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MMOs train us well
Bjelar
Member UncommonPosts: 398
I play a browser game run by one full time developer.
Whenever there is a problem, people expect him to fix it. It doesn't matter if it's day or night, winter or summer. Once the game crashed 6AM on christmas day, and people were fuming it took him two hours to get out of bed, drive to the hosting centre and reconfigure the front end server.
This morning I logged on to my favourite MMO, only to find that the guild ladder ranking hadn't updated at midnight as it is supposed to. I automatically accepted this, thinking it had only been 8 hours. You can't really expect a massive MMO company to press a button in a mere 8 hours. If it takes weeks, people will start making noice, but 8 hours? That's nothing.
How did they manage to train us this well? If the poor guy who runs my browser game ignored a problem for even one hour, he would be out of business in a heartbeat. Even if that hour was 4am-5am on a Sunday (his birthday). I don't even expect MMO companies to acknowledge there IS a bug before a week or two have passed. Never mind looking into it. And I'm pretty sure they've got more than one developer.
Maybe I should try to demand the same response time from my MMO companies as I do for my browser game guy. I'll keep you updated about how long it takes for me to lose my forum rights 
The response time will be excellent, no doubt.
Comments
Your basic question is one of expectation as a consumer.
This ranges all the way from:
foot stamping and tantrum-throwing, demanding to speak with the CEO because your burger doesn't have pickles
- to -
almost pavlovian responses to specific stimuli, such as continuous pursuit of carrots dangled from the end of sticks.
Pick the consumer, and his level of demands vs expectations is different from the guy standing right next to him. And so is his level of addiction, which allows companies to cynically shear the wool from his stupid placid arse, or not.
All I know is that any problem in my browser game generates five threads and 200 posts an hour on the forum, while looking at the MMO forum I refered to as we speak exactly (wait for it!) nobody cares.
The definition of insanity: doing the same thing over and over expecting different results.
Of course, that may have more to do with time zones than company response time, yar?
Time zone? I don't notice any difference in my browser game...
There is a world outside of Rome, you know. Other continents and stuff. It's more than just stories.
If your game happens to be hosted West Coast US, it's 2am...just sayin.
At any rate; having slave-level access to a single developer is indeed clearly superior to dealing with a corporation; you should definitely stick with your browser game.
Oh, now I get you
Yes, that was pretty much my point. It's expected that the only developer of a browser game gets out of bed at 2AM to fix stuff, but a huge company keeps office hours.
Still, I bet I can get banned from the forum at any hour of the day
the steel shines red with enemy blood. It sings of victory, granted by the gods. And as they return bleeding but proud, the horizon burns and the song is ringing LOUD!
You cant compare a simple bug, but still playable game with a server crash with noone able to play. If the server would crash in your beloved MMO you would expect that they got the server running within minutes.. and most probably he will be up within 1 hour.. most probably less
It is true that a simple bug is less critical than a server crash, but it is A LOT easier to fix as well.
Are you saying they should "press the button" as soon as they come back to work? We will see.
Browser games are of course much much simpler than MMOs, but in this case a button needs to be pressed. The janitor could do it, if they told him how before they left.
I seem to recall one time WoW was down for Euro player (something about a Telia backbone issue).. what i recall was not people "taking it with a shrug of the shoulder" i rather seem to recall some people ready to form a mob and march on Paris
So i fail to see what the point of the original comparison is... Trust me over the 10+ MMO's i have played the one thing they all have in common is that players expect that the devs are their slaves to lord over.
I think you should cut the poor one-man dev team some slack. =P
This have been a good conversation
Then I am indeed clueless.
I cant think of any good reason why they don't press it.
Yes, once a good rage gets going it can be quite overwhelming.
It was the thought "well, it has only been 8 hours" which made me stop and think. I would never say that about my browser game.
In order to get a response from an MMO company, you pretty much need 100 pages of wild rage. Otherwise you are ignored. And they still wonder why people work themselves up so badly. We have to march on their land to get their attention
Small things we just ignore, because we know it is futile. It's only been 8 hours.
And, yes, the poor one-man dev should get some slack
Maybe the problem is that your browser game is populated by impatient dicks.
There isn't a "right" or "wrong" way to play, if you want to use a screwdriver to put nails into wood, have at it, simply don't complain when the guy next to you with the hammer is doing it much better and easier. - Allein
"Graphics are often supplied by Engines that (some) MMORPG's are built in" - Spuffyre
That, and the developer actually cares. It's his lifework. Noone is more upset than him if something goes wrong.
I had a similar experience over the weekend with an Android app game, a new update pretty much crashed the game and the servers, they immediately pulled the update and had a popup that said "For more information, see our Facebook page". Now that's all well and good, at least people could keep playing, but they never bothered to update their Facebook page until close to a day later. Why bother sending people there for answers when they're not going to give any answers? I give them lots of credit for the first move, none whatsoever for the second.
Played: UO, EQ, WoW, DDO, SWG, AO, CoH, EvE, TR, AoC, GW, GA, Aion, Allods, lots more
Relatively Recently (Re)Played: HL2 (all), Halo (PC, all), Batman:AA; AC, ME, BS, DA, FO3, DS, Doom (all), LFD1&2, KOTOR, Portal 1&2, Blink, Elder Scrolls (all), lots more
Now Playing: None
Hope: None
It doesn't matter if you understand it or not.
Using all your thinking ability, do you think if there was a magic button they could push to fix a problem that they would not push it for some reason? Are they doing some kind of experiement to see how people react? If you think a problem is solved easily and quickly yet again and again your expertise is somehow not matching what really happens, at some point you have to challenge your thinking.
You see a problem, imagine it is an easy fix then believe with all your will that it is a quick fix and wonder how stupid the devs must be for not fixing it like you know it can be fixed. You, who has understood the system which you have not read a single line of code of and have somehow gleaned expertise far beyond what the devs for that code were able to understand. Is that how you are going to spin this?
Epic Music: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vAigCvelkhQ&list=PLo9FRw1AkDuQLEz7Gvvaz3ideB2NpFtT1
https://archive.org/details/softwarelibrary_msdos?&sort=-downloads&page=1
Kyleran: "Now there's the real trick, learning to accept and enjoy a game for what it offers rather than pass on what might be a great playing experience because it lacks a few features you prefer."
John Henry Newman: "A man would do nothing if he waited until he could do it so well that no one could find fault."
FreddyNoNose: "A good game needs no defense; a bad game has no defense." "Easily digested content is just as easily forgotten."
LacedOpium: "So the question that begs to be asked is, if you are not interested in the game mechanics that define the MMORPG genre, then why are you playing an MMORPG?"
one person handling everything on a small scale is easier than having a whole company with different departments fixing the game.. but nonetheless you should throw money on your dedicated Browser Developer