Behold my angry rant!

Okay, yesterday's post didn't go to plan. For some reason, many of you cannot access Paperghost.com. Here's the theory....I use Domain Mapping to make the URL stuff work, because otherwise everything would be forwarded to (and hidden under) the domain name Paperghost.com with no way to create actual pages and things. Originally, I had this set up incorrectly and so anyone trying to reach Paperghost.com without the "www" would see this awful "domain parked" page. I eventually fixed it, so you could type Paperghost.com with or without the "www" and you'd still see the site.

In theory.

I say "in theory" because for no reason, many of you are still randomly seeing this blasted page. I've no idea why - up until now, everyone this has affected was based in the States (with the exception of one guy from the UK). However, I know tons of people from the US that can access the site with no problems. Could it be a slight glitch with the domain mapping? Possible, I guess. But I got a lot of Mails from people asking if they could see what Microsoft had done to annoy me so much. As I don't like to deny people seeing me rant in a violent fashion, below you can see both of my posts on how Microsoft managed to vaguely wind me up for a bit. Enjoy, or just mutter in a puzzled fashion. Either is good, but you WILL score bonus Awesome points for working out why some visitors get that stupid domain redirect page. The lesson we can all learn from this is: don't mess with my videogames, or I will hunt you down and kill you.

Microsoft Gives you Ants in the Pants!

Over the past few days Microsoft have managed to completely infuriate pretty much anyone with an XBox360. The overall effect of this disaster reminds me of Cartman's reaction to his birthday present (Captain Obvious warning - Youtube clip will immediately play).

How did they manage to do this? Well, let's put it this way - don't make a promise like the one seen in the screenshot - "we're taking the entire XBox live service down for 24 hours because we're adding some cool new stuff (emphasis mine) and we have to take the service offline to do it", then completely mess it up by delivering something approaching less than zero. Note that they also called it SECRET cool stuff, too. Ooh! Secret! Oh man, this'll be awesome! This'll be amazing! This'll be....

...........craptacular.

Yep, Microsoft really need to get a hold of the PR People they employ and smack them upside the head. Because their definition of "cool new stuff" is certainly not mine, nor (I would imagine) anyone elses. Yeah, what's added is useful, but not even approaching the word "cool".

You know what the "cool new features" are? I certainly didn't, because when the Xbox website finally came back online and I logged into my account (where all the "cool new stuff" was hanging out), I saw....the exact same screen that I saw before the upgrade.

In fact, Microsoft managed to

1) Get everybody all excited about "cool new stuff" on the way and make it seem even bigger than it was by telling everyone they had to pull the service offline to do it.

2) Completely screw up the 24 hour window for the service to come back online. I have no problem with this, because it's guaranteed that whenever someone says back in an hour, they mean six weeks. From my extended exeperience of UAT and Load Testing, it's nothing to get all surprised about. However - I believe the eventual offline time for all services was something like thirty-eight hours (and many services are still completely screwed up). That's pretty poor coming from the man's daddy Microsoft. Whoops.

3) Bring the service creaking back into life, only to.....not bother actually TELLING anyone what these "cool new features" were, even though they were quite happy to whip everyone up into a nerd frenzy every five seconds with promises of OMFG YAY HOW COOL IS THIS NEW STUFF, LOL.

Well, it's obviously so cool that they thought we'd all happier hunting these new features down. I can honestly say I've never had such a serving of COMPLETELY UNDERWHELMED when it turned out the all new wonderful features they mangled the entire service for amounted to this....

"You can now change your privacy settings by going to "My Xbox" -> "Profile, right here on Xbox.com.

You can check your Recent Players list by going to "My Xbox" -> "Recent Players".

There's also a link to Microsoft Billing, so you can check your subscription status and Points account online (the billing site was always there, but the link to it from Xbox.com is new.)"

Privacy settings? Privacy settings?! OH MY GOD, YAY!

...........in case you hadn't noticed, I'm beating you round the face with sarcasm. I can only assume the PR people who came up with this terrible piece of spin think they're really crazy when they go to work without a tie, and assume they're rock and roll because they don't wash their hands after going to the toilet. I hope I attain a level of greatness someday that allows me to see privacy settings as "cool".

But wait! It gets worse...

4) Microsoft made a big huge deal about a new game available for download from their Marketplace. Lumines, a great game on the PSP, was making its way over to XBox360. Great! Except...it costs about about fifteen dollars to unlock the full version or you'd be stuck with the demo. Okay, well...it's still a good deal, right? Hang on....something's wrong here.....you know what it is?

THIS IS AN ABSOLUTE RIP OFF OF BIBLICAL PROPORTIONS.

The "full game" you're paying for is still a crippled demo version, and you need to pay MORE money to unlock the rest of the content. Yet this was sold to the gaming public as "the full game". I'll let the angry forum people take over at this point:

I'm mad at you because you claim the full game to be 1200 pts. Five single player levels, and one multiplayer level is a demo at best. I've come to rely on you for honest information about marketplace content, however, I'm sure your words convinced a few people to go purchasing luminess for 1200 not knowing they'd have to pay another 1300 pts if they wanted to get any longevity out of the game.

and

When you play the demo, you see tons of greyed out content that is not available. So I bought the game for 1200 points thinking "A little expensive, but you get a lot of content". Much to my surprise my $15 only unlocked a quarter of the content shown in the demo! All you get is a gimped 12 skin easy mode and multiplayer. Challenge mode, Mission mode, Vs. CPU, and the majority of singleplayer is still locked.

and

I purchased the game instantly since I am a Lumines fan on the Psp. Well...it's pretty much the same game, but its a COMPLETE SCAM. The game is 1200 Ms Points (around $15) It is the most expensive Xbox Arcade game I have bought, but I thought it would be worth it. WRONG...I start playing the puzzle mode and I get to level 5 and it says "To continue you have to purchase extended puzzle packs". Are you kidding me? I thought I purchased the full version. Your telling me I get 5 puzzles on the FULL version? Almost every mode on the FULL version is limited and it says you have to purchase something else to play it. If this is the future of gaming then it is dissapointing. This transaction left me feeling scammed & ripped off, so I am boycotting Xbox Live Arcade.

and

"The full version of the game will be 1200 points. Plus an optional pack for 600 points will also be available that will allow gamers to change their music scene as well as choose from 22 new skins."

That last quote is from the MajorNelson site that keeps you up to date with all the latest XBox live news (you can read about the update shambles from his last few posts). Note that the last part is now crossed out (the optional pack stuff) - however, it still says the full game costs 1200 and it just doesn't. 1200 points buys you a crippled demo. Thats it. I can see that MS want to keep the games available for download to a reasonable file size. But God, did they have to go about it here in such a crazy fashion? Who actually sat down and thought any of the above combined would make for a satisfying experience?

Microsoft, you have screwed up bad. Witness the anger of people on forums yelling at you here, here, here and here. If you want to see huge slabs of anger crashing down upon the heads of the Lumines developers, check out the Lumines forum. It's going to get pretty ugly in there, methinks.

As Cartman would say, I HATE YOU! I WANT YOU TO DIE!

/ end of rant

More on the XBox Live Fiasco

Official Microsoft Blog here. If you ever wanted to see me post about six thousand angry rants in five minutes flat, today's your lucky day. Come cheer me on as I fly the flag for common sense with my usual self-righteous blasts of moral outrage.