Maybe we should send a message to GOA?

[Ovi]

Everyone would feel better I think if GOA would tell us whether they have changed the way they do things so that this situation won't repeat.

To be honest I won't feel any better no matter what GoA say. As I said before I can't blame Goa entirely for the mess. Mythic have to take some of the blame too.

I know we pay GOA and therefore we expect GOA to deliver etc. I am not desputing that fact. However it is clear from how much mythic have been involved and the reasons given for that involvement that GOA cannot, for whatever reason, investigate/fix certain issues.

To restore my trust in the current setup I would expect something to be said / done by BOTH companies jointly. It seems a substantial part of the lost time was over the first weekend where the Mythic guys weren't working.

We need some assurance that both Mythic and Goa have resolved these issues, and that they are not likely to re-occur. Anything said by Goa or Mythic seperately will carry no weight, since it is likely to look like each blaming the other.

[Ovi]

I send RN a mail like that, had 6 chars and I cannot remember what they got, so u say Requiel, that I lost my items for good???

No that is not what he said. He said you will get anythign easily traceable back, in other words activated artis and other non-tradeable quest items for certain.

Anything which is tradeable, they will check your characters trade logs and should be able to prove well enough what items you had and replace anything that can be replaced (i.e. non-Rog and non-crafted).

Sending a RN like that doesn't particularly help the GMs sort out what you had, and unfortunately does mean that your restore may take a little longer.

(Not a criticism, since my 3 RNs were the same, but I was lucky that the chars affected were not important ones, only 1 being a 50).

[Cryn]

To be honest I won't feel any better no matter what GoA say. As I said before I can't blame Goa entirely for the mess. Mythic have to take some of the blame too.

I know we pay GOA and therefore we expect GOA to deliver etc. I am not desputing that fact. However it is clear from how much mythic have been involved and the reasons given for that involvement that GOA cannot, for whatever reason, investigate/fix certain issues.

To restore my trust in the current setup I would expect something to be said / done by BOTH companies jointly. It seems a substantial part of the lost time was over the first weekend where the Mythic guys weren't working.

We need some assurance that both Mythic and Goa have resolved these issues, and that they are not likely to re-occur. Anything said by Goa or Mythic seperately will carry no weight, since it is likely to look like each blaming the other.

Wow, that's a long post about a trivial distinction.

The point is, as Shark and others have mentioned, we've had no indication about whether what went wrong can go wrong again. It's impossible for us to say whether this needs to include Mythic (for all we know, GOA forgot to press a button called "don't corrupt the database" when they rebooted Pryd), but whoever it covers, GOA should put the info on their website so we can feel reassured.

[Ovi]

Wow, that's a long post about a trivial distinction.

The point is, as Shark and others have mentioned, we've had no indication about whether what went wrong can go wrong again. It's impossible for us to say whether this needs to include Mythic (for all we know, GOA forgot to press a button called "don't corrupt the database" when they rebooted Pryd), but whoever it covers, GOA should put the info on their website so we can feel reassured.

I don't think it is a trivial distinction.

My point is that even if GoA do put a post on their website it probably won't be enough to restore my trust in them. If GoA admit to making a mistake and confirm that it won't happen again, then maybe, but I really can't see them doing that.

Given the fact that Mythic are the only ones with access to the code, they are the only ones that can confirm that either the code was working correctly and didn't contribute or that they have fixed any errors.

Take a look at Requiel / Xest discussions, in essence you have Goa blaming Mythic, and Xest (sticking up for Mythic) Blaming Goa, the only way to ensure some semblance of truth is a joint statement.

Remember how little was posted about the problems on the main site and Xalin explaining that it was down to the checking required? A joint statement would need to be checked and modified until both sides were happy, once that happens there would be no arguments about the situation.

[Lairiodd]

Requiel said (here ), that the problem was likely due to added databases field for clustering. This was a big change to the database.

[Belisar]

Mythic and GOA joint statement would be nice in theory but I can imagine it would take a lot of writing and re-writing so that no blame was apportioned or could be apportioned and I guess it could end up saying not very much. It seems clear now that one side or the other is unwilling to share too many of the facts.

A statement saying "it won't happen again" must be a long shot. I imagine they cannot give any such guarantees and to make a statement saying anything close to that would be cutting their own throat if there were any future issues. If I were them I would not be looking to make anything near that.

Requiel and Xalin have released a fair bit of information and should be thanked for that. Sadly I guess it is unofficial and therefore cannot be completely relied upon (not saying it is wrong just that these are unofficial channels). GOA should have made more official and complete announcements, human nature is to wonder and guess and a snippet here or a misread phrase leads to problems.

It would also be nice to know how far through the RN list they are, clearly some cases are more complex than others and therefore will take more time to sort out but being left hanging is not the most pleasant feeling.

[Briannon]

Requiel said (here ), that the problem was likely due to added databases field for clustering. This was a big change to the database.

If this is true then I am amazed at this. Mythic clustered 21 servers when they first clustered, and they have since made further clustering changes to make some 4-server clusters. In all that work none of the server databases were corrupted (as far as I know) and there certainly hasn't been any down time beyond the few couple of hours for patches and changes.

If database changes for clustering just two servers is one of the reasons for this problem then why has it only happened on the euro servers this particular time, and not on any of the clustering done on the US servers?

[Ovi]

Mythic and GOA joint statement would be nice in theory but I can imagine it would take a lot of writing and re-writing so that no blame was apportioned or could be apportioned and I guess it could end up saying not very much. It seems clear now that one side or the other is unwilling to share too many of the facts.

The fact that they made the effort would be a start

[Sharkith]

Hi folks,

there has to be some explanation - thank you Lairiodd for the link to Requiel's posting about the nature of the change in the database in preparation for clustering. This does not however constitute an explanation.

I am not going into the specifics of what an explanation is but what I would say is that if philosophers can give and explanation of what constitues an explanation without having to give details of specific explanations then you can be sure that an explanation can be given that would not blame anyone. The fact there is no official explanation, apology or outline of what we could expect from this service will emerge as the biggest unresolved issue of this whole debacle.

The single most important thing is of course that people get their stuff back and that they are satisfied with the remedial action GOA have implemented. That has to be the priority here and I in no way want people to waste time on explanations and apologies until that is sotred out. I have my doubts about the system they are using but their hands seem to be tied and I do honestly feel that Requiel and Xalin are doing their utmost. So give some credit where it is due.

Doubts will remain however without some sense of apology, an explanation and an outline of what we could expect in the future people may not really feel that their trust is going to be fully restored. The semi explanation Lairiodd has indicated indicates further questions.

If the database was corrupted as a result of cluster changes then why did the same thing not happen to Excaliber?
Was it because Prydwen was the first database to be changed? Why did a similar thing not happen in other clusters?
Is the Prydwen database so different that we might have future issues with future patches?
Should we consider moving to a more stable server?

Can you see that in the vacuum of a decent explanation all that is left are further questions all of which get worse?

So to summarise of course GOA are right to prioritise our friends who have lost so much. We can only respect them for putting this effort in. It is of course not ideal but we don't have much choice other than quitting some of us are waiting to see just how those who lost stuff are being treated.

In the longer term in the vacuum of a decent explanation, apology and promise I have to say I am not enamoured with the fact that I might be playing on a very shaky server. But please GOA help us understand - I promise that I want to believe you. Can you now bring yourself to answer?

Passing the buck to Mythic is unacceptible because you can explain this without getting too specific I am sure. Whether or not you do will speak volumes about your attitude to the good people who have remained faithful in your ability to deliver this excellent game.

kind regards

Sharkith

[rvn]

why dont you just let mythic take care of the servers from now on?