Feldon 
In August 2013, SOE made some drastic layoffs to try to manage costs. The game teams undoubtedly took a hit, but by far the deepest cuts were felt in the Customer Service and Quality Assurance divisions. As I walked past the empty desks when I visited SOE last summer, it confirmed that these teams were hard hit. Still, the quality of Customer Service from SOE has remained almost universally high over the last 18 months, with staff going above-and-beyond to restore hacked characters, update broken quests and content, restore items which have been accidentally lost or destroyed, as well as addressing all kinds of account issues, character transfers, etc. all within a reasonable amount of time.
However the most recent layoffs triggered by the Columbus Nova buyout seem to have pushed the Customer Service department to make some hard choices about which incidents they will handle vs. those that they need to punt to the game teams. I asked Daybreak Games VP of Customer Service Brad Wilcox if he had any comment on recent reports that Phone and Live Chat support had been terminated, long ticket times, and policy changes such as CS staff declining to progress broken quests or assist in the process of voting in a new guild leader to an EQ2 guild that had lost its original leader.
Brad took the time to respond to my concerns with this statement…
We continue to work hard to support the players and the games and have the best support in the game industry.
Short answer is yes we have and continue to evaluate the types of contacts we get and then decide where GM attention is best spent. While we want to make sure that everyone has the best experience possible – in order to do this we will from time to time need to have GMs focus their attention on categories that they can add the most value to.
Frankly there are thousands of tickets each month where GMs are used as a crutch for things that can be resolved by players with continued gameplay, in being more careful in their gameplay or resolving dispute and interactions on their own. We actually created a KB article a couple weeks ago discussing what a GM can/cannot assist with. http://help.soe.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/37731
Chat/Phone support is currently offline – but I hope to provide other solutions soon in regards to this, for example a phone call back by appointment option. A player selects a date/time and a support agent calls them back, which I believe to be a much better experiences then waiting on hold for someone to answer.
Thanks,
-Brad
We checked out this new Knowledgebase article and saw a host of things listed which used to be addressed by SOE Customer Service without so much as batting an eye:
- Deleted items: Please reacquire any deleted items through gameplay.
- Accidentally sold items: Buy the item back from a vendor. If it cannot be bought back, reacquire the item through gameplay.
- Accidentally bought items: Sell the unintended item back to the vendor (not all items can be sold back unfortunately) and purchase the intended item.
- Misloots: The Game Masters will not move items that were looted by accident or sent/traded to an unintended character.
- Accidental item modification (transmutes, adornments, gems, etc): There are in-game means to correct this issue which the player should explore.
- Renaming: The Game Masters will not change a character’s first name, surname, or guild name upon request. Name change potions are available on the marketplace.
- Guild Administration: The Game Masters will not administrate a guild or intervene in guild management affairs in any way. If your guild leader is absent, please create a new guild of your own or find another guild on the server that meets your needs.
- Deleted characters: There are various mechanics in place to assure that characters are not deleted by accident. Let’s be careful out there. Deleted characters will not be restored. Feel free to re-roll a new character.
After 15 years of having some of the best customer service in the gaming industry, this is a hard change for me to accept. Going forward, we’ll have to be extra careful on things that can cost us items. This also puts a renewed focus on gameplay elements that are prone to item loss, such as Experimentation. I wouldn’t risk it on all but the most reliable internet connection on a day when servers seem to be behaving properly.
So they’re going to drastically change the level of support they provide… by quietly adding a KB saying “Sorry, if you did any of the below you’re SOL.”
Makes me wonder what that $17 a month someone else paid DBG for my plat is really buying me.
Tons of money being dumped into EQN.
QFE
I agree and despite storybricks getting nailed you have to wonder whats next for eqn. Just throwing bad money after more bad money to try and make that game viable.
I agree fully with that Feldon. What frustrates me the most they have a successful franchise and instead of improving upon it they have abused it for all they can in order to fund pet projects, many of which don’t exist anymore.
Obviously to develop new games some of that may be done, but I don’t understand why on earth a company would not set a viable limit on it. It would have been easy enough to grow the brand rather than shoot themselves in the foot in order to make a risky project that seems to never get off the ground.
It was pretty obvious when the SC market was introduced they were funding projects welll letting the ecisting everquest franchise slide.
I’ll say this, if somehow my characters got deleted or whatever I would be gutted and likely to stop playing because, like most we put a lot of time into them over the years. They should realize how important that is in keeping customers.
I just don’t understand the logic in pretty much life support a game that brings in money rather than grow it and make it better in the hopes the “Next Big Thing” will work out (I have my doubts on that).
They say they have the best support in the industry, that is so much BULL is unbelievable. I have been trying to get my game back up for months! They said my username was disassociated with my game account or something like that, anyway they said “You have to fix that.” Really, I didnt write the program and I didnt disassociate anything but I have to fix it!
They finally tole me they had fixed it but by then this account is so screwed up with everything that has been done I need to talk with someone to get this going. I am not sure which password goes whee anymore and when I try to get it so I can change the password, it wants me to enter the password I dont know so I can fix the password. If I new the damn thing I WOULDNT HAVE TO FIX IT! I can get to tickets of anything without the password I cant change. They dont provide a phone number or even a chat for h1z1. These guys are smoking something funny to come up with a convoluted mess like this, its the only way they could come up with something this messed up and just plain stupid. Help desk, they dont know what the word means!
I don’t know about in game support, but they have been absurdly slow to act with my problem. I attempted to buy a 90 character with 3500 points (about $30 worth) and the transaction failed. My points were gone and no character.
It has been over a week and all I get it an email saying they are working on it. I can’t imagine a refund of some points could take all that long.
The issues in the Article are generally things the CSR’s shouldn’t have been wasting time on really anyway.
While it will be a pain for some people, as long as the responses on fixes that players can’t impact stay as consistent as they have in the past, I see no issue myself.
Not quite. I agree that a number of the items are frivolous – but some are important. E.G soon after the last expansion I petitioned for assistance as one of my kids sold what looked like a innocuous item (Hook that ports you to Wanderer’s Dock). Anyone who plays knows what a pain it is to travel to Phantom Sea. The item was replaced within a few hours & there was no-way to replace it in-game. Now this was not a game breaker but imagine if it was a crucial item for an signature quest or item?
Ideally the developers would construct quests in such a way that these situations would never happen in which case the customer support would not be required.
did the same thing with that hook, there was a quest reward weapon that had exactly the same icon. Crucial, irreplaceable stuff like that should be no sell, no destroy. CS would also free up time by letting members who pay via Krono do automated server transfers instead of having to put in a ticket.
I accidentally sold one of the items that you see the blue shinies with. (lagglagglagg ohh great, a bunch of items disappeared…)There is no way to re-attain items like that with further game play. If each item had a sell/no-sell setting, that’d be great, and I could understand not supporting return of items, but that would take a lot of server space that they are already having trouble with on the size of character files.
The guild leadership problem is also a bit harsh. Guilds are one of the things that keep people playing. Splitting of guilds is a huge HUGE reason for people leaving the game. A leader leaving and no one else having the leader tag is not something a player can fix. A new leader can hold things together.
I hate being a doomsayer (because I love Norrath), but… my thought pattern on investment companies buying a game company… cutting out every thing possible, leaving it on life support till it pays for itself, then gutting or reselling…. it seems to fit like a glove on this whole situation….
Luther,
I agree entirely. Some of the drop armor you cannot destroy (which gets really old and irritating), yet important things you can. I had that quest reward that looked like the hook as well. I understand reusing icons, but think of the folks that would think the Mark of the Far Seas a piece of currency, etc? (nah, I don’t know if you can delete it and am not going to try, lol)
Kitty
Most of the items on the list I agree with. The ones I dont are deleted items – at least if they are unique items the character can never again acquire, transferring guild leadership of an orphaned guild (just leave a guild with a 10 year history?) and restoring deleted characters (in case of a hacked account). In most cases there are enough safeguards built in to reduce GM interventions, like the 48 hour rule for trading looted heirloom items, buyback and name change potions which weren’t there when the game launched.
A few years back I was beta testing and I wanted to recopy my toons to beta to start fresh. In the confusion I deleted 4 of my main raid toons with over 7 years worth of work and SOE customer service had them restored within 15 minutes of my petition.
This new policy change seems like we are goin the way of Diablo 3 and other similar aarpg’s where if you lose a toon with a decade of development they really could care less what the circumstances are.
When the layoffs happened I stopped my recurring sub because on that date I pretty much realized this was inevitable. Daybreak has no concept of the dynamic between how much time we invest into our toons and how it directly relates to our desire to play as well as our decision to commit more time and money into it’s bottom line.
That linked KB article is named pretty silly. It’s titled “Assistance Game Masters Can Provide“.
The first sentence says this:
The next sentence starts with “Game Masters will not…” and the entire rest of the KB is about what they can’t do. Should have been called “Assistance Game Masters Can’t Provide“.
I wrote an email to Brad Wilcox after an ignored ticket that I ended up closing out of frustration. He responded to me on a Saturday (that was a surprise) and asked me for the ticket number and tried to reassure me how he’s committed to good customer service. I responded with the ticket number, and then….silence.
After 15 years of playing Everquest titled games, I think I’m done when my current sub runs out, and that makes me sad. If I’m not worth their time, they’re not worth my money. And I know I’m not the only one who believes this.
shouild post this publicly, nothing to make people wake up like public shaming
Well customer service is in the dumpster, that is a fact. I get it they are cut bare to the bone and in a big way. I just don’t understand how things that were set in stone changed so much. Having customer service that takes 7 days to answer a ticket and being told hey go find you another guild and throw out years of work, just made me shake my head. However I did get that issue kind of resolved.
Great customer service was the one thing that I could always count on in EQ2, even when a correction was needed due to my own silly mistake. This is just sad that a company thinks that people will tolerate bad service. It is where I draw the line.
Seen the writing on the wall when they allowed an investment company to take the helm. $$$$$
You all knew this was coming, why you all are acting surprised is beyond me.
no, not surprised. I saw the writing on the wall and canceled my account the day of the layoffs.
It’s one of the stages of mourning/loss. >.>
I knew it was coming, I won’t sub to EQ2 again. Not worth my money and when I run out of Krono then I’ll be hard pressed since I lead a Progression Raid Force now and being All Access is rather useful for a leader to have.
Restoring a hacked character, changing ownership of a guild that players are invested into who’s leader abandoned it, losing an item that might not be replaceable or takes forever to be replaced things that retain players that might be on the edge. Even if it’s not out of kindness, it’s just good business to keep long term players comfortable with the game.
Now it feels like “Welcome to Norrath; park at your own risk?
Griff,
As someone who plays multiple MMO’s I agree with you most of the time, but I am glad they stepped out of replacing the Guild Leader.
Yes, in some guilds players have dedicated equal time, status, ran writs. In others, the core group may have done it all and/ or just a couple people, even though others may have come and gone over time. Now, the core guild has RL things and/ or jumps back and forth between games as a guild. You have one guy that is new, decides not to jump with the guild. Fine, he can join another guild or move on. Given the 60 day rule, he could take over a guild that he really had little to do with establishing.
I would think that proving someone abandoned/ vs does the person petitioning have a vested interest in the guild could turn into a nightmare.
I moved a toon and most of her houses did not move with her. This is a common bug. So far, no response. I supose I should grab a Delorean and time travel back to Fanfaire to get my Sktblade Skiff again LOL.
I’ve had this once NOT happening ! In all other cases, the GMs had to fix it. The house should be back after the next server restart but I see why that’s annoying
One of my houses would not work after moving a toon long ago. Apparently, it existed in Frostfang on one server and housing in the new server existed in Frostfang 2. There was no way for me to recover it without assistance.
i can tell you one thing.. all the years WOW has been in operation they have never had a ‘relining’ or shucked their customer service to their subscribers. EQ2 with this new acquisition by Daybreak and sell out by Sony is nothing more than a dump by Sony so they can get out from support for EQ2 and go forth with NEXT and I believe Daybreak is riding the last wave of membership profit. But thats ok.. there will be other games out there to pick up the transfer of all of EQ2 paying members.
They should monitor very closely the relationship of subscriptions terminated / not prolonged and open tickets. While I would play around problems if possible, at some point (e.g. lost some long decorated house or a long delveloped char) I would just stop playing and let the sub lapse. It seems they have forgotten that having access to CS is one of the reasons All Access costs money.
My contacts with CS were few and far between, but always solved things to my satisfaction and reassured me that my money at least financed a high quality CS. I´d rather finance CS für games I play than EQNext which I might never play !
I’ve been playing EQ2 since beta in 2004. I love this game and figured I would be playing until they shut the servers down sometime in the distant future. After a recent experience with Landmark I’m starting to think that like Uli, I might lose my love of the game if I lost one or more of my main toons or other things that are important to me. I have invested more hours in this game than I care to admit and let’s face it, as a woman I am emotionally invested in this game as well. In Landmark I was less than 24 hrs late in paying my claims but I lost them all and everything I built there and was proud of. Yes they templated it, but they won’t fit in just any space and someone took my claim in that time period. I had bought some templates early on, but most wouldn’t work the way they were supposed to, would place, were warped when I placed them, etc. I just have no desire to go back there anymore and wonder if I could feel this way about EQ2 if CS is not backing us up. I tried to equip a raid item once during a quick lull between fights and accidentally hit delete then thought the confirm window was to attune. CS replaced the item within hours. I never bugged them for little things, but was always reassured that they would be there for stupid little mistakes I made. No more.
That’s why I don’t play Landmark too. You build to a spot of terrain, lose it, and someone else gets it (or worse, is just close enough that no one can use the spot) and you’re not going to find another patch of terrain that fits. (I was trying to build Lothlorien near the top of a valley, so when life IRL happened, and I lost the spot, someone claimed close enough that the spot was unusable, I CtrlAltDeleted out and never went back. Maybe I got spoiled by EQ2’s permanent houses, but I won’t do housing any other way. XD For customer satisfaction, they could have combined the permanent houseing style on instances or a different server type, but not only would they not do that, but beta players were flat out rude about me suggesting a change…during beta. o.0
Honestly, old style console games will be all I’ll play after EQ2 sunsets. They’re stable. XD (I never did beat FF8, Blue Dragon, or some others. lol)
Dustin off my old Playstation, Super nintendo and game boy. XD
But I’ll be with Norrath till the bitter end. (And boy is it getting bitter. 😥 )
this article is French translated on http://www.guerrier-celeste.fr/48-frontnews/389-support-utilisateurs.html
I did a lot of petitions and GMs did it great. Last time, I transmuted a raid earring (just looted the same night) instead unattuned the adorment. It was a /facepalm but GM gave me the item. Now it is one of the “non-help” cases.
They do a great job all this years (except for the reports about raiding bots). Let’s see what happens 🙂
Daybreakgames really are writing the rule book on how not to provide customer support, really disappointing to see this and it definitely does not encourage me to try out anything else from them.
They are now killing off forum areas too. 🙁
While I think this list does outline what they can and can’t do, I think it’s dumb to think that this won’t happen and that players will just suck it up and move on if something happens.
Having been through the “guild leader” abandonment about 6 years ago, Theres nothing worse than having a high level guild that multiple people have worked hard to level, get a guild hall, get status items, only to have the guild leader skip out due to their problem with responsiblity.
In the old days there was a waiting period and then the guild voted via mail who they wanted leader…at the time I got elected, and it worked out, but I can only imagine the fall out if folks got the response “suck it up and start a new guild”…no one would.
Customer service is one of the main things that brings players to your game…you can have a wonderful game but if you don’t pay attention to the people who are paying you and the issues they bring up, they won’t stay around to play the awsome sauce that your game is. Sorry, I quit eq2 after it went free to play due to customer service issues, when I came back I was glad to see they had gone back to doing good work…now i’m saddened by this news, and may quit again if it gets bad.
Bad Customer Service Happens, But You Don’t Have to Accept It
http://www.inc.com/paul-schoemaker/bad-customer-service-happens-but-you-dont-have-to-accept-it.html
“2. They treat customer service as a cost center. Different people work here, often overloaded, usually underpaid and understaffed. It is a natural target for cost cutting. Each small reduction in service may not be noticed in itself, but three successive reductions may be noticed loud and clear by the customer.”
HAVE YOU REWARDED YOUR FANS TODAY? THE ALARMINGLY HIGH COST OF BAD CUSTOMER SERVICE
http://www.fastcompany.com/3012419/creative-conversations/have-you-rewarded-your-fans-today-the-alarmingly-high-cost-of-bad-cus
“It’s widely acknowledged that it costs six to 10 times as much to attract a new customer as it does to keep an existing customer, but a current report by Accenture finds roughly half of surveyed consumers saying that they had left at least one vendor because of poor service. More than half of those defecting customers say they would have stayed loyal if they had been rewarded for their loyalty; nearly 70% would have stayed if a problem had been resolved with one call, instead of requiring multiple interactions. Replacing these customers is commonly treated as an inescapable cost of doing business, in a classic case of failing to see a stationary object.”
“The urgency is increased when one considers that the typical customer tells an average of 16 other people about a poor service experience, but only tells nine about the good ones.”
“American Express, in its 2012 Customer Service Barometer Study, found that 66% of U.S. consumers would spend more if they expected better service, with that group willing to pay an average premium of 13% to that end”
85% of consumers will retaliate against a company with bad customer service
http://venturebeat.com/2013/11/14/85-of-consumers-will-retaliate-against-a-company-with-bad-customer-service-report/
/*
“Want to create a customer for life? Make sure your customer service operation is always up to snuff and delights the customer as much as possible.”
Paul J. H. Schoemaker
Inc.com
“The fools! They cut their own throats!”
Dr. Clayton Forrester, The War of the Worlds (1953)
I’m not that fussed about it.
In the big picture, 90% of those issues they now won’t deal with are insignificant a year later in the games life.
Any items lost, etc, are almost useless next xpac anyway. Even characters deleted, which is horrible to experience, can be releveled in a week or two. And I agree with them anyway that it’s really hard to “accidentally” do it.
So you’ve lost a high level guild because someone left you high and dry and were told to create a new one and level it up hours, days and weeks later? You’ve had your max level raid geared character stolen and deleted and then were told to re roll? You have lost items that are no longer available in the game because you accidentally lagged and sold them or thought it was something else and deleted it?
If you haven’t, then I’d say you probably don’t know what your talking about. In all of those instances, I know someone or have experienced it myself. In all of those instances eq2 customer service shined through and assisted and didn’t tell us that we had to reroll, recreate, or go without.
If you have had that happen, and you were ok with the reroll, recreate, go without options, then I would say you are unlike most players.
In the big picture, I’d say about 90% of players who experience anything on this list, and don’t get help will quit.
Regarding deleted items, i know the level 1 version of the journeyman boots that all who pre-ordered EQ2 back in 2003 got are pointless to use today, but I once got mine back via a trouble ticket. This is an item you can’t actually get in game. You had to /claim it. I don’t know if they put that item on the veteran merchant or not, but they should if they haven’t already. For a low level character who doesn’t yet have a mount, it would go nicely with the journeyman cloak.
to bad EQN will never be a game i play
Too bad they didn’t leverage the guide program for GM work (like in the old days of MUDs and MUSHes). Guide get ranks…and when they hit the high ranks (proving that they aren’t unhinged and can be trusted) they get more and more capability…ultimately full GM abilities to provide ‘REAL’ customer service in game. If they abuse that power….they lose the rank…easy.
I expect the remnants of the guide program to shrivel…but if there’s even a seed left, they may want to leverage them quickly.
I can’t blame them drawing the line when they lost so many. Essentially, “Any typically dumbass mistake by a player will no longer be treated otherwise.” would be their new tagline (which isn’t totally unreasonable in most cases). BUT, since this is a game, frequently played by the drunk and barely conscious…dumdum mistakes are typical (yes, I’ve done a few), and people have been trained to have those mistakes reversed.
They need to make a quick buck so they are going to dump everything they possibly can to make the books look good. Once the books look good they can dump it off to someone else for quick turnaround profit. It is painfully obvious these clowns do not have a clue about games or gaming communities.
Thinking about all those “dumb” mistakes people make and expect CS to solve… Why doesn´t DBG just put a Station Cash price tag on those services. Like a character transfer token you could by a “restore-item” token or a “unlock zone” or even a “initiate guild leader vote” token. DBG could price these things according to effort involved – and suddenly CS pays for itself and is again available for the full spectrum of problems.
Because charging your paying customers for support usually turns them into ex-paying customers.
Where-as charging your paying customers and not giving them any options for support turns them into ex-paying customers, as well. I’d prefer they turn customer service into a quick buck over refusing to fix problems I experience in the game I am paying to play. We are all aware they have experienced major cutbacks, but that shouldn’t mean that we have no way of receiving support we require. This wouldn’t bother me so much if I wasn’t experiencing one of these issues right now. We had read recently about how after a guild leader is offline for 60 days, a vote can be initiated. We petitioned expecting this to be the outcome. The guild leader is a RL friend, but is on refusal to log in and make someone else leader or let us log him in to do it (he’d prefer the account never be logged into again). The guild isn’t max level, but it’s high enough that the two of us that are currently active in the guild have the amenities we need. Getting told to start another guild is very harsh considering how long we have spent helping to level this guild up over the years. Guild leveling isn’t something that can be done in a short period of time with two active players. Telling players to suck it up on items like this makes me feel like they are trying to kill the game, trying to push away those players that have been here for years, like they’re oblivious to the fact that anyone has. If it was 1 month into the game coming out, I’d be okay with sucking it up and starting a new guild. They need to take into account the massive amount of time players put into the game when deciding what they should support and shouldn’t.
Man – Reading the articles here have pretty much killed my desire to come back to the game. It’s a damn shame. I always liked eq2 but seems it is on its’ last legs.
after 11 years I am experiencing the lack of the customer service. I moved servers to join a new raid guild. I wasn’t happy and moved back. I contacted them on the first day I moved because I had none of my houses. My bags are full and I have nowhere to put anything. They said to contact them when I moved back. from the 11th to the 20th..how long does it take for someone to take care of this. This is really bad business.
I have had an account not working for a week now just need to get my password reset. I have had 3 accounts for over 5 yrs. So 3x17x12x 5yrs is just over 3,000 dollars. Is it too much to ask for 5 mins of someones time to reset a password.
They say my credit card information is wrong and I only had 1 card ><. I have no idea what is wrong with their billiing records, but they won't let me get access to my account (.
The authenticator's battery died, and you can't open them and put in a replacement battery. Its pretty obvious that was going to occur when you sell non-replacable items, so why are they refusing to take the dead authenticator off my account?
Shouldn't they have some other form of verification without needing my credit card number?
Who ever heard of cutting customer service! Everyone knows even if the game is not perfect if customer service is there to help it makes things alot better. I can’t even get on to my account and can’t get anyone to help me. They have $52 of my in SC How do I get that back since I can’t get into game to use it. Day Break should wake up and smell the the coffee BURNING!!!
Have moved to FL and changed internet provider and I am unable to enter my account to pay my yearly fees. How can I repair this problem. I am now connected with my sister-in-law’s internet which is jacadrochon@embarqmail.com. Please send me a solution.