New Yavn Speaks 4/1 - Yes it's real this time ;)

[Pirate-Emery]

What does this mean? Well, don't expect a new ToonTown land to show up in VMK, but it does mean a whole bunch of cool items and events. Stay "tooned" for more details – sorry I couldn't resist!

Of COURSE we won't give you the Mickey's Toon Town land, but we will give you a bunch of stuff that's not related to Mickey at all...

Classy, Yavn, classy...

 

[vmkfan13]

Of COURSE we won't give you the Mickey's Toon Town land, but we will give you a bunch of stuff that's not related to Mickey at all...

Classy, Yavn, classy...

What events?
I bet he meant the infinite boring teleporter host events..

 

[mickeyminnie123]

It must feel such a joy to kiddos out there to get just another kick wit' da' boot. I mean VMK, haven't they gone through enough already not knowing they couldn't accomplish this quest, and yavn to make this whole experience better. :/

 

[cteddiesgirl]

Not even just the ones who lost. Add in the ones who finished the quest but had to see their good friends be disappointed because they got screwed out of 10 full hours of playing the quest.

I'll join you. I had to leave work and lose real life money just so I could finish this quest. I spent most of my 71 hours of quest time helping others get through pirates.
I think I played maybe 5 games where I was the winner. And 4 of them was because the original winner crashed and there ended up not enough people to get the points required. Every other game was devoted to other players. Including those I played last night instead of finishing my quest.


Too bad some people had to be immature about the quest and the people playing it so decided to end it early.

to all those that didn't get to finish.

 

[delicious]

We all worked very hard to get as many people through as we could. And for myself the end result was
being chained to a computer from opening till closing, I forgot to eat (I actually lost 4 lbs), I don't remember what sleep is... ask my friends since being ill I have been logging out at between 8-9 pm eastern time so the loss of sleep was not good for me (last night my heart was fluttering and feeling funny and today I kept getting dizzy), also since I am disabled and am not truely able to sit in one place for long, today I can not stand up straight and it is extremely painful to walk through my house.
So Yavn, what do you have to say to that??
We got as many through as we could humanly do and I am sorry for those we did not get to help due to the closing of the quest.

 

[mordux]

I spent the better part of 2.5 days trying to get 1 of my kids through, not myself, not my oldest kid, but my youngest, diehard VMK hardcore hat collecting player. All for naught

This blows

 

[vmkfan13]

I have to 2nd this,

I spent the better part of 2.5 days trying to get 1 of my kids through, not myself, not my oldest kid, but my youngest, diehard VMK hardcore hat collecting player. All for naught

This blows

People who finished quest twice probably brought 8 accounts online with 2+ computers.

 

[mtlhddoc2]

People who finished quest twice probably brought 8 accounts online with 2+ computers.

In some cases, that was teh only way to finish the quest ONCE.

 

[IlikedisneyandVmk]

Well you all amaze me, you formed groups here on dis boards outside of vmk, to play pirates to win the quest, It is supposedly not within vmk values to do this. So you must all be cheater's. And vmk promoted this, buy making the pirates impossible to win, unless teams were formed, and I myself witnessed some very rude dis people in pirates lobby who felt they were entitled to hog the lobbys, because these certain people felt entitled.
I am not sure why a moderator would congratulate you all for having spoilers on here, then for allowing people to form groups here outside vmk. I guess as long as the majority of dis boarders won, thats what matters.

 

[mtlhddoc2]

Well you all amaze me, you formed groups here on dis boards outside of vmk, to play pirates to win the quest, It is supposedly not within vmk values to do this. So you must all be cheater's. And vmk promoted this, buy making the pirates impossible to win, unless teams were formed, and I myself witnessed some very rude dis people in pirates lobby who felt they were entitled to hog the lobbys, because these certain people felt entitled.
I am not sure why a moderator would congratulate you all for having spoilers on here, then for allowing people to form groups here outside vmk. I guess as long as the majority of dis boarders won, thats what matters.

communicating outside VMK is not against values.

Hogging lobbies? come on, get real, hundreds of people worked together to get themselves through. No single player could ever accomplish it by being in a lobby alone.

Rudeness is worldwide, as you have shown us, as well. some people are rude, some are not, it is the way of teh world, and the pirates game has been ULTRA-rude for a long time, this was the nicest I have ever seen it.

 

[delicious]

Well you all amaze me, you formed groups here on dis boards outside of vmk, to play pirates to win the quest, It is supposedly not within vmk values to do this. So you must all be cheater's. And vmk promoted this, buy making the pirates impossible to win, unless teams were formed, and I myself witnessed some very rude dis people in pirates lobby who felt they were entitled to hog the lobbys, because these certain people felt entitled.
I am not sure why a moderator would congratulate you all for having spoilers on here, then for allowing people to form groups here outside vmk. I guess as long as the majority of dis boarders won, thats what matters.

I just wanted to let you know that none of our groups were discussed on the boards we were all in vmk making our arrangements. We contacted people on our friend list, met in our room, and discussed a plan. Then we all got in line and excuted the plan. We did not go to a pirate lobby and take 30 min. deciding who was going to be on what team and who was going to do what. We went in started a game and left. As more and more people needed help I personally was contacted through vmk messaging to come help. I did not have time to visit the dis board, but have many dis members on my friend list, so I was not hard to find. If more people had taken the time to meet up with friends in their rooms to discuss plans maybe more people could have gotten into the lobbies to actually play.

 

[mtlhddoc2]

I agree, it was probably alot faster because many people communicated either outside VMK or in a lobby or something before going into the lobby. If everyone had been free-for-all makeshift groups, noone would have ever won it

 

[Cardinal]

Of COURSE we won't give you the Mickey's Toon Town land, but we will give you a bunch of stuff that's not related to Mickey at all...

Classy, Yavn, classy...

Yeah, you actually expect us to give you a venue to use all of your overpriced virtual junk? What do you think this is, my job?

 

[IlikedisneyandVmk]

I just wanted to let you know that none of our groups were discussed on the boards we were all in vmk making our arrangements. We contacted people on our friend list, met in our room, and discussed a plan. Then we all got in line and excuted the plan. We did not go to a pirate lobby and take 30 min. deciding who was going to be on what team and who was going to do what. We went in started a game and left. As more and more people needed help I personally was contacted through vmk messaging to come help. I did not have time to visit the dis board, but have many dis members on my friend list, so I was not hard to find. If more people had taken the time to meet up with friends in their rooms to discuss plans maybe more people could have gotten into the lobbies to actually play.

I did not specifically name people, there are still threads on here of people who were setting up games, so cheating is cheating, its there in black and white, I don't know you, nor know what you did. Kudo's to you, if you played honestly, my point is, that there are other ways to cheat, having posts here seeking teams isn't something of high integrity, I doubt the average 8-14 year old had that advantage, basically shame on Vmk for even having this quest, and setting a score so high that it was unobtainable unless teams were formed.

 

[delicious]

I was not meaning to sound like you were attacking me personally, sorry if I made it sound that way. I just was stating how our group did it. I did not have time to be anywhere but vmk lol. No dis board, no email lol basically no life for the week end lol. And yes the biggest boo goes to vmk for making an impossible quest for the kids. That is why we all worked to get as many though as we could, which believe me was not easy, and still so many that needed our help and time ran out.

 

[aliceblue]

I just love also how the tone is there YET AGAIN that it's their goal to teach us the value of patience, hard work, etc. etc. via things like this quest (same thing was said about the Sparrow game, that it was to teach us patience). It's a game. There is a lot of value in this game in terms of things people can learn/skills they can hone, but it is not VMK's responsibility to try and teach us moral lessons or ethics. Much like the daggone Disney food police telling me I can't have my white bread hot dog bun in WDW anymore because it's bad for me, I don't appreciate this either.

- sound of thunderous applause! -

(I couldn't find a smiley for it.)

Hmmm, this seems to confirm my own theory as to why the quest ended early. Mind you, it is theory only.

Although the items are "virtual", they still take up space on servers and databases. Take a look at the prizes that included two rather complex magics. When putting this quest together, the programmers had to have allowed "X" amount of space on the servers for "Y" amount of players at any given time using "Z" type magic. Based on the difficulty, they probably made a statistical estimate of how many players would get through a very difficult quest, added some extra for a few more than expected, and then started up the quest.

First surprise - they may have underestimated the ability of determined VMKers to work together to get through the quest. No worries, the "extra" cushion they added would accomodate that difference.

However, if you have a few who can hack in to strip prizes (that is, force the database to spit out prizes faster than anticipated), it may well have caused serious programming issues. Some of that really bad lag last night may have been the result of that. It's been a long time since I've had serious dc issues on VMK but last night was horrendous for about two hours. Then it stopped suddenly. A hack or series of hacks is literally an attack on a computer and it shifts resources to protect the program.

Let's go back a couple of days to the sudden addition of the cheater warning. This has happened before (Narnia Teleporters, massive downloads of codes to try to get Sparrow) and, sadly, no system that goes out "live" is completely safe from hackers.

My theory is that VMK put out the warning, some may have stopped, others did not and suddenly the programmers realized that the quest would need to be terminated earlier. I know some of you are wondering why they couldn't just add "more virtual prizes". Programs don't work that way. The only way you can edit them (e.g., add prizes) is to terminate them. Those who run the quest kiosk know that you can't change the quest once it is running. You have to stop it, enter edit mode, add prizes, make changes, test it again, and the resume. That is a program. That is how it works.

As to the "we know who you are" comment. They probably do. Or at least the servers do. It will take them some time to backtrack and get the full data. I've done a little of that myself and it's not as easy or simple as you'd think. Computers store data at incredible speeds but humans take awhile to plow through the data.

This is little comfort to those that started late thinking they had a full afternoon/evening and those who selflessly put off their own quests to help others. But, unlike other events when there has only been silence, it appears that VMK is at least indicating that there was a problem and they are listening to our disappointment. We can only keep hoping that they will find a way to keep these cheaters at bay so the next event is not ruined for so many players.

Tink, thanks for these observations. The thought of what may be behind VMK's decision to end the quest early, and prompted yavn's comments as well, does help with my perspective. Not that I feel it justifies some of the comments in the newsletter.

I don't see what the big deal with the spoilers is, though. We all can use a little help now and each individual has the choice as to whether or not they want to use that answer sheet. This isn't cheating on the SATs or your final exam here. This is getting some help on a game that is supposed to be fun.

Amen, and amen.

I guess they are willing to risk alienating lots of people with the tone of the newsletter, but my guess is that they must be REALLY frustrated with something behind-the-scenes to verbally slap us like this.

I agree; I think Tink may be on to something here.

 

[IlikedisneyandVmk]

communicating outside VMK is not against values.

Hogging lobbies? come on, get real, hundreds of people worked together to get themselves through. No single player could ever accomplish it by being in a lobby alone.

Rudeness is worldwide, as you have shown us, as well. some people are rude, some are not, it is the way of teh world, and the pirates game has been ULTRA-rude for a long time, this was the nicest I have ever seen it.

Responding to a thread, does not make a person rude, expressing a point of view, is just that, yes communicating outside vmk is against the rules, if your giving personal information, my opinion stands, allowing people to form groups here was a form of cheating, for those that did it, and I said for those that did, I did not say ALL, also, I was in a lobby with three other dis boarders who were beyond rude to a single player trying to get a game going, this is first hand knowledge, I said again some dis boarders were rude not ALL. If some dis boarders formed groups within vmk without help from the outside then fine, thats good. Someone who posts an opinion that may differ from your's does not make them rude.

 

[IlikedisneyandVmk]

I was not meaning to sound like you were attacking me personally, sorry if I made it sound that way. I just was stating how our group did it. I did not have time to be anywhere but vmk lol. No dis board, no email lol basically no life for the week end lol. And yes the biggest boo goes to vmk for making an impossible quest for the kids. That is why we all worked to get as many though as we could, which believe me was not easy, and still so many that needed our help and time ran out.

I am sure there were alot of teams like yours that were formed in vmk and you played pirates and congrats to you if you won! I was just trying to state the opinion, that some were not that way, I guess I should have been more specific in saying, that vmk set a score to high, for a person to go to lobby play a game of pirates and move on, it had to be done with 3,5,0r 7 more people, they set it up that way, so there fore there to blame for it. If a game caters to 8-14 year olds, as they state, then make a quest that that age group can do. Or make two quests maybe age specific groups afterall, they do ask for birth year information when signing up.

 

[mtlhddoc2]

Responding to a thread, does not make a person rude, expressing a point of view, is just that, yes communicating outside vmk is against the rules, if your giving personal information, my opinion stands, allowing people to form groups here was a form of cheating, for those that did it, and I said for those that did, I did not say ALL, also, I was in a lobby with three other dis boarders who were beyond rude to a single player trying to get a game going, this is first hand knowledge, I said again some dis boarders were rude not ALL. If some dis boarders formed groups within vmk without help from the outside then fine, thats good. Someone who posts an opinion that may differ from your's does not make them rude.

No, it is not against values, it is only against values if you give personal infgormation WHILE IN VMK. There is no difference of opinion, it is black and white. they cannot set rules for nor enforce any values off the VMK site. None, zero zip nada. What they can set rules for is if values are broken WHILE ON VMK. (there it is again, gee, you think that any personal information transfer might have to take place WHILE IN VMK?). What we do off VMK is our business and does not concern VMK at all, whether they like it or not.

What you said was not rude, but the tone you took and continue to take is.

 

[Shaymojack]

Rest assured, we learned quite a few things from this Quest that will greatly affect future events.

Well, I'm never doing events again. Sounds like they want to punish us in the future for the terrible crimes we've commited by trying to help each other out.