GOA...GOA....GOA <Shakes Head>

[old.Mobstomper]

This is kinda a flame but with a constructive layout (I hope) not stuck together by a 13 yr old who thinks it's cool to swear on the boards

I have never had any problems with GOA and DAoC untill the last 2 weeks, the lag and LD problem is getting worse with me, LDing 10 times in 20min the other day. As a ADSL user I should see Green Green, but I am constantly bombarded with Red Red.

I often wonder why online games are so poor in terms on lag, patches e.t.c. I had the problem with Funcom as well where lag was so bad (Anarchy Online).

Here is an example,
If you were on a bus and it broke down EVERY time you got on it at least once would you continue paying for the service, if the bus slowed down to 2mph and then suddenly zoomed past your stop at 60 (Lag), would you not moan? if you then complained and you were just ignored you would go down to the bus station and get a little annoyed (I know I would).

The point is that for some reason online gaming company's get away with a lot more than normal company's. Maybe becuase the words in an email are less motivating as someone screaming at you in your face?

Other reason I think is that there seems to be no organisation set up to make sure consumers get what they are paying for. However this is the case with Telephones (Oftel) Buses (Local Council) e.t.c. I think that the service we get from GOA is VERY poor for what we pay.

I think that the fact that we do not take real action against these online company's is the reason so many good games are not so good.

There is not a lot I think that we can do now to make GOA listen and I really hope Mythic does not give them the franchise in there next game.

Flame me all you like but these are my thoughts an opinions on why GOA fails to responed to customers and give information on problems.

(P.S Yes I know people have problems with busses and BT but not everyone who uses the service, and also OFTEL forced BT to cut DSL and Internet access prices, so imo a body does make a difference.)

 

[Cerverloc]

I agree. I feel the same way about this subject. The game itself is fun and motivates to continue playing it but the services of GOA have been very poor considered the fact they receive my money every month. I think the company needs to learn to think in a mature way and understand their responsibilities towards their customers.

 

[Alrindel]

Originally posted by old.Mobstomper
Here is an example,
If you were on a bus and it broke down EVERY time you got on it at least once would you continue paying for the service, if the bus slowed down to 2mph and then suddenly zoomed past your stop at 60 (Lag), would you not moan? if you then complained and you were just ignored you would go down to the bus station and get a little annoyed (I know I would).

Your example is silly. GOA is not the bus company in that scenario, your internet service provider is. Let me modify your example a little: GOA is a movie theatre on the other side of the city, you ring them up and you buy a ticket to see a movie at 8 o'clock. Then you go and catch the bus to get to the cinema. If the bus comes late, runs out of gas, breaks down, is caught in traffic, stuck in roadworks, if the bus driver is drunk and gets lost, if the bus company hasn't paid the toll fees to get across a bridge on the way, or if you have an accident, causing you to miss your film, would you storm into the cinema, hurl abuse at the cashier and demand a full refund with interest?

GOA is responsible for keeping the cinema open, the projector in good working order and making sure the movie starts on time. If you can't get there, that's neither GOA's fault nor GOA's problem. Having said that, GOA has been pretty helpful about going to ISPs on behalf of their customers and helping resolve connectivity problems that are well out of their own domain of responsibility. If you are having problem connecting and the traceroute says it's a problem at GOA's servers, then by all means howl, but barring the horrible lag on Sunday night, that has rarely been the case.

 

[-Wedge-]

GOA should look into other internet connection providers, imho...

Seriously, have a few friends that play on the US servers, and they have no lag at all...

If Wanadoo (think they give the connection atm) is unable to deliver a lag free (stable) internet connection, GOA should just look for another solution...

Wanadoo isnt the only internet provider out there... Better yet, let GOA take multiple internet connnections off different providers... (this is possible too)

Oohwell, another cry into thin air, because GOA will never read this... And even if they read this, then they wont take it serious anyhow...

 

[Alrindel]

sigh. i swear, there should be a test, license and L-plate system before people are allowed out on the internet...

 

[-Light-]

Alrindel you haven't got a clue have you!

We are paying customers, what he is saying and what you seem to be missing is that, the bus service is dedicated in taking people to and from that Cinema!!

If the bus service is useless then u don't get to the cinema and u miss the film!

Its the cinema's dedicated bus service and if it is crap u as a customer complain to the Cinema, the Cinema should contact their bus service to sort it out or simply move bus services!

Trying to keep in the metaphor of things

AS FOR U PEOPLE DEFENDING GOA!

Sort it out continually and for 6months now we have been let down time and time again! With patches, lag, updates, information, communication, account problems, character problems etc etc the list goes on

I play on the American servers as well, not a peep of Lag, not a problem if I see someone abusing a bug, almost immediately rectified an upto date continually informative website.

Granted it has continually improved but I am positive that this speed up has come about by the continual complaints and e-mails from users

If we start to sit back and say oh its great now they will get sloppy and we will never move forward

Alrindel, remind me if u start a business never ever to get involved with u as a customer, cause knowing u ur blame it on every one of ur suppliers and never ur own company.

Now stop defending them and start accepting that they are shit, cause they are completely shite

 

[Alrindel]

Light, I'm amazed that you managed to install the game without cutting yourself on the CD-ROM.

 

[-Light-]

Yeah well shame some kids have no idea about customer relations and business, and are happy with mediocrity and not a superb service which GOA cannot supply

As for your personal attacks just shows how immature u are so I won't waste my breath with a retort

 

[Jupitus]

Originally posted by -Light-
Yeah well shame some kids have no idea about customer relations and business, and are happy with mediocrity and not a superb service which GOA cannot supply

As for your personal attacks just shows how immature u are so I won't waste my breath with a retort

Light - go get pingplotter running and examine the traces very carefully when you lag out.

Next, search for and read recent news articles about KPNQwest and Worldcom to understand why alot of ISPs are experiencing problems all across Europe, not just Wanadoo. Don't read the rest of this until you have done so please.

Don't waste your breath posting here, that's a good policy and we're not very interested. I am the manager of a customer support team for a company providing some of their services over the internet. Our ISP is not France Telecom, it is US-based and we currently run 3 T3 connections to the web. Many of our customers in Europe are facing issues right now, just as many of GOAs are, with connectivity and routing due to the disruption you should by now have read about.

If necessary, go and take a course in IP routing and networking and then come back with something a bit more constructive.

 

[[Cerebus]]

Visit Wanadoo : http://www.wanadoo.com/accueil_en.htm

Click on 'Our sites' and select GOA.

Wanadoo own GOA (Or at least most of it). GOA can't go anywhere else.

 

[Alrindel]

What difference would it make if GOA's upstream was AT&T, or C&W, or any other provider, if the lag that Light is suffering is being caused on the BT end? Or by some crappy router in Stockholm (cause of much lag for Swedish, Russian and German players on Sunday). Or by Light's mother running the vacuum cleaner downstairs causing his modem to go all wonky? According to Light, it is GOA's responsibility to come over to his house and tell his mum to turn off the hoover, and they suck because they're not doing it.

 

[cantho]

...

Alrindel: FYI

When doing traceroutes to the servers, the problems always occur at the last two hops ... which are @ GOA

 

[Alrindel]

cantho: FYI

According to people on IRC, the lag was mainly hitting people in the UK last night and they were tracing it to an opentransit node in London.

On Sunday or Monday, the really horrible 1500ms latency that was making life an absolute misery for players in Sweden, Finland, Russia and some parts of Germany was traced to a router in Stockholm.

I don't think the word "always" means what you think it means.

 

[Jiggs]

on the front of the box I got the game in it says 'WANADOO'
the problems are mostly with WANADOO routers, GOA don't even enter the equation IMHO (what do GOA actually do lol????)

I think light is right, sorry to have to tell you this but you IT people obviously live in lala land.............

I run a fairly large company in the city and if I told a customer: 'one of our suppliers let us down' they might give me the benifit of the doubt once or twice, but soon enough they will say: 'sorry not our problem' and go elsewhere.

You charge, you deliver or you out of business its simple.

 

[Jupitus]

... mine has actually been occurring within Demon Internet's WAN I am sorry to say... at least I can call them and bitch though

 

[-Light-]

It is sad to say that the downfall of KPNQWest service is just a poor excuse for a failed service tbh

I play several other online games in Europe and have next to no lag issues at all

If you really must know I pinged GOA recently and found that they were routing their service through American routers!!!!!

The link is in a post around here somewhere can't remember where, I will post it when I find it

As for your personal insults once again I just ignore ur petty comments and realise that once again ur making excuses for GOA's appalling service, get an American Account and then ur see what service is all about, as a customer it is my right to voice my concerns and disapproval at a bad service.

One day when you have a job, ur realise than when the Managing Director wants the budget on his desk at 11am, you don't make some sad excuse on why u can't do it, u do everything in your power to get it down, and that is good business. GOA are not providing a good Service


What amazes me is that ur satisfied with it, if this was any other company with this large a customer base Watchdog would be all over them like a bad rash

But ur entitled to your opinion all be it an naive one

 

[Alrindel]

Jiggs, I don't know what you sell, but I'm sure that from time to time you get customers who are so foolishly unreasonable that you and your colleagues go to the pub and laugh at them over drinks later. Tell me what your business is and I'll come up with an example of a customer who is wrong, irregardless of "the customer is always right."

You and Light and Censi are pretending that you pay GOA a subscription to the game, and GOA runs a pipe straight into your house and are pumping the game in like water, which is preposterous. GOA are running game servers that are connected to the internet, and their responsibility is to keep them running properly and to make sure that the connection to the internet is reliable and adequate. Then you (the customer) pays an internet service provider for access to the internet, and you connect through it to the game (this is the part that you seem to refuse to acknowledge). When the connection breaks, make sure you know which part of the link is broken. Expecting GOA to fix your ISP is like the little old ladies who ring up the post office to complain that their television isn't working properly because they pay their license fee every year, after all, and they should jolly well sort it out.

Understand this: when the servers crash, or the connection breaks because GOA's local routers are inadequate or poorly configured, or because their upstream provider is crap, then I hold GOA fully and completely responsible for this and I expect them to intervene to fix it 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. But when the connection breaks because my cable company goes down, or because the power is off, or because my computer is broken, I don't hold GOA responsible. A lot of people on Barrysworld apparently do, and it drives me insane.

 

[-Light-]

Originally posted by Alrindel
cantho: FYI

According to people on IRC......

Nice reliable source.

The lag issues are a MINISCULE part of GOA's service if you actually read my post you would see I mentioned far more issues than pathetic lag problems take a look up and ur see#


Your discussion skills are laughable

Originally posted by -Light-
Sort it out continually and for 6months now we have been let down time and time again! With patches, lag, updates, information, communication, account problems, character problems etc etc the list goes on

The amount of people who have had their accounts locked out, their credit cards charged when they cancelled their accounts and many many more incidents

You just cannot sit there anymore and say GOA are fine, they have progressed GOD YES, but no where near to providing a reputable service

I am with Jig and Censi all the way

 

[Flimgoblin]

Originally posted by Alrindel
Light, I'm amazed that you managed to install the game without cutting yourself on the CD-ROM.

This elf is the master of put-downs *applauds*

 

[Flimgoblin]

Originally posted by -Light-


If you really must know I pinged GOA recently and found that they were routing their service through American routers!!!!!

It's not GOA that chooses the route (that'd be like the cinema imposing a particular one-way system.....)

What ISP is this? and what country are you connecting from?

 

[Flimgoblin]

I think the analogy (at least with regards to jiggs's post) is more that this cinema is stuck somewhere between the M4/M25 junction and heathrow on a hot sunday afternoon...

1. Your ISP (bus) can break down.
2. You can get stuck in traffic (general routing malaise that's around at the moment)
3. You can get diverted through SW london or something (re-routing via the US )

4. The ticket bloke can lose your credit card/drop your ticket (billing problems)

5. The film can be jumpy. (mythic not sending textures )
6. The projector can break (GOA's servers going boom)

As much as it is nice to vent... alas GOA are only responsible for parts 4 and 6...
They're responsible for stopping 5 from happening very often (Jiggs's suppliers)

Unfortunately the only way they can avoid 1-3 is to relocate to the midlands (I think my metaphor has died). And their London customers wouldn't be too happy.

 

[old.Odysseus]

Stop with the methaphors already!

3 issues are the main reason of lag:

a) GOA's server capacity (in processing power respects)
b) GOA's internet bandwidth
c) Poor game programming
c) your own bandwidth

As all players experience a lot of lag, either all players have lousy bandwidths or we rule out d).

Whether it is a), b) or c) that is the cause of lags I will not guess (its prolly a mix), but stop blaming the players.
One way or the other, GOA or Mythic is at fault.

 

[Novamir]

completely agree that the connection is currently awful. im also adsl from UK

 

[Ifalna]

Your ISP is responsible for routing packets to the DAoC servers. GOA's ISP (Wanadoo) is responsible for the routing of packets back to your computer (the two routes don't necessarily have to be the same).

Therefore if your tracert to GOA is going via the US it is your ISP's fault since you are the one sending the trace.

If GOA were to tracert you and found out that it goes via Outer Mongolia then Wanadoo would be responsible for sorting it out.

Kinda oversimplified, but that's the general gist of it. GOA is not responsible for your ISP's incompetence.

 

[Israfael]

Sorry guys, I agree with Alrindel. This is nothing to do with Goa. They can't change ISPs - as Wanadoo own them - all they can do (And they probably ARE) is bitch at Wanadoo. Wanadoo will then say "Hmph, not our problem" and ignore Goa.

I've had the mispleasure of working for a company 90% owned by Wanadoo in the past (Worked for a company that was took over by them) and they're a complete bunch of tossers. They don't listen to the companies that they own, and they do whatever the hell they like.

This, for once, is not Goa's fault. They can't do a thing about it. Rather than constantly whine whine whine bugger off to the "lag free" american version.

Sorry guys, but this is beginning to get wearing now. Very few people seem to realise how companies like Wanadoo work.

Imagine this scenario -

You work for a very large ISP
You have a server outage at the moment.
This is due to BT screwing up your backbone - it's not your fault.
You can't tell your customer's it's BT's fault because that's bad business.
Several thousand people are right at this moment calling your helpline and screaming "I can't access the internet!!!! Fix IT! I PAY FOR THIS SERVICE!!!"
You can't fix it - You have to wait for BT to send out a smelly little engineer to the middle of nowhere and replace a fuse.
All you can do is weather the storm until BT fixes the problem, and prepare for the backlash.

Ok?

You're Goa.
BT is Wanadoo.
The thousands of screaming customers are those who whine here.

See the point?

No?

Go back to school then

 

[old.Odysseus]

I find it a liiiiittle bit unrealistic that all of the players' ISPs currently route via the US (we're talking every country from spain over poland, finland and england)
Again this leads to the possibilities that i presented before:

a) GOA's server capacity (in processing power respects)
b) GOA's internet bandwidth
c) Poor game programming

If you cant accept any of the above options, it must mean that you believe that every single players ISP is fucked up.
That would be just about equivalent to saying "All european ISPs have either low bandwith or poor routing" - which is of course not true.

 

[Israfael]

ALL the players ISPs don't route through the US - just apparantly a few of them.

Again, I doubt Goa have any control over the routing to their servers - that's something, again, you must blame wanadoo for.

 

[Heish]

Bandwidth is not the issue here since I imagine most people are on a dsl or cable connection. And I seriously doubt that goa's servers don't have enough bandwidth, if that was the case we would lag all the time continuously, which we don't. People don't seem to have any real grasp on how the internet is built and working. There is no such thing as -the- internet company, since it's all built up from smaller ones independent from each other.

Also I must say I love reading your posts Alrindel, noone can diss quite like you. Really amusing to read.

 

[herjulf]

Well the bus example is fine, i BLAME the bus company if the bus is fueled with gasoline that makes the bus stop.
it is their responsibility to choose gasoline that works.

Just as it is GOA´s to choose an ISP that works.

it is that easy,

 

[old.Odysseus]

b) GOA's internet bandwidth

By this I of course mean both the internal LAN, the connection to the ISP and the ISP's bandwith and routing to the rest of the world.

I do not know which of the above specifics (if any) is at fault, but if the fault is inside GOA's ISP, GOA is responsible to have these errors corrected or switch ISP. I pay to play a non-lag game and it is´the responsibility to GOA to make that happen.

Edit:
Enuf with the busses already