GOA providing the worst service

[Vell]

Originally posted by old.Hardbein
Is it just me or do I smell a very quick 1.63 patch coming (read: rangers soloing milegate doors in 2 mins). To avoid Mythics flaws GOA might want to w8 for that patch too......

But they won't wait for 1.63. They'll patch with 1.62 and then leave it months before patching to 1.63, because we'll have to wait for 1.64 and 1.65 to come out too.

By combining patches, GOA aren't doing us any favours, as far as I can tell....

 

[Uncle Sick(tm)]

Originally posted by old.Glendower
Why should I have to provide you any reasons for my own informed opinion that I have developed over 38 years???

I wasn't "taught" anything about France (except its size and location in school), I learned it all on my own.

Just to humor you, I will give you a few reasons why they suck...

1) The work ethic is obviously crap. Holidays at the drop of a hat, and customers/community always come second at best. French products I have seen are overpriced and pretentious (GOA is a good example, too). Read the news about selfish people crippling the country when faced with very minor pension reforms that would benifit all of the citizens.

2) The water supplies resemble that of the third world. Everyone who goes there is appalled by this. Well, everyone from here anyway.

3) France Telecom (do a search if you need background)

4) The government sabotaged a greenpeace schooner while it was in port.

Hey - a one liner for you: you are a stuck up, misinformed asshole. Someone ban me, please. I am stalking 38 years of accumulated shyte again...

Your reason no. 4) why France is shit, is especially entertaining.
What is your country doing to protect the environment?

To quote TedTheDog: "I think you sound like a jerk."

 

[Oddorvard]

A lot of interesting posts here, some of which are also quite informative.

One request though, please don't hijack this thread by flaming the French or counter-flaming those who do.

One thing I would like to add to this discussion is last friday's Friday News. They provided no information when the next server upgrades will take place, no information on when the 'single update' of the chronicles will take place and no information on patches. Instead they discussed upcoming delays in English support and derived Daoc merchandize.

And finally, does anyone else think that instead of focusing on implementing a polling system into their current webside, GOA should rather be focusing on improving the chronicles layout?

 

[blain]

My main gripes about GOA.

1. Website
The site IS buggy, and in my opinion over "flowery"
The chronicles dont always work.
The billing system does not always work
The whole SI expansion thing....

2. Customer Service
How many times have we had a post, where someone sent a detailed rightnow enquiry, including; Character Name, Account Name, Server, Realm and Class, only to recieve an email saying "What server/realm/character/account/class are you"

They are slow to inform the community of problems and vague when they do.

No in game support

Broken XML, only GOA suffered this problem.

3. Patching

Why do UK members have to suffer because of French/German translations?
Why are our servers slow/prone to crashing?
We recently had an increase in our subs, yet as it looks to me, we are the only country who have not gained anything from it.

4. Events
Slow, rare and not very well thought out.

OK there's the whines, here is something constructive.

1. Website
Get rid of the flash and work in PHP

2. First off, get your CSS's to read the emails properly.
There are people who would love to act as in game support agents, and would probably do it for free, or for a small incentive.
Inform the community, when there are problems, how long would it take to post a quick note on the official page?

XML; surely there is a method of reverting back to the last version of the parser that worked?

3. Patching
I am under the impression that the patches are translated manually, I know for a fact that software is available that can automatically translate information for you, surely it would be faster to do it automatically and then check it for faults.
Is it possible to reconfigure the servers so that each country has its own patching server?

4. Events
Again, akin to in game support, I can think of lots of people who would volunteer to help out with events, why not let them?

OK rant over.

 

[Thorarin]

Originally posted by Oddorvard
Herald
The purpose of the Herald is to display information and statistics about characters. GOA's Herald has been down since March 12th. GOA has stated that this is Mythic's fault and will not be fixed until the next patch arrives. However, it seems that our Italian and Korean brethren have managed to keep their Heralds

The difference here is that the Italian and Korean versions have 1 language to deal with. The reason Mythic's tool is messing up (as I understand it) is the translations. For anything but GOA's English/German/French situation, the tool can de adapted on a 1 on 1 basis, but not if you have 3 languages to process with 1 tool.

Why the tool is language dependant in the first place, beats me. Blame Mythic.

Patches
For some reason which I do not understand GOA's servers are usually patched with merged patches, that is two or more patches are merged into one before they are applied.

Patches are merged together to save time. GOA has a policy to do a 2 to 3 week internal testing period with volunteers before a patch goes live. Not merging patches would increase the number of these periods. Theoretically, translation on the next patch could be started before the previous patch has gone live, but that complicates the process.


I agree with some of your points at least, but I thought some clarifications on these issues was in order.

 

[hercules-df]

fuck the french and germans they are GOAs lurve buddys. Gif seperate company to handle the english servers. game.net (bazza) population may increase on both servers too, if UK residents currently using US servers notice we are getting a proper service.#

just had a thought of when the first GM appears on excal, u can bet when you send him a question the response will be straight out of Fawlty Towers - Manuel, or contain jejejejeje.

 

[Driwen]

Re: Re: Re: GOA providing the worst service

Originally posted by Vell

This causes extra delay is us (note - not just English servers, but all GOA servers) getting the patches, because not only do GOA have to test the translations, they also need to test the new game code which has been changed due to the multiple patching - even though it may well be very similar to what Mythic originally used.

Goa will always test the patches and by doing them merged it actually saves time as they dont have to the same tests twice. Off course if the combined patch is very buggy it will take some time, but usually there will be little wrong and by doing the test just once, instead off seperate for every patch, will save time.

And if 1.62 buggs most likely will be solved in an emergency patch which will be included to the patch we will be getting with .62. I would rather have 1.61 seperate though as it makes a nice quest in midgard repeatable

 

[Vell]

Re: Re: Re: Re: GOA providing the worst service

Originally posted by driwen
Goa will always test the patches and by doing them merged it actually saves time as they dont have to the same tests twice. Off course if the combined patch is very buggy it will take some time, but usually there will be little wrong and by doing the test just once, instead off seperate for every patch, will save time.

And if 1.62 buggs most likely will be solved in an emergency patch which will be included to the patch we will be getting with .62. I would rather have 1.61 seperate though as it makes a nice quest in midgard repeatable

Personally, I would rather have patch 1.61 in 2 weeks and 1.62 a month after, than both patches in 4 weeks. The quicker they can get the new game content, and bug fixes in, the better imo. Better to have frequent smaller patches than irregular larger ones.


But I really wish people would shut up about patching the english servers before the french and german ones.

 

[Uncle Sick(tm)]

Originally posted by hercules-df

just had a thought of when the first GM appears on excal, u can bet when you send him a question the response will be straight out of Fawlty Towers - Manuel, or contain jejejejeje.

BarrysWorld is proudly presenting yet another racist fuckwit.
Take a cookie, please.

 

[Rhyler]

One thing I hate about GOA

we don't have any ingame support like the US people have (as far as I know) only the annoying and very slow right now, still they decided to RAISE the monthly fee of the game

btw anyone know if GOA is on vacation or something? sent a question to GOA with rightnow, gone 10days and not a single reply, they surely aren't treating their paying customers nicely.

 

[Brannor McThife]

Time for a comment or two.

Ok, my views...now that I've lived on the outside for 3 months or so, and can't be accused of being a fanboi or something.

Translations
I have never, and will never, believed that GOA has enough people working on this. During testing of SI and other patches which the E&E team helped with, the majority of French language errors were reported by the ENGLISH E&E team (not me, can't speak the language). In all the testing I took part in, I met quite a few of the GMs from the other servers and a few of their CS people - I recall actually showing a CS person where the new spellcrafting ingredients could be bought in the pre-SI patch testing...

Rightnow
I've despised this system since the first few times I had to use it. Having to quit out of a game, make sure I take screenshots and submit them to a system where they spew out an auto-response and then never know if it was dealt with...well, unimpressive. I've heard they don't pay their CS people extremely well, which probably means they actually don't have a single UK person (Pure English first language) with actual proper English linguistic skills in their team.

Why do I say that? Well, take a look at the add-on manual you got with SI, turn to Page 7...look at the headings "Race - Class - Guilds", turn over the page, look at the headings there...

For a laugh...turn to page 25, and read the Realm Points section...hmm...Taking an enemy Relic Keep?

Anyway. fact is, I don't believe that besides the management, and GMs, the rest of the people in GOA are up to scratch. Kemor and Zargar both had experience with US-DAoC before coming to the EU side. The rest of the GMs, well, they attend lessons on how to use various commands.

Events
Well, most people know I was one of the first to get into this, playing Jorem of Midgard opposite Lady Albia of Albion, and some weirdly named Hibbie. From there, I had the chance to play a good few more event characters, and during this time, I really enjoyed the game, and enjoyed some RP interactions with the Mids...although, it must be said, the Mids are about the hardest bunch of gits to get some RP reactions out of. Since that German moron abused the system almost a year ago, I haven't played a single NPC. One-off events were basically canned, and the "Epic Event" stepped in - more like crawled in, was laughed at, then ignored. For months, I, and many other E&E, begged them to do something with this Epic Event. I even managed to drag myself through some of the stages, but eventually I just gave up. A few weeks before I resigned my commission as E&E, they started a new system of NPCs and from initial feedback, it seems to have started working, good luck to those E&E that take part in this. For me, it was the sudden, and extended death of the old Events that depressed me to the point that I wasn't interested in the new Event system.

XML
Perhaps the current state of the EU "Herald" is an indication that they just don't have the skilled people in their employ, because 3/4 months of no XML is just, well, a joke. I really don't care who you blame, but it's still a joke.


Don't get me wrong. I really enjoyed testing SI - otherwise I wouldn't have activated, and payed for - my second account to thoroughly test it. You could easily say, that the most fun I had in DAoC, since the end of the events, was the month I spent testing SI and getting to know people from all the various servers. But that doesn't change the fact that I believe things could definately be done better.

-G

 

[Gallak]

France's biggest mistake was helping the Americans fight back against the English army.

 

[Uncle Sick(tm)]

Originally posted by Gallak
France's biggest mistake was helping the Americans fight back against the English army.

Hmmm... I have to agree actually. Now look at the Canadians - friendly and peaceful people.

ffs France!

 

[Fafnir]

I want to see a Paris Whine Party..

 

[old.Hardbein]

........and no friday news today either (ehrm yesterday)...nerf crafting

Bring on "teh whine guys"....show me how good u r

 

[Teh Krypt]

OMFG I AM THE REAL CLEVER ONE!

The whole reason goa are doing this is simply because we kick their arses in war!!!!! OMG YES I IS THE CLEVER TNX!

You idiots didnt see that one coming did you? no!




ps. This sarcastic flame is intended at the racist idiots who, may well be correct, put the crap into this logical discussion about goa.

 

[tris-]

french people arnt a race, thats like saying americans are a race, they arnt, black is a race, white is a race, do you understand now?

 

[Uncle Sick(tm)]

Call it culturalism then?

 

[mib666]

Originally posted by Vorcyn
Posts like this amuse me

Wow! could you get your tongue any further up GOA's Ass.


As my comment made you laugh so much........

 

[Brannor McThife]

Mib, you seem to have an unhealthy obsession with tongues and asses...



-G

 

[Fafnir]

Originally posted by n3wbie
french people arnt a race, thats like saying americans are a race, they arnt, black is a race, white is a race, do you understand now?

Are they? I thought we all where Homo Sapiens.

 

[Uncle Sick(tm)]

Originally posted by Fafnir
Are they? I thought we all where Homo Sapiens.

Now you are just plain rude...

 

[Nightchill]

I suggested to GOA that, to speed up patching, they should just run all the text through babelfish (on altavista). I believe our money is being wasted to pay real translators when a quality online tool exists.

 

[old.Glendower]

Originally posted by Uncle Sick(tm)


Your reason no. 4) why France is shit, is especially entertaining.
What is your country doing to protect the environment?

I omitted the rest of your quote as it is your usual blather of non-supported, frothing ignorance. Pretty obvious you dont know squat about much of anything, Sick, and you are too cowardly about exposing that ignorance to try and really argue a point in any way other than name-calling. Or, even more likely, you simply lack the emotional development to maintain a rational conversation. I really hope you dont own pets, given your hateful nature.

But, as a matter of fact, I happen to agree that the US government also "sucks" in this and many other ways. Most governments do, really, once you consider that they only exist for the purpose of controling populations and promoting corporate wealth. It is a fact that the citizens of most countries do not share the agendas of their respective governments, and in the US this is particularly true in regards to the environment.

I live in the State of California, which is about the same physical size as France, and is also about the 7th largest economy in the world. This State has the most stringent environmental protections in the US (and the Federal government is always trying to intervene to lessen those protections at the urging of the corporate machine that runs Washington DC), due mostly to the efforts of the citizens who live here. Businesses in many areas are very carefully regulated, and there are a large number of consumer-protection agencies. Many of the top name game companies are based here, and almost every one has offices, btw.

Also, I said FRANCE sucks, not the individual persons who happen to live there...of course that distinction happens to pass over many folk. It is just an opinion, and I gave some examples as to why I think so. As such, it is not presented as a fact, and not really subject to refutation.

And no, there is no more than one "race" of humans according to our local Professor of Anthropology, Norah Glover. Trying to say skin color differentiates between "races" has the same logic that doing so according to different hair color does.

 

[SilverHood]

Also, I said FRANCE sucks, not the individual persons who happen to live there...of course that distinction happens to pass over many folk. It is just an opinion, and I gave some examples as to why I think so. As such, it is not presented as a fact, and not really subject to refutation.

F00l!!!1 France rocks

good food, good weather, nice beaches, nice culture, pretty women.... what more could you want? It beats england in every way, except their government and language

 

[tris-]

Originally posted by old.Glendower
I omitted the rest of your quote as it is your usual blather of non-supported, frothing ignorance.

thats what yanks always say when they know the other person is right:sleeping: america refused to sign to cut down on emissions because they know they would lose money.

and there isnt more than 1 race? what about people in Africa, i think it is, who evolved to be resistant to malaria (sp?) and have different skin types to protect them selves from the sun. are you saying they are the same as an eskimo? taken straight from the dictionary -

"A local geographic or global human population distinguished as a more or less distinct group by genetically transmitted physical characteristics . "

yes, you could say if your ginger, your a different race but being ginger doesnt make you any better compared to being resistant to a disease does it? if your ginger your the same as someone with black hair, if your resistant to a disease your not the same as someone who isnt.

edit: taken from a usage note in the dictionary

"The biological aspect of race is described today not in observable physical features but rather in such genetic characteristics as blood groups and metabolic processes"

 

[old.LandShark]

N3wbie: you don't, then, know the difference between a family and a species. Or was that a species and a genus? I can't really remember tbh :x

Anyhow: obviously the Americans didn't cut emissions because they didn't wish to lose money. That's hardly, the point, is it? The point is emissions needed to be cut and that corral of shortsighted pricks the americans call an administration didn't want to look past their own economy.

 

[Uncle Sick(tm)]

Originally posted by old.Glendower
Also, I said FRANCE sucks, not the individual persons who happen to live there...

Well... care to elaborate why France sucks? What does make France suck?

So what? Their secret service blew up a Greenpeace boat...

Lets talk about the CIA, eh? Or the NSA?
About spying on your supposed allies? Poisoning the milk of Cuban school children? Funding civil wars all over the globe? Aiding fascists to overthrow a democratically elected president (Chile - Allende? Rings a bell?)? Giving Usama bin Laden cash and training - yes.. the CIA.
I could go on and on about American blunders.. shall I?

You are a bigot, Glendower. Just like the president you supposedly despise. Talking blah seems to be one thing Americans are really good at.

Other than you, mister "Lets discuss this like grown up people as long as you share my opinion", I don't slag of a whole fucking country like you do.

Originally posted by old.Glendower
Also, I said FRANCE sucks, not the individual persons who happen to live there...

Read that over and over again - until you finally discover what a bigot schmuck you are.





edit - cutted some stuff rather than the whole thing - Brinx

 

[old.Glendower]

Originally posted by Uncle Sick(tm)
I shall just continue spouting my one-dimensional, foul-languaged verbal abuse as I once again demonstrate that my reading comprehension is something along the order of a 4th year gradeschoolers'

Nice going, Ace. Now have your mommy read my post over for you and explain what I said.

Particularly the part where I say that most of the citizens in this country disagree with the policies of (and actions relating thereto) "the administration". I noticed a similar situation with regards to the English and Blair, yet he totally disregards their wishes in the war on Iraq, correct? Who would you say is at fault there, O Solomon???

All of things you talk about (and many more you dont know squat about, like DynCorp in Colombia) are done by private interests working with their "buddies" in government to corrupt and subvert the democratic process, which includes any oversight or review by the citizens (one of the very good reasons I read papers from all over the world, and not just the pap spoon-fed to the Amercan press by our illustrious leaders...you should try it).

By all means, if you have information about "black box"-type ops of the American government, share it with the world to raise awareness of, and counterract this democratically subversive activity. You and I are in total agreement on this it seems

Those of us familiar with technology and environmental models are aware that the "cost to business" of the Kyoto Protocol and other environmentally sound industries and changes to society is not that big of a deal when offset by other factors. What the real issue is is the decentralization of the power now held by the cadre of elites who run this and other countries (including yours, obviously).

They dont want that to happen.

Oh, and go look up "bigot" in your dimestore dictionary. It is pretty obvious you dont know what it means, but you do a great demonstration of acting like one yourself. Bravo!

 

[tris-]

big·ot ( P ) Pronunciation Key (bgt)
n.
One who is strongly partial to one's own group, religion, race, or politics and is intolerant of those who differ.

sad to say this but it looks like sick was using it the right way