Communication/Server Status etc.

[gromartwo]

I appreciate the work going on by volunteers to bring us our game back. I am having fun playing and although the queue is annoying I noticed the stability on Torchbearer last night.

It took 3 hours to get into the game - I was #1450 and at 4pm PST . I did chores and watched videos and got into the game at around 7:30 pm and the game was stable. Servers were reset for RAM about 10:30 but I was back in game after around 5 minutes and played until midnight.

 

Today I queued at 12:30pm and noticed that the queue size dropped as my position dropped so I thought that the servers may be down. I checked these forums but there was NO information. As my queue time dropped below 50 I checked the forums and saw posts about new servers and trouble getting in the game. Nothing from GMs. I finally made it to 1 of 430 and then got the "no message from server " popup and left the game.

 

We need a GM only topic for Maintenance/Server Status to keep us informed. We had a useful one before everything died last week. Please consider bringing it back.

 

[Wandering_Mania]

I second this motion. It would be useful to have some info on what is going on with what. And after experiencing some very odd things with Excel today/tonight, it would seem to me, that it would be kind of a necessity to inform those who are in the dark of whats up.

[KrazieFox]

I 'third' this motion - it would go a long way to alleviating peoples frustration.  I am constantly refreshing both this forum and the Discord server to see if anything is being posted … waiting in queues queues for hours only to get kicked when we hit #1 would sting much less if we knew what was going on.

 

 

Can we also be aware of Time Difference - when you guys are packing up and going to bed we in Europe are wide awake and sitting at our computers … ready to play.

 

The last message from Tempest on the Discourse server is time-stamped 8:45am (UK) / 9:45am the rest of europe - says everyone is going to bed and they'll try again tomorrow … IT IS Tomorrow here … we're all sitting here not able to get into the game we love and we don't have a clue why … your 9am is our 6pm.  Please take this into consideration.

[Burnt Toast]

I think you should also take into consideration that they are not being paid to do any of this and instead are paying out of their pockets to bring the game back to players.

 

While I get the frustration (I have experienced it as well) - please remember that this is something they do aside from their 40+ hour work weeks - which they are having to do to pay their bills AND the bills for these servers. Expecting things to be as quick and communicative as a professional team working 40+ hours ON the actual game per week is a bit much. Just know that these people love this game...this community..and are doing their absolute best they can under the circumstances. They are paying thousands per month just so they can bring the game back to us all... for free.

 

 

 

I 'third' this motion - it would go a long way to alleviating peoples frustration.  I am constantly refreshing both this forum and the Discord server to see if anything is being posted … waiting in queues queues for hours only to get kicked when we hit #1 would sting much less if we knew what was going on.

 

 

Can we also be aware of Time Difference - when you guys are packing up and going to bed we in Europe are wide awake and sitting at our computers … ready to play.

 

The last message from Tempest on the Discourse server is time-stamped 8:45am (UK) / 9:45am the rest of europe - says everyone is going to bed and they'll try again tomorrow … IT IS Tomorrow here … we're all sitting here not able to get into the game we love and we don't have a clue why … your 9am is our 6pm.  Please take this into consideration.

[KrazieFox]

I think you should also take into consideration that they are not being paid to do any of this and instead are paying out of their pockets to bring the game back to players.

 

While I get the frustration (I have experienced it as well) - please remember that this is something they do aside from their 40+ hour work weeks - which they are having to do to pay their bills AND the bills for these servers. Expecting things to be as quick and communicative as a professional team working 40+ hours ON the actual game per week is a bit much. Just know that these people love this game...this community..and are doing their absolute best they can under the circumstances. They are paying thousands per month just so they can bring the game back to us all... for free.

 

I am fully aware of this … and I appreciate this.

 

The original post is merely asking for a GM only topic for Maintenance/Server Status to keep us informed - whilst I am simply asking them to be aware that there are different Time Zones to take into consideration.  For the guys running the servers, their 1am is our 9am.  Players are sitting down looking forward to play.  So, to alleviate some of this frustration I am simply asking the team to be aware of this time difference.

[stoops7]

The most painful thing for me to see in the discord is watching people wait in line for 8 hours to queue for a server that isn't even up. They bring up how they've been waiting for 4 hours, 5 hours, they're number 100, FINALLY! And we have to break it to them that the only reason they are progressing in the queue is because every single person before them is getting DC'd.

 

It reminds me of that scene from Cloud Atlas when (spoiler) _{the girl works her entire life toward her promotion in the fast food joint and when she finally gets it she gets chopped up and turned into food for the fast food joint.}

[Burnt Toast]

I get the frustration - I really do. I also completely understand it from the Homecoming team perspective. I know they are working their butts off to resolve issues and spending way more than they originally thought they would need to spend on the game both in time and money. Unfortunately...it is the nature of the beast. Torchbearer is barely a week old...Excelsior 3 days old...and the other two barely 12 hours online. No one...not even me... expected there would be 8,000+ players trying to play the game. I figured if we could get 4000-5000 we would be expecting too many players. While it is a great thing that so many people want to play - it has also caused issues which no one saw coming.

 

Homecoming is barely a week old and they have made a lot of progress. Give it 2-3 more weeks and things will have calmed down and been resolved. I know that does nothing now for people who want to play now, but in the long run I think things will be much better for the community overall. I am not a "Homecoming fan boi" but I am a realist and I am humbled and appreciative of the tasks they have taken on to bring the game back to life.

[Jimmy]

Hey guys! Thanks for the feedback.

 

Your best bet for up-to-date info is the Discord server: https://discord.gg/X4fWUDV (see the server updates channel).

[Nostromo21]

Yup, servers look like they're up right now, you wait in the queue for a half hour (luckily I'm in GMT+10 APAC region) and then just shit themselves getting into the server after trying to finalise char creation. Are they actually up or down, under maintenance, overloaded, what???

[gromartwo]

Hey guys! Thanks for the feedback.

 

Your best bet for up-to-date info is the Discord server: https://discord.gg/X4fWUDV (see the server updates channel).

 

Thanks. Just joined Discord. The benefit of forum notifications though is that we don't have to sign in anything to see the notice.

[pooper]

Yea, it's very weird they didn't drop an announcement or something.

 

Do not bother connecting to a server until all 4 are up. That means they fixed it.

[_NOPE_]

Hey guys! Thanks for the feedback.

 

Your best bet for up-to-date info is the Discord server: https://discord.gg/X4fWUDV (see the server updates channel).

 

Thanks. Just joined Discord. The benefit of forum notifications though is that we don't have to sign in anything to see the notice.

 

I second this. Also, some people may not be able to run Discord due to *ahem* corporate policies... but can still run the game... a forum sticky that showed server status would be REALLY nice.

[Almafeta]

Hey guys! Thanks for the feedback.

 

Your best bet for up-to-date info is the Discord server: https://discord.gg/X4fWUDV (see the server updates channel).

 

Could updates be moved to these forums?  Discord's too sketchy for my tastes.

[Wandering_Mania]

Hey guys! Thanks for the feedback.

 

Your best bet for up-to-date info is the Discord server: https://discord.gg/X4fWUDV (see the server updates channel).

 

Thanks. Just joined Discord. The benefit of forum notifications though is that we don't have to sign in anything to see the notice.

 

I second this. Also, some people may not be able to run Discord due to *ahem* corporate policies... but can still run the game... a forum sticky that showed server status would be REALLY nice.

And some may choose to not support Discord at all due to Discords corporate policies. So yeah here would be helpful as well.