7 years gone in a moment

Yormula

I have been involved with ESO since beta, until one fine day while trying to fix an achievement issue ESO support completely fried my primary character.



7 years of progress (all quests, almost all motifs, 32+k achievements, alliance rank) – gone, not fixed.

All crafting bag contents account-wide – gone, not fixed.

Account-wide glitches (no incoming whispers, invisible status) – added, not fixed.



To give you a sense of scale – the original ticket is over 9 months old, result feels rather definitive by now. I ain’t no Brad’s wife to turn it around.

Offer of an empty template character with some gear that came up was not exactly sensible at this point. Character may be leveled completely with all skills, reputations and enough skill points for 3 roles in under 50 hours – been there, done that. 7 years of progress might take just a tiny bit longer to cover.

Now, while nothing is perfect, ESO is imo a great game, combining some unique features not seen in competing titles and decades of noteworthy lore. Hence, from my perspective, the worst thing about the situation is that I am not at all surprised by the outcome. Sure, catastrophic failure events like this one are in all likelihood extremely rare, yet with the accumulation of potential points of failure over the years smth along these lines was just begging to happen.

Offline titles we could manage and mod ourselves. Massive online projects depend on publisher’s infrastructure and support system, and this is where it feels like systemic deterioration brought us to the point where the whole customer relations system is, imo, plain detrimental to an otherwise great game.

Just think about it: craft bag is pretty much the only selling point for ESO+, and, turns out, it is not secure, can vanish just like that, and noone cares.

Automated responses taking weeks and missing the point, tickets getting closed without replying, tickets set to “read answer provided” without replying and hence auto-closing, support asking to resubmit data as they cannot access ticket history – that’s the spirit that brought us the iconic canvas bag. That stuff was and sadly is systemic, just look around these very forums, and resulted in a nonsensical lose-lose situation: players less content than prior to addressing support, finding answers elsewhere while waiting on auto-responses or remaining with a unsolved issue and a series of replies perceived at best as condescending, and the company actually spending funds to make the customer less content.

I guess this here is a somewhat desperate plea to consider altering customer support policies in any of the multiple available ways, as in the current state it's support that's dragging down an otherwise very solid product.

Anyway, thanks for listening in and remember that it might be wise exercising moderation in your emotional attachments.

Wolfenbelle

How terrible, Yormula. Something like what you experienced should NEVER happen. Surely ZOS backs up its systems, right? Or am I being too naive? But if they did back up their systems nightly, it should be fairly simple for them to restore your entire character.

I agree with you completely that the problem is very poor customer service. The "support" methods they use are pathetic and worse.

I have not been in this game quite as long as you since I started during pre-launch in March 2014, but through the years I'm sure we both have seen numerous instances where ZOS could have improved the overall game performance and their customer service. But they haven't done either, which, to be honest, is quite shocking.

Giraffon

Did you ever get to talk with a live person or has the whole ordeal been via e-mail? I've always wondered if things got bad enough for a player if they would actually let you speak with a live person. This seems like it got pretty bad.

ApoAlaia

That made a pretty awful read, sorry it happened to you.

It is surreal that they allowed a bad situation to drag on for so long; I guess if they did so is because they are pretty certain that whatever it may happen the TOS has their back, or at least enough of their back to not feel exposed, the customer be damned.

gariondavey

Sorry to hear that.

beer781993

Thank you for your post.
My eyes are finally opened. Thanks to the recent ps5 trophy incident, I will move to an other game and delete everything. They don't care one bit.
Now I see even that can happen the there is no point to play this piece of junk anymore.

Ackwalan

Nothing worse then the "read answer provided" non-update to a ticket.

Starlight_Whisper

I hope you get help

dvcod

Yormula....what a sad situation. I am so sorry...I hope somehow they can make it right...but I doubt it. I am not sure i would even bother staring over if it were me....take care...Jim

Casdha

I normally dont wish bad on anyone but if there was ever something someone at ZOS should be fired over it would be this. I hope this level of incompetence is not allowed to remain employed there, meaning the person who nuked your account.

Yormula

Thank you for the kind words, guys, and don't worry, I'll be fine either way.

Giraffon wrote: »

... talk with a live person ...?

No, but I'm outside US.

ApoAlaia wrote: »

... ToS has their back ...

That's a complicated subject and depends on your jurisdiction. Probably true inside US, not quite true in EU, dead wrong in Eastern Europe, but then litigation is not always feasible or even possible.

Alurria

Wow, this is bad. Truly sad your character can not be restored fully. If this happened to me I would uninstall cancel my sub and never come back. I would warn as many people as possible. I love playing this game but 7 years worth of character building is nothing to sneeze at. I a sorry this happened to you.

BroccoliSoda

What the heck? How does this even happen? This is like a mechanic trying to fix your car, irreparably damaging it and then looking you dead in the eyes and just shrugging their shoulders and walking away.

NylAR

Yormula wrote: »

I have been involved with ESO since beta, until one fine day while trying to fix an achievement issue ESO support completely fried my primary character.



7 years of progress (all quests, almost all motifs, 32+k achievements, alliance rank) – gone, not fixed.

All crafting bag contents account-wide – gone, not fixed.

Account-wide glitches (no incoming whispers, invisible status) – added, not fixed.



To give you a sense of scale – the original ticket is over 9 months old, result feels rather definitive by now. I ain’t no Brad’s wife to turn it around.

Offer of an empty template character with some gear that came up was not exactly sensible at this point. Character may be leveled completely with all skills, reputations and enough skill points for 3 roles in under 50 hours – been there, done that. 7 years of progress might take just a tiny bit longer to cover.

Now, while nothing is perfect, ESO is imo a great game, combining some unique features not seen in competing titles and decades of noteworthy lore. Hence, from my perspective, the worst thing about the situation is that I am not at all surprised by the outcome. Sure, catastrophic failure events like this one are in all likelihood extremely rare, yet with the accumulation of potential points of failure over the years smth along these lines was just begging to happen.

Offline titles we could manage and mod ourselves. Massive online projects depend on publisher’s infrastructure and support system, and this is where it feels like systemic deterioration brought us to the point where the whole customer relations system is, imo, plain detrimental to an otherwise great game.

Just think about it: craft bag is pretty much the only selling point for ESO+, and, turns out, it is not secure, can vanish just like that, and noone cares.

Automated responses taking weeks and missing the point, tickets getting closed without replying, tickets set to “read answer provided” without replying and hence auto-closing, support asking to resubmit data as they cannot access ticket history – that’s the spirit that brought us the iconic canvas bag. That stuff was and sadly is systemic, just look around these very forums, and resulted in a nonsensical lose-lose situation: players less content than prior to addressing support, finding answers elsewhere while waiting on auto-responses or remaining with a unsolved issue and a series of replies perceived at best as condescending, and the company actually spending funds to make the customer less content.

I guess this here is a somewhat desperate plea to consider altering customer support policies in any of the multiple available ways, as in the current state it's support that's dragging down an otherwise very solid product.

Anyway, thanks for listening in and remember that it might be wise exercising moderation in your emotional attachments.

How exactly did they fry it? I'm not entirely understanding what happened to you. They must have backup systems in place, how is this even a thing?

Sarannah

Sorry to hear this, keep pushing the issue. As there should always be a backup available still, so it shouldn't take long for ZOS to resolve. Make sure to ask ZOS to restore your entire account from a backup made just before your account was destroyed.

It is good you posted this topic, it will draw attention to it. And maybe get ZOS to fix the issue asap, as something like this will frighten others in spending real money on the game.

Will keep an eye on this thread, to see if it gets fixed!

PS: Edit your topic, and add the number for your first ticket about this issue to it. This way ZOS can look into it.
PPS: Add a date to this thread, with a date where you are 100% sure your account was still fine. Even if it was a week before it happened, just to be sure. This might help ZOS to easier find a working backup for your account.
PPPS: Did you atleast get that one achievement that started all this fixed?

ApoAlaia

Yormula wrote: »

Thank you for the kind words, guys, and don't worry, I'll be fine either way.

Giraffon wrote: »

... talk with a live person ...?

No, but I'm outside US.

ApoAlaia wrote: »

... ToS has their back ...

That's a complicated subject and depends on your jurisdiction. Probably true inside US, not quite true in EU, dead wrong in Eastern Europe, but then litigation is not always feasible or even possible.

The reason why I brought that up is because the vast majority of us do not have the means to take an entity like ZOS to court even if 'there is a case'; large corporations have legal departments and financial means to keep litigation going on indefinitely so they have pretty much won by default.

Alurria

The way I read this is, in trying to restore your achievement they accidently deleted your character or account is that correct. Also put your ticket number in the thread as one of the posters said above.

Orion_89

ZOS literally murdered your character! I feel your pain even if I spent only 4 years in this game. If this will ever happen to me, I just quit the game and never come back, I think...

Shewolf075

If this happened to me, and with no hopes of getting my character back I'd expect some compensation.

dotme

This sounds awful. I don't understand why there isn't a restore option, nor - if I'm honest - do I understand why paying (subscribing) customers don't get phone or live chat support.

If anything needs to be escalated, it's things like this. I hope you get it worked out.

danno8

BroccoliSoda wrote: »

What the heck? How does this even happen? This is like a mechanic trying to fix your car, irreparably damaging it and then looking you dead in the eyes and just shrugging their shoulders and walking away.

Sort of, I mean in your example you own the car, whereas in ESO you never really own your character, or your account for that matter.

That said, after 7 years of purchases, and ESO+ you have easily spent hundreds if not thousands of dollars on this game. Just ESO+ for 7 years is $1200. The main draw of MMO's is character building and ESO is not an exception in this case. This is not the type of online game that has no progress or progress resets every few months like in some MOBA's.

In my opinion this guy deserves a new character slot, and whatever it takes to unlock everything much like a PTS character that has everything unlocked. A thousand dollars worth of crowns should be in order also to allow them to purchase much of what was lost like mounts, pets, cosmetics and the like. It's not like those crowns are cash and ZoS stands to lose any money from handing out crowns, they can only be used for digital assets anyway and are unlikely to be traded for cash in this case.

I don't think this is overdoing it, it is simply trying to make him whole again, much like what a judge would decide in a case such as this.

Yormula

Initial ticket number as per the folks' insistense: 200916-004696

Alurria wrote: »

The way I read this is, in trying to restore your achievement they accidently deleted your character or account is that correct. ...

If I had to guess, they logged into with admin priviledges flagged and/or activated the character separately on an admin account, and those presets overwrote some parts of the character save and account variables, effectively corrupting the save, as cleaning this up is too much of a hassle.

Sarannah wrote: »

...PPPS: Did you atleast get that one achievement that started all this fixed?

Good joke, I like this one.

Alurria

Yormula wrote: »

Initial ticket number as per the folks' insistense: 200916-004696

Alurria wrote: »

The way I read this is, in trying to restore your achievement they accidently deleted your character or account is that correct. ...

If I had to guess, they logged into with admin priviledges flagged and/or activated the character separately on an admin account, and those presets overwrote some parts of the character save and account variables, effectively corrupting the save, as cleaning this up is too much of a hassle.

Sarannah wrote: »

...PPPS: Did you atleast get that one achievement that started all this fixed?

Good joke, I like this one.

@ZOS_GinaBruno can you please help this guy out. I mean for crying out loud 7 years gone and he loves playing this game.

Lauranae

Come on @ZOS_GinaBruno, this is the least you can do!!

How can you feel well knowing that this player lost 7 years of gaming because of bug (that did already happened at the launch of the game).

Offering him just a lv 50 with some points is not enough. For once go out of your way and do really what should be done!!

- 1 character with enough mats to compensate all the crafting lost
- max skills points
- golded gear of his choice (2 at least)
- full check of the achievements lost
- all the memento, emotes, mounts, pets, houses he had invested in

- Crowns and crown gems so he can have some fun getting stuff again

And dont forget all this is happening that because ZoS did not answered correctly to a required help, and let the things go further in damaging the player character, you are totally responsible.

Celephantsylvius_Bornasfinmo

I generally tag here on the forum for more visibility. I like quick resolutions too, especially when I'm subbed.

Alurria

Well I think anyone who reads this should be moved to tag Zos because this could be anyone of us.

Indigogo

I'm so sorry this happened.
Come on Zos. Please make this right.

SammyKhajit

@ZOS_GinaBruno
Sorry to hear this OP and hope it can be resolved.

Goregrinder

Yormula wrote: »

I have been involved with ESO since beta, until one fine day while trying to fix an achievement issue ESO support completely fried my primary character.



7 years of progress (all quests, almost all motifs, 32+k achievements, alliance rank) – gone, not fixed.

All crafting bag contents account-wide – gone, not fixed.

Account-wide glitches (no incoming whispers, invisible status) – added, not fixed.



To give you a sense of scale – the original ticket is over 9 months old, result feels rather definitive by now. I ain’t no Brad’s wife to turn it around.

Offer of an empty template character with some gear that came up was not exactly sensible at this point. Character may be leveled completely with all skills, reputations and enough skill points for 3 roles in under 50 hours – been there, done that. 7 years of progress might take just a tiny bit longer to cover.

Now, while nothing is perfect, ESO is imo a great game, combining some unique features not seen in competing titles and decades of noteworthy lore. Hence, from my perspective, the worst thing about the situation is that I am not at all surprised by the outcome. Sure, catastrophic failure events like this one are in all likelihood extremely rare, yet with the accumulation of potential points of failure over the years smth along these lines was just begging to happen.

Offline titles we could manage and mod ourselves. Massive online projects depend on publisher’s infrastructure and support system, and this is where it feels like systemic deterioration brought us to the point where the whole customer relations system is, imo, plain detrimental to an otherwise great game.

Just think about it: craft bag is pretty much the only selling point for ESO+, and, turns out, it is not secure, can vanish just like that, and noone cares.

Automated responses taking weeks and missing the point, tickets getting closed without replying, tickets set to “read answer provided” without replying and hence auto-closing, support asking to resubmit data as they cannot access ticket history – that’s the spirit that brought us the iconic canvas bag. That stuff was and sadly is systemic, just look around these very forums, and resulted in a nonsensical lose-lose situation: players less content than prior to addressing support, finding answers elsewhere while waiting on auto-responses or remaining with a unsolved issue and a series of replies perceived at best as condescending, and the company actually spending funds to make the customer less content.

I guess this here is a somewhat desperate plea to consider altering customer support policies in any of the multiple available ways, as in the current state it's support that's dragging down an otherwise very solid product.

Anyway, thanks for listening in and remember that it might be wise exercising moderation in your emotional attachments.

I love that reference, Brad's ex is definitely out of her mind.

SirAndy

Maybe they still have a copy of your character on the PTS?

Casdha

Folks keep saying they should have backups and I'm sure they do, several layers in fact but after 9 months of the run around I'd be fairly certain what is backed up at this point is the corrupted account and I doubt there is no way to fix it after this much time has passed.

The only way I could see anything would be if you got the console copy back in the day and even that would be 6 years old now.