gm service reaches another low

[Lucy of Kenton]

a friend contacted me to ask if anything could be done about a char that was causing trouble. situation is this.....
guy makes a char with the same name as a member of the command team of BoC. this char then goes around writing vile things in books and leaving them around and writing on noticeboards, one of the ones i read had paedophilia connotations. friend had already paged help and was told by gm they would review her journal. reading a noticeboard does not record in a journal i dont believe.
so i also page, get canned response (no surprise there then). then found that the person had cloned my friends char name.
found him and paged using harassement, got back canned response saying to report using harassement!
has it really come to the stage where people can just be vile and write wholly disgusting things with apparent immunity. i am old enough to remember when gm's would turn up in game!
if i can put the names on this post can you let me know petra?

 

[Myna]

sorry to hear that

i personally have given up to believe gms exist, the last gm i have seen or have spoken to was before my break in 2000 ... came back in 2005 and never have seen a gm or have spoken to one .... paged a few times ... so i odnt waste my time with paging them anymore.

when i read post like GM bla bla is a great person etc etc, becasue he did this and that etc etc. ...then i think ... huh? what did that person do to get in contact with a GM .... just unbelievable

 

[jack flash uk]

well i paged and so far got 2 canned responses

one for a notice on her bulliten board calling her a pancake, i page and instead of tackling the guy that posted this abuse i get told that they cannot help me as i am not the target and to get my friend to page herself, FFS she has been waiting for a few hours to get help

 

[jack flash uk]

And this char has a young player who can stealth and recall and keeps going to her house to cause her more upset, yet the GM staff do nothing

 

[jack flash uk]

as you can see in the picture he/she is still coming to the house to cause more abuse, yet the GM staff do nothing

 

[jack flash uk]

He is now removing the barrels Wellz placed outside her house, and as you guessed the GM staff do nothing, still no8 in the queue

 

[Cailleach]

Banning him/her from the house would be a good start. And that means all the chars on that account are also banned, IIRC. Putting said scrote on ignore is also a good move.

If there's anything at all I can do to help, please let me know. I really loathe people like this - they tarnish the souls of all those they come into contact with, directly or indirectly.

 

[Bobar]

Well actually, removing the barrels is not an offence but obscenity and other offensive behaviour certainly is but why am I not surprised that all you get is
a canned response and no action?.

Because that is currently the standard of service we are expected to endure.

The non response to paging and canned replies are extremely effective ways
of doing absolutely nothing.

How many times have you seen posts about people paging and getting the canned response and next day the offending character has been seen in the same place doing whatever they were paged on for?.

Service in this area has not hit a new low - it is non-existent.

edit. Just had a thought. If you do want to waste some time and enter a page it always used to be stuck at position 6 - not sure what it is now cos I dont bother any more. Are they always so busy that people never post and become number 1. Or is it deliberately started at 6 to discourage people after they have waited for some time and not moved in the queue?. Or if the sequence is broken why has it never been mended?/

 

[jack flash uk]

it has come to my attention that this person has creatd a char to impesonate the Capt of BoC and is going around writing obscene messages about children on guildies noitce boards

he had been reported yet he FREELY roams around BoC land

and of course the GM staff do nothing

 

[Lucy of Kenton]

ok i started this thread but to my knowledge now at least 20 chars have paged so lets just sit back and see what happens

 

[Riply]

ok i started this thread but to my knowledge now at least 20 chars have paged so lets just sit back and see what happens

I gave up trying to page a GM years ago tbh. I guese still having the game still around and having them work on alot of new content is nice to see. But still having the interaction with a representative of the game would be nice to help keep things more enjoyable for the players. Perhaps once this new content is implemented they will have more time and resources to bring back em's and gm's and conselours.

 

[Lucy of Kenton]

I gave up trying to page a GM years ago tbh. I guese still having the game still around and having them work on alot of new content is nice to see. But still having the interaction with a representative of the game would be nice to help keep things more enjoyable for the players. Perhaps once this new content is implemented they will have more time and resources to bring back em's and gm's and conselours.

im afraid you are right, but SA is not an excuse as they havent had a hold on things for years. from dealing with them it is apparent that most dont actually have an idea of how we play uo or even how it works. i also dont trust them not to do something wrong to honest players so its hard to put your head above the parapet.

 

[Cailleach]

It all comes down to customer service in the end, and EA don't appear to have even heard of that, never mind grasped the concept, however vaguely. Would be nice if they could get their act together after SA release, but I'm not holding my breath. Bluey/purple just isn't my colour!

 

[Wellz]

Hey all,
Thanks for all your responses, was good to have a bit of advice. I actually DID manage to grasp contact with a Game Master, who was supportive and assured me that the case would be investigated.

As the griefer is using trial accounts however, I am skeptical as to how far these investigations may go. He is suspected to have two current trial accounts as well as a current subscribed account. I will ask sincerely that if you are considering making a complaint, that you make sure you don't complain about the original Wellz and Hoagie. There are original characters (myself and a friend) that this guy is actually impersonating.

This player's actions only annoy me so much because of the content of his insults. In addition, he is not paying for these two trial accounts, yet goes around asking various players in Luna and New Haven for items and gold to help his temporary characters. Yet again, thanks for the input. Also, many thanks to Lucy and Jack Flash amongst others for hep in-game with this situation.

-Wellz/Rach.

 

[Escaflowne]

Yes this guy is a complete utter ****, he is dead set on griefing the RP community and anyone in it as a whole. He has been flagged and removed from our guilds but is still trying to infiltrate them with new chars and impersonating people. He also impersonated Vespers Marshall and tryed to pretend to be him to get guilded, making up various excuses. He's going around putting trapped crates on the floor so they blow up whoever opens them, when he actually gets into a guild on a character he runs around killing everyone, he walks around freely giving people abuse and throwing some pretty foul language at them; seem him doing this multiple times, even around Haven so all the new people to UO have to see it. He turns up to RP events and ruins them, like tonight we had a market and such in Trinsic which took the organisers alot of time and effort to sort out and this **** just strolled in and started destroying all the stalls and anything that was on the ground.
People like this should be killed at birth.


And yes EA customer service especially on UO is a joke, and the thing that smashes it is as far as i know all the GMs left are all Americans and thus cannot tend to us Europeans timezon efficiently and give most of their attention to the american shards.

 

[Goodoljoe]

You see,the few GMS on duty (ok i didnt manage to say this with a straight face tbh) are too busy chasing afk macroers that are an absolute threat to this beloved community of ours.Things like harassment,speedhacking and what not are not a priority,so please do not bother our GMS with such nonsense.

/sarcasm off

 

[Alezi]

You see,the few GMS on duty (ok i didnt manage to say this with a straight face tbh) are too busy chasing afk macroers that are an absolute threat to this beloved community of ours.Things like harassment,speedhacking and what not are not a priority,so please do not bother our GMS with such nonsense.

/sarcasm off

It's true actually.

Skill training, skill training, tokuno arti farming

 

[Goodoljoe]

Im not surprised

 

[Wenchkin]

I'd be tempted to send a PM to Chrissay detailing what this guy has been doing and see if she can get the problem dealt with as a higher priority.

You've probably done some of this already, but these would be what I'd suggest:

Firstly, you can ban from the noticeboard so anytime a char leaves a vile message that should enable you to ban them whether they're present or not. Forcing them to make a new account each time they visit might at least slow them down a little. It's a real shame we can't type in the names of players we want banned before they arrive

Check any potential recruits can enter the house with your best ban list before you add them too - I had a few who were flagged up like that in Dreamstone.

If he's trying to get into guilds, either as a group or individually make up recruitment guilds that aren't warred to anyone and only hold those new recruits. Have the GM in NPC clothes so even he/she isn't worth attacking. Make it clear that all recruits have to go on that stone until established in the group will really turn him off that idea. And don't even give a set duration when someone asks, it's until you as GM trust them. A real recruit won't mind that, a guild PK certainly will.

Something I've always done with events in Fel (from obvious necessity ) is to have all events either inside one of the guild buildings or open a gate to an undisclosed location from inside that building. Ideally the one with the biggest ban list It's inconvenient holding things in odd locations, but at least you have peace of mind.

I would hope that the combined efforts of everyone would cut down his satisfaction in griefing you and he'd either be banned or clear off, but if there's anything I can do to help in the meantime, just give me a nudge.

Wenchy

 

[Aurelius]

Firstly, you can ban from the noticeboard so anytime a char leaves a vile message that should enable you to ban them whether they're present or not. Forcing them to make a new account each time they visit might at least slow them down a little. It's a real shame we can't type in the names of players we want banned before they arrive

I never knew that was possible - but it leads to an interesting thought...

Since UO character names are not unique, a ban that works in that way would have to be able to tell which 'Fred' made the offensive post, or ban everyone called 'Fred' - and if it's the first of those, there must also be an identifier in the data on the noticeboard that would tell a programmer looking at it exactly which character on which account was the cause of the problem - assuming, that is, they make the effort to look....

 

[Serafi]

It makes me mad that nothing is done against this player. What else is that harassment clause there for anyway?

 

[Leto]

edit. Just had a thought. If you do want to waste some time and enter a page it always used to be stuck at position 6 - not sure what it is now cos I dont bother any more. Are they always so busy that people never post and become number 1. Or is it deliberately started at 6 to discourage people after they have waited for some time and not moved in the queue?. Or if the sequence is broken why has it never been mended?

The queue actually is broken and has been for years....

I can't offer any insight on why it hasn't been fixed yet other then: the bean-counters aren't interested.

 

[Kiminality]

It's not actually broken, per se.
It used to be a standard queue - first come, first served.
Now, it's asynchronous. The GMs handle pages based on priority, however that's determined.

 

[Coppelia]

He's going around putting trapped crates on the floor so they blow up whoever opens them, when he actually gets into a guild on a character he runs around killing everyone, he walks around freely giving people abuse and throwing some pretty foul language at them;

I remember paging a GM for a trapped crate left on the ground in Haven (before
the disaster) and the GM answered it was an offense in Trammel and he would
investigate it. They can know who crafted it and who trapped it. Of course it's
faster to remove it and put it in a trash barrel. It depends if you want to save
people for one day or want a long-term effect.

However nowadays I don't know if GMs are efficient. Last time I paged, the
whole day passed without even an automated answer. Apparently the GMs are
watching over both UO and WAR, so maybe they're too busy with WAR.


PS: use Spoiler tags to hide the large pictures, otherwise it breaks the board. Well, sometimes.
Apparently it's supposed to be automatically scaled.

 

[Lucy of Kenton]

just in case anyone believes the gm review has sorted this, im afraid not, hes still around and still messing people about

 

[Heimi]

Sounds like that joker who made the FUKU guild has made a comeback, or someone very similar..

 

[Bobar]

just in case anyone believes the gm review has sorted this, im afraid not, hes still around and still messing people about
[/QUOTE

I wish I could say I'm surprised but I'm not.

I WOULD have been surprised if you were saying it had been.

In an earlier post on this thread I said -

'How many times have you seen posts about people paging and getting the canned response and next day the offending character has been seen in the same place doing whatever they were paged on for?.'

Well now you have seen another one!.

 

[Lucy of Kenton]

sorry to raise this post again but i feel i must.
we thought it had all gone quiet but hey look at noticeboard today to find a post from the false hoagie (no BoC guild tag) saying 'i love nazis'
is this acceptable?
on another, 'you gotta be 12 to get my eye' 'i sexed your horse up'
'sex those young nazis up, i stole your barrels and am building a barrel castle for underage chicks'

 

[Bobar]

I think this post should be moved to UOHall where it would not only obtain a wider audience regarding the woeful performance of 'Customer Service' but is more likely to come to the notice of someone who just might do something about it.

 

[Bobar]

well i paged and so far got 2 canned responses

one for a notice on her bulliten board calling her a pancake, i page and instead of tackling the guy that posted this abuse i get told that they cannot help me as i am not the target and to get my friend to page herself, FFS she has been waiting for a few hours to get help

Just reread the entire post and this caught my eye.

So according to this anyone can post anything on a bulletin board and unless the owner complains (nominally the target one supposes) no action will be taken?.

How delightful, when you consider the number of younger players this game has that they will be able to read posts by all manner of perverts etc and to know that if you read it there is no point in reporting it as nothing will be done as you are not the target. Quite who the target might be if the owner is leaving and the house will go into decay is open to question.

Just another illuminating facet on the thinking of 'Customer Service' I suppose.

 

[Chrissay_]

If you page harassment on another player the GMs will not speak with you regarding the situation. They will send you a thanks for paging in we will look into it message. This is due to our privacy policy and the fact we are not allowed to talk about another players account with anyone else.

With that being said I encourage you to continue paging in. It's possible that it's not an individual doing this. If you get any other message from a GM other than "we will look into it" please pm me the details of the message you received.

 

[Lucy of Kenton]

thankyou for taking the time to post. lets hopefully do something about this vile individual.

 

[Cailleach]

I don't think the player in question is actually after a full, in depth conversation regarding the action GM's are proposing to take, or not, as the case may be. I rather think they'd quite like it if the GM's could actually just do something about the harrassment.

The promptest response I've ever had from a GM in this game, despite a fair few pages for one thing or another, was regarding a corroded metal box that had apparently superglued itself to the floor of my house. Actually getting a GM almost caused me to fall off my chair.

I have to suggest, Chrissay, that EA still haven't grasped even the most basic ground rules of good customer service. One of those is that we don't actually need to know what is happening, but we do need to know that something is happening, especially cases like this. You don't need to discuss someones account with other players. Just a little 'we're looking into this right now' or 'we've looked into this and have taken appropriate action' email would be nice. If it wouldn't be too much trouble. If you want to know what the most basic rule of good customer service is, it's two way, relevant, meaningful communication. Not canned, or, worse yet, hand written with appalling spelling and grammar, emails or notes that might as well be canned for all the useful, relevant, information they contain. When EA gets that down, half their customer service, or lack thereof, problems will vanish.

 

[Wellz]

The harrassment is towards me and my friend. The messages on the screenshots you have seen are at my building. I have sent around fifty pages, all of which have gotten a canned response. There is only so much time someone can spend paging a GM. The other day, I queued for 7 hours.

The comments that the harasser has currently left on my bulletin board I am reluctant to delete, as they are proof of his behaviour. If I remove them, any acting GM would be skeptical as to whether I was just being a drama queen or not. The messages left around Cove are also disgusting.

I really do need help with this, and no-one seems to be doing much. When the previous GM i contacted said he would do something, I assumed something would actually be done. ...6 days later and I have more abuse on my bulletin board.

 

[Wellz]

Just logged on to find him yet again at my house, leaving more messages. I really don't know what to do at this point.

http://i28.***********/5bd3bs.jpg

 

[Chrissay_]

the best thing anyone can do in regards to a harasser is to page on them and ignore them. Don't even tell them you paged on them. They are trying to get your attention.

By posting on stratics you are giving them EXACTLY what they want. My best advice is to drop the subject and continue to page on them. If you are still having issues please handle it privately.

 

[Rimeny]

This is disgusting and vile behaviour, something needs be done about this.

I was put out by a nasty comment on my BB regarding shop prices, but seeing this is absolutely unreal!

 

[Cailleach]

Chrissay, the very fact that someone has felt the need to post here isn't an indication that they're feeding the troll and is more a terrible indictment of the appalling standard of customer service. They're posting because they've paged around 50 times and are still being harrassed. That's not feeding the troll, that's desperation.

 

[Wellz]

Bear in mind this guy's been about ages. I only decided to post after ignoring him didnt work for about a week. Dealing with this privately is what we did to begin with, due to the content of comments being the kind that you don't really want publicising. It has continued and I am not the only one suffering from it. I continue to thank you all for your comments on this.

 

[Hoagie]

Hey, I'm famous!

I'm not quite sure what people are saying here is really getting through. The person has been asked to stop. They've been ignored. We've tried dealing with it privately. We've relocated entire events when they come around. Between us, we've probably paged 100 times.

We don't want an example to be made of them. We don't need you to parade them out in chains, and go "hey guys, look who we banned!". We just need someone to do something because no matter how much we page on them, noone has done anything. We might as well just be writing the complaints onto pieces of paper and throwing them into a pile in our back garden.

I'm afraid most UO players have lost all faith in the GM service, and it's not a situation that's improving.

 

[Aurelius]

the best thing anyone can do in regards to a harasser is to page on them and ignore them. Don't even tell them you paged on them. They are trying to get your attention.

By posting on stratics you are giving them EXACTLY what they want. My best advice is to drop the subject and continue to page on them. If you are still having issues please handle it privately.

Sorry, but that is plain nonsense in this case. Pages have been made, by many people, over the last week, without any useful or intelligent response from any of the GM team, even on the rare occasion they actually DO respond. The problem has not 'gone away' because EA and their employees are not doing their jobs.

Our deal with EA includes the EA promises that harrasment and obscenity will be promptly dealt with by the company. It's way past time EA lived up to that promise.

 

[Serafi]

There are a lot of things a player can do to not let themselves be effected in situations like these. Like using /ignore, ban the character from the house if he posts messages on the bulletin board (theres an option on the board itself for this), move events around etc. Usually that is enough, and the one doing these things tire rather quickly when he/she doesn`t get the attention they want.

However, there are limits here - especially when the person in question persists. For how long should this then be a situation players need to sort out themselves and when should a GM intervene when nothing of the above has helped? Doesn`t this then come into the harassment clause?

 

[Barney_wins_UO]

I maked gm appear ohter day. At teh base of win. Me showeds them the bug of lose an me showed dems how I haved win sigils fwom minox based wiv no wobba skillds an stuffs. The me killerd a dumbie SL men an GMd appear to sayds GO WAY to bad man, but it ok coz he ded.

So ye gmd coem, but me noes see y old fwiend GM Odee no mroe

 

[Bobar]

If you page harassment on another player the GMs will not speak with you regarding the situation. They will send you a thanks for paging in we will look into it message. This is due to our privacy policy and the fact we are not allowed to talk about another players account with anyone else. QUOTE]

First let me thank you for posting it at least gives one hope that somebody cares. That said, when people page a GM and are fortunate enough to get a response I think we are all aware that we will not get to know what happens.

However when after that response the same individual is able to return and continue their actions it does suggest that however it was investigated it was either superficial or ineffective. As this seems to be the normal outcome it is no surprise that people have become jaded and view Customer Service as a particularly inefficient part of UO. With some justification it seems to me.

 

[Bobar]

the best thing anyone can do in regards to a harasser is to page on them and ignore them. Don't even tell them you paged on them. They are trying to get your attention.

By posting on stratics you are giving them EXACTLY what they want. My best advice is to drop the subject and continue to page on them. If you are still having issues please handle it privately.

If paging normally resulted in the cessation of the harrassment I would agree with what you are saying. However in cases like this where it has not ceased what is a player supposed to do? and as it is not the norm I must therefore disagree.

The shortfall in performance by UO in dealing with issues like this leaves the player little choice but to widen the field of their complaint. The most obvious and useful option open to the player is to post on Stratics. It may be giving the offender what he wants but inefficiency has caused this not any action taken by the complainant.

Countless pages with little response or action is demoralising and a player can at least gain some comfort on Stratics where other people sympathise with their position and take up the cudgel on their behalf. On Stratics a lot of people care.

 

[Aurelius]

Doesn`t this then come into the harassment clause?

Reckon it's impossible to say this is not covered -

"What IS considered harassment?

Harassment consists of flagrant misuse and abuse of game mechanics with the intention of distressing and offending other players. So what's a game mechanic? Game mechanics allow players to interact with the world and each other. For example, the ability to block a doorway is a game mechanic. The ability to create macros with large amounts of text is a game mechanic. Use of game mechanics like these is by no means considered harassment in and of itself. The key to determining whether the mechanic is being misused or abused is to determine "intent". What was the person trying to achieve through their actions? Were they purposefully trying to disrupt someone else's game? While an action may cause others distress, it is not considered harassment until it is determined by OSI/EA that it was done to intentionally cause distress or to offend other players.

Also considered as harassment is any behavior that is incessant, inescapable, derogatory and directed specifically at you or your group. This includes the act of intentionally targeting and disrupting player events, which is never considered acceptable. An important point to note regarding this type of harassment is that a genuine attempt to alleviate the situation must have been made. This could be an attempt to leave the area or the offending player, or simply the act of asking them politely to stop. If a sincere attempt has been made to solve the problem and the offending player persists in the harassing behavior, it can be considered harassment, and the harassment tool should be used at this time. "

The required attempts were clearly made, and the GMs failed to enforce their own company policy.

Even if they want to wriggle out of that, there's always Clause 3 of the ToS (I reckon this is actually covered by clause 1, but sadly that ends with the weasel words 'as determined by Support staff) :

"You may not use any unlawful, harmful, threatening, abusive, harassing, defamatory, vulgar, obscene, hateful, racially, ethnically or otherwise objectionable language toward any other player."

In those noticeboard posts, there's at the very least vulgarity, abusive comment, obscenity, allegation of illegal sexual activity with minors, references to racist groups, and defamatory comments towards those with disabilities.

And apparently that's all fine with EA.....

 

[Lucy of Kenton]

warning, this guy now has a false Escaflowne and i watched as he posted filth in cove again and paged there and then

 

[wee papa smurf]

the best thing anyone can do in regards to a harasser is to page on them and ignore them. Don't even tell them you paged on them. They are trying to get your attention.

By posting on stratics you are giving them EXACTLY what they want. My best advice is to drop the subject and continue to page on them. If you are still having issues please handle it privately.

Agreed, posting here only encourages kids like this, just ignore it, delete the offending posts and im sure they'l give up soon! Doesnt school go back soon anyway

 

[Lucy of Kenton]

ignoring has been tried and unfortunately didnt work so it needs an intervention. one small thing happened this evening that indicated to me that it is being taken seriously but unfortunately i cannot reveal what but lets just see. keep the broccoli dancing for wellz as she has been very upset by this.

 

[kaio]

Aww some people have to much sparetime on their hands...