7 years gone in a moment

Ackwalan

scorpius2k1 wrote: »

DaveMoeDee wrote: »

Davor wrote: »

So sorry to read this. Only thing I can think of is, that we never owned anything here. We gave up our rights to give Zenimax/Bethesda money.

So we never have lost anything to begin with since we never owned anything. I guess that is why Zenimax/Bethesda doesn't give a crap. They lost their own ones and zeroes. We on the other hand never lost nothing.

Pretty sure they give a crap. There can be technical errors though. There can also be skepticism because of how many fraudulent claims they likely come across.

I agree but to the point that area ultimately depends on the support person who has your ticket and how they handle it from there. In retrospect, they sure are showing they care further by not reaching out at all on this thread right? Not one single mod/admin comment in over 24h with 4+ pages of responses from the playerbase. Quite concerning in my eyes.

@Y - not sure if it would help at this point, but maybe post your ticket # here and tag a few of the @ZOS accounts. Super sorry this happened to you, if something like that happened to me I would never come back, especially with the way it's been handled since inception.

It's a good sign (at this point) that there has been no response. Forum mods and game mods are 2 different entities. This thread has not been shut down or edited by forum mods, perhaps because game mods are looking into it. Things take time.

scorpius2k1

After over 9 months of waiting, what's another few days right? Hopefully they will respond, and it's unfortunate that OP even felt like they had to come to the forums on the topic imho.

Alurria

I am keeping my fingers crossed they are looking into this @Yormula.

GenjiraX

Yormula wrote: »

Automated responses taking weeks and missing the point...

The number of times I've had to say, "No, that's not what I reported. Please read my initial complaint again." It beggars belief. It's so frustrating that CS often don't even read the ticket properly.

This is a terrible story, @Yormula - I had no idea this could happen. @ZOS_GinaBruno @ZOS_JessicaFolsom - can someone please respond to this, tell us how many players have been through something like this, and explain what steps have been taken to ensure it never happens to another player again?

15k Crowns compensation. What a joke.

N_L

Damn, reading about this should be a warning to anyone thinking about playing this game long term... And no real response from ZOS either..

WynnGwynn

Abigail wrote: »

Absolutely not suggesting any nefarious activity by the OP, but I'd suggest there are two sides to this tale of woe; that it would be advisable to hear ZOS's before too readily casting aspersions.

I hate to say this, but being on the receiving end of having an open ticket that they 'closed' without notifying me even though I sent several follow-up "Do you have any update for my ticket" emails with no responses after MONTHS due to it being a ticket that was open "too long" for them even though they never fixed it and never responded to my emails asking for an update for the ticket I totally believe OP having been through something similar myself. It was due to a graphical glitch and nothing as serious as this, but I was given the same runaround (with similar "read email" responses with just AI responses where they didn't read anything I wrote, nobody reading the emails I sent and just generally being ignored until I came into the forums and then they just told me to 'open another ticket'. Which I never did because I know it would just get ignored again I just give up on customer service tbh. I might talk to a real person but I'm not using email again. I get their spam emails about promotions so I know they have my email address...they just don't read emails coming from it is all.

Alinhbo_Tyaka

That is awful. There is really no excuse on the part of ZOS that a backup of the character was not made before any attempt to fix something related to it. It is guaranteed at some point, some player will have a situation such as yours where there will be a need to restore the character to its state before support started messing with it.

Girl_Number8

Add your ticket number and tag some people for help

@ZOS_RichLambert
@ZOS_GinaBruno
@ZOS_JessicaFolsom

Go on their Twitter and ask for help

https://mobile.twitter.com/TESOnline?ref_src=twsrc^google|twcamp^serp|twgr^author

Contact Microsoft and ZOS by other methods

good luck and let us know any new developments

lrs8855b14_ESO

Something similar to this made me quit WoW cold turkey - sorry to see it happening here. Really concerning about the health of ESO...

Ekzorka

Now I'm afraid to report an achievement bug on my main...

Yormula

Girl_Number8 wrote: »

...Contact Microsoft and ZOS by other methods...

Been there, done that, just started in a less public manner though.

By now I feel that I owe it to the creative teams behind the game to exhaust available communication channels in pointing out what I believe to be systemic issues - my case is a consequence, not a problem (and, as others mentioned, sadly not as rare as I had hoped).

Thank you, folks, for making this one clearly visible.

davapoole

SirAndy wrote: »

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

problem is they swap servers each week so unless it was last week of pts then they would -probably not have a copy there either but surely they can do something there must be some back up somewhere on the system surely or we are all at risk of this happening to us also

regime211

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.

@ZOS_GinaBruno please help this person out!

EmEm_Oh

This is truly one of the worst issues I've read about. Unfortunately, I don't think there's any way to bring those characters back, being the ticket has remained open for so long with nobody apparently able to for Yormula. I would think there would be information stored locally on Yormula's computer for possible recreation. And if not...this should be a priority software revision for all ESO players.

Unfortunately, there's no case to bring legally, imo. ESO is entirely voluntary, we are provided with characters in a game, and if "poopy-poopy happens", there's nothing in the TOS that says ZOS is liable for errors that are out of their control or even in the worst cases...negligence. If I'm wrong, somebody correct me.

Now, if there was damage to your pc or something like that, then you'd probably have a case. But since it's a "digital tort", these types of things in the gaming industry are so far, unheard of in actual civil court systems.

Abigail

Wonder why everyone is surprised about dismal lack of customer support. It has always been this way -- always -- largely automated to realize a greater net profit.

If you don't like it, vote with your checkbook and quit the game. ZOS will never change.

Philio

Not sure which is worse, this or the guy from one of my guilds who's CP1200 account vanished without a trace (doesn't exist when trying to login and vanished in game). When provided with YT videos and copies of ESO plus transactions to try and support his case ZoS support just closed the ticket.

Seems like there is something seriously wrong with their database...

I hope this thread gets more attention than just a moderator edit, which seems like the most likely outcome

Suna_Ye_Sunnabe

@ZOS_BillE @ZOS_GinaBruno @ZOS_KaiSchober @ZOS_Adrikoth @ZOS_AntonioP @ZOS_RichLambert Please look at this thread. This is something that really requires Zos' action.

Psiion

Greetings,

After removing a some posts, we would like to remind everyone that both Baiting and Bashing are non-constructive and against the Forum's Community Rules, which can be reviewed in full here. We ask that posts stay respectful moving forward.

@Yormula Please see your inbox for an update on your ticket.

Chaos2088

Omg I feel for you. Zos please look into this issue.

MoreTune

[snip] God forbid anything ever happens to your account because it will take months to fix (even if fixed at all)

FYI: Their policy on account recovery is non-existent. Meaning if someone hacks your account and has access to your email and last 4 digits of your credit card. They can claim the account is theirs. Then ZOS terminates the account. Yup, TERMINATES the account. Just because the person who hacks it has all your information. And can now claim ownership. The account is deleted.

So account recovery in reality is useless.

[edited for bashing]

Folkb

FeelsBadMan.

Sililos

[snip]

And for OP, really sucks that happened, I wish you the best and hope ZOS pull their heads out of their behinds for once to fix it.
Their automated cut and paste replies in both support and the forums its truly infuriating.
I always upvote them when I see a mod actually using their brain and giving a personalized response to something, good or bad, it at least shows some degree of interaction.

[edited to remove quote]

scorpius2k1

ZOS_KageW wrote: »

@Yormula Please see your inbox for an update on your ticket.

Glad this is being looked into, hope everything works out and this issue is resolved properly after such a long length of time. @Yormula, if possible please update us here as you can (if you wouldn't mind) as I am sure some would like to know what the outcome is (myself included). All the best.

xeNNNNN

FlamingMeat wrote: »

Different departments I'm sure but still a relevant anecdote: I've been trying for months now to get ONE square of water added to Lakemire Xanmeer. A missing asset that has been present since it's release. It's a $150+ piece of *content* that has only really needed one tile to be placed where it is missing for years. Every avenue to contact is shut down. Even pushing tickets through to actual humans has them say:

NO OTHER MMO I've played has ever had their support staff actively refuse to comment on simple issues so heavily to someone who spends as much money on the game as I do and has done so little to try and keep high-paying consumers playing when confronted with issues.

Also to compare apples to weird, spherical blobs of despair, this video may make you feel better about your situation in a 'could be even worse/dumber' kind of way: https://youtu.be/Pjt_6C2rapQ

This is more a template than an individual staff member choosing not to help you. The templates are used to protect a company (and sometimes the staff that company has) virtually every online company has this but the staff that use them are normally at the mercy of the legal teams in the sense that if they step out of turn in a support ticket it can very easily turn into a lawsuit against them and so forth. Its also to avoid any misunderstandings however from my own experience there isn't enough templates to fit every situation which will often lead to ehhh *air quotes* disagreements *air quotes* between the customer/consumer and the company. Its also worth pointing out that each company has its own rules/laws internally on how CS operates. What those rules are I have no idea thats something they would need to answer.

Trust me as someone whos been in that position, i'd wager its as frustrating for the staff as it is for you.

GenjiraX

ZOS_KageW wrote: »

@Yormula Please see your inbox for an update on your ticket.

Hopefully this represents at least a more realistic offer of recompense for everything @Yormula has lost.

The rest of still need to know we can be confident the same won’t happen to us.

Abigail

GenjiraX wrote: »

ZOS_KageW wrote: »

@Yormula Please see your inbox for an update on your ticket.

Hopefully this represents at least a more realistic offer of recompense for everything @Yormula has lost.

The rest of still need to know we can be confident the same won’t happen to us.

I'm definitely NO fangurl, but I'd wager there's a fair chance the OP shared his account info or stumbled into some exploit (whether purposeful or accidental) that corrupted his data. Doubt we'll ever get a fair accounting of both sides of the story.

Given that this thread is now little more than a *itchfest, I hope a moderator closes it.

GenjiraX

Abigail wrote: »

GenjiraX wrote: »

ZOS_KageW wrote: »

@Yormula Please see your inbox for an update on your ticket.

Hopefully this represents at least a more realistic offer of recompense for everything @Yormula has lost.

The rest of still need to know we can be confident the same won’t happen to us.

I'm definitely NO fangurl, but I'd wager there's a fair chance the OP shared his account info or stumbled into some exploit (whether purposeful or accidental) that corrupted his data. Doubt we'll ever get a fair accounting of both sides of the story.

Given that this thread is now little more than a *itchfest, I hope a moderator closes it.

How would sharing her or his account info cause its irrevocable corruption?

There are still questions that need to be answered, like are we all complete idiots for going anywhere near this game if everything we’ve put into it can be lost in an instant?

I think this thread should be stickied until we’ve got some answers.

what_the

SilverBride wrote: »

NylAR wrote: »

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?

I'm wondering the same thing. What exactly happened?

This ^^
I am curious as to what the initial problem was you had with you character in more detail...
as in "fix an achievement issue" what's that about?...

Minyassa

GenjiraX wrote: »

The number of times I've had to say, "No, that's not what I reported. Please read my initial complaint again." It beggars belief. It's so frustrating that CS often don't even read the ticket properly.

Same here. To be honest, I think there's no such thing as good customer service left in the gaming industry. When I was playing DDO years and years ago, I used to be able to call their office when I had a billing issue or a tech problem, and I would wait in queue and either hang up if it was going to take too long or invest my time to talk to an actual human, and my issue was *never* left unsolved. Then I played LOTRO for a number of years, and for the first few years I was able to call their office if I had a problem, and similarly never had any trouble--I even enjoyed the odd chat with the fellow that usually answered my calls and got to know him a little when I called during low-volume times. Then they switched to a completely online CS model. The first thing that happened was when I had a billing problem that was caused by a regular glitch on their end, instead of solving it by calling and saying, hey, it happened again and getting it fixed, I was out money for a month and had to fight with a new automated system, and things went downhill from there.

When someone dragged me into ESO to check it out, by that time I was so soured that I just abandoned LOTRO and hopped into this game. And I have seen from the beginning that their CS model is just as bad as the originally good one at Turbine became after they ruined it by taking humans out of the equation for the most part. Automated systems know nothing of comprehension, logic, context, propriety, proportion, PR or any of the myriad of things that a human CS agent puts into play from the moment they begin to speak with a customer. The default of any automated system is to delegate and move on, because that's all it knows, and if its options are limited to keep things simple, it delegates improperly. And when a computer makes a mistake, it doesn't try to correct that mistake, it commits to it. Letting computers handle customer service is a mistake too many companies are making now and I think the reasons they are making it is so that they can squeeze that extra bit of profit out of slashing the number of humans they employ, and because It's What Everyone Does Now.

One could hope that ZOS might be the company to break the cycle of inadequacy in customer service that the entire industry seems to have embraced to the detriment of all consumers. One will not hold one's breath, of course. But the company that is so wholeheartedly dedicated to the guild trader system--annoying and tedious as it is--just because it is unique and no one else is doing it MIGHT be convinced to do some pioneering in ways that help its customers, the economy, and maybe the rest of the industry by example.

kinguardian

Jeesz that is awful and extremely frustrating.

Like someone answered before they owe you a large compensation.
A leveled character giving you pets outfits etc etc back that you collected and bought throughout the years.
The motifs you lost. And a very very very big stack of crowns and some money.
That is the least they can do.

Looking at myself ESO has cost me a lot of money throughout the years and that is fine because I enjoy it very much but when something like this happends they do need to give it back. The mistake was on their side and a "oopsie so sorry" simply is not good enough.
Also the way they treat you by not actively responding to your problem is appalling, you do not treat a loyal customer this way.

I am sorry this happend to you and I really hope ZOS steps up in a decent way.
Like said before try also contacting via twitter and other mediums they are on. Maybe that helps.