About the in game support complaints...

[hawkeye_pike]

Since people usually post complaints about GM support here, I want to thank the GMs for their usually good work. I call a GM maybe 3 times a year, and in almost every case I received the help I was asking for. Tonight at about 6pm we went down to Navrey's Lair to hunt a bit, and when she spawned she was stuck on the water pond, unreachable for melee fighters. I called a GM, and he resolved the issue within 10 minutes.

I know that usually it takes longer before a GM responds. But I never waited longer than 1.5 hours. I think that sometimes people are dissatisfied with GM support because they are asking for help with issues GMs actually do not have the power to solve.

 

[Derium of ls]

you gotta admit it's nothing like the old days =( they would just show up to hang out with you, one time I had one pop up 'hidden' (greyed out, but you could see them) they walked around a bit and said; "soooo, what are we hunting?" now those were the day *sigh*

The best was PvPing at the mage tower, I died and there was a GM standing there and they just said "pwned", ressed me and didn't see them again ha.

 

[hawkeye_pike]

Sure, I admit that. I assume that the number of available GMs is much lower today, for EA had to reduce costs and thus personnel. Still, I think the situation is not half as bad as it appears when you read this forum.

I also think that harassment is a difficult (and legal) issue, it it may very difficult for a GM to decide about what action to take. However, I think that the GMs could be more strict with punishment on obvious cases of harassment. Maybe the problem is not the GM itself, but the terms of their contract...

 

[Farsight]

I'll admit, the spawn moving thing (though a solvable problem without their help!) was a good GM experience, but in my past GM experiences, it has been an exception rather than a rule.

Here are some of my past questions and the responses:
1. I was stuck in a hole with no magery skill, no teleport scrolls and no way out.
Response: "We can not help you with that" (A second call got a GM who could help me)
2. I had lost my pet due to an auto-stabling issue bug (pet went to the stables without me getting killed in the process, stayed on my followers list, but at the time I didn't know to check stables for lost pets.).
Response: "We can not recover lost items" I wound up getting help from Llewen and Wenchkin in the tamer forums here.
Followup: After a bug report, I never heard of the issue again.

But all of my previous GM complaints are more than 3 years old... so maybe they've gotten better? I'm still not willing to page myself unless its a game breaking issue.

 

[Derium of ls]

I wasn't trying to cut you down at all Hawkeye, just saying I miss those days

I think I remember hearing that the GM staff is shared with a different game right? And that some of them don't even play UO? So it might not be bad GM's, just some people who don't know the game nor what some requests mean.

 

[LeBaiton]

I don't know what powers GM's nowadays have. Maybe they cut down on what they can and can't do ingame.

What I really dislike though is the current automated message saying that you should submit whatever you paged them about to the UOBugs e-mail with a detailed report, then stating that no followup ingame communication will take place... ever...

If you do submit anything to the UOBugs email, you never get an answer, and since the GM's message stated that no further ingame communication will take place, basically your call for help disappears into the big black void of nothingness...

Quick example? I tamed a greater dragon. During the taming process, which I attempted solo, and without barding skills, the greater dragon blessed itself. The tame succeeded and I ended up with a greater dragon with unequal stamina and dexterity (118 vs. 125). I paged a GM and I got the automated message.

Did I write a report to UOBugs? No. And why? If you want me to write you an email with the bug, give me the certainty of a followup to my help request please. That's all I want, I didn't page you because I like you, or want a cookie. I wrote you a page request because I wanted help in getting something fixed which is broken...

Maybe the GMs have been burned a couple of times, prompting them to just reply to everything with the automated response?...

 

[Aurelius]

Some GMs are excellent, understand the game and what we are trying to achieve, have a good grasp of what can affect gameplay and people's accounts and make very good calls on how they handle situations.

However, not enough GMs are in that category, and there are some who fall far short. The good ones need keeping, and need to be allowed to train the others, but the feeling I've got from personal experience and through reading various is that is not happening - or if it is, it's woefully slow, and disrupted every time some idiot in accounts insists that they cut back resourcing for UO. Customer service is always on the hit list.

Too many of the GM staff do not know their job properly yet - they don't mean to upset customers or make poor calls, but they do because they are insufficiently trained, not experienced about UO, working from poorly written and outdated 'canned response' instruction sheets, and probably feel (as far as I can see, with justification) that EA/Mythic regards them as easily expendable. When the customers raise hell about poor customer service, that hurts morale in the QA and GM staff... but, even allowing for the fact that whatever they do some people will pancake and moan about it, there are genuine problems that need resolving, for the benefit of all of everyone.

EA might hang on to ticked off players who keep playing but never call the GMs again, but that's only acceptable in a business that thinks it's on hold and concentrating on a managed slow decline of the product. If all the stuff about 'improving and advancing' UO means anything, there needs to be the investment and a visible result for the customers from that investment.

Solving a problem means allocating resources in staff, money and/or time, to fix it. Whether that's possible within the EA structure, I don't know, but experience to date is not reassuring. We've had lots of words, but those are cheap and easy. Actions are lagging way, way behind, and those are what matter.

It's not a problem that can be fixed quickly, I appreciate it takes time to sort it out, but EA/Mythic have had plenty of time, and there's not that much, if any, sign of improvement.

 

[HaHa]

That's awesome that such good customer support is in this game. Im still in the que for being stuck in fire dungeon back in '98. Hope they get to me soon....

 

[Beer_Cayse]

I believe many of the GM complaints are because the player themselves did not phrase the call well enough to get anything but the canned URL response.

That stated, I have had rare instances needing a GM. In all but 2 I got good aid and was on my way quite rapidly. The other 2 ... ummm, were disappointing. Yeah, that's the word. I work 2nd-level IT Tech Support, so I know how to format a properly phrased help call.

So I lost a few things ... pixels - but it's still a sour taste.

 

[hen]

Remember when they put up the price of the game they said it would lead to a higher level of in-game support?

 

[Mapper]

I believe many of the GM complaints are because the player themselves did not phrase the call well enough to get anything but the canned URL response.

I also think this, I have had little problems with GMs and I call them a few times a year.

I was helping someone with banners in their house, The owner couldn't remove them because his account wasn't old enough. He paged a GM (No idea what he said) but he got told to phone customer service. I told him not to, I paged and the GM came within 10 minutes and redeeded the banners. It's all about wording.

 

[Beer_Cayse]

yup - and I'll leave it at that before I say something else. <shrug>

 

[Gildar]

If you do submit anything to the UOBugs email, you never get an answer

That's not entirely true (but what makes that statement false doesn't help your issue any). I've gotten a few e-mails back from the QA team over the years (never anything that helped me solve any problems though - just quick "nice find" and "can you give some more details?" e-mails).
It would be nice if GMs were a bit more verbose in situations like your dragon though. The best course of action for issues that GMs cannot fix would probably be...
1. GM looks into the bug database for the issue
2a. If the issue is found, and there are reproduction steps, tell the player that this is a known issue.
2b. If the issue is not found, or there are no reproduction steps, ask the player for more details on what they did before they encountered the problem, and submit a bug report for them.
3. If there are workarounds, tell the player how to avoid the issue until it gets fixed. If there are no workarounds, tell the player that there are no known workarounds at this time, and that they will need to just live with the issue until it can be fixed.