EI and the Future of Horizons 2.1

[Solitaire]

(gets ready for "EI and the Future of Horizons 3.0" and disapearance of this thread)

[Ankua Daru]

Ok, I always thought the forums were for game related topics. How is billing NOT game related? If you do not want posts about billing I can only suggest one solution.

Call the phone company and get a WORKING phone number that someone actually ANSWERS. Here is the key note, tell us what it is so we may actually call it.

Until you do this simple thing that would solve oh so many problems, you should NOT be asking us in aiding you in sweeping your current billing problems under the rug. The problem is not solved by secrecy but by actually communicating with your customers (actual two way conversations). See how easy it would be to fix by simply providing actual customer service.

[vahrokh_the_ancient]

From an "outsider" point of view I see a degree of "outrage" way out of hand compared to the expected difficulties of taking over a game.

I see most don't have an idea about of stupidly hard can be switching a billing system that was so much deep interacting with the game. EII did not invent such system.

Far from me from being a fanboi or something (my address was @Rants and I was a members of the Horizons Refugees so figures my hot support), but EII believe it or not came and bought the game to actually do something with it, not just to evilly harass and make you quit.

If you can't discern the years of bad management you accepted, from newcomers that have still to figure out the insane mess they got sold, you are just spitting on the one and single opportunity (after long "suffering ofc") to have Horizons restored to something like a game that lives on.

Expecially this rabid feeling of openly demanding this and that including to have a personal hot Swedish baby sitter mending your pocket woes (wow 10 euros it's life killing and deserves public drowning in acid of the guilty!), is not present in other games.

You contact their billing department and if it's not satisfactory you can escalate or leave.

Some at Tulga were very close and personal. Lovely but noobish for a company that could not stand the number of tickets for more players.

I knew people opening 3-4 tickets a day and shouted loud when any went not considered life critical off the support. How can this be bearable and sustained by a company? It is not, in fact.

[Garfonso]

I truly agree with vahrokh.

I know many of you loved the TG staff. But they are not the only people on the world, who are able to develope/run a game. And not everything they produced was gold.

[AA0]

I don't think people are angry that EI took over, so much as they have taken a working billing system and made it not work, and are now trying to silence the voices after 3 months of broken billing.
There are numerous comments similar to "If you can't fix billing in 3 months, how are you going to patch the game ever?"

[Garfonso]

Right.. they tried to add Paypal support to the system. Which was demanded by many european players to make it possible for them to play in NA, before and TG always ignored that wish...

After all they tried to listen to the wishes of some players...

[Death-knell]

Well the "we just took over" excuse has gone the way of the dodo. It's time they started fixing stuff and working on the game!!!

[Garfonso]

This is very likely the very last chance Horizons has...
Bashing EI on and on won't help anyone.

That's my opinion.

[Deth]

Yes it is Horizons last chance but I feel also showing them that we the players of Horizons are intelligent and expect certain things to work and to work right also means the continuation of Horizons.

I am sorry if they can not take a few hard knocks from the few people that are left around here just means if they do pull it off and when all the true trolls come out of the wood work they are going to be in trouble. A few people bring up and complaining about true problems will not have anything on all the trolls that will come out with imagined problems and agendas if the game ever gets a good sized player base.

[vahrokh_the_ancient]

I don't think people are angry that EI took over, so much as they have taken a working billing system and made it not work

I still recall the loud whining of the past "WHAA they use a ******** payment service for a gaaaaamee". I still recall the requests for Paypal. I still recall how you cannot take over a billing company with tie to your bank account just with a smily face but you have to contact your billing company (I bet they had their billing company already before buying Horizons for their other activities), have them send you usually not working demo code in say PERL while they need to make it in ASP.

In my former company I had to make a billing system and it took ages and it was really nothing compared to a video game size.

Then imagine the poor WEB developer getting the desperate spaghetti code left by unknown others and having to work along with a C++ programmer for the client based authentication part so the result ends up in a working log in facility (why do you think they'd bring down the character creation screen?).

I think most of the players don't have a true programming knowledge and experience. They think it's a matter of 1, 10 or 100 days. Wrong, even if they had a development team it'd take 6 months just to take over the first basics. And they think EII has pleausure in delaying much needed features working (again), evilly laughing at the poor Horizons player.

They are not, they were sold something well above their judgement (me and others know that amount of work poured in the game by AE and the not celestial quality of it), they just bought some "black box with a promise of business". Now they face the cold truth: an epic mess that as you touch a piece, the rest falls over and they have to fix it ASAP.

It won't take a night. Nor a week. Nor a month. And not a year.

[Death-knell]

This is very likely the very last chance Horizons has...
Bashing EI on and on won't help anyone.

That's my opinion.

There was no bashing in my post, that would involve a bunch of flowery metaphors. People, including myself have been giving them time to get use to the game and figure out how it works. But there are simple things they should be able to fix in a much shorter period of time. Billing for instance, it should not take 3 months to figure out how billing should work. Thats just rediculous.....

Its no wonder its like a ghost town everytime I log in.

[snickel]

(...)

Its no wonder its like a ghost town everytime I log in.

One thing must be said: You are true to your name...

[Vandellia]

I just want to know what the future is for the long ignored and broken school of confectioner before the buy-out their was finally soime light at the end of the tunnel but now even thouhg i have corresponeded with darkenigma i get the feeling that there is not much hope I love this game but i need somthing other then dead silence to hang on to. Please give me a reason to have some hope

[Garfonso]

But there are simple things they should be able to fix in a much shorter period of time. Billing for instance, it should not take 3 months to figure out how billing should work. Thats just rediculous.....

So, who are you to judge how hard or easy getting the billing system to work?

I don't have a clue how that thing works... but I have a rough idea of how many parts have to interact (DB of EI, Game Client, Webpage, DB of PBT, maybe even Webpages of PBT, or selfgenerated ones)...
I don't know how "clean" the TG/AE Code for that system was...

Do you know?
Or have any expirience in setting such a system up?

Do you really believe EI has not at least two or three people working on this the whole day for this three months now?

Do you really believe that they don't recognize that a game without a working billing system is hardly to make any profit?

Just a personal attack... but I can't imagine those things... therefore I would (again) go for vahrokh's opinion and say that it's a complicated system...

[Frith-Rae]

All I'm gonna say is...

I think SOME posts about the billing concerns are warrented on this forum as it IS a game and player issue. I feel posts discussing what players have tried and failed to do, and what the specific problems are with whichever part they are doing (creating new account vs. renewing expired account vs. putting in reneweal information etc.) is *very* important to the current gaming community.

At least one subscription here is floating on the reliance of the billing system. I have *NO WAY* to judge if I can renew or not OTHER than other players telling me the difficulties they've run into, or the difficulties they have NOT run into.

Deleting or sending all those posts to EI doesn't let any of the current base know what's going on, or what's being done about it - it doesn't help asuade any fears, it helps create more because of the..let's hear it..*LACK OF COMMUNICATION*

Not allowing posts about such a momentous issue as to wether or not people are able to renew their accounts or are getting triple billed is just trying to keep the "out of sight out of mind" mentality - which we know doesn't work.

Allow these posts, as long as they are posted in a more perhaps respectful or calm tone and not just ranting.

Or again, bring back the bleeping Rant forum already. Not posting about it isn't solving or helping anyone.

[Nagafen]

The difficulties with the billing were the result of a combination of factors, including missteps on our part, reorganizations within Pay By Touch and existing problems that predated our acquisition of the game. The difficulties we experienced were extremely complex, to say the least. This is, however, a moot point because the billing system is now fully functional, as is the free trial and character creation.

The intention of GM Gizmo's thread was to reinforce the fact that direct communication with EI or PBT is the most effective way to find a solution to any billing issues you might be having.

[Deth]

Nagafen I would suggest again create a mod only Q&A thread and a public Q&A thread. Then take the question from the public thread and post them in the Mod only thread with the answers. That way people can ask and discuss derail as they like but there is still a much shorter thread that people can look and see what was asked and answered.

[Death-knell]

The difficulties with the billing were the result of a combination of factors, including missteps on our part, reorganizations within Pay By Touch and existing problems that predated our acquisition of the game. The difficulties we experienced were extremely complex, to say the least. This is, however, a moot point because the billing system is now fully functional, as is the free trial and character creation.

The intention of GM Gizmo's thread was to reinforce the fact that direct communication with EI or PBT is the most effective way to find a solution to any billing issues you might be having.

Thanks for the reply. But the problem still exists that you say is fixed. I will ask my guild master again, but as of last week he still couldn't create another account and it has been over 7 weeks since he dropped the ticket.

[Kulamata]

Patience D-K, I still expect them to get there, sometime...

Now that character creation is back up, the light at the end of the tunnel just might not be a headlight.

BTW, be sure to invite all to the opening of your Grand Hall, an absolutely staggering undertaking. (The hall, not the invitations.)

[Garfonso]

Thanks for the reply. But the problem still exists that you say is fixed. I will ask my guild master again, but as of last week he still couldn't create another account and it has been over 7 weeks since he dropped the ticket.

If you read the date at that Nagafen posted, then you can see that "last week" is waaaaaaaaaaaay before Nagafen stated that the problem was solved...

You should inform your guildmaster of the latest development and tell him to try again.