Forum maintenance postponed AGAIN.

I understand what he's saying. Just not WHY he's saying it.

Because I like to give an explanation of why things happen the way they do*. It's just how I roll.

*Whenever possible

Maybe for you! I'd rather not have to re-take Calculus next semester

/firstworldproblems, I know...

Which is why we need to get you out of your chair and exercising more.

And cut down on the sweets!




Hyperstrike = Pot
Zwillinger = Kettle

Clicking on the linked image above will take you off the City of Heroes site. However, the guides will be linked back here.

*sigh* The sad thing is that i believe you.
Even sadder is that based on past experience i believe that trying to explain it would be like trying to teach a pig calculus.





(Cue Doctor Who quote about the commonality between the very powerful and the very stupid. )

Look, I don't like the forum problems either, but you're drawing a dumb conclusion from the facts at hand.

Forum maintenance for CoH was displaced by live game release maintenance for another game NCSoft hosts.

Forum versus live game.

Seriously, get some perspective. I work in IT in a shared services environment. My team's applications have release and maintenance schedules that get bumped so other applications can load changes. Even if you're fixing a real production issue with your product, if there's a work-around (and there is for most of the CoH forum issues except the spontaneous logouts) that actually makes it easier for people to bump your maintenance.

There are lots of things outrageously wrong with what's going on with the forums here, but stop translating that righteous indignation into ridiculous indignation over things that actually make sense, but happen to extend or exacerbate the problem. The real complaint here is that someone really should not have jacked up the live forums in the first place, with a possible side complaint that overall maintenance procedures for them need to be scrubbed with a wire brush. But let's not flip out that a production load for another game in a shared services environment bumped our forum getting fixed.

I believe their Frisbee stuff has been getting Zwathinnerthanhispictures a fair amount of exercise.

Perhaps they should see the Paragon Studios/City of Heroes Frisbees in the NCSoft store. I'd buy a few to throw at people here in the halls. (Staff, not students).

I'm sorry, but my empathy for your explanation has been reallocated to an unrelated product that I didn't pay for. Are you serious, Zwill? My ability to peaceably drink the forum kool-aid has also been reallocated towards my ongoing and increasing dissatisfaction.

I would have been happier if the answer was, "Sorry, we screwed up" rather than, "Lineage II>>>City of Heroes." Get it together, Paragon.

Come on, Dump. It's not like CoH has a dedicated web team and they were pulled to work on L2. It, like many other big companies, has always shared a web/server team with all the other NCSoft Games here in North America. If it was flipped, they'd ditch L2 forum maintenance for CoH server maintance.

To put it another way - if your nieghbor hits your car, comes back later and has your paint on it, if there are other things goig on - robbery, drug bust, etc the Police you pay taxes for WILL back burner you (happened to a friend, 12 hours until someone came by to take photos and that was being done as a favor to the assigned cop by another cop).

If L2 had tried to schedule server maintenance after our forum's had already been announced, theirs would of been moved back. But it was totally unplanned.

Why? They didn't screw up. They did something you don't like, but circumstances necessitate it sometimes.

The forums are srsbsns, apparently. Even moreso than NCSoft maintenance a property that is doing very well post-F2P launch.

SRS BSNS.

My empathy for your rejection of Zwill's explanation (and the situation being above and beyond his control at that) is vacant. Killing the messenger is always bad form, DB.

ICUs generally have a different service level requirement than public forums, but I will say as an IT professional whose judgment on this matter is something people listen to, in my opinion we have a professional responsibility to deliver the same quality, service, and effort whether we're supporting an ICU or a public forum. Anyone who thinks differently shouldn't support either.

People have to balance resources all the time, and in my professional opinion when faced with the decision to allocate resources to the proper operation of one of my games, or allocate those resources to doing a dev push on another game's forums, that's an easy decision. The game shards come first, period.

However, by the same token anyone who thinks they could tell me for a year that they couldn't fix my boards and still be employed, well that's highly unlikely.

This is my problem with NCsoft's supposed "web team".

Apparently they are in Seattle. I personally know SEVERAL incredibly knowledgeable people who are currently looking for jobs in the area. Hint.

Originally Posted by Dispari I don't know why Dink thinks she's not as sexy as Jay was. In 5 posts she's already upstaged his entire career.

I do not disagree. I run an IT shop. Our customer portal would take a back seat to any other system being in need. IMO, it's not worth the effort to allocate much in the way of resources to these boards.

What I am fed up with is the level of vitriol and arrogance by a number of posters. I should probably just un-bookmark theses forums and walk away, but I like keeping up with the news that does get posted.

I do not view these boards as being important. IMO, they are little more than a place Paragon can make certain members of the playerbase feel special, for very little investment.

I've said it before, and I will say it again. I'm not talking about a single issue, and I'm certainly not railing on yesterday's hiccup. I'm saying it is symptomatic of a larger issue that has been plaguing Paragon Studios for the last eighteen months. To put it in perspective, I'm talking about climate, not weather.

I guess my problem is that I'm not frustrated as a player, thinking they are entitled to something grand for my fifteen bucks. I'm frustrated as an IT professional who cannot understand how this problem could persist for years. And I *know* what the web team is feeding Zwill is ********, and I know my knowing that means nothing.

You know what *really* kills me? Guess what Lineage II's boards run on? vBB 3.8.6, same as us. I wonder if they have our problem. I'm going to find out.

This. Lern2PR.

but they didn't screw up (at least in this instance)...we got deprioritized for something bigger

How about you stop abusing this particular issue then to drive home your point, because it has nothing to do with your bigger point?

You come across as extremely childish.

This coming from someone who is as annoyed as you are with the complete failure of a web team that is apparently employed by NCSoft.

Of course Zwill probably isn't the person that gets to decide to give them the sack. My company uses an outside contractor for a small online shop we use and they are flippin awful! Totally incompetent. I resent that we give them any money at all. I have told The Powers That Be exactly how incompetent they are but will they get rid of them? No. That would be a risky decision for them and they would have to admit they chose a bad supplier. Plus the hard work of moving all the data. Not going to happen

I will definitely concur on this point. I'm sure it doesn't help that, in their infinite wisdom, NCSoft laid off a sizeable portion of their North American staff earlier this year. I'm sure that hasn't effected their response time at all

This is the basic foundation of my irritability on the subject as well.

Clicking on the linked image above will take you off the City of Heroes site. However, the guides will be linked back here.

I'm going to say you're seriously underestimating the value of a community portal then. The value on a per-user basis is fairly miniscule. But the aggregate value the community as a whole (as well as the company, especially since they're this involved in the community) is incalculable.

Clicking on the linked image above will take you off the City of Heroes site. However, the guides will be linked back here.

What I want is:

1. for someone at Customer Service to clearly and concisely explain to me how my account works with regard to points, tokens, transfers, and rewards; and for these things to work on a schedule that makes some kind of sense.

2. the game to be addressed with the same level of quality control that was previously maintained. Forcing Issue 21.25 and 3/4ths live to compete with a game that I've never heard of and have no interest in with all the bugs in it is just pathetic. Is Issue 21.5 live? Is it not? Why was this forced? You know what happens when CoH doesn't work? I look for something else to do with my time.

Those are my make or break issues. The fact that the forums have been broken for more than a year is just a leaky faucet that constantly drips. Sometimes you can ignore it, and other times it drives you insane because it reminds you how much everything else is falling apart. When the water heater blows out in an apartment on the other side of town, I fully understand why resources have to be allocated--but it doesn't change the fact that the damn sink won't stop dripping. I don't think it is unfair or petty of me to ask that my VIP status works correctly, and that the game is working normally.

Then again, if you're happy paying for something and not getting it, and you're okay with that--I can see how we would disagree.

You forgot "accurately".