GOA....stop the translations and make us happy!!

[old.Nofearious]

I originally started playing Daoc back in November when I got the US version with a couple of other European friends. I loved the game straight away and was most impressed by Mythic and their attitude toward the paying consumers. Constant updates on the herald website, patches almost every two weeks and an incredible amount of future patch information available to wet every player's appetite. This was a gaming company that was getting it right and was taking all that money rolling in month after month and using it to continually develop the game.

Then the Euro version released and we decided to bite the bullet and start from scratch on Excalibur, time zones and more people playing was the biggest reason for the switch. It is now almost May and in that time there has been one set of patch updates, I read about the Battlegrounds, Darkness Falls and now there's news of Respeccing to be hitting the US servers, it's frustrating to say the least.

It is bloody depressing to know that we have no idea when we might get to see any of these patches if at all. The lack of information from GOA and the closure of the forums is bloody ridiculous considering we are paying to play this game, all I want to know as a paying customer is what is going on. There's about 15,000 people playing the Euro version and at an average of £6 per person, '£90,000 a month' is rolling in, sure there's the servers and bandwidth to support, but by christ there's got to be some money left over to pay a translation company to convert what text you have in the game, and get it done to a deadline!!

A better solution IMO is to ask the players on the German and French servers if they would prefer an English (up to date with the patches) version and forget about the translations all together! I mean why are the translations being done? I'd like to know if this is the request of the players or just something that GOA want to do! So many Europeans speak english and I'm sure that the majority of German and French players would prefer to have the latest product rather than a version that is months old!

I still love the game and Excalibur so I don't want to return to my US character, but I would pay more per month if it meant I got to play with the latest patches that Mythic have developed. I just feel completely short changed by my monthly fee not getting me the same level of service that our fellows across the Atlantic are receiving!

So GOA, take a look at doing away with translations all together or just keep a couple of servers unpatched for the players who can't speak English! You have a community that wants you to succeed but you have to listen up to what we the consumer want.

 

[old.Halfmad]

hmm

Personally I dont think that I'd like a game that was written in my second language.

But I've no idea why they can't patch the UK ones faster seeing as there's no translation required!

 

[old.tRoG]

maybe because then all the frenchies and germans would hate us, and move over to our servers, being so overly jealous of us

 

[SFXman]

Re: hmm

There were some good points made in this post. For exmaple the amount of money rolling in. GOA has at least 20,000 customers now. Of course this is not that much compared to perhaps the population of UO but that has been around in europe a lot longer already.
I really don't know what to say. But the interval between patches is long because.... as you said the US got one avery few weeks? Well GOA are jumping over small updates and making them all one big one. So basically it will take much longer to get a patch since we get them in one.
The translation is a must really. Because as I have experienced the French are usually HOPELESS at english OR they don't WANT to speak it (for some damn reason which makes no sense). So some people would be close to unable to play the whole game.

Originally posted by Halfmad
Personally I dont think that I'd like a game that was written in my second language.

But I've no idea why they can't patch the UK ones faster seeing as there's no translation required!

I play this game in my second language

 

[fatgit]

The reason they don't patch the Eng servers, and then patch the others at translation is to cut down on the errors that can occur when you have multiple servers running different versions

It would only take one small human error to b0rk the lot

 

[old.ElDiablo]

So true Nofear.

I play this in my second language too, all games infact. They should at least patch the UK ones first.

 

[old.Veritreus]

So true Fatgit... yet for some reason I see a thread on the idea popping up every week

I do, however, have the utmost respect for people who play this game in a second language... my English is bad enough, let alone my German... and my French? Don't go there

minor-rant

It does get a bit annoying when they start speaking in foreign languages in public chat channels, which I believe is against the terms and conditions of playing on the servers. Sure, in Guild chat if that's what your guild wants, or chat groups, fine, even groups when you know the other people either understand you or don't mind, but you have chosen to play on an English (or French or German!) server, so can you please not get mad at those of us who can't speak your language, and equally, not fill our chat windows with things we haven't got the slightest idea of what they mean? We have a couple of swedes and other nationalities in our guild and it is quite amusing when they get the wrong channel and a bunch of meaningless (to me!) characters appear all of a sudden, but if they were to start having conversations in guild chat it would be rather rude... so they don't.

/minor-rant

Having said which, it doesn't happen very often