MaximumCat wrote: »

If Zenimax actually puts forth some effort to listen to its customer base and address our concerns/problems, then there may yet be hope for ESO long-term. Otherwise, a game I was hoping would take the MMO crown... will fade into obscurity and f2p land.

I fear you are correct. This game was nowhere near ready for release. There is a fundamental unresolved problem with the phase technology that seems to mean almost any quest that requires a spawn can bug out under certain circumstances.

And the Support and communications has been so bad you can only shake your head in bewilderment. Practically unannounced patches that then trash the game. Practically no forum presence on forums that are antiquated and badly designed.

Truly bizarre financial requirements that come across as deeply dubious whatever the true intent may be.

And underpinning it all is the feeling that the customer means nothing. The decision to schedule regular EU maintenance for Sunday day time is simply astounding. It's either a mistake that should be quickly and volubly rescinded or it's a rather telling For Our Convenience Not Yours.

If they truly want to win a long term paying customer base for a game still being beta tested then they have to really up their game all round and not just take it for granted that people will sub no matter how shoddily they are treated.

I really want this game to succeed as a sub game but like I said - I'm having severe doubts that it will unless ZMO wake up and smell the gasoline.

Ragnar_Lodbrok wrote: »

rayvn03b14_ESO wrote: »

They're up against WoW, they just went live, and they're already alienating people knowing full well (if they have any brains for this) that their biggest competitor has a huge and highly anticipated expansion coming in late fall.

The issue isn't who does and who doesn't have 15.00 in their bank account. Let's not go there. The issue is that they failed or didn't bother to be upfront about what they were going to do, and why.

People are upset about that, the servers, and so on, and they're just shrugging and not addressing it. That's not good either. Even a brief message to let everyone know what they're doing/not doing/are picking their noses and will get to it when they feel like it is better than being ignored.

Myself and a few others have sent off notes to The Consumerist, and one other person at least has contacted the BBB. I will say for myself that had they been upfront about what they were going to do, I would have griped and grouched, (Most MMOs these day don't try to get payment info up front, they wait at least until you're hooked after the 30 days lol) but it would have a lot more respect for them than I do right now.

TL;DR: A bunch of crying over typical mmo payment systems and the fact it isnt wow clone #369

By writing something like this you only make yourself look shallow.

There's a multitude of problems with this launch. Individually none of them are major ones, but there's a lot of them, and the lack of communication, which is what OP's post was all about, multiplies those problems a thousandfold.

Pretty much any article and book about MMOs repeats time and time again that open and timely communication with your player base is paramount, especially at launch, especially when there are problems. Players can forgive a lot when they know they're being listened to, that their concerns and issues are being taken seriously. How someone manages to ignore all that advice is beyond me.

otomodachi wrote: »

MaximumCat wrote: »

steveb16_ESO46 wrote: »

I'm still subbing this game but fear that a lot of people are not going to be so tolerant. I can see this going FTP in 6 months purely because in the last couple of weeks they seem to have taken a clear and deliberate aim at their own feet and set the fire-mode to automatic.

Due to the fact that I have yet to hear from a real person regarding my problems, the fact that virtually everyone else I have read about is having the same issue, and the fact that we paid for the game client, and must pay again or activate a sub. in order to get the game time we already paid for... I am not so tolerant.
If Zenimax actually puts forth some effort to listen to its customer base and address our concerns/problems, then there may yet be hope for ESO long-term. Otherwise, a game I was hoping would take the MMO crown... will fade into obscurity and f2p land.

LEAF. Listen, empathize, act, follow-through. Really easy stuff. It took me 72 hours, 3 CSR reps and a forum admin for anyone to actually follow the first step and read my support ticket. When stuff like this happens, it's usually because the reps are overloaded and also don't have the actual authority to fix specific issues on their own due to policy.

Whatever the reason, perception is reality and for a lot of people the perception is we are paying for service we are not getting, I appreciate they are getting slammed but (at the risk of sounding mercenary) that's not our problem. It just shows poor organization on their part that they are not able to step up.

All I can say is I have been playing since launch. I have had 0 problems with the game that were not in one way or another related to me. Perhaps I'm a minority, but I found the launch & subscription went pretty smooth for me.

Someone said they thought that game cards were constricted to up subscription numbers, so I thought I'd point out that game cards are just non-recurring subscriptions, so the numbers are the same either way.

cheeser123 wrote: »

rayvn03b14_ESO wrote: »

Exactly. And, I strongly suspect that the delay in availability of game cards is to grab as many subs as they can first.

Well, duh. Zenimax doesn't work for you, they work for their shareholders.

Hating on people that are this frustrated with the game doesn't help anyone as this is essentially the only customer support any of us are seeing right now. and if its true that Zenimax do work for their shareholders (and I agree with you that they do) the only way to do this is to make money, they only way to do that is from happy customers. They need to connect the dots.

guschops_ESO wrote: »

Hating on people that are this frustrated with the game doesn't help anyone

.... who am I hating on? Sounds to me like I was pointing the finger directly at Zenimax for blatantly and callously working for shareholders' bottom line. Read between the lines, bro.

rug wrote: »

rayvn03b14_ESO wrote: »

They're up against WoW

Sorry I had to stop reading there. They're up against a game that is short of a decade old, who has been through all this and learnt from their mistakes. Did you experience WoW's launch ?

I did. It went much, much more smoothly than this. There were bugs - I fell through the world when using the Blink spell, and got stuck trying to harvest a resource node - but GM's quickly responded in game with assurances that they were being addressed. And they were.

In ESO the wait time for an email or phone response is measured in days, if it ever happens. And that is for the people who can play.

MaximumCat wrote: »

steveb16_ESO46 wrote: »

I'm still subbing this game but fear that a lot of people are not going to be so tolerant. I can see this going FTP in 6 months purely because in the last couple of weeks they seem to have taken a clear and deliberate aim at their own feet and set the fire-mode to automatic.

Due to the fact that I have yet to hear from a real person regarding my problems, the fact that virtually everyone else I have read about is having the same issue, and the fact that we paid for the game client, and must pay again or activate a sub. in order to get the game time we already paid for... I am not so tolerant.
If Zenimax actually puts forth some effort to listen to its customer base and address our concerns/problems, then there may yet be hope for ESO long-term. Otherwise, a game I was hoping would take the MMO crown... will fade into obscurity and f2p land.

Yup. I love the game itself. Don't mistake my griping for otherwise. But either these guys didn't hire enough people to keep up, or they just don't care to answer what people (as a collective, not case by case) are saying in regards to some things. It would go a long way to help smooth things over if they said something, even if it was to say they'll be saying something soon.

jamesharv2005ub17_ESO wrote: »

Seriously for every one person in here having issues there are 10,000 people happily playing the game. All this hyperbole will blow over once people who paid for value shipping finally get their boxes. People who dont have credit cards will simply have to wait till the end of the month for a gametime card. Its not the end of the world. The game will be around for years and years.

Wipe your chin, bro.

byghostlightrwb17_ESO wrote: »

this launch is already better than WoW's was, that didnt seem to hamper its success. Zen has only alienate a small subset of the population those too fickle and stubborn to face reality that these type of issues at launch happen. All these posts like your own serve to do to stop the devs seeing real issues on the forums (due to clutter) they have like "teleporting farmers" (hardly the first mmo to have them), the forum is full vocal and helpful disgruntled customers who wouldn't be happy until the game goes F2P or worse until it fails completely. Some people just dont want to be happy and satisfied. Once again funny your should bring up WoW and fail to remember how bad its launch was and look at it now.

This is the section of the forum where customers are supposed to report problems -- it's also the only functioning section of the forums, and most users making complaints to customer service are completely ignored. Where else should we complain about being locked out of the game, having broken items, missing game codes, etc.? Users are going to voice their complaints here.