Hmm, let's go with:

1362

Ironically, I was a Cisco Certified Network Professional (CCNP) for years. By the end of my career I was manager for a network that spanned three countries (one across the Pacific Ocean). I was younger than most of my employees and had already been recognised by peers for some work that I had done.

I quit, gave up the good salary, and swore never to do IT again except for some few contracts for people I knew well. For the simple reason that those without any technical knowledge have no understanding of what's involved, appreciation for, or reasonable expectations of the work in IT.

It doesn't matter how well the system is setup, how well things are prepared, how many backups there are, or contingency plans, something will fail or something unpredictable will happen. People will always demand timelines when there's no means to predict one. Trying to explain that, or detail the problem, makes their eyes glaze over, or angry because it goes over their head and they assume you're lying/making excuses to cover yourself. Even when you manage to produce a miracle and have service restored quickly, all they will say is "this better not happen again" or similar.

E.g. A company I worked for had an employee infect some servers (he did things we'd specifically told him not to). He'd done it, just before leaving work... Meaning my automated notifications alerted me, just as I walked through the door of my home. I immediately went back and cleared everything, created new passwords for all employees, etc, including having to rebuild some servers from near scratch to be sure we were clear. I then sent an e-mail out at around 5 am explaining the events of the night. I got home again at 6:30 am in the morning. The CEO called me at 7:00 am because he couldn't read his new password, I changed it remotely to something easier for him. After that, he asked me if I was coming in that day... and was angry when I said, "no". The company didn't experience any downtime, lose any money, lose any information/have it stolen, or have any liability to clients for any of those events... Yet the response the next day was blame from the guy who'd caused the issue (you IT guys didn't explain it well enough) and annoyance from the CEO ("you weren't here for the day").

My point, I guess, is that these Devs have my greatest respect for actually daring to make do something where they will have those/these sorts of situations constantly. They've already done/do more than most companies do. Patience, is a virtue, and something that should be fairly applied to their efforts.

It's actually not the capacity that's the current problem (they had up to 970 previously and from what I've seen the Devs say, they can do much more), it's just a bug somewhere in the code that's creating artificial strain/load...

But yeah, that aside, hopefully it'll be a free for all shortly

New to the game, but spent last night grinding to get into a Sequer, first goal down so I'm decently satisfied. Pretty much sold on being here already (Devs & GM's that communicate? Who knew such mythical beasts existed?), so I'll just hang out in the irc when the numbers get high until the issue is sorted. Gives me time to work on some fanart anyway.

Good luck to all the even newer people and hope you get some time to enjoy the game.

P.S. Could a Mod do a /kill or such on my name on the irc? It seems to have glitched and is denying connection based on the belief that I'm still connected. =P Thanks!