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PC Games (Games) Role Playing (Games) Entertainment Games

Earth Fires Destabilize Virtual Governments 29

Posted by simoniker from the looting-on-the-virtual-streets dept.
Thanks to Terra Nova for their article pointing out that Sony Online's virtual worlds are missing their customer service, "...due to the wild fires raging throughout San Diego and the proximity of those fires to the SOE offices. Normal operations will resume once this local emergency is over." Edward Castronova comments: "In other words, a firestorm has knocked out the government that rules over 750,000 accounts", and suggests: "We tend to think of synthetic worlds as decentralized because the users are spread over the globe. They are still highly centralized on the production side, however, a state of affairs with clear implications for the relationship of synthetic worlds not only to Earth's weather, but to its politics as well."
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Earth Fires Destabilize Virtual Governments More

Earth Fires Destabilize Virtual Governments

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  • forethought (Score:4, Insightful)

    by alexjohns ( 53323 ) <almuric.gmail@com> on Monday October 27, 2003 @07:37PM (#7323556) Journal
    They are still highly centralized on the production side

    Because the people running the game couldn't be bothered to distribute the load. Could have been done. Don't blame nature. Blame human lack of forethought.

    • I would love to learn more about how these worlds can be decentralized. If any of you have a minute to deliver the basic idea, please post at the blog (Terra Nova) or contact me at ecastronovaNO@SPAMfullerton.edu Thanks! Edward Castronova

    • Lame slashbot response (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Mike Hawk ( 687615 ) on Monday October 27, 2003 @08:04PM (#7323775) Journal
      They should distribute the load of the physical office space? Hmmm, there is plenty of good reason to have one central customer support office. This isn't servers, these are people. The fire is threatening the physical building where people sit and work.

      I suppose I should have thought ahead and distributed my house and family too. Nevermind that its prohibitively expensive to apply redundency to large physical objects and impossible with current scientific methods to duplicate people. But hey, a bitter slashdotter can't be wrong, right?
      • Outsourcing (to a different location, not necessarily out of country) your customer service usually isn't a really a good thing to do. For the most part, its financially unmotivating and not a very convincing argument since instances such as this are rare.

  • Maybe its a sign that EQ needs a firefighter class (Score:3, Funny)

    by UltimaL337Star ( 641853 ) on Monday October 27, 2003 @08:05PM (#7323788)
    I can single handedly mutilate a level 92 dragon, and SOW across the world in 3 seconds but my account had no chance against that wild fire.

  • Hmmm.... (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Well, what we have here is a country that has suddenly lost it's government and police force, but the majority of the population still exists.
    This should be interesting...

    Place your bets on the ETA for the next "EQ servers hacked!" slashdot headline!

  • Yes, it's a legitimate story... BUT... (Score:4, Insightful)

    by reiggin ( 646111 ) on Monday October 27, 2003 @08:21PM (#7323885)
    aren't there bigger issues concerning this terrible disaster? People are dying and nearly 1000 homes are burning. I realize that this is an article making a point but let's not lose focus on what's really important about this fire.
    • I don't think the point is lost, it just isn't relivent to games.slashdot.org. People come here to read about gaming news. There are a lot of other important pieces of news floating about, but they simply don't get press here because there are better places to go for that sort of news. The point is well taken that having a CS department knocked out is small change compared to the damage and the lives lost in the fire. However, the point relivent to gaming is that the fire has had an effect on a game. W
      • Exactly.

        And to add to that, all of the news agencies in the world couldn't get the important news out to most people anyway, that being whether or not particular people are ok. On the other hand, it only took me two phone calls last nite to make sure most of my family in San Diego was ok, and whether or not they were still in the line of danger. The first call to my parents' home phone, which was busy (unusual due to call waiting, but not given the circumstances). The second was to my dad's cell phone, whi
  • ...they would just give the support staff +100 sv fire Red Glowing Robes:

    MAGIC ITEM LORE ITEM NO DROP
    Slot: CHEST
    AC: 60
    STR: +20 STA: +5 WIS: +5 INT: +30 HP: +100 MANA: +100
    SV FIRE: +100 SV DISEASE: +100 SV COLD: +100 SV MAGIC: +100 SV POISON: +100
    Effect: Flowing Thought X (Worn)
    WT: 2.0 Size: MEDIUM
    Class: NEC WIZ MAG ENC
    Race: HUM ERU HIE DEF GNM IKS

  • Bad management. (Score:2, Insightful)

    by illumen ( 718958 )
    They obviously should have had plans for this.

    Not neccessarily a bush fire, but incase this one office goes down.

    How can a company this large not have redundancy for something making so much money?

    Management should be fired. Or chucked in the fire ;)


    Have fun!
    holepit [holepit.com]
    • Why not have redundancy? Simple. It costs money for a service that while important, is not essential. I don't blame them. The number of disasters that could put such a building out of commission for any length of time are very few. I am sure that if they absolutely needed to they could quickly set up a temporary service center at another corporate site, but doing so would be a terrible hassle. Not the least of the hassle would be the fact that they would either need to move the staff to the new locati
      • Not to mention that the physical location of the tech support center could be perfectly fine. However, the phone system in the area is a mess right now, and many people probably can't get to work. In a time of crisis like this for so many people it's fairly common for corporations to shut down areas local to these types of disasters just for the safety of the people that work there, if not to give them time to assess their losses and work out the essentials.
  • I don't see how this would affect players other then the lack of message deletion in the forums. SOE_tech_support = joke_in_the_best_of_times;
  • Are 3D online games now going to be called "synthetic worlds" in the same way comics are called "graphic novels" in a futile attempt
    to convince other people that they're not really for kids? When are people going to stop kidding themselves that these games are some sort of
    next step in creating alternate realities. They're not. They're a game running on someone elses computer. Period. Take away the graphics and you have a MUD.
  • So EQ's customer service is down and unable to perform their role. How is this different from before the fires started causing problems?

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