Downtime, and Why It's Been Happening

In case you haven't noticed, or you've been living under a rock (like me), Heroes has had quite a lot of downtime lately. Naturally this raises quite a lot of concerns and complaints. Luckily, there has been some dev response on this. And quite a lot of it as well.

Zarquon told us what the issue was.

Zarquon posted in You're not alone:

The raid controller was timing out on the writes to the drive, thus forcing the drive to go offline. Our vender said there was a firmware upgrade for the raid controller that directly addresses this problem. We are taking his word, I just upgraded the firmware before bring the server back online.

For those that don't know, a RAID is a group of hard drives set up in such a way that they work together. RAIDs can speed up the transmission of data, keep the data in a reliable copy, or a combination of the two. They're mainly used to keep a server up if a hard drive fails. If the RAID controller fails, however, then you're screwed.

Fear not, as the compensation fairy seems to be polishing her Wand of Blessing...

FujiQ posted in You're not alone:

Hey Everyone,

We didn't get a page last night/this morning so I was the unhappy first IWG to find out H was down again. Please let me be very up front when I say that you aren't the only ones irked about the situation. We know it's frustrating and we're doing the best we can right now.

We'd like to make it up to you. However, it would be a little pointless to give you any sort of in game compensation until we know that the problem is fixed. Our vendor told us to upgrade the firmware so that's the step we're at now. If that fixes it, we'll let you know how the compensation is going to work out.

I'm so sorry for the inconvenience guys, I know it's frustrating. Thank you for your patience on this matter.

Sincerely,

FujiQ

Pay attention to the second paragraph. No word yet on what this compensation might be. But it's coming.

Got any reporting talent?

Looks like there's another opening for reporters. If you like to write for Ashen Empires, this is your chance to put your pen where your virtual parchment is.

FujiQ posted in AE Reporter Opening:

IWG will begin accepting applications to fill one spot on the AE Reporter team. To be considered, you must be an active and vocal community member with no past violations on your record. You also must be willing and able to write at least two articles a month, at a minimum of 250 words each, about various community and game events.

If you are chosen to become a reporter, you will receive a complimentary subscription. Your posts will appear on the AE Website as well.

Those interested in applying should send a sample piece of at least 250 words to support@ashenempires.com with the subject "AE Reporter Submission." Please tell us your player name in the same email. You may send plain text or an attached word document.

Good luck

Halloween Event set for October 30/31!

It's that time of year again. In a growing tradition, IWG will be holding it's 3rd annual Halloween event. This year, with more candy!

FujiQ posted in Halloween Event 2007:

Ready your weapons and clear your calendars, my friends, because this Halloween IWG invites you to a day of dungeon crawling, candy collecting, prize winning madness. It's going down at the Halloween dungeon which opens only once a year. New candy and new candy holders will be introduced to commemorate the 2007 event.

The Halloween dungeon, which is located in King Lotor's castle (not to be confused with Lotor's Summer Palace), will open twice on each server:

Tuesday the 30th
Legends: 10am-12pm CST, 3pm-5pm UTC
Heroes: 5pm-7pm CST, 10pm-12am UTC

Wednesday the 31st
Heroes: 10am-12pm CST, 3pm-5pm UTC
Legends: 5pm-7pm CST, 10pm-12am UTC

For more time conversions, you can use this website.

Hoping they'll do one on a Saturday...See you there! :)

Some interesting stuff about the Broken Finger Dungeon

Midnight started a thread not too long ago about how the bosses weren't spawning in the Broken Finger Dungeon. Well, it's not necessarily about how the bosses weren't spawning. It's more about how you're paying extra to get access to premium content and not receiving all the content. Naturally, this upsets those players who regularly go.

Both FujiQ and OneEye had some information on the matter. Quite a few players have asked that the timer count only when you are in the dungeon. FujiQ responded on that.

FujiQ posted in Broken Finger Dungeon: The Ingenious Scam? (Page 2)

We've been asked if the BF dungeon worked so that the 8 hours only counted for time spent in the dungeon but the way the game is architected keeps us from being able to do that.

Lara Orcsplitter responded to this and asked why a second NPC couldn't be added to stop the timer. Perhaps this can be looked into. But I keep thinking that people would still complain because they forgot to talk to this NPC.

A real shocker (at least to some people) came in the form of OneEye's input on the content there.

OneEye posted in Broken Finger Dungeon: The Ingenious Scam? (Page 3):

BF was designed as a 1 hour experience, if the dungeon was changed to a in-dungeon experience, the timer would be reduced accordingly.

So what we're really getting for 15 tokens is the ability to experience "everything" in approximately 8 opportunities. In reality, it's probably more along the lines of a little over 6 times. It's almost like getting 15 pulls at the nickel slots except the jackpot is some exclusive items.

Another Expansion in the Works, and You Can Name It!

FujiQ let us in on some key information. It's been some time since we've heard any word about what's going on for AE.

FujiQ posted in What has IWG been up to?:

Hi Everyone,

A lot of questions have been raised lately and I'm here to answer some of them for you. First, just to keep you in the loop, we've been spending a considerable amount of time on an update for Dransik. It's coming along very well.

We've also been working on the next AE update which will be released after the Dransik update. More information will be forthcoming about that over time.

While I'm at it, I'd like to invite the community to help us out. You see, a few AE players mentioned something about the sea and boats...well, it seems that all that commotion got our attention over here at IWG. I'm very excited to announce that we've just started breaking ground on the next AE expansion. The details of the expansion are still being finalized. What's in it, you ask? Islands to discover, sea monsters to battle, underwater dungeons to explore, and more!

You know what this means? Wake up those sea legs because it's CONTEST TIME! Today we started the Expansion Naming Contest which you can access on this forum thread. All are invited to enter suggestions for the name of the next AE expansion. The winner will receive the expansion free of charge! Remember, it's a sea themed expansion.

You asked for it. You got it!

See you in game soon!

Sincerely,

FujiQ
Marketing Manager

So besides the update for Dransik, there's at least one more coming for Ashen Empires before work begins on the new expansion. There have been quite a few people who have vehemently argued for the right to sea travel and now it looks like they're going to be able to do it. The only thing I remember about boats in AE is the old menu icon at the bottom of the screen that never worked. :p

The New Guy Finally has a Name

There's been talk from the DEVs regarding a new DEV. But they kept referring to him as "the new guy" or "him" or "he". Well, apparently he's been properly jumped in finally earned a name of himself!

FujiQ posted in Welcome Dev Alanzo!:

Hi Everyone,

Please give a warm welcome to our newest Developer, Alanzo Dragor. He is training up on Dransik right now and will be moving to Ashen Empires soon.

If you happened to read the Q&A, this must be the guy whose first "major" task will be to find out a way of doing Quest Logs without killing the 1000s that are already there. A hearty "Good Luck" to Alanzo :)

Got Hotmail?

If you use msn hotmail, then you have a problem (other than using MSN hotmail). According to the DEVs, hotmail's been bouncing support emails. So if you have an issue with support and you have a hotmail account, you'll never get a reply. FujiQ explains:

FujiQ posted in Attention Hotmail Users:

On behalf of the support team, I just want to remind everyone that we tend to discourage the use of Hotmail email accounts.

For one thing, Hotmail accounts are not very secure. Also, we recently discovered that our support emails to Hotmail have been bouncing because Microsoft has blocked our servers. If you use a hotmail account and haven't heard back from support on a problem, please try to email them again from a different address. Sorry for the inconvenience, but it doesn't look like there's much we can do about the Hotmail problem.

Thanks!

Just another good reason to switch to GMail.

So you say you just bought a 6 month subscription, eh?

I think everyone pretty much knew what kind of fallout to expect from the price reduction. Well, maybe not the exact type of fallout. But definitely we all knew someone was going to say something. Well, good news for those who did. IWG listened. And they've left a little sumthin sumthin for ya.

FujiQ posted in Price Reduction Gift:

Hi Everyone,

We evaluated the commentary and opinions stated on the forums this week about the price reduction. In the original announcement about the price reduction I said that we weren't going to reimburse tokens or money because, plain and simple, we can't. However, we feel that there are some loyal players who got the short end of the stick during that process.

Here's what we've decided to do. Players who purchased a 3 or 6 month subscription any time between July 1 and July 30 will receive a gift of appreciation from IWG that is equivalent to the difference between the respective old and new subscription prices. Those players will see the gift appear in their AE store. They may use it on whichever character they choose. Those who purchased a 1 month subscription have not been included in this compensation for technological reasons.

IWG always makes an effort to respond as best as we can to player opinions and suggestions. Thank you, as always, for your patronage. I hope to see you in game soon!

I wish I could get the same service from my Gas Station! :)

Subscription Prices Lowered

It's finally happened! The DEVs said that the price would slowly and gradually come down. Well, this is just the beginning.

FujiQ posted in Subscription Price Reduction

Hello Everyone,

For the past couple of months, we've been talking about lowering the subscription price gradually until Ashen Empires is completely free to play. Today marks the beginning of that process! Check out the website to see the changes we've made to monthly subscription prices. 1, 3 and 7 day subscriptions have remained the same. The price changes went into effect this afternoon and will not be applied retroactively.

Some expansion prices have been changed as well. The Talazar's Revenge and Sands of Creation bundle has been dropped from 599 to 499, and the single Talazar's Revenge expansion has been lowered from 350 to 299.

Thank you as always for your continued support.

Sincerely,

FujiQ & The IWG Team

On the website, you can see that the subscription prices for 1 month, 3 month, and 6 month subscriptions are now 120, 345, and 660 tokens a piece respectively. This equates to new prices of $6.00, $17.25, and $33.00 now. That's $2.00 per month off of the old prices.

This should make buying tokens a little easier for those who don't directly pay for tokens. And for those of us who do pay for tokens, now we have a little extra spending room in terms of extras.

More info on the Q&A

FujiQ updated the website with a bit more information about the Q&A mentioned in the newsletter. Most importantly, it shows the location of the portal to "Party Island".

FujiQ posted on the Ashen Empires Website:

Want to get some one on one time with OneEye? Have a burning question for Burningspear? Wait no more! We'll be holding a DEV Question and Answer session next Tuesday, July 31st, from 3pm to 4pm CDT (8pm to 9pm GMT).

The following developers will be attending: OneEye, Zarquon, Burningspear, Madmax, TheTyrant, and our newest developer, Alanzo. The support team (Wintergreen, MonkeyFist, and myself) will also be in attendance.

The session will be held on Party Island, which is accessible from a portal located just north of the central chamber in Lotor's Summer Palace (see the red block in the picture below).

Please come prepared with your questions. We'll have our GMs moderating questions (and spammers).

We look forward to meeting you in game!!

See you there :)

Free Weekend! Woot!

Oh yes! What's better than free? You can't beat free.

FujiQ posted on the Ashen Empires Website:

The update and patch last week were quite time consuming. We'd like to make that up to our community and thank you all for your patience with a free weekend!

Here's how it will work: If you're already a subscriber, we'll add three days to your subscription free of charge. Subscribers will receive their 3 free days on Friday at 2pm CDT. These days will be tacked onto the current subscription balance.

Non subscribers will see their subscription start on Friday, July 27 at 2pm CDT and last until Monday, July 30 at 2pm CDT. To see what benefits you receive as a subscriber, please see the section under subscriptions on the Item List page.

Enjoy!

So if you're a new player just starting out or a returning player looking to go hunt with old friends, this is the weekend to do it! FREE! YEAH, BABY!

Found this little bit of randomness while perusing the boards. 420 brought up the old Quest log issue and this seemed to attract a post from FujiQ.

FujiQ posted in Can We Have Quest Log PLZ?:

we know the game needs a quest log. it's a huge project, worse than the hair fix. perhaps our newest employee can start out by tackling that project :)

/me goes to hunt down this other announcment....New DEV?!?

More Website Updates

Updates galore! It seems that the website is really getting some use after all. With the new look and the new stat pages, you'd think everything was done. Well, almost. Check this out.

FujiQ posted on the Ashen Empires Website:

The website got cleaned-up this week and is feeling shiny! Here's a list of what's changed:

• Guilds and Combat pages are no longer empty.
• AE Reporters Tempester and The Freshest Diva now have their own section on the website.
• The skills page now shows you the list of skills for each profession/class.
• The Item List in the Store Info section now describes the benefits of having a subscription.
• A new fan site has been added: AE Server Status by Jonny Hunter
• Left navigation bar has been universally applied to all pages.
• Website has been tested in Internet Explorer and several formatting issues fixed
• The Player spotlight on Onix and Celtico has been corrected (originally flipped)
• The Rules of Conduct have been updated to their current version.

It seems we'll actually have a reason to go to the official site now other than for the download. Now if only they added an RSS feed ;)

Wedding Reception Set for Sunday, July 29

Remember those wedding bells? Remember how there was no cake?!? Oi! What's a wedding without the big cake anyway? Well, Lotor and Anne will make it up to us.

FujiQ posted in on the Ashen Empires Website:

King Lotor and Queen Anne would like to extend their gratitude to those who attended their wedding in June. The royal newlyweds would also like to thank you in person at their reception, which will be held on Sunday, July 29 at Party Island. Party island is accessible from the portal inside the northern most central chamber in Lotor's Summer Palace. The GMs of Ashen Empires will also be running various events leading up to the reception.

Server times for the reception are as follows:
Legends: 1pm CDT / 6pm UTC
Heroes: 3pm CDT / 8pm UTC

More time conversions can be found here.

Let the celebrations commence!

15 Tokens and What do ya Get?

Lara Orcsplitter has (attempted to) open a discussion about the new Pay to play dungeon we got in this update. Of course, this has proved to be a very hot topic among the players. Some people see it as a ploy by IWG to get the players to pay more money while others see it as another option to enjoy the game for literally less than a dollar.

All this discussion seems to have stirred the attention of at least one IWG official, though. So here's some official words from FujiQ regarding the decision.

FujiQ posted in broken finger with no flames:

Hey Everyone,

First, thanks for posting, Lara. This is an important topic that concerns everyone. I'm sorry I didn't get to this earlier. This matter is extremely important to us. As with any business, yes, we are trying to make money. But we also care about this game and our players. The developers whose names are sometimes cursed on this forum literally broke their wallets trying to save this game so more people could enjoy it. That has been the goal from the beginning. Expect to see the subscription cost coming down slowly but surely.

We by no means wish to roll over our players with sneaky pyschological tricks, but please realize that AE is a difficult sell. It's a fun game, our players know this, but in this world graphics (and a huge marketing budget) are very helpful in getting the marketer's foot through that first door. Of course, the game graphics has its own charm, but do you see where I'm going with this?

I know (very painfully even) that the recent dungeon has sparked some debate about the current system. We're piloting new waters with this type of pricing strategy so the feedback we've been receiving from all of you has been taken into consideration. We promise to work through these issues if you promise to be a little patient with us. And please be patient with each other. :) As always, thank you.

Sincerely,

FujiQ
Marketing Manager
on behalf of the IWG staff

Keep in mind some of the important aspects of this post:

1) IWG wants to lower the cost of the subscription fee.
2) IWG is experimenting with what pricing models will best accomplish #1.
3) AE isn't an easy sell, thanks to issues like Graphics and a smaller marketing budget.

When you think about the 75 cents you're going to spend to check out the new dungeon, remember that you're not obligated to spend it. It's an option. And apparently it's one worth trying out.

Statistics Page is Back!

This has been a long time coming. Many people have been asking for the statistics pages for a long time. Finally, those people have an answer. And it's in the form of statistickey goodness.

FujiQ posted in Statistics Page:

---

The stats pages are live again! You can check them out here. Thank GM Siyone when you get the chance for working so hard on this for everyone.

I have been asked several times if we are going to put the stats back on your account home page. We have been considering fixing that as well, but no decision has been made yet.

You might notice that on the web site stats is only linked from the index/home page. This is because when I updated the site I had to put the complete header/footer files on each page. However, Zarq just taught me what a master page is so now I get to go back and fix that on every page! But I haven't done that yet so in the meantime bookmark and remember to go back to index to find stats. Sorry for the inconvenience, I hope to have that fixed within the next few days.

One thing I noticed right off is that this statistics page combines what used to be two separate pages. Originally, quests and character rankings were on one page and skill rankings were on another. Putting it all on one page is a nice touch. Also I noticed that they're using GET strings in the URL. Can anyone say "Bookmark" ? ;)

Another Patch Scheduled for Thursday

I have to apologize for the lack of updates here. There's been a lot going on during the update process and I've managed to miss most of it. I'll spend some time later on (probably this weekend) compiling what's come out of IWG.

For now, it seems that due to continued issues with the current update (and if you've been away like me, a visit to the forums will definitely enlighten) the servers need a quick patch to resolve a few bugs.

FujiQ posted in Patch Tomorrow:

Hi Everyone,

Tomorrow morning at 10:00am CST (4:00pm GMT) we are taking the servers down to do a patch. We estimate that it will be a quick patch. This should tidy up some of the bugs from the update. In the mean time, you can add AE on MySpace and Facebook or check out the new website!

After a Tuesday update that went all day, I can only imagine what the response will be Thursday morning. Let's hope this update does go up as planned and we can all get back to having fun.

Ashen Empires Developments to be phased out.

Looks like the original AE blog is going the way of Ol' Yeller. With the changes in the AE website, it looks like the aim is to put all the news and other bloggable bits right on the homepage.

FujiQ posted in woooot update is ere!:

Once the website kinks have been worked out, which should be soon, we'll be posting all announcements on the website/forums and will be no longer using the AE Dev blog.

One less place to look for info makes it easier to compile exactly where the new information is all coming from. Though I think it would be nice if the DEVs had a place where they could post stuff like "Y'know, I worked on this for the past week and it still pisses me off."

Update goes live on Monday!

The long wait is almost over! Just a couple more days now.

FujiQ posted in Update:

It is my pleasure to announce that the much anticipated update is almost here! On Monday at 10:00am CST / 6:00pm GMT, the servers will be down anywhere from 2-6 hours while we make the update live. More information to posted soon from OE about what's new and what's been fixed.

Yes, we'll even blog that.

I had a bit of hesitation before posting this. But seeing as it's in the Official announcements...and because I'm a little curious how often this will happen...I figured I'd blog this too. So yeah...database maintenance.

FujiQ posted in Database Maintenance:

Hi Everyone,

We had to do some database maintenance this morning, but it took longer than expected. The servers are back up and running now. Sorry for not announcing this earlier and for any inconvenience it may have caused you.

Hope you had a nice break from AE in the mean time :)

Sincerely,

FujiQ
Marketing Manager