Now I have seen everything!

Aca2017

Just received email from ZOS related to 3x tickets (early afternoon on 2023/04/21, my local time):

• 230421-002891
• 230421-002893
• 230421-002894

This tickets notify me that three of my accounts have been "permanently deactivated". I created three accounts the morning of 2023/04/21 (my local time). I have the game codes I intend to register to these accounts sitting here on my desk, but have not had a chance to enter them yet.

Each of these emails reads, in part:

We regret to inform you this account has been permanently deactivated as a result of violating the Code of Conduct through Cheating/Exploiting.

The emails go on to cite various terms of the Code of Conduct related to "Third Party Applications", and "Bugs"... which would seem to be irrelevant in the case of new accounts that don't have game codes associated with them, and therefore can't even log into the game yet.

I did have some problems with account names... I use a numbering/capitalization scheme involving a base name and individual digits/letters to differentiate the names... and in this case that seemed to run afoul of some "validity" rule... "<name>H" and "<name>I" were disallowed (already in use? Seems unlikely), and I had to go with "<name>h" and "<name>i" (so be it), but "<name>G" and "<name>J" were allowed.

Is there some limit on the number of accounts that are allowed? This is mentioned NOWHERE in the citation of the code of conduct I received as justification for deactivating the accounts. Beyond that, I have read forum posts from users who claim to operate 20+ accounts, and this morning would have raised my count to exactly 20. So, I am guessing not. I inadvertently triggered some other red flag (or some unusually zealous ZOS watchdog jumped to conclusions... which I guess would constitute a red flag of sorts, undocumented).

Is there some prohibition to accessing elderscrollsonline.com and the game itself via VPN? (VPN has caused weird behavior before... sometimes access code emails related to an action persistently don't arrive when I am using VPN, and then subsequently do arrive when I log out of my VPN and repeat the action.) Constraints related to VPN use are also mentioned NOWHERE in the sections of the code of contact cited to me. But there are plenty of service providers that don't like VPN... for instance, I can't pay my storage unit rent while logged into VPN, the service provider's website directs me to an error page when I browse there.

Here we go... read the fine print, and there is mention in passing of "secondary accounts"... the term is not defined (which I suppose allows one to define the term as one sees fit, on case by case basis), but the term appears in language related to "match fixing and collusion [...] intentional losing and bribery"... all of which would seem related to PvP, which I tend to avoid like the plague.

I am going to contest this (the emails offer a link to "instructions" for doing this, but the instructions are to "file a ticket", and there seems to be no category of ticket relevant to "appealing a ban", and in my experience tickets most often ignored anyway, I have to file them over and over and over to have a chance of getting any help). But maybe I can at least solicit a coherent/relevant explanation (as opposed to the explanation I actually received). If I really am somehow violating the Code of Conduct, I would be happy to avoid doing whatever I apparently have done... but for that I will need to have some clue what I did first. Needless to say, I am ***NOT*** using third party applications, ***NOR*** am I exploiting bugs (in fact I would like to see all the bugs I encounter fixed, they negatively impact game play... but historically that has been a forlorn hope), and as I say, I do not engage in PvP much at all (been weeks/months since I was in a PvP zone of any kind, and then only to run a new character through the intro Cyrodiil quests), much less with the purpose of any sort of skullduggery.

Really hard to psychoanalyze this. Very, very cryptic.

TaSheen

@ZOS_Kevin, can you possibly find this person the correct ticket category for contesting these actions?

Dr_Con

i wonder what ticket 230421-002892 said

Elsonso

TaSheen wrote: »

@ZOS_Kevin, can you possibly find this person the correct ticket category for contesting these actions?

Maybe under "Account" and "Can't log in?" or maybe under "Account recovery"?

The categories they have for tickets are not always obvious, but they probably will triage it into the proper place if it gets anywhere close to the target.

Ratzkifal

My guess is this was an automatic thing to combat botting. In order to create a bot the botters do need to obtain valid copies of ESO as well of course, so even though you presumably weren't planning on using all of these accounts at the same time through an automated program, you did trigger the system by behaving the exact same way that someone who intends to bot would.

What exactly were you planning on using these three accounts for? It's definitely not an every day occurence that someone would create three accounts in quick succession with the same name. The only people with two accounts that I know created their second one long after the first.

Tandor

Aca2017 wrote: »

in my experience tickets most often ignored anyway, I have to file them over and over and over to have a chance of getting any help

This sort of phrase makes me wonder what the past history is, and whether it has any relevance to the present situation.

Aca2017

Dr_Con wrote: »

i wonder what ticket 230421-002892 said

Ticket 230421-002892 finally arrived... It contains a preemptive declaration of "psychic war" against the "Federated Association of Satanic Cannibal *** Lizard People of Saturn" (aka "FASCPLPS"), who constitute the membership of the secret cabal of infiltrators that controls most of the national governments here on Earth (pronounced "Ee-yarth")... ACTUAL armed conflict being a bit impractical, since you puny human animals have not yet achieved even rudimentary interplanetary travel, much less a capability sufficient to support operations within a battlespace on the scale of a star system.

(I am, of course, a card-carrying member of "FASCPLPS", a depraved cabal of alien scum if one ever existed, and I deserve whatever I get... er, I guess? What I can't figure out is how ZOS managed to identify me... we are nothing if not cunning!)

(If you wear dentures, don't try pronouncing "FASCPLPS"... it won't end well.)

Apparently my creation of the few extra accounts I needed to participate in a new round of pet "private guilds" (which affords me some additional in-game storage, as a coarser grained and MUCH easier to interact with alternative to mule characters) provoked someone at ZOS to an extreme.

Anyway, I filed additional tickets (I tried the entire decision tree under the ticket interface at help.bethesda.net and ultimately filed under "can't log in/reason not listed", which was the best I could do), appealing these bans, in the following correlation (In case ZOS sees this here in the forums and wants to follow up on all of this):

230421-002891 <> 230421-003313
230421-002893 <> 230421-003325
230421-002894 <> 230421-003337

In the meantime, I am coming to the conclusion that I need to go ahead and follow through on my current intention to take a break from ESO, and play Guild Wars 2 and/or World of Warcraft instead for a while. The hassles of dealing with all of these problems are approaching critical mass. Subscriptions are cancelled, I secured refunds on my Necrom preorders... seems like a good time.

Ratzkifal

Aca2017 wrote: »

Dr_Con wrote: »

i wonder what ticket 230421-002892 said

Ticket 230421-002892 finally arrived... It contains a preemptive declaration of "psychic war" against the "Federated Association of Satanic Cannibal *** Lizard People of Saturn" (aka "FASCPLPS"), who constitute the membership of the secret cabal of infiltrators that controls most of the national governments here on Earth (pronounced "Ee-yarth")... ACTUAL armed conflict being a bit impractical, since you puny human animals have not yet achieved even rudimentary interplanetary travel, much less a capability sufficient to support operations within a battlespace on the scale of a star system.

(I am, of course, a card-carrying member of "FASCPLPS", a depraved cabal of alien scum if one ever existed, and I deserve whatever I get... er, I guess? What I can't figure out is how ZOS managed to identify me... we are nothing if not cunning!)

(If you wear dentures, don't try pronouncing "FASCPLPS"... it won't end well.)

Apparently my creation of the few extra accounts I needed to participate in a new round of pet "private guilds" (which affords me some additional in-game storage, as a coarser grained and MUCH easier to interact with alternative to mule characters) provoked someone at ZOS to an extreme.

Anyway, I filed additional tickets (I tried the entire decision tree under the ticket interface at help.bethesda.net and ultimately filed under "can't log in/reason not listed", which was the best I could do), appealing these bans, in the following correlation (In case ZOS sees this here in the forums and wants to follow up on all of this):

230421-002891 <> 230421-003313
230421-002893 <> 230421-003325
230421-002894 <> 230421-003337

In the meantime, I am coming to the conclusion that I need to go ahead and follow through on my current intention to take a break from ESO, and play Guild Wars 2 and/or World of Warcraft instead for a while. The hassles of dealing with all of these problems are approaching critical mass. Subscriptions are cancelled, I secured refunds on my Necrom preorders... seems like a good time.

Yeah, the jokes aside, what you describe can definitely trigger this sort of anti-botting system. Giving the account names a numbering scheme and creating more than one at a time definitely looks suspicious. What you are planning on doing seems okay as you aren't exactly planning on using all of the accounts simultaneously but just want them to fill guild space or carry items you manually transfer (as opposed to automated transfer).
It could be worth keeping at it with the ticket. Just don't keep filing new tickets because that is resetting the entire process and spamming tickets will result in your tickets being ignored as spam. One ticket should be enough for all three accounts I think, since the person helping you should be able to help you with all accounts on one ticket alone.

@ZOS_Kevin

Aca2017

Ratzkifal wrote: »

It could be worth keeping at it with the ticket. Just don't keep filing new tickets because that is resetting the entire process and spamming tickets will result in your tickets being ignored as spam. One ticket should be enough for all three accounts I think, since the person helping you should be able to help you with all accounts on one ticket alone.
@ZOS_Kevin

Thanks for the clarification. Sounds like I tripped over an automated safeguard of some sort, creating 3x accounts with account names of this sort of mechanistic nature, all within a 30 minute interval. That constitutes a plausible explanation.

(What was particularly strange, other than the futile declaration of war... we lizards got a laugh out of that... was the canned verbiage from the Code of Conduct talking about third party applications, bugs, and PvP scams... none of which are even remotely relevant in my case, all of which in my case would fall under headings like "jumping to conclusions" and "guilty until proven innocent"; it seems false positives based on erroneous preconceptions can leave bite marks. Now I have to spend hours/days/weeks going back and forth with Support trying to reverse a sanction for something I did not do, and never had any intention of doing.)

But anyway, as documented, I have (unfortunately?) already filed 3x tickets, one per account. If that doesn't go anywhere, I will wait 72-96 hours and repeat with a single ticket, and reference all 3x account names and their corresponding "deactivation" tickets in the problem description.

Though I must say, I consider the whole ticket system a vexed question at the moment.

I am preparing to post on another problem (I want to give it another day or two, see if I get a response... but definitely it feels like Support has "hung up" on me), which bears on this issue of "proper use" of the ticket system, or "proper ticket technique" if you prefer. I have had a lot of ticket activity recently, with a number of different accounts (16x accounts, I spontaneously quit receiving access code and automated recovery emails on 8x of them, and ALL of those 8x required manual intervention from Support to resolve). It started with no access code emails, and graduated to no "recovery" emails (when I tried to change email addresses to a more reliable service provider for myself), and along the way I also discovered 1x account I had completely forgotten how to log into (which remains unresolved, and will definitely require manual intervention from support).

(With the 8x "good" accounts, I remained able to receive access code and recovery emails, at the same email service provider as the 8x "broken" accounts... and was able to transition the 8x to a more reliable email service provider; the 8x broken accounts were intractable, unfortunately. But I find it difficult to blame all of these pathologies on "the internet" or glitchy email service providers.)

With the 8x broken accounts, I did not have access to the ticket mechanism under "My Support" (the relevant ESO account was not accessible to me), and there is no mechanism I can find allowing a user to check for updates based on a ticket number, so I have had to throw tickets over the fence, and rely on a response, without any way to view them again.

In my experience, it has not mattered whether I was "nice" and filed 1 ticket at a time, or "naughty" and filed multiple tickets at a time (in bursts, one ticket for each account)... 19x out of 20x tickets have simply been "ignored" (or at least, that is what it looks like to a mere customer who is dealing with Support as a cryptic black box).

And of course, there is no way to get someone on the phone, schedule one or more windows of time to collaborate, and troubleshoot things systematically. As it stands, the vast majority of my requests for help through the ticket system have not yielded one whit of assistance. All I know how to do is wait 96 hours and file another ticket (which is typically also "ignored"), and hope after repeating this process 3/4/5+ times there will eventually be a response (all of which ends up imposing weeks of lead time on the simplest problem resolution).

Having said all this, so far, this has "worked", however imperfectly. Before these 3x accounts were "banned" this afternoon, I had whittled 8x "broken" accounts down to 1x (though of course, now I am back up to 4x accounts that need manual intervention... how many weeks will that take?).

But beyond that, even when there is a response initially (not an automated request for identifying information, but a response that feels like a real human), 9 times out of 10 Support goes dark halfway through the resolution process. And I am dealing with this now with that 1x still-broken account. I filed a ticket, received an apparently automated response requesting identifying information. I supplied that identifying information, received confirmation from Support (a human this time, I believe) that my ownership of the relevant account had been verified. I confirmed the email address I wanted configured on the account (first putting that email address through a few passes of "Forgot UserID?" to make extra certain it was not already in use anywhere). All of this happened fairly expeditiously... but that was the end of that. Support once again went dark (indeed, at each step I half expected Support to go dark... it has happened at each of these stages before; seems like blind luck if something actually goes all the way to resolution). It is almost as if... if a problem is not resolved within ~48 hours, the ticket is basically closed/deleted/whatever, and all subsequent customer communication is automatically sent to the "trash folder". And it generally requires 12-24 hours for Support to respond. ESO support is not allowing itself enough resources to actually solve problems.

What do I do, except file another ticket, and hope?

Like I said, I think we have reached critical mass. I will stick with it a little longer, then bag it. I am just a player, and I am having to pay too high a price in time/effort dealing with all these problems.

TaSheen

Don't file "another ticket". Wait on the ones you've already filed. Once you receive a response, reply to that response. Every time you file another ticket you get shuffled to the back of the line.

The first response you get is almost guraranteed to be "bot dumb". Just restate the whole of the initial email in your reply, and send it back.

This is the most.... uh. I can't say that here. Anyway. Don't do new tickets. Reply to any response you get from support. Over and over and over and over and....

Um. You get the idea....

Aca2017

TaSheen wrote: »

Don't file "another ticket". Wait on the ones you've already filed.

I know you mean well, you are trying to help... but...

How long do I wait? 96 hours? Done that. A week? Done that. A month? Haven't tried that (10 days of dead air is about the most I have been willing to consider), but 8x broken accounts that each need a long-suffering 10-30+ days to resolve, and must be resolved serially... do the math.

What service provider requires paying customers to wait arbitrary lengths of time, without any communication, without managing any expectations, for any hint as to when or even whether a show-stopping technical problem is going to be rectified, without a clear policy of refunds or other inducements to remain a customer? How long should such a service provider expect to remain in business?

And this most recent 1x broken account, it WAS the only ticket I had active at the time. I was exchanging information with Support twice a day for a few days, responding promptly, patiently, courteously to all requests for information no matter how senseless and redundant they were. Then Support went dark, all by itself (there was no other ticket to "shuffle me to the back of the line"). There is no structure to this nonsense. And in each ticket (like these "deactivation" tickets) they say "If we don't hear from you in 96 hours, we will consider the issue resolved." So, I have to wait a week or a month for a response, "trust" they haven't hung up on me? A week or a month before I can safely conclude I *have* been hung up on, and in the meantime I must let ALL the other problems I am dealing with go, possibly irretrievably?

Show-stopping ESO dysfunction on multiple accounts simultaneously... and in the case of the first 8x, it was dysfunction that came out of nowhere (spontaneously, I did nothing to trigger it... access code emails that had worked literally for years simply stopped working, and I could not log into the website or the game)... 8x broken, slowly whittled down to 1x broken, and now back up to 4x broken.

Its like a relentless denial of service attack, everything is getting taken down at once for reasons that are cryptic at best, and apparently, for all practical purposes, none of it fixable because I am not "doing tickets right".

Am I frustrated? Do I see this as senseless dysfunction and a complex of massive organizational anti-patterns? Am I ready to quit ESO and play something else, or nothing at all (and take the consumer resources I have historically devoted to expansions and crowns and etc elsewhere, do something else with with those resources for a while, perhaps permanently)? Yes, yes and yes, and yes. And the longer and harder this becomes, the easier it becomes to follow through on that.

Not a good way to run a railroad. Very frustrating.

spartaxoxo

I know it's frustrating, but she is correct that waiting for an answer is the best course of action. Give it a minimum of 5 business days and then update the existing ticket rather than creating new ones.

Ratzkifal

Yes, update an existing ticket. And remember to be polite despite the frustration.

kargen27

The last three or four days I have been seeing gold sellers (for real world money) in zone chats. I'm wondering if you didn't get caught up in ZoS being over zealous in dealing with those accounts.

TaSheen

kargen27 wrote: »

The last three or four days I have been seeing gold sellers (for real world money) in zone chats. I'm wondering if you didn't get caught up in ZoS being over zealous in dealing with those accounts.

Possible. I don't have zone active.... but it's certainly a real possibility.

Gadamlub14_ESO

wouldnt be the first time. Players got snagged in launch month by the Gold seller bans for giving their friends or spouses gold.

ZOS_Hadeostry

Greetings,

After further review we have decided to move this thread to a category we think is more appropriate for this topic.

Thank you for your understanding

Gadamlub14_ESO

and into the pits of Oblivion it goes.

Aorys

Ratzkifal wrote: »

My guess is this was an automatic thing to combat botting. In order to create a bot the botters do need to obtain valid copies of ESO as well of course, so even though you presumably weren't planning on using all of these accounts at the same time through an automated program, you did trigger the system by behaving the exact same way that someone who intends to bot would.

What exactly were you planning on using these three accounts for? It's definitely not an every day occurence that someone would create three accounts in quick succession with the same name. The only people with two accounts that I know created their second one long after the first.

I created 10 accounts in the same day, just to have my own guildbanks. I see no problem there

UnabashedlyHonest

spartaxoxo wrote: »

I know it's frustrating, but she is correct that waiting for an answer is the best course of action. Give it a minimum of 5 business days and then update the existing ticket rather than creating new ones.

According to the notifications a person should wait a maximum of 4 days before updating their ticket. The notifications say "if we don't hear back from you within 4 days we will consider the issue to be resolved". So a player has to keep their ticket updated at least every 4 days.

Aca2017

"Waiting for a response" on tickets, once again, has proven to be futile. Consistent with my experience throughout, my most recent tickets have been ignored from the outset (again), or hung up on (again). And it has not mattered whether I have one ticket active or half a dozen, the outcome has (with just a couple of exceptions) been the same.

It really seems like tickets are timed out (I assume this is automated), regardless of the current state of the response (including seemingly mere "moments" from resolution... when I have had a constructive response, my ownership of the affected account has been verified by Support and confirmed back to me, I have provided the last bit of information required for Support to take action, and maybe 5 minutes of work is all that would be required to get me back on the road... never to hear from Support again). Beyond that, based on my experience with the rare few tickets that have made at least SOME progress, as far as I can tell tickets get tossed a LOT faster than 96 hours (I have had tickets receive an initial response, only to go dark a little over 48 hours after filing them). And responding proactively on these tickets (i.e. tickets which have yielded at least some response, however pro forma in nature), indicating assistance is still required, in order to keep them "alive" has been as futile as everything else I have tried.

(This is as wasteful of Bethesda/Zenimax resources as it is of customer resources... Support people waste time looking at my account, verifying my information, etc, only to have the rug pulled.)

This has been an unpleasant 5 weeks. Chronic technical problems (that came out of nowhere, suddenly, affecting half of my accounts at random, without any apparent cause and certainly without explanation, and involving the same email service provider(s)) with 2-factor authentication, account management, and account recovery... all requiring Support intervention. Pre-emptive "guilty until proven innocent" deactivation of accounts (apparently for the crime of using account names that are easy for me to remember, and before I could even register game codes to them, much less engage in any form of presumptive mayhem)... all requiring Support intervention. And of course the icing on the cake: A culture of relentless "apathetic disregard" on the part of Support, which demands inordinate effort on the part of the customer to have even the slightest chance.

In contrast, in discussing these ESO problems with my son (who is also a "gamer"), I realized: I have *NEVER* needed Guild Wars 2 support (not even once in ~11 years, starting with the "Beta Weekend Events" back in summer 2012). Sure, there have been unplanned outages (affecting everyone), internet glitches that have caused disconnects (transient), defects in specific content encounters that prevents anyone from getting the correct (or any) rewards, etc... but nothing specific to me that has ever actually malfunctioned, that could affect me for longer than needed to restart the game client, much less that needed some sort of service provider intervention to rectify. Indeed, I have absolutely NO IDEA what Guild Wars 2 support is like. I must assume they offer some form of it, but I have never had any cause to request any, much less any cause to complain about it. ArenaNet et al seems to know what it is doing.

So, I am done. ESO is not for me anymore. An entertainment product needs to be entertaining, not like having wisdom teeth pulled. And a service provider that treats customers as valueless, disposable commodities is a non-starter as far as I am concerned. If I can't access a stable, functioning product, and my efforts to solicit provider assistance to rectify provider-imposed defects are routinely ignored... no-one should be surprised if I discontinue service and take my business elsewhere.

I wish Bethesda/Zenimax the best of luck. Perhaps they will manage to avoid alienating so many customers that they end up crushed. But if my experience is representative, I think are risking that. As things stand now, given this extremely negative recent experience, I really can't imagine ever bothering with them again...

Though of course, that is what I thought about World of Warcraft when I quit 12 years ago, and I just reactivated my account(s) and am considering playing again (Battle.net technology for account access/management has changed quite a bit since I quit, I needed their help getting things re-integrated; beyond that, while I expected hassles, they did not jerk me around, which I consider to be a refreshing and hopeful sign). My son indicates the current expansion is not as underwhelming (much less as outright alienating) as several of the last few. I may jump in for 30 days to see if it has anything to offer.

(So who knows, 10/whatever years from now, I might give ESO another try, if it is still around... though fair warning: I will START with their Support again, to get these few unresolved technical issues dealt with, and regain access to ALL of my accounts. If their Support culture remains unchanged, it will be a very short and uneventful experiment, consisting of being ignored once more, for old time's sake... for exactly 96 hours.)

ZOS_Bill

@Aca2017

Please check your forum inbox as we've sent you a rundown regarding the status of the tickets you've sent in.

Aca2017

ZOS_Bill wrote: »

@Aca2017

Please check your forum inbox as we've sent you a rundown regarding the status of the tickets you've sent in.

ZOS_BILL is trying to help, and I have responded to him via PM, but...

"As coroner, I must aver, I've thoroughly examined her. This horse is not only merely dead, she's really most sincerely dead!"

(Hijacking this to an allusion about flogging dead horses ruins the alliteration... apologies to Arlen/Harburg.)