Issures with

[nynyve]

A few days, I posted a question asking if floating items could block house placement.

I would like to thank the players for their polite, helpful, and rapid response to my question.


I do feel that one response needs to be brought to the attention of the UO Devs:

"You will need to bug them a few times..
I had same problem with the carpet tiles blocking placement way to high..
And there still there 1 month later..
I never placed there gave up with the canned responce they keep giving and was worned i would get a 24 hour ban if i did not stop petitioning them...."

So the player asked the GMs to do their job, and was told to stop bothering them, or they would ban him?


It is nice to know what EA's attitude to paying customers is.


Question for the Devs:

Doesn't this bother you?


Because it sure makes me angry

 

[Siteswap]

As far as UO is concerned, EA treats its customers with pure contempt. The level of customer service is nothing short of disgusting.

As for the Devs ... maybe it bothers some of them, whereas im sure some couldnt give a damn about the players. The Dev/Player interaction is minimal overall and they get paid by EA. Its just a job to them and you can bet your bottom dollar that if Blizzard came knocking with a job offer they'd walk away from UO without a moments hesitation and never look back.

 

[Llewen]

The Dev/Player interaction is minimal overall and they get paid by EA. Its just a job to them and you can bet your bottom dollar that if Blizzard came knocking with a job offer they'd walk away from UO without a moments hesitation and never look back.

Whether they'd go work for Blizzard or not is neither here nor there, but the basic statement is grossly unfair. We've had a producer's letter every month for a while now, and the devs have been posting to threads personally on Stratics, something that is pretty unprecedented, at least not with the frequency we've seen in recent months. You could criticize them for a lot of things, but I don't think this is one of them.

 

[Amren]

As far as UO is concerned, EA treats its customers with pure contempt. The level of customer service is nothing short of disgusting.

As for the Devs ... maybe it bothers some of them, whereas im sure some couldnt give a damn about the players. The Dev/Player interaction is minimal overall and they get paid by EA. Its just a job to them and you can bet your bottom dollar that if Blizzard came knocking with a job offer they'd walk away from UO without a moments hesitation and never look back.

I'm pretty sure Blizzard only hires competent people.

I have never had a UO GM be helpful.

 

[Hexen_Cats]

I'm pretty sure Blizzard only hires competent people.

I have never had a UO GM be helpful.

Gm's were helpful back when OSI ran UO. Since EA got ahold of UO the customer service has gone from helpful to laughable. EA claims they "Build Worlds" When in reality, they destroy games.

 

[nynyve]

I would like to point out that yes, in the past I have had helpful GMs. Mostly over 4 years ago. That was when I got frustrated and went to play another MMO.

When I returned to UO after a long hiatus, my spouse an I were a bit taken aback by the flotsam & jetsam cluttering the landscape of Brit. It was something new to us.

I do, however, think it is ironic for players to be banned for illegal use of goza mats (and all that associated fuss) when the game code is so riddled with problems that things like water troughs can remain for months and block house placement. And then GMs threaten to ban a player for asking to remove these objects, so that the player can place a house.

The stretched hide floating next to one of my houses has been there for years. I am all trepidation to see what will happen when I ask for it to be removed, so that I can resize my plot.

 

[Babble]

Just keep paging, may take time and whining from GMs but they should remove clutter sooner or later.

If you are afraid for your account, open a trial account and page then. No loss if they ban that.

 

[Martyna Zmuir]

I'm pretty sure Blizzard only hires competent people.

snap:

 

[NBG]

Just keep paging, may take time and whining from GMs but they should remove clutter sooner or later.

If you are afraid for your account, open a trial account and page then. No loss if they ban that.

Seriously? I mean really? would you give this kind of advice if this was a real life issue? WTF

 

[Babble]

Not happy with that?
Then cancel the account?
No one forcing anyone to pay.

 

[Lady Storm]

Well for one your trouble might be in how you phrased the request.

I have many for many years explained to players that many requests are worded wrong.

We have few if any dedicated UO gm's left not that they havent put out a hiring call for them, but back to the point. Some of the GM's we have answering the calls now are not very fermiliar with UO. With sparse messages or flippant calls many are canning the answers.

Your issue is with a floating goza? Fine
While 99% of all leftover items now will go poof (this includes rewards, water troths, birds etc...) the minute you place a plot/house, some will not. ( I have gone over many places and removed them myself.. you dont need to except a house to poof the items)
I have seen goza go poof when players try placement so its not that big a deal, except for the extended building made from them.
Many a GM has had his tail fried by the higher ups during that debaccle with the goza houses. So I would think they are not amused by another call on a goza.

Perhaps a Call such as:
Object of player making blocking house placement. Removal needed by GM as player cant access it.

As for our Dev , I am happy to say they are by far the most helpfull people yet and I for one hope EA leaves their sticky fingers off them. They have improved the game for our enjoyment.

 

[Nylan]

I think you need to take some of the comments here with a grain of salt.
When I have had a GM show up to see or help me with a problem they have most all been positive.
I will admit it may have taken awhile to get them there or I may have had to rephrase the page a few times, but when they have appeared they have been helpful.
And I have never been threatened with a banning for paging for help.


This has just been me interaction with the GM,'s.

Good luck

 

[NBG]

GM service is a hit or miss when it comes to helpfulness.

There are really good GMs and there are some incompetent ones. It is not hard to tell which GM knows the Game and which one has no clue and just spam the canned responses.

Lately however, it seems that the ratio of GMs that will actually help versus crappy GMs seems to swing greatly towards useless GMs.

There are many incidents posted by other players concerning the lack of GM support and the bad taste of canned message. In some instances, the canned responses is not even relevant to the issue of the page.


How many of you guys actually bother to do GM review when you get the email with regards to your in game issue? If everyone does spend that extra time and send in the review, at least they will have some idea on which GMs are getting the most complaints. They can see a trend of which GM is actually doing nothing.

Now if the GM services does not improve even after GM reviews, then we will know that CS department for UO/EA don't give a **** about customer feedback.

I wish we can pool together a list of GM names and have everyone keep track of good/bad GM services for individual GMs. This could not be done since it is against stratics's TOS.

My personal experience with GMs is spread across both end of the spectrum and I always make sure good GMs gets the good review and bad GMs gets what they deserve.

 

[Kylie Kinslayer]

Perhaps a Call such as:
Object of player making blocking house placement. Removal needed by GM as player cant access it.

Yeah, maybe that will make the bot understand the request. Why should we expect them to understand.. Goza mat blocking placement and needs removed. Problem is more then likely like most companies now days their customer support is outsourced to India where they speak broken english at best and most of the meaning gets lost in the auto translating software.

 

[Basara]

Actually, their in-game support is located in Virginia (and before that, California, and Texas before that). UO's never used in-game overseas support for the North American shards, and the Asian shards typically have had local GMs as well. EA's call centers, on the other hand.... Most of the staff losses over the last 8 years from the moves from Austin to California, then from California to Virginia, were from the in-game support (aka GM) staff, as they couldn't afford to relocate at their pay level (meaning that they've had to retrain everyone from scratch after each move - and support's suffered as a result).

Just earlier this year (IIRC), Mythic placed a wanted ad for German speakers to act as GMs for Europa & Drach (and theoretically, other games' European servers), to be based in Virginia.

 

[Lord Frodo]

Gm's were helpful back when OSI ran UO. Since EA got ahold of UO the customer service has gone from helpful to laughable. EA claims they "Build Worlds" When in reality, they destroy games.

Hate to tell you this but EA has always owned UO from day one.

 

[Lady Storm]

Hate to tell you this but EA has always owned UO from day one.

Sorry to burst your bubble there Frodo but UO was originaly Origin Systems Inc. with Richard Garrett, EA bought UO.

 

[Martyna Zmuir]

Hate to tell you this but EA has always owned UO from day one.

Sorry to burst your bubble there Frodo but UO was originaly Origin Systems Inc. with Richard Garrett, EA bought UO.

Sorry to burst your bubble, but EA bought OSI in 1992. Five years before the release of UO.

EA has always 'owned' UO. OSI was the studio that produced it before being crushed by EA's poor corporate structure.

 

[GalenKnighthawke]

Sorry to burst your bubble, but EA bought OSI in 1992. Five years before the release of UO.

EA has always 'owned' UO. OSI was the studio that produced it before being crushed by EA's poor corporate structure.

Yep.

I remember this, quite vividly, from the time. I thought, "oh crap, now the Ultima titles are going to suck as bad as the Bard's Tales titles do." In fact I always think it was earlier than 1992 but Martyna's player is likely right.

The point is, Ultima Online itself is and always has been an EA property. What changed, when they moved the UO people from Texas to California, was one of EA's many inexplicable attempts to fix problems by reshuffling their corporate structure.

If you don't believe us, maybe you'll believe MobyGames.com:

MobyGames - ORIGIN Systems, Inc.

which vaguely dates the purchase to "the early 90s."

-Galen's player

 

[GalenKnighthawke]

As to the broader point about UO's customer service, it's always been UO's weak(est) spot and it has not gotten any better. I have a depressing number of bad memories about this. I've been threatened for paging GMs too.

EA seems to like to get rid of its customer service people who actually do stuff. My guess has always been that EA uses "number of pages handled" as the sole performance indicator, which by definition favors the less competent.

My impression now is that there's one customer service team for all games under....whatever banner it is that UO exists under now. I am quite honestly not sure anymore.

-Galen's player

 

[Martyna Zmuir]

UO had decent customer support when it was still in-house at OSI in Austin, Texas.

Once OSI was dissolved, however, the interactive nature of the GMs swiftly disappeared when EARS took over.

I don't directly blame Mythic for the shoddy training the GMs currently receive. I do blame Mythic for not properly spelling out changes to game mechanics and letting things spiral out of control (re: gozas)

Active and ongoing CS (as far as communication et al) also plummeted precipitously when OSI went the way of the dodo.

 

[Stupid Miner]

I must be weird. I almost always tend to get GMs that work and do their job. *shrugs*