會員
帖子總數: 9
註冊: 2003/3/24
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已發表: 2007/7/21 下午3:42
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Wow, please see the irony paragraph above Xtrain. Nice rant abuot ranting lil troll.
Here's a service I pay for, much like cable and plumbing repair. Cumulative pay is in 6 figures, so I don't need to do it myself, I already paid for it.
You're an idiot, coming to a product forum to flame people reasonably criticising the customer service. Way to mix in profanity and name calling. Did you have something in reference to magelo and it's customer relations, or did you swing by just to spout some nasty words and chuckle to yourself because you're freaking cool?
I criticised my isp when they went out too, are you going to hop over there and flame their customers as well /sheesh
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會員
帖子總數: 3
註冊: 2003/9/26
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已發表: 2007/7/21 下午3:50
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nods i agree Xodar i really do agree with you there....lol i call to complain about my ISP too but shrug oh well i'll keep waiting it's all any of us can do right?
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會員
帖子總數: 49
註冊: 2002/2/14
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已發表: 2007/7/21 下午5:17
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Your billing system should suspend account billing each time there is a service interuption. I don't pay for your downtime. I pay for your uptime.
Wrong. There is no guarantee of any kind that you will get a certain amount of uptime, nor is there anything stating that you are only paying for uptime. Furthermore it's just ridiculous in general to expect that.
Without direct input from SOE as to the details of their changes, of course there's going to be some downtime as Jelan has to track down exactly what changed, and then figure out how to fix it. Changes to Magelo are, by definition, reactive. There's no way for him to anticipate changes, so of course there will be downtime.
We don't get (or deserve) a credit every time an EQ server goes down either. To expect and/or demand such a thing indicates a fundamental misunderstanding as to the inherent instability of online services, with a healthy dose of arrogant "I am consumer so I should get whatever I demand" thinking to back it up.
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會員
帖子總數: 9
註冊: 2003/3/24
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已發表: 2007/7/21 下午5:38
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The catch is, no eq server, or my isp, goes down for more than 2 weeks.
I understand there is work involved, and that it's a reactive matter, but this is obviously not a full time job for a couple programmers or it would be done. As a side-job project pulling in six figures for it's operators I have a reasonable expectation of service not being interrupted for weeks at a time. In any other service I pay for I would absolutely expect some kind of compensation or refund for a multi week service outage, were it cable television, or satelite radio, or a web host.
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會員
帖子總數: 2
註冊: 2007/3/25
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已發表: 2007/7/21 下午6:01
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Having read many of the 93 posts over half of which are about account suspensions and refunds. Assuming we lose another week all of this energy is being spent over a dollar fifty?
Just checking as my account is less than two weeks old so I am a noob to the forums.
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會員
帖子總數: 9
註冊: 2003/3/24
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已發表: 2007/7/21 下午6:08
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(quote) Having read many of the 93 posts over half of which are about account suspensions and refunds. Assuming we lose another week all of this energy is being spent over a dollar fifty?
Just checking as my account is less than two weeks old so I am a noob to the forums. (/quote)
This really made me think a second, lol, good post. I suppose it's less the money and more a combination of being frustrated that magelo doesn't work and the length of the downtime seeming a little excessive for a paid service.
Honestly, I'd rather have it working this afternoon then get a refund a week from now.
I still feel like it's pretty reasonable to offer criticism in these forums when something like this happens. While it is inevitable there will be shutdowns for patches, the duration of this one is frustrating.
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會員
帖子總數: 3
註冊: 2005/6/11
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已發表: 2007/7/21 下午6:08
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Finding myself agreeing with Xodar. It has passed 2 weeks and the updater is not working. I do not think that it is unreasonable to expect some sort of service credit. I understand that it is challenging to make the updater work with extensive changes such as have been implemented with the last patch, but the fees for premium did increase SUBSTANTIALLY recently with a mention of being able to provide a higher level and consistency of service. We are coming up on 3 weeks since the patch and still have no patcher. No service credit.....mumblings about things being beyond their control....and my service time is ticking away. Anti SOE sentiment aside, the Magelo team needs a little bit of incentive to be giving it their best effort.
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會員
帖子總數: 23
註冊: 2005/4/15
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已發表: 2007/7/21 下午6:14
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Yup, this is standard for these forums. Any time the Magelo team takes more than a day or two to catch up with changes to the EQ client, there's always people here bitching about the downtime. What gets me is, I'd like to bitch also, but not about the money. As someone said, we're talking about maybe a dollar? No, I'm annoyed because I really really LIKE the Magelo features and I wish I could get my profiles updated because it's really handy to be able to look at them when considering possible upgrades and such, especially since I started a new alt a couple weeks ago. But hey, I can live without it for a while if I have to.
That said, I do agree that the Magelo folks could cut down on the whining quite a lot if they'd be a bit more active about posting the current state of progress. Especially now that it's basically the end of the week and they said the updater would be ready this week. I think it would've been a good idea for them to post something on, oh, about Thursday, giving a fresh ETA. (That would've been a good idea even if the ETA was Friday, just to confirm the previous ETA. But given that the original ETA apparently wasn't going to be right, an update especially called for.)
So, any new ETA?
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會員
帖子總數: 7
註冊: 2006/6/18
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已發表: 2007/7/21 下午6:44
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i've been a member of magelo on 2 different accounts for alot of years... restarted playing eq last june again and again paid for the preium service ..i just repaid the $25 again the 1st of this month for another year now.
here is what i think is realistic.
1. $25 a year is quite a bit for a program that just is a e-penis for most people.....but were all willing to pay it because guilds ask us to have it for for thier website. if you dont belong to a raiding guild really no reason to have premium magelo.
2. everyone understands that sony doesnt give this information to magelo to make updates they have to actually work to find the codes...therefore non of us complained about the price increase for the membership, because we all understood its a actual job to do that work to keep magelo updated and we all understand the reason behind the price increase for premium.
3. magelo staff makes huge bucks off of the premium members, this is a fact the math isnt that hard...
4. all members want is a product that works that they have no problem paying for with small interuptions in service understandable because of EQ patches.
5. knowone cares about $1.50 reimbursment...thats not going to satisfy anyone....they want the product to work .....most employers dont want to hear an excuse as to why they just want results...same rule applies here..whether you want to believe it or not YOU DO WORK FOR US.
6. downtime in INEVITABLE its a fact of business everyone excepts..
7. what is not acceptable and you very well know it is downtime more than a few day maximum a week......the only reason this is even flying right now is because you have the corner on the market ..knowone else is offering anything better ......which does suprise me knowone has offered competion on this corner of the market yet...because their is alot of money being made off this service.....easily over 200k a year no doubt.
8. if patches are too much to handle to find the codes in a reasonable amount of time hire another programmer or 2..
finally to sum this up ...magelo knows right now theres nothing else out there so they have the corner on the market...this is why they want their cake and it it too.. they make 6 figure salary off of magelo but can take thier sweet time on weekends to fix patches and work a day job too and are getting rich from both jobs....
for the amount of money magelo rakes in off of us for this service we should be getting a dedicated 8 hour a day programmer or two.....but why arent they forced to do this? because they have a monopoly on the market plain and simple ...they know this and we do too.
bottom line is they know they arent providing a acceptable service ...there is more downtime than actual working time its rediculous they know it ...but they arent held accountable because they know as well as you or me we have no other option but to accept it there is nothing else out there offered.....
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會員
帖子總數: 12
註冊: 2002/10/4
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已發表: 2007/7/21 下午8:18
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Quote "therefore non of us complained about the price increase for the membership, because we all understood its a actual job to do that work to keep magelo updated and we all understand the reason behind the price increase for premium"
Actually, there was a link with over 150 entries in it complaining about the increase in price when it took effect. Some were threatening to no longer using Magelo at all if the increase would remain in effect, others just wanted tiered membership. I've used Magelo for a few years, and it does not guarantee uptime, or promise service credit for downtime.
I know that we haven't lost EQ for 2 or 3 weeks at a time, but after some patches, it has been down for 12 hours, when they told us 3 or 4. Then after that patch, the programmers had to make an emergency patch and take down servers once again for a few hours. Then the next day, there was another patch for 4 more hours to fix that patch, and hopefully not another patch to fix that one. Even after actual 2 or 3 days of downtime due to patches, which the programmers were supposed to have all the code tested already, since they have a test server, we did not get any service credit at any time.
I even saw on one patch that EQplayers had not been patching the player information for a few weeks. I doubt Sony refunded any moneys or gave any service credit due to downtime.
The only credit I have seen made was for the hurricane ravaged areas from Katrina. Hopefully after the credit was up, they had the ability to play once again.
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會員
帖子總數: 31
註冊: 2001/9/10
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已發表: 2007/7/21 下午8:25
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I wonder. Do all the people who claim that Magelo is making a fortune have access to their costs figures? Do you know how much they pay to operate the server and for the bandwidth etc? Have you taken into account the development time and the years of free service?
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會員
帖子總數: 22
註冊: 2005/4/19
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已發表: 2007/7/21 下午8:51
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Hey Xod!
Sorry to see that you signed up at just the wrong time. There are a few points that I think everyone is missing:
- Not only are SOE and Magelo not cooperators, they are, in fact, competing. Both sell a service that tracks and updates player spells and equipment. It is very much in SOE's best interest to make things as difficult as they can without running afoul of antitrust laws in the US or, more to the point, in Europe. I suspect it is a mistake to underestimate the diffiulty of reworking the program in a neutral to hostile environment. I would cut them some slack.
- In the past three years that I have used Magelo there have been some times when the change took only a couple of days. There have been some times, partiuclarly when the changes are dramatic, where it took longer. In those latter cases the Magelo folks have been incredibly stand-up on the fee side. I have no basis on which to complain on that front.
- The analogy with an ISP is not really a fair one. Two reasons: a) your ISP does not have a company that is actively interfering with your ISP's ability to deliver and b) your ISP is a utility, like a power or water company (and may even be part of such an animal) which has, in comparison to a content provider, a relatively straight forward job. As proof of this assertion, let me say that personally, my programming skills start and end with QuickBASIC. On the other hand, I have set up networks, and modems and routers, etc. etc. so it must be easier to deliver bits than to create them. You have a right to expect your utility company to be up to five nines, but not your game and it's accessories.
- I would underscore the point made above. This is not a huge business. I don't expect to see a stable of Ferrari's in the Magelo parking lot. Frankly, I doubt there is a parking lot to begin with. $25 / year is peanuts. You spend more than that much a month on EQ itself! I don't know how many Magelo accounts there are, but it is no where near 1:1 (I know you did not say that it was) to the number of EQ accounts, or even to EQ accounts where at least one toon has a magelo. I have three accounts, call it 6 toons to each account, and pay the same flat fee. I would not be surprised if the actual average is like 2 +/- :1 EQ accounts to a magelo account, where at least one toon has a magelo, that the average EQ account on magelo has multiple toons, and I further suspect that less than a majority of EQ players have a magelo to begin with.
Personally, it is good for my karma that I take a break from the constant updating of my profile every time phat lewtz (or thin, in my case) comes by.
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會員
帖子總數: 143
註冊: 2006/1/16
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已發表: 2007/7/21 下午8:59
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Hmm another SOE update in 4 days. I wonder how long MU will be down for that also.
While I dont really like the incessant bickering from some, I do feel some sort of account extension is in order. As long as Premium Users are compensated for the long downtimes, I will continue to be a Premium User, until a time comes where I dont feel its worth it(if that ever happens).
I'm wondering exactly how many days MU has been ready to use(other then the extra stuff they were trying to add in for us), and why the "barebones" version wasn't put up, unless they figured in the SOE patch on the 25th, and decided to just keep it down the entire time anyways.
Depending on how big of a patch the 25th one will be, it would be kind of a kick in the pants to have Magelo pop up a "working" version this late in the game, then just have it come down 1-2 days later again, for however long the next update will take them.
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會員
帖子總數: 3
註冊: 2005/3/16
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已發表: 2007/7/21 下午9:06
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The reason Magelo has not been updated is one of two reasons.
1 - The devs suck. I no longer play EQ and only need Magelo to sell my characters. But I spent a lot of time working on MQ2 and we reversed the character structures many times. It takes a few hours. Not a few weeks.
2- They are lazy. There is no other product like Magelo out there. If there where, the competition would keep these guys honest.
There you have it.
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會員
帖子總數: 11
註冊: 2002/4/5
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已發表: 2007/7/21 下午9:08
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At least ppl could update for those 3 days.
If its working, why wouldnt he put it up?
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[100 Deathcaller] Zephur - Gnome Necromancer
300 (15%) Research / Tinkering / Tailoring / Smithing
300 (12%) Baking / Brewing / Fletching / Jewelcraft / Pottery
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