Just because it wasnt the exact day where you were, doesn't mean it was late.
OK again, the delay is a secondary complaint, but since you bought it up, when other providers can manage to release on the day they say even in your conuntry you can expect the providers of a world wide service to do the same (or a nice notice when you order from the UK saying that they will try to release on the day your time but if they will not be able to , they wil contact you)
Again the main point here is LACK OF CONTACT considering they knew they have world wide customers and that it might affect how they had to handle the release.
I love TellTale and I LOVE LOVE LOVE the new Monkey Island. Great work, guys!
Unfortunately, that doesn't change the fact that they caused a LOT of people a LOT of frustration yesterday, which could have been avoided with a single Twitter message.
There's a ton of forums showing the frustration from European gamers, yesterday, all wondering what was going on and why TTG hadn't said anything. The deleted blog post from yesterday had a 1,100+ comments, a lot which were Europeans wondering what was going on.
They were ignored.
Yes, we're in Europe. Yes, TTG are in California. But this is the future, ladies and gentlemen, we have the internet now! :cool: Yes! We DO buy things from other US based digital distribution companies and guess what? They DO take into account international customers! *shock*
Steam (who have "official Steam time" on their store in order to mitigate these misunderstandings) released Street Fighter IV for the PC at 9am PST yesterday morning. That was 5pm UK and 6pm in mainland Europe.
But that isn't the point...
TellTale aren't evil. I'm sure TellTaleGames would have LOVED to released TOMI at 9am sharp, too, but unfortunately they were set back by unforeseen problems that needed to be addressed.
But that also isn't the point...
Bugs need to be squished and problems need to be overcome. I think we all understand that!
The point is simply this: This was a MAJOR release. This wasn't episode #4 of say, Strong Bad. It was the first Monkey Island game in a decade! If people could have queued outside stores to get it quicker -- they would have done!
Paying customers in Europe were going to get the game a day later than they were advertised. Those same paying customers were sitting at their machines, clicking refresh, for HOURS, wasting their entire evenings, getting more and more frustrated. Just check out gaming forums yesterday to see what I mean. Here's some examples:
The whole thing could have been avoided by a simple message from TTG.
If it was US-based customers, sitting at their screens at 2am, they would have said something, but because our money comes from foreign shores, it obviously isn't worth enough to send a Twitter or offer a simple apology.
Blah blah blah...
They released a simple message, it said "we're working on it" and it's not like they had to explain why it wasn't coming out on the launch date. WHICH IT DID! They never specified a time and this is exactly why, because morons like you complain that they should be apologising to each and every person for releasing their game a few hours "late". Where are the LucasArts adventure games, complain about that you dolt!
A thumb down for my fellow europeans : they don't concider the fact Telltale delayed the game only of a few hours.
As I live in France, I expected to play it only late in the evening (remember for us the Apple's keynote is a evening event, not a morning one!).
And Telltale employees probably watched MJ funeral as everyone on earth rather than fixing the crashing website!
And some people don't seem to realize how small a company Telltale are, just because someone like EA manage to release games on time in every region, doesn't mean a small company like Telltale have the resources or man power to do that.
People! Please! I'm sure Jake will be more than willing to come to each and every one of our houses in order to personally apologize over the game's delay.
Jake, please PM each individual in this thread in order to set this up.
The world will be flattened for the next episode to accompany the occurring time zone change. There shall be one standardized time zone where it will always be 7am WST, and all buyers will hereafter be named Fred.
They released a simple message, it said "we're working on it" and it's not like they had to explain why it wasn't coming out on the launch date. WHICH IT DID! They never specified a time and this is exactly why, because morons like you complain that they should be apologising to each and every person for releasing their game a few hours "late". Where are the LucasArts adventure games, complain about that you dolt!
Um i'm not in the angry customer camp or the telltale did nothing wrong camp but your comment is just rude. :mad:
'Blah blah blah...'
-real mature, the person your were quoting simple explained politely his thoughts on the matter. He wasn't moaning or whining or calling telltale names but simply expressing an opinion.
'it's not like they had to explain why it wasn't coming out on the launch date'
-why? people have paid for these games upfront and are waiting to get what they paid for, it's not like telltale are making them for free.
'morons' 'dolt!'
-you use words like these making out that everyone here has been irrational. However, none of them have resorted to calling people names like you.
Like i said, i'm not taking anybodies side. I can see both side on this argument.
A thumb down for my fellow europeans : they don't concider the fact Telltale delayed the game only of a few hours.
As I live in France, I expected to play it only late in the evening (remember for us the Apple's keynote is a evening event, not a morning one!).
And Telltale employees probably watched MJ funeral as everyone on earth rather than fixing the crashing website!
Never EVER speak for your "fellow" europeans again, thanks! And I'll have you know, they took down the website themselves. It doesn't just automatically go to a "we're working on it" screen. Heck it even referenced the Screaming Narwhal's release!
I'm more than a little annoyed that it didn't go up until around 8-9 PM EST. Yeah, I expected since Telltale is on Pacific Standard Time that it would go up later in the day for me...but I don't think it was unreasonable to expect that time would be between 12-3 PM EST (or 9 AM-12 PM Pacific). Really, Telltale, you go to all the trouble to set a hard deadline and then wait all day to finally put it out? At least do us the polite thing and let us know that it won't be up until late in the day so I'm not wasting my time constantly checking the Telltale site (which is never working for most of the release day) for the game to go up because all I have to work with is that "it'll be up sometime during the day".
Um i'm not in the angry customer camp or the telltale did nothing wrong camp but your comment is just rude. :mad:
'Blah blah blah...'
-real mature
'it's not like they had to explain why it wasn't coming out on the launch date'
-why? people have paid for these games and are waiting to get what they paid upfront for, it's not like telltale are making them for free.
'morons' 'dolt!'
-you use words like these making out that everyone here has been irrational. However, none of them have resorted to calling people names like you.
Like i said, i'm not taking anybodies side. I can see both side on this argument.
Forgive me, I was talking to Thunderpeel who I was having this SAME argument with before the game was up. When people can't give it a rest after a day I have to resort to immaturity. Hope you can understand
And I said "it's not like they had to explain why it wasn't coming out on the launch date. WHICH IT DID!" If you're going to quote me, don't just quote the parts you want to to COMPLETELY change what I was saying :mad:
The world will be flattened for the next episode to accompany the occurring time zone change. There shall be one standardized time zone where it will always be 7am WST, and all buyers will hereafter be named Fred.
Keep in mind that this is WHY they have to take the site down
Which is why they should put up a time on the temp page stating that "we're going to have this thing up by THIS time." I see it, and know to come back around that time instead of wasting my time and their bandwidth continually checking the site for a game that's not there.
Forgive me, I was talking to Thunderpeel who I was having this SAME argument with before the game was up. When people can't give it a rest after a day I have to resort to immaturity. Hope you can understand
And I said "it's not like they had to explain why it wasn't coming out on the launch date. WHICH IT DID!" If you're going to quote me, don't just quote the parts you want to to COMPLETELY change what I was saying :mad:
why would i include that? It has nothing to do with the point i want to expect. i know that they released it on time. But i wondered why you didnt expect them to explain themselves IF they didn't release it on time.
Which is why they should put up a time on the temp page stating that "we're going to have this thing up by THIS time." I see it, and know to come back around that time instead of wasting my time and their bandwidth continually checking the site for a game that's not there.
They're not going to put out specific times because people feel that Telltale are obliged to stick to these times and will ask for unnecessary refunds. They released it on the day they said they would. When do you ever get more specific than that for a game? (apart from midnight releases of course)
why would i include that? It has nothing to do with the point i want to expect. i know that they released it on time. But i wondered why you didnt expect them to explain themselves IF they didn't release it on time.
brb din dins
The "which it did" was a crucial part of MY point. Don't read each sentence at a time, as a separate point, read a text as a whole! I never said I don't expect them to explain themselves IF they don't release a game on time. They most certainly will but that wasn't what I said!
Steam (who have "official Steam time" on their store in order to mitigate these misunderstandings) released Street Fighter IV for the PC at 9am PST yesterday morning. That was 5pm UK and 6pm in mainland Europe.
Oh shut up. I spent like full days waiting on for stuff to come out from valve itself. Back at E3 this year the lead designer of Left 4 Dead said we would get the L4D SDK a week after E3 (The SDK we were supposed to get 3-4 weeks after launch of l4D) and it turns out we had to wait like a whole other week after that too. So Steam/Valve has lied many times.
As for TellTale even despite the best efforts from fate they still released the game on july 7th in their time zone so they actully did not lie at all.
Maybe if people weren't of the idea that they have to be one of the first people to play a game, there wouldn't be so much bitterness.
If people waste all day sitting in front of their computer refreshing their screens it is nobody's fault but themselves.
The game came out the same time for everybody. Peoples clocks might have had different numbers on them, but people from anywhere in the world could have downloaded it at the same moment. Which is different than many games, movies, etc. that get released in some areas before others.
With the previous Telltale Games, or even Nintendo's Super Smash Bros. Brawl updates, I never expected the games to come out at GMT (which means Greenwich Mean Time for those who did not know yet). In fact, I always calculated from PST (Pacific Standard Time), despite the fact that I live in Europe.
Thing is, I never complained. Nor will I ever complain. The Super Smash Bros. Brawl updates were bound to Japanese times, because, surprise surprise, they were Japanese based. Likewise, Telltale Games does NOT HAVE TO make sure it comes out in time for the rest of the world, just because it's an "international" company. Fact is, they're not. They still work in dollars in the stores. They're still American based. They can do whatever the hell they want, and that means releasing THEIR games, from which we basically just paid the LICENSE for, whenever the hell they feel like.
That also means that they have all rights to release their games on a later time, even the next day, without giving us any reason, valid or not valid. It just happens to be that they did give a reason, and in my opinion, it's a good enough reason for me.
And I mean, would you really want to have that same situation as with the Fallout 3 add-on The Pitt (or was it Broken Steel?) where people complained about the many bugs, which caused Bethesda to even PULL the add-on to be released on another day? People rather preferred them to release the add-on on another day instead of letting them risk the savegames of many customers.
But meh. It's no use defending Telltale Games for any of it, seeing as I'm not official staff and yada yada. Seriously, all gamers can do is complain. I'm at the point of being done with gaming altogether.
As for TellTale even despite the best efforts from fate they still released the game on july 7th in their time zone so they actully did not lie at all.
Except at time of purchase the time was never defined, so either you would use your own time as a guide, or assume GMT as its a average time(again, lots of places use this and then tell people to add/minus hours to get there times) . I think in both of these cases they failed to meet there target.
I wouldn't use the word lie, as they did try to get the game out but as you said, fate turned against them.
The "which it did" was a crucial part of MY point. Don't read each sentence at a time, as a separate point, read a text as a whole! I never said I don't expect them to explain themselves IF they don't release a game on time. They most certainly will but that wasn't what I said!
Well 'it's not like they had to' for me comes across as 'i don't expect them to,' in other peoples opinions they have to.
Just remember that everybody can interpret what people say and write in different ways no matter how clear it comes across. I apoligise for missing your point though.
1. I love the game.
2. I'm not accusing anyone of lying
3. I appreciate we're not dealing with EA (although I spy a Lucasarts takeover sooner or later).
4. I understand that this isn't the end of the world (although the people
saying that and are still happy to get involved in the thread - even though
it's not that big a deal).
5. I understand how timezones work.
I simply wanted to make a comment about my concerns - to be honest more as constructive criticism. This whole thread has turned into a massive flame-fest, and I apologize if I contributed to that.
Back to the game - let's see what's happening on Flotsam Island.
Maybe if people weren't of the idea that they have to be one of the first people to play a game, there wouldn't be so much bitterness.
If people waste all day sitting in front of their computer refreshing their screens it is nobody's fault but themselves.
How about looking forward to playing a game after a long hard day at work?
Also how can someone reply with never use GMT, but then suggest using PST instead? Never use a generic time that all other times are calculated from but instead no matter where the company is they should use an american time!
Why do people think it's ok to blame others for their own lack of common sense/ ability to research the products they put money on?
Why do people think its perfectly ok for a company to provide no information to there global customers with reguards to why there paid for products are not going to ship as advertised?
Why do people think its perfectly ok for a company to provide no information to there global customers with reguards to why there paid for products are not going to ship as advertised?
You would have a point if they hadn't shipped as advertised. I remember learning about time zones in grade school.
The main issues we are discussing here are customer communication and politeness toward people WHOSE MONEY THEY HAVE ALREADY TAKEN.
Telltale KNEW there were over a thousand people on the forum wanting information about the release time, so many people that the forums crashed. They KNEW that the release date was going to end up being July 8th in most countries other than the USA, not July 7th as stated on their website, and that people were obviously confused and probably upset about this. Yet they didn't have the decency to post a message on their website to apologise to customers who were expecting to receive the game on July 7th, or any information saying why the game wasn't released at 9am PST as many customers expected. There has still been no apology for the majority of customers.
I am not saying they shouldn't have delayed the game to fix technical issues - of course the game has to be the best it can be before release - but since there were clearly thousands of people flooding the site they could at least have posted a page saying "Sorry, we're having some technical difficulties with TOMI and release has been delayed, it won't be available until evening-time PST. We have also had to take down the forums due to large amounts of traffic. We apologise for this inconvenience". That is all that was required of them, but instead there was no customer communication at all, and for many customers they broke their contract to deliver on 7th July.
I emailed Telltale and was informed that the forums were on the same server as the email lists, so the forums crashing meant that they also couldn't access their email lists to contact customers. But I fail to see why they couldn't have posted some information on the website, perhaps on the page that came up to say the forums were down. Posting information about a possible release time on the website would have reduced forum traffic anyway, since most people were refreshing the page hoping to find out when the game would be released. When you've already taken people's money, the least you can do is tell them when they might receive the product they've already paid for. Now a whole load of customers are very annoyed at not being updated on what was happening, and they have a negative view of Telltale's professionalism... this could have been prevented with a simple message on the site, and could probably still be rectified, apart from the fact that no apology seems to be forthcoming for the majority of customers.
The main issues we are discussing here are customer communication and politeness toward people WHOSE MONEY THEY HAVE ALREADY TAKEN.
Telltale KNEW there were over a thousand people on the forum wanting information about the release time, so many people that the forums crashed. They KNEW that the release date was going to end up being July 8th in most countries other than the USA, not July 7th as stated on their website, and that people were obviously confused and probably upset about this. Yet they didn't have the decency to post a message on their website to apologise to customers who were expecting to receive the game on July 7th, or any information saying why the game wasn't released at 9am PST as many customers expected. There has still been no apology for the majority of customers.
I am not saying they shouldn't have delayed the game to fix technical issues - of course the game has to be the best it can be before release - but since there were clearly thousands of people flooding the site they could at least have posted a page saying "Sorry, we're having some technical difficulties with TOMI and release has been delayed, it won't be available until evening-time PST. We have also had to take down the forums due to large amounts of traffic. We apologise for this inconvenience". That is all that was required of them, but instead there was no customer communication at all, and for many customers they broke their contract to deliver on 7th July.
I emailed Telltale and was informed that the forums were on the same server as the email lists, so the forums crashing meant that they also couldn't access their email lists to contact customers. But I fail to see why they couldn't have posted some information on the website, perhaps on the page that came up to say the forums were down. Posting information about a possible release time on the website would have reduced forum traffic anyway, since most people were refreshing the page hoping to find out when the game would be released. When you've already taken people's money, the least you can do is tell them when they might receive the product they've already paid for. Now a whole load of customers are very annoyed at not being updated on what was happening, and they have a negative view of Telltale's professionalism... this could have been prevented with a simple message on the site, and could probably still be rectified, apart from the fact that no apology seems to be forthcoming for the majority of customers.
Couldn't have put it better myself. All this entire situation needed was a little communication on Telltale's part, and everyone would be satisfied and focusing on the game itself rather than the little technical problems.
Well the pain of waiting was intense (eventhough I waited years for this, those darn hours were LONG).
But nevertheless I still prefer that they have a date rather than not having one. Just look in the W&G forum where people are deadly desperat to get a release date....one month span is hard to overcome. Rather a game delayed on or two hours....
Just remember telltale did what they promised....it was out in the US on the 7th!
But lets forget all now and focus on the game....I am sure when number 2 comes out things will be more smooth.
But lets forget all now and focus on the game....I am sure when number 2 comes out things will be more smooth.
What I don't understand, though, is why this launch was so rough? This is not Telltalegames' first time at bat, yet the technical/communication issues were the kinds of things I would have expected at the launch of Sam & Max: Season 1. These guys have had several series' worth of experience by now, so it's not unreasonable to expect that they'd have this down to a science by now.
As someone else from the UK, I have to say the pain was pretty aggravating, and I can understand why the OP is mad. Yes, they're an American company, and I was expecting the game to go up pretty late UK time, just not quite as late as 3am.
It would have been nice if we could have at least been told what the situation was, so we know not to bother waiting up all night.
What I don't understand, though, is why this launch was so rough? This is not Telltalegames' first time at bat, yet the technical/communication issues were the kinds of things I would have expected at the launch of Sam & Max: Season 1. These guys have had several series' worth of experience by now, so it's not unreasonable to expect that they'd have this down to a science by now.
We do have it down to a science. Think "Large Hadron Collider." Levity aside - rest assured we were working like crazy to get this out on time. Many of us were working on the 4th of July weekend, just to bring you the Monkey Island goodness. Sorry we couldn't get it out in the morning, but the world is not a perfect place.
We do have it down to a science. Think "Large Hadron Collider." Levity aside - rest assured we were working like crazy to get this out on time. Many of us were working on the 4th of July weekend, just to bring you the Monkey Island goodness. Sorry we couldn't get it out in the morning, but the world is not a perfect place.
Confirmed: Telltalegames to blow up the world in the final episode of Tales of Monkey Island.
Levity aside, I don't think anyone's question your work ethic or the general quality of your work, just that it'd be nice if these launches could run smoothly.
As someone else from the UK, I have to say the pain was pretty aggravating, and I can understand why the OP is mad. Yes, they're an American company, and I was expecting the game to go up pretty late UK time, just not quite as late as 3am.
It would have been nice if we could have at least been told what the situation was, so we know not to bother waiting up all night.
3AM??? YIKES!
I'm from the uk as well and i spent whole day impatiently waiting for it from 8am onwards, deep down i knew we wouldn't get it till quite late but i thought latest it would be is midnight. I'm so glad that i decided to go to bed instead and look out for it in the morning.
I actually agree with people complaining to an extent. I'm not put out that I got the game on the 8th - doesn't bother me. Telltale said they were going to release on the 7th of July PST and they did - fine.
I'm also not too bothered by the fact that communication wasn't up to scratch, and lets be honest, it wasn't. There were people constantly refreshing their computers to see if the game was out because no one knew when exactly it would be released - that's bad communication from Telltale. A simple "Guys, looks like the game will be released this evening PST" would have solved everything.
Anyway, why I agree with the people complaining is because for whatever reason a lot (yes, a lot) of people had an expectation that the game would be released at about 5 or 6pm GMT (early PST). It wasn't and paying customers were left wondering what was going on with only a vague blog message to go on. And still, a lot of people are angry at this issue.
My concern is that a lot of customers expectations were not met by the service and Telltale have not ackowledged that many of their customers were left upset or more importantly, apologised for this. Which to me just shows a lack of respect for customers, and an unprofessional service manner.
This was my first purchase experience with Telltale and I was a bit put out by that. However, that does not take from the quality of the game, which is very good.
Smousie: I was writing this post at the time you posted and only saw your post after. You've basically said exactly what I wanted to say in this post, only better
Comments
OK again, the delay is a secondary complaint, but since you bought it up, when other providers can manage to release on the day they say even in your conuntry you can expect the providers of a world wide service to do the same (or a nice notice when you order from the UK saying that they will try to release on the day your time but if they will not be able to , they wil contact you)
Again the main point here is LACK OF CONTACT considering they knew they have world wide customers and that it might affect how they had to handle the release.
Blah blah blah...
They released a simple message, it said "we're working on it" and it's not like they had to explain why it wasn't coming out on the launch date. WHICH IT DID! They never specified a time and this is exactly why, because morons like you complain that they should be apologising to each and every person for releasing their game a few hours "late". Where are the LucasArts adventure games, complain about that you dolt!
As I live in France, I expected to play it only late in the evening (remember for us the Apple's keynote is a evening event, not a morning one!).
And Telltale employees probably watched MJ funeral as everyone on earth rather than fixing the crashing website!
Jake, please PM each individual in this thread in order to set this up.
Enjoy your MI, Fredians.
Um i'm not in the angry customer camp or the telltale did nothing wrong camp but your comment is just rude. :mad:
'Blah blah blah...'
-real mature, the person your were quoting simple explained politely his thoughts on the matter. He wasn't moaning or whining or calling telltale names but simply expressing an opinion.
'it's not like they had to explain why it wasn't coming out on the launch date'
-why? people have paid for these games upfront and are waiting to get what they paid for, it's not like telltale are making them for free.
'morons' 'dolt!'
-you use words like these making out that everyone here has been irrational. However, none of them have resorted to calling people names like you.
Like i said, i'm not taking anybodies side. I can see both side on this argument.
Never EVER speak for your "fellow" europeans again, thanks! And I'll have you know, they took down the website themselves. It doesn't just automatically go to a "we're working on it" screen. Heck it even referenced the Screaming Narwhal's release!
Forgive me, I was talking to Thunderpeel who I was having this SAME argument with before the game was up. When people can't give it a rest after a day I have to resort to immaturity. Hope you can understand
And I said "it's not like they had to explain why it wasn't coming out on the launch date. WHICH IT DID!" If you're going to quote me, don't just quote the parts you want to to COMPLETELY change what I was saying :mad:
Keep in mind that this is WHY they have to take the site down
Seems it's ALWAYS seven o'clock on this island.
Which is why they should put up a time on the temp page stating that "we're going to have this thing up by THIS time." I see it, and know to come back around that time instead of wasting my time and their bandwidth continually checking the site for a game that's not there.
why would i include that? It has nothing to do with the point i want to expect.
brb din dins
They're not going to put out specific times because people feel that Telltale are obliged to stick to these times and will ask for unnecessary refunds. They released it on the day they said they would. When do you ever get more specific than that for a game? (apart from midnight releases of course)
The "which it did" was a crucial part of MY point. Don't read each sentence at a time, as a separate point, read a text as a whole! I never said I don't expect them to explain themselves IF they don't release a game on time. They most certainly will but that wasn't what I said!
Oh shut up. I spent like full days waiting on for stuff to come out from valve itself. Back at E3 this year the lead designer of Left 4 Dead said we would get the L4D SDK a week after E3 (The SDK we were supposed to get 3-4 weeks after launch of l4D) and it turns out we had to wait like a whole other week after that too. So Steam/Valve has lied many times.
As for TellTale even despite the best efforts from fate they still released the game on july 7th in their time zone so they actully did not lie at all.
If people waste all day sitting in front of their computer refreshing their screens it is nobody's fault but themselves.
The game came out the same time for everybody. Peoples clocks might have had different numbers on them, but people from anywhere in the world could have downloaded it at the same moment. Which is different than many games, movies, etc. that get released in some areas before others.
With the previous Telltale Games, or even Nintendo's Super Smash Bros. Brawl updates, I never expected the games to come out at GMT (which means Greenwich Mean Time for those who did not know yet). In fact, I always calculated from PST (Pacific Standard Time), despite the fact that I live in Europe.
Thing is, I never complained. Nor will I ever complain. The Super Smash Bros. Brawl updates were bound to Japanese times, because, surprise surprise, they were Japanese based. Likewise, Telltale Games does NOT HAVE TO make sure it comes out in time for the rest of the world, just because it's an "international" company. Fact is, they're not. They still work in dollars in the stores. They're still American based. They can do whatever the hell they want, and that means releasing THEIR games, from which we basically just paid the LICENSE for, whenever the hell they feel like.
That also means that they have all rights to release their games on a later time, even the next day, without giving us any reason, valid or not valid. It just happens to be that they did give a reason, and in my opinion, it's a good enough reason for me.
And I mean, would you really want to have that same situation as with the Fallout 3 add-on The Pitt (or was it Broken Steel?) where people complained about the many bugs, which caused Bethesda to even PULL the add-on to be released on another day? People rather preferred them to release the add-on on another day instead of letting them risk the savegames of many customers.
But meh. It's no use defending Telltale Games for any of it, seeing as I'm not official staff and yada yada. Seriously, all gamers can do is complain. I'm at the point of being done with gaming altogether.
Except at time of purchase the time was never defined, so either you would use your own time as a guide, or assume GMT as its a average time(again, lots of places use this and then tell people to add/minus hours to get there times) . I think in both of these cases they failed to meet there target.
I wouldn't use the word lie, as they did try to get the game out but as you said, fate turned against them.
Well 'it's not like they had to' for me comes across as 'i don't expect them to,' in other peoples opinions they have to.
Just remember that everybody can interpret what people say and write in different ways no matter how clear it comes across. I apoligise for missing your point though.
2. I'm not accusing anyone of lying
3. I appreciate we're not dealing with EA (although I spy a Lucasarts takeover sooner or later).
4. I understand that this isn't the end of the world (although the people
saying that and are still happy to get involved in the thread - even though
it's not that big a deal).
5. I understand how timezones work.
I simply wanted to make a comment about my concerns - to be honest more as constructive criticism. This whole thread has turned into a massive flame-fest, and I apologize if I contributed to that.
Back to the game - let's see what's happening on Flotsam Island.
How about looking forward to playing a game after a long hard day at work?
Also how can someone reply with never use GMT, but then suggest using PST instead? Never use a generic time that all other times are calculated from but instead no matter where the company is they should use an american time!
Why do people think its perfectly ok for a company to provide no information to there global customers with reguards to why there paid for products are not going to ship as advertised?
You would have a point if they hadn't shipped as advertised. I remember learning about time zones in grade school.
Telltale KNEW there were over a thousand people on the forum wanting information about the release time, so many people that the forums crashed. They KNEW that the release date was going to end up being July 8th in most countries other than the USA, not July 7th as stated on their website, and that people were obviously confused and probably upset about this. Yet they didn't have the decency to post a message on their website to apologise to customers who were expecting to receive the game on July 7th, or any information saying why the game wasn't released at 9am PST as many customers expected. There has still been no apology for the majority of customers.
I am not saying they shouldn't have delayed the game to fix technical issues - of course the game has to be the best it can be before release - but since there were clearly thousands of people flooding the site they could at least have posted a page saying "Sorry, we're having some technical difficulties with TOMI and release has been delayed, it won't be available until evening-time PST. We have also had to take down the forums due to large amounts of traffic. We apologise for this inconvenience". That is all that was required of them, but instead there was no customer communication at all, and for many customers they broke their contract to deliver on 7th July.
I emailed Telltale and was informed that the forums were on the same server as the email lists, so the forums crashing meant that they also couldn't access their email lists to contact customers. But I fail to see why they couldn't have posted some information on the website, perhaps on the page that came up to say the forums were down. Posting information about a possible release time on the website would have reduced forum traffic anyway, since most people were refreshing the page hoping to find out when the game would be released. When you've already taken people's money, the least you can do is tell them when they might receive the product they've already paid for. Now a whole load of customers are very annoyed at not being updated on what was happening, and they have a negative view of Telltale's professionalism... this could have been prevented with a simple message on the site, and could probably still be rectified, apart from the fact that no apology seems to be forthcoming for the majority of customers.
I think next time telltale will have a small print under the massive countdown saying 'in america'
Couldn't have put it better myself. All this entire situation needed was a little communication on Telltale's part, and everyone would be satisfied and focusing on the game itself rather than the little technical problems.
But nevertheless I still prefer that they have a date rather than not having one. Just look in the W&G forum where people are deadly desperat to get a release date....one month span is hard to overcome. Rather a game delayed on or two hours....
Just remember telltale did what they promised....it was out in the US on the 7th!
But lets forget all now and focus on the game....I am sure when number 2 comes out things will be more smooth.
What I don't understand, though, is why this launch was so rough? This is not Telltalegames' first time at bat, yet the technical/communication issues were the kinds of things I would have expected at the launch of Sam & Max: Season 1. These guys have had several series' worth of experience by now, so it's not unreasonable to expect that they'd have this down to a science by now.
It would have been nice if we could have at least been told what the situation was, so we know not to bother waiting up all night.
Confirmed: Telltalegames to blow up the world in the final episode of Tales of Monkey Island.
Levity aside, I don't think anyone's question your work ethic or the general quality of your work, just that it'd be nice if these launches could run smoothly.
3AM??? YIKES!
I'm from the uk as well and i spent whole day impatiently waiting for it from 8am onwards, deep down i knew we wouldn't get it till quite late but i thought latest it would be is midnight. I'm so glad that i decided to go to bed instead and look out for it in the morning.
to be fair, i never really liked or got into either of these games myself.
I'm also not too bothered by the fact that communication wasn't up to scratch, and lets be honest, it wasn't. There were people constantly refreshing their computers to see if the game was out because no one knew when exactly it would be released - that's bad communication from Telltale. A simple "Guys, looks like the game will be released this evening PST" would have solved everything.
Anyway, why I agree with the people complaining is because for whatever reason a lot (yes, a lot) of people had an expectation that the game would be released at about 5 or 6pm GMT (early PST). It wasn't and paying customers were left wondering what was going on with only a vague blog message to go on. And still, a lot of people are angry at this issue.
My concern is that a lot of customers expectations were not met by the service and Telltale have not ackowledged that many of their customers were left upset or more importantly, apologised for this. Which to me just shows a lack of respect for customers, and an unprofessional service manner.
This was my first purchase experience with Telltale and I was a bit put out by that. However, that does not take from the quality of the game, which is very good.
Smousie: I was writing this post at the time you posted and only saw your post after. You've basically said exactly what I wanted to say in this post, only better
that's what i was thinking! :mad: