOA would get the boot.

I think the questions, are they capable of running the server isnt really what most people have a problem with, although i don't even think they do that very well tbh. The problem is customer support/communiction. I mean just look at the situation now, no feedback whatsoever, and for those who's passes do not work we still havent got a clue what to do or even a way to contact GOA to find out.

pathetic.

 

[svartmetall]

Originally posted by Tilda
See, I would disagree.

Personally I think they do a damn good job with limited resources. The servers are up 99% of the time and are stable, there aren't daily reboots etc.

I would expect that as a matter of course from whoever had the licence, though. I don't pay a monthly fee to pay Quake 3 and I can't remember the last time any of my favourite Q3 servers were down, so when I'm paying, reliable servers shouldn't even be an issue.

Personally I have found their CS very good, the longest ive had to wait was 3 days and the shortest, 2 hours. I'm not sure whether you have had bad experiences or have just been unlucky but I think I've one about 30 rightnow queries and had no problems.

See, I just don't understand that. All I can say is that from my personal experience, their customer service is non-existent as they NEVER reply to my queries, ever. I cannot understand it.

 

[boomeruk]

my vote was no.

i based my vote on the following facts:

A) it takes 30 seconds to type the following "we are having serious problems atm, our servers will be down, and you wont be able to play the game untill we update with more info, sorry for the inconvienience"

and a futher update in 2 hrs, 4 hrs etc etc (again, taking approximatly 30 seconds)

instead of: "servers will be down for upto 3? hours, and passwords will be with you in 24 hours"

as it stands, the servers were down for at least 8 hours, and its past 24 hours now and i still do not have a password.

B) Everytime a server crash happens, or it is down for maintanance, its along the same lines as above, and causes un-nessercary headachs

c) The news page is appauling. again, a 10, maybe 15 miniute job, informing us whats happening, anything.... silience is the biggest problem ... again, causing speculation, rumours and more unnessercary headaches.

If our company would treat its clients / customers like that, we would no longer have acompany to work for. its as simple as that. you do not lie to 30,000 people publicly. you "cover your arses" there was no guarentee that the servers would be back up in 3, 4 hours, yet they said that. there was no guarentee that everyone would have there new passes within 24 hours, and they said that.

there was no backup plan, no contingency put in what so ever, the people who recieved there passwords that dont work are now in limbo.

everybody knows this, its no secret, GOA are NOT capable of running a professional company as it stands.

 

[Hargh]

They are capable but wouldn't be my choice. The english speaking market in Europe should be catered for by a company who has more interest in pushing the product to more people, plus this would reduce "translation" time.

 

[old.Vae]

Overall they are fairly competent. Servers have a good up rate and only tend to fail during Relic raids
We have a GM - Kemor - who does tend to make an effort to help - think of the number of times he's fixed Sidi etc late at night.

However their information sharing is frankly abysmal. You only have to look at the number of times we are forced to use an online translation of a German or French news post in order to try and get some news of our own!

A quote from a friend is rather applicable to GOA:

Don't treat people like mushrooms:- i.e. keep them in the dark and feed them shit!

 

[Gewny]

technically : yes the servers seems to be u and running as they should.

But information ?

I dont buy the part that they has spoken to the police and so on... they did inform there german players more than us.
Actually we got more information from Sanya (Mythics sacrificial goat) than from GOA.

Basicly there CS suck esp the part about letting ppl know what is going on...

And a thougt for Goa :
If you tell the truth, however how bad it is, then honestly try to fix the issues ppl are gonna trust you. The actual "service" is actually less important than the perception of the "service"...

 

[the_smurflord]

Having played several different mmorpgs, I think the level of up-time and general server stability GOA have provided has been excellent. we've had a few problems over the last 18 months, but in general things have been running very smoothly.

As mentioned by many others, the levels of information and customer support have been pretty dire. Thankfully I've rarely needed them. In this case, GOA has done exactly the right thing if it fears its user database has been compromised, however annoying it is.

As one of Mythic's franchisees I think they've done a reasonably good job overall. HOWEVER, I still think Mythic's decision to make it a franchise operation and not run it themselves was a very very poor one. I do rather get the impression that they do not treat their licencees as much of a priority when it comes to things like patches, expansions and general support, something that is out of GOA's hands.

In an ideal world, I'd like to see Mythic withdraw all it's licences and take over the running of daoc worldwide, but we all know that isn't going to happen.

 

[-yoda-]

i voted no many reasons .. but one thing that sticks out at how bad they are as a company is the so calle REALM WIDE EVENT! thats been going for over 12 months now ... if they cant even sort that out do you really think they are a capable company ? cos i certainly dont.. not if they cant even do a simple thing like that ,

also slow ass response on rightnever ... NOT keeping us informed of whats going on ..... no ingame suport ...... slow patches... also can u remmeber when they screwed up so baly we ha a 24hr re-roll an loas of people lost items/valuable exp etc etc , an we got a whole 50p'ish compensation ROFL ..... bad lag on servers when lots of folks in zone (server crashes) ..an much more smaller things . and now they been hacked an all thislatest crap ...

so imo they as a host imo they not good enough

p.s giff a decent company to run things for us , goa are incompetant .

 

[Lorthania]

I vote yes. Uptime and server performance is good in normal circumstances. I have no complaints about CS either.

I do agree with other posters who say that GOA could communicate better in situations like these, although I fully trust GOA that they will handle this properly.

Lorth

 

[Tilda]

Originally posted by -yoda-
i voted no many reasons .. but one thing that sticks out at how bad they are as a company is the so calle REALM WIDE EVENT! thats been going for over 12 months now ... if they cant even sort that out do you really think they are a capable company ? cos i certainly dont.. not if they cant even do a simple thing like that ,

also slow ass response on rightnever ... NOT keeping us informed of whats going on ..... no ingame suport ...... slow patches... also can u remmeber when they screwed up so baly we ha a 24hr re-roll an loas of people lost items/valuable exp etc etc , an we got a whole 50p'ish compensation ROFL ..... bad lag on servers when lots of folks in zone (server crashes) ..an much more smaller things . and now they been hacked an all thislatest crap ...

Yoda, you havent given evidence.

they do events which is more than the US people get, I dont realy think that that is a big problem, you havent even said what the matter is with the event.
Again, i said use what is fact, we dont KNOW that they got hacked. imo 1 24 hour rollback in nearly 2 years isnt bad. in SWG you get 2 hours of server down time a day and frequent rollbacks.

As it has been said, if they even suspected that there had been a security breach they did the right thing and changed all the passwords.

Tilda

 

[acei]

Unfortunately i've had to say no, it's been 24 hours now and not one single update on their news, it takes less than 30 seconds to write "E-mail's are going out in BLABLA order" yet they haven't even bothered to do that It's important to keep customers up-to-date with info!

 

[specialdave]

Well I voted 'yes' for the basic reason that the servers are up and running for the vast majority of the time. However the lack of diologue between customer and service provider is clearly either underfunded or considered unimportant.

I would be interested in taking a look at the companys financial accounts to better understand their financial performance (but not sure how the DaoC business is run, ie division of single entity, own seperate legal entity, etc .... - the latter would be easiest to get transparancy on GOA's performance re DoaC obviously).

Clearly they generate reasonable income (muttered re 26,000 cusomers at £8 a month = approx £2.5m per annum) but the lion share of this will be taken up with the licence fee paid to Mythic - again would love to get a read of this licence agreement!

I suspect they simply do not have a business model to support an efficient customer service function and to be honest, I often question many of the 'business' minds that are employed by software companies, largely due to the way many are founded - IT bod with clever idea.

All in all, GOA are probably doing just a good a job as the next company - just does not stop it being annoying when they mess it up!

 

[svartmetall]

I'm interested, then, to see how the people saying they have no problems with GOA's customer support would explain their total refusal to acknowledge I even exist (apart from being happy enough to keep drawing my monthly sub, that is)...?

 

[granny]

GOA are certainly capable of running the servers, no question there. However the mmorpg market is turning into a highly competetive one and I think GOA would be well advised to seriously consider how they are perceived by their customers.

Poor service, subscribers feeling alienated and unsafe... these are the kind of things that lead to us going elsewhere :/

 

[werewolf]

me vote NO ...
Reason as many prolly has said before customers support ie if somethign goes wrong u never see anyone ie on mirc or post here or mails or anythign about wot went wrong etc i dont play any other morpgs but i play another online game where they allways inside4 30-1h have some kind off answer wots wrong and why and so on atleast they talk to the ppl who pays to play or give statements..

 

[Breni]

Actual running of the servers - uptime, downtime? No problem there for me.

Maintaining good customer relations? Sadly lacking. They have consistently failed to update us with information whenever there has been a major outage, of any cause. Thankfully, these have been very few and far between.

However, when they do update us, the information given is more of a "Here, hungry man, have a crust" than the offering of a full meal. We all crave meaty information, and they throw us scraps.

They ask for volunteers to "test" their patches, and yet they release bugs like the CS/BT and missing sounds issues.

These are the problems with Goa, the fact that their work is carried out with the minimum of consideration with the customer base. How many posts have been made on these very boards by a Goa employee in total? And how many have been made about this very problem? Even updating the news page itself would have been appreciated...but no, they don't even take the time to do that.

I won't be moving to the US, or stopping altogether - I have a great guild and really enjoy my characters. My faith in Goa as a service provider is good, my faith in Goa's customer service provision is bad.