It has become clear that the pain caused by such a minor change has cut some players so deeply that they will never recover :rolleyes:.
As far as having a legal name changed, that is so unappliable to this situation it is not funny. You do not own your account on this game nor any content linked to it including your username. If the company decides to change it they can and will, all part of the agreement you signed. A join date on a forum is hardy an achievement in life nor should it be regarded as such.
Please remember the forum rules folks on trolling, Brandon already has his work cut out for him with everything going on, likely doesn't need to have to be swinging the banhammer around on top of it.
Look, you may not care about the change, but the rest of us do. I used to look at a person on the forums and consider them with respect because I saw their username, avatar, and signature and knew they had been around a long time. So yes, we do care about this change because the forums make us who we are. They identify us, build our reputation, show who we are. Now that's all being erased. I don't even know where half of the people who commonly posted on the forums went to. So I leave your opinion to you, and will continue to hold my position that this is a turn for the worse.
Yupp, it is ... which makes the whole transition even worse:
Using the same framework, but executed terribad ...
I've seen transitions way better, which had (incompatible) different frameworks.
At least the old Design can be reestablished ... at least on some Browsers (Stylish greets here) ... just takes some time rewriting the CSS. (which again means, this transition was executed badly ... very ... badly ... bad bad)
It has become clear that the pain caused by such a minor change has cut some players so deeply that they will never recover :rolleyes:.
As far as having a legal name changed, that is so unappliable to this situation it is not funny. You do not own your account on this game nor any content linked to it including your username. If the company decides to change it they can and will, all part of the agreement you signed. A join date on a forum is hardy an achievement in life nor should it be regarded as such.
Please remember the forum rules folks on trolling, Brandon already has his work cut out for him with everything going on, likely doesn't need to have to be swinging the banhammer around on top of it.
Also, some culture wouldn't hurt you : go read Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Hegel (and his concept of Anerkennung) or Plato, to understand why even a virtual identity is important to some people. I don't share their love of this community, but at least, I understand and respect their point.
I add my name to this list, but I don't agree with all of the OP's reasons.
Cryptic did an awful job in the conversion.
Among my complaints:
No warning the change was even coming so that people could prepare for a possible loss of data if something went wrong. A basic courtesy Cryptic choose not to extend to its player base, bad business decision.
Asking customers to log to an unknown (Peanut Labs?) website to fill out a survey which you can't even use the Zen as Cpoints for a week after you convert! Oh and some of the links aren't even unusable at this time, not a good first impression!
I've lost my avatar and get stuck with some ugly generic version. Wow what an improvement.:rolleyes:
They can't convince me that there was no way to convert my old posts to this new account, it has been done before at other sites.
No Documentation of the changes or an explanation on how to use new features.
Mail was removed? WTF.
Where the heck did my signature go? Mine was simple but others really put time and effort into theirs, that work is now gone.
Will be looking for a way to block or obscure the Zen promo banner, I don't want to see it.
I've been a huge supporter of the game through the great content drought, F2P transition, and lockboxes but I think Cryptic has really screwed the pooch here. Clearly, someone screwed up and should find themselves on the unemployment line, the poor planning on this is quite evident.
Come on Cryptic you should provide better service for loyal customers, for shame!
"Live Long and Prosper but always carry a fully charged phaser, just in case!". Arrr'ow
It has become clear that the pain caused by such a minor change has cut some players so deeply that they will never recover :rolleyes:.
As far as having a legal name changed, that is so unappliable to this situation it is not funny. You do not own your account on this game nor any content linked to it including your username. If the company decides to change it they can and will, all part of the agreement you signed. A join date on a forum is hardy an achievement in life nor should it be regarded as such.
Your name identifies you to the people you interact with in the outside world.
Your online handle identifies you to the people you interact with online.
This online handle is just as much an identifier as your real name, it is merely applicable in different cases. It can't, obviously, be used as a legal identifier the same way your real name can be used on things like passports, but there are numerous legal cases where someone's screenname has been regarded as their intellectual property.
Personally, I have been known as "Maelwys" online since I started playing turn based strategy games via email back in the early 90s.
PWE do NOT own our online personas. Yes, they own our account names, which may well have the same identifiers, but that does not give them any say over whether I should be known as "Maelwys" or "FluffyKittenPants" in online gaming circles.
Let's stick with the Real Name metaphor for the moment - assume that "Maelwys" is my real name and that I, as "Maelwys", go to work for a company. Said company gives me an office door that says "Maelwys", an Active Directory User Account called "Maelwys" with an email account that says Maelwys@Companyname.com, etc. etc.
I work for this company for several years, meeting clients, building up professional relationships, etc.
People I meet take my Card ("Maelwys at CompanyName") and my address is in their phonebooks (Maelwys C/O CompanyName). My Professional Accomplishments, good or bad, get accreditted to me. I build up a long employment history.
One day the company decides they don't want their employees to be known by their names anymore, so I'm given a reference number instead. Let's say "1701E", just for simplicity's sake. The people I've been associating with for the past several years suddenly don't know where to find me - they see new Reports or White Papers written by me and don't know it's me. Worse, all my PAST work at the company is now attributed to somebody else. It's like my entire prior professional existence at the company has been erased. Hours of work. Just. Gone.
Now realistically it's legally iffy... but let's assume that this company is within their rights to decide to suddenly impose all these changes without any warning. Doing so is still a douche move. At a minimum it proves they don't "care" about their employees, it'll hamper their productivity, and it will foster a lot of badwill.
Now let's take the obvious final step, and imagine that whilst all this is happening, the employees are not being paid by the company, but are in fact paying the company for the privilege of working there. And that someone in the company's HR department is parading around trying to convince the disgruntled workforce that all these changes are for their own benefit, and that they're wrong to voice any dissatisfaction with things.
I repeat, I am quite familiar with large scale Forum changes/merges, and I've never seen one go smoothly unless the online identity of the posters is respected.
this transition was executed badly ... very ... badly ... bad bad)
Flip through the archived posts. You'll see lots of charset errors. Looks like they went from one charset to another without translating it before hand.
If my post were a troll post your logic would apply. Stating facts is not trolling.
As far as online persona ownership goes, you may "own" your persona some places but when you signed up with this particular company you signed that persona over to them. For example if your name had something offensive in it they could without warning change it.
There are plenty of ways to identify yourself as your previous handle, not to mention anyone with half a brain can quite easily and readily identify posters with no effort. I personally had no trouble in spotting the Nagus's posts... i mean that 1 at the end of his name completely and utterly threw me off so far I could not rationally accept that that was infact him.
People are blowing this so far out of proportion.
[SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]
If I truly lacked empathy or a conscience I would not take time out of my day to help someone who had a less fortunate education than myself correct their gross misunderstanding of words in the English language.
I liked the forum beforehand, I thought it was a pretty good design. Now, even the Smilies just don't match.
I won't list every single problem I have here, because I'd take up half the page. I just hope we actually get some feedback taken into consideration and the forum changed in some way
===========
[SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]
Yeah... Not the best signiture, but it's my first time using an advanced image editing program, so... woo!
There are plenty of ways to identify yourself as your previous handle, not to mention anyone with half a brain can quite easily and readily identify posters with no effort. I personally had no trouble in spotting the Nagus's posts... i mean that 1 at the end of his name completely and utterly threw me off so far I could not rationally accept that that was infact him.
People are blowing this so far out of proportion.
OK, let's try it this way:
I had hundreds of posts prior to today on the forums, many of which had a lot of DPS testing, informative links, and build advice in them. I challenge you to find ten of them.
[ Edit: using the forum search function, not Google's Cache... ]
I had hundreds of posts prior to today on the forums, many of which had a lot of DPS testing, informative links, and build advice in them. I challenge you to find ten of them.
[ Edit: using the forum search function, not Google's Cache... ]
You clearly missed the point of my statement, it's ok. Its for future reference not their "archives". Frankly this might not have been a big deal had they just wiped the forums prior.
[SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]
If I truly lacked empathy or a conscience I would not take time out of my day to help someone who had a less fortunate education than myself correct their gross misunderstanding of words in the English language.
You clearly missed the point of my statement, it's ok. Its for future reference not their "archives". Frankly this might not have been a big deal had they just wiped the forums prior.
So instead of reattributing everything we ever posted to someone else, without notice, you're suggesting that they should have wiped it out completely, without notice?
Yes, I can certainly see how that would've prevented any nerdrage... :rolleyes:
Signed. I don't like the new font format, and I don't like how we can't keep our old account names. I also don't like that we can't have custom avatars. Strange that a Chinese company like PWE is curtailing freedom of expression, isn't it?
Also, the fact that I've had to register for a PWE account is awful. I don't like PWE one bit. The only company I like is Cryptic, and I 'd rather keep a Cryptic account than have to merge the two together. Just awful.
Also I'm NEVER buying Zen. I will buy cpoints and have bought along the lines of 50-100 thousand since I started on STO. If cpoints are gone, so is my money.
Cryptic, PWE is running your game into the ground. Don't try to tell us later that you didn't see it coming.
Like this hasn't? I don't know maybe its just me, but I have no problem coping with change, not like complaining about this change is going to change anything anyways. :biggrin:
[SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]
If I truly lacked empathy or a conscience I would not take time out of my day to help someone who had a less fortunate education than myself correct their gross misunderstanding of words in the English language.
Because I can't even link my existing PWE and Cryptic accounts. It finds the matching e-mail addys then when I go to link I get is an error stating that an account is already linked. Then you check the PWE forums for their knowledge base on Cryptic Account Linking and it's a blank page.
This whole thing is horribly done.
I'm a lifetime to STO and CO and am now readily thinking about uninstalling them both due to shoddy customer service. No way is PWE ever getting another penny of my hard earned cash.
ps. petitions rarely if ever work with pwe. they have changed the forum to their standard platform. it is unlikely to revert. we all went through it with PWI when they brought in the new software.
These overbasic boards suck.
Having all customization and history gone sucks even more.
Just posted to let them know.
Not going to use these boards anymore.
"Critics who say that the optimistic utopia Star Trek depicted is now outmoded forget the cultural context that gave birth to it: Star Trek was not a manifestation of optimism when optimism was easy. Star Trek declared a hope for a future that nobody stuck in the present could believe in. For all our struggles today, we haven’t outgrown the need for stories like Star Trek. We need tales of optimism, of heroes, of courage and goodness now as much as we’ve ever needed them." -Thomas Marrone
Comments
/Signed
Look, you may not care about the change, but the rest of us do. I used to look at a person on the forums and consider them with respect because I saw their username, avatar, and signature and knew they had been around a long time. So yes, we do care about this change because the forums make us who we are. They identify us, build our reputation, show who we are. Now that's all being erased. I don't even know where half of the people who commonly posted on the forums went to. So I leave your opinion to you, and will continue to hold my position that this is a turn for the worse.
Yupp, it is ... which makes the whole transition even worse:
Using the same framework, but executed terribad ...
I've seen transitions way better, which had (incompatible) different frameworks.
At least the old Design can be reestablished ... at least on some Browsers (Stylish greets here) ... just takes some time rewriting the CSS. (which again means, this transition was executed badly ... very ... badly ... bad bad)
Also, some culture wouldn't hurt you : go read Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Hegel (and his concept of Anerkennung) or Plato, to understand why even a virtual identity is important to some people. I don't share their love of this community, but at least, I understand and respect their point.
God, lvl 60 CW. 17k.
Cryptic did an awful job in the conversion.
Among my complaints:
No warning the change was even coming so that people could prepare for a possible loss of data if something went wrong. A basic courtesy Cryptic choose not to extend to its player base, bad business decision.
Asking customers to log to an unknown (Peanut Labs?) website to fill out a survey which you can't even use the Zen as Cpoints for a week after you convert! Oh and some of the links aren't even unusable at this time, not a good first impression!
I've lost my avatar and get stuck with some ugly generic version. Wow what an improvement.:rolleyes:
They can't convince me that there was no way to convert my old posts to this new account, it has been done before at other sites.
No Documentation of the changes or an explanation on how to use new features.
Mail was removed? WTF.
Where the heck did my signature go? Mine was simple but others really put time and effort into theirs, that work is now gone.
Will be looking for a way to block or obscure the Zen promo banner, I don't want to see it.
*****************************************************************
I've been a huge supporter of the game through the great content drought, F2P transition, and lockboxes but I think Cryptic has really screwed the pooch here. Clearly, someone screwed up and should find themselves on the unemployment line, the poor planning on this is quite evident.
Come on Cryptic you should provide better service for loyal customers, for shame!
Co-Leader of Serenity's Grasp
Your name identifies you to the people you interact with in the outside world.
Your online handle identifies you to the people you interact with online.
This online handle is just as much an identifier as your real name, it is merely applicable in different cases. It can't, obviously, be used as a legal identifier the same way your real name can be used on things like passports, but there are numerous legal cases where someone's screenname has been regarded as their intellectual property.
Personally, I have been known as "Maelwys" online since I started playing turn based strategy games via email back in the early 90s.
PWE do NOT own our online personas. Yes, they own our account names, which may well have the same identifiers, but that does not give them any say over whether I should be known as "Maelwys" or "FluffyKittenPants" in online gaming circles.
Let's stick with the Real Name metaphor for the moment - assume that "Maelwys" is my real name and that I, as "Maelwys", go to work for a company. Said company gives me an office door that says "Maelwys", an Active Directory User Account called "Maelwys" with an email account that says Maelwys@Companyname.com, etc. etc.
I work for this company for several years, meeting clients, building up professional relationships, etc.
People I meet take my Card ("Maelwys at CompanyName") and my address is in their phonebooks (Maelwys C/O CompanyName). My Professional Accomplishments, good or bad, get accreditted to me. I build up a long employment history.
One day the company decides they don't want their employees to be known by their names anymore, so I'm given a reference number instead. Let's say "1701E", just for simplicity's sake. The people I've been associating with for the past several years suddenly don't know where to find me - they see new Reports or White Papers written by me and don't know it's me. Worse, all my PAST work at the company is now attributed to somebody else. It's like my entire prior professional existence at the company has been erased. Hours of work. Just. Gone.
Now realistically it's legally iffy... but let's assume that this company is within their rights to decide to suddenly impose all these changes without any warning. Doing so is still a douche move. At a minimum it proves they don't "care" about their employees, it'll hamper their productivity, and it will foster a lot of badwill.
Now let's take the obvious final step, and imagine that whilst all this is happening, the employees are not being paid by the company, but are in fact paying the company for the privilege of working there. And that someone in the company's HR department is parading around trying to convince the disgruntled workforce that all these changes are for their own benefit, and that they're wrong to voice any dissatisfaction with things.
I repeat, I am quite familiar with large scale Forum changes/merges, and I've never seen one go smoothly unless the online identity of the posters is respected.
Pot, meet Kettle.
Flip through the archived posts. You'll see lots of charset errors. Looks like they went from one charset to another without translating it before hand.
/10char
As far as online persona ownership goes, you may "own" your persona some places but when you signed up with this particular company you signed that persona over to them. For example if your name had something offensive in it they could without warning change it.
There are plenty of ways to identify yourself as your previous handle, not to mention anyone with half a brain can quite easily and readily identify posters with no effort. I personally had no trouble in spotting the Nagus's posts... i mean that 1 at the end of his name completely and utterly threw me off so far I could not rationally accept that that was infact him.
People are blowing this so far out of proportion.
If I truly lacked empathy or a conscience I would not take time out of my day to help someone who had a less fortunate education than myself correct their gross misunderstanding of words in the English language.
I liked the forum beforehand, I thought it was a pretty good design. Now, even the Smilies just don't match.
I won't list every single problem I have here, because I'd take up half the page. I just hope we actually get some feedback taken into consideration and the forum changed in some way
[SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]
Yeah... Not the best signiture, but it's my first time using an advanced image editing program, so... woo!
OK, let's try it this way:
I had hundreds of posts prior to today on the forums, many of which had a lot of DPS testing, informative links, and build advice in them. I challenge you to find ten of them.
[ Edit: using the forum search function, not Google's Cache...
Blablabla is it long enough now? -_-
This is the fake account of: '@Shinji_Yonazaki' Joined: JAN-2010. (Thanks a lot PWE!)
[SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]
You clearly missed the point of my statement, it's ok. Its for future reference not their "archives". Frankly this might not have been a big deal had they just wiped the forums prior.
If I truly lacked empathy or a conscience I would not take time out of my day to help someone who had a less fortunate education than myself correct their gross misunderstanding of words in the English language.
So instead of reattributing everything we ever posted to someone else, without notice, you're suggesting that they should have wiped it out completely, without notice?
Yes, I can certainly see how that would've prevented any nerdrage... :rolleyes:
New format is horrid.
Also, the fact that I've had to register for a PWE account is awful. I don't like PWE one bit. The only company I like is Cryptic, and I 'd rather keep a Cryptic account than have to merge the two together. Just awful.
This is pure garbage.
Also I'm NEVER buying Zen. I will buy cpoints and have bought along the lines of 50-100 thousand since I started on STO. If cpoints are gone, so is my money.
Cryptic, PWE is running your game into the ground. Don't try to tell us later that you didn't see it coming.
I miss my Gowron Simmons.
Gowron Simmons is pleased to see you, yes!
Join Date: January 2010
Post Count: Who cares?
If I truly lacked empathy or a conscience I would not take time out of my day to help someone who had a less fortunate education than myself correct their gross misunderstanding of words in the English language.
I'm not buying zen either. God, where have you gone my dearest gowron simmons?
Because I can't even link my existing PWE and Cryptic accounts. It finds the matching e-mail addys then when I go to link I get is an error stating that an account is already linked. Then you check the PWE forums for their knowledge base on Cryptic Account Linking and it's a blank page.
This whole thing is horribly done.
I'm a lifetime to STO and CO and am now readily thinking about uninstalling them both due to shoddy customer service. No way is PWE ever getting another penny of my hard earned cash.
http://sto-forum.perfectworld.com/showthread.php?t=275801
ps. petitions rarely if ever work with pwe. they have changed the forum to their standard platform. it is unlikely to revert. we all went through it with PWI when they brought in the new software.
@Liath | My PRIMUS Page | Altaholics | New Vehicle Models | New Emblems | Flag Tights
Asterelle's Forum Enhancement Extension | Game Side Panel Add-In* | Game Server Status Add-In
*Updated to work on Embedded/Non embedded forums post August 2015 Changes
Having all customization and history gone sucks even more.
Just posted to let them know.
Not going to use these boards anymore.
I am really thinking you have lost the plot cryptic!
We have to get a PWE account to access the forums. WTF?
I can't use my Cryptic account to post. WTF?
The forums look horrible now. WTF?
BB code doesn't work in signatures. WTF?
My avatar is gone. WTF?
I will never buy Zen...especially with all these mega-ugly advertisements harassing me everywhere I go.
I've been defending Cryptic and PWE since I got here. That changes today.
"Critics who say that the optimistic utopia Star Trek depicted is now outmoded forget the cultural context that gave birth to it: Star Trek was not a manifestation of optimism when optimism was easy. Star Trek declared a hope for a future that nobody stuck in the present could believe in. For all our struggles today, we haven’t outgrown the need for stories like Star Trek. We need tales of optimism, of heroes, of courage and goodness now as much as we’ve ever needed them."
-Thomas Marrone
Maybe we should all boycott this thing until message heard loud and clear!
I've ridden through the deserts of Athas on a Horse made of Flame....