Open letter to the ZoS team, re. Greymoor and game status

agegarton

First of all, this isn’t a “quit thread”. I haven’t (yet) had enough, but like so many other people I am close.

This is also not a “please compensate me” thread. I don’t believe in compensation and I don’t think a gift and a ”sorry” cuts much ice anyway.

However. While I do not believe in compensation I do believe in getting what I am paying for. I believe in not being messed around. I believe that as customers, we should be engaged in open, adult, honest dialogue by the company that we gave our money to when they cannot deliver the products and services that they promised.

The launch of Greymoor has been appalling for everyone. Relatively simply things that should have been standard on any testing plan led to an immediate shut-down of the servers. On reactivation, a huge percentage of the population were simply unable to access the game. Eventually the servers were taken offline once again. Problems persisted, so this morning we’re back offline. Into the mix, we have had:-

• People who bought the Chaper can’t access it.
• People who didn’t buy the Chapter can.
• Maelstrom - the subject of much controversy - isn’t working properly.
• People have bought houses and been stuck inside them.
• People who bought the physical copy can’t get access to the game without Support.
• Long loading screens have returned at every juncture.
• Log-in queuing was reinstated, a measure which left people hanging for 40-50 minutes.

The list goes on and on. This is all in addition to recent failed performance patches, which have left Cyrodiil unplayable at peak times, Battlegrounds unable to count players, and a fundamental problem with skills and bar swapping that is now persistent not only in PVP, but in PVE trials and dungeons too. Lag on console is reported as worse than ever, and I won’t even get started on Mac client performance as none of us have the time to read that list!

In short, the state of the Elder Scrolls Online is at an all-time low. It’s chronic. Server infrastructure and game have never been in such dire straights.

ZoS has on its hands a wonderful, immersive and engaging game. I have logged far more hours than I care to admit since the days of the beta and spent more real cash than I should, on this game / hobby / social network. However, it really is time that we heard from the management at ZoS about exactly what they are going to do next. I’d like to hear about fixes for long standing issues, not about new content. I’d like to understand what is being done to ensure quality control doesn’t allow yet another update to go this far off the rails. I’d like to understand what went wrong - mostly because I’d like the faith and confidence that someone at ZoS actually knows what went wrong! I don’t want another set of pretty bullet points about a performance improvement strategy, because we know that hasn’t worked. I’d like to know if I’m pouring my money down a bottomless pit, or whether there is likely to be light at the end of what has been a very long, very frustrating tunnel.

Finally, I’d like an apology. A sincere, genuine apology for the state of the game and the performance of the company that produces it, not a “thanks for your patience” copy and paste. And not from a messenger, but from the person who should step up and own this mess as it is a reflection on him and his skills as a leader.

I'd also like to thank @ZOS_GinaBruno and @ZOS_JessicaFolsom - the one area that has improved greatly in the past 12-18 months is the communication about what is happening in the moment, something which can't be overlooked. I imagine the past 24 hours were quite stressful.

Age.


PS. There will be those whose first thought is to defend ZoS, tell me it's a game and not real life, or to point me back to my terms and conditions. All very clever, I’m sure. Terms and conditions are not necessarily the definitive word, especially given the raft of consumer protections that are baked into EU law. I would also say that, as in many walks of life, if your answer is to get your contract out you have failed to deliver any kind of service at the first hurdle.

VaranisArano

Suggestion: take off the "open letter" as those aren't allowed on the forums. Be a shame to have your thoughts removed because of that.

As for the substance of your post, the Greymoor launch is probably the worst fiasco I've seen since Dragonbones (multiple downtimes and rollbacks, players got suspended after a bug made Imperial City mobs worth 1 million exp, and ZOS let a known bug that deleted your stored items go Live), and ZOS accidentally making Elsweyr free for everyone at the launch of Scalebreaker. And yes, those players got to keep their free necromancers, so I wouldn't get your hopes up for any compensation, Greymoor owners.

Uryel

ZOS isn't quite there yet, but they are catching up to Funcom in terms of launch day "prowess". That being Said, Funcom was much better at communication. At the very least, they apologised for the inconvenience.

kyle.wilson

Uryel wrote: »

ZOS isn't quite there yet, but they are catching up to Funcom in terms of launch day "prowess". That being Said, Funcom was much better at communication. At the very least, they apologised for the inconvenience.

An apology admits fault, any American company knows better. Apologies admit liability.

Almost every major game has growing pains with DLC launch. Especially something that changed as much as this one did.

Tavore1138

The problem with having to ask for an apology is that anything you get will be forced and insincere - my real concern is that after making a hash of these launches almost every single time that no-one involved in designing, coding or managing the game ever seems to realise that they have done something wrong - it speaks to a disturbing and undeserved level of arrogance that is probably connected to the inability to process the problems and learn from them.

It is often left to the likes of Gina to apologise for things that are utterly beyond her control because the people who are actually responsible clearly feel apologies, and us, are beneath them.

kyle.wilson

Uryel wrote: »

ZOS isn't quite there yet, but they are catching up to Funcom in terms of launch day "prowess". That being Said, Funcom was much better at communication. At the very least, they apologised for the inconvenience.

The only game I've played from Funcom was Anarchy Online, that was from 2001. I didn't play long enough for it to have left an impression.

JJBoomer

its like, no one actually reads the terms of service. all of this is just *** you sign onto when you agree. if you don't like it, then you shouldn't play. otherwise, things like this are warned about. its not their fault you don't read and prepare yourself for stuff like this. And there is clearly no emotional maturity of intelligence in this community. nothing but testosterone and blind rage

otherwise, you'd all be able to just roll with the punches and practice radical acceptance. You have choice here. You can choose to take the things that go wrong with this game as they come. and enjoy the time where things are stable. or you can not pay and go play something that doesn't spark constant displeasure for you.

But continuing to make threads about "I payed for this, so this is the way it should be, because I say so" will literally get you nothing and continue to get you nothing.

wanders_the_swamps

@JJBoomer agreed. people unhappy with the state of the game should simple stop the eso+ sub until zos gets the message and tries to improve on customer satisfaction. im done with my sub coz they wrecked my main class and race so that's it from me.

Uryel

kyle.wilson wrote: »

An apology admits fault, any American company knows better. Apologies admit liability.

Probably right. Funcom is a norwegian company.

kyle.wilson wrote: »

The only game I've played from Funcom was Anarchy Online, that was from 2001. I didn't play long enough for it to have left an impression.

Played Anarchy Online several years, from 2002 I think. Then Age of Conan and Secret World, from the same company. Age of Conan was surprisingly bug-free compared to the other two.

We're talking about games where walking on the street could suddenly propel you sky high for no reason and kill you from fall damage. Where the equivalent of polymorph could end only partially, leaving you with a human head on a bird body. Where the launch of any expansion would mean several days battling with the serversd to actually log in (granted, the download speed back then didn't help), only to realise that some crippling bugs can give you FPS below 1. Where expansion mechanics started so broken that you had to man,age your guild so that there would always be a few people online, else you'd lose your hard-earned city, because aliens would invade every hour instead of every day... And so on.

Most of this got fixed over time, of course. But "Funcom launch" should be synonym to "catastrophic failure of proportions so epic no other word exist to describe it". And well, then they decided to kill Secret WOrld, which was very niche but very deep, to relaunch it as a streamlined (read : boring AF), dumbed down version of itself. They lost the old players and never really gaine much of a new player base for that IP, and I stopped having any interest in their production from that point on. Who knows, maybe they've improved quite a lot and are now only ZOS-level of epic fail :P

Inoki

I fully support this 👍📌

JanTanhide

Look folks, vote with your wallet. Sub canceled.

agegarton

woufff wrote: »

USA: nothing works but nobody cares
Europe: everything works but everyone complains

Really not sure about that! The EU server has been the most unstable of the two ?

Valabrog

JanTanhide wrote: »

Look folks, vote with your wallet. Sub canceled.

Yeapsy, just canceled.

Going back to swtor - I came here few months ago because ESO have huge development team, constant story updates and world pvp. Guess again.

EmEm_Oh

kyle.wilson wrote: »

Uryel wrote: »

ZOS isn't quite there yet, but they are catching up to Funcom in terms of launch day "prowess". That being Said, Funcom was much better at communication. At the very least, they apologised for the inconvenience.

An apology admits fault, any American company knows better. Apologies admit liability.

Almost every major game has growing pains with DLC launch. Especially something that changed as much as this one did.

TOS would negate liability.

JTD

If only ZOS had the balls to do a FinalFantasy14, own up to their mistakes, put an honest effort in tho fix the state of the game and earn the spoils of that effort. I am well aware this is not the blame of the workerbees but a managment thing.

Instead like someone above said.. .they're doing a Funcom.... which is becoming the laughingstock of the mmo genre...remember The Secret World? I do.. and it's not because of the fun times

poe

A great open letter, with which I agree completely. As said, it isn't about compensation (although one would be appreciated as a token of respect towards the community). Its more about ZOS acknowledging (what OP calls apology) and being transparent about the road ahead on how and when they are planning to fix the big problems, and not repost the old bulletpoints or say we are aware...

This doesn't have anything to do with TOS as @JJBoomer or other ZoS apologists tend to point to. First of all, any TOS has to abide by the consumer laws of the region, in our case the EU. Within the law consumers have protections and rights to working commodities/services as advertised and intended.

Secondly, when we compare a game like ESO, an AAA MMORPG, our point of reference are others within the genre. Not only didn't most of them have these kind of problems (which OP beautifully summarized), most of them have either communicate on them, try to fix it and apologize or compensate the community. And even if other games would be as bad as ESO is now (which they aren't, just go look at WoW, GW2, SWTOR, BDO...) this doesnt give any company a pass to perform like this. ESO is already 6 years old, they have done a ton of updates during the years; they should by now know what to expect from releasing. But not only do they make the same mistake, but the overal performance is deteriorating.

So its not about a release day problem, its the overal deterioration of the games performance coupled with making the same mistake all over again and no communication/apology/transparency/compensation whatsoever.

BloodMagicLord

Yeah, I've been playing since 2015 and was raidleading in a pretty nice guild until a couple of weeks ago, but I basically stopped playing now, after months of almost everything we try to do being ruined by server problems and ZOS barely even acknowledging the problem, never mind fixing it. This launch has pretty much summarized the problems with ESO in a nutshell.

The "read the ToS" people must feel very smart reducing the issue to such a base level, but that isn't going to make anyone feel any better that their community is dying because of repeated incompetence and neglect from the devs, or stop previously loyal players who put (too much) time, effort and money into the game from leaving.

BloodMagicLord

Honestly the lack of awareness from whoever is making decisions is actually incredible. YOu have an already annoyed base of end-game players because they cannot do the content they want to do without ridiculous amounts of technical issues, and then you decide to annoy them even further by making them refarm all of their arena weapons even though they already did the content on veteran, the same base-line for the new perfected items.
Is this just a pathetic ploy to get people to buy crown repair kits during their maelstrom runs? Like is that what we've been reduced to now?

BloodMagicLord

Oh and then they can't even get online to farm the weapons that they're already unhappy about having to farm again. Adding multiple levels of unnecessary ballache just to be competetive in content that doesn't even work properly, if you can access it at all.
Ah but don't complain, read the ToS!!!!!

Uryel

poe wrote: »

when we compare a game like ESO, an AAA MMORPG, our point of reference are others within the genre. Not only didn't most of them have these kind of problems (which OP beautifully summarized), most of them have either communicate on them, try to fix it and apologize or compensate the community. And even if other games would be as bad as ESO is now (which they aren't, just go look at WoW, GW2, SWTOR, BDO...) this doesnt give any company a pass to perform like this.

To further this point... In the past few weeks, Guild Wars 2 has had a major server issue. The servers crashed, and roughly ONE MINUTE after everyone was back online. Problem was, everything had been rolled back to 3 days prior. It happen ed during US night time, so the team wasn't on point immediately.

Because of this issue, the servers were brought offline for a bit more than a day. Everyone got their stuff back, minus some isolated issues, and those people were invited to check in with support. During the downtime, there were several communication from the dev team : "we're investigating" , "we're testing stuff before putting the servers back online to make sure it doesn't happen again", and so on. And there was even a compensation for the inciden, albeit this part could have been handled better : they did compensate people differently depending on whether they had logged in the day the game crashed or not, which ended up giving less gift to people who had become aware of the issue and didn't log in to avoid causing more problems. Still, as symbolic as the compensation was for some, there was a "we are sorry" gift.

Oh, should I mention that it was the first time in something like 6 years the servers were offline ? I'm not saying "unexpected offline", I'm saying "offline". Guild wars 2 doesn't have maintenances, weekly or whatever. Only major issues can cause servers to go offline, and it was the first one in many years.

And then, we have ZOS :

caperb

agegarton wrote: »

PS. There will be those whose first thought is to defend ZoS, tell me it's a game and not real life, or to point me back to my terms and conditions. All very clever, I’m sure. Terms and conditions are not necessarily the definitive word, especially given the raft of consumer protections that are baked into EU law. I would also say that, as in many walks of life, if your answer is to get your contract out you have failed to deliver any kind of service at the first hurdle.

Not that I am looking for compensation or gonna spend time on it, but pretty sure the way the terms and conditions players agreed on do not confirm to European laws (where players agree that ZOS has no obligation to deliver a working product or give compensation).

caperb

caperb wrote: »

agegarton wrote: »

PS. There will be those whose first thought is to defend ZoS, tell me it's a game and not real life, or to point me back to my terms and conditions. All very clever, I’m sure. Terms and conditions are not necessarily the definitive word, especially given the raft of consumer protections that are baked into EU law. I would also say that, as in many walks of life, if your answer is to get your contract out you have failed to deliver any kind of service at the first hurdle.

Not that I am looking for compensation or gonna spend time on it, but pretty sure the way the terms and conditions players agreed on do not confirm to European laws (where players agree that ZOS has no obligation to deliver a working product or give compensation).

Edit: which means that EU players are entitled to compensation. But in reality it will probably cost so much time it isn't worth it.

NeillMcAttack

I just wanna say that I have zero sympathy for most people complaining on these forums.

Firstly, why would you pay for something that you can’t yet access? A mount!? A pet!? Any individual of even minimal skills of comprehension can see that these things are tools for the sellers to guarantee ‘bank’ even if stuff like this happens. If players waited to pay when they knew they could actually consume said product this kind of situation would decrease greatly as the sellers would need it to work correctly on release to ensure investments were protected.

And secondly, how did none of you predict this, it was borderline inevitable? If you are a brand new player then maybe you could get a pass and your first experiences with this product may hold some weight. The devs might actually care about that kind of feedback. But 99% of you are not. This kind of thing is all too common here, and greatly accepted by most of the community, and even defended by some.

They still only have one log-in server for the whole world. They broke more than they fixed the last performance focused patches. Like, HELLO!!!

agegarton

NeillMcAttack wrote: »

I just wanna say that I have zero sympathy for most people complaining on these forums.

Firstly, why would you pay for something that you can’t yet access? A mount!? A pet!? Any individual of even minimal skills of comprehension can see that these things are tools for the sellers to guarantee ‘bank’ even if stuff like this happens. If players waited to pay when they knew they could actually consume said product this kind of situation would decrease greatly as the sellers would need it to work correctly on release to ensure investments were protected.

And secondly, how did none of you predict this, it was borderline inevitable? If you are a brand new player then maybe you could get a pass and your first experiences with this product may hold some weight. The devs might actually care about that kind of feedback. But 99% of you are not. This kind of thing is all too common here, and greatly accepted by most of the community, and even defended by some.

They still only have one log-in server for the whole world. They broke more than they fixed the last performance focused patches. Like, HELLO!!!

It's just not terribly constructive, is it?

Inoki

Uryel wrote: »

poe wrote: »

when we compare a game like ESO, an AAA MMORPG, our point of reference are others within the genre. Not only didn't most of them have these kind of problems (which OP beautifully summarized), most of them have either communicate on them, try to fix it and apologize or compensate the community. And even if other games would be as bad as ESO is now (which they aren't, just go look at WoW, GW2, SWTOR, BDO...) this doesnt give any company a pass to perform like this.

To further this point... In the past few weeks, Guild Wars 2 has had a major server issue. The servers crashed, and roughly ONE MINUTE after everyone was back online. Problem was, everything had been rolled back to 3 days prior. It happen ed during US night time, so the team wasn't on point immediately.

Because of this issue, the servers were brought offline for a bit more than a day. Everyone got their stuff back, minus some isolated issues, and those people were invited to check in with support. During the downtime, there were several communication from the dev team : "we're investigating" , "we're testing stuff before putting the servers back online to make sure it doesn't happen again", and so on. And there was even a compensation for the inciden, albeit this part could have been handled better : they did compensate people differently depending on whether they had logged in the day the game crashed or not, which ended up giving less gift to people who had become aware of the issue and didn't log in to avoid causing more problems. Still, as symbolic as the compensation was for some, there was a "we are sorry" gift.

Oh, should I mention that it was the first time in something like 6 years the servers were offline ? I'm not saying "unexpected offline", I'm saying "offline". Guild wars 2 doesn't have maintenances, weekly or whatever. Only major issues can cause servers to go offline, and it was the first one in many years.

And then, we have ZOS :

Don't bring GW2 here, please. That's really not a good example.

That game is plagued by a plethora of other, very severe issues which I'm not going to discuss on these boards.

Between this and that, it's the same mud.

Squeaky_Clean

agegarton wrote: »

In short, the state of the Elder Scrolls Online is at an all-time low. It’s chronic. Server infrastructure and game have never been in such dire straights.

Word!

(Emphasis on the middle sentence is mine).

shaielzafine

BloodMagicLord wrote: »

Honestly the lack of awareness from whoever is making decisions is actually incredible. YOu have an already annoyed base of end-game players because they cannot do the content they want to do without ridiculous amounts of technical issues, and then you decide to annoy them even further by making them refarm all of their arena weapons even though they already did the content on veteran, the same base-line for the new perfected items.
Is this just a pathetic ploy to get people to buy crown repair kits during their maelstrom runs? Like is that what we've been reduced to now?

I guess this is the 2020 version of ESO eh? They're at least quite consistent this year. Persisting performance problems and server issues from years ago, but now in overland and pve too, not just Cyrodiil. Big disconnect between the end game players and the devs. They're banning paying subscribers and deleting comments on Twitch livestreams that talk about the same things they don't respond to here. Pushing out changes that I can't imagine community class reps were behind. What even happened with class rep program, did they all just quit or something?? What's going on with all these patches that introduce more new problems anyway? How many patches did we have just yesterday? And they threw in some more "balance" combat changes all at the same time again, how are we supposed to know what works properly when they changed most everything & introduced new things all at the same time?

JJBoomer

wanders_the_swamps wrote: »

@JJBoomer agreed. people unhappy with the state of the game should simple stop the eso+ sub until zos gets the message and tries to improve on customer satisfaction. im done with my sub coz they wrecked my main class and race so that's it from me.

the thing is, people are never happy with the state of the game no matter what ZOS does. I don't blame them for not engaging with players more. Whats the point if everyone is unhappy no matter what happens? and thats the thing. Every update, every patch people are on here bemoaning how things aren't perfect, lamenting about coding and programming not being a perfect science, yet could barely do better themselves if they tried; because they're too busy playing a game, shoveling cheetos into their mouths while obsessing about breasts to actually go to school to become an actual game developer and instead getting their degrees from their computer chairs.

Frankly its the complaining and bashing ZOS has gotten old and pathetic. Either accept that there are going to be bugs with this game or leave. If 6+ years of screaming your frustrations, then 6 more years isn't going to change anything. Play the game with all its flaws or don't. that is a choice everyone has.

Uryel

Inoki wrote: »

Don't bring GW2 here, please. That's really not a good example.

That game is plagued by a plethora of other, very severe issues which I'm not going to discuss on these boards.

Between this and that, it's the same mud.

I'm not comparing oranges and apples here, mate. I'm just pointing at a game that does things right when technical issues arise. Which basically amounts to doing their actual best to fix them, and communicating about what's going on. Simple as that. Communication goes a long way in that case, because its lack lets people believe nothing is done.

And well, when I see how they handle most tech issues here, notably the whole "improvement plan" that started backwards and will end with what should have been step one, the database optimisation, I'm ponder who makes the call. My own guess is "not the IT crew".

As for anything else that makes the game good or not, you'll notice I left it out of the equation.

copito

It is our own damn fault. Many of us keep buying the DLCs and keep paying the monthly subscriptions. We keep rewarding ZOS for yet another failed patch update and the never ending server performance issues. The only way for things to change, is when we stop subscribing, stop buying the DLCs and last, stop playing the game for a while. This will then force ZOS to take care of things and take care of their customers.

Steev_z

copito wrote: »

It is our own damn fault. Many of us keep buying the DLCs and keep paying the monthly subscriptions. We keep rewarding ZOS for yet another failed patch update and the never ending server performance issues. The only way for things to change, is when we stop subscribing, stop buying the DLCs and last, stop playing the game for a while. This will then force ZOS to take care of things and take care of their customers.

agreed.