news

[Thangorodrim Atanatari]

any news regarding the auctions?

more then a week of newslessness is making me depressed.

[fireblade]

well id be glad for the moment with no news as need time to earn the 4g i effectually lost with the base price of the lair I used to have on unity increasing from 518s to 4g 680s

[Landowyn]

Still much cheaper than biped plots. The 12g plot in Crystal increased in price to 19+ gold, while the one a few meters away fell from 10.4g to 9 something, thus defying all logic. My former plot went from 2g to 3.5g.

[Thangorodrim Atanatari]

fireblade you could have been imported yourself many months ago, this is no reason to want the rest of the community to wait.

other mmo companies that cost about the same price, couldnt get away with even 1 or 2 days of no news...

did istarians really get used to being ignored?

[Creme]

fireblade you could have been imported yourself many months ago, this is no reason to want the rest of the community to wait.

other mmo companies that cost about the same price, couldnt get away with even 1 or 2 days of no news...

did istarians really get used to being ignored?

I don't think we're being ignored.

Velea posted just last week that they would send out an announcement on upcoming auctions as soon as they can set a date.

There appears to be structure visibility, structure deletion, and permissions as well as inability to recognize trading between alts that have cropped up. Whether or not those were just glitches that were corrected by maintenance or a more chronic problem is unknown. Some seemed to be solved, some have workarounds that have been successful for some players, but there's a good chance that these things all factor into successfully launching auctions.

If these things aren't corrected prior to players trading plots/selling/deconning and rebuilding then customer service could well be inundated with tickets from players post auctions.

This is probably the singlemost important activity since the game was purchased and affects a significant number of players. To date they have shown a great deal of diligence in ensuring that the auctions will be successful.

[Mauricgriff]

I don't think we're being ignored.

Velea posted just last week that they would send out an announcement on upcoming auctions as soon as they can set a date.

There appears to be structure visibility, structure deletion, and permissions as well as inability to recognize trading between alts that have cropped up. Whether or not those were just glitches that were corrected by maintenance or a more chronic problem is unknown. Some seemed to be solved, some have workarounds that have been successful for some players, but there's a good chance that these things all factor into successfully launching auctions.

If these things aren't corrected prior to players trading plots/selling/deconning and rebuilding then customer service could well be inundated with tickets from players post auctions.


This is probably the singlemost important activity since the game was purchased and affects a significant number of players. To date they have shown a great deal of diligence in ensuring that the auctions will be successful.

Maybe I missed something but plots lairs and trading, deconning etc. are activities which have been in game for a long time and we have got by with how they are, that is unless some things have actually changed with regard to this which I am unaware of.

Inmy opinion there are two issues which are the biggest danger to the continued well being of the game.

The first issue is delay in plot auctions.
Since reclaims have started some people have deconned their plots expecting the auctions to begin quite soon. Then there are those who have transferred over from unity and last but not least new players who have just joined.
These groups of people do not have plots also with so many people grinding out and saving as much cash as possible there appears to be hardly any building work going on. The net result is that a large number of the population are not carrrying out their normal activities, because of this I know that quite a lot of people just log in just occasionally for a short time see if anything has changed then logged off. All that I am saying here is that this very serious danger to the game should be recognised.
Personally as far as deconning auctioned plots goes I would be quite happy if all structures were deleted which would completely wipe out the issue on novian farming, but that is just my own opinion, I have no interest in novians and am quite happy to build up my own plot. This way after auctions there would be lots of activity and plenty for people to do.

The second issue is window vista, I keep hearing of people who have vista as all new pc's come with this and cannot play the game, either existing players who have upgradedtheir pc or new players. I'm not saying dev's can do anything about this or that it is anyone's fault, just to recognise that this is a very important issue.

[Creme]

Maybe I missed something but plots lairs and trading, deconning etc. are activities which have been in game for a long time and we have got by with how they are, that is unless some things have actually changed with regard to this which I am unaware of.

http://community.istaria.com/forum/s...ad.php?t=19443

Was talking to someone today that said that he can't see in the planning window several of the structures on his plot.

I also was at a friend's lair and the structure list is completely empty, even though there are many completed structures.

I have also heard talk on Marketplace about other players having difficulty and having "ghost" structures.

Just this past week a friend was trying to add to friends to give me silo access and I was unable to get into those silos, even after being added to the list.

Just imagine all the potential transfers and purchases of auctioned plots and not being able to replan because you can't delete the existing structures or not being able to set permissions on your newly purchased plot/lair.

[Jayne]

Sounds like some stuff went live that wasn't tested? Or we got bugs......

[Creme]

I think more players would test, if they weren't afraid of having structure permission problems. I have not been brave enough to try it myself

[Jayne]

I agree Creme.

[fireblade]

fireblade you could have been imported yourself many months ago, this is no reason to want the rest of the community to wait.

other mmo companies that cost about the same price, couldnt get away with even 1 or 2 days of no news...

did istarians really get used to being ignored?

I was imported months ago and that is the problem, as the base price of the lair i had (on unity) then is a lot lower than the base price for it now, in fact if was imported now would probably not have the problem, as the base price get when imported is presumably the current base price.

so I effectively lost the price difference, and couldn't buy back exactly the same lair even if was up for sale now and no one else wanted it

and wanting enough time to earn the difference (~4 gold) is a perfectly valid reason to want a delay, of course that doesn't mean ill get one

as to some extent it feels a bit like getting your lair forceably purchased from you and then told you can buy it back but only if you pay a load more for it

[Thangorodrim Atanatari]

Just imagine all the potential transfers and purchases of auctioned plots and not being able to replan because you can't delete the existing structures or not being able to set permissions on your newly purchased plot/lair.

as i allready said before somewhere i dont mind some bugs on my plot, as long as i have it.

if its just some buildings, then at least i could work on the other buildings that where not bugged, by far better then all this waiting...

i think handeling bugs on a case by case basis after the auctions would be far better, because also now they must be addressed, and checked if they even exist! in the end it would take more dev time, and keep us waiting longer.

but this is just my opinion.

example: if 5% of the players would have bugs, would it be fair to let the other 95% waiting for the solution to this?
and, even this 5% would they not be more happy if they have allready a partial plot instead of nothing?

edit: i agree with mauricegriffiths that this is a serious threat to the wellbeing of the game.
i mean what creme says. i dont know how he knows all this, but im fairly sure it wasnt stated by the devs officially.

some news to the community would help a bit, yet not save all subs that would be potentially lost.
the only thing that would do that would be to make the step.

anyone thought about making a poll on this?
maby with a link on the login page to make also the non-forum-users aware of it?

[Mauricgriff]

http://community.istaria.com/forum/s...ad.php?t=19443

Was talking to someone today that said that he can't see in the planning window several of the structures on his plot.

I also was at a friend's lair and the structure list is completely empty, even though there are many completed structures.

I have also heard talk on Marketplace about other players having difficulty and having "ghost" structures.

Just this past week a friend was trying to add to friends to give me silo access and I was unable to get into those silos, even after being added to the list.

Just imagine all the potential transfers and purchases of auctioned plots and not being able to replan because you can't delete the existing structures or not being able to set permissions on your newly purchased plot/lair.

Surely these people you talking about creme have had these plots a long time, so I would assume these are longstanding problems with whcih people have got by in one way or another. Have these issues been reported? personally I have heard of very few issues such as this. Most problems I have known have been laggy type problems and fixed by a simple relog. As far as problems with deleting the existing structures goes if devs just deleted all structures on reclaimed plots before auctions I have a feeling there would be less problems. I just don't think now is the time to be fixing little nitty gritty problems which have been around for years already, or are these problems which have just happened since the reclaims and have made the lots unusable.

[Velea]

A couple of points from this thread

1) The bug that was introduced when we patched the majority of changes to live is not one that could have been found on Blight. Please do not "blame" the Blight testers, or those who came to Blight for this. They tested extremely well and we were able to clear up a number of issues that never went live because of their hard work and dedication. The bug simply did not show up on Blight when we tested selling plots in every combination we could think of.

It was introduced when the patch went to live, plain and simple.

2) The bug was big enough that it would have effected every plot bought, sold, or traded during the time it was on the live servers. It has been fixed, and we are finishing up work on the "aftermath" at this point.

I've said it before, but I'll repeat it again. We aren't going to start auctions until we are confident that they are going to work to the best of our ability. When we know that we can sell the resized and reclaimed plots (hopefully) without bugs, problems, or conflicts, only then will we start auctions. We aren't going to rush this, folks, and end up doing it wrong. That's not what Virtrium is all about. We're going to take the time to do things to the best of our ability the first time.

-Velea

[Guaran]

Glad to hear it is fixed.

Sounds like good progress is being made if we can just be a little bit more patient.

[Frith-Rae]

I just don't think now is the time to be fixing little nitty gritty problems which have been around for years already, or are these problems which have just happened since the reclaims and have made the lots unusable.

Last half - bingo!

They aren't problems that have been around for years - these are only all problems that started when the blight patch went live. And not to do lack of testing..

By Gosh - even WoW and every other game out there has bugs that go live regardless of how much testing was done. When are people going to understand that and stop thinking its beacuse stuff didn't have enough "testers" or they weren't "diligent" enough. ITS JUST HOW THE BEAST WORKS!

And no, what the devs are trying to do right now, and what they've tried to do in the last couple of months has NEVER been done in this game before. Parts of it have been done before - but not all of it and not all of it altogether (and certianly not the resizing of basically the entire buildable continent almost...)

[Creme]

I kind of feel sad, because there was so much encouragement for the development team to FIX THE LAND, MAKE PLOTS HUGE, GET RID OF THE "USELESS" plots.

Then there was more screaming of "PREVENT NOVIAN FARMING".

So the developers spent a very VERY long time and many hours trying to relandscape, move communities around, release patches, get feedback, and then fix, fix, fix, fix.

Then came the whole OMG NOVIAN FARMERS!!!

So they put in something to try and address that situation.

All these things are what people were asking for and more or less demanding.

Throughout all these demands, still came the incessant "when will auctions start, when will auctions start".

Folks, they are doing what was requested. Don't expect them to now turn around and let errors slip through when this has been a massive change to all our shards.

They likely could have released the plots for auctions a month ago if they hadn't sought to try and accommodate player concerns for larger properties, novian farming checks/balances.

By doing these things, to improve the lands and please the players, they have added time to the process: time that the players, in demanding these things be done, have added to the process.

[velveeta]

very well stated, creme!

[Smaug]

A couple of points from this thread

1) The bug that was introduced when we patched the majority of changes to live is not one that could have been found on Blight. Please do not "blame" the Blight testers, or those who came to Blight for this. They tested extremely well and we were able to clear up a number of issues that never went live because of their hard work and dedication. The bug simply did not show up on Blight when we tested selling plots in every combination we could think of.

It was introduced when the patch went to live, plain and simple.

2) The bug was big enough that it would have effected every plot bought, sold, or traded during the time it was on the live servers. It has been fixed, and we are finishing up work on the "aftermath" at this point.

I've said it before, but I'll repeat it again. We aren't going to start auctions until we are confident that they are going to work to the best of our ability. When we know that we can sell the resized and reclaimed plots (hopefully) without bugs, problems, or conflicts, only then will we start auctions. We aren't going to rush this, folks, and end up doing it wrong. That's not what Virtrium is all about. We're going to take the time to do things to the best of our ability the first time.

-Velea

If your talking about the bug with nothing showing up in plot access window and not being able to set permissions then no it seems it hasn't been fixed. I sold a lair to another of my alts and again the blank (no completed structures, planning, construction windows all blank, etc) window is there.

Smaug

[Vlisson]

i hope that news will be sent via eMail to all customers, ex-customers too