Instead of my normal rambling, I’m going to share a story from Ay today. A little bit of background, for those of you who don’t know, we’ve been addicted to an MMORPG called Mabinogi for about three years now. This is a love/hate relationship at its finest. We love the game, but because of my background in software development, I loathe the way they manage things like updates.
That little voice in the back of my head says ‘they’re incompetent, you could do better.’ To which another little voice replies ‘all software companies are incompetent, some are just better at hiding it.’
Anyway…they’ve had some serious security problems over the past few months that have taken the game offline for hours and days at a time. Which makes us twitch because we’re addicts. Last night they announced the game would go offline for 17 hours. To which we went “Holy s***”. But, that meant it would be while we were sleeping, and then while I was working. And part of me knew it would be longer, because their updates always take longer than they think, but I had hope. I’m dim like that.
Except so far, they haven’t delayed the finish of their update, they’ve delayed the start. They keep pushing it back two hours at a time so at this point, it will probably extend into tomorrow morning. When they finally get started, that is.
So being the helpful person Ay is, she told me why it’s taking them so long to just start the maintenance.
Behind him is Bob, a man with longer, curly red hair. Bob snacks on a sandwich. His gut hangs over his belt, and he occasionally licks a dob of peanut butter from his fingers.
Ethan stops, realizing it’s too quiet in the room. He looks at the sandwich eater, eyes narrowed. “Where are Dave and Chris?”
“They went to the bathroom.”
Ethan slams his hands on the desk and pushes to his feet with a growl. “You idiot.” He kicks the chair out of the way, not caring as it topples to the ground, and sprints toward the office exit. He bursts through the door, sighing at the sight of the stairwell exit swinging back and forth.
Steeling himself, he pulls his phone from his pocket and dials the first number in his contacts. “Yessir. They’re gone.”
As he listens to the screaming, hoping it doesn’t shatter his eardrums, a movement catches his attention. Without a second thought, he pulls the silenced 9mm from his shoulder holster and shoots Bob in the back of the head before he can follow his coworkers to freedom.
“We’re going to need three. And send up janatorial. We have a mess.” He toes Bob’s fleshy belly. “About three hundred pounds. Yessir. On it sir.” He grabs the sandwich off the ground, tossing it aside again when he realizes it’s grape jelly. Why couldn’t it have been strawberry?
Without another glance at the body, he makes his way back to his office. He knows what he has to do. Each step is outlined in perfect detail in his thoughts. He pulls up the code for the website and types out a brief note:
“Dear Players,
We have updated the times for this maintenance…”
Notification published, he clicks to the corporate Monster.com account and begins to type again:
“Wanted: Senior developer in a fast-paced…” he pauses and searches for the right word, “Friendly environment. Must be willing to start immediately. Must work well in a demanding team culture.”
Happy Friday!
Update (from the actual gaming site, and the reason the ‘you could do this better’ part of me is louder than the ‘no you couldn’t’ part right now):
UPDATE #6
Dear Players,
The work leading up to this maintenance is taking longer than we had expected, and as such, we have delayed the beginning of it several times already.
Since we are still working toward the maintenance, we will update this post again when we have a firm time for the maintenance.
We sincerely do apologize for the inconvenience and ask for your continued patience as we work to improve the Mabinogi experience.
Thank you all.