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NEWS [UO.Com] Vendor Search Issues

Dimitroff

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Dear EA/Broadsword/Whoever Responsible,

I am starting to wonder how have you managed to keep such a devoted and patient playerbase for so long, despite your best efforts to alianate this same crowd...
I see people in this thread, who are willing to give you as much time as you want to, until you finally do something. Hats down to those people.
An amazing playerbase indeed.

Well, I will be the guy, who will use the harsh language then.

Remind me again, please, why am I paying you a monthly subscription? To receive an unfinished product?
Remind me again, please, why should I wait and give you time for a module you have been working on for an year and din't have the resources to stress-test it properly?
I am sorry, but a game, which has the pretence to be the Founding Father of All MMORPGs, which is owned and published by EA and, which has been on the market since 1997, cannot afford to throw lame excuses to its playerbase.
I have been playing MMORPGs for 15 years now, I have played games, which have smaller playerbases, which charge monthly subscriptions and which are capable to launch full FREE expansions every 6 months.
Need I remind you how harsh the gaming market competition is? No, I don't. That's EA's job. And they obviously don't have the capacity to put up a descent management on this legendary game.
Imagine how much more players will you have, if you launch working modules... Just imagine.
And I see people here, who run 3-4-5 accounts. 3-4-5 monthly subscriptions... People, who masochistically love UO.
Your billing and ordering site seems to work just fine, right? I instantly receive the upgrades for the tokens I purchase.
So... You have enough competent people in the company for the most important stuff to run, right?

I am a "modern" gamer.
I have absolutely no desire to excuse UO's devs whatsoever, because they receive paychecks from the subscription I pay every month.
I don't care how the bloody Vendor Search gump looks like. It might as well look like an Excell spreadsheat, for all I care.
I just want it to work. I just want to be able to: Log in -> Grind Cash -> Start Vendor Search -> Find Item -> Port to Item -> Spend Money -> Make Somebody Happy -> Go To Sleep With My Soul At Peace -> Activate Another Sub.
I don't have time to wait. I don't have time to open my own vendor, advertise it, etc.
Time is money.

It's THAT simple, people.
Working modules -> Happy Players -> More Players -> More Cash For UO Team -> New Porsche for Mesanna
Why can't you bloody understand it...
 

DJAd

Stratics Legend
Stratics Veteran
Stratics Legend
It's been over two weeks since they said it would be fixed in the video. Still no update either.
 

Bobar

Babbling Loonie
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So we have heard nothing? Is it a case of 'Tell me the old old story', and why is it the thought that occurs to me is 'If nothing changes, nothing changes.
 

petemage

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Funniest thing in the video was the big smile on this dev guy's face, when he was asked about status of vendor search.

I for myself would have been awful sorry, maybe starting with a "sorry" given out to the community. Explaining rudimentary why things failed.

But all I saw was a big fat smile and some uttered "uhms", "mhhh dont know"s and some rubbish about QA (as if they had QA apart from 3 random monkeys!!).
 

Picus at the office

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It still would have been better to make an expansion over this search. What a total SNAFU event but, sadly, this has been the track record for most everything the last 5 years.
 

Bleak

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Quick update on the status of vendor search: In order to improve performance and handle the scale of requests I have rewritten the vendor search server and optimized the database queries. It is currently being put through the ringer by QA. Once Misk gives the green light we will be updating all production servers. We are hoping to publish next week if all is well.
 

The Old Man

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Many Thanks for the update.

Quick update on the status of vendor search: In order to improve performance and handle the scale of requests I have rewritten the vendor search server and optimized the database queries. It is currently being put through the ringer by QA. Once Misk gives the green light we will be updating all production servers. We are hoping to publish next week if all is well.
 

Lord Nabin

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Glorious Lord

Dot_Warner

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Quick update on the status of vendor search: In order to improve performance and handle the scale of requests I have rewritten the vendor search server and optimized the database queries. It is currently being put through the ringer by QA. Once Misk gives the green light we will be updating all production servers. We are hoping to publish next week if all is well.
Put this on uo.com, not just on Stratics where a tiny fraction of the playerbase will ever see it. If its not posted on uo.com, it might as well not be posted at all.
 

BrianFreud

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Thank You Bleake. I only wish that there had been some sort of update earlier, so we at least had some information well you worked on the code. I also agree with dot; front page news!
 

old gypsy

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Quick update on the status of vendor search: In order to improve performance and handle the scale of requests I have rewritten the vendor search server and optimized the database queries. It is currently being put through the ringer by QA. Once Misk gives the green light we will be updating all production servers. We are hoping to publish next week if all is well.
Thank you! :)
 

GalenKnighthawke

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Quick update on the status of vendor search: In order to improve performance and handle the scale of requests I have rewritten the vendor search server and optimized the database queries. It is currently being put through the ringer by QA. Once Misk gives the green light we will be updating all production servers. We are hoping to publish next week if all is well.
Lots of thanks for the update.

-Galen's player
 

PJay

Seasoned Veteran
Stratics Veteran
Stratics Legend
Bleak will i be able to access the vendor search from any location? Will i be able to search any shard i want too?

If the answer to both of these is no you have just kept the evil sites in business!

*Slow Clap*
 

Petra Fyde

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Bleak will i be able to access the vendor search from any location? Will i be able to search any shard i want too?

If the answer to both of these is no you have just kept the evil sites in business!

*Slow Clap*
Nope, you can only search from a safe location - what kind of person searches where it's not safe to stand about anyway?
Yes, you can search any shard. Just log into that shard.
Yes, you will be able to find all the shops the 'evil sites' don't list, and yes you'll be able to find all the items they don't list even though the shop is listed, cos they'd rather you bought from them for cash.
 
Last edited:

Yadd of Legends

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Nope, you can only search from a safe location - what kind of idiot searches where it's not safe to stand about anyway?
Yes, you can search any shard. Just log into that shard.
Yes, you will be able to find all the shops the 'evil sites' don't list, and yes you'll be able to find all the items they don't list even though the shop is listed, cos they'd rather you bought from them for cash.
All the above sounds good except the bother of having to log in and out of each shard to search it. We're playing in a cross shard economy now with transfer tokens and shard shields. Is a single search that includes all shards out of the question?
 

Petra Fyde

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I don't know. I don't know how it's being done. Seems unlikely that all the shards' items are all together in one enormous database, but I could be wrong? I would expect it to be likely that each shard's database is seperate and stored on that shard's server. But then I'm no coder and have a very minumal understanding of how things work.
Logging into other shards doesn't seem like too much bother to me, but then I don't do cross shard trading.
Anyone who feels inclined to continue to support the illicit, biased sites is welcome to do so. I haven't, don't and won't.
I don't actually do a lot of shopping, beyond attempting to support my shard's regular weekly in game auction, so I guess I'm happy to wait until Bleak manages to iron out the kinks.
 

Riyana

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All the above sounds good except the bother of having to log in and out of each shard to search it. We're playing in a cross shard economy now with transfer tokens and shard shields. Is a single search that includes all shards out of the question?
I can see both sides of this.

Yes, we are definitely a cross shard economy now in a lot of ways. However, not everyone has equal access to shard jumping, so searching all shards for an item might cause more frustration and resentment from those with less access than already exists--and judging from the various threads this has been debated in, there's a lot of it already. (And I do not wish to spark that debate here; I'm just pointing out a potential downside.)

Making the IN GAME vendor search easily access every shard implies greater cross-shard mobility than actually exists. On the other hand, without it people will continue using the third party sites to compare prices across shards-- in fact, those sites will probably figure a way to script/exploit the vendor search itself to include all shards more comprehensively.

I think it should include all shards for that reason alone--a third party site should not be more functional than the in game option. But I think it will open the floodgates for much more shard shield/token anger in the future if it does.
 

cazador

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Stratics Legend
The vendor search just really never made any sense..wish they would have spent the time fixing bugs and adding interesting content..I know the argument of "that site" is blocking sales..I've never witnessed it..but a friend of a friend of a guildies friends friend told me once about a time he heard about it..not quite sure why it's not as functional as the 3rd party one..but I'm glad is almost finally getting fixed..honestly doubt I personally will ever use it..but hopefully a lot of people get some good use out of it, for all the man/woman hours that were put into it.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
 

Picus of Napa

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If it could/will generate revenue for the game it would have made sense but as it is at the moment I'd say a total waste of time but it does make the fanboys happy and that's what really counts...
 

WootSauce

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Congrats people, you have asked the devs to fix a problem that didn't exist, and then bash them when they didn't fix the "problem".
 

cazador

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Stratics Legend
Congrats people, you have asked the devs to fix a problem that didn't exist, and then bash them when they didn't fix the "problem".
There's probably a group of 10-15 people who haven been asking for this and most likely spamming Mesannas email about it for months/years...this is why I've proposed the idea of in game ballot voting for new stuff added..this wouldn't have even made it into development..this game needs soooo much more than a vendor search..but I am glad the MyUO is in the works..maybe they needed the infrastructure to piggy back off of I don't know..I'm not a dev..


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
 

Warpig Inc

Babbling Loonie
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It's been over two weeks since they said it would be fixed in the video. Still no update either.

We have an awsome dev team and it will take 3-4 days of work to complete. So give it a few more weeks. EA lets them work on the UO product only on Thursdays.
 

GalenKnighthawke

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It seems clear that most people who've spoken on this issue support the idea of a vendor search.

As often is the case on never can be certain how most people who haven't spoken, which is to say most players, feel on it. However, unlike certain other things on which a vocal minority is heard disproportionately, this doesn't actually hurt anyone and can actually help.

As is well known, currently only Luna and selected other places (mostly right on the outskirts of Zento) are available in the unofficial vendor searches. Non-Luna, non-Zento vendors, thus, suffer, in effect cut off from shoppers in search of a particular item. And, thus, the game suffers by reducing the real estate that matters in the game and by over-emphasizing the importance of Luna and other favored areas.

Right now customers who are looking for something in particular, rather than just looking to browse and make impulse buys, have their realistic options limited by what the vendor searches wish to include.

The vendor search will not kill the vendor search sites -- it seems doubtless that their interface will be superior and more versatile and streamlined (what on earth, for example, made the UO people think we wanted to search on Artifact Rarity?), and they offer additional services.

Further, if the official vendor search was intended to kill the unofficial ones then I'd be really surprised. I look at it more as being intended to expand customers' potential horizons.

I look forward to its completion and to being able to have a non-Luna vendor that might actually have some customers.

-Galen's player
 

petemage

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As is well known, currently only Luna and selected other places (mostly right on the outskirts of Zento) are available in the unofficial vendor searches. Non-Luna, non-Zento vendors, thus, suffer, in effect cut off from shoppers in search of a particular item.
This does not get right just because it is repeated over and over. There are tons of Non-Luna, Non-Zento vendors on these sites. Yew, Umbra, tons of Malas, outer Trinsic, and so on..

But who travels Trinsic when you can shop the same item in Luna for only 10k more?
 

GalenKnighthawke

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This does not get right just because it is repeated over and over. There are tons of Non-Luna, Non-Zento vendors on these sites. Yew, Umbra, tons of Malas, outer Trinsic, and so on..

But who travels Trinsic when you can shop the same item in Luna for only 10k more?
If you take the time to read the post you're replying to you'll see it's pretty clear I'm aware of the fact that non-Luna, non-Zento shops have ever had some presence on those sites. If it helps, here's the sentence: "As is well known, currently only Luna and selected other places (mostly right on the outskirts of Zento) are available in the unofficial vendor searches."

The point remains the same.

I mean, really. These sites won't suffer all that much, if at all, once this thing is live.

-Galen's player
 

Captn Norrington

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The Luna shopping experience is the same as real life, even if a store sells something slightly cheaper in the middle of nowhere...we still go to the fancy looking mall to buy whatever we need, mainly because its easier to find, even when the vendor search is fully functional people will still shop in luna most of the time or use 3rd party sites, just because they are used to it and humans are creatures of habit. hopefully the vendor search does provide non luna vendor malls a chance at attracting customers.
 

Warpig Inc

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See post 209 in this thread by team member Bleak.

-Galen's player

See humor and remove bundled undies from crack. Ahhh relief.

See any my post on the subject. Nothing good will come from vendor search. The bad will out weight the good till the end of days. But still a bump.

Before there was Luna there was yew and brit gate vendors. I ran a very successful vendor shop on the road next compassion desert X roads LS. Then I spent an arm and a leg for a Luna house for the unique location before it became Luna Mall. Also it still takes a lot of work to even run a bad vendor shop. The Makato vendor loop on most shards has open spots. Why becuase the hardcore vendors put out for a Luna Mall shop. Dropping runes is one less thing a busy vendor supplier needs to do. I rarely dropped runes for my desert vendor house. Word of mouth kept me busy. Luna allowed the casual seller to place a vendor. You can see all the mechanics of selling that made Luna become what it is, good and bad. A boondocks vendor shop can allow a shop be run and avoid all the Luna vendor search BS.

I shut my Luna vendor shop down months before word of an ingame vendor search was leaked. Moving back to boondocks vendor house and thinning account numbers. The ability to block vendors from the search is the best feature of the vendor search. Something the gold sites search doesn't allow in Luna. Come on. Why would they even have that feature of avoiding the search? Easy answer of why the vendor search will not be the godsend everyone thinks it will be.

Humans are lazy. Humans can be deceitfull. Why pick up a rune when they can walk the loop. There are proper named vendors for desired goods. And for the more lazy types the vendor search sites. Keeping on the lazy theme the new vendor search should of just been a window to buy things across Sosaria. No need to travel. Gear placed directly on a vendor pops up a type sorting method based of worn location and use. Everything else is title found grouped. A fel vendor can then still be a great vendor house. Buyers just would never know it was a marble workshop on Blanche Island. Hell make the search cross all shards. Vendor option to sell across shards. Cross shards sales the seller pays a goldsite export percentage.

Yes the Luna Mall will crumble. Replaced by the Sosaria Mall. Advantage will be with fel vendors multi cliented/guild stealth archers to kill repricing buyers. Still to this day a nice piece of gear cannot be priced below the going cost of one relic frag. So I just give gear away to new players.
 

PJay

Seasoned Veteran
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An image of me doing a search while playing uo.... something i wont be able to do with uo vendor search. Why would i do this? Because UO is mostly grind so this way i can look for items do my shopping etc etc.

searchnplay.jpg

I think people who xshard would like to search the shard they are going too before logging in and out SURELY if you have the ability to search other shards all at once RIGHT now you would?

If the bad sites are hiding cheaper objects fair play! they wrote the scripts they made the site.
UO clearly not bothered in challenging them cutting them off so your complaints?

And Im totally against cheating and scripting but the only people who care are players the people who should care turn a blind eye.

They had the opportunity to kill the evil sites off and chose not to simple as that.
 

Smoot

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If you take the time to read the post you're replying to you'll see it's pretty clear I'm aware of the fact that non-Luna, non-Zento shops have ever had some presence on those sites. If it helps, here's the sentence: "As is well known, currently only Luna and selected other places (mostly right on the outskirts of Zento) are available in the unofficial vendor searches."

The point remains the same.

I mean, really. These sites won't suffer all that much, if at all, once this thing is live.

-Galen's player
Its actually pretty good now. only problem is non-luna only gets updated every 12 hours
off the top of my head, vendors i have found what im looking for thru search sites:

One on outskirts of britain
Yew gate
about 5 screens from yew gate
2 around vesper
1 way out in the desert in malas
a few on road to umbra
2 right next to umbra
a handful east way outside of luna
2 or 3 around trinsic.

thats just off the top of my head that ive gone to in the past few days, like i said they dont update as fast as luna, but about the same as zento.
just saying there is a pretty good presence on the search sites of non-luna non-zento vendors.
 

Uriah Heep

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:eyes:

There was a guy on Legends had one listed in Skara Brae. Yes, they will do it.
:popcorn:
 

GalenKnighthawke

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:eyes:

There was a guy on Legends had one listed in Skara Brae. Yes, they will do it.
:popcorn:
*sighs*

Well if I'm going to reply to anyone on this issue it may as well be to the member of the Stratics staff who's chosen to take this particular stance.

Yes there have been circumstances, opaque to me, wherein the vendor searches have covered non-Luna, non-Zento vendors. No one has denied that, indeed I actively have acknowledged it.

However no one reasonably can deny that they primarily cover vendors in Luna and around Zento. They are not a shard-wide search. Such would be extremely inconvenient to do without having access to UO's database, which it's doubtful that they have.

I repeat that there's every good reason to believe that the search sites will survive the implementation of the vendor search, because (I really hate that I have had to repeat this so many times) they offer additional services beyond the vendor search and doubtlessly will offer the superior interface. (Even before I saw the official search's interface I knew this'd be true, because I am familiar with UO and the way things work within it.)

Luna and the Zento region also will survive. Firstly because they likely will remain covered by the vendor search sites which I've no doubt many will continue to prefer to use. Secondly because they will be the most convenient places by far at which to just browse around until you see something interesting you didn't know you wanted.

However, what happens now is that almost anyone who's looking for something specific uses the search sites, or hits up a friend who does, or spends a lot of time going through vendors he or she knows exist and are well-stocked. Anyone not listed in the search sites (by virtue of having vendors in Luna or near Zento or otherwise listed on the sites) or is unknown to a particular potential buyer is thus cut out of that particular, very important market. Some non-covered vendors also do well by having a regular customer base and carefully maintaining stock. Hence, presumably, why vendors will be able to be excluded from the vendor search, so that those sellers can continue to run their businesses in the manner to which they've become accustomed.

After this is implemented I'll continue to maintain a vendor in Luna.

I bear Luna no malice -- I've never been among those who wanted to tear it down. (Indeed I do believe I'm one of the few who's admitted to liking it.) I just want other places to have a better chance.

I bear the vendor searches no malice whatsoever -- I've never been in the "SHUT DOWN THE SITES" crowd. (If you find a post to that effect I'll be very surprised and I retract what I said at the time.) I just want non-covered vendors to have a better chance.

I am unlikely to address this issue again. I have to assume those who continue to not get it are choosing to do so and there's basically nothing I can do about that.

-Galen's player
 

BrianFreud

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This does not get right just because it is repeated over and over. There are tons of Non-Luna, Non-Zento vendors on these sites. Yew, Umbra, tons of Malas, outer Trinsic, and so on..
Maybe on Atlantic, and I've noticed they've started to include some select locations on LS, GL, and Chessie... but otherwise, no.
 

Theo_GL

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Quick update on the status of vendor search: In order to improve performance and handle the scale of requests I have rewritten the vendor search server and optimized the database queries. It is currently being put through the ringer by QA. Once Misk gives the green light we will be updating all production servers. We are hoping to publish next week if all is well.
Well I guess its good to know its at least using a database on the backend. Knowing EA though its probably something like mySQL.

First lesson in DB performance is index anything that can be searched.
Next lesson is make sure you have your DB prepared to handle the max connections and shared memory needed to run a lot of parallel queries and increase the shared memory area to pin alot of the common data into memory.

This DB could probably still use some aggregate tables to speed query response times. In fact why don't you just throw this thing on a Hadoop cluster for pennies on the dollar?
Yes, you have now tread into my realm of the computer world. Do you need additional help? Bump my account age to 14 years (from 11) and I'll speed that thing up.
 

Dimitroff

Visitor
Stratics Veteran
Quick update on the status of vendor search: In order to improve performance and handle the scale of requests I have rewritten the vendor search server and optimized the database queries. It is currently being put through the ringer by QA. Once Misk gives the green light we will be updating all production servers. We are hoping to publish next week if all is well.
Today is Friday, dear Devs,
Weekend is coming, so any update?
Or the entire vendor search server will have to be rewritten... For a third time?
 

Dot_Warner

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@Bleak

Any updates on vendor search? We're going into the 7th week of this being nonfunctional...
 

old gypsy

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*grabs broom... clears cobwebs off vendors*

*cough*
 

Petra Fyde

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Why is this thread revived? Vendor search is working fine, I've used it in the past couple of hours.
 

Cocaine1

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Hmm.
It looks like it FINALY work now ( or still bugged ?)

I've posted in this thread cause didnt seen any anounce that Vendor search is work now.
I belive this news MUST bee posted in UO.COM and at the UO patch screen.
 

Promathia

Social Distancing Since '97
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Hmm.
It looks like it FINALY work now ( or still bugged ?)

I've posted in this thread cause didnt seen any anounce that Vendor search is work now.
I belive this news MUST bee posted in UO.COM and at the UO patch screen.
What? lol

Yes it works fine, and yes it was posted on uo.com
 
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