GOA WAR Website Petition

Penlid

Fledgling Freddie
Joined
Aug 9, 2004
Messages
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Just made this e-petition to basically see the amount of people who want GOA to change their site, if there is a large number of people who sign it then will push it forward to GOA and onto Mythic which seem to have a hold on GOA atm.

Basics of the petition...

Category: Gaming

Region: WAR-Europe Customers

Target: GOA

Web site: Warhammer Online : Age of Reckoning

Description/History:
A petition for GOA to listen to its community and change its ways regarding its Flash Website.

Petition:
As you may know GOA always use flash for their website, but it has become increasingly annoying for many of GOA's Warhammer customers.

We are now asking for GOA to re-design its website along the same lines as Mythics website for better performance and information.

So basically what you sign for is the following:

We the gaming community of Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning on the servers currently ran by GOA, call on GOA to re-design its website and not force the use of flash on its website. We also call on GOA to frequently update its website with information as soon as they have it and include the much awaited Realm WAR and server status pages we were promised a month ago.

And the link...

Change WAR-Europe webpage to a non-flash website Petition
 

Mabs

J Peasemould Gruntfuttock
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Messages
6,869
jobs a good un

and zomg, an interwebs petition that is actually not written by a 6 year old \o/
 

aika

Can't get enough of FH
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cause we know that goa listens to its customers and values their opinion
 

Penlid

Fledgling Freddie
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If we can prove to Mythic that we're actually getting a shit service then maybe they'll have an effect like they did with the open beta and getting goa to sort their shit out. If there is a slight chance this will help then good cos thats what we need.

No point paying your money per month to be treated like shit and do nothing about it.
 

Boggy

Fledgling Freddie
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Pen, I'm not a fan of Flash for these sort of sites, and I get niggled by GOA using it, but I dunno whether objecting to Flash on general principles would be viewed as a particularly strong case. It is a widely used Internet technology, after all.

Might help if you could specify why you object to using Flash? Some suggestions:

- Security. Flash player has had security flaws in the past (WoW customers got caught out by it a few months back I think) over and above those in browsers.

- Usability. No back button, yuck. Why make us all puzzle through bespoke interface conventions when everyone is already famliar with those in their browsers?

- Performance. No huge for me, but Flash has definitely more sluggish responses over standard HTML content.

- Player availability. Some networks won't let you install a Flash player.

Just a thought.
 

Penlid

Fledgling Freddie
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Good points there Peat, will see if i can add them onto the petition, thats generally the aim of the Petition what you posted :)
 

Flimgoblin

It's my birthday today!
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only issue I have with flash is I can't browse the news site on my mobile. Some html alternative content would sort that out though.

Boggy - the war europe website supports the back button (read a news story, then visit another page then hit back - you'll be seeing the same news story).
 

Boggy

Fledgling Freddie
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I've not been able to see that, Flim. The news stories I tried launched in a separate tab.

Try this: go to the home page, expand a menu option on the left, click a menu item. What happens in your browser? In mine, I don't even get an enabled back button, and I think it's because it is all playing inside a single HTML page, with the Flash engine paginating content instead. I could be wrong.
 

scorge

Fledgling Freddie
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They shouyld have a HTML friendly version as well, that way you can choose which one you want to use.

:m00:
 

pikeh

Resident Freddy
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Signed.
I've learnt a lot from designing my own website about the inaccessability of Flash based sites. Since converting to HTML, my hits have increased ten-fold since last month.
People are just put off by it, new technology or not.
 

Mabs

J Peasemould Gruntfuttock
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Signed.
I've learnt a lot from designing my own website about the inaccessability of Flash based sites. Since converting to HTML, my hits have increased ten-fold since last month.
People are just put off by it, new technology or not.

i dont think its a "new tech" thing so much as an "overly complicated, doesnt really work for lots of people, for little gain" tech ;)
 

Soazak

Part of the furniture
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Signed.
I've learnt a lot from designing my own website about the inaccessability of Flash based sites. Since converting to HTML, my hits have increased ten-fold since last month.
People are just put off by it, new technology or not.

There are already guides on the internet for this... ;)
 

pikeh

Resident Freddy
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There are already guides on the internet for this... ;)

Hah!
Throughout uni we were taught Flash more than HTML, primarily becuase it's more image based (and I was doing illustration, afterall). When it came to my website, I just stuck with what I knew.
Maybe something like whats happening with GOA?
 

Mabs

J Peasemould Gruntfuttock
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Hah!
Throughout uni we were taught Flash more than HTML, primarily becuase it's more image based (and I was doing illustration, afterall). When it came to my website, I just stuck with what I knew.
Maybe something like whats happening with GOA?

i have it on very good authority that the GOA web monkey can only do flash sites, hence why it was never changed
 

Cadelin

Resident Freddy
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Aren't we unhappy about the quality of service GOA provide, with one aspect of this being the shitty flash website?

The petition seems to indicate that if the flash website was to be changed then everything would be better. While it is certainly a first step it hardly solves the main problem which is the lack of information.
 

Penlid

Fledgling Freddie
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Aren't we unhappy about the quality of service GOA provide, with one aspect of this being the shitty flash website?

The petition seems to indicate that if the flash website was to be changed then everything would be better. While it is certainly a first step it hardly solves the main problem which is the lack of information.

Thats also included in the petition, the way they have it laid out atm makes it more difficult for them to update, it should be really easy to do.
 

scorge

Fledgling Freddie
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you should not really have to petition for better or same service.......

:m00:
 

taB

Part of the furniture
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I don't know anything about security et al. But my work computer is effing shit (128mb RAM) and stuggles with a lot of things including flash. Would prefer a more basic option at the least.
 

Litmus

Resident Freddy
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Cant see it makeing much difference, every person on the plannet could sign it and nothing would be done :K
 

Raven

Happy Shopper Ray Mears
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Don't people find it fun trying to find which bit of the picture to click to get information?

Think of it as a little puzzle game!


<sarcasm>
 

Bugz

Fledgling Freddie
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The GoA Website only half loads for me :l

The sidebars load but the middle is pure white.

Ironically, Mythic's site loads up in about a quarter of a second.
 

Muylaetrix

Can't get enough of FH
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I don't know anything about security et al. But my work computer is effing shit (128mb RAM) and stuggles with a lot of things including flash. Would prefer a more basic option at the least.

i hope you don`t try an play warhammer on that :p
 

Xandax

Loyal Freddie
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While the website definitely is one annoyances, it is more the overall attitude and service level of GOA which should be targeted.

Especially such as the lack of Realm War and Server status this long after live is simply disgustingly poor service level, for one thing. "Technical difficulties" or not, and "two to tango" or not - just give us the damn XML file if you can't make the website work.

I can live with a shitty website, as long as the content on there is good and fast updated, but even that seems impossible with much of the news value hidden away on user forums, for some obscure reason.

I'd love to sign this petition, but alas - GOA have never listened to customers, because we are just "bashing" out of hatred.
 

Flimgoblin

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I've not been able to see that, Flim. The news stories I tried launched in a separate tab.

Try this: go to the home page, expand a menu option on the left, click a menu item. What happens in your browser? In mine, I don't even get an enabled back button, and I think it's because it is all playing inside a single HTML page, with the Flash engine paginating content instead. I could be wrong.

yeah it rewrites the URL as anchors - if I visit a page from the left nav then hit back I get the homepage - works fine for me.

Which browser do you use? it's a fairly common technique for making the back button work on a flash site - quite prevalent on t'interwebs.

TBH an HTML framework website with flash bits would do the job of the current site - there's nothing that really needs flash on there... Nowt wrong with flash though when used well and appropriately - it's coded well enough on the war-europe site (with the back buttons etc. anyway) just seems a bit of an odd choice for what the site actually does.

There's no fancy transitions - probably removed to make it run faster - the main reason you'd want a flash framework rather than an html one.
 

Gorbash

One of Freddy's beloved
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I wrote a rather large post on why flash is a bad choice a while ago, so rather than re-itterate it all, i'll just bullet the main points that might be worth adding to the "because" list:

*Using a 3rd party plugin to deliver content the browser already knows how to handle natively (text and static images) is wasteful and pointless. Flash is primarily for rich content the browser can't display on its own.
*Accessability of flash is minimal unless you implement it manually (which aside from language selection, GOA have not).
*Security of flash is something i'm not qualified to comment on, but people just dont trust it, whether it does the job or not.

Needless to say, petition signed.
 

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