Some advice needed...

[mikeyandscoobyx2]

hehe hijack is a funny word.

 

[poohluv2u]

Mint, sorry to hear you feel a little disillusioned

I've been playing for 9 months now, but at first I felt like being new to the game was quite a disadvantage. I wanted some mickey ears but everyone was crying for rare, and I had nothing that couldn't be bought in the stores. I didn't feel like I could ever catch up. Then I realized .. why do I have to catch up?

I focused on just having fun and started to worry less about what I didn't have. At first I bought lots of items so I could use them to trade, but with all the scamming going on at the time, I got too nervous to trade, so I finally figured out I am not a trader. From then on I bought only what I needed and maybe some for a friend. Maybe even more important than that I only bought what I wanted .. some items I didn't really want, so why buy them .. just to have them? Voila! .. no more stress. By buying less and only the items I wanted, I free up more credits to have almost everything that I want.

While getting credits from NPC's and music making is not as fun as playing games, it is profitable (with more than one character) So far I have bought everything that I've wanted and some for friends and I still have 70,000 credits on my main character .. not too shabby. Maybe you just need to rethink how you play the game. Hope that helps

 

[aengus]

I'm not really losing interest, but i am losing time. It is difficult for me to get time on. But on another topic, What exactly is happening when lag occurrs in mansion or pirates. I know when there are alot of players playing aforementioned games there is lag, but what technically is happening? Aengus? Qruthie? If there are that many ppl on vmk to create lag, why isn't there lag like that ALL over vmk?

Most of the time I think its because the game has so many people playing it because of the double credits. I have to assume there is a "known" limit to where the amount of people in mansion starts to hurt the rest of vmk. I am only basing this guess on the fact that VMK limits how many people can play mansion at a time. I cant see any other reason they would limit it. So, at least my theory is; when the game is at maximum capacity it is to prevent it from degrading performance throughout VMK. If thats how they determine their level of FULL, then mansion would naturally suffer if its at a threshold where they want to prevent the game from lagging down.

Yeah, I really don't know would have worked too huh?

 

[SorcererDonald16]

Mint, I feel your pain. I too have a lot less time than most to work with. I've played more recently to try and get the items, but on average, I play maybe 4 hours per week nowadays. Some weeks I only manage about an hour of playing time. Donald currently has about 445 credits on her; my other characters have about 25 (no, not 25K, 25 credits). And I certainly haven't been on big Christmas shopping sprees; I still haven't bought a single snowman magic or green soldier, for example. Sad, needless to say. Example: I haven't logged in since Sunday and likely will not have time to log in until Friday. I know people say get daily credits at least since that doesn't take long; well, frankly I don't have time to do that. I work 8 hours a day on the days I work, commute to grad school, am in class some days until 10pm, and have tons of work and reading to do for my 4 classes. So even getting daily credits is impossible for me most weekdays. Weekends, I have work to do, so VMK is not a priority either. I have to force myself to block out time I really shouldn't be blocking out just to play to buy the new stuff. I never could even afford a Royal fountain, so I will have to trade for one at some point.

Unfortunately what's happening is VMK is seemingly gearing itself towards people who have hours upon hours to play the game. Those of us who have long work hours, are in grad school, college, or tough secondary schools, or children whose parents place fairly strict limits on internet time, well, we're all mostly out of luck if we're playing largely because of the collecting or trading aspects. I just sincerely wish VMK will consider making things more reasonably priced or make the games pay more. Because frankly, since January of this year I have mostly viewed VMK as a chore which I have little patience for, as opposed to a game I enjoy. Scrounging up the time and credits to buy the stuff released each week is almost like another project or assignment on my already long list, and that makes the game less enjoyable to me. My opinion will probably change once I'm finished with grad school in May, but I do find it sad that VMK is mostly set up for people with a fair amount of time to play it (unless of course you have no interest in the collecting/trading aspects of the game, in which case credits and items don't matter to you).

In other words, I have no real advice for you Mint other than to say I sympathize and wish you better luck finding time than I am having.

 

[Disney Dreams]

MInt,

Thank you for this thread. I think it is wonderful to see all the new, creative, wonderful items VMK has come up with for us to enjoy this month but it's impossible to keep up unless you are one of those amazing players that has 100,000+ in credits (which I am not!).

I was literally down to 400 credits a few days ago. There is just new stuff every single day making it crucial to play play play! But what about life? I had some medical issues keeping me from playing a few nights ago and my husband had nothing to say when I looked at him and said, "But I HAVE to play tonight! I can't afford to not be earnning credits!" There is a constant flow of new items making it impossible to plan. The games earn less than the items cost (unless you are a stellar fireworks player). Suddenly I am feeling, "Why bother? It's impossible to do it at this rate that they are setting."

I honestly have no clue how VMK expects kids who are in school all day, adults who work all day, or ppl who can't be glued to the computer all day for whatever reasons to be able to afford all of the new stuff at the rate / prices it is out. I am very fortunate to have more play time than most and as a non-fireworks expert, I am living each day near 0 at the end of the night. The quests are wonderful and certainly help, but the credits prices compared to the reasonable credits earned for the "average" player is way off balance.

The new stuff is incredible, but is it (dare I say?) almost TOO much? I dont really have any tips for you. I too am feeling sad about VMK right about now as fun as the cute stuff is. Why? I am selling my hard earned items every which way I can because it seems to be the only answer - sad, huh? Meanwhile, I spent who-knows-how-many hours building a holiday game room that I am very proud of, but can't afford to take time out from playing for credits to actually be able open it and share it with other players. Every second running my would-be-fun game is credits lost (meaning loss of new items). Sad. That's not what I thought VMK was supposed to be about. But it seems to be the only way to get through the month.

If you figure out something i'm missing, please let share.

 

[Mnementh]

Thanks, everyone, for your thoughts and ideas. I really appreciate it.

Unfortunately, I have another complaint to add to the list of things making me lose interest in the game. I know I'm not the only one experiencing this, but it does seem as though I'm in the minority, which is making it even more frustrating. Everything on the game is loading slowly. The initial VMK loading bar takes forever to fill up, room loading bars take forever to fill up, things like Fantasyland rides, the mansion lobby and ride-a-thon rooms take so long to load that I actually get the "five minute warning" for not moving for so long.

This all has been going on for a week or two now, but today was the icing on the cake. I was trying to do the new quest. As you all know, the first task is to change your clothes. Well, stupid me started the quest as soon as I logged onto VMK, before my clothes had even loaded, not knowing what the first task was. I failed the first task because my clothes hadn't loaded, I let the game sit there for 45, yes, FORTY-FIVE minutes waiting for my clothes to load and they never did. I had to leave to run some errands and forgot to put my friends list up, so I naturally got DCed, but I'd bet my bird hat that my clothes still hadn't loaded when the game DCed me. I didn't even bother signing back on and I'm still not finished the first task.

 

[cteddiesgirl]

Thanks, everyone, for your thoughts and ideas. I really appreciate it.

Unfortunately, I have another complaint to add to the list of things making me lose interest in the game. I know I'm not the only one experiencing this, but it does seem as though I'm in the minority, which is making it even more frustrating. Everything on the game is loading slowly. The initial VMK loading bar takes forever to fill up, room loading bars take forever to fill up, things like Fantasyland rides, the mansion lobby and ride-a-thon rooms take so long to load that I actually get the "five minute warning" for not moving for so long.

This all has been going on for a week or two now, but today was the icing on the cake. I was trying to do the new quest. As you all know, the first task is to change your clothes. Well, stupid me started the quest as soon as I logged onto VMK, before my clothes had even loaded, not knowing what the first task was. I failed the first task because my clothes hadn't loaded, I let the game sit there for 45, yes, FORTY-FIVE minutes waiting for my clothes to load and they never did. I had to leave to run some errands and forgot to put my friends list up, so I naturally got DCed, but I'd bet my bird hat that my clothes still hadn't loaded when the game DCed me. I didn't even bother signing back on and I'm still not finished the first task.

Hmm. I so sorry to hear this Mint. While I am having to take time to load things, mine isn't that bad.
Maybe it's your connection or something with your computer? My computer is old and relatively slow, but I have DSL.
Are other things taking longer to do on your computer now, or is it just VMK?

 

[Barbday62]

I was taking about 15 minutes to log onto VMK and I have Cable internet (Fast) What we did besides the usual clear temporary memory and cookies and such is to finally defrag the computer and bow I load pretty fast. Have you tried the defrag thing yet? We even went as far as putting our Ram up to a gig and a half and it didnt even help like defrag did.

 

[Mnementh]

Hmm. I so sorry to hear this Mint. While I am having to take time to load things, mine isn't that bad.
Maybe it's your connection or something with your computer? My computer is old and relatively slow, but I have DSL.
Are other things taking longer to do on your computer now, or is it just VMK?

I have DSL also and, as far as I know, nothing strange is going on with my ISP. Everything seems to be fine. The only other thing I'm experiencing any slowness with is the Disboards, and I think that's happening for everyone.

Oh, and I can bring my laptop over to my parents' house who have wireless cable Internet and experience the same problem, so it has to be the computer (but I really can't afford a new one right now). My fiance has the same type of laptop as me and she experiences the same problems I do.

I was taking about 15 minutes to log onto VMK and I have Cable internet (Fast) What we did besides the usual clear temporary memory and cookies and such is to finally defrag the computer and bow I load pretty fast. Have you tried the defrag thing yet? We even went as far as putting our Ram up to a gig and a half and it didnt even help like defrag did.

Actually, yes. I tried to defrag my computer a couple weeks ago when the slowness first started and I saw no change in performance, surprisingly. I don't clear cookies and temp files too often, but I did do it once since experiencing this slow down and I didn't see a change.

 

[Belle1997]

By any chance do you have MSN live. I once had this problem and when I uninstalled it and went to a lower version it seemed to solve my problem. I could not play ghosts to forever to load. I was so so sad.


Do not know why but a few have had that problem. So try that. And then try uninstalling shockwave and flash and reinstalling them. The clean out your cookies etc.

I did this the first time It was slow to load then afterwards Fine from there.

Also If I find the bar is loading to slowly I close down the program and start again

 

[Disneychick74]

Try cleaning temp internet files and cookies
Open and IE page and click on Tools and then Internet options.

if you have never done this or haven't in a while it will take a while to delete them all.

Also you might want to try to Uninstall and reinstall Shockwave.
Last but not least make sure all your video card/chip have the latest drivers.
You can look to your computer manufacturer web site for that.

 

[aengus]

mint, just curious what are the specs on the laptop? ram and cpu?

 

[Mnementh]

Drat... you know, I meant to check today before leaving for work and I ran out of time. The computers were basically standard issue for my college. We all had to have one, so I didn't even bother to check the specs on it. I know it's a Dell Latitude, basically as cheap and bare-bones as you can have.

On the bright side, I got rid of all Windows Live stuff installed on my computer and I uninstalled and reinstalled Shockwave and the loading is still taking forever, but my clothes actually loaded today!

Unfortunately, shortly after, we lost our Internet signal Guess this just isn't my week.