GOA WAR Website Petition

Discussion in 'Warhammer' started by Penlid, Oct 27, 2008.

  1. Penlid

    Penlid Fledgling Freddie

    Just made this e-petition to basically see the amount of people who want GOA to change their site, if there is a large number of people who sign it then will push it forward to GOA and onto Mythic which seem to have a hold on GOA atm.

    Basics of the petition...

    Category: Gaming

    Region: WAR-Europe Customers

    Target: GOA

    Web site: Warhammer Online : Age of Reckoning

    A petition for GOA to listen to its community and change its ways regarding its Flash Website.

    As you may know GOA always use flash for their website, but it has become increasingly annoying for many of GOA's Warhammer customers.

    We are now asking for GOA to re-design its website along the same lines as Mythics website for better performance and information.

    So basically what you sign for is the following:

    We the gaming community of Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning on the servers currently ran by GOA, call on GOA to re-design its website and not force the use of flash on its website. We also call on GOA to frequently update its website with information as soon as they have it and include the much awaited Realm WAR and server status pages we were promised a month ago.

    And the link...

    Change WAR-Europe webpage to a non-flash website Petition
  2. Mabs

    Mabs J Peasemould Gruntfuttock

    jobs a good un

    and zomg, an interwebs petition that is actually not written by a 6 year old \o/
  3. aika

    aika Can't get enough of FH

    cause we know that goa listens to its customers and values their opinion
  4. Penlid

    Penlid Fledgling Freddie

    If we can prove to Mythic that we're actually getting a shit service then maybe they'll have an effect like they did with the open beta and getting goa to sort their shit out. If there is a slight chance this will help then good cos thats what we need.

    No point paying your money per month to be treated like shit and do nothing about it.
  5. Boggy

    Boggy Fledgling Freddie

    Pen, I'm not a fan of Flash for these sort of sites, and I get niggled by GOA using it, but I dunno whether objecting to Flash on general principles would be viewed as a particularly strong case. It is a widely used Internet technology, after all.

    Might help if you could specify why you object to using Flash? Some suggestions:

    - Security. Flash player has had security flaws in the past (WoW customers got caught out by it a few months back I think) over and above those in browsers.

    - Usability. No back button, yuck. Why make us all puzzle through bespoke interface conventions when everyone is already famliar with those in their browsers?

    - Performance. No huge for me, but Flash has definitely more sluggish responses over standard HTML content.

    - Player availability. Some networks won't let you install a Flash player.

    Just a thought.
  6. Penlid

    Penlid Fledgling Freddie

    Good points there Peat, will see if i can add them onto the petition, thats generally the aim of the Petition what you posted :)
  7. Flimgoblin

    Flimgoblin It's my birthday today!

    only issue I have with flash is I can't browse the news site on my mobile. Some html alternative content would sort that out though.

    Boggy - the war europe website supports the back button (read a news story, then visit another page then hit back - you'll be seeing the same news story).
  8. Boggy

    Boggy Fledgling Freddie

    I've not been able to see that, Flim. The news stories I tried launched in a separate tab.

    Try this: go to the home page, expand a menu option on the left, click a menu item. What happens in your browser? In mine, I don't even get an enabled back button, and I think it's because it is all playing inside a single HTML page, with the Flash engine paginating content instead. I could be wrong.
  9. scorge

    scorge Fledgling Freddie

    They shouyld have a HTML friendly version as well, that way you can choose which one you want to use.

  10. Hintshigen

    Hintshigen Fledgling Freddie

    Signed but not holding out much hope for any changes.
  11. pikeh

    pikeh Resident Freddy

    I've learnt a lot from designing my own website about the inaccessability of Flash based sites. Since converting to HTML, my hits have increased ten-fold since last month.
    People are just put off by it, new technology or not.
  12. Mabs

    Mabs J Peasemould Gruntfuttock

    i dont think its a "new tech" thing so much as an "overly complicated, doesnt really work for lots of people, for little gain" tech ;)
  13. Soazak

    Soazak Part of the furniture

    There are already guides on the internet for this... ;)
    • Like Like x 1
  14. pikeh

    pikeh Resident Freddy

    Throughout uni we were taught Flash more than HTML, primarily becuase it's more image based (and I was doing illustration, afterall). When it came to my website, I just stuck with what I knew.
    Maybe something like whats happening with GOA?
  15. Mabs

    Mabs J Peasemould Gruntfuttock

    i have it on very good authority that the GOA web monkey can only do flash sites, hence why it was never changed
  16. Cadelin

    Cadelin Part of the furniture

    Aren't we unhappy about the quality of service GOA provide, with one aspect of this being the shitty flash website?

    The petition seems to indicate that if the flash website was to be changed then everything would be better. While it is certainly a first step it hardly solves the main problem which is the lack of information.
  17. Penlid

    Penlid Fledgling Freddie

    Thats also included in the petition, the way they have it laid out atm makes it more difficult for them to update, it should be really easy to do.
  18. scorge

    scorge Fledgling Freddie

    you should not really have to petition for better or same service.......

  19. Gahn

    Gahn Resident Freddy

    :ninja: Don't start me on this ...
  20. taB

    taB Part of the furniture

    I don't know anything about security et al. But my work computer is effing shit (128mb RAM) and stuggles with a lot of things including flash. Would prefer a more basic option at the least.
  21. Litmus

    Litmus Resident Freddy

    Cant see it makeing much difference, every person on the plannet could sign it and nothing would be done :K
  22. Ctuchik

    Ctuchik FH is my second home

    and he's doing a pisspoor job of it :<
  23. Raven

    Raven Brrrrr!

    Don't people find it fun trying to find which bit of the picture to click to get information?

    Think of it as a little puzzle game!

  24. Bugz

    Bugz Fledgling Freddie

    The GoA Website only half loads for me :l

    The sidebars load but the middle is pure white.

    Ironically, Mythic's site loads up in about a quarter of a second.
  25. Narzeja

    Narzeja Loyal Freddie

    *inserts coin*

    Go man, go!!
  26. Muylaetrix

    Muylaetrix Can't get enough of FH

    i hope you don`t try an play warhammer on that :p
  27. Xandax

    Xandax Loyal Freddie

    While the website definitely is one annoyances, it is more the overall attitude and service level of GOA which should be targeted.

    Especially such as the lack of Realm War and Server status this long after live is simply disgustingly poor service level, for one thing. "Technical difficulties" or not, and "two to tango" or not - just give us the damn XML file if you can't make the website work.

    I can live with a shitty website, as long as the content on there is good and fast updated, but even that seems impossible with much of the news value hidden away on user forums, for some obscure reason.

    I'd love to sign this petition, but alas - GOA have never listened to customers, because we are just "bashing" out of hatred.
  28. Flimgoblin

    Flimgoblin It's my birthday today!

    yeah it rewrites the URL as anchors - if I visit a page from the left nav then hit back I get the homepage - works fine for me.

    Which browser do you use? it's a fairly common technique for making the back button work on a flash site - quite prevalent on t'interwebs.

    TBH an HTML framework website with flash bits would do the job of the current site - there's nothing that really needs flash on there... Nowt wrong with flash though when used well and appropriately - it's coded well enough on the war-europe site (with the back buttons etc. anyway) just seems a bit of an odd choice for what the site actually does.

    There's no fancy transitions - probably removed to make it run faster - the main reason you'd want a flash framework rather than an html one.
  29. Boggy

    Boggy Fledgling Freddie

  30. Gorbash

    Gorbash One of Freddy's beloved

    I wrote a rather large post on why flash is a bad choice a while ago, so rather than re-itterate it all, i'll just bullet the main points that might be worth adding to the "because" list:

    *Using a 3rd party plugin to deliver content the browser already knows how to handle natively (text and static images) is wasteful and pointless. Flash is primarily for rich content the browser can't display on its own.
    *Accessability of flash is minimal unless you implement it manually (which aside from language selection, GOA have not).
    *Security of flash is something i'm not qualified to comment on, but people just dont trust it, whether it does the job or not.

    Needless to say, petition signed.

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