Some of you will know me, a good chunk of you wont, because I mainly play Tribes 2, but this applies to all game players so please read.
Some of you may have heard that Tribes 2 is currently having/did have (depending on when you read this) technical problems which have caused us to not be able to play the game (the main login server went down). As online gamers we expect things like this to occur from time to time, however, the server has been down for almost 48 hours now.
Sierra supplies very few servers for Tribes 2, most are player provided. Therefore they have to maintain very few servers, which equates to a low overhead. They have made (from my guesstimates) over 10 million dollars off of Tribes 2 players alone (taking into account the decline in cost of the game, and over 500 000 copies sold).
Sierra has offerred no explanation as to why the servers are down, how long it will take to fix, if they are working on them, or that they are sorry for the inconveneince - the only message we get is an error message when we try to log in.
In 48 hours NOT ONE attempt has been made to communicate the problem to us.
While I have no hard proof or facts, it seems to me that Sierra's support of Tribes 2 has dwindled considerably. It is curious that it takes over 48 hours to repair a problem, when they have clearly already taken our money in exchange for providing a service, which is unavailable.
We (I am speaking for the T2 players that I have talked to - quite a few, but if you dont feel this way feel free to respond) the Tribes 2 players are quite fed up with the way that Sierra treats us. We feel that we have little to no power in the face of this large company with a very large share of the gaming market. We have been forgotten about for a large part because Tribes 2 is not as popular as it once was. There is no money to be made off of it anymore. However there is still a dedicated base of players for the game however, and many of us are avid players - that have already paid and deserve the technical support of Sierra to fix these issues in a timely manner, not 2-3 days later or whenever they feel they can get around to it.
Having the server down for 48 hours damages what player base there is left. It also frustrates players, because no reasons, or explanations or apologies have been given, or even a time frame. My email to Sierra resulted in this response
The response to your question:
----------------------------------------
Solution Added On 06/02/2003 8:25AM
Hi, we are working on getting the servers back up and running. We have been
having some network issues.
Thank you for your patience. We should be back up and running as soon as
possible.
Mike Bowman
Manager online support.
I sent a complaint after the servers had been down for over 36 hours.
You may ask what my point is.
Its fairly simple, if we as players dont stand together and tell gaming companies we wont stand to be pushed around, or neglected after we have paid our hard earned money for their game, then they will continue to treat us as they please. They will not repair servers, they will not add patches, they will not service our games even though we have paid for them. Why? because we keep shelling out cash for the next title, and the next one, even after they do things like this.
For proof I submit to you the fact that it was not too long ago that games were released without the need for further patching. Now it has become a regular occurrence.
So Im asking for support from the Online gaming community.
Alteast bump this thread, send an email to Sierra, complain....do something.
As a group we have a lot of consumer power. Alone we have nothing. Games earn 86 billion dollars a year for gaming companies. We spend that money, its time we got something in return.
Little Poon
Some of you may have heard that Tribes 2 is currently having/did have (depending on when you read this) technical problems which have caused us to not be able to play the game (the main login server went down). As online gamers we expect things like this to occur from time to time, however, the server has been down for almost 48 hours now.
Sierra supplies very few servers for Tribes 2, most are player provided. Therefore they have to maintain very few servers, which equates to a low overhead. They have made (from my guesstimates) over 10 million dollars off of Tribes 2 players alone (taking into account the decline in cost of the game, and over 500 000 copies sold).
Sierra has offerred no explanation as to why the servers are down, how long it will take to fix, if they are working on them, or that they are sorry for the inconveneince - the only message we get is an error message when we try to log in.
In 48 hours NOT ONE attempt has been made to communicate the problem to us.
While I have no hard proof or facts, it seems to me that Sierra's support of Tribes 2 has dwindled considerably. It is curious that it takes over 48 hours to repair a problem, when they have clearly already taken our money in exchange for providing a service, which is unavailable.
We (I am speaking for the T2 players that I have talked to - quite a few, but if you dont feel this way feel free to respond) the Tribes 2 players are quite fed up with the way that Sierra treats us. We feel that we have little to no power in the face of this large company with a very large share of the gaming market. We have been forgotten about for a large part because Tribes 2 is not as popular as it once was. There is no money to be made off of it anymore. However there is still a dedicated base of players for the game however, and many of us are avid players - that have already paid and deserve the technical support of Sierra to fix these issues in a timely manner, not 2-3 days later or whenever they feel they can get around to it.
Having the server down for 48 hours damages what player base there is left. It also frustrates players, because no reasons, or explanations or apologies have been given, or even a time frame. My email to Sierra resulted in this response
The response to your question:
----------------------------------------
Solution Added On 06/02/2003 8:25AM
Hi, we are working on getting the servers back up and running. We have been
having some network issues.
Thank you for your patience. We should be back up and running as soon as
possible.
Mike Bowman
Manager online support.
I sent a complaint after the servers had been down for over 36 hours.
You may ask what my point is.
Its fairly simple, if we as players dont stand together and tell gaming companies we wont stand to be pushed around, or neglected after we have paid our hard earned money for their game, then they will continue to treat us as they please. They will not repair servers, they will not add patches, they will not service our games even though we have paid for them. Why? because we keep shelling out cash for the next title, and the next one, even after they do things like this.
For proof I submit to you the fact that it was not too long ago that games were released without the need for further patching. Now it has become a regular occurrence.
So Im asking for support from the Online gaming community.
Alteast bump this thread, send an email to Sierra, complain....do something.
As a group we have a lot of consumer power. Alone we have nothing. Games earn 86 billion dollars a year for gaming companies. We spend that money, its time we got something in return.
Little Poon