Move a token, lose a trader... BEWARE! [SEE UPDATE]

[Dairuka 888]

Yea, we're taking it pretty hard. My son has been playing for about 7 years now and 3 of the 4 traders were his that he worked his butt off for. The kicker is that a dev alluded to the fact it may be a bug and the head game master indicated that it is flawed and needs more work on the deed-disband side.

 

You can have the best product in the world but at the end of the day it's only as good as the customer service provided. I know they can fix this with a few stokes of the keyboard and they choose not to.

 

In Wurm, nothing is ever considered a "bug" until after it's been "fixed".

 

Until then, it's a "feature".

 

Obviously this "feature" needs to be "fixed" so that we can all admit it's a "bug". A game-breaking one at that.

Edited March 25, 2014 by Dairuka

[Lithien 268]

Since I am in such a sarcastic mood today, I would say you should get a hold of Rolf on IRC and get him to make an immediate hotfix, since this actually is a game changing bug, that if not acted upon right away, can turn into a situation that prevents you from even replacing those traders - unless you control 63 tiles in every direction from all of those traders yourself already.

[Caroligan 116]

Since I am in such a sarcastic mood today, I would say you should get a hold of Rolf on IRC and get him to make an immediate hotfix, since this actually is a game changing bug, that if not acted upon right away, can turn into a situation that prevents you from even replacing those traders - unless you control 63 tiles in every direction from all of those traders yourself already.

I sent Rolf an e-mail as IRC doesn't seem to want to work for me.

 

As to the partial refund. I know I did not receive it because prior to disbanding the deed I removed all my coin from the bank leaving a zero balance. When I disbanded the deed I received these messages.

[11:04:31] The settlement of Angelfire Oasis has just been disbanded by Caroligan.

[11:04:31] Your available money in the bank is now 5 silver.

[Caroligan 116]

I thought it was 4 traders, turns out it was 3. 2 of my son's and one of mine. He was getting ready to buy his 3rd. Thank Vynora he didn't buy it yet. May need to save the money for a different game

 

[11:04:31] Trader_Vadik is no longer a citizen of Angelfire Oasis.
[11:04:31] Trader_Victoria is no longer a citizen of Angelfire Oasis.
[11:04:31] Trader_Ambar is no longer a citizen of Angelfire Oasis.
[11:04:31] You are no longer citizen of Angelfire Oasis.
[11:04:31] It is 09:20:02 on Luck day in week 1 of the starfall of the Digging in the year of 1039.
[11:04:31] The settlement of Angelfire Oasis has just been disbanded by Caroligan.
[11:04:31] Your available money in the bank is now 5 silver.

[meiyeeer 78]

+1 to getting your traders or money back! Geez, that's 200s worth...

[Caroligan 116]

I'll donate 5 silver to your disaster relief fund.  I am over on Pristine, x6, y23.  CoD me something, unless you're gonna be in the area soon.

I really appreciate the offer. That's very awesome of you. However, If we can't get the traders back, we may be searching for a new home game to play in the near future so your gesture would either go to waste or be returned. Good to see that there are people like you out there though

[Object 281]

Losing three traders is terrible and I absolutely feel your pain because I lost five...yes five, with the exact same issue.  After the fact I then remembered that I did read somewhere that they'd leave the village when you disbanded the village but there was a lot of contradictory information on it.  A few places said they would attempt to rejoin any new deed you placed and other places said they would just disappear altogether.

 

Now I'm a logical person so I thought it was just ridiculous that the devs would allow a system where traders just disappeared with absolutely no reimbursement, so I just assumed they stuck around and the information I read that said otherwise was inaccurate.  So then a few months after I read this info and shrugged it off I wanted to move my main deed which had all the traders attached to it and lo and behold they actually disappeared.  Which in turn led me to disappearing from Wurm for about 8 months.

 

The sad thing about the situation is there are a lot more people who have these kinds of trader horror stories, but most of them quit Wurm because of it and you won't be hearing their story.  This is an absolutely insane feature and should be rectified asap to prevent more people who have invested into this game from being shafted because of a ridiculous mechanic that seems to be considered an unintended feature.

[tobaul 28]

Sorry to see you a victim of a broken system just because you missed an obscure line of text.  I believe traders should have a writ the same as houses, this would solve more than a few problems associated with them.

[Dairuka 888]

Sorry to see you a victim of a broken system just because you missed an obscure line of text.  I believe traders should have a writ the same as houses, this would solve more than a few problems associated with them.

 

Even Merchants have contracts.

[wasntme 156]

just so you guys don't lose any more traders kick the trader from the deed then disband and the trader will stay.and become part of the next village that deeded over it.

[Drpox 73]

It has been REPEATEDLY stated to kick the trader from the village prior to disbanding if you want to keep it.  This has been known about traders for well over the year. 

 

Sorry, this mechanic was put in for the people who let their deeds disband and to prevent anyone from getting free traders.  IE so Rolf can get another 50 silver's worth from anyone that has not taken the proper precautions. 

[meiyeeer 78]

It has been REPEATEDLY stated to kick the trader from the village prior to disbanding if you want to keep it.  This has been known about traders for well over the year. 

 

Sorry, this mechanic was put in for the people who let their deeds disband and to prevent anyone from getting free traders.  IE so Rolf can get another 50 silver's worth from anyone that has not taken the proper precautions. 

That's why there should be a confirmation box for people who disband their deeds manually. That's different from people who let their deeds disband from being inactive

[Rolf 3,563]

I received an email from Caroligan so I'll post what I answered:

 

Hello,

 

I've added a clearer messages in red about traders when disbanding.

 

I discussed reimbursement with my GM team and they strongly adviced me not to since it would extremely unfair to the other players who have had the same thing happen.

 

I agree that a golden customer service will help out greatly and I am very happy about our GM team who tries to keep this game afloat despite it's issues, bugs, imbalances and poor information. A difference between your business and mine is that we have to assume that all our customers communicate and we can not expect to give special treatment or help one without the others hearing about it. We have to be as fair as we can in every situation hence we have to follow policies.

 

Many of our players appreciate the game for what it is trying to achieve: attempting to give players what many have searched for for several years, sometimes more than a decade but that other companies never attempted or failed at. This is the reason I do my best to deliver that and developed it without much resources or other employees for several years. This of course caused lots of situations where polish and sufficient warnings are lacking.

 

It is always sad to hear stories about lost stuff because we try to make it clear that it may happen. I am very grateful that you pointed this situation out the way you did and caused us to add more warning messages.

 

You are mistaken if you think I believe I make money from people losing things this way, quite the opposite of course.

 

I'll be happy to give you and your son the special 'Clairvoyant' titles reserved for reporting situations like these causing changes, for whatever it is worth.

 

Please also consider that for every citizen trader that was disbanded you also received 20 silver coins in return, and hopefully (<-- that happens during free disband events only)

 

Hopefully you have managed to drain at least a portion of the missing silver coins.

 

Best regards,

 

Rolf

Edited March 26, 2014 by Rolf
Wrong information

[rosedragon 2,282]

Thanks Rolf. And...

 

 

I agree that a golden customer service will help out greatly and I am very happy about our GM team who tries to keep this game afloat despite it's issues, bugs, imbalances and poor information. A difference between your business and mine is that we have to assume that all our customers communicate and we can not expect to give special treatment or help one without the others hearing about it. We have to be as fair as we can in every situation hence we have to follow policies.

Please remember your own words, especially that in bold when next time you itchy to do a ninja update.

[Pwent 113]

Please also consider that for every citizen trader that was disbanded you also received 20 silver coins in return,

The OP repeatedly stated in this thread that he/she/they didn't get 20 silvers per trader lost, only 5s for the deed disband.

So at least you can fix that bug too, and give them 20s per trader lost, since they were supposed to.

[Rolf 3,563]

I updated the post. The 20s reimbursement happens during free disbands only.

[Lithien 268]

The trader contract when you place a trader doesn't mention anything about free disbands only though. It just says, that you get a partial refund when disbanding while the trader is a citizen, so I hope that text gets changed.

[Archaegeo 136]

So lets say you are GM, I cant fix your car, even though it was  bad mechanic issue that was our fault, because if I did that I would have to fix others cars.

[Skorb 36]

I discussed reimbursement with my GM team and they strongly adviced me not to since it would extremely unfair to the other players who have had the same thing happen.

 

I agree that a golden customer service will help out greatly and I am very happy about our GM team who tries to keep this game afloat despite it's issues, bugs, imbalances and poor information. A difference between your business and mine is that we have to assume that all our customers communicate and we can not expect to give special treatment or help one without the others hearing about it. We have to be as fair as we can in every situation hence we have to follow policies.

 

Many of our players appreciate the game for what it is trying to achieve: attempting to give players what many have searched for for several years, sometimes more than a decade but that other companies never attempted or failed at. This is the reason I do my best to deliver that and developed it without much resources or other employees for several years. This of course caused lots of situations where polish and sufficient warnings are lacking.

 

 

I can see the logic in wanting to be fair across the board, the last thing you want is to have one player getting even more upset because of some sort of "favoritism" shown to one player, when they perceive they were in the same situation.  However, if your "warning message" was found to be lacking in providing an adequate warning to players, by presenting a message that could be either misconstrued or missed altogether, it seems to me the appropriate step would be to offer players who ran into this issue, from today back to the beginning of the issue, a silver refund for their loss. I'm assuming that you keep a historical record of all tickets submitted, so it should be quite easy for a GM, to review past tickets on this, based solely on the player who submitted them, and make an announcement in the game news section that if someone has reported this issue, in the past, to please submit a new ticket and they will be compensated, provided they submit the ticket from the same account.  Maybe include a note about people trying to scam the system being punished harshly.  (Perhaps a great time to implement a "whipping post" system, where they can be chained to one, in the middle of the starter town public square to be repeatedly whipped to within an inch of their life for public amusement.)

This seems like a fair approach which would avoid all the drama about someone not being "treated fairly" and also resolve this situation in a far more effective fashion, than giving someone a title that effectively cost them over 100 Euros.  Since you updated your warning messages, not providing any sort of a refund going forward seems like a fair and reasonable approach.

Obviously, this is just my 2 cp.

[Dairuka 888]

Rolf, I would hope you take serious steps to ensure this doesn't happen to anybody else. Don't just put up a warning, put up a message that requires people to actively click, or even type out "delete" along with the warning.

 

If he decides to stay. I'm personally willing to put up 10s to Caroligan's relief fund.

 

Call it payment for having the courage to speak out and stand your ground until something positive changes.

Edited March 26, 2014 by Dairuka

[Caroligan 116]

I still plead my case.

Hello Rolf,

Thank you for your prompt attention in this matter and the implementation of a clear message at the time of disband.

Because I also own and operate my own company, I understand that is very important to receive feed-back and advice from members of your organization that have achieved a higher position of trust, in this case your GM Team. It is even more important that the decision you make is not one of solidarity with your team, but one of choosing the right thing to do in any given situation. It is the ultimate role of the leadership to praise his/her advisors when they are right and back them up, or to admonish them when they are wrong and teach them what is right. Leadership can be very cold and lonely sometimes.

I agree that it would be unfair to reimburse only myself in this situation, however "fair" and "right" do not always mean the same thing. It is possible that the fair thing to do is not always right and the right thing to do is not always fair. In this case you feel it is fair to not reimburse me however we both know that it is not right.

Here is a hypothetical: This past year we purchased a new Chrystler 300 and have driven it approximately 14,000 miles. If Chrystler, the manufacturer of the product, finds that there is cause or a potential to cause harm to their customers in this product, they do the right thing and issue a recall. They make changes in there production process to ensure that no Chrystler 300 leaves the factory without the problem fixed and from that date forward their customers are protected from that specific problem. Back to the recall. When I receive the notification from Chrystler that my vehicle has a problem, I take it to them and have it fixed. When I take it to them, it does not matter in the slightest bit that I had already received 14,000 miles of driving pleasure in my nice new car, they fix it at no cost to me. They were the ultimate cause for the problem with their product and it is their responsibility to make sure their customers are made whole and protected from future problems of the same nature. In this situation replace "Chrystler" with "Code Club AB" , the "300" with "Wurm" , the "cause for harm" with "lack of warning when disbanding traders" and "14,000 miles" with "silvers previously drained".

This is the fair and right thing to do.

In this current situation you have a product that had the potential to cause harm, or has caused harm yet have done absolutely nothing to make any of your customers whole and until know, protected from harm. I do not need a team of advisors to know that this is in no way fair and undeniably not right in any stretch of the definition.

I also started my company as a one man operation, I totally understand the pressures and the timelines that a one man band is under and yes, I made mistakes, many mistakes. I call them "growing pains". Even if I had to take the hit, if my growing pain adversely affected one of my customers I had to make it right because it was not his fault and I want to keep them as a customer. I lose very few customers because of this and have grown sales 30-40% each year I have been business, in a down economy.

In my professional leadership opinion, the right, and fair thing to do is to reimburse us for our loss, fix the issue that created the loss and offer a "recall" period for any and all players that were affected by this loss to come forward for reimbursement. This would require that they 1.) adequately reported the issue to a GM in the past and were denied. 2.) Their new claims be fully reviewed and substantiated. and 3.) at the end of the recall period, provided that a fix is now in place, no future claims will be accepted nor approved.

This would be the fair and right thing to do. It shows outstanding leadership as well as gives your customers confidence in that leadership and more importantly, the products you offer. Without the customer, there is no company, period.

I urge you to review your latest decision and see that it is not fair or right. Convince yourself and your advisors that the right thing to do is still out there waiting to be done.

Best regards,

Caroligan

Mayor

Angelfire Oasis, Release.

Edited March 26, 2014 by Caroligan

[Torgrim 403]

I lost a trader exactly like this about half a year ago. I was told by GMs there was nothing to do since it was my own mistake. 

 

EDIT- Actually in my case the trader was placed on another deed by me, I then disbanded my own deed some months/year later and poof the trader on the other deed disbanded becuase it was citizen of my own deed rahter than the deed it was placed on. 

 

Silly me, I should have known better... All my fault.. Player mistake.. no refund ..

 

The GM tools must really suck if it's not possible to see that this was clearly not my intention and I didn't cheat in anyway

 

Oh, and yes I reported it right when it had happened and got a fairly quick response from GMs.

Edited March 26, 2014 by Torgrim

[Ayes 3,715]

I don't know where any of you who have had Traders be deleted have been all these years when it has been made plain knowledge of the results of disbanding ones deed with a Trader upon it. As this status has changed over the years the procedure has been updated. If an individual like the OP has not made the effort to educate themself on how to proceed to their best advantage, I see that as no ones fault but their own.

 

Rolf has taken the right approach here and in no way should any refunds be given to those who have been so careless as to not take the time to find out the options available for disbanding a deed with Traders upon them. I mean really, try to take responsibility for your own actions rather than blaming them on others. This red message upon disbanding a deed with a Trader upon it should now at least take away this opportunity for players to avoid their own responsibility and blame their mistake upon the game developers. In that respect it is a good idea.

 

=Ayes=

[Toeol 185]

I still plead my case.

-snip-

 

It would be worth pointing out before this that everyone that has a Tag other than DEV is a volunteer and has 0 control and are mearly available to advise when requested, what is done with that advise is ultimately up to the 4 or so people that actually control the direction of this game, 

 

 

The only problem with 2/3rds of your post and the entirety of your analogy is the understanding of the difference between a product and a service, at no point in time are you paying for Wurm as a product, you are paying for access to the server as part of a service, the EULA quite clearly states that you have 0 ownership over anything at any time.

 

I feel the whole "Cause of harm" stuff is completely melodramatic, if you got more than 50s worth of stuff from each of your traders then your ahead anyway

 

the information is widely available, and in a game where one of the first things you (hopefully) learn is that you look at the wiki before you commit yourself to anything, you would have had more of a reason to be upset if it wasn't there, but im sorry to say it was......

 

I've a trader on my deed and have disbanded / moved my token whilst a trader was present, but the first thing i did was checked the wiki to make sure that there was no effect on the trader before i undeeded and redeeded over it.

In fact, it was me doing this that resulted in the confirmation for the wiki that traders join deeds placed over them if done quickly enough, this was almost 2 years ago.

 

 

I understand that your upset, I really do, but i don't feel that anyone other than yourself really dropped the ball on this one. the information was there and available, perhaps not as in your face as you clearly needed, but still, it was there

 

to put it into a business term, seeing as you like those analogies; you didnt do your due dilligence before making this move, and now your paying the price.

Edited March 26, 2014 by Toeol

[Lithien 268]

It would be worth pointing out before this that everyone that has a Tag other than DEV is a volunteer and has 0 control and are mearly available to advise when requested, what is done with that advise is ultimately up to the 4 or so people that actually control the direction of this game, 

 

 

The only problem with 2/3rds of your post and the entirety of your analogy is the understanding of the difference between a product and a service, at no point in time are you paying for Wurm as a product, you are paying for access to the server as part of a service, the EULA quite clearly states that you have 0 ownership over anything at any time.

 

I feel the whole "Cause of harm" stuff is completely melodramatic, if you got more than 50s worth of stuff from each of your traders then your ahead anyway

 

the information is widely available, and in a game where one of the first things you (hopefully) learn is that you look at the wiki before you commit yourself to anything, you would have had more of a reason to be upset if it wasn't there, but im sorry to say it was......

 

I've a trader on my deed and have disbanded / moved my token whilst a trader was present, but the first thing i did was checked the wiki to make sure that there was no effect on the trader before i undeeded and redeeded over it.

In fact, it was me doing this that resulted in the confirmation for the wiki that traders join deeds placed over them if done quickly enough, this was almost 2 years ago.

 

 

I understand that your upset, I really do, but i don't feel that anyone other than yourself really dropped the ball on this one. the information was there and available, perhaps not as in your face as you clearly needed, but still, it was there

 

to put it into a business term, seeing as you like those analogies; you didnt do your due dilligence before making this move, and now your paying the price.

 

Actually the wiki states that you get a partial refund, if you disband while the trader is still a citizen. Look at the image for the trader contract, on the trader page. That part of the contract is even in bold.