What just happened to PMDG and AVSIM is exactly what happened to LucasArts when they released Star Wars Galaxies, to Blizzard when they released World of Warcraft, to Cornered Rat when they released World War Two Online, and most recently, Electronic Arts when they released DICE's Battlefield 2. Completely unable to meet the demand, and scratching heads as to "how did this happen?". Happy on the one hand that you get the volume, terrified on the other of the prospect of making the customer mad. A marketing nightmare.Welcome: You have a product that everyone wants at the same time.Not only do you not provide the product, but those who made it through can't get to the follow up services such as tech support. Double jeopardy.The industry that depends on online services is still in the process of figuring this out. Not surprising that with the recent increase in the number of in-home high speed connections, when consumers converge onto a site or service, it can easily become a mini denial of service situation (it's not malicious, but the impact is the same). Not only do we, the consumers, use up connections on web servers and tie up e-commerce, we also download very large files, full program executables and media - because it's easy and we can, and we get miffed easily if the service is not there. We expect it to be available, when we need it, even at 2:00am.It wasn't the case when everyone was dial-up or got a CD through the mail. With 256K links and above being more and more popular and cheaper, it's clear that today's landscape is quite different even from what it was a few months ago. From the industry standpoint, it's not easy to be proactive when you have no idea what the consumer is going to do. The cost to meet a theoretical demand can be astronomical up front, and disastrous if you miscalculate. And it's a short term commitment - the load will be sporadic and can't be amortized over months or years.The internet is 24 x 7, worldwide, and it's pretty clear that the server side still has a lot of progress to make to manage the load and handle this issue.I'm still impressed that some excellent services can be provided free (AVSIM), some companies like PMDG strive hard to serve their customer and do the right things. Thanks.Etienne

Etienne,Congratulations, you just hit the nail on the head.I can't speak for PMDG, but now, factor in that AVSIM is a volunteer organization whose principals all have real-life jobs which pay money, and that we don't *have* the cash to meet the theoretical demand, hopefully the rest of you might begin to see the problem.Welcome to the real world. This is exactly why, when people say "You were down! That sucks! You should be there 24/7!" we say "Fine, you run your own website with this volume of traffic and see how far you get."Yup, I am bitter. I am annoyed and I am stressed right now. Not at PMDG mind you, but the few *censored* who think that either we aren't pulling our weight, or, even better, those who thought we were "in league with PMDG" in trying to con members of the community out of their time and money, and those who think we just sat here while the forums were offline laughing our a**es off because people couldn't post. Some of us -- at both PMDG and here -- have been working every hour they can for the past two days to repair the damage and try to get things working again. And this is the thanks we get.Times like this make me wonder why I do this.Matt.

HiIt`s nice that you have decided to make excuses for PMDG but they have gotten themselves into the same position in the past and seem to have not learned from it and made the exactly the same mistake again.Ever hear of mirrors?I wonder if this will be rememberd when the next cutomer support survey is conducted.And by the way I had no problem getting the DVD version of BF2 from my local store several days after release which in my view would be the most likely time to see a shortage.Troy

I think some people thought "conspiracy" because of the message when you tried to access the forums. Putting PMDG in the message made it look like an advertisement for PMDG and their hot selling airplane.But anyway, I think many people with PMDG, and other game companies, knew what they needed to do to meet the demand, but were reluctant to spend all the money beforehand without making sure their predictions were right. What if PMDG purchased new servers but their airplane didn't attrack such attention? They would have lost lots of money.

>Hi>>It`s nice that you have decided to make excuses for PMDG but>they have gotten themselves into the same position in the past>and seem to have not learned from it and made the exactly the>same mistake again.>Ever hear of mirrors?>I wonder if this will be remebered when the next cutomer>support survey is conducted.The fact that this release crashed AVSIM, the largest simming site on the internet, should give you pause before you start making such comments. How is a small addon developer with a staff of less than 10 people supposed to keep up with demand like this when said demand is crashing huge websites and taking down internet backbones? Do you think they have millions of dollars to pay for the kind of bandwidth that ensuring that (in advance no less) would require? Support has been availiable through the [email protected] email this ENTIRE time and they are answering as fast as they can.A bit of info I posted on the other site yesterday too - RSR went through the entire credit card processing database *manually* removing any duplicate CC charges that people had incurred by trying over and over to buy the plane. He did this while trying to answer emails and work out the server situation simultaneously. A lesser company would leave you to handle this with the CC company. How about remembering THAT next time those customer service surveys come around? Being unable to buy the product due to demand is not bad customer service when by definition you are not yet a customer.>And by the way I had no problem getting the DVD version of BF2>from my local store several days after release which in my>view would be the most likely time to see a shortage.And I assume you like me saw the absolutely massive and unacceptable number of bugs and feature regressions as compared to previous versions of the BF games in the release version of BF2? That's what he was talking about, not distribution...Ryan

So, you'd rather we lied then?Literally, if I had my way right now, these forums would be closed -- permanently. Fortunately for you, slightly less angry minds prevail at the moment.

When Microsoft, arguably the largest and wealthiest software company on the planet earth, launched Windows x64 the servers imploded on the very first day due to the demand and it took a WEEK to get it up again. When my team and I set up the "Land Warrior" project for the US Army we planned for every perceived issue and when we went live we found a new "issue". This new issue could place 300,000 battlefield ready troops in theatre in jeapardy because they could not all connect electronically to a command and control site so we scrambled to fix it and did. Now on paper we are designing Gig-B and DVSG-II for the Department of Defense (DoD) and Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA) and we are OVER building the infrastructure so we don't repeat. Of course, overbuilding is easy when you have a priority project with funds as needed appropriated by Congress (read <--unlimited supply of money). Even so, can I promise the Government 100% up time? No way.With the assumption that Avsim is not able to procure an unlimited supply of funds from Congress to keep their servers up and running 24/7/365 and PMDG not able to come up with the $50,000 per month required for an OC-48 + multihomed server farm then we will have to accept outages as a fact of life. Here or anywhere else. As said, it has happened to Microsoft, Lucasarts, Electronic Arts, Cisco, US Army...#### it's happened to just about everyone.It is easy to say "they should have done this or that", but at the end of the day, the server was down, it is fixed and life moves on. Editorial:Many in the community are confused now because look at what this community has become! Everyone is lumped in to the same basket. Major free FS sites like AVSIM are now non existant. The other major sites charge a fee for "First Class Service" - which essentially is a fee to download anything. FS has moved from a freeware driven hobby to a brisk business. The end user has turned cynical because they feel, if they have to pay for it they can make demands and the developers in general are only willing to take so much. The cost of a single airport can cost almost $40US and the most expensive FS aircraft is almost $100US. Having been in this hobby both as a contributor on the Avsim Staff and now just as an onlooker the FS landscape has changed and it has changed for the worse. Oh, yes, the add-ons are much better than they were even a year ago, but overall attitudes are much worse from the end-user as well as the developer. Still, Avsim remains doing the best they can on what they can scrape together as they always have. So, I would remind all to focus your frustration and not levy blame on those who welcome all for FREE while asking very little in return (respect). Realize that Avsim, and a handfull of airplane designers and scenery makers (you can count em all on one hand) are all that are left of the OLD FS Community. Regards,Mike T.

HiI`m talking about availability at payment.I`m just calling into question claims the original posters that at least in my case seemed to be less than informed.It seems to me that PMDG just can`t or won`t for whatever reason provide the proper amount of resourses that were required.If they had then Randozzo would not have had to spend his time doing things that should`nt have to have been done in the first place.I don`t know really but the fact that F1 handles big releases without these kind of problems make me wonder what the deal is.

You know it makes me laugh that people compare large cap companies such as EA to our hobbies developers. You know what? We're all here for a reason. Our passion of flying. Every serious simmer I'm sure shares the same passion and developers as well. The developers of many add-on aircraft do not do this to make a living - They do this to please us by bringing top-notch aircraft to our hobby. I'm sure they enjoying flying when they get the chance as well.Look how far our hobby has come since the early ages. You really have to wonder how far we can push the "real envelope". Yet we have people like you that complain about one or two days of downtime. As a serious simmer myself, if I had the ability to, I'd help in any way possible to further enhance our sim. Without all the developers/resources in the hobby out there, what would we have? Have some patience. Complaining and bickering will not help. If you don't like it, I don't know why you are here. Majority of the simmers that have a interest in the hobby understand the situation and at least have respect for the people that allow us to enjoy these type of products and services.

I really don't care if you close these forums or not, life goes on. I never said lied, I just said you could have stated unusually high traffic has caused the forums to be closed until further notice

Wonder how long til this thread gets locked...Eric

>I don`t know really but the fact that F1 handles big releases>without these kind of problems make me wonder what the deal>is.No one has ever had a bigger release than PMDG :-jumpyNo one has ever published a more bug free add on aircraft than PMDG :-jumpyJust face it - The release of the PMDG 747 brought a revolutionary change to the add-on market. Better quality and higher price are accepted by the market. Some folks will complain about missing wing views and to steep pricing. But the complaints will fade away and the Queen will remain. Why? Because she's a lady ;-) Ulf B

LOLNot long at all I would expect and either a warning or ban for me for treading the toes of the sacred cow.;)Troy

This is the first time I have responded to **** like this, but it makes me really angry that people are complaining like this about what happened. Ad for PMDG, give me a break. I can tell you I wanted to know why everything was down, and the message said it, and I was satisfied. I'm excited for PMDG that they had this kind of response for an aircraft.Thank you, Thank you AVSIM for all the work you do for this community. Go away ridiculous complainers about this problem. Get a clue about what it takes to run a web site and how much it costs. And if it didn't work the first time you tried to download it, why didn't you just wait till tomorrow, or next week even, was it THAT important? Geez.Thomas Perry

>LOL>>Not long at all I would expect and either a warning or ban for>me for treading the toes of the sacred cow.;)>>Troy You speak about that which you do not know. The TRUTH of the matter is this, PMDG upgraded their servers for demand well prior to release and in FACT their servers did not go DOWN, they were taken DOWN temporaly. Just try to imagine the amount of purchasers at ONE TIME every second to get a picture of what this can do to any online selling software, the sheer amount in one second was the issue and believe you me it was ALOT. So please before you belittle Rob/PMDG please have some facts to back up such statements would ya?[h4]Randy J. Smith[/h4]