Thoughts on the pre-auth

Gareske

FIRST OF ALL!
-The damage has been done
-I realize that hindsight isn't helpful in this case but rather mocking
-If you choose to sit/stand/balance (whatever it is you do) and read this, you have no room to complain about it.
-I am beyond pissed off with this service, spelling errors might be a common issue, and i do apologize for that.

While I can say that Zenimax has tried to make a dent within the current problem of subscriptions (though what seems to no avail) i feel no sympathy for them nor the support staff because they knew what they signed up for, but as you can tell not a lot of common sense was put into execution.

HAD THEY A DECENT AMOUNT OF SENSE, what they would have done at least for their verification process is charge 1 penny. (0.01) as a quick ping to make sure the account was valid surely everyone has at least 1 penny in their account, so the issue might have decreased.

SECONDLY, had they a decent amount of sense, for some of us who ordered the digital copy, you know the one online that we paid w/ a card for anyway? We should not have had to setup a subscription in any way shape or form in order to access the 30 days because we just bought the game, ergo the account is OBVIOUSLY valid (for the time being, not sure if gift cards work)

FINALLY, World of Warcraft, back in the vanilla age, didn't *** up THIS bad (not that i think, i'm kinda looking through rose colored glasses at the moment. and what relation does this have? I have NO EARTHLY IDEA! )

But thank you Zenimax for putting forward your notion of cash before customer. I know a lot of businesses have the same thing, but they basically go around and B.S you, saying that the customer is important, trust me i know. But at least your honest about it, i'll give you that.

What should be done, is to take away the required subscription and just give us our game time. if you feel that in any way that is too much game time to give for free. you should've caught that while you were still planning and reduced the free giveaway time.

Now given the major hiccup in your operations naturally, you must be reprimanded, which quite of people are apparently doing as of now. On top of that, you know some sort of reparation is in order if you want to keep a decent chunk of the people around.
SO what do you plan on doing? Giving away free time? Exclusive items? Free Expansion?

I know i'm getting my hopes up here, but cmon guys. Admit it. you royally F'ed up.

Thank you for your time dear readers, i'm off to go ride the space corgi.

Quoriah

Unfortunately, I think they only recently discovered how they account platform works and handles setting up the game and choosing the subscription. By then it was already too late to do something about it.

I would rather think this since if they knew beforehand how it worked, it only shows:
- blatant ignorance and them thinking they can ride it out
- poor design or foresight on their game direct / product manager / UX designer since they should have predicted this would have happened

Also, allowing people to play and then terminating access is a WTF moment which they tried to amend with that system notification.

I don't have a problem with being asked to setup a recurrent subscription or adding my credit card to said subscription. That's how MMOs are working. (I am in the same boat as others being unable to play due to that silly pre-authorization)

What I do have a problem with is the way they handled this situations.

Other companies (both gaming or other software vendors) have a better way to manage recurrent subscriptions.

One way to do it - and in my humble opinion the most elegant way to handle this:
- buy the product
- set the account up
- be asked to choose the preferred subscription & add your credit card (no pre-authorization; they just ensure the CC is not expired)
- 5-10 days before the renewal day said company verifies you have the funds
- you get an email saying "you sub is getting close to renewal and you will be billed accordingly on day X; if you wish to change your subscription click here"
- or you get "you seem to be missing the necessary funds from your bank account; your subscription will be renew on day X, so please make sure to have the funds ready or you will no longer be able to access the game past day X"

Another way is to split the billing system in 2: preferred payment method (add as many CCs you want) and choosing the subscription. You then choose the subscription and select the CC of your choice to pay your subscription with.