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Zomag

Are We Waiting for Rolf to Wake Up Again

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I've been playing the game for about a year.  It's pretty stable for the most part.  But once again the servers are down and I'm guessing we have to wait (since it's 2 am in Sweden) for Rolf to wake up and restart the servers.

Given the amount of money that this game is generating for Rolf, it's amazing that he can't hire another server admin that doesn't live in Europe to restart things when they crap out in the middle of the day in the US where I'm assuming a significant amount of his income comes from.

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As you said, it doesnt happen too often. Would you hire full time cleaner for your summer holiday house, where you spend 1 week a year at most? - No.

But as a fact its really annoying having 2 best of your horses hitched to a cart full of other valuable stuff and get disconnected in the middle of the road. And i live in EU, its night time here, so should i w8 10 hours for Rolfs good sleep to claim my stuff back, be4 some1 else does if the server comes bk and i miss it?

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As you said, it doesnt happen too often. Would you hire full time cleaner for your summer holiday house, where you spend 1 week a year at most? - No.

You're right in this regard.  However, he could probably get a volunteer easily enough that could act as server admin while he's away withoug having to pay them.  The GM staff is pretty good in my experience, I would suggest giving of them the ability to restart.

Anything is better than having only one person running the servers and if it's bed time then hundreds of paying customers are just out of luck

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@ Skatyna Hey buddy no worries I'll grab your stuff for ya, tell me cords :)

@ Zomag  And what is this amount of money that is being generated for Rolf though this game, rough idea?

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I fully agree that any public project MUST have 24/7 maintenance staff.

Even if he gave all sleep bonus for that, what use do i have of it knowing i have 4+ hours of it anyways compared of potential loss of 10 silver worth stuff in game, when we all know game currency is real currency that brings 10s to 10 euros...

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@ Zomag  And what is this amount of money that is being generated for Rolf though this game, rough idea?

In the last year I gave him about 2,500 USD...I'm assuming I'm not the only one paying to play this game.

Sorry, I assumed he wasn't doing this for charity.

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If you paid 2,500$ to play a game you got some screws loose LOL

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If you paid 2,500$ to play a game you got some screws loose LOL

Nope, just plenty of $ for a game I enjoy

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I must admit having joined the game a few days ago and having bought premium and some extra silver yesterday, I was very suprised to hear that only 1 person is able to restart the server, even my old minecraft server had 3 people with the ability to restart it if it went down and that was a hobby between a couple of mates.

Guess we have been spoilt these last few years, mmo's have a high demand for service considering they generally cost alot more than your typical game. But customer service to the side, access to the game should always be right up there at the very top, without everything is mute.

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heh, wurm completely down ...good to know <,<

already thought its only me locked out.

are we sure rolf is making much money with the game? guess he does, but probably not getting rich on it, as i would say wurms prices for prem and silver are pretty fair. though yea, deed upkeep...in some cases generates him good payment from some players.

and yea, guess not whole devteam lives in sweden? would be good to have someone for swedish night hours to do the restart <,<

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It's like any other business endeavor - you pay for something as long as it has value.  When it ceases to have value (even temporarily), you either cease to pay or you complain about paying (or both).  In this particular case, the staff could at least implement a 24 hour monitoring application that monitors connectivity to a SQL database, to check if a service is started or at least do a Ping test to the machine in question.  A failure triggers an SMS text message, email, phone call or whatever.  We did this when I owned an IT consulting company and it was literally $50 of software to make it work.  That message should go to somewhere stateside (US) to provide value to what is probably a considerable amount of revenue from US premium members.  When we utilized it in my company, me or one of my engineers got a text in the middle of the night (yes, it sucks) and took 15 minutes to remote in and reboot the servers - no drive time required.  Granted, it wasn't fun - but it made customers happy, which kept revenues flowing.  It was a small price to pay for customer service.  Now, one could argue that this is a "donation" based game - but let's face it, if you're generating revenue - it's a business and there are customers involved, no matter what color you paint it.  I'm not complaining - just making a suggestion to support the previous post regarding 24 hour backup support for these outages.  I think Wurm is an excellent project which I enjoy (my wife can testify to by the number of hours I play). 

Just my 2 silver.

Kruggan

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Rolf ought to have someone on duty ready and able to restart the servers.  From what I've seen, Wurm going down on a Saturday or Sunday late afternoon US time is a fairly predictable occurence.  And that is prime time gaming hours, the heaviest traffic times for the US at least.  There ought to at least be a GM on who can call him on the phone to wake him up if he's the only one who can start it back up again.

If it was 2AM in Sweden when it went down, then that means about when I have to go to bed for work in the morning, Rolf will be getting out of bed, maybe.  And that means I have 2 good horses who are going to be wandering loose fo rat least 6 hours before I can get up in the morning to check on this.  And 16 hours if I forget and can't get online until I get home from work.  I figure even though they are in a mine I can probably kiss those horses goodbye.

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Nope, just plenty of $ for a game I enjoy

Just curious what did you buy with 2,500$ ingame?

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and yea, guess not whole devteam lives in sweden? would be good to have someone for swedish night hours to do the restart <,<

And how to do that, when Rolf is literally sleeping next to a server?  :P

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heck.. give me a platinum account for payment and I would handle off hours restarts :P Im in US.. so.. what do ya say?

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Nope, just plenty of $ for a game I enjoy

Just curious what did you buy with 2,500$ ingame?

Spent most of it at FM for iems that I gave away to others or kept for myself.... we had a fairly large group that came in together.  Also gave a fair amount of stuff to players that started after I did.

Haven't needed to buy much lately since I'm generating income now but that's mostly where it went.

Now let's get back to the original topic.

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Skat, maybe a remote restart? oh well, im not in server managment details :D

at least i suppose its possible to share server maintenance between several people, even for wurm >,<

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And how to do that, when Rolf is literally sleeping next to a server?  :P

Hehe, I do wonder if that is the case.  If the servers are sitting in his basement then I can understand why we have to wait.  :)

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Skat, maybe a remote restart? oh well, im not in server managment details :D

at least i suppose its possible to share server maintenance between several people, even for wurm >,<

OFC it is  :) But leaving a remote access also leaves open port which potentially could be used to hack the server (seeing it in coders eyes)  8)

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meh if you see it that way, forgett about shared server access,

rolf needs that 50$ installment to give him a wakeup call when server is down

edit> how he still can be peacefully sleeping, while like 250 people all over the world are almost close to tears <,<

well, if servers stays down, i still can pretend skyrim is wurm with with all promised updates and send dovakin working in the fields and cutting logs

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It's like any other business endeavor - you pay for something as long as it has value.  When it ceases to have value (even temporarily), you either cease to pay or you complain about paying (or both).  In this particular case, the staff could at least implement a 24 hour monitoring application that monitors connectivity to a SQL database, to check if a service is started or at least do a Ping test to the machine in question.  A failure triggers an SMS text message, email, phone call or whatever.  We did this when I owned an IT consulting company and it was literally $50 of software to make it work.  That message should go to somewhere stateside (US) to provide value to what is probably a considerable amount of revenue from US premium members.  When we utilized it in my company, me or one of my engineers got a text in the middle of the night (yes, it sucks) and took 15 minutes to remote in and reboot the servers - no drive time required.  Granted, it wasn't fun - but it made customers happy, which kept revenues flowing.  It was a small price to pay for customer service.  Now, one could argue that this is a "donation" based game - but let's face it, if you're generating revenue - it's a business and there are customers involved, no matter what color you paint it.  I'm not complaining - just making a suggestion to support the previous post regarding 24 hour backup support for these outages.  I think Wurm is an excellent project which I enjoy (my wife can testify to by the number of hours I play). 

Just my 2 silver.

Kruggan

Well so much for meeting at 9:00 he he.

-Uian

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Hehe, I do wonder if that is the case.  If the servers are sitting in his basement then I can understand why we have to wait.  :)

Im pretty sure they are in his house. Sweden has really brilliant internet connections, so if he got 100 MBs "home" line he doesnt need any server provider.

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