Disappointingly Unprofessional.

[JaredXS]

UPDATE: Ok, I discovered the IRC chat page and was informed that this situation is due to some Emergency Maintenance on the server. Whilst I fully appreciate the need for such maintenance in a emergency, I'm going to leave the rest of the post in place - especially due to the fact that the launcher states that the server is up. I can't stress this enough: if you are every going to move the game/genre out of the garage and into the mass audience - you need to stop presuming the average player understand to visit specific forum posts, or IRC to find out whats happening - you NEED to communicate with your customers!



Hello,

In my four days experience as a newly paying customer and subscriber of this game, I have experienced a 10 or so hour 'rollback' without explanation. I only discovered this when reading 'local' chat last night.

Further to this, and to be my added disappointment, the second time I try and log on over this UK Bank Holiday weekend, I now find that the server is offline.

This is despite the launcher stating clearly that the 'main server is up'.

So, for the second time - I am unable to play the game at 1 pm UK time on a Saturday afternoon.

If this is a unintentional downtime, so be it - these things happen.

However, if this is due to the the time-zone difference and the misguided perception from the US-based developers that this is an 'ok' time to re-boot, or maintain the server - then it is downright amateurish.

If you wish to stand a chance, you seriously need to up your customer relations - and avoid pissing off your new customers. One, they won't come back, and two - more importantly, they certainly won't recommend Xsyon to their friends.

I want your game and this genre to succeed but - in all truthfulness - you are not doing yourselves any favours with the reputation you are starting to acquire.

[Armand]

If only they'd just begun to acquire it... The status quo is silence, momentarily broken by muffled "I'm sorry"s & "It won't happen again"s.

[JaredXS]

Such a shame, and so unnecessary to boot. I can't believe how obvious it is too!

The amount of 'indy' games that fall foul to this kind of handling of customer relations is astounding. I mean, it's not rocket science!

[d3m0nd0]

Rocket Sciences isnt actually that complex. Now if you compared it to the understanding of quantum physics, and its relationship with entropy.... That would of been more adquate.

[Malivius]

It is shocking...I understand a small development team and limited resources, but if they can't even update that message with the current status, things may be much worse than we think...the most recent "Status" on the launcher is from about 6-7 days ago...

[MrDDT]

There is no reason for the patcher not to update with the server status. ZERO.

To the OP. I agree with most of what you said there. Just remember that the server crashed and thats why they were down, not because they planned it though. OH expect the server to do be down during the week during your play times though because 3 AUS people felt like it should conflict with most of the other people that play the game.

[JaredXS]

I enjoy and wrly approve of the 'make do and mend' humour of the replies, but it certainly shows that we are all in agreement as so far as to quite reasonably expect to be informed properly of any downtime and the reasons for it.

It will be genuinely worrying if knee-jerk reactions are made to individuals whims.

I think, ultimately, the problem is not so much as to the fact that a small development team with a single server is clearly going to find it hard to run an international game across multiple time-zones, but rather that it expects to charge non-indy subscription charges for it.

I had the same issue with Mortal Online. Can it not be reasonable to charge say, £4/month (or the equivalent in euros/dollars). That would then become a huge bargaining chip and get-out clause for the developers. People are far less likely to complain about downtime, or possibly even roll-backs, if they are paying 1/3 of the 'normal' MMO subscription fee?

[mmogaddict]

I think, ultimately, the problem is not so much as to the fact that a small development team with a single server is clearly going to find it hard to run an international game across multiple time-zones, but rather that it expects to charge non-indy subscription charges for it.

I had the same issue with Mortal Online. Can it not be reasonable to charge say, £4/month (or the equivalent in euros/dollars). That would then become a huge bargaining chip and get-out clause for the developers. People are far less likely to complain about downtime, or possibly even roll-backs, if they are paying 1/3 of the 'normal' MMO subscription fee?

QFT. (apparently I need to say more)

[Persha]

Not going to add to the drama.