Do GM's ever help?

[Rimeny]

So last night I cleared out a vendor and dismissed him, unfortunately left in his place is a reserved sign. This is making my house look untidy, so whats a citizen suppose to do?

I know, ill page a GM and ask for him to remove it.

3hrs later, canned response about not being able to interfere with the games mechanics...

This is a poor show, anyone else had this problem...did they get it sorted?

 

[Babble]

They help, just takes time patience, persistance and luck.


And yes they should remove it if a gm reads your question and has time

 

[Tanivar]

I had this happen, it was gone the next morning,.

And as for GM's doing thier jobs? No they don't very often. What they do to earm thier paychecks besides clock in and out and tick off paying customers with long waits, and not being any help, who knows.

 

[Babble]

Don't be too hard on GMs.
My guess is they are not that well paid and have pogo, warhammer, daoc, uo to look after and are most likely understaffed.

 

[Petra Fyde]

Yes, they do. It takes careful phrasing of your page. I had one come to a character last week who had a stuck debuff, no matter what I did the physical resist wouldn't reach the total of her suit.

 

[Black Sun]

In the last year I have paged a GM 3 times.
Once was when I did something stupid and got a character stuck on the roof of a building with no way to get down again. The GM actually appeared and teleported me to the ground.

The second time was when a spammer was standing in Luna spamming the URL of the page for a well known (and unnamed here) scripting program. Shortly after the page the spammer winked out of existence.

The last time was when I was trying to place a house but it was being blocked by some stew left floating in limbo from when the last house to occupy the spot fell. The GM didn't appear, but removed the stew and I was able to place my house.

So, they do help, but as everyone said it has a lot to do with the wording of your page. As far as the sign thing goes, a GM won't remove them because server-up resets them and they would have been gone anyway. I know it's a pain that they won't, but I understand the reason behind that one... kinda.

 

[ACB1961]

Yes they do.

4 or 5 times over the years I've been greatly helped by a gm. One time the gm took over an hour looking for a mouse hole that had poofed.

I understand the frustration you feel but seriously they are just people. Some of them do an excellent job, and some of them do not.

 

[Rimeny]

Perhaps I should have worded my title better, I've been on the end of good GM's and no so good.

My frustration of waiting online for a response got the better of me.

 

[Sevin0oo0]

I've had some good experiences, just not lately - it was years ago. The next to last last time I paged was when magincia was rubble, My boat got stuck on something Under the water, and it(not my boat) had to be removed. Quick, fast fix, english was native language, polite, and in person - I sent +rep to 'im.
This thread is kinda like the last one that got locked, so... ibtl

 

[Boogy]

tl;dr

fark yah man, when I hit GM lumberjacking sometimes I hit way harder.

 

[Mapper]

Yes I have, Takes just the right wording.

Regarding those red signs, I believe they decay after a day or two.

 

[Basara]

Actually, the signs self-delete on server maintenance, from past experience.

 

[Lady Storm]

We all forget when we are in the heat of anger over something not working and having to call apon a GM. The wording of one's post to them needs to be done with a calm head thats thinking of the best way to convie the situation, as with the stew part left behind or the "boxed statue" that was axed into blocking house placement. GM's are not dumb or calus they are people just like you or I. They are doing their job... We tend to forget they are not just our GM's. We now share with other games due to EA cutbacks. If you have not noticed we are still tight with money in this country, EA who is the parent company still controls the purse strings for Bio/Mythic. We need to have clear messages to the GM's when we call. Vagueness is not going to bring a GM to your needs.

 

[Nyses]

You can give the GM's a free pass if you want with all that "you just have to word it correctly" garbage. Fact is GM support used to be a LOT better.

I do not care if they are taking care of multiple games and are short staffed, perhaps EA should hire a few more and provide some training. I pay my monthy subscription fees every month, so YES, I do expect support when I actually do need to page for it.

But all this is just as EA is a giant corporation that cares only for Profits. After all, in business, if you are not growing, you are dying. Just ask em.

Not sure about the sign, I hope it does auto delete at server up for ya.

 

[Tanivar]

My last GM page was when I relocated the Gyldenfeld Store one building over and removed the old foundation. The steps didn't go away. I paged, waited, gave up and went over to work on building the store, got the icon in the corner with a message that they couldn't help me. Tried again, got the message again, and later saw the steps were gone.

 

[covert]

Wear your luck suit when you petition.

 

[Raptor85]

Around 2005 and before, you paged a GM they recalled in front of you and TALKED to you within 10 minutes asking about the problem. (even if they couldn't help you with it)

When I left UO in 2007 it was already getting pretty bad, GM pages tended to take around 20-30 minutes

Now that I'm back, my average page time for a GM is over 3 hours, then getting the canned "can't help you" message, then waiting 3 more hours until I give up. I had a quest bug on one of my accounts (A bug that's been there and reported since ML Beta BTW....) and needed a GM to clear a quest flag. It took 4 days of paging and waiting. 4 DAYS, as in I'd log in, page, play on my other account on the other screen while moving every now and then, after my page get's automatically canceled re-page. Best part...when a GM did finally fix it...he did it during the 2 minutes before server-down and it was reset to "bugged" when the server came back up.

These were not angry, uninformative messages either, these were messages fully detailed about the problem I was experiencing. The canned message I get back when the page is canceled asks for the exact information I provided in my message. Where are we outsourcing GM's to now, Chinese call centers? They're about as helpful as Netgear's support...

I haven't been able to successfully get help from a GM in almost 6 months now, and it's getting ridiculous

If EA really wanted to get scripters out of the game, they just need a few active GM's, I page on them all the time but it doesn't help when by the time a GM checks it's 3 days later and they're offline.

 

[Rimeny]

Well red sign disappeared at server up.

I guess all's well that ends well, I know we cant always get the personal response but it use to be really nice when a GM would actually show up and chat with you.

 

[MalagAste]

Raptor is right.... when I first started UO back in .... gods I think 99... I can't remember... anyway back then you paged and a GM stood there and "Talked" to you... actually listened to the problem and looked at what you needed help with and helped you.... or couldn't.

Now you page and after waiting for hours on end you get the canned blue dot of doom nearly every time.

I have paged about stew... paged about monsters spawning where they can't be reached, paged about problems removing things from my house and numerous other items.... only to get the canned response.... I have paged and repaged about things.... and a few times been told that if I page again (on removal of things like stew).... I'd be banned. I've tried everything I can think of to get service for things but failed.

And yes I've carefully worded my page to things that "have" worked before only to have them FAIL.

In my opinion they should go right back to having GM's show themselves and LOOK at your problem firsthand before giving a stupid response. I think it's poor customer service to send me the stupid blue button of doom response and quite frankly I am certain that you get that when the GM's are too freaking lazy to do their job... or they have no clue what it is your asking. You know what's sad? Sometimes the response they give me in the blue dot.... refers you to PAGE A GM!..... How silly is THAT!?

It's my opinion that since they went to using the blue dots... fewer and fewer GM's have a clue how to do anything ingame and the customer service has gone down the tubes.

 

[Viper09]

Well I think the reason GMs were much better in the past is probably due to the fact that they weren't exactly covering a number of other games at the same time. Instead of having pages for UO, they have pages for several other games at the same time.

Think they should just go back to that, GMs working only on one game as opposed to several at once. However that would mean EA would have to hire more and I don't think they care enough to do that.

 

[Kaleb]

I have not had a GM help me, and know what they were doing since 99.

 

[I Play UO]

Maybe the problem is that they are bothered by people paging about a red sign in their house...?

 

[Lady Storm]

Well I think the reason GMs were much better in the past is probably due to the fact that they weren't exactly covering a number of other games at the same time. Instead of having pages for UO, they have pages for several other games at the same time.

Think they should just go back to that, GMs working only on one game as opposed to several at once. However that would mean EA would have to hire more and I don't think they care enough to do that.

Viper09 is correct. Our GM's were ours alone, and for a good deal of time they had some help from Counselors. You remember the Blue robed players who vollenteered their free game time to assist the GM's when our numbers were so large? Well that was how the GM's had time to "Talk" to you.

You are correct that the GM's of today have little if any pity for the players of UO, we are but a small fraction of their duty calls. We have no idea what other games player base give them in way of hellish torment. Canned response might be the system on auto pilot. When the Q is so big it weeds out "key phrases" and sends the canned answer you get with that GM's marker.

I'd love to have a GM team all to UO's use. Tis a wish mind you and I seriously doubt I will get it.

 

[Babble]

With the subscription numbers UO probably has I expect them soon only to give email support