Very poorly done, vmk!Fin's Gallery of Fun

[cowboys_girl]

Just wanted to mention I looked at the calender for the rest of this month and next because I was not prepared for this event and wanted to be for the next one.

Well anyway, Saturday Feb 3rd either is not done being changed over for the new "New Orleans Square" Host room names or they are running double rooms that day. How are the hosts going to be in two places at once though???

-Stacey

 

[SorcererDonald16]

I think people are more likely to assume tickets were given out because Yavn himself said they'd start having "exclusive events" where you need tickets.

 

[peasy]

Let me start off by saying, although disappointed I didn't make it in tonight, I'm not mad or hurt. Curious as to what happened is a good way to describe it. I'm sure vmk staff will address what happened at some point. If nothing else, in e-mailed responses to those who clicked on contact us and said, "what was that?"

When I went to search at 7:28 Fin had a room and it had people IN it and people in queue for it.

Do I know what that room was for? Nope

Do I know who was in that room or who had tickets and was in line for that room? Nope

So, when I went back in the next few times, I was VERY confused and bewildered.

So how about we quietly and calmly discuss the possibilities.. if this was an un-intentional mistake, it was an interesting one. Considering there were people in that room and people in line, that means poeple have tickets to that particular room or at least one of Fin's rooms, right?

Someone mentioned that she may have wanted to open up and get ready - but weren't they able to do that before the pass/ticket system was introduced? I would imagine they have a feature that they can do whatever they want in a room without allowing anyone access. At the very least, they are not allowed to have "friends" and therefore, could make the room "friends only".

So another possibility is that hosts and vmk staff were allowed in there to "view" and be in the room and there are about 65 of those people? I guess? I'm just trying to figure out in my mind what the "un-intentional" mistake could be. If this was the case...why wouldn't they open the room under a different name to do such a thing? I'm sure they have to know what kind of a stir this would cause.

Maybe they gave tickets to those that they saw doing something nice? Seems like they would have mentioned it prior to the even though.

Either way, it's their game and it's free so I don't feel the liberty to complain much. It just confused the jeepers out of me.

On a total side note, I saw Hula trading earlier today with a CL and after they were done she said, "thanks for letting me borrow that" - that confused me too, can't hosts get anything they want? I guess they have to get it from some sort of "inventory" or store too though and she must not have had what she needed on her right then.

 

[qruthie]

I don't know what happened tonight but I think it's premature to conclude that favorites were given tickets. I don't believe the event was ticketed at all. What probably happened is Phinny set the room as ticket only to prevent people from entering it before the event started then changed the status when she opened the room. It's likely many computers wouldn't update the room status immediately to reflect the change from ticket to non-ticket. I know in the past I've seen Host room title or description updates posted on the DIS long before I saw them appear on the popular room list. I think it says a lot that we have a person in this post who didn't have a ticket yet was the fourth person in the room.

Why would the line be so long so quickly? Well, there were over 5000 people on VMK when I checked before the event started. 50 to 100 of them could have easily gotten in line in a fraction of a second. I've seen some real life cases of this happening. Disney Auctions used to sell pins from a limited edition of 250 using buy it now on ebay. If Stitch was on the pin, the pin would sell out in less than 10 seconds. That's right, 10 seconds! I think the shortest sell out time we ever saw was 2 seconds.

Now, if there had been tickets for Phinny's room, there could have been many reasons people had them other than favoritism. Can tickets be given out as quest prizes? Can tickets be given as game prizes? Can tickets be given out during trade events? I'm not saying that any of these happened because I don't believe people had tickets for Phinny's room. However, if there had been tickets, people could have gotten them from these types of sources.

 

[SorcererDonald16]

But qruthie, a lot of people are all saying the same thing: they tried to enter the room, when it first popped up and couldn't because they "needed a ticket." And soon it showed a queue of between 50-100, and still said "tickets only." I would be inclined to think it was a glitch myself if it wasn't a boatload of folks both in the game, elsewhere, and some here all saying the same thing. Line kept getting longer, and it still said "tickets only." Then "tickets only" was removed and the line shot up to an awful number in the hundreds. It's not like the room showed up as red mickeys like sometimes happened before with the Yard Sale, it showed up but said they couldn't access it because they had no ticket. That wouldn't be an issue of the individual computers freezing, I don't think. I know there are bugs any time a new thing is released, but this truly does not make sense to me.

If it is something like they are rewarding people for good behavior or what not, they need to tell us that so we know what's going on.

 

[Adventuredaz]

Why do they need to tell us anything, they give us the times and the event happens. I have seen these events fill up for two years almost. This is not new and they tell us more now then in the past. Incidentally I am a realist not an optimist, since it came across that way. I feel I know Fin better then to intentionally run an event in an unfair manner. I can tell you I did not get in and if you review my posts you will see I have said the Yard sale would be the measure of the passes worth. I never got in the event without the pass and I did not get in with the pass. So for me the negatives outway the possitives. I can't play at the mansion while in line, only Fire works or I crash. So i waste a lot of time lose credits and have less or equal chance of getting in the room.

All of you be prepared, they will be operating ticketed events and it doesn't matter how people get the tickets people will accuses and abuse people in all maners out of jealousy and rage, I find it very sad that ya'll can't give the benefit of the doubt and all feel entitled to something others have and just can't enjoy the game.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
***I would like to add an apology to Fin for the poor treatment I feel she has recieved here tonight from some of my (embarased to admit) fellow board members that have bumped thier heads, and gone off half cocked, accusing things they know nothing about. Thay apparently have forgoten she is doing a job and coments such as I see here are both mean and hurtfull. Some people assume a lot, without all the facts, and you know what that does.

 

[elikapekakini]

all i have to say is you are all right they might be favorites and they might be prizes we dont know all i know is that i sit in line for 3 houres then when i do get in i get booted!! because i was late not right to me but i am so used of being booted, cheated, ect.... that i am about to quit VMK because i have been on of 2 year and all this makes me mad!

 

[ForeverWDW]

Here's a few thoughts about tonights event . First off congrats go out to Host Phinny. I think she may have reached that 1000 people in waiting line goal. Top I was able to see tonight was 983 ppl waiting in line. Secondly my hats off to you Phinny I was waiting in line with the rest of the ones who almost made it. I figured she traded about 500-550 ppl. Thats an adverage of 2-3 ppl a minute.. Kuddos to you girl. Even on my best day I can't trade like that..lol

OK now about the ticket things everyone is debating. My thoughts are this, If by some shear chance some 100 ppl got a secret pass to Phinnys room don't you think that little tidbit of info would spread around VMK and the boards like crazy? Not one mention of it. So here's what I think happened.. Phinny tried to go in her room and was flooded by 100 or so ppl trying to get in as quickly as possible. She attempted to create a pass only enterance trying to stop the flood of ppl. The poor people who got caught in the pass only line must have gotten the "Can not enter from the map" bar. They then had to try and re-enter the line with the rest of us. Reasonable explaination? You tell me

Congrats go out to those who did actually make it in Phinny's room. Hopefully I can be a lucky one next time around.

 

[qruthie]

I understand what you are saying and I'm not saying you are wrong. Things do seem to be very fishy. I'm just trying to offer a possible explanation for the room showing up as being a ticketed room and having a queue without any tickets being issued let alone being used.

What I mean is I believe that not all computers recognized that the room had been changed from ticketed to non-ticketed. I'm not talking about computers freezing. A delayed update could easily happen if one VMK server noticed the change before the other VMK servers did. My semi-educated guess is server A picked up the change and players on server A were able to get into the room or get their VMK pass. Meanwhile, players on server B, server C, and so forth still saw the room as being a ticketed room, saw the queue growing and couldn't get in the room. This didn't make sense so people, using the data they saw on their screen then assumed the room was ticketed and favorites had been given tickets. Then when server B, server C, and so forth picked up the change, the line grew bigger very fast. That made it look even more like a few favorites had been let into the room before it was opened to the rest of the players. Again, this is just my semi-educated guess. Back when I was writing software, it was very common to update things on one server and then let the update propogate itself to the other servers.

Of course that makes it somewhat difficult to explain how the queue length was being updated without the ticket status being updated but that could boil down to the nerdiest levels of the inner workings of VMK and how data updates are prioritized. It is possible that the queue length data is updated at a higher priority than the room access data is updated. It does make sense to do as close to a "live" update of the length of the queue and make it a higher priority update than the data that says who can access a room. The reason would be that the queue length data is expected to be constantly changing compred to the data about who can access a room which would change significantly less often. I hope this makes sense, I'm tired and am having trouble explaining.

This is just a single, therefore meaningless, data point but yesterday I changed one of my rooms' access from friends to only myself yet a friend was able to enter the room after I had made the change. Because of that, I'm quite sure there is a good chance of a delay between when the room access data is changed and when it gets noticed by VMK.

 

[Adventuredaz]

Actually Q that made a lot of sense in that i have noticed toom titles don't update fast on friends lists if a person is in the room and the title changes quite some time can pass before the rooom title on the friend list updates. I think in fact it does not untill they re-enter the room. so that updates by request only. So the first people in may have still seen ticket only but when they clicked it received fresh data that allowed entry where others may not have. So it is sure that some information is prioritized diferently in the game.

 

[peasy]

Regardless of for how long, or why though - we have determined that Fin did choose to make her room available ONLY to "ticketed" guests at some point, for some reason. There are three choices (right? - my memory is terrible some times) for us as users (and I would imagine even more for hosts):

Everyone
People with tickets
Friends only

Someone brought up a good point, maybe on accident she opened the room, then tried to change it to "tickets only" to stop the flow and maybe the people who did get into the queue or room early got the boot, or had to go to the back of the line? Interesting!

 

[hdmonkeybug]

Someone mentioned that she may have wanted to open up and get ready - but weren't they able to do that before the pass/ticket system was introduced? I would imagine they have a feature that they can do whatever they want in a room without allowing anyone access. At the very least, they are not allowed to have "friends" and therefore, could make the room "friends only".

My guess on all of this would be that it was some sort of a glitch that had to do with this (which Yavn posted in the newsletter): "In the past when the event time was close to being over we would pull the room from the Room Navigation Menus and only the remaining 50 players waiting in the line would get in. Now with the VMK Pass system we currently have no way to turn off the passes when a specific threshold is met."

If they no longer have the ability to pull rooms from the Nav bar - why do we think that they have the ability for it to show up when they want? She was probably getting the room ready - like someone said, and put it on tickets only. I saw the same thing you all did. At 8:28 I looked for host room and it popped up with a line an don tickets only. I clicked enter again and I got in line at 157, only to leave the queue later by accident, (that's another story). But I have seen these rooms fill very quickly, within seconds and I have also had the luck of being the first in a host room, so it varies and I really don't think that Phinny had anything to do with it.

 

[SorcererDonald16]

The statement that we all feel we are entitled to something and why can't we just enjoy the game... that really hurts, even if not directed at me. Actually it reduced me to tears. I have never felt entitled to anything in this game. I believe we all have a right to an equal shot at getting into the events to get special prizes. That, in my opinion, is not a sense of entitlement, but rather a sense of fairness. I didn't complain one bit when I didn't get in Hula's events most times and only got in the Aqua Fire event once back in the summer (aka the game that gave out an Inferno if you got lucky). I was sad, but I never said I was "entitled" to get in and get a rare item in trade or win Inferno.

Q, your post made sense to me after I read it a couple of times. I'm not very computer-savy, so it took awhile. That is possible, and I hope that's what happened. I hope someone with VMK will give us an explanation ASAP.

Peasy, there's also another option for the rooms: Myself. So, can't you only have the room open to yourself without allowing tickets or friends in as well? Unless I"m confused, I'm thinking that is how it works.

 

[StephenTXT99]

If anyone actually paid any attention they would have seen the line fluctuate very rapidly. I doubt 70 people were issued tickets and as some of you are trying to suggest that Fin intentionally only wanted to give VIP treatment to some, all she had to do was set to friends only and the room wouldnt even appear in the search box.

So stop the bellyaching and childish speculation. I entered the room at 2 minutes past, and had no ticket. I was the 6th person in, and to prove this, Someone asked fin whether they could get her pins, she said no pins for sale.

Enough people, some of you read too much into things

 

[StephenTXT99]

All of you be prepared, they will be operating ticketed events and it doesn't matter how people get the tickets people will accuses and abuse people in all maners out of jealousy and rage, I find it very sad that ya'll can't give the benefit of the doubt and all feel entitled to something others have and just can't enjoy the game.

Well said. VMK will never win. If they announced today that on April 15, 2009 they were giving away 5000 infernos, someone will still complain that there wasn't enough notice.

 

[TLinden16]

She let them do both, Rolls? I thought the description said "Choose" one or the other? I can't check as I'm still in the "standby line;" was afraid to try pass because of the problems I've had with it booting me back to the end of the line even when clicking once.

Yes, she was letting people do both even though it said choose. I wound up doing both because just about everyone else was, and there were some good prizes in there. I just thought it slowed things down, though, as she had to move a stick for everyone to get into the quest area.

 

[CAJUNWDWFAN]

I made it in last night. I started by clicking on entering host room. Like many people have mentioned, it stated that I needed a ticket. So i tried a few times to enter and finally got in line at about 150 or 160 something like that. Well it finally took me 2 1/2 hours to get it. When I asked Phinny for red crate, I clicked accept. My screen froze up! I managed to check my inventory. Yes, I got the red crate. But I couldn't exit the room. I wanted to try the quest but couldn't. So I was a little concerned in the beginning but I was happy it turned out ok for me. I'm sorry to say that it looks like if you don't get to the host events within the first 5 minutes or so you're not going to get in. Unless it's a teleporter event where the line moves quickly.
Good for some, not so good for others.

 

[Hank's R&R]

I would just like an official explination as to what happened. Thats all.

If it was intentionally ticketed, my comments still stand.

If it was not intentionally ticketed, you all can burn me at the stake and I owe Fin a sincere apology.

Disney Dreams - I don't know how often you visit Host games or rooms where Host's are, but you'll usually find that there are always people who "stock" Fin and follow her around in there. There are always also the people who are her "favorites" (thats just what I call them) who are the ones who would get tickets. Just my opinion and I am sorry if I offended anyone.

 

[tigressjewel]

I had no idea this was all going on last night. I know I did click to check out the host room and see about getting in line but when I saw 790, didn't even bother as I knew I had no chance of getting in. VMK pass is a great idea, but with the bugs it has now its almost worthless. What good is it to use it if I'm going to crash at 35 or get in the room after its closed? This certainly needs improvement. As far as tickets...

All of you be prepared, they will be operating ticketed events and it doesn't matter how people get the tickets people will accuses and abuse people in all maners out of jealousy and rage, I find it very sad that ya'll can't give the benefit of the doubt and all feel entitled to something others have and just can't enjoy the game.

I feel sad to say that this statement is just all too true. VMK has continually promoted greed and jealousy in the game and apparently they are now taking it even further with favoritism issues. As for me, pixels come and pixels go, but I choose to enjoy the game regardless. When you really stop and think about it, your game play/experience is not affected by any pin, furniture or costume. What makes the game fun is the people you meet. I could lose my entire inventory, but as long as I still have my friends list, I have all I need in VMK!

 

[Grumpy_Disney_Dad]

Just to add my experience to the mix, I too started clicking on the host room at 3 minutes until open. The first time i clicked it was a ticketed room with 15 people in line and in the room. The second time i clicked It was a ticketed room with 15 people in it and 100 people in line. The third time i clicked it, it was an open room with 15 people in it and I became 60th in queue. What I would guess happened was that fin opened teh room, Then switched it to ticketed to "get the room ready" then reopened it. I dont think the hosts would intentionally open a ticketed room just to play favorites. Iknow some of yall disagree with that statement, but my thoughts behind it are: If i was able to get in line at 60 after seeing 100 people ahead of me, Then that would mean that 40 people moved through the room in less than 2 seconds. I find that very hard to believe and think the lines were simply a program glitch. Personally I think the host event went very fast and smooth considering that it was a yard sale AND a quest. I know all of us want to get into every host game and event but lets face it with an average player count in teh 5000 range this is no longer going to be possible. I would also like to add that personally I like idea of having different events rather than the same "Find the Teleporter Game" and I thank the staff for coming up with new and creative ideas.
Are there stillproblems with the new system ..YES, but rather than jump on the staff and declare that they are playing favorites, I think everyone should take a deep breath, Give the benefit of the doubt this time, and wait and see if the problem gets fixed.


I would now step off my soap box but being a short Gnome, I need it so i can reach the faucets and cabinets in my kitchen