I've been in IT since before there were PCs. There are few principles that have held true for me, for as long as I've been doing this.
1. Before you can fix the problem, you need to know what you are fixing.
OK - Bioware got hacked. The first part of dealing with that is determining how. Once that is known, it can be addressed based on the method, constraints on what has to continue working, and available resources to work on the problem. Part of the time since the server was taken offline may well have been consumed in figuring out how they were hacked.
2. Nothing is as easy as it seems.
Anyone skilled in a technical field has heard someone not familiar with the particulars of a specific issue say "Its simple to fix. All you have to do is..." ...followed by a simple plan that may or may not work, and even if it will work is either impractical or far more difficult to implement than it sounds. This can be compounded when the person doing the work may not be an expert in the field, but rather someone pressed into service who knows just enough to get a handle on the work needing done and they are dealing with legacy code or hardware.
3. Mission creep will kill you.
It is very easy when setting out to fix problem A, to decide to fix problem B 'while I am in there anyway,' which can quickly lead to having to fix problems C through F. This is a killer, and could easily happen if, for instance, Bioware decided to fix the CD-Key authentication method.
4. Murphy was an optimist.
Regardless of one's intent to fix only problem A, life often has other plans. A is fixed and the fix breaks B. You fix B, but C and D break on their own while you do it even though they had nothing to do with your fix. You look up a week later while working on problem Q, trying to figure out how you got there.
5. Volunteering for ungrateful people isn't very rewarding.
If you've ever gone out of your way to help someone who did nothing but complain about how you were helping them, you've been here. Next time they need help, you find you have something better to do instead. In this case, sure we paid for NWN - but the game is 9 years old and its hard to argue we haven't gotten our money's worth. Bioware isn't making any significant money off this game anymore (if any at all), and though it can be argued that they reap a significant amount of goodwill and time in the spotlight by their continued support for it, reading some of the posts on these forums, that can be hard to see sometimes. (Trust us, Bioware, the goodwill is there and counts.) Any time spent on fixing this issue is taking away from time spent on current projects that actually make tangible dollars, unless it is done in someone's free time. That drops their continued support into the realm of volunteering to help... and it can be hard to muster up interest in doing so for people who are being asses about it.
6. Communication is king.
Any time there is a situation that negatively impacts a customer, the one thing that most contributes to customer satisfaction with the eventual resolution of the issue is communication. The best tech company I've worked for has a policy that from the time an alert fires, the engineer working it has 15 minutes to contact the customer regarding the issue. That takes precedence even over fixing the issue. Once initial contact is made, the customer must be contacted and updated daily until the issue is resolved. The constant contact keeps the customer informed so they don't have to speculate about what is really happening. I'm not suggesting daily updates here from Bioware, but once every week or two would keep the mob from passing out torches and pitchforks. Being honest is OK - i.e., "We're doing 100 hour weeks on ME3, and I've only been able to spend a few minutes working on this."
6. Lack of Communication sends a message.
Silence when there is a known issue can be interpreted in many different ways. Communication allows management of that message - but sometimes failure to communicate can be a message in itself. It could mean the Bioware folks are really busy and haven't got time to update us. It could mean they're constantly at the "almost have it fixed" point and don't want to update us until it is back online. It could mean that they don't want to update us because they don't think we'll like the news, and they're hoping we will go away without the reputation hit they will take otherwise. It could mean they have been ordered by EA to do nothing and stop communicating on it. It could mean something else entirely. We don't know - and some people are going to assume the message is whatever they want (or fear) it is, and operate on that basis.
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Here's hoping the reality comes in on the positive side of things, and things are brought back up soon.
Modifié par Sethan_1, 24 juillet 2011 - 03:26 .
