My Downloads Page / Humble Bundle Downloads Issues

Same exact issue, was hoping to have access to these files for the weekend.

Thanks skizzerz!

I decided to redeem it myself as that gives me the option to hand out 4 different codes so multiple people can win something.

Now I just need to decide how many sets I want to have to distribute at the event...

+1

Same issues here, trying the 'lite' or single-file chapter versions of the files doesn't seem to help at all.

See this thread for further clarification.

yes, I'm seeing this as well. I appreciate the header to make us aware. Any idea when would be a good time to attempt these downloads?

Common Paizo its 2016 and you need not run servers on DSL in a garage, we need more servers fired up in the cloud! I will not purchase the full bundle until I can at least download one PDF for god sake and check out if I want the full Humble Bundle for $25. Your loosing people interest with the indefinite personalizing link BS not to mention loosing charity money for willing people!

As someone that spent 28 bucks on only two pdfs yesterday that I can't download because of the bundle thing going on, I think people should focus on that it's charity. You'll eventually be able to download, just as I will. But it should be about the charity. That's just IMO.

Common Paizo its 2016 and you need not run servers on DSL in a garage, we need more servers fired up in the cloud!

Paizo has a policy against that as far as I know, due to wanting to keep their intellectual property under their own control and not on any other servers.

Your loosing charity money here people!

At over 23k bundles sold and over 300k in donations, I don't think they are particularly worried about a few impatient people refusing to donate.

yup a bunch of us bought it to play a few games over the weekend, none of us can download

some of you are patient
some of you have common sense
some of you understand the bigger picture of this event

the rest of you make me a little sad and a bit angry

Same problem. I can't get passed the personalization process on the download page. I have been able to download one product in 12 hours. I'll stick with 5e's smoother and less broken rule set and smoother and less broken web site. EPICALLY EPICAL EPTASTIC FAIL PAIZO... and I'm a GM, the kind of person you want to want your product because I BUY MORE OF THEM THAN A PLAYER.

You do realize they've sold over 23000 bundles over the past 24hrs? I don't know what you know of networking and web traffic, but to have 23000 people trying to access Gigs of data over a 24hr period when you've never handled that kind of traffic before would crash just about any website. They have a disclaimer at the top of the downloads page; give it some patience and come back in a day.

I bought two pdfs yesterday for 28 bucks... haven't been able to download either.. While I can empathize a bit, as a college student with only limited time to read or play... I also have to say... have patience. This was a charity bundle that had a rush they weren't quite expecting. While I know how annoying not being able to download for you is, I only have two pdfs I want to download, but can't. Patience.

more like increase timeout to 10 hours...

The4TimeTravelers wrote:

Common Paizo its 2016 and you need not run servers on DSL in a garage, we need more servers fired up in the cloud!

Paizo has a policy against that as far as I know, due to wanting to keep their intellectual property under their own control and not on any other servers.

Well publishers, what can you do. They tend to be stuck in the 60's in terms of technological prowess. Not much to be done there....

And then to add more injury, after you are timed out they tell you that you have downloaded it.

I have tried waiting various times before downloading... including an hour and 15 minutes... nothing.

I get that there is extra strain on the servers due to the humble bundle and what-not, but seriously? I can't download 1 single pdf file?

Also, the system gives no clue as to whether or not anything is being done, and sometimes just pops me back out to the homepage - really infuriating!

Is anyone addressing this, or does Paizo really just expect us to wait for days or weeks until their servers can handle our downloads?

deltreey wrote:

yes, I'm seeing this as well. I appreciate the header to make us aware. Any idea when would be a good time to attempt these downloads?

Common Paizo its 2016 and you need not run servers on DSL in a garage, we need more servers fired up in the cloud! I will not purchase the full bundle until I can at least download one PDF for god sake and check out if I want the full Humble Bundle for $25. Your loosing people interest with the indefinite personalizing link BS not to mention loosing charity money for willing people!

At most there are frustrated people. The interest is still there, given that people are here talking about how they cannot get the merchandise. Paizo didn't expect the huge response that they received on this promotion, and were not geared for that sort of demand on their servers in combination with their monthly release schedule.

It's 2016, let's show some patience. It's a great thing that there are this many people interested in the game.

Well publishers, what can you do. They tend to be stuck in the 60's in terms of technological prowess. Not much to be done there....

You consider 'stuck in the 60's' to mean offering nearly all of your content in digital format? Because they don't trust outside contractors?

It's a large event, yes, but a web-based business should prepare for an event they know is coming, and be able to scale servers in response.

Maybe they are doing this and it's still not enough, maybe they are doing nothing but watch their servers redline all day, waiting for traffic to die down in a few days.

For many people this is their first experience with Paizo, by not being prepared for that traffic, they have made those people's first experience a terrible one.

As an individual who works in the IT sector, I would like to hear from the company about what they are doing to resolve this issue, not just the banner on the download page that says to wait.

Same problem here for me. I will wait - good to know the problem isn't on my end.

But how many people are actually able to download anything? The only way to reduce the traffic without having very unhappy customers is if a reasonable proportion of people who bought stuff recently are actually able to download what they bought.

So waiting for the traffic to die down is a good strategy for us customers, but a lousy one for Paizo.

I guess what I want is for the company to tell us what, if anything they are doing about the download issues. It would be nice to know if they are just expecting us to wait this out or if we may see some kind of resolution.

at least you guys can see your books. I entered my code and the books aren't even on my download page.

Exactly, is the plan to wait for this to sort itself out? Or are plans being made to add resources to fix this sooner?

I am not trying to complain, I just need to know. Will I get to down load sooner, or just forget about Pathfinder until everyone else gets done.

Day 2 of trying to download a single PFS scenario.

Please, admit that the personalizer is not delayed, it is flat-out broken, and take whatever steps you need to to resolve.

Merged all downloads related threads.

Hey folks! Gathering some information for you all, and will be posting again shortly. To keep us able to respond to you all as best as possible, please refrain from creating additional threads or responding to old ones.

As an individual who works in the IT sector, I would like to hear from the company about what they are doing to resolve this issue, not just the banner on the download page that says to wait.

I agree

Merged all downloads related threads.

Hey folks! Gathering some information for you all, and will be posting again very shortly. To keep us able to respond to you are best as possible, please refrain from creating additional threads or responding to old ones.

Thanks for letting us know that you will be providing details Chris. In my book, it goes a long way to alleviating customer issues.

I need some kind of solution very soon, I have to prep 7-16 for a con that starts tomorrow and I don't have the time to click my download every 30 seconds for the next 6 hours to evetually get it. -.-

Chris Lambertz wrote:

Merged all downloads related threads.

Hey folks! Gathering some information for you all, and will be posting again very shortly. To keep us able to respond to you are best as possible, please refrain from creating additional threads or responding to old ones.

Thanks for letting us know that you will be providing details Chris. In my book, it goes a long way to alleviating customer issues.

I agree, as they say "Hell is not knowing."

Thank you Chris.

I finally was able to schedule some time to catch up on my reading and I can't download a single thing. You need to change your banner to say that it isn't working at all. There is no delay, the system is just not working. In this time of instant communications, it seems like there really isn't much info coming to us. I may actually have to cancel this weekend's session.

Quick update: I've talked further with our tech team and waiting on confirmation of a few details. The service is still online, but, the queue is just currently very large.

Jack, I can confirm that downloads ARE working, as I managed to get Thralls of the Shattered God this morning. It DID however take hours of waiting and clicking.

Glad it worked for you Tri. I have been trying since yesterday. Waiting a few minutes to hours each time. Never gets past the My Downloads...personalizing file stage. From what I have been reading I am not the only one. I am just sad because I have some time to kill and finally can catch up...<sigh>...first world problem for sure.

Guys just start to trust your customers! All this stuff just because of your copy protection... Load it up into a database with an integrated login. So everybody can download the plain files. That would help everybody! Thanks!

Word on the street is that you need to keep your session fresh, by clicking the download link periodically to maintain your login to the queue. Not sure how true this is.

Guys just start to trust your customers!

Which ones? The ones that posted torrents of Pathfinder PDFs? The ones that uploaded everything to Scribd?

C'mon.... If someone wants to post it on torrent or wherever will also delete this "copyprotection"(just a watermark). So if the result of that is, that the REAL customers have huge problems you should rethink your tactics....

The problem with that argument being that the "real" customers haven't had this issue until about 26 hours ago, so up until that point it was hurting nobody

The real customers DON'T have huge problems. I've purchased from Paizo since 2009. This is perhaps the second or third time I've had problems with the personalizer. This incident is unlikely to convince them they need to do away with watermarking. It's far more likely to convince them they need to alter their setup to deal with these heavy loads.

Edit: Ninja'd by Phylotus?! THERE WILL BE REPERCUSSIONS!

Guys just start to trust your customers! All this stuff just because of your copy protection... Load it up into a database with an integrated login. So everybody can download the plain files. That would help everybody! Thanks!

The watermarks serve a secondary purpose beyond just making it annoying to upload the pdf to file sharing/torrent sites (someone motivated to do so can, with enough time, simply remove all the watermarks so as a defense mechanism against pirating that only keeps out the lazy ones). If you want to play in the Pathfinder Society Organized Play, you need to have the sourcebook on hand for any non-core options (to prove you own the book). This can be done either by having the physical book or by having a printout of the watermarked pdf. If you came in with a printout of a non-watermarked pdf (or a photocopy of a book), that wouldn't hold up to PFS standards.

If you don't care about PFS, this doesn't apply to you so it's just a half-baked copy protection measure that makes downloading things from this site an exercise in frustration, even when the queue isn't clogged. The likelihood of that process changing is approximately zero though, so nothing to do but wait. I'm personally going to hold off a couple days before attempting my downloads, I'm not in any particular rush with them.

Just because you are such an hard formed community you shouldn't think about the new customers like that! I bought a lot of paizo books!!! Im not from the US so i bought the stuff in my country's online store... So if you wan't to expand your community you should be a bit more open.

As a "real" customer, I am only slightly annoyed at technology for doing what technology does, but not at the people or the cause. The charity is a great thing. The Paizo folks do what they can do. Technology getting upset that it is being overwhelmed.. it is annoying.. but it happens. It isn't anything for anyone to really be upset about.

Just because you are such an hard formed community you shouldn't think about the new customers like that!

I'm not sure what you are referring to. Perhaps I should have put some quotations around the word real, since it is fairly meaningless. But you were the one to bring it up, after all.

Cthulhusquatch I totally agree with you!

Just wanted to report that after about 20-30 minutes of clicking on the download link, I did manage to get a hold of PFS scenario 7-16.

Sorry if I've chosen the wrong words for it! I also managed to download some files. The problem is just the way of communication by the tech-team and the community after more than 24 hours.