Shadow_Kitty

Well, if he's following the spec, I can't blame him for taking shortcuts. It's his job to do it fast, cheap and safely and according to spec.

I'm afraid that you're right.

Considering that we euros paid for four servers, not eleven, for six years, and that the Euro and USD currency rates means that we're paying 50% more for just over a third of the service, I think we can strike "cheap".

This has been in the works for some time, and they have until the end of summer = half a year to for a data migration, so we can probably strike "fast" as well. It's not that they're building a completely new service. And I'm not in a rush - they can wait until CoH2, as far as I'm concerned.

That leaves "good".

Right?

Yep. But it's also a cheap and lazy simple mechanical process that also happens to be the simple mechanical process that affects the greatest number of accounts.

To be completely honest, I give f-all about the professional programming perspective. Some jobs are easier, some are harder, but it's the programmer's job to deliver a product according to specs.

I see this as a customer relations issue. Either the spec didn't take customer relations in account, or it valued the programming cost over the affected customers, or some programmer ignored the spec. Either case, it's unsatisfactory from a customer relations point of view.

I've survived for six years on four servers. I mostly play on one, rarely visit another, and the two last I've never even touched (granted, they're the French and German servers, I don't understand German and could possibly order a fish for dinner in French without poisoning myself).

How would 11 more servers that I wouldn't visit make me happy?

Seriously.

That's just the login name. However, if there's a conflict about @GadgetDon, and he is Euro, and he first logs in on the character DonCocky, he will no longer be @GadgetDon. He will be @DonCocky, unless there already is a @DonCocky - then he will be @DonCock.

Correct. Thanks.

The point is that an American company has been forced to comply to a ruling of a governing body of the European Union, including building a special version of their software and pay quite a hefty fine, despite the American company being non-European.

Nope. Please tell me how you came to that conclusion from what I said, so I can avoid expressing myself in such unclear ways in the future.

What I tried to say is:

The total number of NA accounts and EU accounts is not relevant to this reasoning. The non-conflicting accounts will not be affected at all, neither EU accounts or NA accounts, so we can ignore them when we're assessing the damage.

What is relevant is the subset of accounts with conflicting names. That's where the damage happens. And in that subset, there are three sub-subsets, namely the sub-subset "EU primary account conflicting with own NA secondary" (call this sub-subset S1), and the sub-subset "NA primary conflicting with own EU secondary" (S2 for short).

The third sub-subset "EU player with same global name as another NA player" (S3) is a constant; no matter who wins the conflict, in each such pair there will be one shafted player. So S3 is also ignored when assessing the damage.

If an EU global name lose the conflict, then the sub-subset S1 gets shafted, because their primary global name is changed, while the S2 is not as shafted because their secondary global name is changed.

Conversely, if an NA global name lose the conflict, then S2 gets shafted when their primary global is changed, while S1 is less so because their secondary global is changed.

Since I believe that S1 is greater than S2 - i.e. there are more EU players with secondary NA accounts, than there are NA players with secondary EU accounts - more players will be shafted if EU global names lose the conflict, than would be shafted if NA global names lost the conflict.

Now, NCsoft will try to rectify this by having a reactivation weekend prior to the change and a global name change on self-induced conflicts, which is very decent. But my point is that less accounts would be affected, and perhaps a reactivation and global name change wouldn't even be needed, if it was NA accounts that lost global name conflicts.

Seattle-based Microsoft had to pay billion-euro fines to the EU Council and even build a special Explorer-less Euro version of Windows. Nobody buys that version, but it's there and it was enforced by a governing European body onto an American company.

...but seriously, let's drop this legal thread. It's silly. It's not discrimination (but if it were, it would be governed by English law, 'kay), it's just either the cheap solution or the lazy solution that in either case happens to screw as many players as possible and all of them Euros. Even if the solution were to screw NA players, there would be less players screwed, since there are more EU players with NA accounts than NA players with EU accounts.

The EULA between a Swedish player and the EU company NCsoft Europe also do business within the jurisdiction of England. There is no NCsoft Sweden. Despite me living in Sweden, I do business with UK-based NCsoft Europe, under a contract that specifically states that English law applies.

You could argue that paying 150% more* for 4/11th of the amount of servers for six years would be volunteering at least the money for the fairer system.

* True, that's temporary and because the euro currently is a stronger currency than the dollar, but still.

Aaaactually, the User Agreement itself has this to say about the matter:

Actually, I wasn't complaining about discrimination. I was correcting Capa_Devans' statement that EU players abide under US law since the servers are in Texas.

And that's not the case. Well, it's true that the servers are in Texas, but European players have a business relation with an European entity under a contract that is explicitly governed by English law, and any legal disputes are to be settled in an English court.

That may very well change in the future (unlikely, since international transactions of contracts are pretty tricky), but at the present, it doesn't matter that the servers are in Texas. Our contracts and business relations are with NCsoft Europe, Brighton, UK.

Three objections.

1) Even if we ignore that this example is a bit artificial: in the hypothetical Vet Scheme, the NA player loses one global name of two, i.e. 50% of his globals. If the proposed Geographical Scheme was used to resolve this conflict, the EU player loses one global name of one, i.e. 100% of his globals. So in this particular example, the NA player gets "half the damage" of the EU player. If we are to select scheme based on doing as little damage as possible to any given player, Vet Scheme is less unfair than Geo Scheme in this particular case.

However, this is just one example. We have to look at the whole. Hence objection 2.

2) Even if we ignore "half damage" and it doesn't matter how many globals you lose out of how many - if you lose one, you're as much hurt as someone who loses twelve - the Vet Scheme shafts players in special cases like the above. It's not geographically bound either; it could in theory happen to a EU player as well. But it's still a special case.

However, the Geo Scheme shafts every geographically selected player with a name conflict. That's not the special case. It's the general case.

And even then you can argue that that's not valid, because in every conflict there will be two parts: one affected player and one not affected, so it's not a special case that the Vet Scheme shafts a player. Every scheme will shaft one player. Which brings me to objection three.

3) No matter what scheme you select, there will be a certain number of conflicts. In all those conflicts, there will be one affected player. The scheme only selects which player gets affected, but the number of affected players is constant. If there are X conflicts, there will be X affected players, no matter the scheme.

Of all those players, you will find a lot more affected players saying "oh, it's okay, The Other Guy had more vet badges than me, so it's just fair he gets the global", than affected players saying "oh, it's okay, The Other Guy is from the other side of the pond, so it's just fair he gets the global".

Aaaactually... our accounts and contracts are with a EU company. Subsidiary, yes, but European:

Emphasis are mine.

I'm primarily talking about global names on player accounts, not the accounts per se. I'm not talking about the login name on those players' accounts. I'm sorry if that was unclear.

If they implement it. Even if they don't, I can live with it.

Yes, that's nice. Still, how much less problem would it be if it was the few NAs with transatlantic accounts that would be given this? How many fewer support cases on more convenient times for lower rates?

Possibly, but then I would like to hear someone with a red name stating that "we can't use veterancy as selection criterion because it's unsafe".

At the moment, all I've heard specifically on the selection criterion is that registration date would be unfair and harder to explain to the affected players, and their email address may be invalid so we may not inform all of them. That sounds to me that a selection other than geographical location is not only possible but also not particularly dangerous; but customer support may have to talk to work more.

Nope. 100% pure Euro here. My grandfather has a cousin in Chicago somewhere, but that's the closest to an NA account I can come.

I actually doubt that any discrimination law is applicable, but if it is, it is a European one, not an American one. Which was the main point of that post.

And yes, I'm not sure that I will be affected, but I would not be surprised if I was.

What worries me is how poorly planned this seems to be. For instance, it's said that EU players will be affected, because that will affect the least number of players. If it was NA players instead, it would affect exactly the same number of players. It may even affect less players since a lot of those collisions will be EU players' NA accounts, and my guess is that there are more EU players with NA accounts than NA players with EU accounts.

Also, there is a warning that what may seem fair to some may be utterly unfair to others. I can't think of any scheme that would be more unfair than to go by geographical borders. Even picking the other side would be more fair - their phone rates when calling support would be considerably lower than ours, and they can do it at un-ungodly hours. That would be more fair than to pick the side that will have to call transatlantic rates at silly o'clock to get support by phone.

This sends up big red flags to me. While I have no doubt that the merge has to be done, how to do it seems very very poorly planned. If at all.

Well, that is part of the problem: a lot of us Euros (like, all of us) think that it is unfair that Europeans automatically lose the battle for their globals, just because we're from the other side of the pond. The criterion "not NA" is by every definition of the word unfair. I would be surprised if any other scheme would cause as many paying customers to consider themselves unfairly treated.

Good to hear that you're still discussing the matter though, and thanks for informing us.

If you read the EULA for EU users, you will find this at the start of part 15:

Thing is that it's a bit tricky for a US company to offer services to EU customers. It's a lot easier to have a company based in EU under EU laws, and let that company do internal transactions to the mother company in the US.

As a result, we Euro players have a business relation with NCSoft Europe which is under European law (in this case specifically English law). There's not much left of that company, except for the part that takes our subscription money and passes it back to the US mother company. But it is subject to English law and EU directives.

So the anti-discrimination law may be applicable.

Even if we were to agree with your point of view (which most of us Euros are not, and that should be quite apparent after 15 pages in two days), ever heard of the straw that broke the camel's back?

"It's a cultural thing. You're American, you wouldn't understand."

Thing is, we're a pretty tight community over here. Everyone knows everyone, and we know each other by global name. The global name is a part of our respective identities! That's how we're known to each other because that identity stretch across server borders. It is our digital selves in this game, built up for years. Our identities is not the characters; it is our globals.

At about this point in the discussion, someone (usually American) says "but it's only a game!"

Well, perhaps, but it's also a part of our social life. A digital one, granted, and one based on make-believe, granted, but we still travel all over Europe to see each other for friendships made in this digital make-believe world. We still mourn our digital friends when they die.

So, in all fairness to the NA players, if your global means so little to you, and they mean so much to us, why don't YOU lose it when the server lists merge? They don't mean anything to you.

Right?

Well, I give you that. But at least there's the chance that we decide that tonight is the night when we should go to the movies or have a beer at the pub with the mates, or simply don't bother to login tonight, and you can still do a quick logon in the morning using your laptop on the bus just to change the global.

And before you go on about how unlikely that is to happen, remember that with the change both globals scheme, you have a chance to steal your global back. You may actually keep it. If your global really matters to you, you can take half a day off and fix it - as can we.

But with the announced scheme, EU players do not have a chance. We will lose it.

Someone had, but not me. And there was a pretty nice solution to it as well: add two checkboxes "EU" or "NA" to the login screen that invisibly appends the "EU" to the account name when logging in.

Yep. The cheap and downright lazy way this is handled makes me angry.

And since quite a lot of the vocal Americans in this thread says their globals don't matter to them, but us vocal Euros says it does to us, I guess the cheap and lazy but fair solution is to add "_eu" or "_na" to both globals in a conflict and issue a global name change token to both.

Because then the euros who care about their globals would change it and live happily ever after as "@myglobal", while the Americans who would not care (as so often iterated in this thread) would live happily ever after as "@myglobal_na".

...right?

Now you're you're making a general case, NA. Please don't.

It could equally well be that the NA servers are the ones moving onto the euro list.

Actually, it's neither of those two. It's a merge of two lists into a new list.

It's a query in a database. It involves one database guy running the query.

The query has to match two sets of globals in two databases and change one of them, depending on which database it is in if they conflict. The query could equally well change both names, or use another criteria to change one depending on being active, age, or whatever.

The point is, it's done by one script that acts according to a set of conditions. There's no practical difference in logistical requirements.

And we lose an identity that's been around for five years. Possibly to an inactive account or a trial account and in some cases to our own accounts.

It's a bit like you moving to Paris, and suddenly French immigrations finds out that you're too much alike this guy in the census, so from now on, you have to have a sex change, no matter if that guy moved to Germany, was a tourist on vacation, or for that matter was you on vacation five years ago.

Is it worth it for access to another country, no matter how big it is and how great the food is?

Meh. I liked not having that bleeding popup in my face.