What are our options?

vestahls

This is mainly for the PC EU players, seeing as we can hardly have one good day of playing anymore, and every maintenance patch either fixes nothing or makes it even worse.

Clearly ZOS isn't trying hard enough to solve the issues of its customers. The NA servers can run well enough, but somehow the EU ones can't? Why is that.

From our side, it seems opening tickets doesn't do anything. Complaining on the forums doesn't do anything. Aside from quitting the game - which many of us (or at least, me) don't want - what can we do to drive home our demands that we need better service?

Open question here, because every other discussion seems to be going around in circles.


inb4 the TOS covers their a$$e$. That doesn't mean we are forced to accept being given scraps from the table. It doesn't mean anything aside from the fact that it would be difficult to sue, but that's it. We pay money, they give us access to the game, that's the deal. If the deal is faulty on one side, we have every right to assert ourselves and demand the service from the service provider, just like any paying customer anywhere in the world.

Nordic__Knights

vestahls wrote: »

This is mainly for the PC EU players, seeing as we can hardly have one good day of playing anymore, and every maintenance patch either fixes nothing or makes it even worse.

Clearly ZOS isn't trying hard enough to solve the issues of its customers. The NA servers can run well enough, but somehow the EU ones can't? Why is that.

From our side, it seems opening tickets doesn't do anything. Complaining on the forums doesn't do anything. Aside from quitting the game - which many of us (or at least, me) don't want - what can we do to drive home our demands that we need better service?

Open question here, because every other discussion seems to be going around in circles.


inb4 the TOS covers their @sses. That doesn't mean we are forced to accept being given scraps from the table. It doesn't mean anything aside from the fact that it would be difficult to sue, but that's it. We pay money, they give us access to the game, that's the deal. If the deal is faulty on one side, we have every right to assert ourselves and demand the service from the service provider, just like any paying customer anywhere in the world.

LOOK AT FALLOUT THEY JUST GOT HIT SAYING THEY HAVE TO REFUND PLAYERS THEIR MONEY WHY NOT ESO DUE TO ABOUT SAME BS JUST LATE IN ITS LIFE NOT OFF THE START MEANING PLAYERS FOR ESO HAS LOT MORE INTO IT SO SUPPORT SHOULD BE ON FIXING IT FASTER AS MORE MONEY IS IN PLAY HERE

JamuThatsWho

Our options are to withhold payment and stop playing.

oxygen_thief

my option is destiny 2

essi2

JamuThatsWho wrote: »

Our options are to withhold payment and stop playing.

Pretty much^

Also keep complaining, otherwise the PR people will just think everything is fine and dandy.

vestahls

essi2 wrote: »

JamuThatsWho wrote: »

Our options are to withhold payment and stop playing.

Pretty much^

Also keep complaining, otherwise the PR people will just think everything is fine and dandy.

Keep complaining where, on the forums? After a few years of this, I get the feeling the forums are basically our containment board.

JamuThatsWho

oxygen_thief wrote: »

my option is destiny 2

Mine is WoW Classic.

daemonios

Stop paying. I did.

VaranisArano

vestahls wrote: »

Clearly ZOS isn't trying hard enough to solve the issues of its customers. The NA servers can run well enough, but somehow the EU ones can't? Why is that.

If you believe what ZOS has said here; https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/499388/update-on-pc-na-eu-issues-updated-10-27-8-40pm/p1
The reason EU gets hit instead of NA is clear enough: PC/EU has the highest number of concurrent players, and its that demand on the servers that causes various hardware/software to bottleneck. Thanks to our spread out time zones, PC/NA has less concurrent players on during our primetime.

That's been the consistent reason this whole year - they made improvements soon after Elsweyr launched - and it looks like the increases didn't hold as long as they hoped because we're back in the same situation. Same issue back in April: https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/467936/pc-eu-server-update-april-11/p1

That probably doesn't help the annoyance, but that's why PC/EU gets hit with these issues far worse than PC/NA. PC/EU just has more players who all want to play at the same time.


That being said, adding the new hardware for increased server capacity back in April-May took ZOS about a month and a half from the announcement that they were doing it to taking down the login queue. (And the issues started in January, with big spikes in usage in late March.) As disappointing as that is, I'd keep that timeframe in mind when it comes to expecting improvements to server capacity in the future.

x48rph

vestahls wrote: »

essi2 wrote: »

JamuThatsWho wrote: »

Our options are to withhold payment and stop playing.

Pretty much^

Also keep complaining, otherwise the PR people will just think everything is fine and dandy.

Keep complaining where, on the forums? After a few years of this, I get the feeling the forums are basically our containment board.

No, not the forums. I doubt they care much about complaints here as it's not much of a PR issue since most people already bought the game. Complain everywhere else. Facebook, twitter, ect... pretty much anywhere they might advertise or promote the game. For instance, you see a facebook post promoting eso, make sure you immediately drop a comment about how horrible the performance is. Bad publicity and loss of $$$ is what gets their attention.

AlienSlof

daemonios wrote: »

Stop paying. I did.

This. ^

When I pay for a service, I expect a service. Currently, as an EU player, I am not getting a good service, so no paying.

sadly, there are those who throw £$1000's at the stupid crates, and always there will be those types, so our small protests and wallets closure go largely unnoticed.

TheHsN

Play the Game already you have paid for it... If every one Cancel their Eso+ IT IS DONE.... Dont pay for game and crown store...

They will understand it in a 1 week after they see how income get less

svartorn

Paying for something that doesn't work, and not working is protected by it's own terms of service is peak capialism.

I dunno why EU players are continuing to play it.

MagicalLija

I mean sure they'll lose income from EU but

1. You can't get Everyone to stop paying, not even that, maybe a small percentage of the amount of players possibly 20% at most. (That's if everyone on the forums agrees)
2. They'll still be making so much income from NA since there's probably like 3 times as many players there.
3. They've tried to fix the performance, complaining about it more won't help.

Yes I'm angry about losing my ESO plus time, Tickets etc.

But what can we do about it? Like what are they gonna do give us all crowns and hope for the best. What are you all trying to achieve from this? Performance updates? An apology?

You all paid for this game, you deserve to be able to play yes, but making nonconstructive whiny comments about how you're going to go on strike from spending money is honestly laughable at.

preevious

The server had a 30-60 mins of difficulty ..

Are you serious?

MagicalLija

preevious wrote: »

The server had a 30-60 mins of difficulty ..

Are you serious?

In total, the servers definitely weren't struggling for "30-60 minutes".

It went over multiple days, for a vast amount of people. Me, personally, wasn't able to log on for 3 days.

3 days, of infinite loading screens, infinite "logging in".

I had Loading screens which went up to 2 hours long and before I get a snarky comment about how my PC is bad normally screens would always load under 30 seconds.

After the patch it takes maybe 1-2 minutes.

vestahls

AndrejLeo wrote: »

But what can we do about it? Like what are they gonna do give us all crowns and hope for the best. What are you all trying to achieve from this? Performance updates? An apology?

Erm yeah that's the point, what can we do about it? Only mine is not a rhetorical question.

The point is to achieve improvements and have the game run for EU at least as well as it does for NA. So yeah, what can we do about it?

Not paying for Plus is an idea, although yes it's hard to get everyone on board with that. Taking them to court, while seemingly valid if the Ausie example is anything to go by, is a bit extreme and we're not really at that point of suckage yet.

Shaming them on public media is also an idea, although I'm not sure what impact that will have on management. Maybe it will have some.


That's why the thread is here, to discuss options and the validity of each one.

jcm2606

AndrejLeo wrote: »

I mean sure they'll lose income from EU but

1. You can't get Everyone to stop paying, not even that, maybe a small percentage of the amount of players possibly 20% at most. (That's if everyone on the forums agrees)
2. They'll still be making so much income from NA since there's probably like 3 times as many players there.
3. They've tried to fix the performance, complaining about it more won't help.

Yes I'm angry about losing my ESO plus time, Tickets etc.

But what can we do about it? Like what are they gonna do give us all crowns and hope for the best. What are you all trying to achieve from this? Performance updates? An apology?

You all paid for this game, you deserve to be able to play yes, but making nonconstructive whiny comments about how you're going to go on strike from spending money is honestly laughable at.

The mistake you've made is in assuming Zenimax just wants some of the money, when they really want all of the money. Look at how Activision Blizzard tied themselves into several knots to try to please both the Chinese and Western markets, because don't want one or the other, they want them both, they want it all.

GreenhaloX

1. Delete ESO/go play another game
2. Complain to Higher HQ
3. Boycott/protest
4. Lawsuit
5. Keep playing and take it, hoping to God they'll fix things soon

MagicalLija

jcm2606 wrote: »

The mistake you've made is in assuming Zenimax just wants some of the money, when they really want all of the money. Look at how Activision Blizzard tied themselves into several knots to try to please both the Chinese and Western markets, because don't want one or the other, they want them both, they want it all.

If they wanted more money, why the hell was One Tamriel a thing?!

If they wanted more money they WOULD follow in Blizzards footsteps in making people PAY $100+ A YEAR TO EVEN PLAY THE GAME.

If you don't want to pay, don't pay. No one forced you to pay, no one forced anyone here to pay. Everyone here chose to pay for ESO+ which is subscription based, but for ESO, ESO itself is under $10 in sales.

I don't understand the petty ideas of:

Oh yeah here's a good idea, let's just not pay! A massive percentage of people don't pay for ESO plus, again if ZoS wanted more money then they'd want a subscription based game, but surprising it's not.

MagicalLija

vestahls wrote: »

Erm yeah that's the point, what can we do about it? Only mine is not a rhetorical question..

Nothing, we can do nothing.

Instead all of you are complaining for something which they're trying to fix.

They've already extended the event for the witches festival.

They've put out patches to fix servers.

They've made statements apologising on the issues.

What else do you want.

vestahls

GreenhaloX wrote: »

2. Complain to Higher HQ

I haven't actually seen this one before.

How could we go about it though? According to Wiki, ZeniMax is run by:
Robert A. Altman (chairman, CEO)
James L. Leder (president, COO)
Cindy L. Tallent (EVP, CFO)

Any other leads on upper management? Because this is one way to escalate issues.

In normal business-client relationships, like for example a company employing an audit firm or a consultancy firm, if service is not up to standard, the client has the option of escalating grievances to the direct manager of the team providing the (slacking) services, and if that doesn't work then escalate it higher.
And in these situations, the complaints of customers are taken quite seriously, because when you provide services, this is your livelihood. You give a damn about what your client thinks.

This is a "normal" way of interacting with a service provider. It doesn't mean you're rude or make outrageous demands, but when you keep seeing mistakes - especially the same mistakes - in the service being provided, you can ask "hey, what's up with that? give me something better". A dissociated group of "individual" consumers can do the same thing.

daemonios

AndrejLeo wrote: »

jcm2606 wrote: »

The mistake you've made is in assuming Zenimax just wants some of the money, when they really want all of the money. Look at how Activision Blizzard tied themselves into several knots to try to please both the Chinese and Western markets, because don't want one or the other, they want them both, they want it all.

If they wanted more money, why the hell was One Tamriel a thing?!

If they wanted more money they WOULD follow in Blizzards footsteps in making people PAY $100+ A YEAR TO EVEN PLAY THE GAME.

If you don't want to pay, don't pay. No one forced you to pay, no one forced anyone here to pay. Everyone here chose to pay for ESO+ which is subscription based, but for ESO, ESO itself is under $10 in sales.

I don't understand the petty ideas of:

Oh yeah here's a good idea, let's just not pay! A massive percentage of people don't pay for ESO plus, again if ZoS wanted more money then they'd want a subscription based game, but surprising it's not.

You are laughably naive if you think One Tamriel brings in less money than mandatory subs. The clown store is a bottomless pit where you can spend far more money than you would ever pay if you simply subscribed. At the same time many people are still subbed, since playing without ESO+ is such a pain, mainly due to item creep.

ESO is just one example of what we get when we agree to microtransactions. ZOS only cares about keeping the clown store going. As long as the players don't outright abandon the game, they can ignore the performance issues.

MagicalLija

daemonios wrote: »

The clown store is a bottomless pit where you can spend far more money than you would ever pay if you simply subscribed. .

Do you all have money problems or something?

If you're sooo bothered about the crown store then just dont buy stuff.

Your loss if you spend so much money on the game, one day the servers will go down for good.

Nordic__Knights

Why would they remove my video if it wasn't something they dont want others to see its not an lie nor is it misleading its facts on an issue that is of this nature that involves them
https://youtu.be/dfR5k6GTYMQ
Kick me ill post it 100xs as we have an right to its FACTS ABOUT WHAT WE CAN DO DUE TO THE POOR GAME YOUR GIVING US TO PLAY

zer0_sum

JamuThatsWho wrote: »

oxygen_thief wrote: »

my option is destiny 2

Mine is WoW Classic.

I tried WoW classic but the stupid people from retail basically ruined the entire point of Classic. With their stupid group dungeon clearing for grinding, and BiS lists and cheating bosses. It's not the same.

They're playing Classic like Retail and then wondered why they ran out of things to do.

daemonios

AndrejLeo wrote: »

daemonios wrote: »

The clown store is a bottomless pit where you can spend far more money than you would ever pay if you simply subscribed. .

Do you all have money problems or something?

If you're sooo bothered about the crown store then just dont buy stuff.

Your loss if you spend so much money on the game, one day the servers will go down for good.

I *don't* buy stuff. And it's not because I have money issues. I was happy to subscribe to this game since early launch and keep subscribing every month for as long as I've played.

And even though I already pay, I'm inconvenienced by the item creep that's designed to drive ESO+ sales because of woefully inadequate storage space.

And even though I already pay, I have to struggle with bugs and server stability issues while development focus is primarily given to new paint jobs of the exact same mounts and pets and costumes.

And even though I already pay, I have to see actual content being replaced with daily chores, because the only thing that matters to ZOS is that you log in daily.

You like paying for fluff? Fine, it's your money. Don't tell me it didn't make the game worse, though.

Raideen

svartorn wrote: »

Paying for something that doesn't work, and not working is protected by it's own terms of service is peak capialism.

I dunno why EU players are continuing to play it.

The issue is not capitalism, its greed.

xenowarrior92eb17_ESO

AndrejLeo wrote: »

jcm2606 wrote: »

The mistake you've made is in assuming Zenimax just wants some of the money, when they really want all of the money. Look at how Activision Blizzard tied themselves into several knots to try to please both the Chinese and Western markets, because don't want one or the other, they want them both, they want it all.

If they wanted more money, why the hell was One Tamriel a thing?!

If they wanted more money they WOULD follow in Blizzards footsteps in making people PAY $100+ A YEAR TO EVEN PLAY THE GAME.

If you don't want to pay, don't pay. No one forced you to pay, no one forced anyone here to pay. Everyone here chose to pay for ESO+ which is subscription based, but for ESO, ESO itself is under $10 in sales.

I don't understand the petty ideas of:

Oh yeah here's a good idea, let's just not pay! A massive percentage of people don't pay for ESO plus, again if ZoS wanted more money then they'd want a subscription based game, but surprising it's not.

ur argument is pointless cuz you clearly weren't here since day 1...eso was a sub based game and it would still be if they wouldn't had use the money to develop and target the console versions 1 year later which I consider the greatest mistake in their lives...cuz yes nobody would play on consoles if they would had to pay 30$ monthly sub...so yes nobody forcing you to buy eso+ now and we can clearly see how well that went for the game...on the other hand imagine having to be sub based and ur given "these" in return.. people would have the right to be mad...oh well life sux for us...and the future isn't any brighter...its just... a *Shadowland*

Rain_Greyraven

Hey I know!!!!

You can always cry about it on yet another forum thread.

GrimTheReaper45

Best option is to stop playing and paying if you feel that the game is unplayable or not enjoyable. For any game not just eso. If enough players feel the same it will hurt there wallets which will make them do something.