Not sure where to post this horrible customer service disaster. (With Pictures!)

[Sauteed Onion]

I am a long time UO player who has thankfully throughout the years not needed hardly ANY time from the gm's, save for the occasional replacement of a mob that spawned in an odd spot, or a random object in the ocean getting stuck on my boat.. but I had several questions today October 30th 2011 that needed answers that were not found on ANY of the FAQ's on uoherald.com and not something I found skimming through the forums.

Several things, regarding afk macro'ers next to my house, housing questions that were not answered in the (although rather comprehensive) available faqs, and my inability to actually target said macroer. Anyhow.. after SEVERAL hours of waiting, for a response I get an automated reply telling me that my petition was not specific enough to classify, so ask more concise questions and send in another petition.. so I did.. and informed them that the links to many of the faqs are broken and do not exist.. about 3 minutes later I received another automated response... this time I took a screen shot. The results are kinda funny; and rather infuriating.

ALL THE WHILE this is happening between the failure of a customer service rep and I, a guy from uogamecodes is spamming in general chat to go to the site and buy stuff, that his gold is so cheap blah blah.. WHAT THE HELL?

Now, after actually spending a few seconds on just the front page of the uo site... I did get to the feedback area, and thusly took a dump in the negative feedback area, but I am left with questions unanswered, and no desire to deal with that poop poor in game GM. It's frustrating because I do still enjoy the game, even after all these years, but would it be so impossibly difficult to just spend, oh I don't know, 4 minutes maybe 5 with a long time customer to sort out issues that could have been resolved in that amount of time? Apparently so. Can you up the bar some in this field?

By god, I'm not in any way educated past the high school graduate level, but it doesn't take a rocket scientist to see that this is clearly intentional lack of care or discretion on EA/Mythic/whoeverthehellelse's side. And it just isn't gonna go over well with me anymore.

 

[Viper09]

You sent a help request asking general questions in game? Horrible idea, lol.

Of course you can all your questions here. There are a lot of knowledgeable people here so take advantage of these forums.

 

[KingHen]

I am a long time UO player who has thankfully throughout the years not needed hardly ANY time from the gm's, save for the occasional replacement of a mob that spawned in an odd spot, or a random object in the ocean getting stuck on my boat.. but I had several questions today October 30th 2011 that needed answers that were not found on ANY of the FAQ's on uoherald.com and not something I found skimming through the forums.

Several things, regarding afk macro'ers next to my house, housing questions that were not answered in the (although rather comprehensive) available faqs, and my inability to actually target said macroer. Anyhow.. after SEVERAL hours of waiting, for a response I get an automated reply telling me that my petition was not specific enough to classify, so ask more concise questions and send in another petition.. so I did.. and informed them that the links to many of the faqs are broken and do not exist.. about 3 minutes later I received another automated response... this time I took a screen shot. The results are kinda funny; and rather infuriating.

ALL THE WHILE this is happening between the failure of a customer service rep and I, a guy from uogamecodes is spamming in general chat to go to the site and buy stuff, that his gold is so cheap blah blah.. WHAT THE HELL?

Now, after actually spending a few seconds on just the front page of the uo site... I did get to the feedback area, and thusly took a dump in the negative feedback area, but I am left with questions unanswered, and no desire to deal with that poop poor in game GM. It's frustrating because I do still enjoy the game, even after all these years, but would it be so impossibly difficult to just spend, oh I don't know, 4 minutes maybe 5 with a long time customer to sort out issues that could have been resolved in that amount of time? Apparently so. Can you up the bar some in this field?

By god, I'm not in any way educated past the high school graduate level, but it doesn't take a rocket scientist to see that this is clearly intentional lack of care or discretion on EA/Mythic/whoeverthehellelse's side. And it just isn't gonna go over well with me anymore.

Holy Toolbars Batman!


P.S. InGame Help = *crickets*

 

[A Thought Elemental]

hmmm interesting. I used that feedback form that you found to leave similar feedback earlier today. Wondering... what is up with the gms in this game? Just from past experience plus reading about the guy on the forums whose luna vendor has been denial-of-service-attacked for weeks now, by apparently the same abuser.

The difference in the experience when dealing with a WoW GM vs the ones here can be night-and-day...

I feel like i'm being negative all the time and I don't want it to be like that :/ . but it is like, damn.

 

[Shiznit Bo'Bourbon]

Some guy sent a GM page full of general game questions and got a "go to website" response. Nothing to see here. Except that the OP is also the sort of internet-incompetent that installs every toolbar that comes their way.

 

[Madrid]

hmmm interesting. I used that feedback form that you found to leave similar feedback earlier today. Wondering... what is up with the gms in this game? Just from past experience plus reading about the guy on the forums whose luna vendor has been denial-of-service-attacked for weeks now, by apparently the same abuser.

The difference in the experience when dealing with a WoW GM vs the ones here can be night-and-day...

I feel like i'm being negative all the time and I don't want it to be like that :/ . but it is like, damn.

Yep I'm still being sabotaged on my Atlantic Vendors....going on week 3 now....what can one do? I can understand the OPs frustration.

GMs used to actually show up and interact with the player and interview them as to what exactly the issue the player is having. Now we get you
canned response after waiting 30-60 mins.

About a week ago I paged on a Sunday about a housing issue and thought I was going to have to wait for a few hours. The GM showed up within 60 seconds and fixed my house issue.

I'm not sure if they got teenagers in their doing the GM service getting paid minimum wage (not that that's an excuse for poor service) or some of them are just completely inept and don't give a hoot.

When I paged about my housing issue that was the best GM service I've ever had. When I paged (multiple times) about the player who is still currently exploiting my vendor it's the worst GM service I've ever seen.

 

[Mirt]

In my experience it seems to be based on how much information you provide in your initial post. If its something easy and you say exactly what you want done it seems to work out better. Of course that is just in my experience.

 

[Ludes]

Some guy sent a GM page full of general game questions and got a "go to website" response. Nothing to see here. Except that the OP is also the sort of internet-incompetent that installs every toolbar that comes their way.

Lots of those toolbars look like the kind that install themselves.. and some can be frustrating to get off.. but that would drive me nuts. There's more toolbar than window.

 

[Petra Fyde]

Well, for a start, the guy spamming go buy stuff is NOT from uogamecodes.com
uogamecodes.com is the official retail site and they do not tout for business in game, nor do they sell gold.

The correct feedback link is:
Feedback | Mythic Entertainment | Ultima Online

 

[Viper09]

Lots of those toolbars look like the kind that install themselves.. and some can be frustrating to get off.. but that would drive me nuts. There's more toolbar than window.

Precisely why I read carefully whenever I install anything and be careful where I click. Some installs like to automatically check the "install toolbar" box and even go so far as to say it's recommended, lol.

On another note it should be no surprise that WoW has better CS. They are widely popular.

 

[Viper09]

The correct feedback link is:
Feedback | Mythic Entertainment | Ultima Online

Hmm, looks like the automatic response the OP got needs to remove the .php from the link.

 

[Shiznit Bo'Bourbon]

The guy spamming on trial accounts isn't spamming for uogamecodes.com, he's spamming for a similar-sounding site whose name I obviously won't mention.

 

[KingHen]

Precisely why I read carefully whenever I install anything and be careful where I click. Some installs like to automatically check the "install toolbar" box and even go so far as to say it's recommended, lol.

On another note it should be no surprise that WoW has better CS. They are widely popular.

This

IT Tip: Always choose "custom" installation versus the typical. You will get the option to not install their toolbar or other unnecessary programs that clutter things up.

Ignore their warnings that only advanced users can use the custom option, they are trying to get you to install their extra crap.

 

[Nails]

I got a target the player, who was hidden and untargetable, and then resending complaint just a day ago. I wont handle your pages if you do not organize them perfectly and PS I wont be doing squat anyways GM response

 

[A Thought Elemental]

On another note it should be no surprise that WoW has better CS. They are widely popular.

but it does not have to be that way

The popularity goes hand in hand with the GM interaction experiences, it's not like the popularity empowers the GMs over there to do what they do.

Night and day. A GM throwing a broken link in your face, while you are logged in, and never bothering to chat with you directly, would be unheard of.

A player DOS attacking another player's ability to use the auction house? omg that would be fixed so fast and the abuser banned that it would make your head spin.

 

[Viper09]

but it does not have to be that way

The popularity goes hand in hand with the GM interaction experiences, it's not like the popularity empowers the GMs over there to do what they do.

Night and day. A GM throwing a broken link in your face, while you are logged in, and never bothering to chat with you directly, would be unheard of.

A player DOS attacking another player's ability to use the auction house? omg that would be fixed so fast and the abuser banned that it would make your head spin.

What I meant to suggest is that as WoW is very popular Blizzard has the money and need to have well trained and well informed CS employees to help their playerbase.

 

[Ludes]

What I meant to suggest is that as WoW is very popular Blizzard has the money and need to have well trained and well informed CS employees to help their playerbase.

Blizzard and EA do seem to have very different ideas as to how to relate to the people that give their companies money.. It's sad really, in most cases said company would be defunct fairly quickly.. EA however is pretty big and has several irons in the fire so they have a "different" outlook on customer relations. The sheer size and scale of their diversity seems to make them feel safe.

And it does seem to be working for them... so far.

 

[A Thought Elemental]

Blizzard and EA do seem to have very different ideas as to how to relate to the people that give their companies money.. It's sad really, in most cases said company would be defunct fairly quickly.. EA however is pretty big and has several irons in the fire so they have a "different" outlook on customer relations. The sheer size and scale of their diversity seems to make them feel safe.

And it does seem to be working for them... so far.

oh my. SWToR had better not have the sort of CS that UO does. I was planning to start that game when it comes out but, it was with the expectation that it intended to compete with WoW's CS, not be steamrolled by it.

 

[Ludes]

oh my. SWToR had better not have the sort of CS that UO does. I was planning to start that game when it comes out but, it was with the expectation that it intended to compete with WoW's CS, not be steamrolled by it.

Well, its the same company. They might pay more attention to it short term cause it's their new "flagship" release. But company priorities will remain the same, after a few months they will settle down and simply rely on people to pay for their subs no matter what.

They've proven this time over, Remember EA is not run by "game" developers or "game" players. They are run by "revenue generators" and "business" managers.

Said people do not give a mongbats hide for our opinions and wants or dislikes.
They only care about your 15 bucks cause revenue generation charts run on a quarterly (i.e. 3 months) basis and they have to show revenue to get their 15 week vacations.

We can Bit** and Moan all we want but every time you pay your fifteen dollars you are "accepting" what they do.

Course I can't really talk unbiased cause I pay my fifteen bucks a month on three accounts faithfully. (not to mention my kid's accounts).

P.S. If the OP wants to clean up that toolbar mess.. ICQ me and I'll walk you through getting rid of those at the registry level.

 

[Nok]

UO GMs and CS isn't going to answer those types of questions unfortunately. Searching the forums and UOGuide are your best bet. UOS (Stratics) just updated their search, UOF and UOG on-site search works pretty well. Or you could use the custom community search in UltimaXbar.

Of those four toolbars, if you want one... keep Yahoo, and ditch Ask, AVG and Quixley (those three aren't doing much for you). You can uninstall them without having to uninstall the software they came with. In Firefox in the command menu, click Tools and then Add-Ons. In the Add-Ons, right click the toolbar you want to get rid of, on the context menu left click Remove, depending on which version of Firefox you're using click Okay, then Restart Firefox.

Also check in Windows Control Panel, in the Programs And Features if you want to uninstall the Internet Explorer versions that probably got installed too. Those four are easily uninstalled and you don't need to edit the registry to get rid of them.

No one -needs- to have any toolbars, but some people like to have at least one generic (Google or Yahoo) and sometimes a niche toolbar... like a GameXbar or others. The idea is to use what you need or want, but not install everything on the planet. There are plenty of good toolbars, but they get overshadowed by the mass of crappy ones out there.

If you have any interest in installing the UltimaXbar in Firefox, do yourself and me a favor... hold off for now. The current version of the GameXbars for Firefox is having a problem I haven't fixed yet... so if you try to install UltimaXbar in Firefox, you end up with DAoCXbar (Dark Age of Camelot) instead. I'm working on a new Firefox version and the grouping function is broken... so it alphabetically displays the first GXB (DAoCXbar), and doesn't display the grouping menu so you can't switch to the correct GXB. Again... hold off for now.

 

[Raptor85]

My own recent experiences with GM paging here http://vboards.stratics.com/uhall/253734-cant-get-ingame-support.html

I did get a PM from mesanna a few days ago finally and i sent in the full scope of the problem, havent heard back yet but in either case I should NEVER have had to come to stratics to get a hold of someone at EA for support in their game (not to mention two weeks to even be gotten back to....that's horrible on a game where I supposidly pay a extra $3 a month now for "improved" support). If i didn't have a stratics account (And that's not uncommon, I never used stratics until I started on siege and needed to make a lot of trades for stuff not commonly vendored) I would never have even gotten so much as a reply, the bug report and support emails from EA seem to be filtered straight to /dev/null, I've never had anything sent to them have any effect, the phone line is useless (others that call in never get support, and myself it's already "after hours" by the time I'm even around), and ingame support nonexistant. Only my history with UO and the Siege community even keeps me around anymore, the game and it's support are so broken as to the point where I wouldn't even dream of playing any other EA MMO in the future, or any other game from them for that matter, and I think that's the line we need to drum home.

EA, you're working up so much for your new MMO launch, but do you realize how horrible it looks to your customers, and how much doubt to the success of the MMO there is when looking at how you treat your current games? Why start playing a new game from a company who will inevitably let it fall to shambles in a few years. These games are INSANELY profitable, and I can't fathom why a little support can't be given to keep players around, and keep your image from going so much to dirt that in the future you'll have no customers. Yes, the star wars name alone will guaranteed it will be an initial success, but you won't always have that to rely on in the future, and when the playerbase stops paying for that game then what?

 

[A Thought Elemental]

Damn.

Well, I can only hope that with SWToR they intend to turn over a new leaf and really compete shoulder-to-shoulder with WoW, in which case they will realize (if they are intelligent and observant) that to do this *requires* the in-game, long-term customer service to be up to the sort of quality that you see in WoW. If they are genuinely serious and don't just want to sell boxes on launch day, this will be among the things they work hard at in their game.

I hope it works out, minimally because I won't do GW2 because it requires Steam (right? wrong?) and I refuse to allow that on my machine. So if SWToR turns out to be as well-watched and carefully-managed as UO (*cough*), it would narrow my available MMO choices even further.

 

[Woodsman]

Damn.

Well, I can only hope that with SWToR they intend to turn over a new leaf and really compete shoulder-to-shoulder with WoW, in which case they will realize (if they are intelligent and observant) that to do this *requires* the in-game, long-term customer service to be up to the sort of quality that you see in WoW. If they are genuinely serious and don't just want to sell boxes on launch day, this will be among the things they work hard at in their game.

They are. Shame it only supports Star Wars and not the other three BioWare MMOs.

'BioWare Ireland' opens as 400-person customer service center ... in Ireland | Joystiq

Following up its tax incentive-fueled studio opening in Austin, Texas, EA this morning revealed the opening of a new customer service center in business friendly Galway, Ireland. When fully staffed, "BioWare Ireland" will task approximately 400 employees with making this year's big BioWare release go as smoothly as possible, employing customer service agents primarily. Star Wars: The Old Republic is set to launch December 20 in North America, and December 22 in Europe, so the service center is opening just in time for business.

 

[Sauteed Onion]

Thank you all for your input for the tool bars lol. I cut off a big portion of the uo webpage screenshot so it appeared as if the there was very little page to tool bar ratio going on there.

I will be the first to admit I'm not super "tech headed" when it comes to computers and all, but I'm also not the only person that gets on this computer even though it is mine. Anyhow, if it wasn't apparent I was extremely angry when I posted that, and it is the reason I even signed up on the forums, though I regret nothing I said in the post, and it is all relevant to the in game state of affairs.

Furthermore I read the UO is a sinking ship thread from JC the builder today, and although I've never met him (or if I have not sure if I have met another character of his or not), I have watched many of his youtube vids if not all on ultima, and use Uoguide daily, almost religiously for my Ultima info scrounging. I think is pretty severe there is so little in game support for things that already are going on in the game right now, and I think it's deplorable their trying to revamp dungeons and such with this upcoming patch/publish and they are still struggling to get seemingly eager customers through their new billing hoops.

Half of my initial complaint that got this horrible in game "support" response was that there was an afk macroer running multiple macro programs just a house away from me.. a Mining bot and a Mysticism raising bot right by my house in Malas. I went so far as to go and talk to them with no response, and by chance went exploring around in brit fel pumpkin fields looking for pumpkins and happened by the unresponsive miner and watched them mining away, even went so far as to shoot them with an ebolt a couple times, and they just kept on mining. I tried to report them, but could not find the "proper" way to report them so tried to ask how to get to do that and got this horrible series of (I'm hoping it was automated) GM responses. The game is extremely exploitable on the 2D level, nearly buggy beyond beta standards in Enhanced client (I may be overspeaking on this part, I haven't touched Enhanced in around a year because I hate it that much), and the bugs that exist in the "Report Bugs" thread sticky are pretty much ignored or unresolvable.

With all this being said, I still love this game, dearly. It has a sentimental hold on me, I've been playing for a LONG time, and would love to continue playing, but it just seems that they want this game to phase out "on it's own" so they can refocus efforts on the new flavor of the month (SWToR, which I've followed loosely). I'm happy to see they are hiring a 400 man CS team, but can we get at least a 1 man support team for this game? Damn.

Additionally, I think too many "Markateers" and big business heads probably look at the "life expectancy" of these mmo's and just treat it like "We've already made our money, let's move on" and don't give a hot minute worth of care (because they don't have to, they already got our money) to really be able to get it to the "right" people that this game needs some affection. Don't get me wrong, everyone in my guild and I have talked about the excitement the shame revamp is gonna bring, but I for one can't see myself legitimately staying around too much longer if I can't get basic support in a game I pay to play. ( And I hate free to play games )

Anyhow this is getting on to the extremely long post mark so I'll wrap up my ranting with, May all your adventures in UO be fun ones, good ones, and hope you never have to get the fail Customer Support that I have received.

 

[A Thought Elemental]

They are. Shame it only supports Star Wars and not the other three BioWare MMOs.

'BioWare Ireland' opens as 400-person customer service center ... in Ireland | Joystiq

I know they are hiring various staff (including GMs, loss-control specialists, etc) at the new Ireland facility. The real question is if they are going to have the GMs there do a quality operation. The fact that there IS a loss-control department at all is encouraging, as you can see that they're hiring those too. But we will have to see what really comes out of it all I guess.

 

[Black Majick]

I am a long time UO player who has thankfully throughout the years not needed hardly ANY time from the gm's, save for the occasional replacement of a mob that spawned in an odd spot, or a random object in the ocean getting stuck on my boat.. but I had several questions today October 30th 2011 that needed answers that were not found on ANY of the FAQ's on uoherald.com and not something I found skimming through the forums.

Several things, regarding afk macro'ers next to my house, housing questions that were not answered in the (although rather comprehensive) available faqs, and my inability to actually target said macroer. Anyhow.. after SEVERAL hours of waiting, for a response I get an automated reply telling me that my petition was not specific enough to classify, so ask more concise questions and send in another petition.. so I did.. and informed them that the links to many of the faqs are broken and do not exist.. about 3 minutes later I received another automated response... this time I took a screen shot. The results are kinda funny; and rather infuriating.

ALL THE WHILE this is happening between the failure of a customer service rep and I, a guy from uogamecodes is spamming in general chat to go to the site and buy stuff, that his gold is so cheap blah blah.. WHAT THE HELL?

Now, after actually spending a few seconds on just the front page of the uo site... I did get to the feedback area, and thusly took a dump in the negative feedback area, but I am left with questions unanswered, and no desire to deal with that poop poor in game GM. It's frustrating because I do still enjoy the game, even after all these years, but would it be so impossibly difficult to just spend, oh I don't know, 4 minutes maybe 5 with a long time customer to sort out issues that could have been resolved in that amount of time? Apparently so. Can you up the bar some in this field?

By god, I'm not in any way educated past the high school graduate level, but it doesn't take a rocket scientist to see that this is clearly intentional lack of care or discretion on EA/Mythic/whoeverthehellelse's side. And it just isn't gonna go over well with me anymore.

Holy Toolbars Batman!


P.S. InGame Help = *crickets*

I was thinking the same damn thing! LOL!