Beware of Battlegrounds: They Can Lock You Out of Your Account

DragonRacer

I was trying to enjoy the last night of Crazy King weekend with three friends all in party chat on PS5. First match went fine. Second match (Eld Angavar arena) everything seemed fine except my UI said we were still “waiting for players” and the scores were zero. Even though we were running around capturing flags and killing players. For my friends in chat, they said their UI was updating just fine. I died and chose to “release” but that timer stuck at zero as well.

I opened the scoreboard and chose “leave battleground”. Got stuck on an endless load screen back to Vvardenfell. Closed app. Tried to log back in. No error code, just “login failed, an unexpected internal error occurred” and to contact customer service.

Troubleshooting on my end has been: closed and relaunched app twice. Turned off PS5 and turned back on. Tried to log into EU server (I mainly play NA). All are same error message. I am 100% locked out of my account.

After talking to some guildmates, I have learned during Midyear Mayhem that two people experienced the same error, contacted support, and were told it is a bug the team is aware of and that there was nothing support could do. They would have to wait until the next maintenance for their accounts to be unlocked.

So, I did submit a ticket (240819-004345). The agent who texted me has escalated my case. Now I await an email I assume will tell me I am SOL until Wednesday.

Thankfully, as the GM of a major trading guild, our bids are already in for tomorrow. But it’s kinda ridiculous an entire game mode is so bugged it can LOCK YOU OUT FOR DAYS and it’s known, but no fix? And we’re pushing out special BG weekends while this is a thing?

What’s the status on this major known bug? Because I’m certainly not playing BGs again until there’s a fix and that’s a real shame because I was just beginning to enjoy these.

spartaxoxo

Have you tried deleting your saved data? Not the game itself, just the save data. It just has some settings like screen size. It probably won't work but worth a shot.

And yeah, that's wild that you're locked out that long.

@ZOS_Kevin

Is this a known issue?

DragonRacer

spartaxoxo wrote: »

Have you tried deleting your saved data? Not the game itself, just the save data. It just has some settings like screen size. It probably won't work but worth a shot.

And yeah, that's wild that you're locked out that long.

@ZOS_Kevin

Is this a known issue?

I’ll give it a shot tomorrow, but my hope is low. I do not have an email reply yet, but this response a guildmate got below when the same identical bug happened to them during Midyear Mayhem proves ZOS is aware and just… letting this continue to happen to people. Not closing BGs until it’s fixed. Actually PROMOTING it with special weekends like Crazy King. All with no way to even help people beyond “wait until the next server maintenance”.

I have words for how this feels as a customer paying ESO+ for 10 years and being endlessly supportive of the game, but those words are not allowed.

(Support response to guildmate with identical bug encountered)

Syldras

DragonRacer wrote: »

everything seemed fine except my UI said we were still “waiting for players” and the scores were zero. Even though we were running around capturing flags and killing players. For my friends in chat, they said their UI was updating just fine. I died and chose to “release” but that timer stuck at zero as well.

Interesting. It's not completely the same, but I also encountered a bigger bug a few days ago, which also seemed related to UI not updating (which is the reason I will mention it here).

My main died in the Archive and I couldn't do anything because it kept saying "Waiting for the fight to end", while the fight was, obviously, long over. I couldn't teleport to anyone, I couldn't use the "/stuck" command, everything resulted in the message "You can't do that while you're dead". Logging out and logging in again resulted in my character's corpse being moved to the wayshrine in the main hall of the Archive, with the same message on screen and again nothing to be done. I logged out once more, and, hours later, when I gave it another attempt, the corpse was moved out of the Archive, to the Mournhold wayshrine, where I could finally respawn. I was lucky; I already messaged support and expected to be unable to use my main for days until they manually change his status.

I really hope that support can help you somehow.

ZOS_Kevin

spartaxoxo wrote: »

Have you tried deleting your saved data? Not the game itself, just the save data. It just has some settings like screen size. It probably won't work but worth a shot.

And yeah, that's wild that you're locked out that long.

@ZOS_Kevin

Is this a known issue?

This is a known issue and not working as intended. Though the lock out should only be 30min, rather than a few days. We will be fixing this in a future incremental. We did note it in our known issues section of the patch notes.

However, we will pass this along because of the longer time and see if anything else is going on.

Shara_Wynn

Perhaps the OP should get some compensation then, in line with what others received while having their accounts locked out during the anniversary event?

16k seals of endeavors sounds about right as a starting offer?

Also I am not posting this to be inflammatory. I am posting this to say that what is good for the goose is good for the gander and that all who have their accounts locked for extended periods of time through no fault of their own, should receive fair compensation for their loss of game time.

Since we have just had a scheduled maintenance, does that mean that the OP will now have to wait two weeks for this to be resolved?

If so then compensation is absolutely warranted imho.

DragonRacer

ZOS_Kevin wrote: »

spartaxoxo wrote: »

Have you tried deleting your saved data? Not the game itself, just the save data. It just has some settings like screen size. It probably won't work but worth a shot.

And yeah, that's wild that you're locked out that long.

@ZOS_Kevin

Is this a known issue?

This is a known issue and not working as intended. Though the lock out should only be 30min, rather than a few days. We will be fixing this in a future incremental. We did note it in our known issues section of the patch notes.

However, we will pass this along because of the longer time and see if anything else is going on.

@ZOS_Kevin

Your link actually alarms me even more because this is NOT the same issue we are talking about here.

Your link states this: If you’re disconnected from a Group Random Battleground during play, you may receive the message “You or a member of your team is locked out of queueing,” but no Deserter debuff is applied and the lockout timer will not expire for 30 minutes (even though the visible timer will expire after 5 minutes)."

This is NOT about a deserter timer or not being able to queue up for battlegrounds again. There is no such error message. This is me being locked out of the game 100% and it is definitely more than 30 minutes.

This horrific game-ending bug occurred around 9:45pm eastern last night. It is now 7:12am Eastern the next morning. I click to start up the ESO app on my PS5. I click "Play" on NA server. I now get a fun new message that is ERROR 304: This account is already logged in.

PLEASE tell me your team is aware of THIS bug. Support has not responded to my email since the text last night saying my issue was being escalated to a different team (which is fine because this was overnight, I get it). The other two people this EXACT same bug happened to - whose support email I posted saying support told them they would have to wait until the next maintenance to access their accounts again - they tried to log in every single day with no success. They had to wait 4-5 days for the next Wednesday maintenance, which did fix their accounts.

Fortunately, that means I only lose out on everything today - seals of endeavor, daily login reward, all the questing and content I could have been doing - so long as tomorrow morning's maintenance does unlock my account tomorrow morning.

But that "known issue" you posted is NOT this. This is much more egregious. Please tell me the team is aware...?

EDITED TO ADD: I guess apparently what you linked is a PC issue from their patch maintenance on Monday (yesterday). I am talking about the PlayStation gaming console. This is an entirely different, WORSE bug. It has now affected at least 3 people on console that I am aware of (myself included) since Midyear Mayhem. And the "fix" is being told you have to hope and pray the next server maintenance unlocks your account. That's not an acceptable long-term solution.

DragonRacer

Shara_Wynn wrote: »

Perhaps the OP should get some compensation then, in line with what others received while having their accounts locked out during the anniversary event?

16k seals of endeavors sounds about right as a starting offer?

Also I am not posting this to be inflammatory. I am posting this to say that what is good for the goose is good for the gander and that all who have their accounts locked for extended periods of time through no fault of their own, should receive fair compensation for their loss of game time.

Since we have just had a scheduled maintenance, does that mean that the OP will now have to wait two weeks for this to be resolved?

If so then compensation is absolutely warranted imho.

PC just had maintenance yesterday. Thankfully, I am on console whose maintenance is tomorrow morning. But yes, anyone who encounters this bug it seems will be locked out until their next platform maintenance, which can be a short or very long timeframe depending on when the error occurs.

Aurielle

Well, guess I’m not running BGs anytime soon. Thanks for the heads up, OP. I hope this gets resolved for you with tomorrow’s maintenance, and I hope you get compensated fairly.

DragonRacer

Oh my God, THE IRONY.

I see today's endeavors - which I am 100% locked out of even attempting to get thanks to this glitch and I am mega-bummed I can't get that nice 50 seals for the Oblivion Portal one.

But if y'all are willing to risk your account being locked out for an indefinite period of time, sure, go do those 2 Battlegrounds for a daily today.

This is shameful. SHAMEFUL. Do not promote a broken game mode that is locking paying customers out of your game.

Elsonso

DragonRacer wrote: »

@ZOS_Kevin

Your link actually alarms me even more because this is NOT the same issue we are talking about here.

Your link states this: If you’re disconnected from a Group Random Battleground during play, you may receive the message “You or a member of your team is locked out of queueing,” but no Deserter debuff is applied and the lockout timer will not expire for 30 minutes (even though the visible timer will expire after 5 minutes)."

This is NOT about a deserter timer or not being able to queue up for battlegrounds again. There is no such error message. This is me being locked out of the game 100% and it is definitely more than 30 minutes.

Yeah, it definitely does not sound like anything listed in the Patch Notes. The patch notes statements assume that the player can actually log into the game.

This does not mean that ZOS is unaware of the problem mentioned in this thread, but it appears that it is not in the Patch Notes section for known problems.

ZOS_Kevin

Thanks for clarifying. We'll pass this along and do an investigation incase this isn't a known issue. Will follow up when we have more info.

DragonRacer

Thank you. Kevin. I feel I have provided as much detail as possible surrounding the circumstances when the bug occurred, but if the team can think of any more details that would assist, just let me know and I'd be more than happy to provide.

@spartaxoxo - I tried deleting the saved game data on my PS5. I checked Cloud storage to see if there was any saved game data there to delete (there was not for ESO). I powered off the PS5 and unplugged it from the power outlet entirely for 30 minutes since I sometimes see that suggested as, I guess, some kind of hard power cycle? At any rate, after resetting my screen proportions and light to darkness ratio, I still was met with ERROR 304 - This account is already logged in. Even though it clearly is not as guild members see me in roster, marked as offline 13 hours ago, on the toon who encountered the bug, location being the Battleground arena that bugged out.

Aside from completely deleting and redownloading the game as a try, there appears to be nothing fixable about this on PS5 on my side. This is pretty clearly a problem on ZOS's end server-side and it is up to them to correct it. Speaking of which, no support email update as of yet.

I am now in the process... For Science! at this point... of waiting 84 years for my old PS4 to finishing copying files for the latest ESO update (all the more a reminder how improved QoL is on PS5 for this game, good Lord) to see if I can log into my account on there. I do recall when PS5 had that awful Rawl'kha bug where characters going to a certain part of the northern end of the map would crash and become stuck there, that some folks were able to log in on their PS4 and move their toon to safety (or else support had to go in and move that toon to safety for them, which begs the question of why that can't be done for this BG bug as well?). I hold little hope, but it is the last thing I can try on the client side.

Man, I understand PvP is not very populated, but I can't help but think were this happening to people doing dungeons or trials or overland questing or house decorating - getting indefinitely locked out of all toons, their entire account, on both servers, simply for playing the game and encountering this bug - that this would be a much higher priority fix. Or at least would be more support help than "wait until next maintenance". Which also makes me curious if tomorrow morning's console maintenance will fix this for me before support eventually tells me "sorry, can't help" like they did to the others. LOL

What a mess.

spartaxoxo

Another way I've fixed that error besides the PS4 thing is to try and login to the European server. I fully logged into the character, messed around for a couple minutes in game, then switched back. But I never had anything as severe as what you're experiencing.

I hope one of these fixes work because it's absolutely ridiculous to have to wait so long.

I think the PS4 thing you're trying is the most likely to work given what happened back with Rawl'kha.

DragonRacer

@spartaxoxo I already tried to log into EU. Does not work/fix for this issue.

PS4 copying files now at 83%… LOL

spartaxoxo

Dang! Good luck 🤞🍀

reazea

DragonRacer wrote: »

spartaxoxo wrote: »

Have you tried deleting your saved data? Not the game itself, just the save data. It just has some settings like screen size. It probably won't work but worth a shot.

And yeah, that's wild that you're locked out that long.

@ZOS_Kevin

Is this a known issue?

I’ll give it a shot tomorrow, but my hope is low. I do not have an email reply yet, but this response a guildmate got below when the same identical bug happened to them during Midyear Mayhem proves ZOS is aware and just… letting this continue to happen to people. Not closing BGs until it’s fixed. Actually PROMOTING it with special weekends like Crazy King. All with no way to even help people beyond “wait until the next server maintenance”.

I have words for how this feels as a customer paying ESO+ for 10 years and being endlessly supportive of the game, but those words are not allowed.

(Support response to guildmate with identical bug encountered)

Well this is educational. Thank you. *facepalm*

DragonRacer

Hmmm hold up. It did finally let me into the EU character now that I made years ago during the Summerset community event to unlock the Psijiic Grand Villa.

Gosh, so many free crates LOL

Guess I will try NA again after lunch to see if getting into EU jostled anything…

DragonRacer

Welp, answer is nope: I got into EU, opened a bunch of free crates, logged out.

Tried to log in to NA on PS4 - no error code, now just the “LOGIN FAILED An unexpected internal error has occurred. Contact customer service…”

Tried again to log into NA on PS5 - same internal error message.

And no update from said customer service as of yet.

DragonRacer

Guess I will just have to hope maintenance magically fixes this tomorrow. I am still locked out of PS NA and the only support response was hours ago saying it was escalated to another team.

I have so many questions and am trying to be patient, but I feel like I’ve been put into a back corner here. At least the guildmates who experienced this last month were told maintenance might fix it and they would be compensated. I haven’t even been told that much. I am going 100% off hope given to me by fellow players.

Bobby_Digital81

@ZOS_GinaBruno @ZOS_Kevin This is unacceptable. How can people be locked out of their account for playing a Battlegrounds match? This was happening during Whitestrake's Mayhem less then a month ago and no word from ZOS or letting the community know that this is happening. People just have to wait and pray that their account gets unlocked after scheduled server maintenance? People spend hundreds of dollars each year to enjoy your game, but get penalized if they want to play the game by getting their account locked out. I hope the people that get locked out of their accounts get some type of compensation. Should really be able to answer a ticket if someone is locked out and resolve it within 24 hours. Not let them wait until maintenance with the hope that it might get resolved. I really enjoy this game, but hearing about these types of issues and the extended wait for a hopeful fix is wrong and needs to be dealt with better.

Rkindaleft

I can absolutely confirm that this bug is now pretty well known to people on PS/NA and at least 2 people I know personally have been locked out of their accounts for more than a day.

My raid lead had this happen to her and wasn't able to get back into her account for 3-4 days when she crashed in BGs during MYM leading to getting stuck in a loop of endless load screens. She blue screened at the start of the game and wasn't stuck in a glitched BG instance like OP was, so there seems to be a couple different ways that people have gotten the bug.

I took this image from what was uploaded in our discord a couple weeks ago. ZOS offered her 1000 crowns and a couple other things as compensation.

DragonRacer

Amazing that I have to get all of this information from players and not support itself.

Still no response after the “we’ve escalated” email almost 7 hours ago. No mention of server reboot or compensation. Just hoping the maintenance tomorrow fixes it.

Living on a prayer.

MidniteOwl1913

I will be avoiding the BG's until this is resolved, after tonight that is because maintenance tomorrow.

DragonRacer

The good news! Server maintenance does seem to be the fix for this issue as I can now finally log back into my PS NA account after being locked out for the past 35 hours.

The bad news: still no response from ZOS support at all. Not about any compensation for missing at minimum my daily log in reward (which now locks me out of the final day reward - not a giant deal, but it’s the principle of the matter at this point) and the Seals of Endeavor, including that nice 50 seal one for closing an Oblivion Portal.

And zero response when I desperately ask if the character who encountered this Battlegrounds glitch is even safe to log into. His last location still shows the BG Arena that caused this mess. If I log into him, will I be locked out again?

I guess until someone decides to actually respond to my support email, I’ll just have to avoid that character until the night before the next server maintenance. Since apparently you won’t be helped otherwise and I don’t want to risk being locked out for, like, two weeks.

Ingenon

I think that the next scheduled console server reboot is September 4, when Update 43 releases on console.

DragonRacer

Ingenon wrote: »

I think that the next scheduled console server reboot is September 4, when Update 43 releases on console.

I believe so as well. So I guess Dro’khar will sit there in my own personal timeout until 5 minutes before I go to bed the night of Sept. 3rd. Then I’ll check him and either it’ll be fine or I’ll only be locked out for the duration of one sleep cycle. LOL

Boy, it’s fun trying to manage this kinda stuff totally in the dark and running off assumptions…

ZOS_Kraken

@DragonRacer Can you please tell me your ticket number?

DragonRacer

ZOS_Kraken wrote: »

@DragonRacer Can you please tell me your ticket number?

It is Reference # 240819-004345

Been “waiting on agent” after escalation since noon Eastern yesterday.

Thankfully, this morning’s server maintenance has granted me access to my account again. But it doesn’t answer my question about if logging into the character who was affected is safe nor does it answer my compensation question. Those last details are summarized in this morning’s email reply to that ticket number I sent this morning, so hopefully that was at least received.

DragonRacer

Additionally, if this assists the team at all in trying to replicate/diagnose/fix this bug so that people can play BGs again without fear, I spoke with some active BG-playing guildmates who do multiple daily and have never encountered this bug. They mostly play solo BG.

I have never encountered this bug in the occasional solo BGs I have done in the past either.

I got bugged out - and the two guildmates last month who got bugged out - in group BGs. So there may be a clue there.

ZOS_Kraken

@DragonRacer I have left you a forums message about the status of your ticket.