Q: The LOS problems in the Labyrinth are pretty severe. What are you doing about them?

A: Be aware that this answer is simplified very dramatically for a number of reasons, and that if you think I’m leaving something out, I probably am. I am not terribly technical, and I also get nervous when I am discussing things that could be abused. The combination of the two factors is going to make this answer a little vague. I’m sorry.

The primary problem is a computer program that takes several days to run. We call it the “pathing computer,” but it does a lot more than pathing. It sets up many of the parameters that control what your characters can and can’t see or do in a particular location. It is not the ONLY thing that controls what you can see and do, obviously. We use the pathing computer program to lay a foundation, and build on that foundation with code.

It takes more than five days to run a full pathing program even on a crazy computer. The trick is to start late enough that we’re using the very latest data from testing and feedback, but early enough that the process will finish before we patch.

The program failed halfway through, for the first time in my memory. We couldn’t have started running it any later than we did, but we didn’t have enough time to finish running it a second time before we launched. Attempts to apply the code as a temporary fix, without the pathing computer’s foundation delayed the launch, by several hours and didn't work.

All this incredibly dull behind-the-scenes information has been shared strictly so that you’ll understand when I say we literally could not get the LOS issues addressed this week, and that the first stage of the LOS fixes will be done next Tuesday. Immediately after that is taken care of, we’ll start implementing the code fixes, which we have been working on while we wait.

The current situation is not okay with us, I very much apologize, and we’re doing the best we can.

Q: I did not recieve an item that I needed to complete a quest, though my journal was updated as if I had received the item. So, I appealed. At the time, it was about 1:20 am EST, and the average wait time was 31 minutes. When I finally logged out for the night, the average wait time was up to 34 minutes, but my wait time was approaching 5 1/2 hours. 

Today, I've been in game for about another hour and a half, upping my total wait time to 7 hours, and the average wait time now is 1 hour and 11 minutes.

I'm not sure how the /appeal system works but after about hour two last night, I was watching the /appeal information like a hawk.  I noticed my appeal went from 2 of 7 on the server to 3 of 6, to 2 of 5 to 1 of 5 to 2 of 5 and it seems to me like my issue is being ignored.  I understand that sometimes more pressing issues come about that need to be handled immediately but for 5 1/2 consecutive hours?? I get the feeling that they're reading my /appeal information and pushing it off in an attempt to avoid having to deal with the issue, hoping that one of the other CSRs will handle it.  I'm over 7 hours now, waiting on a CSR.  This issue needs to be addressed.

A: Sorry about posting such a long letter, guys, but I felt like it was important to the answer that I do so. There are a lot of things going on this letter that I want to explain, and I also want you to know that I feel exactly as frustrated as this player does when I am in the same spot. So do the CSRs, when they are just playing. (There’s no secret employee helpline – we wait with everyone else.) It helps – a little - to know what’s going on.

Before I start, let me say I can’t stand the “average wait time” thing. I hated it when I was working billing for an ISP in (DELETED: OMG, THAT WAS A LONG TIME AGO). I hate it now when I get “your average wait time is bootelly boo” when I am on hold, because that number is a tenth of what I actually wait. And I really, really hate it when I’m playing Camelot. We process (legitimate) stuck appeals in much less than five minutes. We process other types of appeals at speeds ranging from that to around fifteen. These numbers are totally screwing the “average” number displaying to you and create completely unreasonable expectations.

Especially quest appeals – these are processed by one person per shift with special powers unavailable to “regular” CSRs. The average wait on these is longer than what the number displays, but we can’t teach the program to distinguish between types of appeals.

The “average wait time” is also not taking into account a specific feature of the appeal system. Let’s say you send an appeal, let’s say you forgot to label it a quest problem, and you become #10 in the appeal queue. The first CSR to see your appeal reads it and relabels it as a quest issue, and puts you back in line. Now no CSR except the Quest Guy will even look at it.

If you labeled it “quest” the first time, thank you, you saved a ton of time.

Suddenly you’re #11. What the…? You log off in fury. So did I, the first time I saw that.

Later you log back in. The system looks at the time stamp on your appeal and puts you back in line according to that time. Now, someone else who HAD been number 10 is now number 11, because your appeal is older than his. But where you are in “line” depends on the relative age of appeals one through ten.

You can see how your “place” in line can change dramatically depending on how many people with outstanding appeals log in and out while you’re playing, eh?

Now consider the dramatic effect of the first week of a new expansion. There are a lot of people playing with unfamiliar elements, there are still bugs to be ironed out, and there’s usually a rash of people who haven’t played in awhile… and whose outstanding appeals jumped ahead of yours because they are much older.

So those are the things you have to consider when you think about the system, and now you understand better why I loathe “average wait time” and I’m not a huge fan of “number two of ten” either. I hope this helps in some small way.

But I would be seriously remiss if I did not BEG you all to read this next part. (And, if you were the guy whose question I used, please don’t take offense – you are a very articulate person, or I wouldn’t have used your question as an example. I will take your well-written email over most any day.)

When I forwarded this player’s letter to Customer Service, they did me the courtesy of checking the account to be sure we had not made a mistake. The appeal was just like 80% of the appeals we get. The appeal read, “can't finish this quest, as I don't have the one time drop item required by the quest giver.” The character that sent the appeal has several pending quests. If we knew the name of the quest, the step of the quest, and the name of the item, we could have fixed the problem while he was offline, and just sent him a quick tell to follow up when he logged back in.

Please, PLEASE put the specifics into your appeal. The entire system would move infinitely faster if everyone put the facts (and just the facts, no emotion or adjectives) into their appeals.

Q: Has double exp. been removed from Classic zones and moved to SI, or do both areas have them?

A: Only the zones listed here have the bonus: http://www.camelotherald.com/more/2810.shtml

Q: You recently announced that you are aiming to deactivate the Trials of Atlantis engine. Does this mean that you will release Catacombs for free download, as you did with ToA when you shut down the SI engine?

A:  Yes.

Q: Those of us that purchased the expansions individually as each was released have separate folders with similar files for each client (i.e. Mythic/Atlantis and Mythic/Darkness). If I only play using the Darkness client, can the other folders be deleted to conserve disk space or does the client pull data from these other folders?

A: Yes, go ahead and delete the old folders. The client only pulls data from the folder where the desktop shortcut you use is located, if that makes any sense.

(Edited, since "yes" is not an answer.)

Q: Why is it we didn't get two more character slots with this expansion?

A: Oh, crud. This was on one of the forums – a player said he remembered seeing me and Missy say there would be news, but that there had been no follow-up. Here’s what I posted on the board:

This is my fault - I had the update scheduled for a grab bag a month ago, but at the time I was still fighting the decision and decided to pull it from the bag.

The simple fact is I was still hoping we'd get it until pretty recently. We had one of the server guys pull logs of how many people had filled all their slots on their main server. Then we cross-referenced with how many people had filled all the slots, but at least one slot had not been logged in for more than a year.

It came down to a) we were very, very unlikely to get the feature in unless we dropped something else, and b) it turned out that the percentage of customers who actively used all of their character slots was under 5% (I think). So in light of a), we dropped it for the time being.

And then I spaced. I remembered having it in a grab bag, and forgot that I'd pulled the question. I'm sorry, that's entirely my bad.

The players in the thread reminded me that while information was nice, more character slots and soon would be better. I had to respond:

I know, you guys, and I'm not going to stop begging. There are enough of us with this problem that I can't just drop it. But there also weren't enough resources where I could win the argument. This post was mainly to apologize and let you know what the deal was.

 ***

So there you have it, for now. Two super long, two super short. I have plenty of other Labyrinth questions out at the moment, awaiting testing and investigation, and will try to do a special Wednesday grab bag for you. I’ll let you know on Tuesday.

No announcements this week, just a hearty thank you to everyone who bought the expansion and has taken the time to send their thoughtful feedback. See you around the Labyrinth this weekend -