Non-Disney Online Games Virtual Family Kingdom Thread

[disvaclub92]

I have to say that while the "safety" measures are not up to par with Disney with the things we are allowed to say and the help button not working..while it can be a danger to some, WHY does all of that responsibility lie with VFK?

I agree, where are the parents, but we know that is not the case.

I am just guessing here, a parent may read all the stuff on the surface of the VFK site. Such as the Constitution, it appears that safety measures are in tact. Until you actually test it, which you and I both have. Some parents may not. My point is, if you state safety in your constitution on the website you should have the functionality to perform it as well.

 

[Kasiks]

lol You edited like 5 times, sorry?

not 5 times

I thought you were saying i said something wrong ..

 

[Belle1997]

Maybe what the developers need to do to get people back on side is post a top sticky note in bold letters. This is beta testing and some of our safe features are not working at the moment. It is not recommended that children play this site unsupervised until with have finished implementing all safety moderation features. We will post an update when this feature is working. Thank you for your patience.

 

[SharkMeal]

First, I was teasing a certain mod about not being able to find the remote control for his TV.

Second, I am a person who defends the BETA part of this game to everyone. I know it is Beta and I find it fascinating to watch it grow with every step we take in the game. In fact, I would donate money to the developers if they asked. There needs to be a safe place for families to play online and I am willing to help monetarily with that.

Did I ever say it was VFK's fault that the H1 Center caught on fire? No I did not. I do admit that I may not have chosen the best words for my post, but the post was tongue-in-cheek and playing off the PP "look under the couch".

Oh, I can't go outside because the fresh air is full of things that I am allergic to, including sunshine, so I will just have to stay in today.

While you may not have meant it, your previous post came across
kinda harsh to VFK (if they were to ever read it) imo. And maybe mine did
too. It was no intention of mine to start an argument.

You mentioned the rock had a bug in which it was a pink couch, which
was fine. Then you said you could not get in, which was also fine. But what
threw me off was the "Maybe I should find a better online game"
part. Then i started thinking "well what would you expect"?

And when you said you needed to find a better online game, and your
supporting detail was you could not get in the game to "find the remote under a pink couch rock" then that sort of is blaming them for being down. That's
the way it came across me. It did not look like you were teasing about the
last part, and I was just stating that it wasn't there fault and that it is beta.

 

[SharkMeal]

NEW UPDATE from home page:

Update 3:

Morning,

We are continuing to work through various issues this morning. We will have additional contractors on-site this morning starting at approx. 7 AM. Some will hand-off from contractors who worked overnight and others will start the recovery/installation of new electrical gear to power the data center.

We are still working through the EV1 DNS and ServerCommand items. We are making progress on both items and expect to have both functional within the next 120 minutes.

In addition to the above, the network engineering group worked overnight to prepare the network for the recovery of H1. We expect the reconvergence of the network to go smooth once H1 comes back online.

We do not have an Estimated Time to Repair at present; we should have a better estimate this morning. Our staff and management continue to work through the night and morning-- we will continue to provide hourly updates.

Todd

 

[Cardinal]

redundancy is to prevent a single point of failure belle. I install routers for a living

You know what? That explains so much.

 

[aliceblue]

Since when is an internet company responsible for babysitting your children?

They are not, of course.

However they are responsible for safety features which have been deliberately advertised.

If we are paying attention to our children this should not be an issue.

The issue is not about parental supervision, but about general trust of an internet game site. I'm sorry, but if they can't carry through on major claims about game safety, it speaks volumes about them as a company, and what can be expected of them in the future.

 

[souper]

Maybe what the developers need to do to get people back on side is post a top sticky note in bold letters. This is beta testing and some of our safe features are not working at the moment. It is not recommended that children play this site unsupervised until with have finished implementing all safety moderation features. We will post an update when this feature is working. Thank you for your patience.

Great idea Belle. I hope you have e-mailed this in to them.

 

[Mouse Man]

From what I have seen, the "game" has the potential to be very good. As a parent, I make every attempt to monitor what my boys are up to on the internet. My 10 year old can't understand why I won't allow him on sites like MySpace until he is in High School since "all" of his friends already have their own pages. I tested this site myself using his character. In the 15 minutes I was on, I saw a girl telling the room that VFK has no chat rules yet so it's ok to give out information. Well, I don't think I will allow my son to participate in this "beta" just yet. I would be happy if they announced they must shut the place down until July or how ever long it takes to get some true moderation on there. They already established a following and people will wait for a place that is to be their VMK replacement.

 

[Vary]

I have to say that while the "safety" measures are not up to par with Disney with the things we are allowed to say and the help button not working..while it can be a danger to some, WHY does all of that responsibility lie with VFK?

Where are these kids parents? I signed my son up for beta and since seeing the chat the first day he is not allowed to go on unless I am sitting with him.

Since when is an internet company responsible for babysitting your children?

There are thousands of sites and games that allow worse chat than VFK. Let's take Habbo for example. I am 33 and I blushed when I signed up and chatted for about 10 minutes before I got so disgusted I logged off never to go back.

What it comes down to is good parenting, knowing what your children are doing online, who they are chatting with, what they are chatting about and what is allowed or isn't. Just because you CAN tell people your name and where you live does not mean you SHOULD. If we are paying attention to our children this should not be an issue.

By this logic, it would be okay for Second Life to claim to be family friendly. It's the parent's problem if they let their kids play there, right? If parental supervision were enough, we wouldn't need reporting features.

Habbo is for teenagers, not little 'uns, so it's not really a good comparison. And sure, there are some bad ones out there, but this is by far the worst 'family' virtual world I've seen, safety-wise - and I've seen an awful lot of them. What do you mean 'allow worse chat than VFK?' VFK allows you to say literally anything that you can find a way to get through the dictionary filter. If you can find a dance for it, there is nothing else to stop you from saying it.

Any game that claims to be kid-friendly needs to hold itself to a higher standard than this. They went a step farther from just calling themselves a family game and actually claimed that the game was being moderated by the same people who kept VMK safe. It wouldn't be surprising for the less technically adept parents to be satisfied with that. As we've seen in this very thread, there are still some people who actually think VFK is safe. Online safety is clearly not a priority for the developers. Why make excuses for that?

You know what? That explains so much.

:

 

[Belle1997]

Maybe what the developers need to do to get people back on side is post a top sticky note in bold letters. This is beta testing and some of our safe features are not working at the moment. It is not recommended that children play this site unsupervised until with have finished implementing all safety moderation features. We will post an update when this feature is working. Thank you for your patience.

Hello out there wondering if this would solve the issue for now. One thing I learned early on is when you complain if you can think of how it could be don't better it is more positive. If they can not get the report button working that would solve the issue temporarily. And also a sticky in the log on page nice and big for parents who are peering over their kids shoulders to see it.

 

[Belle1997]

Sorry while I was writing my why has no one responded to my suggestion Happy did yes I will email them

 

[aengus]

woah @_@

This was their update from may 28th

We now have our servers working in New Mexico, New York and backup servers in Dallas. This gives us both the bandwidth we need, and serious redundancy.

We will be doing live tests throughout the night, so if you happen to get into the virtual world, keep in mind it will only be up for a few minutes for any one test.

compared to the description of the problem presently or as of last night

As you may have heard in the news, there was a large explosion caused by electrical equipment failure in the H1 data center in Houston that knocked down three walls at about 5:00 PM CDT. Fortunately, and most importantly, no one was injured. In addition, no data was lost and there appears to be no damage to the servers or networking equipment.

You remember when you first started playing that the servers went down? Well that was because of bandwidth, so we went to The Planet, which is recognized as one of the most RELIABLE providers in the world.

As luck would have it we are among an estimated 100,000 websites that are down around the world.

We have been assured that engineers are working around the clock to get the H1 data center back online, and we are told it will resume operation sometime tomorrow, Sunday, June 1st.

We are not going to waste this time though. This gives us the opportunity to complete enhancements we are working on, and add new lands. Our goal is that each day you log into the kingdom, it will be better than the last.

Keep an eye out and make sure you log on when the services are restored, because our world will be better than ever.

We have rerouted the DNS for the WWW server, so that we can share with you what is happening.

However, we do need the bandwidth from the H1 data center in Houston to support all of us in our virtual world.

We will keep you updated about the progress being made in restoring the Houston data center.

I really didnt mean to irk anyone (ok honest this time I didn't) We were discussing recently that they were changing history, its the only reason I brought attention to it. The two updates are in direct conflict, and they went and deleted the May 28th update, which as you all know drives me crazy

I have a suggestion maybe we can all take to heart no matter what side of the issue we are on. It has been my experience that things tend to balance out. So yes there are many naysayers but there are also many koolaid drinkers. Perhaps if we met in the middle somewhere and the views weren't so polarizing postive or polarizing negative we could keep this from getting ugly (yeah it got uglier as soon as cardinal got into this thread, but thats nothing us nor VFK can fix )

 

[Belle1997]

Card remember I vote for you as most lava. Big A has to go back and read again how to win frends part

 

[aengus]

Card remember I vote for you as most lava. Big A has to go back and read again how to win frends part

OMG see... negative negative negative

 

[LoriR]

Lively discussion of both sides is great, and we need to respect one another's personal opinions. ( not agree, just accept there is more than one way to look at things )

I would like this thread to keep all of our member's eyes wide open about where VFK is now and where it is in the coming days.

My personal opinion ( no you don't have to agree!) is that there have been many manipulative actions taken and promises made way before there is any chance of them being put into action. I have high hopes that this game develops into what we are all looking for, but I feel this will be a long way off. I've "beta" tested in other games and none have been this undeveloped once open to public testing. I would also like them to be more forthcoming about what they plan to charge to play and what this will include. Honestly, at this point I would be very hesitant to offer up my credit card info to a group we know so little about.

Let's all agree to disagree and try not to take what anyone is saying too personally.

Here's hoping VFK turns out to be what has been promised!

Lori

 

[Belle1997]

OMG see... negative negative negative

No just a kind friend suggesting you missed a chapter or too

 

[Cardinal]

OMG, Magic, you're back! VFK is surely a great thing. It has the power to resurrect the dead!

(yeah it got uglier as soon as cardinal got into this thread, but thats nothing us nor VFK can fix )

If VFK had a say in this, they would've pretended that I don't exist!

(And I would prefer that a lot more than YOU!)

 

[souper]

A way around the broken report button.

• Take a screen shot of the bad player behavior.
• Go to the main VFK page.
• Use the "Contact Us" link.
• Create an message title that fits the situation. Here are a few off the top of my head (Violation of Constitution, Ban Worthy Behavior, Unacceptable Behavior, Player Making Me Uncomfortable.)
• Send a detailed message of the situation. Include date, time, room, and screen shot. My thought on the screen shot is it may assist in the research process. Due to photoshop I am sure they will still need to research each individual situation. The photo may help them to prioritize.
• Then, hope for the best. When they research the situations, perhaps bans will occur. Then the game will be a bit "cleaner" for everyone.
  

 

[LifesPink]

who knew the report thing would be such a big deal ! i am very suprised that VFK hasn't gotten on that, but i'm sure with all the busy stuff going on it must be challenging

I think that now, that's the least of there problems because, VFK is down. I think right now, there job is alottt harder then they thought it would be. VFK creators have the odds against them right now