PC-EU Server Update - April 11

Iluvrien

Verbal_Earthworm wrote: »

lordrichter wrote: »

Verbal_Earthworm wrote: »

lordrichter wrote: »

I can remember a time when I would have gotten angry about stuff like this.

Except you aren't even on the PC-EU server, have not experienced the Login Queue Fiasco and are only here to troll apparently.

I play on PC EU almost every day. I have sat through the queue. I normally try to play in off hours, because it is more convenient for me and because I am just a nice person and don't want to add to the queue times. Sometimes, the only time I have available is during EU prime time.

Sure you do.

I may disagree with the stance @lordrichter is taking on this issue*, but over the last 5 years I have never found them to be actively deceitful. Aim your anger and frustration where it is actually deserved, at ZOS.

[* I think internal discussions alone will not solve this or prevent it from happening again. I think that internal discussions with an eye on what is going on in various customer feedback channels is far more likely to do so. As such I think the discussion being had on this forum is both useful and may lead to ZOS taking this matter more seriously in the future.]

ruikkarikun

Too many events we have it's not healthy. Like it's not fun anymore. Ask anyone in any situation, if you will give them too much something they will loose interest. Think about it.

And it's sad to read about NA/EU. EU SERVER NEEDS SERIOUS HELP.

Verbal_Earthworm

Iluvrien wrote: »

Verbal_Earthworm wrote: »

lordrichter wrote: »

Verbal_Earthworm wrote: »

lordrichter wrote: »

I can remember a time when I would have gotten angry about stuff like this.

Except you aren't even on the PC-EU server, have not experienced the Login Queue Fiasco and are only here to troll apparently.

I play on PC EU almost every day. I have sat through the queue. I normally try to play in off hours, because it is more convenient for me and because I am just a nice person and don't want to add to the queue times. Sometimes, the only time I have available is during EU prime time.

Sure you do.

I may disagree with the stance @lordrichter is taking on this issue*, but over the last 5 years I have never found them to be actively deceitful. Aim your anger and frustration where it is actually deserved, at ZOS.

[* I think internal discussions alone will not solve this or prevent it from happening again. I think that internal discussions with an eye on what is going on in various customer feedback channels is far more likely to do so. As such I think the discussion being had on this forum is both useful and may lead to ZOS taking this matter more seriously in the future.]

My actual post was reportedly systematically redacted, what you read was just a placeholder in place of me asking that person not to pm me with rude nonsense.

FlyingSwan

Ethyarion wrote: »

FlyingSwan wrote: »

zaria wrote: »

21 minutes as I post this.
As an bare minimum, ESO+ should get credited the time this is on. so if it last 14 days we get 14 days added to ESO+ duration.
Only apply to player with eso+ running before we got the login queues.

Yes, it's a breach of EU Consumer Rights Directive on fitness for purpose for digital content and the supplier must make a remedy, that includes a refund.

If you're in the UK you can always demand a refund by citing the unfair contracts act. Basically ESO+ is a contract, they changed the terms of access without consultation or agreement.

And no, the EULA does not waive the legal rights of the consumer.

By EU law ZoS should email every subscriber before renewal too before taking the fee.

I don't play ESO much these days but ZoS really needs to get their act together and start to respect its EU player base.

Last night I asked for a refund of my Elswyr pre-order and my year's sub and ZOS responded and refunded within 30 mins. The matter was dealt with swiftly and professionally by the support team, so I think they have been apprised of the need to respond correctly.

Technically, I could push for a refund of the game on the basis the contract has changed and the digital content is not easily accessible, but I have played it massively since beta, so consider the core purchase a good one. But whilst I believe it's in ZOS' interest to fix this problem as soon as they can, the fact they let it get to this juncture shows how bloody useless they are, so I am not holding my breath.

We've had thread after thread pointing out how broken the EU Server has been this year, and all we get are platitudes and throwaway comments from the forum bods, "we're working on it, we know we need to communicate more". Well sure, that's why the game is in this *** poor state, because words are cheap, actions aren't.

Valion

Hey folks,
this is what I wrote in another thread while waiting to log in, yesterday evening, quEUe server.

"20 minutes of waiting time each log in to a game I paid a total of over 1000,- € for, up until now?
Unacceptable.

And please, don't tell us it's because of increased player numbers.
I really think you stripped down the server capacities in the beginning of 2019.
Or maybe after five rented years? "

Having slept about it, and waiting for my bounty to drop ingame (-we all have been there, haven't we? ), I must admit that once I pass the hidden wall called "queue", the game still grasps me like seldom another game has done. Ever.
So maybe it's really just others joining the line, signing their name?
I hope so, but still I doubt it.

Gnozo

The Queue is disgusting.

Sunday evening i dont even think about logging into the game. I dont have much time to play, i dont waste them by a Queue is 30 minutes..... Wow...

Server Problems are here for years. Every day a new thread gets created on how Bad Performance is.... We getting told they are working on Performance... Just lies, nothing gets done. With morrowind they said they changed how the server handles passives and this will increase Performance. Its worse then ever before and now we also have a Queue to play the game.

Group finder (pve and battlegrounds) is broken for years.... No fix
Cyro Performance is so bad i cant even find words for it.... No fix since years
Bugs everywhere, login for 1 hour and face 4+ Bugs just by playing normally.... No fix
Snipe health desync... No fix, "engineers" working on this since months.... No fix
Stuck in combat.... Also no fix...

Maybe its time to not threat your customer like trash and listen to them. Giving them something in return and not releasing more and more content wich they need to pay for.

MikaHR

lordrichter wrote: »

Do they pay you to type this apologist nonsense?

No need to get nasty. I don't work for ZOS, am not paid by ZOS, and I have no inside information to share about this, but they are not treading on unfamiliar ground for me. I've been on both sides of this sort of thing, and I have learned a lot in my prior experiences. I can remember a time when I would have gotten angry about stuff like this. Now, I know better.

Varana wrote: »

The problem is the utter silence on any of this. Not once have they acknowledged, in the past months (let's be honest, this is not an issue only since January), that there may be problems with server capacity.

I will not argue against the idea that they need to communicate better.

I appreciate the commentary from Firor, and that fact that he makes these statements. However... In my mind, when they need to push out a statement from Firor about a situation that has been brewing for several weeks, it is a sign that maybe they needed to be talking about it more, before it got to that point. He's a busy guy.

Again, this is part of what they need to discuss internally to decide whether there were improvements in what they could have done. Communication should be on the agenda, I think.

Fixer2050 wrote: »

As someone stated in few previous posts, they had forseen this would happen since January '19 and they still waited till the problem happen to act.

One of the things that I have been trying to inject into this discussion is that we do not know what actions they have been taking. To suggest that they waited to act is probably inaccurate. What we do know is that it was not enough.

Hopefully, in a couple of weeks, this will pass. While that happens, there are login queues on the EU servers. Could they have done something different to avoid this before it happened? I cannot say. They are working to fix it, and that is the next best thing.

It is called opportunity cost, now they have to think about if this degraded servers will cost them more (due to loss in revenue from existing AND new players that wont bother with such bad service) than if they bought few servers and integrated them before the event.

There may be even FO76 disaster involved where ZOS staff had to help fix that disaster...

andreasv

MikaHR wrote: »

lordrichter wrote: »

Do they pay you to type this apologist nonsense?

No need to get nasty. I don't work for ZOS, am not paid by ZOS, and I have no inside information to share about this, but they are not treading on unfamiliar ground for me. I've been on both sides of this sort of thing, and I have learned a lot in my prior experiences. I can remember a time when I would have gotten angry about stuff like this. Now, I know better.

Varana wrote: »

The problem is the utter silence on any of this. Not once have they acknowledged, in the past months (let's be honest, this is not an issue only since January), that there may be problems with server capacity.

I will not argue against the idea that they need to communicate better.

I appreciate the commentary from Firor, and that fact that he makes these statements. However... In my mind, when they need to push out a statement from Firor about a situation that has been brewing for several weeks, it is a sign that maybe they needed to be talking about it more, before it got to that point. He's a busy guy.

Again, this is part of what they need to discuss internally to decide whether there were improvements in what they could have done. Communication should be on the agenda, I think.

Fixer2050 wrote: »

As someone stated in few previous posts, they had forseen this would happen since January '19 and they still waited till the problem happen to act.

One of the things that I have been trying to inject into this discussion is that we do not know what actions they have been taking. To suggest that they waited to act is probably inaccurate. What we do know is that it was not enough.

Hopefully, in a couple of weeks, this will pass. While that happens, there are login queues on the EU servers. Could they have done something different to avoid this before it happened? I cannot say. They are working to fix it, and that is the next best thing.

It is called opportunity cost, now they have to think about if this degraded servers will cost them more (due to loss in revenue from existing AND new players that wont bother with such bad service) than if they bought few servers and integrated them before the event.

There may be even FO76 disaster involved where ZOS staff had to help fix that disaster...

Fallout 76 had launch performance issues because ZOS staff got involved. It looks like they have fixed that problem now and hired quality staff.

Ezhh

So I may as well add my experience:

I was working on my first vMA clear, doing a few stages a night. It had been a long time since anything in a game had gripped me like this. I started the final stage on the day the queue was implemented, but hadn't seen the queue myself yet. I was trying a blind run, had many deaths, and it was huge amounts of fun. I had finally just started round 4. I was basically planning to sit there until I beat the thing. Then I disconnect.

No problem. I seem to disconnect a fair amount there for some reason. I'd learned on previous days while doing earlier stages that staying calm and just relogging meant the instance would not reset and I'd be on the same round.

Nope. 9 minute queue. (So back to round 1 if I want to continue.)

Even though it's annoying, I'm not too bothered by the initial queue (unless it makes it totally impossible to connect), but losing progress on something by being placed back in that queue again is just no fun at all.

MikaHR

andreasv wrote: »

MikaHR wrote: »

lordrichter wrote: »

Do they pay you to type this apologist nonsense?

No need to get nasty. I don't work for ZOS, am not paid by ZOS, and I have no inside information to share about this, but they are not treading on unfamiliar ground for me. I've been on both sides of this sort of thing, and I have learned a lot in my prior experiences. I can remember a time when I would have gotten angry about stuff like this. Now, I know better.

Varana wrote: »

The problem is the utter silence on any of this. Not once have they acknowledged, in the past months (let's be honest, this is not an issue only since January), that there may be problems with server capacity.

I will not argue against the idea that they need to communicate better.

I appreciate the commentary from Firor, and that fact that he makes these statements. However... In my mind, when they need to push out a statement from Firor about a situation that has been brewing for several weeks, it is a sign that maybe they needed to be talking about it more, before it got to that point. He's a busy guy.

Again, this is part of what they need to discuss internally to decide whether there were improvements in what they could have done. Communication should be on the agenda, I think.

Fixer2050 wrote: »

As someone stated in few previous posts, they had forseen this would happen since January '19 and they still waited till the problem happen to act.

One of the things that I have been trying to inject into this discussion is that we do not know what actions they have been taking. To suggest that they waited to act is probably inaccurate. What we do know is that it was not enough.

Hopefully, in a couple of weeks, this will pass. While that happens, there are login queues on the EU servers. Could they have done something different to avoid this before it happened? I cannot say. They are working to fix it, and that is the next best thing.

It is called opportunity cost, now they have to think about if this degraded servers will cost them more (due to loss in revenue from existing AND new players that wont bother with such bad service) than if they bought few servers and integrated them before the event.

There may be even FO76 disaster involved where ZOS staff had to help fix that disaster...

Fallout 76 had launch performance issues because ZOS staff got involved. It looks like they have fixed that problem now and hired quality staff.

Actually it may be that ZOS staff wos fixing FO76 instead of ESO.

andreasv

MikaHR wrote: »

andreasv wrote: »

MikaHR wrote: »

lordrichter wrote: »

Do they pay you to type this apologist nonsense?

No need to get nasty. I don't work for ZOS, am not paid by ZOS, and I have no inside information to share about this, but they are not treading on unfamiliar ground for me. I've been on both sides of this sort of thing, and I have learned a lot in my prior experiences. I can remember a time when I would have gotten angry about stuff like this. Now, I know better.

Varana wrote: »

The problem is the utter silence on any of this. Not once have they acknowledged, in the past months (let's be honest, this is not an issue only since January), that there may be problems with server capacity.

I will not argue against the idea that they need to communicate better.

I appreciate the commentary from Firor, and that fact that he makes these statements. However... In my mind, when they need to push out a statement from Firor about a situation that has been brewing for several weeks, it is a sign that maybe they needed to be talking about it more, before it got to that point. He's a busy guy.

Again, this is part of what they need to discuss internally to decide whether there were improvements in what they could have done. Communication should be on the agenda, I think.

Fixer2050 wrote: »

As someone stated in few previous posts, they had forseen this would happen since January '19 and they still waited till the problem happen to act.

One of the things that I have been trying to inject into this discussion is that we do not know what actions they have been taking. To suggest that they waited to act is probably inaccurate. What we do know is that it was not enough.

Hopefully, in a couple of weeks, this will pass. While that happens, there are login queues on the EU servers. Could they have done something different to avoid this before it happened? I cannot say. They are working to fix it, and that is the next best thing.

It is called opportunity cost, now they have to think about if this degraded servers will cost them more (due to loss in revenue from existing AND new players that wont bother with such bad service) than if they bought few servers and integrated them before the event.

There may be even FO76 disaster involved where ZOS staff had to help fix that disaster...

Fallout 76 had launch performance issues because ZOS staff got involved. It looks like they have fixed that problem now and hired quality staff.

Actually it may be that ZOS staff wos fixing FO76 instead of ESO.

Maybe. Although performance is improving there, which you can't say of ESO especially on the server in question here.

IWinWithPewPew

ot's funny you're looking int eu console servers. Because they're empty.

wesly.backersb16_ESO

If I read all these comment without any context , I would think that the world is collapsing...
Now it's the time to do your laundry peeps...

IzzyStardust

Nifty2g wrote: »

log in to do a raid on eso and be put on a queue, hopefully that doesn't become a problem for the raid groups.

Meanwhile; you will just have to log in sooner

IzzyStardust

daemonios wrote: »

Thank you @ZOS_MattFiror for the update. I for one can't say I'm fully satisfied by your answer, though.

I feel the PC-EU players' complaints have been constantly downplayed or outright ignored until the issues couldn't be swept under the rug any more. It's been 3 months since the moment things got really bad, yet only now are you reacting, and the first reaction of turning on the queue, while I can understand the purpose, is further punishing the players. Why wasn't the problem acknowledged and addressed sooner?

Secondly, either I'm very much mistaken, or you already have the ability to increase your server capacity. I haven't played PvP regularly in years, but during the Midyear Mayhem event I spent many hours in Cyrodiil and was pleasantly surprised at the performance even with every faction pop-locked, as were others who talked about it in-game or in the forums. Did you not expand your server capacity then, and if you did, why didn't you do the same now?

We'll have to see how things go from now on, but in my book ZOS has barely any credit left. I hope you can turn this around.

Hey - Islyn here. It's why I raid on NA; even with worse ping.

ArchMikem

The funny thing about this are those creating threads wanting to merge server populations.

MuttleyGriffin

Newbie here - at my first few experiences of the queue system, and then reading this latest thread, I thought it would be a temporary thing to deal with. Then this Sunday came and I'm greeted with a ~30min queue.

It irked me; I'd waited all day to be able to jump in and continue my early adventures of ESO, and it's not only a queue, but a pretty hefty one at that, especially with limited time on a Sunday evening (family, chores, sleep for work etc like many of you here).

Tonight I go on at 6pm UK time, and once again, another 15-20 min queue.

I decide to read this thread from first page to last; and I'm really disappointed to read that this is an old, ongoing issue that has plagued the PC EU server for quite sometime. I was naive enough to think this was a recent, temporary thing that would be rectified with additional server capacity, but now my optimism has quickly turned to one long sigh...

I might be oversimplifying things here; but if the servers are increasing high demand, from customers who pay for the game, chapters, ESO+ etc, why would they not add more capacity ASAP to accommodate more players and generate more revenue? It's baffling.

Verbal_Earthworm

MuttleyGriffin wrote: »

Newbie here - at my first few experiences of the queue system, and then reading this latest thread, I thought it would be a temporary thing to deal with. Then this Sunday came and I'm greeted with a ~30min queue.

It irked me; I'd waited all day to be able to jump in and continue my early adventures of ESO, and it's not only a queue, but a pretty hefty one at that, especially with limited time on a Sunday evening (family, chores, sleep for work etc like many of you here).

Tonight I go on at 6pm UK time, and once again, another 15-20 min queue.

I decide to read this thread from first page to last; and I'm really disappointed to read that this is an old, ongoing issue that has plagued the PC EU server for quite sometime. I was naive enough to think this was a recent, temporary thing that would be rectified with additional server capacity, but now my optimism has quickly turned to one long sigh...

I might be oversimplifying things here; but if the servers are increasing high demand, from customers who pay for the game, chapters, ESO+ etc, why would they not add more capacity ASAP to accommodate more players and generate more revenue? It's baffling.

It is indeed baffling.

Verbal_Earthworm

@ZOS_MattFiror

Your login queue is not working as you said it would.

If we don't want to wait in the queue, the "leave queue" button does not function and we remain in the queue, forcing us to quit the game with alt+f4 or task manager.

The timer often stops entirely forcing us to wait for an hour or more before then quitting as above.

When quitting the game or disconnecting from the game or experiencing a crash to desktop, the promised grace period does not function and we are once again placed in the broken queue.

Any word of a possible fix?

Of course, this is to be dealt with a lot sooner than the two week estimate you gave for a server fix.

Paying customers are asking where their money is going, if not into the game?

We want communication and we want it now.

Aurrynthea_Drake

ZOS_MattFiror wrote: »

Everyone,

After seeing the commentary about the queuing system being enabled on the PC EU servers yesterday, I thought I'd let everyone know what has been leading up to this, and what we are doing to alleviate the situation.

Please note that the situation that led to the queuing system being enabled is not related to the overall client performance issues that we talked about at the end of last year - those engine optimizations are still underway and hopefully you'll see them in-game at some point this year. The situation that led to queuing has nothing to do with client performance - it is because our servers are overloaded.

Starting in January we've had an influx of new players - we've have had some of our highest weekly average user, daily active user, and peak concurrent user numbers in the last six weeks since we launched on console back in 2015. So, it was in January when EU players started noticing degraded server performance. We made tweaks and updates to the service to free up extra database resources and other boosts to performance, which is why you have been seeing more and longer maintenance outages than normal in the last couple of months.

However, in late March, we really saw a huge spike in the number of users logging in, which led to too many concurrent users for the platform to effectively support. As a result, players on PC EU have seen a severe degradation in service. This degradation started in January, but has greatly accelerated in the last week - lag spikes, disconnects, inability to zone from instance to instance, weird interactions with LFG, etc. These problems are greatly exacerbated by having serious load on the servers, as there are too many users for the hardware to handle.

A quick aside: these problems affect the PC EU more than the other megaservers because it has our highest peak concurrency of any of our six megaservers. The reason: the EU is a highly PC-centric gaming market - and also because almost all of our EU players are located in two time zones. Compared to the North American servers, where there are four time zones to spread out the "peak playing time", the EU has almost all its users logged in at the same time, which leads to very high peak usage.

So, here is what we are doing to fix the problem:

• Short term, we are turning on our queuing system (as you saw yesterday), which will cap the maximum number of players allowed on the PC EU megaserver. You should only see the queue at peak times, when demand is higher than the hardware supports. As was posted yesterday, the estimated time to login may not be 100% accurate, but it will give you an idea of how big the line is. ALSO: if you are disconnected from the server for any reason, you should have a twenty minute grace period to log back in and "skip" the queue.
• Longer term: we are spinning up additional hardware in both our NA and EU datacenters in order to support our growing user base. We expect the time frame for this to be about two weeks, but we will keep you posted. And yes, we are adding more capacity to PC NA as well as EU because we are rapidly approaching the same problem in NA and want to get ahead of it. We will also be looking very closely at our Console megaservers to make sure they have enough capacity.

I know it is frustrating to be stuck in queue, but it is better to do this than have the entire service be unstable and frustrating for everyone. We will do everything we can to get the new hardware online as quickly as possible and stop queuing and have the service return to normal. Stay tuned for details.

Matt

I am so angry that NA always gets performance improvements BEFORE it becomes a problem but EU always seems to get left right up until the problem can no longer be ignored.

Why is that? Is my eso+ subscription less important that someone in the states?

Flappers297

@ZOS_MattFiror

> ALSO: if you are disconnected from the server for any reason, you should have a twenty minute grace period to log back in and "skip" the queue.

This is not true. It might be the behaviour you expect, but it is not the actual behaviour for users. You should fix it or retract this comment. Actual behaviour:

Given you queue for 20 minutes
When you finally get in and pick up your daily
Then you get disconnected and have to queue for 20 minutes again (or quit)

On an aside, it'd be really interesting to know what your infrastructure looks like. The fact that you need two weeks to scale out suggests there is some room for improvement...

Sandrock

Dear customers,

In January we saw an increase in player numbers that caused server issues. We didn't want to invest in extra server capacity at the time because we were worried that the numbers would drop again and we made an investment for nothing.

Numbers didn't drop, they only kept increasing and so did the problems.

We still didn't invest in better servers. We thought waiting would be better.

4 months laters and numbers have gotten so high that servers can no longer support the player base and we have to put a queue on the servers.

As a result, we are pissing off our long-time paying users as well as giving a very poor impression to new players just trying out the game, who probably won't have the patience to sit through a 20 minute queue for a game they haven't got any vested interest in yet.

So now we stand to lose both loyal customers as well as new ones.Just because we didn't act early enough and increased server capacity on time.


How do we plan to remedy our mistake?

By telling you to enjoy the queue for two weeks while we try and sort out more server capacity and ask for your patience.


We didn't think it was necessary to take more bold action.

What we could have done:

1. All users who had ESO plus or made a purchase above 20 euro's in the crown store in the past 6 months will get priority queueing.(One loyal customer is worth more than 10 new users who are just trying out the game after all)
2. After we have resolved the server problems, all users who played between 1st of March and then will get a month of ESO plus free (it may even lead to more people subscribing to ESO plus afterwards)

But we didn't think we should show you this type of services.


Yours sincerely,

The unstrategic poorly thought out management of Zenimax

VeenixO

When you guys are talking about extra hardware... Are you talking about upgrading a server or buying extra ones? I really hope it means extra servers because if not, maybe you should take an example from other MMO companies.

Besides, don't want to be a complete a**hole rn... But ZOS... Haven't we (the players) been telling you this for years that placing all players in one server per region isn't going to end up well?

Have seen posts from almost a week ago about this topic and really hope it gets fixed in a few days because I can not login at all... Keep getting kicked out.

For the future tho: Before trying to save on server costs or whatever, think about the players and their experience first and then think about the cost. Money will come if the players have a good experience, it won't if your players can't even get into the game.

Lith

Perhaps the immediate solution for EU players is just stop playing on EU servers, which clearly can no longer cope. Bar the extra latency, NA has lots of space folks. They should be able to absorb lots of EU players, if not ALL OF US, if you already have a toon or two there. I am glad I developed that account (same account - different server) 8 months ago, and have a toonbase to work with. And for the moment, I at least don't have to suck queue-ass there.

Heaven forbid their servers start overloading and they get the queue system implemented there also.

Killum

ZOS - I do NOT pay for a Game + Expansions + Sub etc etc just to be told when I try to log in that I am placed in an indefinite queue to play the game.

I wont to know if ESO+ members will be able to log in without a queue or will at least be given priority over non-paying customers?

FlyingSwan

@ZOS_MattFiror The problem is you lack credibility, so many of us do not believe what you say. I have played since beta and whilst it’s a good IP, the management has always been weak.

I suspect you and ZOS are merely paying lip service to remediation, after all, if you were serious about building a sustainable capability then this would have been dealt with at a strategic level, Not tactical. I therefore doubt this one incident can stymie what is clearly a poor management culture at ZOS.

Riverlynn

@ZOS_MattFiror

Classic marketing spin. I'm surprised you haven't positioned this as a 'Loading Screen Artwork Pack'.

Oh, and then charged us for it.

Prospero_ESO

@ZOS_MattFiror

Honestly, this is a declaration of bankruptcy for your whole IT Operations department. For almost 3 months you are running with an open eye into these problems, it´s unbelievable. What was it? Was it mismanagement, was it dilettantism? Incompetency? Or was it just plain greed so that you can squeeze out the last $ of your customers before money is invested ?
I work for almost 20 years as a system engineer in different companies and datacenters, if in my company we see performance problems arise and are basically doing nothing or not enough to solve them for our customers BEFORE they become a problem, people get laid of, beginning at the management by the way.

Merkart

I regret that I've paid 6 mounth eso-plus subscription. It was the last time I bought ESO plus. gl with your new feature.

Jaraal

Strange business model where the solution to overcrowding is to turn away customers rather than planning to accommodate them. I’m glad I’m not a stockholder!