Ryzom

Do you think the developers should give subscribers a refund if they can't provide a service?

Lmao! Touch of over-reaction there imho, drcole22! It's one patch, one evening that went badly. I don't think that warrants a 'give us some $$$' poll!

I'd rather this than have ppl dupe for a few days and flood the economy with false dapper, tbh.

I thought I'd just point out that it's your free month anyway, so I voted yes, they should give us a complete refund

Unless the contract (ToS) states that the servers will be available 24/7 then I see no reason why they would feel obligated to refund anyone anything if a patch cycle takes longer than anticipated. Exactly what service are they failing to provide? Something goes wrong with a patch and it's taking some time to fix. This is something that will happen at one time or another with any MMOG. In fact, I would point out some other games that shut their servers down for maybe 8 to 12 hours on patch day, while the devs here try to keep downtime to a minimum for which should be applauded rather than berated. Would you prefer they didn't patch in case it takes longer than they think it will? Nowhere in the ToS does it state the servers will be available for X amount of time per month, so where does compensation come into it?

Having said that, some companies do offer some kind of compensation, but they're not legally bound to do so.

I never really understand why it is that as soon as a server is down for 10 minutes more than anticipated, people start screaming for refunds (not to say that is happening here, but I've seen it in many other games).

Yes it's frustrating when servers are down longer than hoped, but as I said before it's something that will (not might, *will*) happen to every single MMOG out there. I've seen servers down for two or three days because a patch got fouled up.

I'm truly sorry for ranting here, but this kind of thing makes me very angry. Sure, if the servers were down for days on end after every patch then perhaps there's cause to complain, but what we've got here is a situation where a server is down a couple of hours longer than anticipated on one occasion.

Have a little patience. Look at it this way, if you're an hour late for work once through unforeseen circumstances does your employer stop you a months salary?

lazarus wrote:Unless the contract (ToS) states that the servers will be available 24/7 then I see no reason why they would feel obligated to refund anyone anything if a patch cycle takes longer than anticipated. Exactly what service are they failing to provide? Something goes wrong with a patch and it's taking some time to fix. This is something that will happen at one time or another with any MMOG. In fact, I would point out some other games that shut their servers down for maybe 8 to 12 hours on patch day, while the devs here try to keep downtime to a minimum for which should be applauded rather than berated. Would you prefer they didn't patch in case it takes longer than they think it will? Nowhere in the ToS does it state the servers will be available for X amount of time per month, so where does compensation come into it?

Having said that, some companies do offer some kind of compensation, but they're not legally bound to do so.

I never really understand why it is that as soon as a server is down for 10 minutes more than anticipated, people start screaming for refunds (not to say that is happening here, but I've seen it in many other games).

Yes it's frustrating when servers are down longer than hoped, but as I said before it's something that will (not might, *will*) happen to every single MMOG out there. I've seen servers down for two or three days because a patch got fouled up.

I'm truly sorry for ranting here, but this kind of thing makes me very angry. Sure, if the servers were down for days on end after every patch then perhaps there's cause to complain, but what we've got here is a situation where a server is down a couple of hours longer than anticipated on one occasion.

Have a little patience. Look at it this way, if you're an hour late for work once through unforeseen circumstances does your employer stop you a months salary?

We pay £15 a month for them to patch, they have to take the servers down to patch, it was only a few hours.

This question is purly academic as I dont think that this is affordable for Nevrax. Loosing 0,5% of the current player base is the better deal anyway.

A refund for what?! For patching the game and trying to make it better?! now this is sad... When developers are not doing anything for years people are getting used to it, when they actually start fixing stuff as soon as they can people ask for a refund You should have added 'Lets fill the lawsuit against Nevrax for the ruined evening' according to your logic. Good thing is that most of the people voted 'No' though.

hey, i just wanted to get a idea from other players on how they feel about the downtime...

hey, we're all back in and happy now (apart from that damn lag!!)

Anyone else remember AO when it started? That was soooo bad, the graphics were glitching the lag was horrendous, the community was ticked off and behaving badly ... very nasty start indeed. Everquest lags .... oh wait no, it is your ISP, right? And every time Everquest brings in a new expansion there are serious wobblies. Heck the lag in SWG, in its early days makes Ryzom lag seem like the fast lane.

Ryzom headed out from beta now with not a lot of problems and I think the developers are working their noonies off making sure the gremlins are captured and chastised roundly if they escape a patch. Why would they not, they are in an extremely competitive market and this game has not been hyped to the gills (to an extent but not like WoW, SWG et all). They need to capture and keep their initial customer base. There is a lack of information but why on earth would they want to provide details of an exploit? That there was one, that some people (you know who you are!) took advantage, that they had to swiftly take down the server and fix it is not the end of the world. That a developer may have spilled his coffee on his keyboard during the patch is human... heck, we have all done that at some time have we not... be thankful it was not beer.

We are the initial customer base. I think this is where we start to decide how we want to interact with the game, the company and each other and, to be honest I think it has been really positive. But in as far as the current ups and downs are concerned I sincerely believe we have to cut some slack.

Except for the lag ... that has to be fixed and soon. I have a powerful computer which I bought and put racing treads on for gaming and I do not want the games to let this sleek machine down. It seriously must be sorted.

Plus, I get motion sickness from the rubber-banding and there is not enough Haze in the world to cover up the aroma of a full out icky.

Only time I'd expect any kinda of money back would be if the servers were offline for more than a day. OR were offline for large chucks of a day every day.

Even then I'd just expect money back for the days the servers had problems, not the entire month or 1/2.

When patches roll out you have to expect a few hours problems, maybe even an entire nights worth. But if this happens once every 3-4 weeks, its no major problem when you consider the game is been improved at the same time