Here's something from Mark Jacob's blog...

[Dreamor]

Hes a human being not a robot.

Lets be honest though, yes he is human but he could just 'not' post. Right now the GOA 'haters' as such have been waiting for this oppurtunity to strike. They will use any and all forms of complaining.

As someone that works for a games company, what IainC did was wrong, but then hindsight is a wonderful thing. He probably regrets posting it, but I don't blame him for doing it. He was kind of right, but if another company or say a member of the government said this a lot of people would be expecting some form of apology or a change in jobs, thats for sure.

I'd say give GOA a chance, its Open Beta AND you've not YET paid for it. The times you want to rant and complain should be when the head-start kicks off or when the servers become public and you've paid money and are paying money to get the game monthly.

Good luck to both Magnus and IainC, being a Community Manager/Liason is very tough but then if you feel your going to post something thats taken out of context or in a bad way, get one of the others to read it through/discuss it with the team. Right now every person counts as release enters its final stage.

People should just be patient, better these problems are found now than on headstart/live opening?

 

[Fweddy]

I respect IainC loads for that post. It seems perfectly reasonable to me.

 

[twix112]

Yeah sure they are under a lot of pressure now, can imagine he hadn't slept very much when i wrote that but still... There are some ppl that have payed for their CE allready and by a company of their size you expect them to be proffessional... But thinkt that the submission of all the beta keys and accounts on that page would be a smooth ride is just being pathetic... But as you said it's easy to look back and say "we should have done it like this" but I will still say it: Why didn't they open the submission of the beta codes a couple of days before and just take the login server down. Then all these problems with people not getting their emails be resolved by the time of the OB date. Or a day after... But sitting by your computer and waiting for an email that never gets there is frustrating...

 

[Manisch Depressiv]

It's funny how some say that he was right while his post was just the usual bullshit we have been getting from him when he was our man at GOA for DAOC. First the data center takes everything "unscathed" and then it is a problem factor too. Contradict yourself more.

His original sentence was :

"If having delayed access to a beta test really drives you to such depths of anger and fury then - and there is no polite way to put this - there is something wrong with you."

There was nothing in there about death threats and whatsoever. His so called "clarity edit" bringing it all up was nothing but laughable damage control.

He says that the critics have been out of line, well most of the posts on random forums with MMOG nerds are.

A loyal and friendly customer base doesn't fall of the tree though, you have to earn it the hard way. Now look at GOA's track with DAOC and look how many have predicted the cluster fuck with Warhammer and GOA and ask yourself if this doesn't automaticly lead to a reduced level of patience. People fear that it will go this bad way when the game gets retail status and some have paid for open beta access (a point Iain doesn't seem to know).

For me Iain lost all credibility when he started to say that dueling in DAOC leads to anti-social behaviour and started to spawn guards on the very remaining core of what was Dyvet.

I wouldn't want him dead because if it though, that's just low.

Contract with GOA should be terminated. That's it. Reroute the players to Mythic's account management, let them use an own stack of servers in the US who then will (or their data) moved to Europe for better latency.

Oh wait, too late for that! Means that MJ and EA are part of the problem as they should have known what's coming their away a long time ago.

We've been complaing for years, maybe at the wrong places.

 

[lefo]

Hes a human being not a robot.

He had absolutelly no reason to act the way he did. Dont tell me he had a gun pointed to his head to to say it. Just because some crazy 12 years olds cream on the forums doesnt mean anything. These things get sorted by administrators and normal polite and mature people dont give a damn about it what so ever. Especially not CMs of companies that work with masses of people. Next time he will kill someone perhabs, because he is just a human not a robot.

 

[Succi]

oh wow, there are still people defending goa

 

[Xandax]

oh wow, there are still people defending goa

To some, a company can do no wrong, if they hold something they desire.

 

[Muylaetrix]

Why didn't they open the submission of the beta codes a couple of days before and just take the login server down. Then ...

then shit would have hit the fan the moment of the official release and not on the moment of the open beta...

better have their system break down NOW while there is still time to correct it than on the 18th.

it`s called a stress test. the test was succesfull, the system went on it`s back like a cheap whore, that`s the thing they want to find out in the beta, not on the release.

that`s why they have betas, thank you for helping in debugging the system, sorry for the inconvenience.



BBBBBEEEEEETTTTTTAAAAA

 

[mrbandersnatch]

Means that MJ and EA are part of the problem as they should have known what's coming their away a long time ago.

Spot on.

Part of the reason WoW is such a success is they KNOW that EVERY territory is ESSENTIAL to maximise profits, and they put in place the ORGANISATION to ensure they maximize the potential from each territory. As far as I've been able to see with DAoC, Mythic did not give a s*** about Europe; and it is beginning to look like its a replay with WO.

I really don't understand it apart from concluding that Mythics upper management have such a UScentric world view that they are perfectly happy to see their business to seiously under perform anywhere outside their home territory. It's going to be interesting to see if EA is as content with that as Mythic are though.....

 

[Xandax]

then shit would have hit the fan the moment of the official release and not on the moment of the open beta...

better have their system break down NOW while there is still time to correct it than on the 18th.

it`s called a stress test. the test was succesfull, the system went on it`s back like a cheap whore, that`s the thing they want to find out in the beta, not on the release.

that`s why they have betas, thank you for helping in debugging the system, sorry for the inconvenience.

Impossible to claim.
It is perfectly possible to test the account center and let people register keys prior to the day when opening game servers.
From any stress testing point of view - from project management point of view - from software development point of view - GOA seriously dropped the ball on this one. If they had launched the center a week or two earlier with all keys out, the site would get hammered then, with time to spare to fix it. It is obvious - it is even exemplified with the fact that people hammered the download servers when they put up the client.
People want to be in good time, so they can enjoy the game, and thus they'll hammer it as soon as possible. And if not - it is a short question asked from GOA to get them to it.
Heck - even Mark remarks that it perhaps wasn't "planned" that they should launch the center the same day (It wasn't from lack of trying as he said).

The test was horrible, because people weren't (aren't) testing the game, the server, the infrastructure, but instead are forced to test an account center.

The most obviousness of the farce is that Mythic didn't wait to the last possible moment, and had time to fix the problems with the account center, prior to the Open Beta launch.


And by the way - Launch is the 14th, and that is 5 days away and they still have a messed up account center. It is getting awful close to affect the head start because GOA didn't release it earlier.

There is no excuse - either they screwed up the technology or they planned terrible. Neither of those two are comforting. This was not successful test. And the claiming of such only displays obvious lack of understanding of the situation.

 

[mrbandersnatch]

If you want to stress test a website you use a tool such as loadRunner. You do NOT use your customers. EVER.

If I had cocked up to this extent I would expect to be fired. Then again I wouldnt have cocked up to this extent and I've been out of web development for nearly 3 years.

 

[~Latency~]

what ian said is totally right.. how can people get so angry and furious about delays on the open beta of a game... get a fucking life instead of sitting around for days waiting to play- surely you have something better to do.. or not in most cases..

go ian for being honest.. if you had anykind of job or commitment or anything else in your life you wouldn't be so stressed about this meaningless shit.. it's another game you'll play 5+ hours a day wasting away..

idiots

 

[Succi]

what ian said is totally right.. how can people get so angry and furious about delays on the open beta of a game... get a fucking life instead of sitting around for days waiting to play- surely you have something better to do.. or not in most cases..

go ian for being honest.. if you had anykind of job or commitment or anything else in your life you wouldn't be so stressed about this meaningless shit.. it's another game you'll play 5+ hours a day wasting away..

idiots

It was a sunday. Alot of people spent the day off from work hammering f5.

(idiot)

 

[Muylaetrix]

Impossible to claim.
It is perfectly possible to test the account center and let people register keys prior to the day when opening game servers.

ofc it would have been possible and it WOULD have avoided all the problems we had, true. but shit would have hit the fan AT LAUNCH then, when even a greater number of players would try to register their keys. If what had happened with the start of open beta would happen at launch, oh boy, then people would have REALLY reason to be pissed. some people have been in closed beta for a time and got automatic access to open beta (including me), some people won keys with various, .. stuff. ok a lot of people bought a box that guaranteed them open beta access, and the biggest complains probably come from the last category...

the box does not say when, what and how, it just says that people who bought the CE were guaranteed access. TECHNICALLY, if these people can play for ONE day before the headstart, they get what the box claims.

OK, that would be BAD, but think about it.

and sure, the launch of the open beta was a disaster, no way to deny that. but better to have this disaster with open beta than at live headstart or launch. this stuff might happen at headstart and would almost certainly happen at live launch. it seems that right now we are looking at .. 90k ? people who tried to register ? any idea how much would try to register at launch ??? at least NOW they still have the time to come up with a fix.

people can be disapointed, unsatisfied about not having emediate access to open beta, but people would have WAY more reason to cry havoc because they don`t get what they pay for compared to now where they get a bit of a delay on a promised bonus.

From any stress testing point of view

it was a good test, it reveiled huge shortcommings to the system that still can be fixed before release.

from project management point of view

it was really bad.

People want to be in good time, so they can enjoy the game, and thus they'll hammer it as soon as possible.

this is not the game, it`s just another beta phase. and people will hammer it more on launch than they did with the start of open beta.

The test was horrible, because people weren't (aren't) testing the game, the server, the infrastructure, but instead are forced to test an account center.

most are testing the game now, and the account center got tested, failed the test, and can still be corrected. beta is not about (well, not only) playing the game, it`s finding the shortcommings in EVERYTHING that comes with the game.

This was not successful test. And the claiming of such only displays obvious lack of understanding of the situation.

a test where a system fails, can to some extend be called succesfull IF it helps avoid the same failure in reality and not only under testing conditions.

BETA is testing conditions.

in 5 days time it`s for real.

I can only hope that the failure to deliver at the launch of the open beta will help prevent the same thing happening when the game really goes live.

 

[Hawkwind]

It's clear from reading the posts and comments GOA staff need some serious Customer Value training. Having worked in support for half my life it does annoy me that they can't even get the basics right. You simply can't aggro a customer or be unprofessional in communication. Golden rules of CSM! They seem to have the old mentality of customer equals 'the enemy' and it shows.

Feel sorry for Iain as his hearts in the right place but writing a response like that, regardless of what customers were saying was only going to have one outcome. Customers will get frustrated and angry. They will foam at the mouth and swear but as a company representative you have to be above it. Always staying professional. Your customer facing staff say more about your corporate image than any letter from a CEO ever will!

GOA please learn from your mistakes.

 

[Ribbit]

Who in thier right mind is going to trust their website with their account details now?

Think about it.

32 hours after clicking for the final phase confirmation, I get an email. Then I get another. Then I get another. Then I get another. Then I get another. Then I get another.

All within 1 minute, first to last. Yes, that was 6 in total.

All saying "Your code hasn't been registered. Click here to view the reason." I duly click. Only to get :
"Your account is not yet verified, please check your inbox". It's too outrageous to even beggar belief!
Unprofessional, arrogant, incompetent, and blatantly unskilled, yet they want OUR money? For that 'privilege'?
You have got to be joking.
Are some of you people paid apologists for GOA, or what?
You are a disgrace to yourselves, and you aren't doing yourselves (or GOA) any favours.

It's you people that steamed in on Sunday attempting to excuse away the inexcusable, that went a huge way towards winding people up to such ridiculous extremes in the first place. I was one that tried getting you to shut up and go away, and in the end most seemed to get the message. But it still hasn't sunk in the amount of highly avoidable damage YOU did. No, never YOUR fault, always someone else's, someone else that isn't an asskissing brown noser like yourselves.

It's YOU that are very much a major part of the blame that things went so far, because all you were doing, was throwing petrol onto the fire with wild abandon.

If you have the slightest common sense at all, you would do well to just shut up and crawl back into your holes and keep out of everybodys face for the forseeable.

 

[Raven]

It is not the first time he has alienated a community, I am sure some of you recall the catastrophe that was the TT incident and the being called up on MSN by a mate to spawn some mobs on the nasty soloers. water under the bridge now ofc

To be fair though some of the shit on here has been bang out of line, he should have used his old forum alt to voice his personal thoughts on the matter and some sort of official COMPANY line on his official forum ID. Something about threats not being welcome or tolerated and those who use them will not be welcome on the forum.

Its simple customer service and anyone who has worked at a large corp will know not to let personal feelings get involved, that pissy little customer may well make you want to bury your phone in their ear but you have to remain polite.

Anyway, many people predicted that the "keeping the customers informed" part of the manual was lost somewhere, maybe the old excal hamster ate it out of spite.

I would genuinely be pissed off if he was severely punished for this though, as people say I think he means well and lets be honest working for a company like GOA would be a nightmare, I think much of the time his hands are tied by pointless red tape. If anyone has to deal with a French company you will know what they are like, absolute crap.

 

[Aiteal]

We go round and round and round in the circle game

Bought WAR for my younger brother, advised him he would be better off on a US server, but, he wanted to play alongside his Uni mates.

When I spoke to him earlier today his email still wasn't through.


GoA as a EU MMO provider would have been dead in the water ages ago if DaoC had client side language files.

Most of the folks that could switch to US servers without having to play in a second language voted with their wallets.

All in all the situation is mildly shocking, but not in the least suprising.

 

[Xandax]

ofc it would have been possible and it WOULD have avoided all the problems we had, true. but shit would have hit the fan AT LAUNCH then, when even a greater number of players would try to register their keys. <snip>

That must mean that Mythics account center will crash hard(er) then GOA's at launch then? Because it wasn't tested "as good" as GOA's, because they deployed it earlier.

You seem to indicate that the same amount of traffic and problems wouldn't have arisen if GOA had been out in good time, and I claim otherwise.
I claim otherwise, because people - if they had their Open Beta keys - would have done as they did Sunday morning, if it was 2 weeks earlier, a week earlier or just 1 or 2 frigging days earlier.
I claim this from the fact that they did in the US, people did when they could download the clients. They've done in pretty much any MMO I've seen to date.

There is no where - absolutely no where - it states that you can only get realistic or similar "testing" done if you open account center at the same time as game servers.

Claiming that it was for the best this way shows lack of understanding of test and correction phase for software.
It wasn't a successful test, because GOA never left themselves with room to fix it, so they had to cut into another phase, delay another phase. That is
poor test setup. That was something many people mentioned.

We know this - Mythic knows this (cause otherwise, they're plans would have been different) - and I'm sure GOA knows this but either choose to ignore it or couldn't keep up with their schedule (despite claiming it was on schedule).

It was horrendous to deploy the account center the same day as game servers. No matter how you try to spin it, it was not for the best, it does not provide "better" testing.

Yes, it is better it happened now then at launch, but it would have been better yet, if it happened last week, so GOA had time to fix these issues and people would have been able to hammer the game instead - as intended.

Heck GOA themselves hint/claim it wasn't due to traffic. That would mean the test would have been perfectly valid as well with less traffic as well, which is just underlines that it was stupid to do it Sunday instead of a week prior, which - again - would mean GOA had much more time, peaceful time, to fix the problems without cutting into paying customers time.

 

[Muylaetrix]

It is not the first time he has alienated a community, I am sure some of you recall the catastrophe that was the TT incident and...

the TT incident was about principles

either you are part of a realm or you want to fight 8 vs 8 fights and fat RP.

it` the discusion about what we are doing.

are we playing a fantasy 8 vs 8 or are we playing a pvp / rvr game.

you can not hijack your realm, without people getting mad.

 

[Idris]

I'd hate to see him get punished over it too. I didn't think his comments were all that different to what Mark Jacobs said, he just used different words. And besides, it's not part of my job to read the hate-filled posts, I skimmed and went to dev posts so I know I didn't see the worst of it.

Am a bit concerned we didn't see Iain post yesterday and hope he does today. Just so we know he's around!

 

[Hawkwind]

wrote some shiz....

You must spread some reputation around


Totally agree they are a company in serious need of a Customer Service Team who knows the value of customers. I wonder how many people have already gone US based on what happened and how much revenue they have lost due to it? Classic example of how not to handle a cock up! Reminds me of the old Hoover free flights debacle and about as bad to the gaming community.

Will we be able to put Early Start keys in a few days before or will it be the same BS all over again? I was planning to take a day or two off work and get a good headstart with some other TMM guildies but I'm not going to bother if its going to take several hours just to register the key again.

 

[Gahn]

the TT incident was about principles

either you are part of a realm or you want to fight 8 vs 8 fights and fat RP.

it` the discusion about what we are doing.

are we playing a fantasy 8 vs 8 or are we playing a pvp / rvr game.

you can not hijack your realm, without people getting mad.

Stop this non sense already, it's a game i play it how the heck i want.
By now i'd hope the fucking lesson was learnt.

 

[Himse]

I can understand Iain from a pure human point of view cause, honestly, am openly criticist with Goa from years but there's a line one shouldn't cross at all tbh.
That said he's a Community Manager and the front end of Goa, he should really think twice before hitting send button on a forum

Why do you think they all got fed up with posting on the DAOC forums?

Everytime they hit send someone would flame them

Justified imo, since GOA were a bag of wank with the English servers.

 

[Himse]

Time for a second post after re-reading all of this.


TBH you ALL said GOA would suck, WAYYYYYYYYYYYYY earlier than the game was even into deep design.

When they announced GOA would be the host, you all cried, yet you're still playing here.

When GOA fuck it up, you cry, but none of you ever realise that you all have been moaning and effing for months upon end.


I agree wholeheartedly with most of you, i think Requiel / IainC doesn't even deserve to be English WAR GM imo.

They should have brought in a fresh team imo, and then just put IainC in another job where he doesnt have to reply to the community.


IMO Roaken would do a better job here, so far i've seen him keep a level head in all of his posts.


Edit - toned down the personal attack

 

[Ribbit]

Well hope springs eternal, and all that, and I for one was more than happy to give them a second chance. With all the DAoC experience under their belts, I felt there was a solid prospect they'd get it right this time, and TBH, I was really rooting for them to succeed, for the benefit of the playerbase.

While they for sure aren't getting my money any more, that doesn't stop me from being bitterly disappointed that the leopard has failed to change its spots so visibly and so publicly.

In whatever walk of life we are, business can be hard (and it's going to get a lot harder in the very near future), and I for one hate to see any business let down customers and shoot themselves in the foot in the process.

It's all so unnecessary, and all I ever want, is business to be good and successful, at business.

You know there's a guy near me, Karl, that should be running a restaurant kitchen, but he owns a little snack bar caravan. He likes people, he gets on with people, he does first class food, and whenever I pass, even if I'm not hungry, I'll support that guy by having a cup of coffee and a chat with him.

He knows the score, he doesn't have to practice or act an approach to his customers, he lives it. He is part of reality, and isn't detatched from it.

Karl makes a very good living at what he does, because he deserves to.

I want to see GOA like that. I want to see GOA enjoying their work. I want to see GOA's customers enjoying what they deliver. I really do.

 

[Patriarch<>Matriarch]

Not very surprising that Requiel would tell the community to fo, after all wasn't this the same guy feeding us with BLATANT lies for over a year regarding the status and progress of Dyvet.

He showed great unproffessionalism before and is bound to do it again.

Amazing that pepole actually stick up for this toddler. Telling his community to chill when there is nothing to chill about when GOA handled the whole Euro daoc so poorly and despite every bit of commons sense got the contract again from mythic; and start it all with something like this.

Ofcourse some people with short fueses will start yappering, but sinking down to their level is just so bad. Imagine how much cops have to hear, imgaine them answering back with the same coin, so to speak, would be laughable and they would eventually been sacked or replaced. [/ police <> forum police analogy for teh slow :x ]

 

[Heta]

Not very surprising that Requiel would tell the community to fo, after all wasn't this the same guy feeding is with BLATANT lies for over a year regarding the status and progress of Dyvet.

He showed great unproffessionalism before and is bound to do it again.

Amazing that pepole actually stick up for this toddler. Telling his community to chill when there is nothing to chill about when GOA handled the whole Euro daoc so poorly and despite every bit of commons sense got the contract again from mythic; and start it all with something like this.

Ofcourse some people with short fueses will start yappering, but sinking down to their level is just so bad. Imagine how much cops have to hear, imgaine them answering back with the same coin, so to speak, would be laughable and they would eventually been sacked or replaced.

when I said this, but in less words, I got a warning

 

[Beefeater1980]

tl;dr version: sympathy for Iain but recognition he messed up, good example of CRM set by MBJ, lessons for GOA. Constructive post worth an eyeball, even if I do say so myself.

Both Mythic and GOA are experienced MMO operators, and know (or should have known) that angry internet nerds, red in byte and claw, are the people who pay their monthly bills. It can hardly have come as a surprise that a proportion of these customers, when exasperated, were extremely rude and immature.

Despite that, surely it's hard for any working adult not to have a lot of sympathy for Iain personally. Without question, he screwed up: there is just about nothing a customer relationship manager can do worse than insult the customers, however justified he may be, and as a result the poor guy must have spent some time feeling pretty shell-shocked (and probably coming under a lot of pressure from GOA management). Imagine you call up Sky to complain about your satellite connection, get the run-around on a crackly and annoying automated service for 3 hours, and explode at the poor schlub on the other end of the phone when finally you are connected to an operator. It's not his fault. But it's not up to him to tell you to chill out, or lecture you for being rude either - and if he does, his boss, who is paying him to help to keep you as a customer, is likely to want a word.

We've all screwed up at least once in our working lives, and you learn that the way to cope is to check your ego in, admit what you did wrong and the scale of it, apologise and demonstrate that you are working hard to get things better - oh, and avoid the red line issues (see below). That's very probably what Iain will have had to do internally, and that should be the end of it - which is in any case between him and his employer.

So the real question for us as EU customers is whether GOA can now, as a corporation, do the same. It's instructive to see how positively the EU community first responded to Mark's getting involved and quite right too: his first email on the topic was something like "it was a total disaster, we're all working like slaves to put it right, and will have more for you by [time]", repeated frequently and with authority. That built trust. GOA could learn from that.

The problem with GOA's official communications is that they've been a bit inexpertly spun - when GOA says that it's trying to put things right, it also says too many other things that you NEVER say when you're in that 'oops I messed up' situation.

• You don't say that it wasn't that bad.
• You don't tell people the problem's mostly solved (until well after it has been).
• You don't point out that person X in exactly the same situation did much worse.
• You certainly don't point out that the person you are apologising to is behaving like a total twat.

Any or all of these things may be true. But you still don't say them, because that's not what the situation demands. Yes, it's hard and occasionally upsetting - only the most confident and effective managers can apologise credibly when things go wrong. That's why companies pay customer relationship managers, who need thicker than average skins and better than average soft skills, to say them.

In summary, an open point to GOA: don't mix excuses in with your apology, but demonstrate that you're working to improve things either by delivering tangible results or with frequent updates explaining what you are doing. Do this, and we your customers will trust you - and you will as a company reap the benefits of that trust.