GOA - facing big problems

[Xest]

The reports I am getting is that performance in game is very very good. So no issues in there as yet. I should be up and running shortly.

As for the website falling over - to be honest I am not a web expert so I really don't know what to say.

Would be a bit worrying if performance wasn't good when only a handful could get into the game in the first place

It's just a shame they didn't take the time between DAoC's slowing down and the ramping up for Warhammer to learn some of the basic techniques about running high availability, high performance services. I would've thought that might be a priority if they're truly trying to promote themselves as a changed organisation.

The issue this time round is Warhammer will almost certainly be a lot more popular, netting a player base in the millions rather than the few hundred thousand as DAoC did so if GOA don't get their act together soon it's going to be a whole lot more high profile each time this time around but of course it's going to be even harder again because they'll likely be facing higher demand than ever before. It'll certainly be interesting to see how it plays out over the next few years.

[Sharkith]

Would be a bit worrying if performance wasn't good when only a handful could get into the game in the first place

I agree Xest, what I mean is it is running much much better since closed beta. There are bugs etc. In the main it is very smooth and pretty nice to play.

As for the customer service issue I could not agree more. Running a flash front end when demand is going to be so high is suicidal. It is amazing no-one saw that coming. The staggered registration Mythic did should have been implemented at GOA.

At the end of the day - GOA is certainly a bit of a soap opera....

[Xest]

The Flash thing is GOA's loss tbh. I already pointed out to them the idiocy of using it for this type of site before.

Roughly 16% of net users don't have a Javascript capable browser or have it disabled. Many more don't have Flash installed/can't install it due to the retarded bugginess of it's installer that can result in unusable Flash on some systems that requires 30mins or more of registry molestation to fix. GOA are throwing away at very least 20% of their potential playerbase with a Flash only accounts system.

But then although GOA suffers, so do the players who buy the game then realise they can't play it because of the Flash crap.

[Nikolas]

Open beta delayed by about 24 hours which was a shame, but since then the open beta servers have swarmed full. Account issues on their site are now working (fingers crossed) and the server we are on is handling excellently on High.

We experianced our first keep siege yesterday late on, and even with about 40 or so people running about it was incredibly smooth.

I think they may just be able to pull it off tbh

[Venge]

The Flash thing is GOA's loss tbh. I already pointed out to them the idiocy of using it for this type of site before.

Roughly 16% of net users don't have a Javascript capable browser or have it disabled. Many more don't have Flash installed/can't install it due to the retarded bugginess of it's installer that can result in unusable Flash on some systems that requires 30mins or more of registry molestation to fix. GOA are throwing away at very least 20% of their potential playerbase with a Flash only accounts system.

But then although GOA suffers, so do the players who buy the game then realise they can't play it because of the Flash crap.

I have to admit that I never understood the will to use Flash on DAoC (and now WAR) website. Flash is cumbersome, is against the "small comp req" that DAoC had and overall, is just less internet friendly unless you want 100% fluff (which is, I think, not the point here).

With today's W3C regulations, you can do very accessible, fast, ergonomic, nice and compatible websites.

[Cernos]

I have to admit that I never understood the will to use Flash on DAoC (and now WAR) website. Flash is cumbersome, is against the "small comp req" that DAoC had and overall, is just less internet friendly unless you want 100% fluff (which is, I think, not the point here).

With today's W3C regulations, you can do very accessible, fast, ergonomic, nice and compatible websites.

Flash is so old school it is quite frankly embarassing to see GOA sticking so steadfastly to it, it's like they don't understand how to do things in any other way and this just backs up all their wannabe critics who say GOA have not changed, are still the same old amateurish company bungling along.

Compare the Mythic WAR site to the GOA one. The Mythic one is modern, fast, slick, robust, good looking and most important of all user friendly and accessible. The GOA one is none of these things. It looks like their old DAOC site that they paid some temp a few Euros to convert.

Even the beta key input form was an embarassingly poor implementation where the Tab key didn't move you between input fields as it should but took you to the end of the page. Astoundingly crap, did no-one test it, or more likely did they test it, noticed this issue and just couldn't be arsed to fix it.

[Venge]

That's what happen when you have "people who draw stuff" making websites

It's all fancy and stuff but then you go: "Hmm, no field indexing?" and they go: "wut? oh, you saw that little birdy on the top right, it giggles every 25+n seconds!"

[Nikolas]

What's the EU Warcraft site done in?

[Tugomer]

javascript...
if you're hinting at the banners, yeah, flash is a good choice for that

[Xest]

Ah people who draw stuff... the reason for GOA's site problems have become clear now

Programmer art all the way!

Seriously though, that's the whole point of modern web development techniques so that you can have the people who draw stuff draw stuff whilst people who makes stuff work, make stuff work.

Is it that GOA only has people who draw stuff and no one that makes stuff work (also known as web application developers) then ?