90k errors and YOU SE

[Shioban]

Great job restating the ToS like a snarky jerk, and missing the point completely. If SE doesn't fix these problems and calm the large amounts of players affected by them then they'll just take their money elsewhere and no one will win.

It would seem that you've missed the point. You agreed to it, meaning you have to deal with it regardless of what the issue may be. If the game and or sections of it are broken and need maintenance to fix it, you as a consenting adult agreed to wait for whatever period of time they've stated. Or are you completely missing the point of a basic MMO ToS?


Would you rather them leave it and not pull it down to fix it?
Think sensibly and you'll come to the conclusion "It's better they take it offline and fix it, yes".

They are fixing this unique problem as we speak.
What I mean by this is, once you fix it, it's very likely to break again or even make it worse once you put it back up again.

As I pointed out already, this is a completley different set of problems to the one you probably encountered last week, and the week before that, and the many months before that during the BETA/ALPHA stages.
If you're having difficulty distinguishing what I mean by this, this video might help: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ueZ6tvqhk8U

A memory leak is completely different problem from a database error, so why would you lump them into the same category of "OMG SE fix this".


If you were expecting an MMO to have a flawless 24/7, one month solid without issue status, then you're never going to find an MMO you're happy with.

WOW, Guild Wars 2, TERA, Star Wars, RIFT. EVERY single one of these MMOs has had database errors, memory corruption, memory leaks, small lines of code causing conflicts and crashes or hangs.

As a (supposedly) mature adult, you agreed to deal with these problems when they occurred, my "snarky" remark was simply pointing out that YOU agreed to deal with it, but yet here we are.

If SE doesn't fix these problems and calm the large amounts of players affected by them then they'll just take their money elsewhere and no one will win.

I'm sorry, but if you can't deal with a video game going down for 1-2 hours, you're going to need a priority check.
That's genuinely worrying and I'd recommend you seek further help if it's causing you (or anyone else) this amount of stress.

I have yet to find a single person I know who has left the game, because the servers have gone down for maintenance due to an error.

If you want to leave over a few bits of maintenance, you know how to cancel your subscription and un install the game, you'd be the only one loosing out here.

If they are under 18, I sure hope they got their parents permission.

/dryhumor

[ReplicaX]

It would seem that you've missed the point. You agreed to it, meaning you have to deal with it regardless of what the issue may be. If the game and or sections of it are broken and need maintenance to fix it, you as a consenting adult agreed to wait for whatever period of time they've stated. Or are you completely missing the point of a basic MMO ToS?

If they are under 18, I sure hope they got their parents permission.

/dryhumor

[Susanoh]

It would seem that you've missed the point. You agreed to it, meaning you have to deal with it regardless of what the issue may be. If the game and or sections of it are broken and need maintenance to fix it, you as a consenting adult agreed to wait for whatever period of time they've stated. Or are you completely missing the point of a basic MMO ToS?

I would say you really are missing the point if you think parroting the ToS has any relevance to the topic. Any MMO ToS basically states that developers can treat their players like complete garbage if they choose to, but that doesn't necessarily mean that players will sit down and happily allow and keep paying for a game where the developers abuse it.

For example, it says right at the top of the ToS that SE can delete your character "FOR NO REASON." Now, let's just say for example, that SE decided to actually decided to ban 10% of the players in their game "for no reason" each week. Would you also come in and say "Well, this is what we signed up for, guys, so I'm OK with this. Deal with it guys!" I would imagine not.

That example is a little extreme, and obviously it's not expected to happen, but the point is that just because the ToS allows developers free reign over absolutely everything, it doesn't mean that players would actually put up with it. In fact, if developers abused their players to the fullest extent that their ToS allowed, I'm willing to bet that there's hardly any players who would put up with it. There's nothing wrong with defending SE for their actions in there's good reason to, but anyone using "hey, look, it's in the ToS!" as a legitimate argument cannot be taken seriously.

[Shioban]

I would say you really are missing the point if you think parroting the ToS has any relevance to the topic. Any MMO ToS basically states that developers can treat their players like complete garbage if they choose to, but that doesn't necessarily mean that players will sit down and happily allow and keep paying for a game where the developers abuse it.

Actually, it is a valid point. Because you agreed to it. Yet again you've failed to see the point.
As for your analogy of "They could ban anyone at any time!", yes if they see fit to ban you for something they deem harmful to their game or the people playing it they are completley within their right to withdraw your access to the game, but this is completely off topic.

No-one is treating you like "garbage", don't make it out that someone in intentionally making your life a misery.

It's a video game built on flawed technology, it could break at any moment and multiple times throughout the week.

As human beings its easy to get angry at something that we don't understand, or when something suddenly doesn't work for no apparent reason.

The Terms of Service are a given, you can't avoid that. Maturity and respectful understanding however are something people seem to severely lack.
Things will break, things will need to be fixed, you have to deal with it.


Having a few hours downtime on a game that is up almost 24/7 is perfectly acceptable, deal with it.


"But why didn't they fix this in the beginning?"

Originally the servers purchased for the data centrers were quite cheap, the game had failed once before.
So the 3-5 months prior to the Alpha stage, they considered their projected number of players and worked around this data.

Servers cost a HUGE amount of money to set-up, run and maintain. As the original projected number of players was quite low it's very easy to see how the Alpha/Beta/Release stages had capacity issues.
It's takes at least 3-4 months to set up a new set of servers, this is not something you can do over-night and can cost hundreds of thousands of dollars to set up initially.

So when the BETA and release stage had numbers way beyond what they expected it took weeks to condense what would normally take months to prepare for in order to compensate for the huge influx of new and old players trying to access the game.

"Why does any of this matter now, surely they'd just replace them?"

No. It would still cost hundreds of thousands of dollars to replace and set them up. The issue being that its an incredibly risky financial investment to replace hardware when you've only recently purchased hardware, essentially doubling or tripling your expenditure for the sake of a slightly faster/more stable output.

But the biggest point is, all this would NOT prevent issues such as the instanced server issues over the past two days, or the other server issues we've encountered in the past few months. Newer hardware simply would not avoid the issue.



TL;DR Servers are expensive to set-up and replace costing hundreds of thousands of dollars. Replacing these would not prevent everything that has happened from happening.
Stop trying to make it out as if they're targeting you and /laughing. The game will break and go down occasionally, deal with it.

[Susanoh]

Actually, it is a valid point. Because you agreed to it. Yet again you've failed to see the point.
As for your analogy of "They could ban anyone at any time!", yes if they see fit to ban you for something they deem harmful to their game or the people playing it they are completley within their right to withdraw your access to the game, but this is completely off topic.

No-one is treating you like "garbage", don't make it out that someone in intentionally making your life a misery.

I'm only responding to this part of your post because the rest of it goes off on things that I never argued and have no interest in arguing.

If you think my analogy is off topic, then you aren't seeing the complete uselessness in parroting the ToS as if it has relevance to the discussion.

By agreeing to the ToS, you agree that SE can ban you at any time "for no reason." Not "if they find you harmful to the game" or any of that. It specifically states "FOR NO REASON" in all capital letters for you to see. If you wouldn't be satisfied with SE randomly banning you or a bunch of your friends just for giggles, then you agreed to something that you wouldn't put up with. In which case, what you agreed to you're only willing to put up with on a case by case basis, making the entire argument that "this is what you signed up for" pointless.

Edit: To make this more clear, no player in their right mind would ever in a million years play a game where developers abused their ToS to the fullest extent they are technically allowed. To even suggest that players should roll over and deal with something not just because it's the reasonable thing to do (which is fine), but because it's in the ToS, is ridiculous.

[Shioban]

If you think my analogy is off topic, then you aren't seeing the complete uselessness in parroting the ToS as if it has relevance to the discussion.

By agreeing to the ToS, you agree that SE can ban you at any time "for no reason." Not "if they find you harmful to the game" or any of that. It specifically states "FOR NO REASON" in all capital letters for you to see. If you wouldn't be satisfied with SE randomly banning you or a bunch of your friends just for giggles, then you agreed to something that you wouldn't put up with. In which case, what you agreed to you're only willing to put up with on a case by case basis, making the entire argument that "this is what you signed up for" pointless.

Edit: To make this more clear, no player in their right mind would ever in a million years play a game where developers abused their ToS to the fullest extent they are technically allowed. To even suggest that players should roll over and deal with something not just because it's the reasonable thing to do (which is fine), but because it's in the ToS, is ridiculous.

I haven't seen or heard of them banning anyone for "No Reason", that's simply there incase someone gets accidently banned to cover their behinds.
Stop trying to scapegoat the subject.


I posted it because people were whining "I want my money back, I want my time back, GOD ITS NOT FAIR!". So, yes you DID miss the point and your analogy has nothing to do with the topic at hand, because you DID sign up for this and its very clearly relevant.

To even suggest that players should roll over and deal with something not just because it's the reasonable thing to do (which is fine), but because it's in the ToS, is ridiculous.

By no means, roll over and let them tickle your belly for 2 hours. But everyone agreed to the ToS which says "You agree that we'll take the game down whenever we please for as long as we please". That's why you agreed to it in the first place.

The big issue here however is not the Terms of Service, or people getting banned, or why the sky is blue.

It's people who are crying and complaining about something they don't understand. When the basic answer is; "Things break, they need fixed, get over it".

That's my original point, if you can't understand that /shrug. (Ah well, at least I tried)

[Susanoh]

I haven't seen or heard of them banning anyone for "No Reason", that's simply there incase someone gets accidently banned to cover their behinds.
Stop trying to scapegoat the subject.

I posted it because people were whining "I want my money back, I want my time back, GOD ITS NOT FAIR!". So, yes you DID miss the point and your analogy has nothing to do with the topic at hand, because you DID sign up for this and its very clearly relevant.

There's no scapegoating going on here, I'm being fairly straightforward. If you can understand why players would complain if SE decided to start putting players' names up on a dart board and banning anyone the dart hits, then you understand that a player's expectations of their service is different from what they technically signed up for. Also, that if a player finds the service inadequate, they will make their voices heard regardless of what it says in the ToS. The entire thing is there to "cover their behind" as you put it, players understand well that developers will do what they want to, but they aren't going to sit and be quiet if they dislike the service they are getting.

It's people who are crying and complaining about something they don't understand. When the basic answer is; "Things break, they need fixed, get over it".

That's my original point, if you can't understand that /shrug. (Ah well, at least I tried)

Not sure why you'd think I don't understand that, I can see both sides of the argument just fine and never argued in favor of either of them. What I disagreed with is you using the ToS as leverage in your argument as if the ToS mattered at all.