I would expect a business customer would have a better SLA with their provider thsn I do with mine because their business depends on it
again, i'm sure the AWS ISP's were solid. it's not DB's or AWS' problem when some random downstream border router dies. anytime a backbone provider goes down, EVERYONE feels some kind of pain.
Believe me AWS would not have been down for that length of time. They would have redundancy in place (or certainly should do)
Our company uses Azure and if many of our big European customers could not access our platform for several hours we could be looking at very large compensation bills
the thing is thou DBs servers are not down, their internet connection is not down. If some random backbone operator between you and DB is having network issues it's not something they can do anything about. Have you tried the VPN method yet?
And this is a game not some b2b platform, DBs customers arent losing any revenue.
Captain Lvl 99; Vip0; 552 Unique Immortals; Fleet: Omega Molecules; Base Lvl 134 (MAX); Playing Since March 2016.
the thing is thou DBs servers are not down, their internet connection is not down. If some random backbone operator between you and DB is having network issues it's not something they can do anything about. Have you tried the VPN method yet?
And this is a game not some b2b platform, DBs customers arent losing any revenue.
DB customers were not allowed to access something they (in some form or another) are paying for.
It doesn't matter if you can't do anything about it, if you have a bussiness and your customers are affected (let's say power is out and you can operate your theatre, or shop), you try to keep them happy somehow. If you compensate them with something, then you go seeking compensation for however is responsible to you (the electricity company maybe). Even if you can't get that compensation, it's better to keep your customers as happy as possible (or they could take their bussiness elsewhere)
the thing is thou DBs servers are not down, their internet connection is not down. If some random backbone operator between you and DB is having network issues it's not something they can do anything about. Have you tried the VPN method yet?
And this is a game not some b2b platform, DBs customers arent losing any revenue.
DB customers were not allowed to access something they (in some form or another) are paying for.
It doesn't matter if you can't do anything about it, if you have a bussiness and your customers are affected (let's say power is out and you can operate your theatre, or shop), you try to keep them happy somehow. If you compensate them with something, then you go seeking compensation for however is responsible to you (the electricity company maybe). Even if you can't get that compensation, it's better to keep your customers as happy as possible (or they could take their bussiness elsewhere)
with that logic people living inside this affected area can ask for compensation literally from every single 3rd party who has presense in the net in any capacity, they couldn't access these sites...
Captain Lvl 99; Vip0; 552 Unique Immortals; Fleet: Omega Molecules; Base Lvl 134 (MAX); Playing Since March 2016.
with that logic people living inside this affected area can ask for compensation literally from every single 3rd party who has presense in the net in any capacity, they couldn't access these sites...
My point of view is not that they are entitled for compensation, but it's wise for the provider to do something for the customers. DB has a right to say "not my fault", but it gives a really bad image: They are not on out side, they don't care, they are on their on side, and so should be their customers.
DB customers were not allowed to access something they (in some form or another) are paying for.
This is where your logic fails because STT is not a subscription based model.
It's a per transaction based business model so, by contract, there is no SLA for uptime. The only thing remotely close to a subscription, is the monthly card, which you would be entitled to having CS help you claim lost dilithium if you aren't able to access the game
Again, neither Disruptor beam, nor Amazon Web Services control the flow of worldwide internet traffic so it's not their duty to make sure every person in the world can get to the game.
their willingness to work with each person via ticket is the perfect response. anything further is just good will, but you're not entitled to any further blanket compensation.
with that logic people living inside this affected area can ask for compensation literally from every single 3rd party who has presense in the net in any capacity, they couldn't access these sites...
My point of view is not that they are entitled for compensation, but it's wise for the provider to do something for the customers. DB has a right to say "not my fault", but it gives a really bad image: They are not on out side, they don't care, they are on their on side, and so should be their customers.
well they did ask people to send in a CS ticket, so thats taken care of :DD
I just feel it's surreal some people are blaming DB for this issue.
Captain Lvl 99; Vip0; 552 Unique Immortals; Fleet: Omega Molecules; Base Lvl 134 (MAX); Playing Since March 2016.
This is where your logic fails because STT is not a subscription based model.
It's a per transaction based business model so, by contract, there is no SLA for uptime. The only thing remotely close to a subscription, is the monthly card, which you would be entitled to having CS help you claim lost dilithium if you aren't able to access the game
Again, neither Disruptor beam, nor Amazon Web Services control the flow of worldwide internet traffic so it's not their duty to make sure every person in the world can get to the game.
their willingness to work with each person via ticket is the perfect response. anything further is just good will, but you're not entitled to any further blanket compensation.
Even free players are contributing to the bussiness, so money is not the only way they are "paying". Contributing to the player base makes the game more valuable. But it's left to DB to value those customers, at the risk of them leaving (along with those who paid for monthly cards, like me, or those who paid for the event packs for the event they couldn't play at it's fullest)
well they did ask people to send in a CS ticket, so thats taken care of :DD
I just feel it's surreal some people are blaming DB for this issue.
I agree that it's some good will, and good for them for that. The only problem with that it's that it's gonna take a lot of effort to process all those tickets, and it seems like they are betting on not many people bothering themselves with a ticket, and risking them sitcking to the bad image this incident brings.
I would expect a business customer would have a better SLA with their provider thsn I do with mine because their business depends on it
again, i'm sure the AWS ISP's were solid. it's not DB's or AWS' problem when some random downstream border router dies. anytime a backbone provider goes down, EVERYONE feels some kind of pain.
Believe me AWS would not have been down for that length of time. They would have redundancy in place (or certainly should do)
Our company uses Azure and if many of our big European customers could not access our platform for several hours we could be looking at very large compensation bills
the thing is thou DBs servers are not down, their internet connection is not down. If some random backbone operator between you and DB is having network issues it's not something they can do anything about. Have you tried the VPN method yet?
And this is a game not some b2b platform, DBs customers arent losing any revenue.
I can get in now (and have been since yesterday morning). However I ended up starting the event 15 hours after the start - which in a Faction event means game over unless you are willing to spend big.
Skirmish or galaxy events would not have been a problem.
I don't think you understand how the internet works. If some route goes down traffic can be redirected down an alternative route.
DB was the only internet based resource that I use that experienced an issue.
Which suggests that DB was less prepared for such an event than other content providers.
One of my fleetmates did (plays in England and was affected). No word yet on outcome.
I have an Aussie in my squad and she was affected. CS told her that there would be no blanket compensation and anything given out would be through in-game mail.
. If some route goes down traffic can be redirected down an alternative route.
DB was the only internet based resource that I use that experienced an issue.
Which suggests that DB was less prepared for such an event than other content providers.
thats the general idea of rerouting, why this isnt working properly, I dont know. If it also affects 911 call centers then it is not something that could have been avoided with reasonable effort.
And for more anecdotal evidence, this outtage hasnt effected me in any way. So everyone has done everything correctly?
Captain Lvl 99; Vip0; 552 Unique Immortals; Fleet: Omega Molecules; Base Lvl 134 (MAX); Playing Since March 2016.
I don't think you understand how the internet works. If some route goes down traffic can be redirected down an alternative route.
DB was the only internet based resource that I use that experienced an issue.
Which suggests that DB was less prepared for such an event than other content providers.
A large portion of the Pacific NW was affected. DB's services, or at least part of their services, are hosted in the AWS West-2 Region, which is housed in Oregon. Their ELB may point to a mirror site, but the ELB itself is in the West-2 region.
Maybe consider the possibility that you're not using a lot of content that's hosted in the Pacific NW area.
Slowness can also occur if alternate routes are congested, or if BGP is not updating properly (which is done at the ISP level, not by AWS or DB).
Let's call it what it is, this was a freak occurrence that was in tolerable levels for DB. DB could scale out their server farms further if they wanted, but that cost would be passed down to the players. I've dealt with AWS scaling/mirroring costs before, they're not cheap. You have to have a balance between cost and up-time tolerances.
I don't think you understand how the internet works. If some route goes down traffic can be redirected down an alternative route.
DB was the only internet based resource that I use that experienced an issue.
Which suggests that DB was less prepared for such an event than other content providers.
A large portion of the Pacific NW was affected. DB's services, or at least part of their services, are hosted in the AWS West-2 Region, which is housed in Oregon. Their ELB may point to a mirror site, but the ELB itself is in the West-2 region.
Maybe consider the possibility that you're not using a lot of content that's hosted in the Pacific NW area.
Slowness can also occur if alternate routes are congested, or if BGP is not updating properly (which is done at the ISP level, not by AWS or DB).
Let's call it what it is, this was a freak occurrence that was in tolerable levels for DB. DB could scale out their server farms further if they wanted, but that cost would be passed down to the players. I've dealt with AWS scaling/mirroring costs before, they're not cheap. You have to have a balance between cost and up-time tolerances.
It is not a freak occurance, it is a failure of DB to plan for a localised outage. Or they simply don’t want to spend the money, in which case they should have either cancelled the event before it started, or held up their hands and apologised (and not tried to palm this off on a third party).
The game requires an active internet connection to work, so I would say it’s only reasonable that they have contingency plans in place to counter.
Absolutely they should have alternate servers or be able to reroute traffic through other networks.
I did. Received a few trinkets. I know people who received more, people who received less. It's Customer Service Lottery and that's part of the hurt people feel.
Over and over we've been told that we forum readers are a tiny, insignificant fraction of the playerbase, so our concerns and opinions, not being representative of the whole, can be cheerfully ignored by DB.
Yet, when there is an incident which affects a large section if the players, the official remedy (in this case, open a CS ticket detailing your circumstances) is only posted HERE, instead of via an in-game message which would reach ALL affected customers.
So, which is it?
1) Forum readers are an insignificant, dismissible tiny minority, or
2) Important announcements don't have to be made in-game, so obviously all the players who need to know will see them here, so the forum readers are NOT a tiny minority.
For pointing out the Emperor has no clothes, I expect I'll be celebrating New Years with a forum ban. See you in 2019, and remember that you, the customers of DB, are an ignore-able annoyance!
Kudos to @SSR Barkley for trying to offer a reasonable analysis and commentary. I am curious about something: How have any other game companies handled this outage? Timelines is all I play, so I'm entirely oblivious to the rest of the gaming world.
2) Important announcements don't have to be made in-game, so obviously all the players who need to know will see them here, so the forum readers are NOT a tiny minority.
Well devil's advocate... people that can't get in game due to the outage won't be able to see a message sent via in-game mail...
Over and over we've been told that we forum readers are a tiny, insignificant fraction of the playerbase, so our concerns and opinions, not being representative of the whole, can be cheerfully ignored by DB.
Yet, when there is an incident which affects a large section if the players, the official remedy (in this case, open a CS ticket detailing your circumstances) is only posted HERE, instead of via an in-game message which would reach ALL affected customers.
So, which is it?
1) Forum readers are an insignificant, dismissible tiny minority, or
2) Important announcements don't have to be made in-game, so obviously all the players who need to know will see them here, so the forum readers are NOT a tiny minority.
I had had this thought too.
And flooding CS with complaints is not costless to other players. I have had to open a CS ticket for a non-delivery of order issue and I'll surely be delayed by all this other noise that could have been avoided.
Come on DB, you have so much player goodwill to earn back, just do the right thing (I was not affected by the outage until maybe now, but I've thought the whole way through this situation that DB still has a long way to go to earn back customer loyalty and should just make a good gesture that isn't another crappy old school useless legendary).
Yet, when there is an incident which affects a large section if the players,
As difficult as this might be given that DB presumably would be the only who could determine this, have a "large" section of players been affected? While it is incredibly frustrating to those affected and it would be nice if the number was zero, there is a difference between 1-5% of the player base being affected and 20-25% (or 50% or whatever "large" is). There would be variations depending on crew (I imagine a Doctor variant is more popular than someone like Demora Sulu) in terms of point totals, but are people who put in their usual amount of effort seeing "large" improvements in their relative rankings on the leaderboard?
...that isn't another crappy old school useless legendary).
Speak for yourself. I don't believe there is such a thing as "useless" legendaries. For example, despite only having two skills Minuet is a mainstay on voyages here. Same with T'Kuvma. Even Capt. Scott with his single skill I don't feel is useless, and he's roundly panned on these forums.
Now that I've gone off topic, what do I feel DB should do in this situation? Nothing. The outage wasn't caused by DB but caused by forces outside their control. They made the right call here in not providing global compensation
Yet, when there is an incident which affects a large section if the players,
As difficult as this might be given that DB presumably would be the only who could determine this, have a "large" section of players been affected? While it is incredibly frustrating to those affected and it would be nice if the number was zero, there is a difference between 1-5% of the player base being affected and 20-25% (or 50% or whatever "large" is). There would be variations depending on crew (I imagine a Doctor variant is more popular than someone like Demora Sulu) in terms of point totals, but are people who put in their usual amount of effort seeing "large" improvements in their relative rankings on the leaderboard?
Three of seven continents were affected. {North America, Europe, Australia.} How many actual players? We will never know. Since their answer {which not everyone will see} is "File a "Customer Support" ticket and see what we decide to do on a case by case basis"......
Why was Vicki not expelled from Greendale after she literally stabbed Pierce in the face with a pencil?!?!?
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the thing is thou DBs servers are not down, their internet connection is not down. If some random backbone operator between you and DB is having network issues it's not something they can do anything about. Have you tried the VPN method yet?
And this is a game not some b2b platform, DBs customers arent losing any revenue.
It doesn't matter if you can't do anything about it, if you have a bussiness and your customers are affected (let's say power is out and you can operate your theatre, or shop), you try to keep them happy somehow. If you compensate them with something, then you go seeking compensation for however is responsible to you (the electricity company maybe). Even if you can't get that compensation, it's better to keep your customers as happy as possible (or they could take their bussiness elsewhere)
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with that logic people living inside this affected area can ask for compensation literally from every single 3rd party who has presense in the net in any capacity, they couldn't access these sites...
One of my fleetmates did (plays in England and was affected). No word yet on outcome.
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Captain Zombie's Combo chain calculator
This is where your logic fails because STT is not a subscription based model.
It's a per transaction based business model so, by contract, there is no SLA for uptime. The only thing remotely close to a subscription, is the monthly card, which you would be entitled to having CS help you claim lost dilithium if you aren't able to access the game
Again, neither Disruptor beam, nor Amazon Web Services control the flow of worldwide internet traffic so it's not their duty to make sure every person in the world can get to the game.
their willingness to work with each person via ticket is the perfect response. anything further is just good will, but you're not entitled to any further blanket compensation.
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well they did ask people to send in a CS ticket, so thats taken care of :DD
I just feel it's surreal some people are blaming DB for this issue.
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I can get in now (and have been since yesterday morning). However I ended up starting the event 15 hours after the start - which in a Faction event means game over unless you are willing to spend big.
Skirmish or galaxy events would not have been a problem.
I don't think you understand how the internet works. If some route goes down traffic can be redirected down an alternative route.
DB was the only internet based resource that I use that experienced an issue.
Which suggests that DB was less prepared for such an event than other content providers.
I have an Aussie in my squad and she was affected. CS told her that there would be no blanket compensation and anything given out would be through in-game mail.
thats the general idea of rerouting, why this isnt working properly, I dont know. If it also affects 911 call centers then it is not something that could have been avoided with reasonable effort.
And for more anecdotal evidence, this outtage hasnt effected me in any way. So everyone has done everything correctly?
A large portion of the Pacific NW was affected. DB's services, or at least part of their services, are hosted in the AWS West-2 Region, which is housed in Oregon. Their ELB may point to a mirror site, but the ELB itself is in the West-2 region.
Maybe consider the possibility that you're not using a lot of content that's hosted in the Pacific NW area.
Slowness can also occur if alternate routes are congested, or if BGP is not updating properly (which is done at the ISP level, not by AWS or DB).
Let's call it what it is, this was a freak occurrence that was in tolerable levels for DB. DB could scale out their server farms further if they wanted, but that cost would be passed down to the players. I've dealt with AWS scaling/mirroring costs before, they're not cheap. You have to have a balance between cost and up-time tolerances.
Second Star to the Right - Join Today!
Yeah, I'm waiting till the end of the event, or to see what happens. I really hate dealing with DB's CS.
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Fixed
It is not a freak occurance, it is a failure of DB to plan for a localised outage. Or they simply don’t want to spend the money, in which case they should have either cancelled the event before it started, or held up their hands and apologised (and not tried to palm this off on a third party).
The game requires an active internet connection to work, so I would say it’s only reasonable that they have contingency plans in place to counter.
Absolutely they should have alternate servers or be able to reroute traffic through other networks.
Horse kicked? Check.
You seem to have a lot of information about DB's inner workings. Are you a representative of the company? Not an accusation, simply a query.
I did. Received a few trinkets. I know people who received more, people who received less. It's Customer Service Lottery and that's part of the hurt people feel.
Over and over we've been told that we forum readers are a tiny, insignificant fraction of the playerbase, so our concerns and opinions, not being representative of the whole, can be cheerfully ignored by DB.
Yet, when there is an incident which affects a large section if the players, the official remedy (in this case, open a CS ticket detailing your circumstances) is only posted HERE, instead of via an in-game message which would reach ALL affected customers.
So, which is it?
1) Forum readers are an insignificant, dismissible tiny minority, or
2) Important announcements don't have to be made in-game, so obviously all the players who need to know will see them here, so the forum readers are NOT a tiny minority.
For pointing out the Emperor has no clothes, I expect I'll be celebrating New Years with a forum ban. See you in 2019, and remember that you, the customers of DB, are an ignore-able annoyance!
Well devil's advocate... people that can't get in game due to the outage won't be able to see a message sent via in-game mail...
I had had this thought too.
And flooding CS with complaints is not costless to other players. I have had to open a CS ticket for a non-delivery of order issue and I'll surely be delayed by all this other noise that could have been avoided.
Come on DB, you have so much player goodwill to earn back, just do the right thing (I was not affected by the outage until maybe now, but I've thought the whole way through this situation that DB still has a long way to go to earn back customer loyalty and should just make a good gesture that isn't another crappy old school useless legendary).
As difficult as this might be given that DB presumably would be the only who could determine this, have a "large" section of players been affected? While it is incredibly frustrating to those affected and it would be nice if the number was zero, there is a difference between 1-5% of the player base being affected and 20-25% (or 50% or whatever "large" is). There would be variations depending on crew (I imagine a Doctor variant is more popular than someone like Demora Sulu) in terms of point totals, but are people who put in their usual amount of effort seeing "large" improvements in their relative rankings on the leaderboard?
Now that I've gone off topic, what do I feel DB should do in this situation? Nothing. The outage wasn't caused by DB but caused by forces outside their control. They made the right call here in not providing global compensation
Three of seven continents were affected. {North America, Europe, Australia.} How many actual players? We will never know. Since their answer {which not everyone will see} is "File a "Customer Support" ticket and see what we decide to do on a case by case basis"......