What happened to your post MAG? I typed up my reply and when I submitted it, it was gone!

Anyway, The Adventure Company Forums appear to have been closed:


My reply to MAG's announcement is this:

I just noticed that as well, and headed over here to talk about my disappointment.

I must say that The Adventure Company, while putting out quite a few good games, has pretty much been a constant source of varying levels of disappointment to me.

It seems like all they were able to do was tell us to turn down our video and sound acceleration on our computers, which was never really a "solution" in my mind. More of a "workaround" if you ask me.

And now they've taken away what was, for me, one of the best resources for communicating with other customers of theirs who were having problems with their games. Other customers and gameplayers seemed to be the best way to solve some of the problems that TAC did their best to ignore, and even that avenue of help has disappeared.

I'm really starting to think that instead of buying games by TAC in the future as soon as they're released, I'll be waiting several weeks to see what pops up in our Gameboomers forums and other places on the web as to whether or not the game has annoying bugs and glitches that I'd rather not put up with.

Sigh.



a

Yes, I'm also a 'transfer' from the TAC forums; and just registered my same user name in this forum, today. I felt quite alone for awhile, as I didn't see any posts around that talked about the forum disappearing! Those of us who utilized the Private Messages option appear to have lost access to our stored messages forever. But hopefully, when TAC re-opens the limited use forum next week -- they'll (at least) allow former members (and former 'loyal customers'?) to access our stored PMs and save the ones we want to keep to our computers.

By the way, the DreamCatcher forums may also be closed now -- but I'm not sure about this. I couldn't open pages from the Main Index page, but it may just be my browser settings. I had difficulty opening the page to register HERE, also. So if the DC forum IS still open, I hope someone will post about that.

TAC should have given us notice that this was going to happen. I did have a strong feeling that it might happen, due to the sudden disappearance of any TAC staff posting replies there. I'm extremely disappointed in them, for treating long-time customers and forum members so poorly.

I noticed while browsing the Aura forum that several posters were getting quite bold in what they talked about. The one guy went so far as to post that he downloaded Aura for free and mentioned the method he did it and how to obtain files.

I really wouldn't be surprised if TAC just got sick of their own forums being used against them.

Plus, this way they don't have to pay someone to moderate the forums. Oh, well.

a

Just checked Katsmom... I'm still able to get to the dreamcatcher forums. Nothing seems to have happened to them yet.

a

Auntie Shoque, I took it out to see what other info, I can get first.

In whatever form a forum is started - it is in some part with the intention of helping.
Any forum closing is a sad affair, one less resource for its members.

There's too many things we don't know yet and speculating will not help. Let us leave it at that.

Auntie Shoque, I just wanted to point out that I don't know how it's done on other forums, but here at GameBoomers, the moderator and administrator positions are all entirely volunteer--done just for the love of our members...

And we love you all for it! :kiss:
Ana

As Dictator I just have one thing to say about all this :

to GameBoomers Katsmom

to GB, Katsmom---It's a very wonderful place

Dictator of the High Mucky Muck........

Inferno

to GameBoomers, Katsmom!

Who's the High Mucky Muck?

Hi guys,

I'm also a TAC departure, i became a member her a while ago, i didn't post here a lot, i hope that's a nice place to be.

Katsmom nice to see another member from TAC here, I'm not alone YEAH, I'm only joking here, I'm sure that there is other TAC members around.

I was online when the TAC forums closed, i got logout and when i went back i had a nice message telling me that the forums were closed, at that time i send an e-mail to the customer services and they replied to me, here what they had to say:

Dear Dany,

Unfortunately The Adventure Company Forums have been closed, as stated
on the website they will be reopened as a read-only database. We have
decided that our games can be more effectively supported directly
through our technical support and customer service departments.
Unfortunately forum private messages are no longer retrievable. I
apologize for any inconvenience this many cause you and if you have any
further questions please do not hesitate to contact me.

Thank you for contacting DreamCatcher Games and The Adventure Company.

Customer Support Supervisor
The Adventure Company 1-888-611-9999
Dreamcatcher Games 1-866-232-5777

Sorry English isn't my birth language, be patient with me, i will try to remember to use the spell check

CU

danyboy

I've been a member of TAC forums for a few years, but started only going there sporadically when I discovered Gameboomers, a much better source for info and some of the best people around.

I didn't know they closed the forum until I saw this thread!

Katsmom and to all the TAC members! Glad you joined us.

Melanie

Without the desire to start any form of a debate, I just wanted to say that despite all the flaws in some of TAC's games I think we need to remember the good points:

I'm thankful for the fact that TAC still makes adventure games in a day and age when they are far and few between.

I do not blame them for closing the forum because it was no longer what it was intended to be. It was supposed to be a place to chat and have fun and share your love of adventure games and instead became a place to hang their dirty laundry for the world to see. How many companies can you think of would have a customer complaints dept in full view of the world?

I hope they rethink the way they handle some of their games and people can and should voice their opinions to them but they are not alone in the fact that some of their games do not work on all computers. I have had at least a dozen others from different companies that I have not been able to get to run and the company is not giving me my money back.

I'd like to see us constructively criticize and in the same breath support those that still try and give us the genre that we enjoy. And to top it off, they tend to reasonably price their games as well.

Please do not chastise them to a point that they will no longer produce adventure games.

Just my opinion and I do not mean to upset anyone.
Ana

Hi again guys,

You're right BrownEyedTigre, my post was very negative, let me make this one more positive, i enjoyed Syberia 1, Dark Fall 1 (and I'm waiting for Dark Fall 2), ROTS 1 was great, the Dracula series was also great, i even enjoyed Black Mirror (even with the minor problems, i don't want to be seen like i despite TAC games, I'm also looking forward for the Agatha Christie games that will be release by TAC.

TAC only publish the games, they're not responsible for all of the flaws, i have almost all of their games and was satisfied, with a lot of the titles they published.

Sorry about my negativity, i will behave in the future.

I edited my first post and erased the negative part in it.

Thank you Melanie for the warm welcome.

CU

danyboy

I didn't really intend for my post to sound completely negative either. TAC distributes some pretty good games. My beef with them is their customer service. It's rather spotty, as near as I can tell.

Even telling us that they have problems getting patches produced or admitting that they were having problems figuring problems out would have been more desireable than their standard "lower your acceleration" replies that they always posted. I found it especially interesting that they would do the standard reply even if someone obviously knowledgable of computers posted everything they had tried and it still didn't work.

And I don't actually blame them for closing down the forums, considering the posts that were showing up there over the past several months. It just doesn't really do anything to strengthen their image as far as customer service is concerned.

a

Ana, thank you for reminding us of the droughts we've had with good adventure games in the past. It's very true that we shouldn't denigrate TAC too badly. You made a very good point about showcasing their customer complaints also. I can't think of any other companies that do that. It's not good business.

While I've never been satisfied with their level of customer service (their standard form letter replies really annoyed me), they're not the only software publishers with that problem and they do publish a LOT of good adventure games. Perhaps part of the reason for them having so many problems is that they publish so many games.

Besides, we can usually get all the tech support we need from our game geniuses here.

We all get frustrated & sometimes need to vent, Danyboy & Auntieshoque, so don't worry about it. We're glad you're here.

Melanie

Wow! Thank you to everyone who posted, to welcome me to this forum.

*I'm so happy that I finally found the SMILEYS!*

I miss my avatar, but they tell me I can have one here when I've made 10 posts...

I understand the comments made about going easy on TAC, regarding the problems with recent games. I wouldn't want to see them go out of business either. But they've lost my trust now, because of what happened yesterday.

My unhappiness with TAC is due to the way that they closed the forum. They COULD have given us some warning, or prepared us. They COULD have given us a chance to exchange e-mail addresses; to save messages in our PM mailboxes; to save favorite threads to our computers; to get used to the idea that the forum was closing! Why didn't they do this? I simply don't understand how the staff of TAC could treat loyal customers of theirs so badly.

I'm very happy to be here, and in time I know I'll feel better about all this. But each time I read a game box that says "from The Adventure Company" on it -- the memory of July 9, 2004 will come back to me. Will it stop me from buying their games? I don't know. Time will tell...

well let me give you a bit of background, not on TAC forums, but in a similar vein.

I used to 'work' as a volunteer moderator on virgin.net's own sites, they decided it just wasn't feasible to keep the forums running as there were many other sites which covered the same things. We all had a big leaving party online, advising the members the site was going. It is very difficult to look after a discussion forum, you are always balancing on a tightrope, trying to keep the chat going without being too biased or letting tempers get in the way.

As for the support for games, as my family play many diverse genres, I can tell you it isn't only one company who have problems!! Got Rise of Nations Thrones and Patriots for Hubby as a Fathers day pressie and it won't even run on his pc!!! It works fine on mine but can you find a decent patch or help on setting it up??? Nope!! That was released by quite a big company too

Looks like we're 'cross-posting' between two threads about TAC, tigger. Now I know that yes, you ARE a moderator here. I'm sure not used to chatting with a moderator at this hour!

well it was us Mods who decided to make a big party out of it when Virgin went... they were Our forums so I suppose it was different in that respect.

Maybe the staff weren't allowed to say anything, so if they chose to comment well and good, but otherwise it could have been out of their control so let's not give em too much grief

I would have agree that it is likely the presence of mods like Tigger at the virgin site - that set things up in an orderly way.

The TAC forums were left to run along, almost by themselves. Not necessarily the exisitng TAC mods fault, you can only do so much with a handful of people at a very busy site.

No problem with that. I don't blame the TAC staff who regularly posted with us in the forum. As I said over there -- with one possible exception, the TAC/DC staff members were always extremely warm and courteous (IMO). I know they would have said something if they could have. And it's possible that even THEY didn't know, until it happened.

The decision to dump us without warning came from higher up -- and I only hope that ONE day, we'll find out why it had to happen the way it did.

Welcome all TAC members to Gameboomers! You've found a wonderful new place to call home!!

Mike.

to all our new members from TAC.