In another thread, @Saerydoth posted the following, and I felt inspired to write my own thread rather than post it as a response because this has gotten REALLY too long for it's own good. XD

Saerydoth wrote: »

I work on a help desk myself (internal/technical for a non-gaming company)...when we work overtime (which is almost always voluntary for us) they ALWAYS get us pizza. How about some variety?!?

But in all seriousness, I agree. Keep in mind, the CS team JUST started about a week and a half ago. And they went to nothing (since the game wasn't launched) to an INSANE amount of tickets practically overnight. No matter HOW large the team is, this is going to create ungodly queue times. I feel for them, I'm sure these people are about pulling their hair out by now.

For everyone else complaining about wait times...settle down. They are doing the best they can. Things will calm down, this is a HUGE rush of initial tickets since everyone started playing the game all at once.

There is this huge tendency in the computer world, for people to get mad and call support the instant something doesn't work *exactly* as they suspect, and they feel they shouldn't ever have to do any troubleshooting on their end because "they paid for this". This is frankly ridiculous, and the majority of the issues that you encounter while playing CAN be resolved on your own. Yes, if you encounter an issue, you should definitely /bug it for future investigation. But also keep in mind that a lot of issues are caused by something on your end.

Like @Saerydoth above, I worked a brief time (Some two years) in a form of customer support, only this was inside a Free-To-Play video game, that was supported only by donations and had no form of currency in-game at all. My job wasn't a paid one, and was completely volunteer work. I had a desk that I'd commandeered in The City, and I would answer questions to anyone who walked by, be it an in game issue, story questions, or some technical question. New players would walk by and ask questions that a lot of the time others would either miss or ignore.

My job wasn't anything glamorous, and at first I was happily glad to help out where I could... But after several years of this, in a game that received very little maintenance beyond a monthly update, I began getting tired of my lack of power to do anything. I had a set time that I could log in between on a daily basis, and there was nobody else who took my position before or after that time. I had no breaks, no days off... And whenever I had to go to another location to help another player out, my table would sit abandoned.

Often times, I could only offer some suggestions of what to try, as many technical problems outstripped my knowledge of what could be going wrong. Many times, issues cropped up that were client side rather than server side, and I would be at a loss as to what to do besides offer a consoling "Sorry." The "rare" opportunity that something had gone wrong server side, I was in no position to do anything but notify someone from the Game Company.

There was but a single server, and a world-wide audience was constantly filtering through. Many times, I would direct a new player who only loosely spoke English to someone who I knew spoke their language, and if nobody else was on, I would direct them to a Forum, or a Player-made Neighborhood... Many times I had no clue if they progressed onwards or not. But it was all I could do.

During my stint as "barkeep" (As I called myself), certain players would be banned, and there were others that we wished WOULD be banned, but just kept popping up like wildfire (Sound familiar?) time and time again after they WERE banned, but as it was a Free-To-Play game, that did little to deter them and their griefing (Including, but not limited to, nasty things like stalking players, and out-of-game Videos that slandered not only the older players who were trying to help out newer players but also certain members of the in-game staff).

There was only ONE time in my time there that a player was 'improperly' banned, but the story turned out to be so convoluted that my impartial investigation was partially tied up into the official one, and it eventually turned out that the ban had been for the player's own protection, and was lifted after the behind-the-scenes scenario was resolved, many days later. I still don't understand the full extent of the situation, and only knowing that it DID involve one of the known parties that was causing trouble, I STILL don't want to know more than that.

This game that I used to work in has server troubles as well, from time to time. Player-created Games would break, the server would get overloaded to the point that the chat-systems refused to show people online unless you logged out and back in, and even on launch, the game was so completely overwhelmed that the owners needed to upgrade the server size many times over the course of three days. Not to mention the time that the entire game broke because a seemingly unrelated Amazon Server Cluster had crashed, making traveling through the game a near impossibility for many folks. Oh people complained to the Game Owners, but there was nothing THEY could do. It was all in the hands of the Amazon folks who were working to restore their broken server.

What about Bots, you ask? Gold Sellers are plain stupid, I'll agree... but some of the "bots" I've seen in my time has the Gold Sellers putting the term "Bots" to shame. I've seen people make Creations that allow in-real-time chat translations across other languages, in game, all through a single avatar. I've held conversations with one, that could parse my text and respond, so long as I mentioned it's name. There was one that would count-down, and lose track of where it was if you distracted it.

In my time there, I saw the community get torn apart by petty reasons and disputes, many, many times, and I hope that ESO, which is only JUST starting to spread its roots, does not suffer a similar fate. I left quite a while ago due to feeling strained by my position as "Support" and I don't know if anyone has taken it up in the mean time. Probably not, because people still try to get me to come back.

Some of you might be able to guess what game I was in, but if so, you're probably one of the ones who feel sorry for ZOS Customer Support. And if you don't know the game? Let me just say that it has had a rougher time staying alive than any game has. It was postponed for years originally because the Publishers pulled the plug on it and all of their online projects at the same time, while the game was in Beta, before the official launch was even being considered, and the only reason it survived was because of those who supported the game through all of its rough patches.

ZOS Customer Support no doubt has encountered just as much in one week as I did over my many years in support, and it's only just beginning for them. Their system is an officially made one, with layers upon layers of management and red tape, where as mine was simply just me and anyone who would take my redirects. I no doubt had it easy, but that doesn't make the stress any less real. I understand how this system works, and how easily it gets clogged up.

If you've managed to read through this long, entire post, then maybe you've started to get a feel for how the employees in ZOS Customer Service are fairing. I tried to give one major experience of my own for everything that I could think of. No doubt, I've missed a lot.

So, for now, I'll close this post, knowing that the Ending has Not yet been Written.

_Calum Traveler