CSV list - why can't it be functional?

[Almeric_CoS]

<p>I'm working towards a major roster purge of inactives in my guild.  Since the guild window in-game can be a bit of a bear to work with on the hundreds-of-people scale, I decided to temporarily upgrade my eq2players subscription to include Advanced Guild Tools.</p><p>Doing so allows me to pull up Last Played dates via the web interface.</p><p>Once I have the roster displayed as I want, I selected CSV List so I could move my data over to Excel for sorting and marking.  But do the Last Played dates I selected show up?</p><p><span style="font-size: xx-large;color: #cc0000;">NO</span></p><p>I've been less-than-thrilled with a lot of EQ2players functions for years, but I've been subscribing to at least some (often all) of the functions since launch.  These services should be free anyway, but as a guild leader I had to put that aside and subscribe to some of the tools (like profile viewing) for the sake of organization and - at times - security.</p><p>Real life has me to where I need to hand off leadership now.  I'm SO TOTALLY DONE PAYING FOR EQ2PLAYERS.  It feels good.</p>

[Grimlux]

I agree.. Now that SOE has their cash cow LoN it would be nice to see them lift the cost of EQ2players.com to free. That will allow people to actually have more character slots and allow people to parouse through the content. Needless to say.... there are other nameless companies who do not charge for this service...

[Lantis]

I think a lot of people wouldn't mind paying 99 cents a month if the service worked as advertised...The CSV (and XML) export isn't linked to what you select on the page AFAIK - it has a static list of fields in it.

[Almeric_CoS]

<p>Ah, my mood doth improve:</p><p>After a lot of fiddling (thank god I'm MOS certified in Word and Excel), I get my data more-or-less how I want it, and I start running through my guild's roster checking alts-vs-mains and whether or not the mains have been offline long enough to be purged.</p><p>And then I notice a friend of mine who I KNOW FOR A FACT has been on within the last week at the very least, and pretty regularly all the time, and I find that EQ2players is reporting him as having been offline since F'N JANUARY.</p><p>I'm so very, very full of anger right now...</p>

[Hellswrath]

<cite>Almeric@Permafrost wrote:</cite><blockquote><p>Ah, my mood doth improve:</p><p>After a lot of fiddling (thank god I'm MOS certified in Word and Excel), I get my data more-or-less how I want it, and I start running through my guild's roster checking alts-vs-mains and whether or not the mains have been offline long enough to be purged.</p><p>And then I notice a friend of mine who I KNOW FOR A FACT has been on within the last week at the very least, and pretty regularly all the time, and I find that EQ2players is reporting him as having been offline since F'N JANUARY.</p><p>I'm so very, very full of anger right now...</p></blockquote>Make sure to put down his character name and server so gninja can look into it.  The updating problem is posted all over and is being worked on.The CSV fields and XML feeds not giving all the info we want has also been posted on and further posts may help make our point, but only if it is kept constructive.

[Almeric_CoS]

<p>Over the course of the evening, as I performed my purge, I was stymied again and again by roster inaccuracies.  It's not a "post a character name" to get a one-off fix problem.  And yes, I know it's documented in other threads, but I decided to add it to this one as well.  The inaccuracies were not the point of the original post, after all.</p><p>If the issue with CSV functionality that I brought up at the start of this thread has been addressed, my initial searches failed to turn up anything about it in the last 6 months or more.  It's not just about updating, it's about displaying the correct, requested fields.  I don't see ANY web-dev posts on it.  Could I be wrong?  Of course I could, and you're welcome to prove me wrong.  That won't make me regret posting a new thread about it, however.</p><p>I can be constructive about all sorts of things, but over the last <b>3 and a half years</b>, my tolerance for EQ2Players bugs has worn rather thin.  If I thought I could get it, I'd ask for a refund of all the money I've ever paid for the service, as even a reason of using funding for 'continued development' doesn't fly at the snail's pace EQ2Players develops.</p><p>I'm sorry if that's too flamey, if this thread gets locked, if I get an official warning, etc., but it's true.  I'm extremely supportive of EQ2, but I'm still going to call a spade a spade.  Glossing over these shenanigans gets us nowhere.  I have no doubt about the complexities of the databases that store our character information.  I know databases; I get databases.  I wouldn't quite call myself a database "expert," but I'm pretty dang sure it doesn't take 4 years to write a working query on a well-designed database.  I'd just like to see some owning-up of the issues, some visible work to fixing them in a <b>timely </b>manner, and/or making this disfunctional service free.</p><p>/grumble</p>

[Dark_Grue]

<cite>Almeric@Permafrost wrote:</cite><blockquote><p>Over the course of the evening, as I performed my purge, I was stymied again and again by roster inaccuracies.  It's not a "post a character name" to get a one-off fix problem.  And yes, I know it's documented in other threads, but I decided to add it to this one as well.  The inaccuracies were not the point of the original post, after all.</p></blockquote><p>/agree</p><p>The one-off fixes are pointless. Clearly, you can't address database syncronization issues a row-at-a-time. Great, you've (maybe) fixed that one character, <i>for today</i>, but what about the next time, what about the (statistically-speaking) hordes of other characters that aren't updated consistently, only their owners don't know to look, or don't notice? There's been no word of the root cause, or if the Web Team is even close to a solution - although, as Hellswrath has mentioned, they have said they are "working on it".</p><p>I suspect if more guild leaders audited their guilds and posted long lists of inaccuracies and when and how often they occurred, it might highlight how widespread the problem is. Who would want to put the effort required in auditing the data anyway? That's a stupid amount of effort, I certainly have no desire to audit my guild roster and log discrepancies over any significant portion of time, and my guild is relatively small.</p><p>I don't know it would produce more satisfactory results anyway. There are few people (customers or SoE staff) who take the time to track issues long-term and track results. Most don't realize that the many of the problems with EQ2Players have existed in one form or another since the game launched. To be fair, although the DB sync issue has been ongoing for a very long time now (I believe it really started getting noticed with the EoF update and it's been accelerating since then), it wasn't a zero-day problem.</p><p><cite>Almeric@Permafrost wrote:</cite></p><blockquote>If the issue with CSV functionality that I brought up at the start of this thread has been addressed, my initial searches failed to turn up anything about it in the last 6 months or more.  It's not just about updating, it's about displaying the correct, requested fields.  I don't see ANY web-dev posts on it.  Could I be wrong?  Of course I could, and you're welcome to prove me wrong.  That won't make me regret posting a new thread about it, however.</blockquote><p>The way SoE <i>addressed</i> the request to fix the CSV and XML data feeds and return and/or add additional fields, was at the RoK update. The <i>way</i> they did it was to remove even more fields and make all the roster manipulation features that Roster Master did (for free) part of a new EQ2Players pay service. So, I guess you could say they made their position clear. Only now, everyone (pay and Roster Master users alike) gets data that's inaccurate. So, it <i>has</i> been addressed, yes. Addressed satisfactorily? Well, it opened up a new revenue stream for SoE. People are still paying for thier Advanced Services subscription(s), regardless of the utility, function, or benefit of the service. Matter of perspective, really- Working As Intended.</p>