User talk:A D Monroe III

This is a talk page. So talk. --A D Monroe III 17:04, 6 June 2008 (UTC)

CoH Game Crash September 10 2008

I was playing CoH yesterday, and lost mapserver connection.

I checked the server status, and couldn't get to the site (http://www.cityofheroes.com/servers/index.html) -- 404 error.

I tried the forums and NCSoft support; all were down.

This morning, I still can't get to any of them.

I came here, and didn't find any news.

Anyone getting through? Anyone with any news?

(Yes, I know this isn't the best place for inquires, but I can't find any other.)

Corrected your link above. Try it now.

Moved discussion from article to user talk page as it's probably better placed there.

I didn't have any problems playing last night and to the best of my knowledge there weren't any major crashes yesterday or anything. You might check the official boards for information, though. --Eabrace 13:30, 11 September 2008 (UTC)

Sorry, but your advice is not helpful. As I stated, I can't get to those sites. Since all CoH and NCSoft site seemed down, that's why I thought it was something global.

I've run out of options. The problem is preventing me from checking status of servers or my account, much less submitting anything to them to say I'm having a problem. I can't even cancel my account. Since there's no help here, the only vaguely CoH site I can get to, it seems I'm done. I'll just have to cancel my credit card to stop being charged by NCSoft.  :( A D Monroe III 02:04, 12 September 2008 (UTC)

My mistake. I thought that the issue was that you were trying the wrong URL. From the subject of your original response on my talk page, I interpreted it along the lines of "Thanks, the corrected URL made the difference." Clearly not so much. (And yes, the fact that I posted my response to your user page and not your talk page was unintentional. Obviously not my best day. :))

All that being said, I wouldn't give up just yet.

I just checked the forums and there's a thread that Lighthouse started at 5:47 (EDT) this afternoon. Since you can't reach the forums, here's the post that started the thread:

Our Support Team is actively researching reports provided by players that customers are experiencing intermittent connectivity issues to our various North American game service as well as our web sites.

At this time we are uncertain of the exact impact of this issue as our player graphs look as they “should” for this time of day. If anyone is experiencing difficulty, please reply here with details as well as clicking the link in my signature to contact our technical support, if you haven't already.

Thank you!

Immediately following the post by Lighthouse are several responses all describing the same sort problems you've described. Some have also been having the problem since early afternoon September 10. For several users the problem is sporadic, but there's more down time than up. At least one person has stated that while they could not reach www.plaync.com, they were able to reach help.plaync.com to submit a trouble ticket. You might try that.

At any rate, it sounds like NCsoft is aware of the problem and attempting to figure out what's going on. I would expect that a fix should be in work as soon as the root of the problem is located, but it might be a day or two before this is cleared up, and it's probably not going to be NCsoft that's the source of this.

In the mean time, in case you're not able to reach the NC help site to submit a ticket, I'll put that thread on watch and try to let you know if any major developments occur.

Sorry about the mixup back there. --Eabrace 05:35, 12 September 2008 (UTC)

I had something similar happen to me euro side, it was found to be the internet provider what was causing the problems. So i'd check that if i were you. -- DM Yarrow 13:17, 12 September 2008 (UTC)

From the information being posted on the boards, it appears that the problem is likely not with CoH or NCsoft, but with an ISP's lines (possibly Qwest.) The issue also appears to be related to players in the West trying to reach across to servers on the East coast. For curiosity's sake, which server or servers have you tried to reach? If you can't get past the updater trying to connect, have you tried skipping the updater using the cityofheroes.exe -project "coh" workaround?

This sort of issue seems to pop up at least once every few months, but I don't think we've ever posted articles in the wiki for anything that wasn't an issue with the game client its self. --Eabrace 13:20, 12 September 2008 (UTC)

Just adding a note: As pointed out by Eislor on the boards, NC also has phone support for technical and billing issues.

Phone Support

We offer telephone support for billing and technical support issues only. You may contact a member of our Billing or Technical Support Teams by calling the number below. We do not offer telephone support for general game support issues. Any calls regarding game support will be directed to use one of the available support methods listed in the Game Support section.

1-512-225-6359

Mon-Fri

12pm to 5pm, Central

So, if all else fails, at least that's another method you might try if you're still trying to reach support. --Eabrace 16:41, 12 September 2008 (UTC)

I don't know how I can make this clearer. I can not get to any CoH or NCSoft site. I can not get to any list of servers, so asking if I'm West or East server is nonsense.

The phone number would have been a good idea, if I'd known about it sometime before 5pm Central today.

The ONLY site I can get to that has any relation to CoH is THIS site. Apparently there are others in my situation -- maybe dozens, maybe thousands; since the problem is they can't contact anyone, there's no way to know.

UNLESS, CoH Wikia steps up and does something to gather information and tell people. It's nice to have things like the latest pictures of badges locations updated, but these things won't stop people from leaving CoH for good. Telling them something about this problem can actually make a big difference to the CoH community.

Do something, please. --A D Monroe III 00:43, 13 September 2008 (UTC)

And I'm sorry, but this is about all we can do. We're players just like you. We don't have a special hotline to NCsoft support or anything. I know it's frustrating, but we're not tech support. There's nothing we can do that's going to help get this fixed. --Eabrace 02:16, 13 September 2008 (UTC)

Official word from NCsoft Operations is that everything on their end is functioning properly.

Posted by Niviene (11:19 PM EDT)

We have been in touch with our Operations Team and they have reported everything is now working properly. If you are still having problems connecting please check with your local ISP and then post here.

Posted by Ex Libris (11:27 PM EDT)

Operations has reported this issue as resolved. Please try logging into your regular play server. If you are still experiencing issues connecting to the game, please first try checking with your local internet service provider (ISP).

Also post here with what server you are trying to connect from and what geographical region you are located from.

We thank you for your continued support and patience.

Regards,

Ex Libris

Of course there's something you can do -- post an article. It's what you do, right? People need information about CoH, you provide it. Specifically, this is information that they can't get anwhere else. I'd thought you'd be eager to do this. Instead, you move this all to my talk page, where no one gets it. Sorry, I don't understand this.

Yes, everything is fixed now, so the most significant part of this opportunity is passed. However, it's still good to have an article that can be referred to for others that haven't tried to get back in, or have given up getting in. Also, this may happen again.

Really, right on your home page, you have "News" section. Do you actually think none of this is news? --A D Monroe III 19:11, 13 September 2008 (UTC)

A D Monroe III, I sympathize with your recent inconvenience regarding connectivity with City of Heroes and the NCsoft site, but the fact of the matter is that technical issues on NCsoft's behalf are entirely out of our control and we should not be expected to respond to them. I understand your point about Paragon Wiki being the "last site standing," as it were, but in reality it's just another fan site and has no formal obligation to keep players in the loop as far as the quality of NCsoft's services is concerned.

Technical problems happen to everyone from time to time, but it's never the responsibility of someone else to notify the public about it. If Paragon Wiki experiences downtime, for instance, we won't expect NCsoft to keep people updated on the situation. It can be inconvenient and frustrating at times, but things seem to be sorted out now. I'm sorry your experience was not satisfying, but Paragon Wiki really was not in a position where we could do anything about it.

GuyPerfect 02:14, 14 September 2008 (UTC)

Look, let's keep the discussion focused. Does CoH being down qualify as News? --A D Monroe III 14:53, 14 September 2008 (UTC)

Not in the scope of this project, no. Occasional downtime should be all but expected. --GuyPerfect 16:40, 14 September 2008 (UTC)

What is news, then? --A D Monroe III 17:03, 14 September 2008 (UTC)

Game updates, for the most part. A few other announcements have gone in over the years, such as wiki news or contests or such, but most of it involves updates to the game specifically. --GuyPerfect 17:26, 14 September 2008 (UTC)

You seem to be stuck in a rut. You only report what you've reported before? If, for example, CoH and all other NCSoft sites were down for a week, a month, or a year, you wouldn't say anything? If it then came back on, you would keep quiet? --A D Monroe III 12:18, 15 September 2008 (UTC)

ruts can be useful things. I use them quite often when its very snowy outside and I need to walk somewhere. I imagine that if NCsoft closed down for a month or more, we probably would be saying something on the site. If they shut down for a year, I expect that this site wouldn't serve much or a purpose. I can assure you that if a flaming ball of rock falls from the sky and hits NorCal, we'd put it up on the news. It largely comes down to scope, and by that, we're looking at the effect over time. Outages happen, major ones would possibly be recorded (like when someone gets fed up with the mapserver and takes an axe to it, taking out all the west coast servers). An outage of a few websites for a day or so.. websites do need to be updated, service providers sometimes have issues (<-- used to work for Charter comm, you have no idea the issues >_< they make).

In the end, this isn't really the sort of thing you use the news section for, its more the sort of area you'd have the RSS feed for (yes, doesn't work for undeclared outages, they often do tell ppl though). Several of the other Fan sites have them. We might be looking into such at some point in the near future though, some change to organization and such are being discussed right now by the admin. Ultimately, its a matter of man power in many cases.--Sleepy Kitty 18:12, 15 September 2008 (UTC)

That's all a little vague, but at least you're not denying that you would never do anything like this, which was the nonsense I was hearing before.

As an undeclared outage of all sites (as it appeared to many people), wouldn't this fall into your qualifications? Manpower isn't the issue here, as several people have been willing to spend their time discussing it, and I was willing to start the page myself in the first place. --A D Monroe III 11:21, 16 September 2008 (UTC)

Since everyone else seems to be weighing in, I'll throw in my two cents as well. In order for an outage to merit "newsworthiness" I'd be looking for one of two things: an official announcement from NCsoft (not just a dev or community rep post that officially acknowledges it on the forums; I mean something that goes up on their actual non-forums website [1]) OR news coverage by the press (newspapers, televisions, CNN, whatever). In either of those two cases, then yes, I'd expect to see an article go up about it here.

Otherwise, then no, I wouldn't. In this case, it wasn't an outage of all sites. It was a lack of connectivity. The sites were still fine. So reporting it as an "outage" would have been misrepresentation. As for widespread connectivity problems... well, while I certainly think it sucks, I don't think it constitutes something we should post here. If we covered this, then we'd have to cover a lot of other technical support scenarios that have occurred over the years. I can think of several instances where servers have gone down for periods of time. Do they get an article? Where do we draw the line? These things just seem outside the scope of The Paragon Wiki. It exists primarily to document game content and gameplay. While other things end up being covered too, technical support issues seem to fall too far outside of our scope. I'm not inclined to start including them now, and apparently neither are the others who have weighed in on it. -- Sekoia 15:31, 16 September 2008 (UTC)

If "x" is newsworthy, then anything that looks just like "x" is newsworthy, even if just to assure people it isn't "x". Say there's smoke coming from a nuclear power plant; people are worrying that the plant may explode. If a reporter finds it's just a car in the parking lot behind the plant that's burning, he doesn't say "oh, then no one needs to know this".

And, in this case, it was and outage of all sites -- just not to everyone. The equivalent of saying that not everyone will get irradiated from the smoke at the plant; the people who are getting affected should be told.

But, yes, repeated occurrences of the same thing aren't news. So, how often does this kind of thing happen?

I've seen the servers go down, and the CoH server status page says their down. Usually, I'll expect they'll be back up shortly, or I'll soon see some explanation from CoH. This isn't news.

But, that's not the case here. The servers are down like other times, but I can't get to the server status. I can't get to the forums. I can't log a question with NCSoft. Every single CoH domain is down. I've never seen this before. But, I can get to CoH Wiki. At last, some link to the CoH world!

And what do I find? Apparently, I find people that aren't prepared to deal with anything unusual, because only usual things are news? But, oddly, I find a lot of people interested in telling me why it's not interesting.

If this sort of thing happens a lot, where CoH Wiki is the only link, then there should be a general article in this Wiki pointing out that repeated history. If it happen very infrequently, then each occurance is worthy of an article.

--A D Monroe III 13:10, 17 September 2008 (UTC)

I disagree with your leading premise. Reporting something as news only because it looks like something else that would, in fact, be news is not good reporting. If a reporter discovered that the smoke from the nuclear plant was only a car fire in the parking lot behind the plant, I'd be surprised at any reaction beyond, "Well, that was a waste of my time." If I actually saw the report on the news that evening, my reaction would be, "Slow news day, fellas?"

Reporting that there had been an outage of all CoH sites would have been speculative reporting at best. And we would have been wrong. There was no outage of the CoH sites. There was a connection problem caused by the infrastructure of the internet. That no more equates to an outage of the CoH sites than the inability to turn on your TV to watch Fox News during a power outage equates to an outage of your cable service.

I don't recall exactly when the last connectivity issue of this nature ocurred, but I want to say it was within the last 8 months or so. It's at least the third or fourth time I recall seeing one. I don't consider that frequent, but I don't consider it to be unheard of, either.

What you found here was that people were willing to take time out of their day to relay information to you in an attempt to offer some form of help despite the fact that your particular issue fell outside the scope of this project and was not an issue with the game itself.

For the record, and for future reference, the forums (link located under the Navigation heading to your left) would have been a better venue for this discussion. Had I any inkling that there would even be a discussion, I would have pointed you there to begin with. --Eabrace 14:04, 17 September 2008 (UTC)

Going to add my comments as well since anyone that knows me at all knows I have no problem doing so. It has been stated above several times that this site has no magic link to NC Soft headquarters and the problem you described originally is a Tech issue that could only be resolved by them. YES if an official announcement came out from NC stating, lets say, due to a virus infecting all servers the game would be shut down for a week, 10 days, whatever until it could be purged someone here would certainly post that here. A temporary outage that didn't even affect everyone and was taken care of the same night it occurred? Keep in mind this isn't anyone's full time job. No one is here round the clock to check on every issue that comes up in game. I understand your concern and I'm sure the problem you described affected a lot of players but I am on almost every day and I know for a fact I was on on September 10th and didn't have any major issues.

Now I'm not sure if its even the same night or same incident but somewhere in that week I did have a mapserver problem myself (quite a few of us get them these days from time to time) and when I attempted to log back on every other server except Virtue (where I play) was up and running. I waited about 10-15 minutes logged on again and the server was back on line. I don't even recall trying to check server status on the offical site since obviously I already knew VIRTUE was temporarily off line.

Now think about that situation and your demand for NEWS. by the time I logged in here, drafted and submitted an article letting anyone know that Virtue was down the chances are it would have already been back up... Like I said I only had to wait at most about 15 minutes. I know it can be frustrating not knowing what is wrong but the best place to go for those answers is NC Software. This a a Wiki, and on line reference source for players to come and find answers to questions they have about the game like how many Lost bosses do I need to get the Finder badge. It is not tech support and while I am sure NC Soft appreciates the efforts we make here to help people enjoy the game when they do have a technical issue arise no one is picking up the phone to call and let us know. WHO would they be calling to begin with? --Taxibot Sara2.0 16:59, 17 September 2008 (UTC)

The fact of the matter, A D Monroe III, is that since this was a technical issue that affected a small portion of the userbase for a relatively short amount of time, Paragon Wiki staff has decided to not bring it to attention here, and will not do so for similar cases in the future. If you are unable to understand this reasoning, at least understand that this is how things are gonna work.

As has been stated multiple times already, we are not NCsoft. We are not affiliated with NCsoft. We have no connection with NCsoft whatsoever. What happens with them is not our responsibility, and I think I speak for all of us when I say that we don't appreciate when someone tells us how to do our voluntary, free-of-pay jobs on this site. I certainly won't ask you to agree with every decision we make, but I do ask that you respect our decisions and that we make our considerations to the best of our ability to do so. --GuyPerfect 17:38, 17 September 2008 (UTC)