PC Gamer article

[cjkaceBM]

Hehe what a load of bullshit in that article. A couple of whiners got their 15 minutes in the spotlight (wonder why they didn't use their ingame names?<sarcasm off>)

Lets take a look at a few pertinent points.

Quote 1 - Players who, for various reasons, no longer had a valid email address stored in the subscription system were left for almost two weeks with no word as to how they were to receive a new password to access their account. And without a password they were also unable to communicate with GOA, who provides customer service only via a website/email system that requires a password for use even when it is working.

Sorry but I was one of those people and it taught me a valuable lesson. Keep my details up to date. If I change my e-mail address for whatever reason then I should update my account ASAP.

Quote 2 - "Unlike Mythic in the US and companies running the game in other parts of Europe, which offer customers in-game customer support, if you have problems here you have to email a service GOA calls RightNow. What a joke, players call it Right Never," added 32-year-old Coventry gamer Ann Kahney.

Never had a problem with Right Now, and from browsing BarrysWhine the vast majority of people haven't had either. As for other companies offering in-game support, that in itself is the joke, as people will /appeal for the silliest reasons and then get pissed when the answer they receive isn't the one they want. Go take a look at VNWhine for examples.

Quote 3 - UK players also say they're being short-changed as they're unable to play the game to its full potential because GOA offers only two normal servers to its English speaking customers, while offering three servers each to its customers in other countries.

Hmm so Goa should open another English speaking server when Excalibur is never FULL, and Prydwen has around two thirds of Excalibur's numbers. There aren't enough English players to warrant the costs of another English server. If both the English servers were running at 90% capacity 90% of prime time then Goa would open another server.

Quote 4 - As well as complaints about lack of customer support, players are also angry GOA takes weeks if not months to implement patches from American game developer Mythic. They are currently three patches behind their US counterparts.

We are 2 patches behind and have been for some months. The old translation argument is getting to be rather tiresome. Why should over 75% of the DAoC playing community have to wait even longer, just because they don't speak English? Goa said from the start it would be like this, if you don't like then go play somewhere else. Their servers, their rules.

This Goa bashing is getting stupid. While I'm not happy about them being hacked and the 10 days it took to let us know about it, neither am I that annoyed. It taught me a lesson about keeping my details up to date, showed that despite the problems it was sorted reasonably quickly, and that ultimately it has cost me nothing as I was recompensed for the disruption. Aside from faster communication I fail to see what else Goa could have done, and this article seems to have been written by whiners for whiners.

FLAME AWAY.

The above quotes are copyright Gamesradar but have been used to highlight for criticism purposes.

http://www.patent.gov.uk/copy/indetail/usingcopyright.htm

 

[old.Jable]

yeah well, I would be happy if someone else had the franchise for UK. leave GOA for the french and german population, but i would prefer a different company to run the english servers.

the idea of having no /appeal is stupid. yeah some people whine using it, but look at ultima online. you can page a gm explaining in 100 words what your hassle is. this is then answered, sometimes within 10 minutes, sometimes over an hour, but at least the feature is there. in our game, we log out, send an email, then check our email numorous times waiting. and thats assuming it isn't some screwed up french holiday, with them all out the office, which has happened before when they had "issues".

whichever way you look at it, we get shortchanged by GOA. look at the shrouded isles release day? took how long to register the damn game? and there should be a third english server. and the only reason there isnt is because GOA didnt market the game in this country at all (or at least, not so anyone would notice).

i think i can safely say that if an english company ran the english servers, we would see more english advertising and more english players playing the servers, hence we would have 3 servers. GOA screwed that up when they decided to save money to spend on their telephone exchanges instead of on the game. but thats what happens when a game like this isn't run by a dedicated games company.

basically, if anyone put british telecom in charge of an mmorpg, i'd laugh my tits off. now change that to french telecom and introduce them handling the english community?

if there was a vote for the english servers to be handled by someone else, it would get my vote. thats not a whine either. its the god-honest truth. i wouldnt think i owed some stupid debt to GOA either. no offence.

 

[Solarius]

I wonder how many people actually dislike GOA on the sole fact that they are a FRENCH company?

Personally I haven't had a problem, I know some people do hava a legitimate complaint, but realistically the fact that the company is french should have *no* bearing on peoples complaints, and it seems to hold a high value in the grudge stakes, from what I've read!

 

[Coim-]

Originally posted by Tilda
iirc you can brouse without your name being shown in the line of names

I know. I meant...that I have only ever seen kemor (or anyone else from GOA) reply to a thread directed at themselves once, and that was when apoc was bugged.

 

[ning]

Originally posted by old.Jable
i think i can safely say that if an english company ran the english servers, we would see more english advertising and more english players playing the servers, hence we would have 3 servers.

So which company ? There is not any english MMORPG company. Moreover there is not any big english video game company.
I don't think that a new start-up company can easily buy office, buy 3 big servers , make advertising, pay staff, ...

 

[ning]

Originally posted by Solarius
I wonder how many people actually dislike GOA on the sole fact that they are a FRENCH company?

If people, who dislike GOA on the sole fact that they are a FRENCH company, would use more their brain, they'll find out that 40% of the video game are distributed by French companies (Ubi Soft (www.ubi.com), Infogramme (www.atari.com), Vivendi (who distribute the US version of DAOC) , Wanadoo, ...). Wake up, French don't only make wine and cheese

 

[old.m0000]

Originally posted by Tilda
what a load of crap.
Theres loads of factual errors in that (were not 5 patches behind US for starters) and it is by no means representative of the whole community, if it was, why are so many people till playing?!

someone wants to be on the E&E team badly!!!1

 

[Mid - Kirinia]

People seem to blame the fact that GOA is french for the lack of the third English server...

If GOA was English, the other European countries would probably not have a 3rd server, and they would all blame the UK. Seriously, is it such a problem that we don't have a third English server? Prydwen doesn't have enough people on it as it is. A third English server is a stupid idea. Other Euro countries might have 3 servers, therefore enabling them to play all 3 realms, but if we are really that desperate to play all 3 realms then atleast we have the option of playing the US version. Non-English speaking people don't.

Most people don't even have enough time to 'do well' in one realm, let alone two or three. If you really are annoyed that you can't play all 3 realms at the same time then stop rolling every fotm class in every realm that mythic throws your way and try playing a class and sticking with it instead.

Third English server is a stupid idea, we barely have enough players for two servers.

(yes I live in England)

 

[old.Jable]

so the boat stops with mythic? i suppose their deciding not to manage the uk servers, leaving us to goa, means we have to wait for patches in foreign languages and generally get bad customer service and support, while failing to advertise the game appropriately leaving us with a depleted playerbase compared to elsewhere in europe.

the lack of advertising was comical, what company releases a game and doesn't put an advert in any of the magazines for 6 months? surely not one that runs a game relying on a large quantity of players? you want to fill 2 3000 place servers with word of mouth?

also, i dont care how good rightnow is, it isn't as effective as a dialog with a gm, or as reassuring. and their closing down their own forums so we had no means of discussion with GOA spoke volumes about the way they feel about the community.

i feel sorry for the people we get to speak to from GOA, they dont deserve the flack they get, but GOA have made it their business to cut themselves off from any kind of contact that can't be vetted by themselves and dealt with as and when they feel, rather than dealing with the customers needs. i dont like to deal with companies that do that, and once i finish playing this addictive game written by another company, i will never have dealings with them again.

anyway, as i said, if another company was given the license to run the english servers, meaning up to date patches and no events, you wouldnt hear me complaining. tbh i regret choosing the uk servers over the us servers. at least then i could talk about changes in patches and do some testing on the test servers, rather than reading discussions and knowing the patch isnt available for 2 months at least.

and im glad a magazine has printed an article that presents how out of order GOA were leaving people in the dark about what was happening, with no explanation. i hate frustation, and i had enough trying to register SI. let alone losing my password and being unable to play, or tell anyone about it for days. is that what we pay money for?

 

[boni_ofdavoid]

Originally posted by ning
So which company ? There is not any english MMORPG company. Moreover there is not any big english video game company.

fairly true (though codemasters are english, they aint starting something with dragon empires on the go).

Originally posted by ning
If people, who dislike GOA on the sole fact that they are a FRENCH company, would use more their brain, they'll find out that 40% of the video game are distributed by French companies (Ubi Soft (www.ubi.com), Infogramme (www.atari.com), Vivendi (who distribute the US version of DAOC) , Wanadoo, ...). Wake up, French don't only make wine and cheese

Infogrames are the scum of the earth imho.

They are the main reason why there are few decent uk games companies left. You should do your homework about Infogrames and how its operates. Quite simply they buy promising companies to gain control of a franchise, then shut them down if the franchise doesnt pay, or chrun out benal sequals if it does.

 

[Driwen]

Originally posted by old.Jable
so the boat stops with mythic? i suppose their deciding not to manage the uk servers, leaving us to goa, means we have to wait for patches in foreign languages and generally get bad customer service and support, while failing to advertise the game appropriately leaving us with a depleted playerbase compared to elsewhere in europe.

about advertising that is indeed a big fail. However it isnt an option of uk servers by mythic or by goa. Mythic had never planned to release it here and they might have done now, but that not as soon as goa did certainly. So the boat stops at maybe being mythic being shortsighted on the fact that europe is a nice cashmaker and that they should have paid more attention to who they give it too.

 

[old.Ramas]

Originally posted by bombshell
It doesnt say 5

'They are currently three patches behind their US counterparts'

Which is also wrong

164 - 162 = 2.

 

[StormriderX]

If goa communicated with the community more I think a lot of the complaints would go away...

 

[ning]

Originally posted by boni_ofdavoid
Infogrames are the scum of the earth imho.

They are the main reason why there are few decent uk games companies left. You should do your homework about Infogrames and how its operates. Quite simply they buy promising companies to gain control of a franchise, then shut them down if the franchise doesnt pay, or chrun out benal sequals if it does.

I never said it was wrong. I was only quoting a few french video games companies.

 

[-Lonewolf-]

Sorry but I was one of those people and it taught me a valuable lesson. Keep my details up to date. If I change my e-mail address for whatever reason then I should update my account ASAP.

In the days since beta I never changed my e-mail ever and I still never received my passwords and then when I did e-mail GOA they proceeded to close my query after 48hrs went by OMG some people don't access their computer everyday some of us have lives outside it all

Never had a problem with Right Now, and from browsing BarrysWhine the vast majority of people haven't had either. As for other companies offering in-game support, that in itself is the joke, as people will /appeal for the silliest reasons and then get pissed when the answer they receive isn't the one they want. Go take a look at VNWhine for examples.


Unlike urself, a small number of people have not had a response from Rightnow for upto 4 weeks.
The area ur missing is they should not have to be waiting AT ALL!. As for your so called ingame support being a joke it is actually very effective as I have played on the US server for quite some time and any problems I have had from bugs to abusive people have been dealt with swiftly and to my satisfaction ur idea that people are pissed when they don't receive they want is laughable not to mention idiotic


Hmm so Goa should open another English speaking server when Excalibur is never FULL, and Prydwen has around two thirds of Excalibur's numbers. There aren't enough English players to warrant the costs of another English server. If both the English servers were running at 90% capacity 90% of prime time then Goa would open another server.

Your nearsightedness if it is such a word is hilarious if you ever took the time to play on the primary French server with a population of 3500 you would see the LAG, FPS hell and general nightmare trying to lvl due to every spot being camped. And don't get me started on the Zerg hell.
I recently attended a session of RvR on Excalibur at peak time 2735 people on the server and Emain was zerg upon zerg some love it majority hate it


We are 2 patches behind and have been for some months. The old translation argument is getting to be rather tiresome. Why should over 75% of the DAoC playing community have to wait even longer, just because they don't speak English? Goa said from the start it would be like this, if you don't like then go play somewhere else. Their servers, their rules.

Who really cares how many patches we are behind them that really is being pedantic and silly the reason people are annoyed is because there is no clear justification for us (English people) being made to wait longer for a population (NB French and german) who at this time seem to be receiving a better service than we are, and as for the patches argument I remember when SI was release in the USA on Nov 2002, the european community had to wait till feb to get it and then it was delayed into march I was there and i moved to america then to play because of the shit service here

This Goa bashing is getting stupid. While I'm not happy about them being hacked and the 10 days it took to let us know about it, neither am I that annoyed. It taught me a lesson about keeping my details up to date, showed that despite the problems it was sorted reasonably quickly, and that ultimately it has cost me nothing as I was recompensed for the disruption. Aside from faster communication I fail to see what else Goa could have done, and this article seems to have been written by whiners for whiners.

FLAME AWAY.

The sad fact you have highlighted in that paragraph is that ur prepared to accept second rate service from a company and the the glistening fact your failing to miss is that the 'HACKING' should never have happened in the first place. Don't get me wrong GOA have had really good spells where they have done really well but they then seem to fail time and time again. I know my criticisms and arguments are not gonna change anything but at least I am prepared to voice my concerns about the way a game I love and enjoy playing is going only because of the company running it. And before you say the old well leave then, I have and am currently playing on the american servers where I am loving it and the community and pendragon, and /appeal, and the many servers including pvp and roleplaying

Oh and one other thing I have noticed as well which may interest some people the Graphics on the American version are better than on the European one I will post up some screenshots this evening to prove it

Consider urself flamed my good man

 

[cjkaceBM]

If you play in the US Lonewolf then why do you even bother to post on the European boards?

Your comment about e-mail is so funny its almost unbelievable. Nowhere did I say you have to be online every hour, I stated that when you change e-mail address its a damn good idea to keep other accounts updated. After all you tell all your friend's your new e-mail address don't you?

The online CSR program in the US is whined about on the VNBoards quite a lot from what I've read. And people do bitch when they don't get the answer they want. Everytime a raid goes pear shaped they /appeal, get told it's working as intended then bitch and cry.

Right Now is not perfect and never will be. Not because it's a poor system but because people are never satisfied. Customer Service and Support is the biggest money sink for any company, and very,very few come close to even being very good. A minority have problems just like in every other aspect of life and automatically they deliver bad service across the board. Sorry but thats bullshit. Over 90% of the people that play this game don't have major issues, and that by any companies standards is good customer service. It's impossible to give perfect customer service, because some people want everything now, for as near to free as can be and even then thats not good enough.

Hehe and as for the hacking situation what else could they possibly do? Do you know how it happened, because if so please enlighten the rest of us. An enormous amount of companies get hacked, but it's not seen in so public a manner. You know why? Because the majority of so-called hacks are done by disgruntled employees/ex-employees. Updates for security issues on every major platform are released on a weekly basis, because the people that program them didn't forsee that by programming XXXXXX into a webpage/URL/e-mail header etc created a buffer overflow, allowing the execution of malicious code.

 

[-Lonewolf-]

Once again CKJACE ur arguments and discussions are completely full of wild hearsay and crazy comments that you can't even backup with any evidence

Your comment about e-mail is so funny its almost unbelievable. Nowhere did I say you have to be online every hour, I stated that when you change e-mail address its a damn good idea to keep other accounts updated. After all you tell all your friend's your new e-mail address don't you?

Huh? The point I was making was that alot of people that hadn't even changed their e-mail address and still didn't receive their Subs password. HELL why the fuck am I even talking about INFORMING THEM!! of changing ur e-mail there should be a system where you can change it FFS

Check out this american system and tell me you guys are not missing out. When you log in you have a little account button you can press and this comes up you can change it all in a matter of seconds you just enter the details in any box you want to change and it updates it

USA Account Page

The fact that GOA's problems have made it into a magazine article I think is evidence enough that a large section of the DAoC community is digruntled so ur supposed 90% are happy is just complete assumption on your part

As for the CSR program like you stated no customer service system is superb but its one more thing that USA has that the european community doesn't another channel of communication you can't please 100% of the community 100% of the time but at least you can give them as many ways of letting you the company know that

GOA has one e-mail that over 10000 people are expected to mail if Rightnow is down

GOOOOOD Customer Service and Disaster Recovery escalation point

And as for the hacking event, never happened to Mythic in fact hasn't happen to the majority of MMORPG's out there and I state the MAJORITY some have had it Shadowbane comes to mind.

And I think ur find that it was a employee that caused the the hacking fiasco allegedly which only emphasises a lack of administration security by GOA

In the words of the immortal Mythic "The developer tools are the only tool that can perform those things in DAoC (referring to the mob spawns) and you can only use those within the Mythic building"

And to answer your why am I posting here....because I care about the community I first started in...unlike some people

I post in the hope that one day it might change

 

[old.Jable]

Originally posted by StormriderX
If goa communicated with the community more I think a lot of the complaints would go away...

What a great post, i totally agree 100%


now heres a cow blowing bubbles

 

[cjkaceBM]

I agree that the whole account system could have been implemented better, but in all honesty is it that much of a hassle the way it is now? I personally can't see it. Maybe the US system is better, but where's the big deal in having to log-in to a website once in a while to change your details if necessary?

I still feel that the article was inflammatory and reported from a very negative aspect. So many of the community were so disgruntled that they had quotes from only 2? Experience has shown that disgruntled people shout far louder than those that are generally content. So my assumption is no worse than theirs or yours, but mine is based upon what I read on these and other boards, and in no way, shape or form could it be described that the majority were disgruntled.

I too love this game and I don't feel it benefits anyone that people bash Goa into oblivion all the time. If people want a new English server, better customer service then why not offer constructive criticism instead of the GOA SUX threads that appear once a day on these boards? There isn't any alternative to Goa in Europe atm as far as I can see, with British online game playing companies having gone to the wall long ago, so an alternative is a bit limited atm.

I think Storm summed it up perfectly really. If they had a PR person whose job was to keep the community up to date, then the vast majority of complaints would vanish into the ether. Mind you it's not a job I would take, because the attitude of a lot of people on this board is so negative that after a week or so I would be tempted to say FU.

 

[cjkaceBM]

Just read the letter from one of the 'hackers' (dunno how I missed the thread tbh) and altho it's scarey what happened, one thing stood out very clearly in the Barrysworld thread about it. Very, very few people whined about Goa, thereby confirming that the disgruntled are in the minority.

 

[censi]

Theres a lot of things GOA do very very very badly.

They get away with it because the DAOC engine and platform is pretty robust and generally the servers stability is pretty good.

The things which they are responisble for (translations, account admin, customer support, outage notification) they do not dedicate much resources to and generally do badly.

Computer gamers have a tendency to moan a lot. GOA wont get credit for the things they do well (and there are things). But tbh they do desearve a lot of critism. This article is not dramatised and I think it expresses the general feeling towards GOA in the DAOC community accuretly.

I would luv to know how that guy got the GM account though.

 

[old.Ramas]

We are 2 patches behind and have been for some months. The old translation argument is getting to be rather tiresome. Why should over 75% of the DAoC playing community have to wait even longer, just because they don't speak English? Goa said from the start it would be like this, if you don't like then go play somewhere else. Their servers, their rules.

Actually GOA said a few weeks at most.

They certainly implied it would be far less than a running 6 months.

I actually think Mythic are partly to blame for this, the way GOA don't appear to able to start translating dialogue until usually a few weeks after an American launch sounds like a pretty half assed process.

Simultaneous Engineering exists.

 

[-Lonewolf-]

Originally posted by cjkaceBM
I agree that the whole account system could have been implemented better, but in all honesty is it that much of a hassle the way it is now? I personally can't see it. Maybe the US system is better, but where's the big deal in having to log-in to a website once in a while to change your details if necessary?

I still feel that the article was inflammatory and reported from a very negative aspect. So many of the community were so disgruntled that they had quotes from only 2? Experience has shown that disgruntled people shout far louder than those that are generally content. So my assumption is no worse than theirs or yours, but mine is based upon what I read on these and other boards, and in no way, shape or form could it be described that the majority were disgruntled.

I too love this game and I don't feel it benefits anyone that people bash Goa into oblivion all the time. If people want a new English server, better customer service then why not offer constructive criticism instead of the GOA SUX threads that appear once a day on these boards? There isn't any alternative to Goa in Europe atm as far as I can see, with British online game playing companies having gone to the wall long ago, so an alternative is a bit limited atm.

I think Storm summed it up perfectly really. If they had a PR person whose job was to keep the community up to date, then the vast majority of complaints would vanish into the ether. Mind you it's not a job I would take, because the attitude of a lot of people on this board is so negative that after a week or so I would be tempted to say FU.

Have to say I agree with most of what you say there

 

[old.Jable]

whats that meant to mean, only 2 people quoted so there arent many upset people?

if that magazine had posted one thread asking for views, they would have got a good phat amount of quotes from people who think the service sucks (especially during a crisis where they show time and again their incompetence when dealing with members of the community). id say that if everyone who had a problem put their names down, it would reach into the hundreds, maybe the thousands. and the annoyance is most of the moans would be about stuff GOA could fix like crappy communication and no in game support.

of course, the negative views expressed on this forum have no basis in fact (saracasm) so would be discounted by every anti-whiner out there.

the article gave the clearest picture of the crap we have had happen to us, and its put it in the public domain. maybe if GOA get some bad press rather than hiding behind rightnow, we may see some action from them. im certainly not going to pat them on the back.

btw did everyone forget that they sent a GM password out to a player by accident? id call that a cock-up and worth a damn good moaning anyway.

 

[old.Kerosene]

The article was indeed biased in order to make the story interesting.

Also, don't delude yourselves into thinking Mythic will do anything. Goa do bring in a lot of revenue and the sales record is proven, even if it could be substantially improved via proper marketting and distribution. However while Mythic are essentially getting profits from a reseller/service provider it's going nowhere.

The main point is we'd all pretty much got over the goings on of a few weeks ago. Let's just forget about it.

p.s. I don't whine on these boards since it's a waste of time but I did email GOA with my concerns and got zero response which was pretty much expected.

God.. I hate to agree with C-ra-J-dar-K but he's been talking sense through this thread. I'd suggest rereading his posts without bias.

 

[Rubric]

I would be interested to know the numbers of people who did not get their password through no fault of their own (yes not up dating your details is your own fault).

Personally I have never had any problems at all.

 

[censi]

They said summin like 10% of account had problems.

Prolly out of those 10% about 2-5% will loose their accounts forever (pure inaccurate guess)

So with roughly 100,000 subscribers (they got more btw) 5,000 accounts will be lost.

5,000 times what? 30£ for 6 month subs?

£150,000 over 6 months.

This fook up cost them money.

And thats just a totally innaccurate guess at the base cost. We wont go into re-funds or the fact that they could have lost more acccounts or the fact that I think it costs more than that for 6 months subs.

So maybe as much a 1/4 of a million pounds.

nice

 

[Driwen]

I think they lost 1% of which also are people who just quit, because of the hacking incident. I think its only 1%, because everyone I know got their passwords in the end. But if you followed their instructions, you did get your password. A few people off course didnt end up getting their password, probably because either something went wrong on goa's side or they didnt gave goa enough information.
Now atleast half of the people who have quit over this incident would have done it anyway sooner or later, as they were fed up with goa and just needed one more screw up in their eyes to quit.

So it cost them 41000 pounds(41 for 6 months) and for 100,000 subscribers they had to give 10% 3 weeks free (on average), which costs them 55000 pounds (cost of 3 weeks based on an average of 3months subscriptions). So the cost on the customer side is 96000 pounds probably, but then comes other costs insight like having to beef up security or hiring someone to help them (no idea if this was the case). Anyway goa is following legal actions, so they might end up getting most of the money back that they lost from this incident.

 

[sru]

Originally posted by cjkaceBM
Never had a problem with Right Now, and from browsing BarrysWhine the vast majority of people haven't had either.

-- hmm. Must be a minority. 4 months for one question, 3 for another. Sure, it was not a "I am stuck" issue - it required a though process to solve.

Hmm so Goa should open another English speaking server when Excalibur is never FULL, and Prydwen has around two thirds of Excalibur's numbers. There aren't enough English players to warrant the costs of another English server. If both the English servers were running at 90% capacity 90% of prime time then Goa would open another server.

This comment actually annoys me a lot. Have you actually TRIED to buy a copy in the UK? No game shop in Bristol has it, even Amazon does not stock it. If you want one, you have to order from Europe. And GOA wonders why there are not enough English players? they even admitted in that article that they did not provide adequate resources to support English tech support.

There are very valid arguements within the article and players are cross. Justified or not. Any company worth their share price will take note of these "concerns" and address them.

 

[Driwen]

Originally posted by sru
they even admitted in that article that they did not provide adequate resources to support English tech support.

There are very valid arguements within the article and players are cross. Justified or not. Any company worth their share price will take note of these "concerns" and address them.

the article is hardly shocking news and it is certainly not an objective one. Now goa admitted that they want to improve the rightnow tool. They didnt admit that they didnt provide adequate resources let alone that it isnt adequate on itself. However it can be better and they are working on it to improve it.
Btw it isnt my opinion stressed about goa rightnow, but goa hardly said something in the line that they felt it wasnt adequate. For myself it worked every time reasonable fast and it should work within 72 hours imo, if it doesnt it should get improved.