So What is Plan Z?

LOL fair is fair, The Obama joke manages to hold office.

All passengers will keep their hands and arms inside the cars and remain seated while the roller coaster is in motion. We will begin our wild ride in just a moment.

i got all the faith in the world with the Titan Folks. i lost all faith with ncsoft now. so i wish all the best for TonyV and the Titan network.

You just need a big huggie wuggie! Smoochie woochies for CGM! You cuddly cutie, throw that language around some more - it gives me the tingleees!

Adorable, see?

And he probably still thinks he's not a troll.

As far as I can tell he isn't and even though I have often disagreed with his positions I have never felt they weren't reasoned or his own.

If you want an example of a Troll, that would be someone who posts on these boards making out and out false and misleading statements without disclosing they are being paid by NCsoft/Paragon studios. We had just such a person who made a very long habit of getting people to believe that yes the Paragon Studio people were on the ball and their problems would be addressed shortly.

In the end we learned that while the devs in a perfect world would have liked to address the issues, in this world they had no intention of doing so.

Very well said.

Bill, before everything goes away, I would just like to say, you have been one of the shining lights of this place. Back when I used to participate in the tech board, you were one of my favorite posters. Intelligent, and funny as hell. I can honestly say, I will miss seeing you post once this all goes away.

Voting with our wallets (a very third party vote, sadly) is the only way to show our displeasure of NCSoft's actions. Money given to GW2 goes to NCSoft, so if we don't want NCSoft to get our money, GW2 can't have it either.

Your puppy still has time to run away to an animal shelter before it gets sent off to a nice farm where it can run* just before a new shiny puppy arrives.

*I shot the dog and tossed its carcass in the slough

There's a difference between 'I won't play it, but you have fun' and 'I will do everything I can to make sure your fun dies like mine did'.

Indeed, and it looks like the #SaveCOH group will do everything in their power to make sure that this happens.

So, whilst NCsoft might have the mission statement of making people happy, it looks like the #SaveCOH group have the mission statement of "Making peoples lives as unhappy as possible".

And screw it if you are an innocent bystander, you are collateral damage and deserve it for consorting with the enemy.

#SaveCOHKillsCommunities

Do you even know what you're talking about?

There are multiple definitions, and yes it does apply.

All it took was one insult and someone to get ungodly defensive and this thread spiraled into a rather humorous hell

I think you may be overstating your evidence and information. The support ticket functionality has been shown numerous times over the years to have little to no interaction with anyone outside the support techs. At best, they will forward the ticket to the account management support, or to the community manager. That is about the extent of what the ticket system is for. At best, all you are likely to be able to do legally, is get some support rep in trouble for not forwarding the communication. I'm not sure how much experience you have with large software organizations and their support tiers, but in this case, you were using a ticket system that is NOT specific to this game. It is for all of NCSoft's games. Most of the people responding to such tickets, are low level support reps. All they are aware of is, the game is being shut down. Therefore, anything beyond immediate in-game support, or questions about accounts, are not likely to be considered. Again, I am only guessing here based on my own experience in large software groups, but the most likely effect of your ticket involved a bunch of the support reps on a smoke break telling stories about the weirdest tickets they got that day.

If you have been with the game as long as you say you have, I have to assume that you have not had many occasions to actually USE the ticketing system, otherwise you would not be surprised by people's reactions that you used this as your primary means of communication with NCSoft. I don't know you, and I don't know what further communication may have occurred after the initial ticket was submitted. Obviously, a LOT of other things could have happened. Maybe the ticket WAS forwarded to where it should have gone, and your reaction was completely justified. I don't know, and it is relatively immaterial. Your reactions here indicate one of only a few things. Either you made a mistake in how you proceeded, and are now trying to backpeddle to avoid looking foolish, there were other things going on that you are unwilling or unable to share, or you were just unaware of the specifics of how the NCSoft ticketing system works. I don't know what the correct answer to that is, nor do I really care.

The point I am trying to make here is, you are fighting a losing battle continuing in the fashion you currently are. You aren't gaining any supporters, and are merely reinforcing the negative feelings your detractors have. Don't get me wrong, I find the entire exchange terribly entertaining, but if you are going to continue, I would prefer you understand WHY some people are so vehemently against your current position, because I truly don't think you are understanding the other side. Even if your credentials are precisely what you say they are, it does not preclude making a mistake. That is what it looks like happened.

Feel free to ignore my comments, or argue against them. I have pretty extensive knowledge of very large international software firms, and how they work, both in design, support and QA. There are a few people here who know who I am and what company I work for. No, I am not some president or owner. Just a guy who has worked in the field for going on 17 years now. I will say, that it is not a game company, so I could be just as incorrect as you are about how their communications work. Based on my own experience, both within the company I work for as well as with NCSoft in the past, I think my understanding of how inappropriate the channel you chose was, is more correct than yours.

I've not been getting involved in the whole back and forth (many - maybe even most - of the participants on both sides have become very tiresome), but this post really sums up the bulk of my feelings on the subject. So I figured I'd make what's probably my last post here a +1 to it

Just got off a Skype with TonyV.

His boss kinda "oversold" him at work. So he's been chained to a desk, nose-to-the-grindstone for the last couple weeks.

When I asked about it, he said he'd drop an update on us in the next day or two.

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

Yep. I come here for updates on the devs and the fellow players I always felt were worth reading. Now its just devolved into Troll Central.

I never wanted to say anything, because the hearts are still broken and the feelings are still raw. They have every right to be upset. However, I'm a firm believer in the notion of 'pretendy fun-time games' as well. At some point you have to take a step back.

Voting with your wallet is your right as a consumer. Informing other consumers that they may be next, that's your right too. Making your own superhero MMO, I sincerely wish you the best of luck.

But the way past a broken heart is not to turn into Syndrome. Don't be a jerk. And I wince everytime I see posts headed in that direction.

Blood Widow Ricki * Tide Shifter * T-34 * Opposite Reaction * Shaolin Midnight * ChernobylCheerleader

Entropy Legion * Hyperion Force * Hero Heights

Expecting 6million outright would have been impressive. The Original Guild Wars took a few years to hit 5million sales.

Then again, I never heard the prediction of 6million sales... but I did hear something about 4million sales...

*shrugs* To be fair, I think that this is a problem with the whole range of industries, especially where you are starting to hit saturation points for their own market.

A more interesting metric would be "how many people from Guild Wars 1 joined their account up to Guild Wars 2?". That would give you an idea at least of the number of people who have migrated (or just bought) both games.

*shrugs*

I always suspected that GG was evil. Now that the sun is nearly set on the game, I think that's becoming ever more obvious!

I had an Amiga 2000. I got it in 1988. I didn't stop using it daily until some time in 1998. By then it had a 50 MHz '030 with 4 megs of 32-bit fast RAM and 2 megs of chip RAM, extra serial and parallel ports, a CD-ROM drive and a 3 gig IDE hard drive, running Amiga OS 3.5.

Indeed. You must have been responding to this before reading successive commons on this matter I posted further on in this board. It's common enough on forums like this.
You are stating that the support system was a completely closed one? That the GM's have no contact lists, personal supervisors, etc. (with the exception fo the support techs)? No one outside the company actually has direct knowledge or evidence of the internal relationships. So saying "It has been shown..." has a doubtful pedigree. Especially since that's inconsistent with how any large corporation tends to operate. This very week I took on a freelance support position with a large multinational corporation based in Saudi Arabia. I have a list of contacts that span two continents and multiple nations. And those are just my immediate supervisors. I have their email addresses and Skype handles. I don't deal with human resource only because I'm a contractor using another firm to manage those issues. I gross $60.00/hr for this little job. I get those tickets. Attempt to solve them. Forward them on if I can't, but I always communicate with the client about everything on it even if my answer is "I don't know". I'm not even an inside employee to the company and I have more information available to me that you attribute to NCSoft staff.

No, that information was to cover my ***, and not as a tool for future litigation.
That would have been even better for me then. They'd have a larger contact list.

Which would have produced a far different response than the one I actually received. Rather than being simply ignored, "I don't know", or "Go to the website", I got legalese. It's because I didn't get the kind of response one would expect by doing that I re-evaluated the situation. My original plan was to try this, and if it failed to provide useful information, I would look into more standard channels of communication. What I gleaned was there was likely an outstanding company order blocking any communications over this matter. I might have found another one, but I did not have any cause to believe any of the other publicized channels would do much better A professional journalist recently discovered to her shock just how solid this wall is right now. Want a link?

So based on your knowledge of software operations you make a guess about business operations? I know that question is blunt and tends to sound accusatory. You are one of the more civil persons I've seen on this board and I mean you no ill will. Your speculations would normally be accurate given that it relates to a specific frame of reference familiar to you with regards to general patterns, but the specific information I received was inconsistent with those.

Off and on since 2004-2005. And I have had little need to use the ticket system, but when I have I've had satisfactory responses. And I didn't use it as my primary means of communication with NCSoft. I used it as an information gathering tool to find a better means of communication with NCSoft. This was the first step in a general contact attempt. It was the discovery stage. This stage unorthodox methodology is acceptable and often encouraged. Please not that I also used the same ticket for the expected usage of that communication channel. I expected even poorer response given the anticipated shutdown, and my assessment was accurate. I simply gathered more information, identified the likely issue, and found an effective solution.

This has been described further in this thread. And, no, you don't know me outside of any self-reporting. I have my fair share of superlatives I could promote, but I have declined to do so. But as a rule, based on formal assessments by trained professionals, I'm generally not incompetent.

I didn't expect the ticket to be forwarded at all. If that happened I would have been thrilled, but I didn't see it as likely. The results were statistically atypical.

The above argument can be deconstructed and demonstrated to have a number of logical fallacies. While such a statement is technically accusatory at the moment there is no refusal of accountability involved, only the desire for brevity. The best response to this list is "None of the above".

Not fighting a battle at all. Just maintaining accountability and disclosure. But yes, I shared the original story because it was amusing and entertaining. The method was unorthodox but the information I gained from it was valuable.

30+ years here. But your background is respectable. I started as a Federal programmer involved in overseas missile base construction, moved on to an international telecommunication firm and handled software product release. I not only did the release but handled certification. My signature was there twice, and was the first ones applied. Then 3 vice presidents and the company president. We did high end products used by banks and governments due to their accuracy. We also did OEM work for Rockwell and other manufacturers (Dell, Grid, Tandy, Compaq...). I just burned out and decided to do my own thing for a while. I actually looked into going back with them last year but found out the holding company went belly up and took all its subsidiaries down with it. I've owned my own company for over seven years but worked for other multinationals in management roles. I just never messed with acquisitions. Not my forte'. But I'm happy to try - and even fail - if my CEO ask. And I'm not afraid to experiment. Bounced into this game software company in its startup stages and mostly just putting sweat equity into it at the moment. Common enough. The founder has a concept that has been able to attract and sustain good talent. When he was able to land an Oscar award winning actor as a voice role with no money involved I was impressed.

Damn, where were you white knights after Commodore went bankrupt? LOL

EDIT: Oops, I meant to mention increased support for the ReactOS project! I guess I still miss certain things a lot harder than I thought. lol

She's young, technically competent, with a vindictive streak I've found amusing. She responds well to consistent, positive contact. What does that mean? Always respond to her, or anyone else, with consistent kindness and strive to never abuse the trust gained. Be personally accountable, admit your failings, and not be hateful. The old saying "Always say something nice or say nothing at all" actually works. The quote "Do not repay evil for evil but, rather, good for evil..." I've found works better still. I can provide the analysis to support this argument that are probably better than pithy sayings, but I've been rather dry in my formal stuff. I can sound like Mr. Spock if I have to, but it's not my first choice.