[the_wrecker]

Seeing as I just got permanently banned for creating a duplicate account on the relicnews.com forums I better tell the end of my story here.

Basically, 5 months after release Dawn of War: Soulstorm remains unpatched and lots of stuff is broken. I figured this might warrant a refund. I thought other people might want one too so I posted on the Relic News forums about it. Man, was that unpopular!

Seems that saying a bad word against Relic and being told you aren’t entitled to a refund is considered trolling:

http://forums.relicnews.com/showthread.php?t=201433

I was not very impressed by this. I thought my thread was ok. So I appealed:

http://forums.relicnews.com/showthread.php?t=201439

They locked my thread again >< I thought that was really unreasonable and I felt a bit victimsied. So I asked them to delete my account:

http://forums.relicnews.com/showthread.php?t=201445

They refused. So, I broke my account by changing my email address to something nonsense. I thought I’ll leave it at that. I decided to email THQ anyway:

Hello

I’m very disappointed with my purchase of Dawn of War: Soulstorm. Several “critical” issues have been identified within the game and these have not been fixed after 5 months. The user community was informed a month ago that a patch release was imminent but there has been no new news.

I do not think that a 5 month delay in patching “critical” issues is even remotely acceptable. Relic/THQ have specifically stated that these issues are “critical” and so, therefore, we can assume that the product does not function as intended.

Clearly I would not receive a refund from the vendor after 5 months so I’m contacting you to request a refund. As a loyal and enthusiastic customer I bought Soulstorm the day after it was released. However, I do not think that I have been rewarded for that loyalty and, on the contrary, the delay to the patch is insulting. I have waited patiently for a patch but now it
is beyond a joke.

It would be far better if the game was just poorly made and left at that but to admit that it is poorly made, promise to rectify and then make no visible progress for 5 months is astonishing.

I look forward to hearing from you.

They replied:

Date 15 August 2008

Further to your correspondence of 13 August 2008
Your customer number is

Hello,

I’m afraid we do not have any part to play in the development of the games or patches here in technical support. This is in the hands of the developers, in this case Relic.

We do not know exactly why the patch is delayed but the information they have provided so far does suggest they are still working on it. The most likely cause of the delays will be due to not wanting to release a patch which actually breaks more than it fixes.

The patch development itself can take a good portion of time to complete, depending on how complex it is but it takes far longer to play-test it and resolve any issues which arise from this and as this also includes multiplayer testing it increases the time required. I admit that 5 months is quite a long time to wait but this has been neccesary to ensure a smooth deployment. As a player of the game myself I am also awaiting the patch to fix these issues but I would rather give them all the time they needed to produce a quality patch rather than rushing out a half baked patch which ruins the game entirely.

If you are still not willing to wait for the patch and wish your refund you will have to return the game to the place of purchase as this is the only way to obtain a refund. The Sales of Goods Act covers products which are not fit for purpose for up to a year after purchase but this is handled by the retailer, not the manufacturer. In order to obtain your refund from the retailer you need to provide them with proof of purchase which can be the till receipt (if you still have it) or a bank/credit card statement etc. Please see the following website for more information on your rights under the Sales of Goods Act :

http://www.berr.gov.uk/consumers/fact-sheets/page38311.html

Wow! That’s promising, I thought. That looks like I can get a refund. So I made a new account on Relic Forums (old one broken and requested to be deleted).

Some people seemed to agree they thought a refund was in order, others, again, seemed to think that a wanting a refund was some sort of crime.

Anyway, after creating a duplicate account I guess getting banned was inevitable:

http://forums.relicnews.com/showthread.php?t=202043

I emailed Amazon anyway:

08/20/08 13:25:46
Your name:
Order No:
Comments:I purchased Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War - Soulstorm Expansion Pack (PC DVD) on pre-order in March 2008.

To date there are numerous problems with the game that remain unpatched. The developers, Relic, have been promising to patch these “critical issues” since around the 26th March.

I contacted THQ (the publisher) regarding a refund and they informed me that “The Sales of Goods Act covers products which are not fit for purpose for up to a year after purchase but this is handled by the retailer”. I have a full response from THQ regarding my refund request which I would be happy to forward to you for further information.

Under The Sale of Goods I believe that the game has “minor defects” and is so not “suitable for purpose”. Relic have acknowledged this by describing the problems as “critical issues”.

Therefore I would like to return the game for a refund. Given that a long period of time has passed and Amazon.co.uk is not at fault I would be willing to accept a credit note. However, I would prefer a full refund.

They replied:

Dear Customer

Thank you for contacting Amazon.co.uk.

Firstly, please allow me to apologise for any inconvenience caused in this regard.

Please note that all electronic items purchased from Amazon.co.uk come with a one year warranty from the manufacturer, unless otherwise stated.

Therefore, we kindly request you to return the item to the following address.

Any postage charge incurred for this return will be refunded back to you.

Full refund no questions asked. 5 months I have had the game. What does that tell you?

I’m VERY unimpressed with Relic News. Considering how useless Relic have been you’d think that as community-led site they’d be supportive of someone seeking some compensation. I guess not! They claim to be unaffiliated with Relic but why the hell were the trying so damn hard to shut me up?!

P.S. I just found this - only fair to link it too ^^

http://forums.relicnews.com/showthread.php?t=202059

The only responses I’d like to make to that are:

1) Lol - drama queen
2) Saying I only went there to complain is false; before Soulstorm came along I was just as happy as anyone else!

It amuses me that the biggest problem with social network sites that let you interact with everybody is the fact that they let you interact with everybody, which includes every single anti-social asshat in the world with internet access. Some recent comments I stumbled across on Digg, admittedly not the responsibility of the site itself, have put me off using it permanently.

The disappearance of Madeline McCann and the death of Princess Diana: two topics with which the British media, and public, seem morbidly obsessed. However, aside from the disproportionate amount of press coverage these two events receive, I think I have noticed a few other similarities.

If we are to assume the worst then both Madeline and Princess Diana were murdered by people close to them, or, at least, those people were complicit in their deaths. Both were British citizens on foreign soil with the initial investigation carried out by non-British personnel. Most importantly, in both cases, there has been so much press coverage, editorialising, hyperbole, misinformation, etc that it seems impossible, in the event of an arrest, that a conviction would result.

There are also several ironies here. First, if it was indeed murder then those involved will probably make a clean get away, regardless of any findings that ensue. Second, it seems that the only difference between a conspiracy and a conspiracy theory is the amount of publicity involved. Therefore, the more you do to uncover a conspiracy the less likely you are to uncover the truth. And third, in the case of Madeline, the Spanish Portuguese Police’s policy on the secrecy of ongoing investigations, which has been neatly circumvented by the outraged British press, was probably the best chance we had of finding out what really happened.

These things considered, compare the unprecedented efforts of Madeline’s parents to keep the story in the press, and the forthright and generally dignified assertions of Mr. Fayed.

“Erectile dysfunction sucks”

Oh, the irony!

They’re for spreading the cost of things that you can afford, not for buying things you can’t afford.

Just had to get that off my chest.

Continuing this weeks “strange but true” theme…

I went to the canteen for lunch today, got some food and went looking for a seat. I noticed a chap from my section at a table nearby so I went and sat near him. Conversation ensued:

Him: I see you went for the chicken pie too?
Me: Yeah, it’s not too bad although these carrots are disgusting
H: I went with the broccoli. I smeared it with some of that emmental they had.
M: Oh yeah?
H: Yeah, it went with those sandwich things, though they looked more like a cake to me…
M: OK

I let the conversation trail off, thinking that maybe the “sandwiches” he mentioned were, in fact, the Spotted Dick…

So, once my colleague had left, and I had finished my food, I decided to confirm my suspicions. I went back to the service area looking for anything that looked even vaguely cheesy. I found nothing and my suspicious were confirmed. Apparently my colleague, even now oblivious to the fact, had put custard on his broccoli. Nice.

I was reading a magazine from Saturday’s paper this AM while eating breakfast and I came across this. I laughed so much I was afraid I’d wake my girlfriend.

Wtf is a Meerkat Garden Wobbler?!

P.S. If, after the SpiderPig thing, you think this is my attempt at trickery check the website. Truth is indeed stranger than fiction.

I feel genuinely bad about this.

You’re probably aware that some chap created a facebook group around the premise that if 100,000 people joined they would name their newborn child Spiderpig - well, they got 100,000 members and according to the scanned, but possibly fake, birth certificate the kid is, in fact, called Spiderpig Sparkhill Young.

I’m strangely sickened.

I’ve made a few long overdue pkg updates today. In particular, grass has been out of date for a month. I had some initial problems with the build and had to set aside some time to check it but clearly my initial efforts were lazy at best. It turns out it was a simple SMP compile issue. It’s normally top of my troubleshooting list and was the first thing I tried today. A month delay for such a trival thing deserves an apology. Sorry!

Upgrades to the gensplash pkgs will take place after the name change has been completed. I can’t believe the renamed the app little more than 2 months after I renamed all the pkgs. Doh.

Sod’s first law of programming states that:

“any free code you find for use in your own programs will always use different object nomenclature to that which you have already used”