The main thing here is that it was in fact down for more than 8 hours. That is just ridiculous. As someone already said, there should definitely be staff checking the site round the clock to make sure things are running smoothly. It just looks very unprofessional, and untrustworthy. Speaking for myself, I spend a good amount of money supporting this site, I feel like we deserve to have an update if the site is down for more than 1 hour, much less 8. Just tried to purchase CSC, it turned green as per usual, telling me that it accepted my card, and then OF COURSE the site went down. Never got my CSC. Don't know if I was charged. Very unreliable.

This is a forum for Site Feedback, both positive and negative. Please, do not tell me or anyone else to "stop complain" (sic) because we are using this forum the way it was intended.

If you have no problem with how Subeta staff communicates when their are problems with the site, that's cool. That's your right. But I am allowed to be unhappy with it, and I am allowed to express that unhappiness.

And I am allowed to express my happiness. Let me remind you, that YOU were the one who pinged me after my post and said that isn't right. Even though it aimed no one in particular. I just wanted to show that we love Subeta anyway, because I saw too many posts about site's downtime and no "thank you" for decreased ToTing and PP time at all. Meanwhile, this allows us to get much more items than we could have gotten during that downtime. I am grateful for that, and "Please, do not tell me or anyone else something like "No. Just no."(sic) because we are using this forum the way it was intended". Just follow your own words.

There is a difference between expressing your happiness, and what you did, which was essentially trying to tell people that see things differently than you to shut up.

Of you want to tell staff how much you love them, feel free to make a thread to do so. That's not why I made this thread.

Not sure what posts you read but that one can be seen on page 2. Some posts after Keith responded JESSYTA posted that. I would count that as a thank you ^_^

, oh, now I see, sorry for using your private forums. Teaching tolerance to others' opinion and being so intolerant at the same time. Yes, I think I've chosen the wrong thread. Now I'm going this dissatisfacfaction-only thread, it seems that I'm too optimistic for it xD

, I was talking about the majority of posts and my first message wasn't posted to JESSYTA personally, please, note that.

Now you are just trolling. Don't be sorry for posting in the thread. Be sorry for telling people to stop complaining when they have every right to do so. And for missing the post where I DID thank staff for the shortened times.

There is no 'donating' to Subeta either, if you purchase credits in the cash shop, you are getting credits in return for your money, which you can then spend on virtual goods. Donating would be giving money to Subeta and getting nothing in return. Paying for cash shop credits also does not mean that you are more entitled to complain in the Site Feedback forum. Whether or not people pay for credits on Subeta, they are entitled to their opinion.

I've spent over $400 in my time on the site, and I definitely consider it donating. I can't own pixels and am fully aware that an unforeseen glitch could destroy some of those benefits. That wouldn't be anyone's 'fault'. I put that money towards the community and the quality of an experience I enjoy. I'm usually - not always - satisfied with the paths the staff provide for recourse in negative situations, such as reduced ToT and Pumpkin Patch times after such an extended downtime. That being said, EVERYONE has a right to provide their feedback, not just those who pay.

I think a good solution would be a regular 'checkup' schedule for the site during events so that staff are always aware after a crash happens. It may interrupt the sleep schedule of a single staff member a night... but no more than any other responsibility would.

If you were just 'donating', you would not have gotten a service. You received virtual goods and services, meaning you made a purchase. Just because you're okay w/ considering it a donation, doesn't mean you're correct. I don't understand what people aren't getting about the difference between donation and purchase. A donation is a GIFT, often towards a charitable cause. Subeta is not a non profit. You are not donating to the church of subeta. You are buying items from an online store.

People who pay and people who don't have totally equal rights to play and no one should be given special benefits. however, BECAUSE it is a business in the game of making a profit, and because they have paid staff, they should MAKE SURE THEIR STORE STAYS OPEN AND MANNED DURING BUSINESS HOURS. THAT is not a difficult concept to grasp. THAT is what we are asking for.

Like I said, I can't own pixels. My Wardrobe has surely benefited because of it, but so has - for example - the art that everyone else views. When I attend my local Firefighter's Costume Ball and pay to get in, I'm benefiting a service that is provided to multiple people, not just myself. That is how I see it. Trying to 'own' something online seems drastically futile to me.

Other than that I agree with you. A staff member has a responsibility that they have chosen and there should be a schedule to prevent long downtimes. What are the 'business hours' of Subeta, though? Maybe that should be posted, since nothing is flawless 24/7 and people don't seem to know what to expect. This isn't a social media giant like Facebook; not enough people are on staff to monitor it at all times.

I don't get why gamergate needed to be brought up? Whether it is true or not doesn't matter, because irrelevant much? ;l It's like the reply was meant to distract us from the OP's suggestion. I'm also one of the people who is curious as to what gamergate had to do with the attack. Throwing us a bone without further explanation, and such a controversial bone at that, is just mean. You shouldn't do that, sorry. ;l

I'm in Europe, so I kept checking back to see if the downtime page on subeta would change to something more than automated "there seemed to be an internal error blah blah blah" but it didn't. And that's exactly why a twitter or fb update would have been immensely useful. I don't even use twitter and I checked out twitter to see if there was any info, because this was going on for HOURS. For all I knew, it could have been down for the rest of my day, and I wanted to know what was going on.

Yes, the site goes down a lot of times, but usually we get something more than the typical Calvin Blackmoon error page and it doesn't last for 9+ hours at a time. This was especially long and right after the ddos attack that an update would have been immensely helpful. I hope that in the future outside social media is used more than just for advertising events or contests.

I don't expect staff to get up in the middle of the night. Fine, you were sleeping, but then that means what? You sleep until 10 am? Damn, that's really, really good. I mean I wish I had a job where I could sleep in that late to. I'm not expecting you to be psychic, but you DO know the site has had a ddos attack and it's event time with battling just activated, and you SLEEP IN TO 10? Flabbergasted as to why you would think that is okay? After all these years of managing the site? For all I know, you guys probably do care, but that kind of behavior doesn't come off as caring at all. Less (justifying) words, more action please.

edit: I don't mean staff should wake up at the crack of dawn; that's usually reserved for us unfortunate commuters after all. ;) You can wake up at 8, curse at your alarm clock and bemoan the existence of mornings for 5 minutes, pop into lounge clothes in 2 minutes, put some bread into the toaster and turn on your computer in the mean time to discover oh shit--- the site is down and stare helplessly at the screen for 5 minutes, and yet still log onto twitter to say "Discovered the site is down, don't know what's up, but working on it!" and all of that would have taken less time than reading through dozens of posts complaining about lack of communication, trying to find an excuse as to why, and wasting time posting it up.

I'm not sure why this is such a huge discussion, but that's probably because I'm very neutral about it. I understand sites go down & although this wasn't handle in the greatest of ways, it was handled & the site is now back up with a reason as to why it went down.

As Keith stated not everyone has the rights to be able to post to the Subeta facebook and twitter and why should they? Even if someone noticed the site was down they would still need to get in contact with Keith or someone who could post to a social media site so that information could be relayed & that's not always easy. Things happen & people are still people. Yeah it sucks that there were no updates, but at least we can learn from this and hope for a better system in the future.

I know that it was said that they were working on a way to be better alerted when the site goes down. But the thing is that many of the staff members are in the US & aren't able to be around all the time. So even if an alert goes off, a member might accidentally sleep through it/miss it. I'm sure they have other things going on in their lives & probably even other jobs. Plus sleep is pretty much a daily function.

I do think not updating the facebook/twitter feed was an oversight because the community likes to be kept up to date, but hey it happened & all you can do now is hope that the next downtime will be a bit smoother.

Well, right. But in your example you're paying for a service. You're paying for an experience. Just like you would pay for a hotel room. No, you don't own the hotel room. But you weren't donating to the hotel company. You were paying for the experience and the service. digital goods are similar. An odd mix of service and goods.

However, there are a ton of people on staff for such a small site. Between Admins and Artists and programmers, etc, there are ~31 people on paid staff. I don't know 31 people who have the exact same sleep schedule spanning four or five time zones and two continents (one including the contenient where the outage was "in teh daytime" --though noon in the US is a little late for a grown up to sleep in on a weekday).

Idk I feel like staff is used to acting like teenagers and 20 year olds and they haven't grown up professionally. They need to develop their professionalism and dedication along with their site or it will never grow.

A few brief points from my perspective:

• Subeta is a business aiming to make a profit
• From my understanding, their primary income is through things like site cash purchases and ad views
• Users who are willing to give time to the website thereby viewing ads, or directly pay money, come from an international audience. They are key stakeholders.
• These key stakeholders are effectively able to be online 24/7. Therefore, I feel there should ideally be someone available for 24/7 contact if something is going wrong.
• People are generally more understanding if they know what is happening.
• Downtimes during events doesn't personally bother me that much; however, your most loyal and active users who spend hours on this site probably are the ones who mind. I imagine the most income comes from these users too.

EDIT: I think this message "HEADS UP! We're going to take the site down for a few minutes at 10:35 pm Subeta time to let the servers recover. Should only be a minute or two of downtime! [Remove]" type of thing is a good example of good communication :)!

To be honest, on the surface I LIKE that they told us it was related to Gamergate... but only on the surface. I'd like transparency, and to know exactly what is going on. If the comment had been elaborated on, I would have been more inclined to go "ah, i see", but since it is so vague that it brings up more questions than answers, I don't find it satisfying.

Agreed. It was helpful, I vacated the site for the short time it was scheduled to be down.

I think it's irritating as all hell that I literally had gone to bed with the site down and woke up and there was zero communication in those 8 hours. None.

I don't even see in any light how that is okay.

THIS. ^^^

The issue here, is that in order to be a PROFESSIONAL business the lax in things like what happened the other day, is not acceptable.

THIS x 100,000 ^^^

Perfectly worded without boring people into a story. Thank you.

Why would you LINK to pages and say "Find more updates at our...account" but then never update it?

That never, ever, ever looks good. Ever.

Also A+ Snarky response from the staff trying to shift the blame about everything to anything but themselves. Slow clap it out, people. :)