DKP_Mon and Bidder issues
I am not able to open Bidder while in a raid, and have had this problem since the last WoW patch. I am running DKPMon_RaidLeaderSuite v5.4. I have deleted it and reinstalled it twice.
The raid tracking portion of the addon seems to be working fine. I am able to import the nightly strings into the rapid raid portion of the site. The site is updating properly. However I can’t see any results from my exports from the site. Because Bidder is not functioning.
I set myself up as the DKP lead and I am constantly spammed with:
DKPmon: I’m now the DKP lead.
DKPmon: DKP leader changed to Julise
DKPmon: DkP leader changed to Julise-Greymane
This is a constant spam in my chat box during the entirety of the raid. It repeats about every 30 sec. And I get this spam whether I set myself up as DKP lead or not.
Bidder is totally non-responsive. I (nor anyone else) can open any menu from it.
Can you please tell me what I need to do so this mod will work correctly again? I use your system and need it to be working properly.
Thank you in advance for your help.
I first posted this issue in Rapid Raid forums on Thurs afternoon, March 13. It is now Sun afternoon, March 23. Ten days with NO acknowledgement at all? NONE. Not even a "we're looking into it" or we have tested the mod and have come to the conclusion that it's user error; let us try to help you. Something. Anything.
You guys going to learn the hard way that abandoning old customers for new will not be your salvation. Spending resources on eye-candy instead of maintenance is not good for long-term survivability Just because its more fun and glitzy to add new customers via new game support as opposed to crunching the code on old products, does not mean the new customers will be more loyal than the old ones you left hanging with broken mods. Contrary to popular viewpoints, WoW is not dead yet.
Coke switched to New Coke - it was a disaster. Why Coke thought their market wanted to abandon their old product and drink a new one baffled everyone. Coke did not consider brand loyalty when they switched products. Why does Guildlaunch think its old customers no longer want to use their old product called Rapid Raid?
Ford's stupidest idea was to introduce the Edsel which competed with its other brands, brought no value-add to the table and had zero quality control. Why did Ford think they needed to add yet another product line which actually did not add anything of substance for their customers.? It was a costly mistake.
Guildlaunch has an aggressive campaign running to attract new games, to add new features, to revamp the structure of web hosting pages. You are doing so well with your new changes. A value-add to many of your customers. I do realize your staff is all working hard, and probably non-stop. These are healthy signs of a growing business. But to turn your back on customers who have been offering that monthly payment for 7 years is something that eventually will come back to bite you in the ass. I'm a business woman, trust me I know. I've had my ass bitten too many times when I failed to follow through or address a nagging issue that customers were waiting on.
The raid tracker is still incapable of tracking the boss, Paragons of Klaxxi. We have asked for this tracking since mid-December. You gave us some lip service, swept the issue under the rug hoping we'd let die. We did. We (I anyway) gave up, type it in manually on every kill. You going to wait for me to give this issue up too?
If you are overextending and don't have the personnel to work on old products, either reassign some for this old and boring quality control, give us a time-line for completion, or simply let us know that you are no longer supporting certain items in your product line. Be ethical.
Ebbie,
I really can't do anything here other than apologize and say I'm trying to make it right, but it's not an instant thing.
You might think it is more lip service, but I will say that we have made a couple of behind the scenes changes that are not shiny and greatly impacted our development bandwidth over the last few months. We embarked on a major technology overhaul on the behind the scenes systems of Guild Launch. While this has an impact, these items are largely invisible:
1. Our server migration improved the Guild Launch experience for everyone with faster load times and more scalability
2. As part of that migration we moved all files and images to Amazon S3 so that we could remove file size restrictions and improve load times
3. We moved our server stack to a more modern web server and upgraded to the current PHP versions, which required thorough evaluation of system wide code changes
4. We installed New Relic on all of our servers so that we could get up to the minute debugging and performance info right out of the app and more proactively respond to any issues in the app
5. We moved more assets to our CDN improving worldwide load times
6. We moved DNS to a worldwide DNS infrastructure which improved worldwide load time
I say all of that only because I would like to make sure you understand that we are not just focusing on new shiny features, or on acquiring new customers. We have been focusing quite a bit on system wide, low level items that have a broad impact on our long term product quality and development.
All that aside, issues with Addon maintenance predates most of this. These low level changes which we had to get done, have however impacted our ability to crawl out of the Addon development hole that we've dug.
Here is the current state of the Addons:
1. DKPMon and Bidder are way out of date with current Addon APIs and is feeling the effect of changes in Blizzard's API badly. It needs to be replaced and we need to find another way to get DKP info into game.
2. Raid Tracker works very well overall and we have every intention to keep it updated.
The primary thing we need for Raid Tracker improvements is a few consistent guilds to join a "Charter" user group and help us test new versions on live or the test server and to provide specific details from there when new content is released. Our primary Addon developers, myself and Brian, are not currently in guilds running the top end content so we rely on the community and this bit us majorly in the butt last year when many of the Wikis had yells recorded incorrectly.
If being in that "Charter" user group is something you would be interested in then I've PM'd you my personal email and we can get that going in email.
-Stephen
Stephen, I am aware of the dedicated and hard work you guys continuously do at Guildlaunch. I do not mean to belittle that. You are the premier guild-hosting service; you are no. 1 at what you do.
Most of the bullets you listed are over my head, but I have been aware of the many things you have been improving; I actually read your updates. I am appreciative of the efforts you guys go through to keep your service updated and user-friendly. I haven’t been with you for 7 years because you fail to deliver.
My personal beef has to do with customer relations and addon maintenance. I think you drop the ball there. I don’t like fumbles any more than you do; we both lose on a fumble. You need to stay on top of forum threads and give timely responses.
I think I can infer from your response that the raid tracker will continue to be supported, but that the DKP tracking and bidder side of the addon are too antiquated to devote any additional resources to. I will also infer that you are reluctant to just simply say this because those of us who use it will likely look elsewhere to fill our needs.
Most users probably do not need the dkp side of the equation. I do. And I do realize all needs are different; you do a great job of filling the needs of a very diverse group. I just happen to be one of the unfortunate customers whose needs you cannot fulfil. And I expected you too. Thus you have a very disgruntled customer.
Usually the best way to deal with an unhappy customer imo, is just tell ‘em like it is. In a diplomatic way of course. Which you have just done. And because I have been a Blizz customer for many years, I’m used to not getting what I want for my money. Normally I'd insert an lol there but to be honest, it really isn't funny!
I would like to know if you are going to continue to provide a full plate of rapid raid features, including dkp and bidder type addons or if this is something you are going to phase out. I do realize you said that you need to find another way to get DKP info, but does that mean you will be able to devote resources to do so? If that is a yes, are we talking weeks, months, or longer?
I have responded to your e-mail concerning the charter user. If it helps develop better product, I’m more than willing to participate.
And thank you for your response to my post. I can tell you spent time and thought on it.
Ebbie,
Thanks for your understanding and I apologize again for our less than clear communication of issues relating to our WoW Addons. Our perspective of the work involved with bringing Bidder and DKPMon forward has changed over time. I would like to make one last "update" to get it functional, then start on transitioning to something new.
I'm bringing a new developer up to speed on Addons and I hope that he is effective rather quickly. He's smart and full of energy and a dedicated WoW player, which is a good combo to steward the Addons.
I absolutely want to continue to provide a full suite, which includes:
1. Web based DKP tracking
2. In-game display and DKP modification
3. In-game raid and item tracking
I think that long term the only element we may have to reduce is the bidder part of the addon. A lot of complexity is in that Addon to provide that relatively straightforward functionality. My goal though would be to have an Addon footprint that we can manage, and that we could open up to the community to add to. DKPmon and Bidder right now are very very difficult for any community member to add to due to their complexity. I do need to get a better picture of how people are currently using or would like to use those two mods.
So, give me a bit of time to speak with actions instead of words and let's get you hooked into our Beta group and see if we can't work together to get this fixed.
-Stephen