Sadiablo

I was hoping he didn't get in trouble for having free time and get tossed into some oubliette. 

A wiki would be a super nice idea, There is a really helpful one for FS and some of the other games, Gothador has needed something like that for years since the GoW and Gothaguide went down. 

If they just started it, I am pretty sure a lot of the players would help update and maintain it. They are posting some locations here on the forums for things, but it really isn't the same as a dedicated resource set up like a wiki. 

That is something that would have been awesome. 

I just put a ticket in about my account being compromised and a character in specific having some questions of ownership. 

Can you guys please take a look at it and see if you have any suggestions or can resolve the problem before it gets really really messy?

27-34 days on open tickets.  With the amount of time the staff spends on the forums is it really that difficult to spend 5-10 min (or more preferably) to answer the stockpiled tickets from time to time?

I know Eldevin is going to be out soon and you have to make sure the bugs are out of that and that everything goes smoothly, but seriously guys. I am sure I am not the only person that has tickets in. Which means paying customers are being ignored for 3-4 weeks at a time.  

If you guys don't have enough staff, hire a few temps to just come in and answer tickets or something. There are posts on the forums from almost all the games that have been waiting since october or the first week of november for a reply and not getting one from the HCS Staff (which people need)

I know it sounds like it, but really not trying to be a nag. I just want to be treated like a customer since.. ya know, I am a customer. I am not asking for freebies or standing in line somewhere asking for donations with my hand out. 

I am one of many people who have been playing HCS games as long as there have even been HCS games and paying the entire time for them. And since that means we have all given you hundreds or thousands of dollars over the years for virtual goods instead of real world physical items.. it really isn't too much to ask to get support assistance with tickets or tech problems or game questions. 

Everyone else feels the same way .. well, except FS players and Eldevin players since every bit of staff attention goes to one of those two games and every other game gets almost entirely ignored. That's why everyone left Gothador and most of the other games and they are now ghost towns.  And when you see more than 10 people online at a time it's like Christmas!

They got run off and pushed into other games where the staff actually pays attention to them and answers their support problems. 

It's professional, part of the job, and greately appreciated since people are paying for products (playing the game) as well as someone to answer their questions on a customer support basis and they are not receiving that at all. 

Thank you so much for this thread Iago, it's something that is really needed.  There are so many things people want and have been wanting for the last 5 or so years apparently it is really hard to narrow it down to one list.  Even more so since you are the one that is (un) lucky enough to be the only person working on gothador.  I really miss when it was you and Doc and Hoofy  all chipping in, I feel bad that it's just you doing it all  AND on top of being pulled constantly into other games that have their own team. 

We don't get to ambush and steal their team dev's, I don't think it's right that they can pull you from  Gothador when they have their own people already. 

As far as updates, I will give you a few things that EVERYONE on the forums has said they want, and then a few things that I would personally like to see , that I think would also be appreciated by other people in the game (for those that are actually left)

Community requests. 

#1.  An information resource,

Something that would at the very least "fill in" for the dead sites like Guild of Wisdom and Gothaguide, we need something like that desperately.  It would help people keep their interest in the game by making them able to actually find things, and it may help rekindle the interests of players who only left because those resources vanished. 

Plus it would be immensely helpful to new players, many of whom spend all day asking questions in the shoutbox nearly begging for help since nobody can find anything anywhere or about anything so they quit out of sheer frustration alone. 

Every other game out there has at least some sort of Wikipedia type page set up as an information resource to provide people anything they need to find in the game.  All you guys would have to do is start it up and I am sure people would gladly add to it little by little till it was a fully useable information site. You wouldn't have to do all the work yourselves at all. 

#2. Content/Update Roadmaps,

I use this term because I have seen them in Fallen sword and the other games and they are very well received by the players. It lets them know not only that there are actually updates coming in the future but it gives it them an idea of when or what they involve, it lets the players know you are listening to them and have a list so to speak of things to iron the bugs out of, modify, update or implement to keep the game going. 

#3. Invasions! / Dark Clouds!

You could even use a RNG type system to play this out, the game can randomly determine the invasion type for a given time period, For example. Somewhere between the 15th and maybe 22nd of every month an invasion will occur. The game can randomly determine what it will be too. One month may be squiggles, next could be incendite or Zahaar etc. People would love items from those events that they can use to gear up their character or their alts. 

Plus, Dark clouds are always fun and encourages people to pop into the game more often since they know if they leave their characters just sitting in 1 spot for 3 months means that they will be dead and have lost a host of body parts and gold or whatever else. 

#4. More detailed/informative quest information in logs

(I know this will be very time intensive so a little at a time works, doesn't have to be updated all at once). Some of the quests are very vague, they just say (as an example)" go kill x amount of creature" but they don't actually tell you always where the creatures are, and since there isn't a lot of information floating around the people have no idea where to go and look for the creatures or items required by a quest. So updated information that tells people more or less exactly where to go or exactly what they need to do could be a huge help. Even more so without an information resource like Gothaguide/ GOW up and working properly or at all

Personal Requests:

#1.  Character services implemented/ re implemented.

 You USE to have a character rename service. This was a fantastic idea, sometimes people wanted to change things up and give their characters a new feel and being able to rename it was a really nice option. Especially people that come back into the game after some time away (like myself) and don't really feel like a "Insert Random Name" any more. Being able to rename it would be really nice to fit their new playstyle, Hoof said "You can easily create a new character" which is true, however. Not everyone wants to re roll a new character, go through all the tier quests  find all of the impossible to find information/ items again and level to 5,10,15,25 or 50K+ with a new character just to get a different feel with their character and essentially scrap all the years they put into the characters when something as simple as a name change would work. Plus it was great for you guys at HCS. You made money off of it, it took a few min here and there to implement the new name and voila! Happy customer, money to help fund your projects and people can go back to enjoying their new character feel. 

Along that same vein,

Maybe a race change service, and for the same reason as the name changes. Maybe you don't feel like a (insert random race) any more but you don't want to have 4,5 or 10 years worth of work to just go to waste by having to roll up a new character and start from scratch again. And since there is no race revert quest above tier 2 or 3 maybe.. Once you pass that line there is no going back. What about players like Fredd or Vickie? they are 189,000  and 227,000 or so. What if they wanted to be a Diabolic or Lich or any other class. They are screwed, They have to spend all the time and effort to make that new character and go through the mind numbing amount of questing, leveling and gearing up all over again just to experience the new  race. And that is really unfair, especially since they can't just go and look up all the quest information needed to do the hundreds of quests again to make all that happen and not many of us have an identic memory to remember every single step in perfect detail. And since much of their items probably came from long forgotten invasions, it may be hard to re aquire all the materials to reforge/remix  to make the gear again, or to get lucky enough to get all the items to drop again.

I am willing to bet that if you re instated the name change service you would have people lining up to do it, and same with race changes. It's something every other game out there has and you know why? People want those options AND it makes the company $ to offer those services for a modest fee. I know I would gladly pay $20 to change a character name and probably even the same amount to change races. There you go, $40 right off the bat to change a couple lines of code in your database. I get what I want, you get the money you want/need and more importantly.. you get a happy customer!. It is a win-win situation for everyone. 

And since people have a lot of gear they worked forever to get, and items that come from invasions or events that never happen again, trying to replace all of that stuff is a nightmare. So letting them keep what they have and just race change or name change or both would be a great boon to people. 

#2. More Staff support, or at least enough to be able to respond to player tickets. Submitting a ticket is the preferred way to get assistance, and while that is good in theory.. it only works if someone is actually answering the tickets you know?.

I understand that  there is a money issue, HCS may not have enough $ at any given time to hire ANY staff, let alone a barebones crew of them. But As Marjin suggested in a thread I started before, there is a really simple way to deal with that. 

You could bring people in on an intern basis. That would give you new staff and you wouldn't have to pay them very much, if at all . You could offer them hands on training with coding or customer support that would teach them how to work for you and do the stuff you need at HCS. It's another Win-Win situation.  You get assistance, you may even get enough people in the studio that each game can go back to having it's own team (which would be a godsend to players and you alike) and once they are competent enough with the ins and outs of the game. They can be the team that works on this game or one of your other current games since they would already have some experience working with it. And once you have staff support and all the things players want, you would start bringing more money back in through the game so you could then afford to hire more people or start paying the interns when they became full fledged members of the staff. 

Everybody that has left the game from what I have seen and the players I still keep in contact have told me that they left because the game was "dead", "There is no new content, no bug fixes, no attention paid to the game" and similar related comments. So having a dedicated team working on the game, regularly adding things to it or fixing the laundry list of problems people have been reporting for years. (And customer support of course) would be a blessing for all of us players and it would be music to your bovine ears when everyone in the community changes from being unhappy and complaining constantly, to being content/ happy and thanking you. 

That's it for now though  Btw.. when you can, can you peek at some of the peoples tickets that have been sitting in que for weeks now without resolution?

Thank you Iago. 

First you take out Veruca in Charlie and the chocolate factory and now you take out everyone in a square 

While I do appreciate that when going to the Gothador Game window from here to log into the game, it says there are over 95,000 players.  I am saddened by the fact that at any given time  over the past couple of weeks that I have been back to playing it has said there are (at most) 8 people online at a time. 

I know Gothador has had a long run since 2004 and most games never live that long  so in that regards it is an incredible success story. I want the game to revive though personally, it was a big part of my life for a while and I am sure other people can relate.  All the hours we spen't running around during an invasion gathering goodies, seeing a new creature and saying "Hey what's that?!" and as soon as you step into the square with it, it shows you that it was in fact the quickest path to your respective hellgate/graveyard/heaven gate or whatnot. 

All the time on the Gothador Radio Show with Jinxeth (You're the man Jinxeth!) or spent running around exploring things and adding all that info to the now non existant / or practically non existant "Guild of Wisdom" site or Gothaguide.org. It was a lot of good memories and some very cool people came and went, 

(I still love the Demi cult of Enlightened Squirrel Wranglers.. Damn you Costin for such a catchy name!)

And then there's Butters and Nyarlathotep and  the people from Fate or Omega cell or Beltaine Blade. 

Love them or hate them (though everybody loved butters and Nyar!)  all of these people left a big impression on you (and definitely me) and for a long time it was more than just "a game"

So, in that vein.. I was thinking we should have a suggestion thread and maybe if possible get it stickied!

Things that the remainder of the Gothador community think could help freshen up the game and maybe draw some of it's crowd back or perhaps bring in new blood. 

So, post your ideas here and maybe the cow gods will see them and be able to work some of the stuff in as content in the near future

^

I have been trying for a couple weeks to get into some of my alts, but I can't remember or find the passwords I used for them since it was back in 2006. 

The problem is I can't use the "forgot password"option either since the email address I registered the characters to are no longer active.  Every couple years I change email addresses and those have been dead since 2008 or so. So there is no way for me to be able to get into my characters but I don't want to just start over from scratch when I have lvl 4k+ characters fully geared still in the game that just need logged into and re subscribed. 

I have tickets in about it but they are all pending a week+ without any response or resolution.  Any help guys?

Thanks.