Love the game... But it's really not ready for release!

Chibihalo wrote:
You know I love it when someone throws around their profession like it makes them some kind of expert in another field all together (not). You work on servers not designing mobile social town simulation gaming apps like this one. I bet you the programming languages you know aren't even close to what the computer engineers know over at EA. Now if this was about the issues with their servers maybe people would listen to you because it's your field. However, that's not what it is and you don't know any more about the issues people have been having since the relaunch and what's causing them than the rest of us so don't act like you do just because you work with servers all day.

You're complaining at time of the year when the server load is very taxed (now that's something you would be able to give your professional opinion on) because more people are playing at a very consistent rate. A lot of them missed things with Halloween and they don't want to run that risk here. There is a lot of new animation to the game for the rest of the month so people are going to be experiencing issues on their end. Someone connected with EA has said within the last week or two that part of the issues are connected to download rates on our end and with larger and larger Springfields out there some people just can't handle the amount of stuff they have to download from the servers and the game crashes on them. Don't count the game out just yet and say that your "professional" opinion tells you this should have been rereleased. Give it another month for the Christmas updates to get put to bed and people who claim to be "power players" to go back to being once every other day people and lurking the forums again and you'll see a whole different game experience.

You've faux pas'd (sp / punctuation in the right place?) a few times:

- It's not another field altogether. I work (and am involved) with environments that are globally distributed - maybe a slightly smaller scale (only several 100,000s users instead of potentially millions, granted). My areas of expertise are authentication systems (Active Directory), databases (Active Directory, SQL, MySQL), applications (Active Directory, SharePoint, a multitude of bespoke apps), client/server architecture, terminal services (linux bases, MS Remote Desktop, Citrix), web apps (BuddyPress/WordPress, Boonex Dolphin, SharePoint), and networking (WAN/LAN/VPN across a multitude of networking technologies)... Agreed it's not a mobile gaming social network but it is client/server technology that ultimately relies on a database, authentication system and networking components. /Geek.

- Due to my job in managing (building, implementing, supporting) servers, applications and environments (architecting, implementing, supporting) in a global distributed environment, one of the core disciplines I have to work with and plan for is networking and capacity management. I (and not just me, others have said the same) have said a couple of times on here that it feels like resource/capacity issues with servers and/or bandwidth. You even point out that the server load is taxed - and that is something I can give my opinion on... After saying in the previous paragraph I can't...?! Anyway - the point is you should always have the resource required + a percentage overage in capacity. Do EA for this game? Maybe they've been caught off guard with the number of people suddenly playing... But this seems to have happened several times over now, and they're also not responding to support requests in the timescale they have set for themselves and then promise customers.

- With regards to animation... This isn't a terminal server application - in other words, the game in its entirety isn't happening on a remote server with the display being sent to you and the controls back to a remote server. If that was the case then the game would only be a couple of MB on our devices and wouldn't require lots of updates to the devices. The game itself may be taking place on a remote server (in numerical, mathematical form with a database) - but the animations are all local (and is most likely what is causing the large update files of 50 - 70MB+ - but in anycase this is invoked and run locally). This should not be causing issues server side.

- You talk about me mentioning my profession (as not relevant, when I beg to differ) - but then you, without knowing me or my experience, talk about "the programming languages" I know. Sure, I understand the logic and mechanics of programming and can get by in knocking a script or program together if I have to... However I'm not a programmer. Indeed every time I have to I need to refer back to syntax and it takes my quite a while. I don't doubt that the programmers at EA know much, much more than me (though you again assume that I think I do). What I do know about is distributed application platforms - afterall I'm an infrastructure engineer that's worked with a lot of global household names over the years, architecting, implementing and supporting infrastructure that may not be a game but really isn't many miles away in principle of implementation.

- It's not my professional opinion that tells me the game shouldn't have been released. It's my consumer opinion that says if you're gonna start allowing people to pay for things, make sure it works. My professional opinion understands that it could be capacity, that yes sometimes some things go wrong - but a lot is going wrong this past week beyond just a few hiccups, and that you really should be responding to support cases in the timescale you have set yourself (or even sending a generic message to everyone with outstanding cases saying "sorry we're going to be a bit longer in getting back to you" if you have issues with capacity there also!).