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minkhollowSo PMOG/The Nethernet/whatever you feel like calling it is, apparently, going under.
Nice of them to give people some warning, though I suppose the recent plethora of 500 errors/buggy tool overlays should have been a sign. Not to mention, there was a sudden shift from 'free, totally free, in conclusion free!' to '...so those upgrades? you have to pay Real Money to get those now. :D?'
Something that massive is going to need income to support its servers, I know. But... I feel like you have to build in the expectation that you pay Real Money for perks from the beginning. You throw it on people at the last minute, and you get... well, you get things like the reaction on LJ to '...so you know how we said we'd never have ads on-site? we lied. :D?'
It's just... more than a little disconcerting to load the site, thinking I'll participate a bit in the system, and see a bunch of crates with 'goodbye' messages and a 500 error.
And then I get in to see what's going on, and it sounds like the Powers That Be are saying 'we can take it down now or let it limp along without support, but it's coming down either way.' No matter what anyone else has to say about open-sourcing, scaling back to an older, more workable version of the toolbar, leaving the forums up with a dose of Google Ads or something... anything, basically, other than A or B. (And apparently it was also news to some people who've been deeply involved in forming the game from at or near the beginning.)
I can't decide what I'd rather see happen, and I've been less involved in the forums lately as a consequence, in part, of the game mechanics suddenly changing. (Not the Real Money part, though that irked me when they unveiled it.) But I'd hate to see it go, and I did connect with a few people there.
I just hope the company behind it takes some lessons from how this unfolded, and implements them if and when they try to make the Next Big Thing. I understand that they're trying to do right in this situation, but I think it started going to pot on them in that regard a few steps back, and perhaps the best way to rectify it will be to move forward with lessons learned.
(I dunno, it's late. XD)
There's a refugee camp of sorts up, for the... what, two of you? who are/were also a part of the passive fun.
Nice of them to give people some warning, though I suppose the recent plethora of 500 errors/buggy tool overlays should have been a sign. Not to mention, there was a sudden shift from 'free, totally free, in conclusion free!' to '...so those upgrades? you have to pay Real Money to get those now. :D?'
Something that massive is going to need income to support its servers, I know. But... I feel like you have to build in the expectation that you pay Real Money for perks from the beginning. You throw it on people at the last minute, and you get... well, you get things like the reaction on LJ to '...so you know how we said we'd never have ads on-site? we lied. :D?'
It's just... more than a little disconcerting to load the site, thinking I'll participate a bit in the system, and see a bunch of crates with 'goodbye' messages and a 500 error.
And then I get in to see what's going on, and it sounds like the Powers That Be are saying 'we can take it down now or let it limp along without support, but it's coming down either way.' No matter what anyone else has to say about open-sourcing, scaling back to an older, more workable version of the toolbar, leaving the forums up with a dose of Google Ads or something... anything, basically, other than A or B. (And apparently it was also news to some people who've been deeply involved in forming the game from at or near the beginning.)
I can't decide what I'd rather see happen, and I've been less involved in the forums lately as a consequence, in part, of the game mechanics suddenly changing. (Not the Real Money part, though that irked me when they unveiled it.) But I'd hate to see it go, and I did connect with a few people there.
I just hope the company behind it takes some lessons from how this unfolded, and implements them if and when they try to make the Next Big Thing. I understand that they're trying to do right in this situation, but I think it started going to pot on them in that regard a few steps back, and perhaps the best way to rectify it will be to move forward with lessons learned.
(I dunno, it's late. XD)
There's a refugee camp of sorts up, for the... what, two of you? who are/were also a part of the passive fun.