Are we still gonna be billed the full amount O_o?Follow

That seems like it would be a good thing to do, ill go ask a GM for ya on my server, if that helps any.

On the one hand, I'm 99% sure that the Terms Of Service contain the usual boilerplate about "occasional outages" being simply part of the deal. (That's not to say that such boilerplate could protect a provider from legal recourse for a really long outage, but 1-2 days out of 30 probably isn't outside the realm of "occasional.")

And SE generally does an excellent job; for all we know, this past weekend's problems were colossal and SE did a great job behind the scenes. Can't say.

On the OTHER hand, it would be an EXCELLENT idea, both ethically and in terms of generating/maintaining goodwill with customers, if SE were to "voluntarily" credit affected accounts by $5 or something.

It probably won't happen. I won't lose any sleep over it if not.

You have to keep in mind that not only were people who didn't get to log on affected, but those that were in the middle of something were too.

I know during one of the server downs that my LS was fighting Hakataku and the cluster was lost due to everyone dc'ing. What about something like Fafnir? Zenmetsu was fighting and server went down when it was at 10% (thankfully, they did reclaim it after server up). Do you realize how much of an "event" it is when NA even gets to claim ground HNM's?

Yes, we'll all "move on" but to be honest, if S/E wants to maintain good customer policy, they had better do 1 of 2 things:

1. Implement an actual item/xp/etc. reimbursment policy. I KNOW for a fact other MMORPGS did it and did it well. Even AO had a very good reimbursment policy, I see no reason why a better funded company such as S/E can't even offer a minimal one compared to a much smaller company like Funcom that offered a fully fledged exp/item reimbursement policy. Frankly, this is laziness on S/E's part and it stinks. All it requires is having detailed logs + having someone capable of reviewing those logs and making a proper decision. It's a shame that GM's in this game are a.) powerless to make any real decisions and b.) not given any form of tools that would allow for reimbursment. I.e. in the case of Hakutaku, they would simply need to revisit server logs to see that Hakutaku was indeed spawned, not killed and that server went down. Cluster should be reimbursed.

OR

2. Allow for monetary/other benefits back. Offer free game time, offer partial refund, SOMETHING. After all, it is inconvenience for the customer and it's not like it would be a massive loss for S/E. Good customer relations + us being HAPPY with the company far outweighs the loss of money they would have if they were to even reimburse us 25% of our monthly fee this month in the long run.

--------------

Who am I kidding though? S/E will never change, I'm arguing uselessly and we'll all continue to play this horribly addictive game despite problems like this till our eyes bleed or the server shuts down. -_-

I realize people were doing things. But come on, ITS A GAME. Nothing of real value was lost. NOTHING.

Which brings me to your two points. If EITHER point is addressed in the manner you suggest, you will open the flood gates to many things.

Let's take your first thought one step further. As part of this incident, many people lost gil and items in the AH. Should these people be compensated? If so, How? keep in mind you are establishing a precedent. You are assigning VALUE to these items. If they are just imaginary, make believe, pretend items then they have no value, and thus recompence is not expected. HOWEVER, the moment you assign value to them then you must accept that each item in this game has value and if it has value, then the rules change quickly. Rembmer I'm jsut assigning it value, not saying it's worth money or anything. Just that it does, in fact, have value.

Your second argument is a bit screwball. Because you lost less than 1/30th of your paid play time you want 25% of your costs refunded? So for your 43 cents worth of lost time you want $3.23 back? So you are now assigning a monetary value to your time spent playing in excess of the actual value of the time you paid for? Again, you are opening up a can of worms here. Now I have a precedent for claiming that the Hours spent farming for the items lost in example #1 mean that the ITEM has a REAL MONEY VALUE. Are you following where this is going?

None of this is meant to argue the point that people lost time and effort. But your suggestion of real recompence for imaginary items of no value is alarming to anyone who sees past immediate satisfaction. If SE stepped up and offered the solutions you suggest a lawyer could, and believe me the first time someone lost an E-bow in a AH accident WOULD, rip them apart with their own value assignment. Now you've created a situation where player time and effort translate into REAL MONEY VALUE, and player items are assigned REAL VALUE.

Now you have banned players suing SE to recover the RMV of their time spent playing (easily tracked through logs), the RMV value of items their character had based on time spent farming, camping, hunting those items. Suddenly $3.23 has become hundreds, and thousands, and mutliplied by hundreds of thousands of players....millions. Still think SE can swing it?

There is a REASON the EULA bans RMT and also states:


It has nothing to do with fairness, stopping cheating, or 'being nice'. it has everything to do with protecting SE's backside from those who would use even the tiniest excuse (say maybe the loss of a days play and a 'valuable' cluster) to unleash the lawyers and make a money grab.

If you think I'm off my rocker, it's already happened, in EQ, In Ragnarok, and in a half dozen other games around the world. So far users have won exactly twice, both times in Korea (and in both cases financial judgements were ordered). it would only take ONE win in the US to end MMOs for good. No one would be able to afford to make, support, and remain liable, for everything that happened in them.


43 cents is the REAL value of what you lost, based on what you PAID for this month's service. Everything else, is make believe and pretend and carries NO VALUE.

Edited, Tue Apr 12 14:53:31 2005 by airamis

Regardless, we play for fun and it can be very frustrating when that fun gets thwarted by things like this.



No, not really. It's been done (100% successfully too, mind you) in several other successful MMORPGS. Square/Enix is not in some way special nor do they lack the funds/manpower for something like this.



Implement a system that allows for GM's to be able to check logs related to the person who submits a petition in regards to something getting lost. If you lost an item, petition for it/gil you were supposed to get. GM can check log, using tool that allows them to send gil/item back to you.

This system exists in other MMORPGS. Don't tell me that it will cause excess problems for GM's either; once people realize that there are wait times, they won't bother petitioning over trivial things.

I'm only arguing because this kind of system doesn't exist in FFXI. I'm not even slightly hoping that it will ever get implemented, simply because it wasn't implemented to start off with and I have little faith in S/E.



Hold on a second, don't put words in my mouth. I wasn't clear about it earlier, but I merely suggested 25% (just as a random figure), merely as an act of goodwill, not because I was placing a value on my time lost. It's just customer relations. Offer something of value to compensate for aggravation/inconvenience in order to keep customers happy. It's not unreasonable nor is it unimaginable. You see it all the time in the real world, I don't see why S/E should be spared simply because it's a virtual world. It's still a company dealing with customers.

I'm not saying that they should give "XXX" amount of dollars back for "YYY" amount of time lost that they couldn't play ingame. I'm suggesting they offer an incentive on goodwill to keep customers happy, because it's fairly obvious many people on Ragnarok are obviously upset at S/E, and you can't really contest that.



No, there are plenty of other MMORPGS out there that offer conditional item reimbursement within the game rules. Doesn't have to be outside money trade or anything. I'm not even slightly suggesting that they place "REAL VALUE" on virtual items.

I'm suggesting that they change their systems to allow GM's with more functionality/tools/decision making abilities to review case by case (they ALREADY answer things case by case, I *don't* see how this would make it any worse than it is already for GM's). With the ability to see proper logs, they could easily tell if a player is lying.

You wouldn't have players simply petitioning with make-believe stories that they lost an E-Bow and getting away with it, simply because GM would be able to check the log and see that player is lying.

Again: this system exists in quite a few other MMORPGS and works very well. Just because it didn't exist in EQ doesn't make it alright for it to occur here as well.

S/E has money and manpower. They have the means to implement a half-decent item/xp-reimbursement within the game (I'm NOT talking about giving virtual items "REAL VALUE") if it can be determined that it is S/E's fault that the problem occurred in the first place.

It would be nice if they would reimburse items lost during this. I had some strange **** happen. Two of my trees I was growing outright disappeared. One came back last night. The other, I'm assuming gone for good.

The money that never made it to my mh, fine, don't send the gil. But can I at least get the item back?

I know in the real world these things don't make a difference and this game is for entertainment. But by it's nature this game is a timesink and some people lost stuff of a lot of value that could set them back weeks or even take them to the point of fustration where they are going to quit.

Trying to help players who lost something during this isn't acknowledging that the item has value, it's acknowledging that the customer has value.

I personally don't care if I see any of that stuff I've presumed gone for good again. It'd be nice, but it's not important. However, if they did make an attempt to restore the stuff to my account, that would just make me a little more loyal and a little less likely to quit if things keep going haywire, because I'll know that they care about their customers.

And MJS, I understand where you are coming from. But that should be their goal, for customers to not know how bad it really is. I know the internet is iffy and things crash, and sometimes in the crashes things are gone for good. But when my sites crash and it effects my customers, I do what I can to make it up to them.

I mean they could do something as small as offering a special event when everything calms down, like an adventurer appreciation one like they did last year, to show the customers that they are sorry about what happened.

Aserek,

the problem is by doing most of what you suggest REAL VALUE becomes IMPLIED legally.


You pay a set amount for a set service, it's completely reasonable to expect/offer a recompence that is fair in terms of actual value of lost services, which in this case is around 43 cents.

I understand all your arguments but the fact remains that it DOES create legal precedent and it DOES create implied REAL VALUE, both which lead to other things.


In a way this has actually all been addressed and tried in courts alreadt. You can thank AOL and a large chunk of their money for redefining the word "unlimited". AOL users sued AOL due to excessive busy signals, disconnects and other things that made their claim of "unlimited" access invalid. Users sued, AOL lost, lots of Lawyers got new Porsches and now "Unlimted" means "all bets are off, if you get on great, if not tough."

Sadly in this world, people will take advantage of any act of kindness or tiny semantic twist they can. Imagine what IGE would do if they could show Square themselves placed a monetary value on accounts, items, and by default gil. Of course the argument here would be "the EULA" forbids it. Well ok, then in this case the EULA, has the situation covered too.

I suppose that my time working for a developer made me far more of a "READ THE EULA" kinda guy. It does stink, and I'm not saying it's 'right' but the EULA, which you agreed to before you ever earned your first gil or your first XP point, say that when this kind of thing happens...... tough. And you clicked OK and agreed that when it happens to you........tough.

Tif's idea of a player appreciation day like they did in the past is probably the safest (for Square) route to take. Becuase it addresses players who are disgruntled with an outage but places it in a format that is beneficial to ALL players, whether they lost anything other than 43 cents worth of availability or a 15m gil item.



Now some clever schmuk needs to come up with MMO Insurance....


Edited, Tue Apr 12 19:12:03 2005 by airamis

HNMs are one thing, and offering some sort of compensation for people who lost fairly major stuff... eh, ok, I'm with ya there. As to what form said reimbursement should take, well, who knows.

But all I gotta say is, IMMEDIATELY after the first problems occurred and were fixed, people were assembling mission PTs, doing god fights, and popping Hakutaku. Even after the SECOND problems occurred. Sorry, but if there's obviously a major problem on our server, you need to just wait it out. It's not worth the risk, and going and using your cluster/triggers at an extremely volatile time is your own poor decision. Just have a little patience for things to get back to normal.

All water under the bridge now since things seem to be fine.

Thank you for proving my point. You're saying EXACTLY the kind of thing that I was referring to in so far as assigning REAL VALUE to imaginary things.

You are effectively statig that since your time has value and your spent that time (and value) earning an item (for the sake of argument)and thus that item has a value based on the value of your time. So what is your time worth? And is your time worth more or less than my time?

All it takes is one person, using your own argument, in a legal setting, and you now have a major problem on your hands. This is why SE must keep the value of your lost time/effort/service at 43 cents, the REAL VALUE of the money you spent for the right to play during the time that was lost.

If your time is so valuable...why are you wasting it playing a game? Shouldn't you get doing something that earns you what your time is worth? Or did you make a decision to 'waste' your time by playing a game instead of making money? If so, then you had already written off the value of your time by decidig to waste that time in pursuit of idle pleasures. Thus, you lost nothing.

I agree with Tif that as a business owner you want to give something back when possible to compensate a customer for any problems that arise, no matter the cause. But the realities of such things can rapidly spiral out of control. Will you do the same thing every time? Maybe, what if you don't? Will that make people more irate at you for having done it in the past and now suddenly "getting greedy"? Consistency of policy is a big deal. Even unhappy customers accept (at least in my experience) that at least if the policy is consistent and consistently applied, and stated up-front, they really have no reasonable expectation of compensation for losses. Most are ok with it. Sure there are whiners and petty people out that that will ***** a blue streak becuase they lost $5, but you can't base a business off satisfying the most difficult 1%.


Edited, Wed Apr 13 10:42:55 2005 by airamis

WoW has their "Rested Bonus", and several times when there were long server outages, Blizzard decided to give all characters a full rested bonus, meaning everyone got 200% exp from fights for at least 1.5 levels (exp gained from quests doesn't count against your rested bonus).

Something similar could easily be done here in the form of an exp scroll being delivered to everyone's MH.

But keep in mind, any "reimbursement" is completely an act of kindness on the part of SE.

With what you just said mainly the:



Well you are effectively stating that if someone is making money of this (GS), that they are therefore not wasting time, as it is part of their income, although this action is illegal, RMT still happens. So yes some people WILL put real value on those items because they sell them for REAL CASH. The real value of a days play for a competent GS (e.g.they camp LL and get all claims in 24hours, 24x450k which is round about 10800k, would net them about 400-1000 dollars in REAL CASH), but that is not the argument. The argument is people who play this game legally, PAY legally for their monthly subscription and pleasure of the game.
Which they cannot access due to these repetitive server crashes.

I'm not asking for 25% of my monthly bill back and I agree with Asherek it was a random figure, HOWEVER, I would like compensation for the TIME lost, time i could spent entertaining myself on a HOBBY. Any items lost during the crash would mean a reorganisation of events, and with the different time zones that would mean certain people who may have booked time off work to participate in such events, would be unable to do so second time around. This IMO would constitute a WASTE OF TIME. After all, most of those people will have worked towards booking that time off, and while they werent playing the game, in the meantime they would be EARNING thier money. So on their day/s off they would like to realx and participate in an imaginary social event. This event would have resulted in their satisfaction (unless of course you sit around and get payed for doing nothing).So these people who have WORKED towards having this time off, will have just WASTED a day of thier time. And ,yes, if they work in an important career in e.g. public services/hospitals. Their time is worth more than yours (Unless of course you and all your friends are immune to any disease/injury in existence). In this situation a reimbursement of the involved items/gil would be acceptable IMO. XP would be out of the question, as we all know XP parties are unreliable/unpredictable at best, so a simple scan through logs wouldnt be satisfactory as who knows how a party would turn out?

Also with what your said about one person using an arguement, look at how many of us complain/ set up valid arguements about third-person programs, GS's. Do you see SE getting sued for that?
They make gestures of goodwill (kicking known GS for example), they tell us about their actions, so if you want to pry deep into others people arguements go ahead and pry, thenreflect on your arguements and see how flawed they are.

Asherek isnt saying "GIVE US CASHJ! GIVE US CASH!" All he is saying is that a motion of goodwill, reimbursement would be pleasant for those of us who play this game as a HOBBY, and INVEST time on here.

Extra note: By saying real value ... Do you ever get frustrated with parties/camping NM's/certain events/lag? Cause if you do, you're showing REAL EMOTION, but come on... It's just a game right? ¬.¬

EDIT: Do you have an obsession with 43 cents? You seem to use it in every argument? Does the number 43 have a special place in your heart? I know you spent the time calculating the exact amount of a days owrht of gameplay, but you've already stated how much a days worth is, why do you repeat it?

Extra Note2: The people who work would make (in Britain) @ least £5.25 an hour, and work around 7 hours. so 7x5.25= £36.75 a day, working 5 days 36.75x5=£183.75, Converting that into dollars @ the Rate of 1.72 A weeks worth of Wages would mean $316 dollars.
Picking a random number. Bills a week(inc. rent/mortgage[sp])= $180, Shopping= $50, Thatwould leave roughly about $80 dollars? Now that 12.95, would leave 70. This is a single person living in a very rundown flat, And not being of working age, my facts most likely arent correct, but if they work 5days a week, thats 20 days a month? leave on average 10 days of 'free time', During that time they would visit family, 'hang out' with friends, do chores, sleep, leaving roughly about 2-3 days of play time, so those 2-3 days of playtime is worth roughly $4... Where's the 43 cents now?

Bearing in mind this situation is entirely ficticious, and that i'm not of a working age, this could happen to someone. All this proves is that the "value" of someones play time varies from person to person. Also considering all the people playing the game, that 43 cents mounts up, so SE are gaining (for 3 of these crashes) $1.29 per person, and how many people play? 500,000 approx? Thats $645,000 for three days (unless of course only 50k people play but still thats $64,500 a day).... Do i need to say any more?

Edited, Thu Apr 14 10:10:08 2005 by Sifuspike

Edited, Thu Apr 14 10:14:14 2005 by Sifuspike

Flawed reasoning #1: This person is paying $12.95 a month. Sorry, last I checked no one came to my house, put a gun to my head and forced me to buy the game or even keep it past my free month OR pay $12.95. This person is MAKING A CHOICE. If he's spending his money, that's his right. And that money is going to a service which he is permitted to use under the terms of the EULA. If, as I seem to think you are suggesting, this fee is a financial hardship of some sort, maybe he shouldn't be playing?

Flawed Reasoning #2: Simple, you pay $12.95 per month for the ability to use the Playonline service and access Final Fantasy. You accepted a contract that says you agree that using FFXI:Online is worth $12.95 per month to you. If you do some really simple math that means $12.95/30 days in the month will yeild 0.4316x cents per day that you have agreed to pay. That means if you shold lose 24 hours of access to the service you have 'lost' 0.4316x cents that you have pre-paid for that time. On months with 31 days you're actually only paying out 0.4177x cetns per day to play. This is the established value of play time you agreed to in the EULA and pay paying this amount every month. How would SE be liable for anything beyond that? There is a contract in place establishing a value for the service which can easily used as a baseline to establish 'loss'. You can adjust this up or down obviously based on the extra $1 a month you agree to pay for additional characters, so adjust your math accordingly if such is the case. So that's where the 43 cents is, still is and always will be.

$4 is a fictional number of no use in this equation as it simply doesn't apply.The reason is as I stated above previously. What is your time worth? What is mine worth? In theory we each have different values for our time based on employment. THat's pretty simple and obvious. I make $50 an hour, you make $6, so does SE owe me more money becuase I make more an hour than you do? And imagine the Corporate attorney making $600 an hour, SE's into him for a TON of green aren't they? Nope. You know why? Because of the above example. THe time we play is time we are not working, making income, but leisure time we all have chosen to spend in the same hobby. This resets all of our time values to a common mark. zero. But we have all also agreed that this time has a value commensurate with the cost of play. This time has a set value as laid out above. No more no less. So your $4 does apply any more than my trying to say SE owe me $400 or the lawer $5000. THey are groundless claims.

Flawed Reasoning #3: 3 days? Total server down time was less than 24 hours. And unless you're telling me hours are counted differently in the UK than in the US, I have no idea where the 3 days number came from. it may have been spread across some 70 hours, but are you really claiming you spend 72 hours straight playing? If so, look into decaff. Also, economies of scale don't matter. Your $640k number is misleading. 43 cents paid back to 500,000 users would be $215,000. About a third of what you state. And it would be $215,000 / 500,000 which puts you right back to 43 cents. See? Unavoidable number because it's just a fact. No obsession required, no thought either. No more than people who add 1+1 are obsessed by the #2..just happens to be how the math works out.




Flawed Reasoning #4: Banning of a Gil seller, Griefer, MPKer,3p apps, or such is not a 'gesture of goodwill'. It is, in fact, enforcement of the EULA and SE's rights under it. Reporting is as much PR as it is threat to those who were missed that time around. SE can't be sued for enforcing the EULA because they are in fact exercising a legal right you agreed they had by playing the game. No goodwill about it. It is, in point of fact, SE making sure they retain their rights by enforcing them.


Something to think about. It seems everyone can grab the EULA and User TOS and quote it like the bible when it comes to Gil selling, MPK, griefign, etc. BUT, let me point out....



Translation - Sometimes we might lose stuff, accidentally, by act of god, or otherwise. Terribly sorry, cope. Bad things happen.



Translation: Sorry to dissapoint. Terrible really, so sorry. Cope.

(Sorry Caps are theirs, not mine)

Now keep in mind, you AGREED to ALL of the above the moment you signed on. All of them roughly end up saying "too bad" should something happen that costs you time/money. And paying special attention to the last section above, even if you could prove your most elaborate case, SE's TOTAL debt to you would be your last months bill, at MOST.

So, now that we all agree that we KNEW we had no reasonable expection of compensation, and that yes, it would be nice if SE threw some kind of event for us to run around towns wasting even more time for no real reason, are we done here?
OR do you guys still want your 43 cents back :)?

BTW: I haven't rated anyone's post here, up or down, save Tiffie's...UP cause usually I agree with her at least in part or becuase she makes her points so well it's hard not to appreciate the effort.


Edited, Thu Apr 14 14:48:34 2005 by airamis

EDIT: One other thought. REmember the title of this thread is "are we still going to be billed the same amount", so yes, in point of fact, the basis of this entire thread DOES amount to "give me money". Becuase it started with a question that implied a desire to have the monthly bill adjusted to compensate for the down time. Which, last I checked, we pay in money.

Edited, Thu Apr 14 14:56:09 2005 by airamis

Nope that wasn't really directed at anyone.


I guess what really gets me, and today just proved it even more to me. Is that people (all around the world but perhaps more so in the US) expect compensation for things that 10 (five even) years ago would NEVER have been thought of.

Case in point I was reading an article today about a group of parents demanding 'some kind of compensation' because their kid's little league opener was cancelled and the kids were so dissapointed and the parents had planned their social times and dinner plans around it. The REASON it was cancelled was a series of thunderstorms moving through the area that the officials felt would make it too dangerous, due to the lightning and the bad field conditions, to hold the event. So they cancelled it.

To my way of thinking this is SMART and protecting both the kids and the parents. Unfortunately, weather being weather, the majority of the bad weather missed them and they just had some light sprinkles and some minor rains later in the evening.

But there the parents are, demanding compensation for 'dissapointing' the kids (they played the game the next day) and for 'inconvenience' the parents sufferd. A few even want the officials to be replaced (how nuts is THAT?!) because they made a poor decision!

its nuts. This is no different. There was an unfortunate series of events that lead to people not being able to play a game for a brief period, and people want 'compensation'.

Anyone remember back when life just sort of happened? Good and bad. And no one looked for someone to make it up to them? Now anything happens and someone demands that somebody else do something special for them to make it all ok. Sad.