Problem with the Servers

Hey guys,

As some of you have noted, we have a problem with our servers. This is the first real problem in many, many months. Our annual uptime has been over 99% since launch. Unfortunately, this one is out of our control. Our servers are hosted by Amazon and they had a general malfunction late last night and they tell us they are repairing. We don't know what happened exactly because Amazon has not given us any further details other than to say they had a big failure.

This incident has happened during our busiest week this year so oviously its not good. This pisses us off more than you trust me.

Playing offline for now is your best option at the moment.

We apologize for the inconvenience and we'll let you know once everything is back up.

We have already taken steps to mitigate down time issues and it has not been a problem from our side in a very long time. As mentioned in my article on SimHQ we plan to take more or ROF offline in the future, but we have not had the right opportunity to do that yet. Our server arrangement has many advantages, but when a 3rd party we rely on fails it's a pain. So we'll look for ways to stop this from happening in the future, but we'll need patience from the community.

Jason

was wondering why I could not log onto the website, was going to buy some planes

playing offline is not an option, since I am playing the demo version.
oh well ..

Ok, sh... happens...
At least we know, what's going on.

Thank god i filled up my hangar last night! Sorry bout your luck jd, heh.
Hopefully the servers come up soon, I was looking forward to someone gunning the wings off my poor plane tonight ;-)

Maybe could you inform us via the twitter account ?

http://twitter.com/RiseofFlight

Amazon tells us they are making progress now, but still no ETA.

That's not our twitter account. I don't know who started that.

Jason

In light of the server issue, and the fact that SimHQ shows 133 people in this forum... how about you drop some teaser knowledge on us!

Go after Amazon, Jason!

YOU are the Camel, THEY are the EIII.

Sorry to hear it is a server issue. I was hoping it was do to preparations for the next big update, Even though I figured it wouldnt be out yet, I was holding out hope anyhow. Oh well.

Rob

+1

(152 viewing now...and growing. Jason, you have our attention )

I've teased all I can at the moment. I'm concetrating on getting the servers back up right now. That's most important at the moment.

Jason

Just read THIS on the bbc website

Yep that's us! Fun.

Headline should read - Amazon Servers goes down. Pisses off Flight-Simmers round the World!

Jason

Appreciate the heads-up Jason - you guys inspire loyalty for actually caring about your customers.

Good luck with restoration of the servers, Jason... I've got my fingers crossed it won't be much longer.
I'm sure every minute that you're down comes at a high cost.

I've a feeling this is going to really backfire on Amazon.

150+ people viewing the forum, is that a record?

Thanks for the info Jason!

Ok just for fun some teasers while we wait for Amazon.

Some Camel + Aldis fun with a new Sunset/Sunrise mod I'm working on. Does not end well for the Pfalz.

Jason

very nice

Ok a couple more.

What's going on here? I dunno a furball apparently. Hard to tell they are tiny specks.

Jason

Nice, very nice. The extra view distance will help gameplay a lot I think.

Aldis looks great, I think I'll use it a lot.

The terrain looks good in the last two shots, is that with the new AA settings?

Same terrain, but max settings. Except buildings are drawn out further and I think I had forests set to current levels so 50% of max in that shot, but they can be drawn out farther now too.

Jason

Is this what is coming in the next update? wow!

nice work...I cant wait for the field modifications!

It just looks smoother, no jaggies in evidence. I thought it might have been the super (multi?) sampling AA.

Thanks for the update, Jason!

I recently rebuilt my PC and hadn't reinstalled RoF yet. Got the sale e-mail last night and went bananas -- bought all but two planes. Installed it and let the update download as I went to bed last night. Woke up this morning, went to log in to validate the install and see my new overflowing hangar, and... can't reach servers. Aargh!

I figured it was something with the hosting when I couldn't reach your website. But I appreciate your post very much -- saves me a lot of futile troubleshooting!

The perils of the cloud future... The nice thing is, if Skynet does ever take over, we can just rebel when the servers go offline.

Mogster it's the same as now. No special settings other than draw distance of objects. We have SuperSampling enabled for 1.019, but it will crush most systems. It's not on in these pics. I don't fly with it on.

Jason

Rgr

Nicely done!

It's been on everyone's wishlist for donkeys.

Got to have it NOW !!!!!

You can check on the Amazon cloud status here:

http://status.aws.amazon.com/



It's their North Virginia facility that went down and much of "Web 2.0" with it.

http://www.bnet.com/blog/technology-business/amazon-outage-shows-how-web-20-becomes-web-00/10157



Just go play Portal 2 for now and come back tomorrow.

Take care,

Bender, IRFC

Spent the afternoon and evening outside. Desperate times call for desperate measures

Pah....

Nirvana, Valhallah, Outside, Wales....

All myths.

What's an outside?

Jason

You know, that open expanse to the left, right above and below your cockpit.

Nice, finally the Aldis and the long range view will fix what is probably one of the worst things about ROF, it's looking good.

I hope you picked up some sales from all the forum traffic about CoD, there have been quite a few posters asking about other sims etc, and although Im sure CoD is going to get there, as ROF has done, I imagine the favourable comparisonstowards ROF may have assisted in some sales, it's a good time for flight simming, we have ww1 ww2 and modern war covered at the moment.

The Aldis will be super sweet. The view distance is a great touch too! Now everyone can zoom out, look up and see me orbiting above like Sputnik. =)

Does that make me a mythical being?

Very nice screenies. I can't wait.

Delightful. While I personally haven't had any issues with view distance, it looks like a neat little adjustment. As always, very impressed with the work y'all do, Jason.

What a great thread! First, I now have a great explanation for why I have had such intermittent piss poor internet performance today. Second, we get some great teasers from Jason! That Aldis and the longer view distances look fantastic! Thanks, Jason, for the updates!

I've only had this sim for a week, and just bought all the planes with the new sale, and now I can't go online with my new toys.

I am, however mollifying myself with visions of wild, beautiful women in scanty tiger print bikinis holding the poor Rise of Flight servers hostage at spearpoint.

That, and offline mode trying to learn some of the new planes.


Yes it's true, I broke a decade of lurking to register and post this comment.

LOL, welcome to the community RuhRoh! I would say definately get some practice offline before venturing online!

Yeah, bummer! Had to cancel a bomber training night with the fellas because of Amazon...*grumble-grumble*...


Thanks for keeping us in the loop Jason!

Much appreciated!




...know you're not to blame at all....hope you're not getting flak from others failing to keep themselves in the loop....

It's 5am or so in Moscow now. I hear some of the Amazon based companies are back up, but our guys are probably just now waking up. If our servers can be brought back up I'm sure they will jump on it as soon as they get back into the office. If not possible we continue to wait. Technology at its finest.

Jason

No worries...I got a chance to offline test my two new aeroplanes getting some stick (wheel?) time in the Gotha and HP. Glad I was offline. I sank into Reims on one go, then later in succession pranged the landing gear, a wing, one motor sans prop, entire tail section missing somewhere near the cathedral in Reims. Even managed to side slip into a hangar on another landing attempt. Practice practice...oh look, I'm being transferred back to the Infantry

I hope you're taking well under full fuel, especially with a full ordnance loadout. If you've read accounts of flying the heavies I'm sure you're doing just that.

I still marvel at how well the sense of weight and inertia is represented in these. The only large aircraft time I have in the 3D world was a USAF full motion B-52 simulator for less than an hour. I swore that the tail followed 30 seconds behind the rest of the plane when a turn was initiated! The HP and Gotha certainly are ponderous hunks of machinery, eh?

=MFC=Gunloon

I find it funny how the Amazon store isn't down. Just bought some music from there. LOL.

huh, i thought you could still play online if the servers were not available, jus scores and such could not be updated?

from another thread where i posted the question:

"Originally Posted By: Hammer_RLG

along those lines, what are they doing to fix their drm check service and the crashes i read about earlier in this thread? nothing is more frustrating to have purchased a game but not be able to play it because of a dependency upon a service like that.

The master-server does crash quite a bit recently. But this usually doesn't keep you from playing (neither offline, nor online). It just causes some other problems (score doesn't get updated etc.)"

so it seems one cannot play online when the servers are down? or are these servers just general public servers?

while these servers are down, can one host a server for others to connect with direct ip? or a lan server?

thx.

Hi all,

Not to kick what is most probably a dead horse, but why the deliberate dependance on so many external factors to run this sim? No matter how reliable Amazon may have been, it's not infallible, nor is the infrastructure between it and any particular used. Asked another way, why go this route when several other less intrusive and failure prone methods of anti-piracy (I'm assuming this is the primary purpose of this system) are available? I'll quote two user friendly (IMHO, it is debatable, but both would spare this kind of pain except for initial installation) examples - The DCS series (BS and A10) and Combat mission series. Both are activated once online, tying the install to a particular machine, and can then be deactivated online to be used elsewhere. Once activated (which takes only seconds), no connection is needed at all.

Can ROF be played this way? ie Startup and play completely offline with zero loss of functionality? Not having been able to activate my copy (and now being away for work for a week), I haven't been able to find out Also, I read another post recently where a user, despite playing in offline mode even though he was connected, still got the 'Connection to master server lost' message every 30 seconds when the server went down. That sounds unnecessarily painful.

I'm not trying to offend, just looking for some answers. It has probably been hashed through already so I do apologise if it's a pain to bring it up again (just joined, still busy going through history of posts on the forum). Also, the ROF forums are still down as I write, so I can't ask there.

I have to agree with this. I used to have no problem with the activation system as long as it was never down for any significant period of time. But now what we're experiencing is just showing that we need some more flexibility. I know the master servers have been more than 99% up, but I don't care so much about average statistics when this is my simple story: my best buddy just bought RoF yesterday. I'm going away for 10 days, and we only have 2 days to have some online coop fun with RoF before that, it's been wasted by this event. I'd rather have had a system that didn't waste our time. Please consider introducing more flexibility in the future...

#%&*$# happens they say. Amazon have let 777 down, just like the countless other companies and customers who use their cloud computing services.
On the whole the 777 online component has been fairly robust, it's not 777's fault that Amazon have failed in such a spectacular way. If any blame is to be laid at anybody's feet, it is solely with Amazon.

I'm annoyed as anyone, but I'm not thinking "damn 777 and their online requirement" I'm thinking "WTF are Amazon playing at!!"

Also at the beginning of this thread Jason stated they are looking at relaxing the online component even more. So if Amazon fail so massively again there will be more options open to us.

Arghhh! I finally bought the DL version of ICE from amazon a couple of hours ago and can't activate the game. I have the worst timing.

Well at least my newborn is (finally) sound asleep.

....we're under attack 'n can't take off!

THAT'S SABOTAGE!

Get that resistances 'n on the wall.....


Without any joke:

Best services is no services at all (needed...)

Cheerio

I installed the demo, played it awhile ´till bedtime and now can´t play it for 2 days.
Sure you understand my hasitation of buying the full product, infact it´s not even possible.

I hope you guys get it sorted out soon, btw My first opinion of ROF it self ... I was very impressed

I probably should not say this but under the circumstances, just re register for the demo using a free email provider once the servers are back up, god knows there are enough of them available, but don't kick the arse out of it if you enjoy it, it's an outstanding product and deserves support.

As for the complaints, this is currently the only flight sim available that has not been pirated, everyone you fly against online has paid for the privilege, and this tends to keep out a lot of the dross seen in public servers elsewhere. While it does not stop all the griefing, it would be a damn sight worse should pirates have access, and the potential revenue for 777 could drop off considerably threatening continued development.

Hello,
well i could say "i have said this all the time, online req. is !"§$%&/(!! ... etc.tc. blahblah". but i won't

Chance for me to fly over the Easter days is now over anyway, will visit the family and look for easter eggs - "desperate times - despereate measures" or so someone said here lol.

The Amazon servers are still not up - what is "very funny" is that only 3 out of 30 or so servers have problems, according to Amazon. All others certainly work perfectly. I think they have a very "elastic" idea of marketing, and how to sell their problems to the public

So i'm off, Happy Easter to all of you, and especially to the russian team ! You guys rock !

Greetings,
Catfish/Wels

Those update pics are great! Can we have another outage next week too?!

ROFs back working online again

Hopefully 777 can get some compo from Amazon for this.

I appreciate the comments made by some here, but just a few points:

- "Amazon let 777 down": True BUT, I would argue that 777 put themselves (and us) in a position to be let down by another service provider, and further, potentially cause future probems for individual users (ie poor/intermittent internet connections etc) They obviously chose a product that they thought would be reliable but in this specific case wasn't. Nonetheless, THEY put themselves and us, the buyer of their products in that position, nobody else. Their users acted in good faith, and were let down by choices they made, not by choices we made. Again, online activation a la the examples I quoted use tiny amounts of bandwidth, and only on a once off basis - hence less reliance on always on, high speed lines, and this also give the producers of the product (777) the ability to handle that aspect themselves (a la Combat Mission's activation process)

- The two examples I quoted have not been pirated AFAIK. The initial Russian release of DCS: Black Shark was crackable, but it used a different system and the crack involved merging two different products together if you wanted to play in english. DCS: A10, and Combat Mission: Shock Force and it's addons have never been cracked to the best of my knowledge. The numerous patches applied to sims also tends to defeat cracks with each release anyway. I would also argue that sim players are older, wealthier, and less likely to pirate software in any case, but that's rambling on a bit.

This isn't a rant (ultimately I'll get a working product that functions most of the time) - I argue the point because I do believe there is a better way forward for 777 that would be less intrusive and problematic for them and us. It's their choice of course. I was talked into buying this by a friend because of the Easter special - I had always held off buying it purely based on their DRM decision.

is the website still down? I still cant access the site

The server is still down for me too:

....and here is (obviously!) what really happened!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7wRxASytPuQ

Absolutely it can be played this way. I only go online in three situations: (1) the original installation, (2) to download updates and (3) to change my in-game pilot profile (from one nationality to another). Brief log-in for a specific purpose, then offline. I always play offline. And I've never gotten the "connection lost" message.

Unfortunately, you just happened to buy the game at the one time the server is down. I completely understand your frustration. But it's not representative of how the game works on a day-to-day basis.

+1. Perfectly explained.

Lucky me, this happened while I am in the Philippines on a scuba trip and away from my ROF rig. Maybe I won't be as rusty as I thought compared to all the other MPers when I get back home this weekend.

It's great to see so many names I recognize in this thread, too.

For those frustrated with the inability to get online, this would be a good time to try Pat Wilson's Campaign Generator, which can be downloaded from http://www.wingsofhonour.com/forums/ipboard/index.php?/files/ (look for the one dated April 18, his most recent version at this time).

The very long thread about the Campaign Generator is at ROF Campaign Released) elsewhere on this site.

Charlo

I'm happy to report that all systems are back online except the ROF Forum which will be back online soon.

Again, sorry for the inconvenience. Amazon did cause us to loose a lot of business during our busiest week ever so we're pretty pissed off. Take a look at all who were affected. Looks like they got iRacing too.

http://ec2disabled.com/

And for the record, our system us not just about DRM, it's an entire Content Delivery System designed to be flexible and forward looking and it allows us to do some trick things that we like very much and by the continued growth of the ROF community so do you.

A big outage like this is actually rare and we take steps to back up our content and system, but those systems also use Amazon. We never expected such a huge shutdown for so long. A big provider like Amazon should not have such issues for so long, but in the global technological heap that is the 21st century stuff like this can happen I guess.

The bottom line is that this is an example of the worst thing that could go wrong at the worst time and it's embarassing, frustrating and irritating. The ROF crew has been working hard since the beginning of the outage to get you back up and fully flying as quickly as possible. They have been at there stations round the clock. Please know that this outage blindsided them as much as it did you.

Even with this hiccup, over the past 2 years since launch we have been up and running 99.992% of the time.

We thank you guys for your patience and understanding. To those new users who just got into ROF, as has been said here already, this is not the typical week for ROF by any stretch of the imagination.

Our Easter sale has been extended a day or two longer so those who were unable to buy planes yesterday can now do so.

Again, thanks to everyone for keeping you cool, we appreciate it!

Jason

Glad you guys got it solved, I´ll go back to the demo and who knows I might treat myself on a easter present this weekend

Cheers

Adrian

Sounds like Sony have big problems of their own.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-13169518

Glad to hear that things are getting back to normal Jason.

nice... I just pre ordered the breguet and got the sopwith triplane I was going to get the neuport 11...but not sure about it

I'm able to access the forum now... looks like everything is back!

(Standby... that may have been a little premature... I was able to sign in... but then the old 404. Must be close though).

Edit: Got into the website with the store and everything else up except the forum... we're close now!

Get it, it's an awesome little plane hehe.. My favorite of the neuport series so far

took much convincing lol, I just got it!

Wow, you got back up even before Reddit.

Coincidence or does someone at Amazon actually care about RoF? In any case, this was a very unfortunate incident, but some of the whining and lack of understanding displayed in this thread baffles me.

The decision was made 3-4 years ago to follow this DRM route. Using the online component not just for DRM but also make it a feature and use the online connection for things like profile storage. For instance not only are stats and profiles stored online, but also the career mission generator mission templates. The new career mode will use this feature too. The Templates can be updated on the fly by the devs without the need for dozens of micro patches. This feature will be even more handy when the new campiagn is out.
Player A reports a bug in a career mission - 777 respond by fixing that bug almost instantaniously.

Coming back to the DRM, it was soon realised by NeoQB that the online issue was a big issue with the buyers of RoF. When Jason got involved he also realised this and pushed for it to be relaxed. Hence the offline option for single missions and QMB. The reliance on online is still an issue with a lot of people and 777 and Jason know this so, once again, I reference the comment made by Jason earlier in this thread, where he stated that they are looking at ways to relax it even more.

I, for one, am pro the online component. I like that my game profile is stored online. That I can log into any PC with RoF installed and instantly pick up where I left off. This blackout has been a pain. But i have been lucky enough to have been playing this game since the first beta without any internet issues until now. That's quite a few days uptime and only this one day down.

Arma505, you have just been very unlucky mate. You will eventually end up with a product that functions a lot more than just some of the time.
Life can be a lottery sometimes. You choose to succumb to the temptation of RoF just as Amazon decided to go tits up.

Same for me, Ive been playing since the game was released, and this is the first time I have been effected by it...and it was no big deal imho

In celebration of it being back up, I will now treat myself to some new planes. I am so weak, but playing into my weaknesses is so much fun!

Thanks for your update Jason and you guys really do a fantastic job. I greatly appreciate it!

I am afraid you are incorrect about the dcs titles, cracked versions are doing the rounds on some private ftps, (should point out I am part of a group that submits the latest online hacks to Evenbalance regularly checking private sites, and not some sort of software pirate). I am not going to say any more on the matter, other than to say dcs have been informed and a copy of the offending files submitted for their attention.

With respect to Combat Mission: its user base is incredibly small, I know a number of military simmers that have never even heard of it, I only stumbled on it recently myself, and this, at least in part has an impact on the likely hood of becoming a target for piracy



Me three.

I think that is harsh. 777 could have chosen to run their own servers and foot us the subsequent bill. Those servers still might potentially have crashed and we'd still be dealing with an outage. You say they put us in this position. In one sense, yes. In another, you put yourself in this position by choosing to buy RoF. You were let down in this instance by choices you made. However, just like we put our good faith in 777 to deliver, they put their good faith in Amazon to deliver products & services that they had paid for.

You can try to hold their feet to the fire for not delivering 100% 24x7 online up-time, but that is a standard I think is too high to demand. Their performance to date (for the past year I have been involved anyhow) has been excellent and I can tolerate the rare outage like this.

Back up for me. Just bought the Alb III to celebrate the sale and I also had just noticed the snazzy red and white candy-stripe paintjob it sports -got to get me some of that.

That is a pretty cool skin indeed, it inspired my D.VIIF


I hope the whole down time was not too much of a burden for the guys in moscow, they have enough work as it is

Man, that Alb is definitely a different bird from the others - I kept shearing the wings off for a start and really felt it seemed quite a bit less manouevrable than the DII. I was up against tough opposition though (in a quick mission as that's about all I have time for most days) - 2 Pups. Those things are incredible! I soon realized I'd never be able to keep up with them due to the plane, my view problems (still just the hat-switch) plus my piloting skills, so I had to outfox them. I stayed high and hoped for a lucky deflection shot but those things hop around like nothing. Next I thought I'd run away but that was a bit dull so I took them down into the trees near a river. It worked! One ploughed in almost immediately. The other it took me a good 5 minutes of twisting and diving and racing in and out of tree lined rivers and ponds but finally he too succumbed. Possibly my most satisfying kills so far. Excellent fun.
Then I went and strafed the downed plane. Served the twisty-turny little bugger right.

RoF forum still down here.

Must agree with ARM505 here. The biggest drawback of this system was spectacularly displayed these couple of days. Worse was it happened right at the beginning of the sale period and I would imagine lots of new buyers were unable to use their newly acquired product for the last 2 days.

It is sorted right now and I am in the process of teaching myself this whole new way of dogfighting. It runs very well on my rig which I am pleased about.

The ROF Forum is still down because the server we have it at Amazon has not been recovered yet the guys are telling me. Everything else is working and Easter sales continue to flow unabated again.

Like I said in my post above. This is a rare occurance and it is the worst outage by FAR we have ever expeienced and it happened at the worst possible time. Probably a conspiracy at Amazon to make us look bad.

iRacing is finally back up as well, but there are many who are still down.

Jason

Bolt - get CM: Shock Force. awesome sim.

So my question got buried earlier.

I take it the answer i received in another thread was not correct. if the servers are down, no type of online play can be accomplished. is that correct?

not via LAN or private server?

thx.

Helmut

P.S. I work in the cloud industry. it is amazing that an advanced cloud company like amazon is so reliant upon one location, although it is not that uncommon - unfortunately.

Unfortunately Hammer you are correct, no online play when the server is down. RoF has no IP or Lan function only a MP browser.
But, Jason did say they are looking at relaxing the online reliance, maybe this will include IP connections.

In light of the fiasco with Amazon maybe it's a good idea to have IP connectivity as a backup.

Just to clarify - (despite a brief search I could find no specific list) loss of the master server means:

-No multiplayer
-Cannot change pilot nationality
-Cannot register the sim to run it the first time
-Cannot change career?
-Cannot register new aircraft?

-Can play single player, QMB, career mode (as long as one does not try to change it)?

Can one have multiple careers running concurrently?

I've bought the sim, but now cannot play due to being away for work, hence my ignorance, sorry about that.

I feel I must respond to some statements too. Arjisme, as for your point (theoretical, I know) about me having let myself down by buying ROF (hardly the attitude 777 would take I'm sure), I must disagree. I have met or exceeded every single requirement that is documented for this sim, including the permanent internet connection. They didn't - outsourcing resources is irrelevant to me, I'm only interested in running the sim, not who provides what for it. It's that simple. And there are less bandwith intensive means of activating and running a product, that do not require massive investments in servers, and could be handled in-house by them, as has proveably been done by others.

I must add to that that I do realise that this is apparently an exceedingly rare occurence. It's just a pity that it's been 100% of my time available to play, what with me being paranoid about this kind of DRM to start with

As regards about being cracked - that news about DCS is new to me, and I have followed those sims for years. I would venture to state that Eagle Dynamics lost very, very few sales to those sources, if any (this unfortunately leads down the road of the piracy vs lost sales debate which is a big one that won't be solved by me)

Whether CM's user base is small or not, it still doesn't seem to be cracked. Nonetheless, I do agree that if it were incredibly popular, somebody would no doubt try. However, frequent patches, which ALWAYS occur with sims, normally render each crack useless.

The ability to run ROF on multiple PC's seems unecessary to me, as I can't imagine many people have more than one high end PC with TrackIR, rudder pedals, high end joystick/throttle etc? The only exception I can think of are serious mission builders who may like to do this on another, more portable/work pc. I don't know. I only speculate on the point of this ability.

Anyway, I'm sure everybody has heard enough of my opinions - I remain unconvinced that this method of protection/content delivery is the best road to take (just in case nobody guessed by now ) - so I'll just be looking for what functions remain (over and above those posted by others here already, thanks very much to them btw) when internet connection is lost. In my defence, the ROF forums have also been down, and I will continue to search there.

Cheers and thanks, I look forward to playing what is obviously a superior product in almost all ways. Almost

Silly discussions in my opinion. Servers are up now so go play! The server being down for few hours and the inability to play multiplayer and the very few who couldn't activate their planes are now resolved. It's a Saturday.....enjoy the SIM!!!!! I've been playing this sim since day 1 and this is the first such occurrence in all those years! Outsourcing is the way of business now and not everything can be controlled. If you have a blackout, will you blame 777? If there was no online requirement and you required a DVD in your drive to play instead and your DVD drive went out, would you blame 777? It's silly. Outages are a part of life around the world. GET OVER IT!

Hello ARM505, and welcome...

Of course, your point is well-taken - no one forced 777 to rely on the current system, it was entirely a matter of choice - and of course, it was not the customers' choice, as you've rightfully observed.

As I'm sure you'll also figure out soon enough, there are lots of folks around here who would have you believe it's your fault this happened. (Let yourself down, indeed! I guess maybe the producers of this sim really do want people to feel like they've "let themselves down" by choosing to support this sim. I guess people like you and I should obviously regret ever choosing to support this with our purchases, if you listen to some of the people here!!)

I suppose it would all be much easier if we just believed that balderdash, or just went on and pretended nothing happened. Who cares about all this old bothersome DRM stuff....just go play! There's plenty of people around to keep an eye on your best interests as a consumer, no need for you to worry about that...

Huh?? Don't think anyone said that. Or anything even close to that.

Not sure arjisme was really saying it was your fault. In any event, he's one guy.

Seems to me several folks weighed in here to empathize with your situation and to explain how the online system really works. I'm also relatively new to ROF and have found the community to be very helpful.

Exactly how I feel at times...whether I'm right or paranoid who knows but it's how I feel..and so do others...

Folks, you bought the sim knowing an internet connection was required. Regardless of who provides the servers, you're guaranteed that anything made by the hand of man is going to break at some point. So that means you bought RoF knowing at some point, you probably wouldn't be able to play because of server issues. It happens in MMOs occassionally too, and there people are paying $15 per month usually.

If you didn't want to deal with the "hassle" of the server being down 0.01% of the time over the last couple of years, then you shouldn't have spent the money on the game. Unless of course you are saying that you weren't intelligent enough to understand that when you bought the game, a required internet connection means there's a chance the server could go down at some point. Are you saying you literally aren't that intelligent? Or are you saying that you expect 100% uptime from every technology that you use, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year, year after year? You must be deeply dissappointed with a lot of things in life then, because few things are that solid.

Statements like 777 studios wants you to feel bad or that they want you to believe it's your fault are childish and idiotic. They are doing their best and we all bought the product knowing server downtime was a possibility. If you aren't adult enough to handle that, then you obviously made a bad buying decision based on your needs. Go buy one of the other WWI flight sims that doesn't require a connection. Problem solved. I'm sure you won't find anything to complain about with either of them.

For the record, I'm against the required connection. I personally think it'd be better without it. But I'm adult enough to realize I spent the money knowing what the downside was and so I just deal with it when it happens. It's called personal responsibility for your own decisions. If I knew I was going to have a cow over the server going down, then I wouldn't have spent the cash. If the server was failing every week, yeah...now you've got a complaint. But once or twice every couple of years?!? Seriously? Grow up or get lost. Nobody needs whiners with conspiracy theories about how the very company that depends on your purchases actually wants you to feel bad and be let down. They are more pissed than you are. You lose access to playing the game. They lose the ability to activate new customers and sell planes which earns them money. Try to put a moment of thought into it beyond how things affect only yourself. The world doesn't revolve around you personally, so any theory that uses that as it's premise is wrong from the begining folks.

Here's a theory for the whiners. You knew server downtime would eventually happen, so you bought the game knowing that when it finally did happen you could whine pathetically all over the forums about being victimized by the company because you secretly love the attention and you love to feel self righteous. Why else would a person buy a product they knew could fail at some point if they had zero tolerance for failure??? If you ask me, that theory makes perfect sense.

PS. Don't EVER play WoW. The servers come down once a week for 8 hours for maintenance and it doesn't tell you that that will happen on the box. For your own health, so you don't die of a little heart attack, don't ever play that MMO. But I'm sure that Blizzard does that just to make their 12 million subscribers who pay them $15 a month feel bad about themselves. Yep. Good call on cracking that conspiracy too.


Hellshade

+1

First off, this was not us screwing up the server, but a huge fundamental breakdown at Amazon that affected many sites, not just us. iRacing anyone? Such an event is hard to foresee, but a hazard we all live with today as a connected society. And for those people who continue to complain about the internet getting in the way of your ROF fun, we have much of the sim disconnected now and has been for some time, so you could still fly and we've stated in the future that we will work on disconnecting the Career as well, but that will be further down the road once we know it works 150% solid.

But as usual the proof is in the pudding. We have had a 99.992 uptime since launch 2 years ago and the Amazon situation was clearly a fluke hardware failure or an attack of some kind. Only issue is that it happened during our biggest sale ever. What's also important to know is that once everything was back up sales resumed and skyrocketed so the community clearly supports what we are doing and its important to note that without the system we have built, ROF would have died over a year ago. Those who hate it would say it was our biggets draw back, but on the contrary it was our savior.

It's funny because other genres accept this kind of system and STEAM is a similar system that dominates the market, but it's still this little corner of the univesre called flight-simming that is slow to fully adapt. Cloud gaming and systems/account management is the future, your distribution, DRM, add-on system of 10 years ago is not coming back.

We are keen to make ROF a business model that allows for sustained development, flexibility and innovation. Sure technology can throw a curve ball at us every once in a while, but imagine a future where flight-sims can thrive and new content can be developed and easily distributed without the need for messy downloads and shopping at several different retailers to get what you want. We're trying to create a new way forward for flight sims and by the interest shown by other developers and publishers lately we are having an effect. If you don't like our system it's fine, but your options will continue to shrink.

Embrace the connected world and be apart of the digital age.

And for those that constantly predict our doom and the "what if we go under scenarios" all I can say is that we are still here after 2 years and nearly a year after we went truly solo. Keeping Master Server running is not that expensive or hard. I've said it before and I'll say it again, we're not going to let your game not work if we go away. It's easy to prevent that.

Jason

Which means some moron somewhere thinks they are entitled to a 0.008% of a refund. /faceplam

Hellshade

Looks like we have a few folks here who did not understand my point. Since this discussion is still running, I will chime in (as I nearly did yesterday when I decided it wasn't worth the effort) to try to clarify.

But first things first: I was not and am not speaking for 777 Studios, nor am I representing what I think is their opinion on this subject. So please drop that insinuation (to those of you who wanted to extrapolate my statements to be 777's).

To my point: you paid your money to buy an entertainment product from 777 Studios, called Rise of Flight. I give you the benefit of the doubt that you knew what the game's features and requirements were when you made the decision to spend your money. This decision was entirely your own.

Now it is completely reasonable to expect 777 to provide full functionality as advertised in their product. When they fail at that, they are responsible for that failure. Any customer of theirs would complain about that. But we, as paying customers, have put ourselves in the position to be disappointed by substandard delivery (even if it was only a momentary, brief drop in service quality). That you are in a position to be disappointed is, in some part, your responsibility.

The above would never be embraced (at least publicly) by a business selling product. They want their customers to perceive maximum value in their offerings. So much so that the far more typical mantra we hear is "the customer is always right." As a result, I see lots of folks take that to heart and believe that since they dropped their $50 (for example), they now have a carte blanche right to demand anything and everything from the company that sold them the product. And coupled with that comes the mistaken notion that the entire responsibility for their satisfaction with the purchases they make lies with the companies they buy from. Again, I say, NO -- there is some responsibility we each must own for the choices we make.

The very sensible response we could make in these situations is to not buy the offending company's products anymore. We have learned something and will not make that mistake again. But, there it is -- you did make a mistake if you really are unhappy with your purchasing decision.

Now put the shoe on 777's foot and see them as a customer for a moment. They also spent their $$$ and contracted with Amazon for services that they thought would be valuable. Amazon did not meet their expectations. 777 are just as much a disappointed customer as you and I are when things like this outage occur. They own the responsibility for purchasing that service from Amazon. Amazon owns responsibility for not delivering what was expected. They share the blame. Just like you and I do when Rise of Flight in some way disappoints us.

I have not spoken at all about how to divide the sharing of blame here. If you want to tear that apart, go for it.

Finally, all of this is, at best, an academic discussion. I don't think I've seen anyone so upset that they regret their purchase and want a refund. If anyone feels that way, I am sure they can reach out to 777 on that and discuss it. I think we are only momentarily disappointed in this recent outage, but in the grand scheme of things the net value we get out of RoF is still so compelling that we will continue to play it and even buy additional content as it is offered. If anyone had an expectation before they bought this sim that the online aspects would be available 24x7, 356 days/year indefinitely into the future, well your expectations are unrealistic, particularly given the smallish investment you've made for that. The good news is that this is almost what you really do get. It just happens that they did finally suffer an outage for a brief spell. But taken as a whole, it was a small burp in an otherwise steller delivery of product.

Ok, I keep being misunderstood here, the joys of text based communication. My response regarding 'being at fault for buying ROF' was directed only at Arjisme, due to the way he worded his reply - I'm not a moron, I KNOW that uptime will NEVER be 100%, and in his defense he obviously wasn't implying that 777 would feel that way. I've been playine EVE for several years, and online sims for nearly a decade. My point, cleverly hidden apparently, was that it never needed to be like this in the first place. What they have done, they have done well - but IMHO the requirement for 'always on' internet is not necessary for a simulator. Twice last night (yes, I got to play, great sim!) while playing solo, I had the 'Connection to master server lost' while playing solo - and yes, the message DOES appear every thirty seconds, in the middle of the screen, no matter whether the connection was restored or not it seems. Yes, I know one can 'log in offline' (now there's a very strange statement indeed!) but then it needs to sync for some reason when I 'log in online' (?) - the whole thing just seems unnecessarily complicated and needy in my very humble opinion, thats all I'm saying.

Simplified, it's like having a hammer that requires an internet connection to function - the connection goes down for .001% of the time, I ask 'Why did we need to have it connected in the first place?' and everybody says 'Hey, they're doing an awesome job with reliablity, stop being unreasonable!' Sheesh! And I did volunteer that there were useable alternatives (with debatable merits sure, but still perfectly good enough), I wasn't just saying 'Make it better but I don't know how!'

So - great sim, unneeded complexity in the connection requirements in my very, very humble opinion. Just saying it.

I must also compliment 777 on their netcode, which even with a 300ms ping (me to the noob server) was smooth and fluid with very little warping or odd behaviour. And again, it's a well polished sim, great work.

Oh, and Hellshade.... *facepalm* - it's incredible how rapidly misunderstanding can be generated. I'm not sure who your remarks were directed at, but they were a bit harsh. Whiner? Conspiracy theories? Grow up or get lost? ...because you secretly love the attention and you love to feel self righteous?

Uncalled for, no matter who they were directed at. And the strangest thing is that we agree on the main point of the 'always on' connection.

It's not that you're being misunderstood. It's more that you're not listening.



ROF does NOT require an "always on" internet connection to function. I played without missing a beat all through the server outage. Only reason I even noticed was because I couldn't access the ROF forum. I almost never log in; last time was many days ago.



Very, very simple solution. See that big "Login Offline" button. Click that. Then you will NEVER get the server lost message in solo play. Ever. Won't happen.



Why? So...

1. People won't steal their stuff. But you already know that; your question was not truly rhetorical. And it has worked extremely well. Which is one big reason why they can...

2. Deliver new content easily. Which they do regularly, mostly for free. As you'll see.

I would say that your timing was bad, but I wouldn't want to be construed as blaming you. So I'll just say instead that the planets were aligned against you in this particular instance. But that's hardly an indictment of the entire ROF business model.

Hi ARM505. Just wanted you to know that I did see you making that point originally. My original comment did not address that (obviously) as I was more interested in commenting on the ideas of where responsibilities lie. A side discussion around that ensued and your original main idea got lost a bit there.

The original RoF was an online-only game, with the offline component added later. Given that, I can't agree with your assertion that "it never needed to be like this in the first place." If it hadn't been like that in the first place, there is good reason to think that we wouldn't have RoF at all.

I think to truly assess the wisdom of the online aspects of RoF it is better to try to do some kind of cost/benefit analysis. Had they done things another way what would be the benefits? What would be the costs? Taken in aggregate, is that alternative approach better than what we have?

Regardless, Jason has already said that the devs are trying to modify the online requirement to reduce it. So they are already working the issue, which should come as good news. As far as I am concerned, one of the great things about RoF is that the devs do listen to the community and try to take into account our feedback. They are constantly evolving the sim toward something even better. I like to think of RoF as "Project: RoF." It is damned good now, but it is an actively growing and evolving sim and it's fun to be a part of that.

To clarify, this is what my posts were referring to.

And I agree that RoF probably didn't have to be programmed to require an internet connection. But at the time that I bought it, I saw that the connection was required and I chose to buy it anyway, as did the above poster. If you accept the agreement, you shouldn't whine about a 0.008 downtime over the course of a couple of years. And there is absolutely no call for suggesting that 777 studios want people to feel like they have let themselves down by choosing to support the product.

Again, if your intolerance for server downtime is zero, then be an adult and don't by the damn product just so you can whine about a small server outage 2 years later. To me, this nothing more than a pathetic attempt to paint ones self as being victimized (first by the server outage and then again by the idea that the company wants you to feel it's all your fault) so you can spout off self righteous lies. The only purpose for which I can see is to gain attention for ones own self at the expense of reality.

Apologies to anyone else who doesn't share the above posters feelings and believed my remarks were directed towards them.

Again, I agree that it would be better without the required connection, however I bought it knowing that was part of the deal. I don't paint myself as a victim of some 777 studios conspiracy to make me feel bad about myself simply because a damn server failed. It was a server failure, plain and simple. We all knew internet connection was required when we bought it. If we have zero tolerance for server failure, then don't buy the sim. It's that simple. That's my point.



Hellshade

What do you say Admins, I think this thread served it's purpose; time to close it out?

I AM listening. So far, this is what I've heard:

FOR (with my arguments against):
- DRM.
Jason, and others go so far as to say "its important to note that without the system we have built, ROF would have died over a year ago." I cannot see how this can go unchallenged, since other sims/niche products have been doing just fine without the system (DRM specifically) that 777 implemented. DCS:A10, for example, is thriving. See my previous posts for more details. But in any case, as I mention below, DRM as it currently stands would only need slight modification to satisfy all I think. Read on.

- Great uptime of the master server. Yes, the master server is reliable - but thats not the only link in the chain, which nobody except me seems to mention. Apart from the little hiccup with Amazon when I bought the sim, during my first play session connection with the master server was lost twice in one hour. Many players are on the end of multiple links, any one which can fail. Which leads me to the next obvious point:

- You can login offline. As my post said ,I obviously know this (in fact somebody quoted my own post back at me with a rewording of what I just said to try to explain that it's possible.) BUT, what if I want to play multiplayer, which is a fairly important part of the sim? Again, it's not just a matter of the master server being up - ALL players must constantly be able to see it. It is a fact that the odds are then dramatically lower than 99.9%.

An Alternative (the core concept being to only bother the player when there is a genuine problem):

- Keep initial registration/activation online. This takes seconds and is perfectly understandable. An alternative would be to allow play using limited functions for a fixed period offline only without registration. This means new buyers can at least have something to play for a day or two solo without dependance on a server being up, and also satisfies the need for a demo. The current demo requires registration and online only play (IIRC) which is totally unnecessary IMHO. Who registers for demos nowdays?
- Instead of 'login online/offline' makes all logins offline by default (ie the sim just starts in the hangar and you're ready to play). Have a 'sync' button which syncs your stats etc at will, or have it done in the background when a connection to the master server happens to be detected. If needs be, also do a validity/legitimacy check of the system during this period, but in the background. You would sync if you had just bought a new aircraft for example. Updates could still occur during the setup window prior to the sim starting, as they do now.
- For multiplayer, if the master server is detected then it can function as it does now. However, if it isn't, direct IP connections should be allowed. Legitimacy checks (done as above, or at will on syncing) should be valid for seven days/a fixed period and must be valid for multiplayer to take place.

These are just ideas that could be integrated with the current system with a reasonably small investment of resources I believe. The point being that nobody has to make the right choice of login just in case his connection fails during solo play, can still play multiplayer with his group of friends if some server in another country/the link to that server is down, still provides a method of DRM, and doesn't bother the user pointlessly. The system is more robust and fails to a 'safe' (customer friendly) condition. My engineeringness may be showing through

ie, Back to my point - There is a better way.

Ah forget it.

Jason

777 doesn't have military contracts as ED do.

If starting from a clean slate, your ideas would have more potential to be realized in an economically viable way that I believe they could be now with the current RoF. You estimate it would be a reasonably small investment for 777 to implement your recommendations, but I see no good reason to think your estimate is accurate nor do I see any assessment on how that would impact the team's current schedule for producing the new content that they plan to give away and/or sell to keep the revenue stream alive.

This is a lot of non-revenue-generating time you are proposing that the dev team invest in order to make it so the game "doesn't bother the user pointlessly." But, as already argued, the degree to which it annoyingly bothers users regarding connectivity is already quite small (despite your initial experiences) and can be practically managed in the current game by logging in offline. Not as slick as you like, I understand, but the effort for what you ask is out of proportion to the problem, as far as I am concerned.