Plane of Storms Progression

I'm so glad im not playing on the -storm server called Phinny atm You guys can be test dummies so the people of Ragefire and Lockjaw wont have to. I can't speak for Lockjaw, but atleast on Ragefire we have cooperation between the guilds.

Literally none of this pertains to you unless they make changes to the open world zones so...

Thank you, that was the point I was trying to convey.

Did you happen to play a paladin named Guzzle on Maelin a long time ago?

I must confess, I am but an impostor. I did play with him, though, in Sequel.

Threads merged...public silenced...

I feel like they could've at least commented on it. They took the time to merge the threads. Say it's being discussed. Or there's no intention of changing it. Something. Anything.

While it's easy to focus on - what have you done for me lately? - the devs have, over and over, responded to players and worked to improve the game. Hell, that's why we even have TLP /picks, phinnie instancing, and a ton of other fixes over time (remember vp key mobs for example?).

There's still plenty of time, and they're just coming off break. Still probably premature with the dev attacks, probably more helpful to stick to how much of a roadblock this will be by simple #'s and the gameplay grief you're afraid it may cause you/your friends/your guild.

I think folks are just nervous because we know if this doesn't show up on Test within the next week or two the best case scenario is it gets patched directly to Phinny which track record proves is hit or miss. (We can also look to the Howling Stones AoC as a reminder that timing is obviously important for this server.)

So I don't think the issue is that it's not done per se, so much as we haven't gotten a "ah, that's a good point, we'll get it fixed" from Prathun or Absor, or a "valid points, let me escalate this to the dev team" from anyone else.

Anyone in any kind of customer service or communications role knows that radio silence scares people.

99% of the time I am fully supportive of the devs and what they do for the game. When people whine incessantly on the forums about every minor thing I find it as obnoxious as the next reasonable person.

However, this issue started flaring up 3 weeks ago. The "coming off of break" excuse doesn't really fly with me at this point. It takes 60 seconds to write "we're discussing it" or "we have zero intentions on changing anything." After 3 weeks, then taking the time to remove a thread on the subject instead of address it, it's just bad customer service.

Am I throwing a tantrum? No. Am I going to leave the game? Hell no. I love the game. But I know how fickle people can be, and there could be an unnecessary and easily avoidable loss of subscriptions over this.

Again, don't get me wrong, the dev team does a lot of great stuff and works some miracles. But being unwilling to take a few seconds to address a community concern is just bad form. Period.

The dev in question was on vacation for at least two of those three weeks...

They just came off a live expansion, expansion launch & bug fix binges, plus what looks like a few weeks of crunch time to get all of PoP instanced (and its a metric ton more instances than any other expansion, with what is probably the worst event code in the game from stories told). Plus holidays and what is likely a well deserved break.

Easy to be nervous, I am, I think this is a huge issue, even if I'm confident I will get my key fairly fast. I just don't think it's an excuse, more such as, simple facts. They have a bruising schedule and a small team. And lets be honest, the attention to this round of TLP, and specifically to Phin, is way above any other past TLP round, or even many live expansions back in the day, worth of dev attention. It's not perfect, we get upset at bugs and blocks, but my god, it's really been a pretty damn good product.

Call any customer service department of any company (i.e. cable, electric, etc) and see if they tell you, "Sorry, but the representative responsible for your area is on vacation right now. You're going to have to wait for 3 weeks."

Would that be acceptable? Because that's not even what's happening here. It's complete radio silence.

And even still, there's another week in there. 604,800 seconds. Taking 60 to write a response is asking for 1/10,080 of their time.

But no, I could totally see how you'd think that's being too demanding.

This is not a customer service issue. It's a development issue. An issue that won't even impact players for another month yet.

Stop derailing the thread. Prathun always posts - he's been on the board about two fixes already today. Give him a chance.

Posts should be about the important topic here: this has the potential to ruin the server for several weeks or even months for a lot of people. This is exactly the type of thing many people came to Phini to avoid. This isn't what the server is about and I really trust that they will do something and I'm hoping to see an update sometime soon.

A bunch of off topic posts will waste more time as they try to sort through to what's important... that we need this looked at and fixed in some way.

Splitting hairs and marginalizing the issue scarcely makes it acceptable. When the customer base is requesting feedback, and none is given, it's bad form. Justify it however you want. We'll have to agree to disagree.

The focus should be put more on Daybreak being willing to bend a little in order to make this progression experience a little more enjoyable for the majority. When the entire community aside from a few trolls is pleading with you to change something, it only makes perfect business sense to listen to those paying customers. Do I think there's going to be a mass exodus if there isn't a change? Nope. It's just going to be discouraging, and a miserable first two weeks for everyone not in AoS or OGC. Or for the smart folks, we'll just let two weeks go by and let the animals rip each other apart.

My two cents.

Everything adds up though. There are a lot of people that have a bad taste in their mouth from the Praesertum experience. This is going to be worse and just add to that.

While I don't think there will be a mass exodus either, it certainly isn't going to help the longevity of the server.

It's probably gonna be hard to sum up this problem better than this one sentence.

I completely agree. That's more of what my message was about. Dissatisfaction over time will definitely start to have negative effects on their business. If they're looking to make a quick buck and then drive this bad boy into the ground, then by all means disregard all feedback. But, I don't think that's whats going on here, especially with the signing on of DDO and LOTRO.