Customer service?

[Luthen]

I have a ticket that has been sitting with no response for too long. It is about a plot issue on the Chaos server. It was posted on the 17th of June. It received no response until I nagged for one, with Velea answering on the 19th. She stated that she and the database administrator would address the problem the following week. No such luck. I made several replies after Velea's response but received no answer. That single message on the 19th was the last I heard from anyone until I complained on this board and PMed Amon for help. He checked out the ticket and posted a reply on June 25th stating he would e-mail Velea and the database administrator for an update. There have been no replies since even though I have replied to the ticket, and zero progress on the situation. I PMed Amon again but he never answered.

My problem is serious to me; the time I spend playing this game is serious to me; and the money I spend every month to play this game is serious to me. Why is it that two weeks and nearly 100 tickets from other users later that no effort has been made by anyone to address this situation? The careless attitude toward and the lack of concern for my problem are disheartening and disconcerting, this from a company to which I give my hard-earned money every month. This issue is one many players would likely quit over, and the serious failure to communicate has me wondering whether this is a company I truly want to continue investing my money into. I am frustrated and angered at the pathetic quality of service I have received over this ticket.

If it is that impossible to coordinate the database administrator I would appreciate any kind of response telling me so, to make me feel as though someone over there is actually aware of this ticket and cares and is going to invest their energy into resolving it. I understand the people who work at Virtrium are busy, but I am not paying you for nothing, and I expect a certain level of customer satisfaction when it is my money leaving my account every month and I have a serious problem.

There must be some curse on this ticket rendering everyone who views it deaf, blind, and mute.

If the issue is going to be ignored then simply close the ticket and spare me the trouble, and I will cancel my subs. I have enough to worry about, I do not need to worry about whether or not anyone is actually going to get motivated enough to take care of my problem. At this point it's no longer about the problem, it's the principle of the matter. Terrible customer service leads to loss of customers. Having my problem treated with such lack of empathy and disrespect for the amount of time and effort I have poured into this game over the years has left me with a very bitter taste in my mouth. Why do I have to work this hard for customer service?

[Vaz]

Once upon a time I spent real money to submit a custom item in There.com (on top of my subscription, since There was a subscription-based service at the time) and it was bugged in such a way that it couldn't be used or sold.

Sent a ticket in October 2004, again one month later, and again one year later.

No response and never fixed.

[Creme]

25th was 5 days ago, with a weekend in between and it looks as though they have been very busy these past couple of days with the update to live and likely will be all day/evening.

Maybe you'll get a response tomorrow.

[alastar devil]

sorry to hear this Luthen, and i do understand. my experience with dev support has been very positive, i hope you get some help soon.

[awdz]

Why is it that two weeks and nearly 100 tickets from other users later that no effort has been made by anyone to address this situation?

Wowsers... you said you've gotten at least 2 responses from folks saying they are looking into it during one of the busiest times they've had since they became the game owners. If I had over 7 tickets a day thrown at me over one issue, I'd feel harrassed - and they've been dealing with a great deal on top of these requests.

Please remember that those you are sending the tickets to are people too; patience and politeness can go a looooong way toward getting your issues resolved.

I am assuming you did do a search of the tickets database to see if there was a known issue with an easy workaround for you. I do not know what the triggering issue is, so I cannot suggest any alternative for you in the meantime. Perhaps if you were more specific, other players could help? Otherwise, your post comes across as more of an impatient rant to me. Just my impression based on how you described things.

[Luthen]

Awdz,

My problem cannot be resolved by other players, otherwise I would have been more specific. I have been quite polite and quite patient on this matter. However, I do not feel as though I have been given adequate service.

As I stated previously, I can understand if the company is busy. Most companies are busy. This does not excuse lack of communication in any way. And I can understand if the people who answer the tickets have many to deal with. That, however, is their job -- to satisfy customers, resolve issues, and sort out problems. It has nothing to do with harassment. I do not feel as though my particular problem has been properly addressed, and I believe the issue has been poorly handled from the beginning. That is what I am criticizing.

You can consider my post what you will, impatient rant or frustrated, upset subscriber feeling disrespected and ignored. In the end this is here to have my problem addressed.

[Luthen]

Thank you Velea for responding to my ticket. I look forward to seeing this problem finally resolved.

[Dragonbait]

You know, you do raise a valid point here about customer service. I sent in a ticket just about two months ago and still nothing has been resolved.

Two months, and still nothing has been resolved. Not too sure what else I can do but bring it up again, and again, and again . . .

Go figure, try to send in another ticket about this matter and the page cannon be found or displayed.


Moderator's note: The reposting of quotes made in a support ticket is not allowed on the forums without first requesting that the person may be quoted. Such communication is considered private, and thus subject to rules of reposting private information.

As noted by Creme, the tickets which were quoted were ones from the old support system. But they are still subject to the same rules.

[Creme]

That's because they moved to a new ticket system.

There was a post in announcements that they weren't porting over existing tickets, so if you wanted to follow up on your ticket under the old system, to put in a new ticket on the new and improved system.

There is also a thread about the problem. Frequently for things that have already been reported and are in the queue to be fixed, someone from the staff may choose to update the forum post on the topic, as that it might hit a broader audience.

[Velea]

Luthen,

Since you raised it here, I'd like to respond here as well.

Your problem, that you accidentally sold your lair back to the community before deconstructing it for novians, is far from an easy one to fix. It is a very time consuming process to research in a database backup what your lair had in it, made even more difficult of course because the person who once owned that lair no longer does.

I'd also like to explain to everyone a few differences in how the support system works now.

1) If your ticket is open and not responded to, this is actually a "best case scenario" for your ticket. Every time any CS person logs in to the system, they see that ticket as still active and in need of a response.

2) Once a ticket is assigned, the status should change to "In Progress". This means that someone on the team is working on the ticket.

3) When a CS person responds to the ticket, the status is actually automatically changed to "ACA" (Awaiting Customer Action). Unfortunately there is nothing that anyone on the team can do to change this status. Why I bring this up is because we try to avoid giving "We're working on it" responses just for the sake of saying "We're working on it." It makes it more difficult for us to remember that that in actuality the ticket is something that WE need to be working on, not the customer.

I realize this isn't always ideal and that people will want to know that their ticket is being worked on. But I'd ask that you understand that so long as a ticket is open, it is very much an active ticket that we are doing our best to resolve. It is quite possible that you'll see a number of tickets "come and go" in the system while your own appears to be not worked on.

But please understand that the vast majority of the tickets we get are ones that can be resolved in 15 minutes or less. Things like a request for a name change, lost account information, inquiries about transferring from Unity, returning customers who need help returning... these are all very quick to respond to and resolve. Someone having deleted a fully constructed lair when they sold it to the community isn't.

[Gnozzorg]

I am by no means a fanboi, but I really need to side with CS here. I have many problems with the game at the moment, i.e. things that annoy me or that are just downright frustrating.

But CS has never been one of those problems in the 8 months I've been playing this game. In fact, this is the best CS I've ever encountered in any MMORPG, and I have played quite a few. I've been told stories about the last owner of this game, the entire community being completely ignored for a year or more. And to me it seems the new owner tried to make up for that mistake by creating the best CS they can. And in my own personal view, they succeeded at that. Even a big game like EQ2 (which I played for 2.5 years) never offered me this quick and actually helpful CS.

It's just that these last few days really appear to be extremely busy for the whole (small) crew keeping this game updated and up and running. I never had to wait for a week to get anything fixed (90% of my tickets had their first update within 24h), but currently, as mentioned, they're working on a huge patch.

I am often frustrated with the game myself, especially since last tuesday (I dubbed it "horror patch" for myself), but CS being unresponsive at this moment... that is very understandable.

Just my 2 unhelpful cents.
Hope everything gets worked out for you, Luthen.

[Velea]

Keep in mind too that at this time of year many of us are taking some much needed vacation time. Some of the delays that people have experienced lately are due to the right person (and yes, with a team this size it is one person usually) being on vacation. This is not an excuse, but a reason why sometimes there is a two week or longer delay in being able to resolve a problem.

[LOVWYRM]

I totally agree with Gnozz!!!

Happy vacations for all - you all deserve that- and more!!

[DragonToejam]

I shall add my 2c here. So far this year, I have had several issues that required the submision of tickets. And every time, Custoimer Service was prompt and curteous. From the consolidation of my accounts, to a problem with a new plot, and a few other minor issues in-between, I am very happy with CS here in Istaria. I would also like to add a big THANK YOU to all of you who are responsible for making life here in Istaria possible. Keep up the great work.

[Sigi]

I was totally amazed to read what the problem was. OMG, I wouldn't even condsider to sent a ticket about such a mistake if I had made it, (and I did accidently once sold a plot to the community on which I had buildings and forgot to deconstruct them first) let alone expect a prompt solving of that problem. I personally think it's real nice that they look into it instead of saying I'm sorry for you but it can't be corrected.

[Creme]

I was totally amazed to read what the problem was. OMG, I wouldn't even condsider to sent a ticket about such a mistake if I had made it, (and I did accidently once sold a plot to the community on which I had buildings and forgot to deconstruct them first) let alone expect a prompt solving of that problem. I personally think it's real nice that they look into it instead of saying I'm sorry for you but it can't be corrected.

I'm hypothesizing here, but a lot of players don't know what methods of offloading a plot gives you novians. So it's possible that Luthen didn't know he wouldn't get the novians automatically when the plot returned to community and deconned.

I've seen the question asked in Marketplace before; "If I sell back to community, what happens to the structures." Sometimes someone knows the answer, sometimes something *thinks* they know the answer (but really doesn't).

Either way, yes, many MMOs won't return items that were lost due to player mistake, only if it was caused by some sort of bug.

I know that I don't personally expect my open tickets to get followups 1x a week saying, "we're still working on this, please be patient." Other people have different expectations, so it's good to know what the customer service policy is.

I don't know if there's a post (or a sticky somewhere {hint hint} on what happens to structures and their contents when a plot is sold to player, returned to community and also reclaimed.

Perhaps there could also be information provided about specific structures, for example: deconned connies with items listed get returned to the owner of the structure's vault (most times, sometimes not everything makes it to vault). Silo contents are NOT returned to the owner when a silo is deconned.

[Velea]

Actually, Creme, with this patch when someone sells their plot back to the community they are told at least twice (might be three times) very specifically that they don't get novians. The text used to read just that structures would be deconstructed.... now it says they are deconstructed but you don't get novians.

This is much better than having a post or something on our website because (even in a game like Istaria) only about 10% of our player base ever reads the forums/website.

[Creme]

Actually, Creme, with this patch when someone sells their plot back to the community they are told at least twice (might be three times) very specifically that they don't get novians. The text used to read just that structures would be deconstructed.... now it says they are deconstructed but you don't get novians.

This is much better than having a post or something on our website because (even in a game like Istaria) only about 10% of our player base ever reads the forums/website.

That's a great improvement and will definitely help if players are unable to answer the question on regular chat channels. Thanks for letting us all know about this

[Vahrokh]

As former DB admin, I can confirm that this specific issue will take a long time and hard and tiresome work to be sorted out.