Right Now Post

[preladon]

I posted the follow question on RightNow! at 23:49 yesterday evening...

The Excalibur server was bought down over 24 hours ago due to a server crash. At the time of logging this ticket, no information has been added to the UK site to indicate that GOA are trying to fix the problem, or indeed are even aware that there is a problem.

Please could you establish when the server will be returned to service, confirm that I will not be billed for the period that the server was down, and explain why GOA (or their webmasters) have decided that updating their paying customers is not a priority?

I got the following response at 10:15am (GMT)

We invite you to read the following link :

http://camelot-europe.goa.com/news/newsrub.php?id_rubrique=58


Sorry for the inconvenience.

I'm about to add information to this ticket to ask them to answer the remaining outstanding questions.

1) If you knew about it on Saturday - why weren't we told?
2) Your news article states that people will be compensated for lost time - can you confirm that this will be at least one week, since I lost a Sunday when I could have played all day - it's no good giving me a Thursday or something as a 'free day' when I'm at work all day.

Apologies to those of you who are not interested in this post - I'm locking it to stop it turning into a whine, and will update it if I get any further responses.

 

[preladon]

Here's the update I posted:

The link that you have posted does not answer all of the questions that I have asked.

To re-iterate:

1) Since you clearly knew about the problem on Saturday, why didn't you make your paying customers aware of the problem, and alert them to the fact that you were aware and working on it? You have done nothing to calm the extremely bad blood that exists between GOA and the customer base after other similar problems, where servers have gone down and no information has been provided, even though each time it happens, you promise more information next time.

2) Your news article makes reference to the fact that English players (by which I assume you mean anyone with access to the Excalibur server - since it might not just be English players) will be compensated for lost time. Are you planning to simply extend subscriptions by a day or two? All players have lost a full day on Sunday, which (for most people) will have been a full day of playtime; providing an extension of one weekday does not compensate for this lost time, since most players will be at work / school during the day and not able to make up for the lost time.

I look forward to a prompt response to these issues.

Thread locked again...

 

[preladon]

And here's GOA's reply...

Hello,


We are sorry for the lack of communication.

You will be informed through our official website.



Yours sincerely,

My response to this will follow when I have formulated it...

 

[preladon]

My response...

Whilst your apology is appreciated, I don't believe that it deals with the magnitude of the problem that is being discussed here.

Two further points have come to light since I first logged this call, which I would like to bring to your attention:

1) People who were logged in to Excalibur with two accounts during the relic raid that bought down the server were able to continue to play with the account not in the zone that crashed (e.g. buffbots) and even to log out and log in with different chars. This would suggest that it was not Exclaibur that crashed, but the login server (probably under the weight of the people trying to log back in all at once), and that you did in fact NOT bring Excalibur down for preventative maintenance at all as indicated in your post.

2) The service was returned within an hour of start of business on Monday morning. This, coupled with the first point, would suggest that actually there was no-one monitoring the servers between the time the zone crashed (and presumably the login server was bought down by the people attempting to login) and the time that your staff arrived for work on the Monday morning, when it was discovered that the machine(s) had crashed and promptly rebooted them. Is this the case?

The outstanding questions then that need answering are:

1) What (if anything) actually crashed on Saturday evening?
2) If, as you state, the servers didn't crash, but Excalibur was bought down for maintenance, why were users able to play on Excalibur until the early hours of Monday morning?
3) Why does GOA believe that keeping their paying customers informed of problems is not a priority?
4) Is there a way that people who are now so upset with your level of service that they no longer wish to continue with the game can get a pro-rata refund of any outstanding subscription money, given that you are not providing the service that you are contracted for.

 

[preladon]

I'd rather leave this post locked so it can be referred to as an exact copy of the discussion between me and GOA, but are people actually interested in this?

Please reply to my other post to let me know. Thanks.

 

[choonz]

IBTL.

 

[preladon]

Goa's latest reply

We invite you to read the following link :

http://camelot-europe.goa.com/news/newsarticle.php3?id_article=1671


Sorry for the inconvenience.

I posted an update..

This response is certainly far better than previous ones, and suggests that GOA are now well aware of how angry the paying customers get when they are ignored.

There are two outstanding issues on this problem ticket that still need to be answered:

1) Since the servers didn't automatically restart as they were supposed to, and the servers did then not come up until 09:30 the following morning, this indicates that the 24/7 service that we are paying for is not being provided. That is to say that no-one was checking the servers between the time of the crash and the beginning of 'normal business hours' on Monday morning. I appreciate that your latest posting states that you improving that portion of the service, but if that's the case, what have we been paying for up until now?

2) Your initial response to this ticket was to refer me to a posting that stated that you had bought the servers down for maintenance. The latest posting indicates that this was not the case. Could you confirm which is actually the case? And if it's the latter scenario, why you felt it was okay to lie to your paying playerbase?

In addition, you have not responded to my request of an option to terminate my account with a pro-rata refund, based on the fact that you have now admitted you are not providing the service you are contracted to. Are you going to make this option available to the entire playerbase?

and then also added

Apologies, there is of course one additional question, which you may need to direct towards Mythic rather than answer yourselves...

Why does the game allow for a number of players to join a zone that even the most up to date of computers cannot support? Surely it would provide a better gaming experience to prevent a few users entering a busy zone than to crash the entire zone and ruin the game for hundreds?

 

[preladon]

Goa have eventually responded (after me pointing out it had taken over 4 days). This came from the French system, because my warning of responding before they change the issue to resolved is all in French...

Greetings,

A few answers to your questions :

1) Improving our service does not mean it was not as good as advertised. It only means we keep learning from all events (good or bad) and that we do care about our customers.

2) There is no lying involved here, just a communication issue between switching teams in a rather stressful day. As mentioned in the news of the official website, a server crash was the cause of the week end's problem.

3) There will be no option for a pro-rata refund of an account. Instead a free day of subscription has been added to each account as a compensation.

4) As you guessed, Mythic is indeed looking into the zone overpopulation issue. That said, arbitrarily preventing people from entering a zone might be a difficult thing to do since there is no definite point where a crash will happen. This is unfortunately very random, and hopefully very rare.

Regards,

And my response

To address each point:

1) I disagree. The back of the DAOC box states 'A persistent on-line universe where thousands of players can simultaneously interact or confront each other'. This is the 'advertised' service, and has not been being provided. In fact, your fourth point confirms that you are not providing the 'advertised' service.
2) Okay - fair enough - well aware of the stress an issue like this can cause.
3) Okay - I don't think this is suitable compensation, but that's not what this discussion is about.
4) I disagree with this. Excalibur has been down on a number of occasions over the last couple of weeks. It appears that zone crashes are not as rare as you would like.