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Thread: You want to know our real problem, Jolt?

  1. #1
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    You want to know our real problem, Jolt?

    Here it is, spelled out for you: Players didn't sign on to WoL expecting it to still be in the Beta-testing phase. WoL is a finished product, or is supposed to be. When players signed onto it at the beginning of this age, they expected a finished product, relatively bug-free, or close to it. They didn't sign on to be beta testers. They signed on to play the game they've enjoyed for the last 11 years. Sorry, but from what my friends have told me so far this age, if this is a "finished product", I'm a friggin dutchman.

    I can understand your desire to save man-hours and time by pushing it in to replace the already fossilised coding, especially when it came under attack, but you would have lost a lot less players recoding the old script to amend the vulnerability in the old code and putting that back up for an age whilst the last of the bugs were worked out of this one than forcing the entire playerbase to become beta-testers without realising it, something a lot of them just do not want to be, and them all further cause to doubt your sincerity to the ongoing survival of their favourite game

    Bad judgement call on your part, Jolt. Now you are seeing the repercussions: a loss of yet another 2000 players over last age. I hope you have something serious up your sleeves, I really do, else this is just going to continue as more and more players retire for good, and the rate of new players landing in kingdoms where they are welcome will plummet. Noone wants to teach half a kingdom of newbies how to play from scratch when last age they were rocking at the top. More and more mergers will occur, and the number of kingdoms will drop like a stone.

    Please, Jolt. For the sake of the game we love, start showing some better judgement in your decisions. Well-meaning and a "doing it for the best" attitude can't carry you all the way. If you hear there's an iceburg in the area, it usually best to cut speed, rather than swapping to a new boat or plunging on ahead at flank and hoping for the best. We all know from experience and history what happens when you choose the other course...
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  2. #2
    Post Demon Spliff's Avatar
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    I'm honestly having a hard time seeing what all the fuss is about.

  3. #3
    Needs to get out more VT2's Avatar
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    That's because you're either drunk, stoned, or both.
    Catwalk's crusade for legalized cheating was a stunning success, with ghettos and low-tiered teams everywhere losing their wells of knowledge to better kingdoms in the process.

    Step one: replace everything that works.
    Step two: blame the predictable epic fail on outside forces.
    Step three: keep the community informed that no progress has been made since the last update.
    Step four: thank you for your patience.

  4. #4
    Post Demon Spliff's Avatar
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    Well, for your information VT2, I was at work making money at the time of my last post. Something I'm sure few of you understand.

  5. #5
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    Spliff, over half my kingdom from last age retired shortly after I left for my break. On speaking to them, and others in similar situations, the reasons cited were:

    1) unable to log any more than a minute at a time, and even that only intermittently, for about a week and a half right at start of age, one of the most critical times in this game to be able to log when and as you need to in order to set yourself up for the entire age
    2) too slow - pages taking up to 5 mins to load, even on the new code
    3) War was bugged to hell - too many to list here. This was the most popular reason given
    4) ops were not working half the time - both self and enemy (being charged stealth/mana for them and not getting results)
    5) In the half the time they were actually working, half of that time they were not working correctly (not working in the manner they were supposed to, or giving weak if any results)
    6) Attacks were either fubar or inconsistant (Ambushing for 0 acres, or for over 50%, plunders giving ridiculously low % of gains for nw-comparison, etc)
    7) Dragons not disappearing when killed, resulting in penalised gains throughout the entire war
    8) Abuse of the various bugs through various means - deliberately bouncing after hitting to take advantage of the ambush bug, racing to get the first dragon off to prevent others from doing so (yes, I know, this was fixed, doesn't change the fact it happened), etc
    9) Player entered VM, province was left running and vulnerable with player locked out, by the time player got back, prov was in ruins

    This is just to name a few. Now, this is all stuff that should have been cleared in the beta. A product such as this should <NOT> be being posted as a finalised product such as WoL is supposed to be (GENISIS is/was supposed to be the test server, and was always advertised as such, not WoL, which is supposed to be home to "serious" play, such as it is), or rushed into service claiming to be nearly at that standard. It is pretty clear that an incomplete product was produced and players were given a choice of either participating in an open-beta format (Seriously, was this product actually at open-beta level even? Most developers I know wouldn't have said so) without it being classed as such, or quitting the game (at least for a while) and losing their place in their kingdom.

    That is just poor business practise.

    Now, before the flaming begins, let me just say this: These are not people who have posted here (that I know of, anyway). They are not out to seek attention or to make a statement or anything like that. They just quietly decided, one or two at a time, that the game was just in too poor shape to be worth their time at the moment, and usually left with a quiet note in PM of something along the lines of "if it ever gets back to normal, give me a yell, but right now, bugger this, I have other things to do than waste time on something that's not working". I'd wager a lot of you know some of these people, or a few people like this, dedicated players who had just had enough of the bugs and the slowness and decided to quietly call it a day for now.

    I just think it's time their story was heard, their reasoning put out there, and hopefully a bit of notice taken by those who make the decisions, so that next time around they make a better call than they have been lately
    Last edited by Allanon KT; 13-12-2009 at 14:12.
    ~~ S A N C T U A R Y ~~
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    "The phrase... 'Who's your daddy?'... comes to mind"

  6. #6
    I like to post Catwalk's Avatar
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    I can easily imagine Spliff stoned and drunk at work, browsing the Utopia forums.

    I agree with Allannon's assertions about bad decisions. Even if what's done is done, it might not be too late to stop OMAC/Jolt/Gamestop/The Anti-Christ from making more bad decisions. In theory. In reality, most are just sticking around to watch the train wreck in morbid fascination.
    For Master of Magic fans:

    Quote Originally Posted by Dylan Collins, CEO of OMAC
    You should ask as many people as you can to criticise what you plan on doing.

  7. #7
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    As long as whomever owns the game sees that the number of players is more or less stable they'll think they're doing great (They really must be that stupid, or simply not care). Sadly, while I've always was highly sceptic towards the claim that we have over 3k bots playing, i fear it's true. This age we've only lost players, yet total number of players is still 10k5.

    I'm one of the "lucky" ones in yet another fallen kingdom. 8 players lost and they're dropping like flies. I'll probably stay around till the end but it's pretty clear to me utopia is dead. B&S'd better have an amazing trick up their sleeves if they're wanting to to revive this game. As I said before B&S should start reading some kd forums to get some insight as to how the players are feeling right now.

    Right now (well.. over a month ago, but you can't change the past) B&S should just admit that this game isn't going to work until the next age (or maybe later) and create an option to "come back to new utopian recode nr 2". I'd go ecstatic if, until the game is working for real, they'd put us back to the old code but i guess that is too much to hope for.

  8. #8
    At One With The Keyboard Luth's Avatar
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    yadda, yeah, unfortunately it is too much to ask for, even putting it on genesis would make a whole truckload of people happy. but it won't happen. :(

    they should have patched the old code enough to put it up and then put this piece of **** on gen where it belongs to finish the beta.

    as it stands now, not many more nails will be required to finish off this game we have loved for 11 yrs
    ~ Lúthien ~
    “There are two means of refuge from the miseries of life: music and cats.” ~Albert Schweitzer
    Words make us think thoughts... Music makes us feel feelings... Songs make us feel thoughts" ~"Yip" Harburg
    Goodnight Utopia

  9. #9
    Game Support Bishop's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Allanon KT View Post
    Players didn't sign on to WoL expecting it to still be in the Beta-testing phase.
    Quote Originally Posted by blog
    The new code will remain in beta.
    They should have expected it to be in beta, because it is.
    Last edited by Bishop; 13-12-2009 at 19:57.

  10. #10
    Needs to get out more VT2's Avatar
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    I was expecting beta to have ended when they ended the beta.
    With OMAC, you should never expect anything, except failure.

    Grand, epic failure.
    Catwalk's crusade for legalized cheating was a stunning success, with ghettos and low-tiered teams everywhere losing their wells of knowledge to better kingdoms in the process.

    Step one: replace everything that works.
    Step two: blame the predictable epic fail on outside forces.
    Step three: keep the community informed that no progress has been made since the last update.
    Step four: thank you for your patience.

  11. #11
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    Quote Originally Posted by Bishop View Post
    They should have expected it to be in beta, because it is.
    Bishop don't be an arse. Can you honestly say that the current state the game is in is acceptable?! Personally I don't care how this game is tagged, "beta", "alpha", "new code". "The Ultimate Super Version", I don't care.

    All that I care about is that before the game moved to this new code, I was playing an ejoyable game. Then the code was "under attack" and we were moved to this version of the game. This version is not enjoyable to me, and not to many others, for all the reasons stated before. Really all that I want (and expected) is Utopia to be the same as it was, or better. Not 10 times worse. (And really, that can't be too much to ask. Mehuls version of the game wasn't a masterpiece of design or coding (the concept (webbased/teambased game) of the game was, and still is, a masterpiece in its own right), and it's beyond my understanding how the devs managed to make this game so much worse)

  12. #12
    Game Support Bishop's Avatar
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    nonetheless its in beta, and was announced as such. the fact that you expected it to be different changes nothing

  13. #13
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    Sadly, none of the players agree with that point of view. So how does Jolt/B&S/Gamestop plan to remedy that? Because quite frankly bull**** like "this was announced as beta take it or leave it" really pisses me off. In case you hadn't noticed, this is a team based game, intended to bring people together, in kingdoms. THIS MAKES THAT YOU CANNOT QUIT BECAUSE YOU DON'T WANT TO BE A &^$^ BETA TESTER AS QUITING MAKES YOU LOOSE YOUR KINGDOM. AND NO, THE 3 TRADES (5 NOW) PER AGE ARE NOT ENOUGH TO BRING A KINGDOM BACK ONCE THE GAME IS PLAYABLE AGAIN (ALSO BECAUSE AFTER A TIME OF NOT PLAYING PEOPLE SIMPLY DO NOT COME BACK), IF THAT EVER HAPPENS BECAUSE THIS ATTITUDE OF YOU/JOLT/B&S IS THE BEST WAY BY FAR TO MAKE MORE AND MORE PLAYERS QUIT!

    Edit: Bishop, please show this topic to the ones in charge, I realize you're just acting as their voice so it isn't you that should be aware of how the players feel, it's B&S/Jolt/Gamestop that should know.
    Last edited by Yadda9To5; 13-12-2009 at 21:35.

  14. #14
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    Bishop, that is my point, actually. Players were given a choice of become Beta testers, or quit the game and lose their position in their kingdom. At the time most of them signed up to what is now WoL, in a lot of cases almost 11 years ago if not more, the server was NOT a beta server. They didn't sign up to be beta testers. They were not given a choice. That's pretty reprehensible for a game developer to do.

    That is for the small portion that actually read the forums/blogs regularly. Most the rest would have logged in for their new age, found themselves redirected, and suddenly everything gone to hell in a handbasket as they ran into a billion and one bugs on what they had believed to be a stable server. As I said, given the choice of become a beta tester, or quit and lose their place in the kd
    Last edited by Allanon KT; 13-12-2009 at 23:40.
    ~~ S A N C T U A R Y ~~
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    "The phrase... 'Who's your daddy?'... comes to mind"

  15. #15
    Game Support Bishop's Avatar
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    according to them their hand was forced and they had to launch the new code before it was ready. am i enjoying the new tick and the lag in the evening? hell no. am i surprised that a beta game isnt 100%? no.

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