ZOS outsourced their support, apparently. Header information in posted emails indicates it's an Oracle-owned support company hired in.

The game is fantastic as long as you don't have any issues that require a support ticket...still waiting for mine after 6 days but at least I can play.

I feel sorry for those that can't even login, they're really missing out.

But no I am not surprised, I've been thought many MMO releases and they're almost always the same.

wiz12268b14_ESO wrote: »

Nearly 5000 posts in this forum with complaints, bugs, inability to log in, etc less than two weeks into the games existence. Not a true shock but still a lot of problems.

But how many people are REALLY surprised? Even the most blind fan of this game knew there were problems going in. Obviously the same old problems are still there, but the new ones that have arisen are the ones that are mind blowing. But not all that shocking.

ZOS has never made an MMO therefore they have never had to deal with customers or servicing customers. So the way theyre handling it (or lack thereof) isnt a shock either.

Seriously anyone that has followed the development of this game without blinders on saw these things coming or could anticipate how they might be handled given a 'worst case' scenario.

I just hope everyone who feels let down remembers this the next time a game is hyped to high heaven and everyone is willing to throw their money into a company and a game that is clearly not ready for release.

I thought SWOTOR woke people up but it wasnt enough. Hopefully the implosion of this game will open enough eyes so that these gaming companies look to have a quality product, which goes beyond the game itself and how they handle all of the business surrounding the game.

i think they just gave up on us or maybe the auto replies were just enraging people instead of fixing anything.

I just saw that ZOS outsourced the customer to an Oracle owned company. I lol so hard I peed my panties. I told my husband he just looked at me and said get a refund this game is toast. Don't know if it's true but it would explain everything.

Yeah, they hired a company to do customer support and another one to host the forums.

I am wondering whether the forum staff is Zenimax or a contract company.

You would be surprised how many companies hire third party customer care management companies. The company that I worked for had numerous Fortune 500 companies including top 5 banks and computer manufacturers.
It is easier for a company to out source this sort of operation... the hardware to manage a call center is expensive and very specialized from the phone switching system to the network infrastructure and then there are the customer support scripts too. This is mostly for tier 1 support, escalation often goes to the company itself where they have a small center or a group that represents the company at the call center itself.

wiz12268b14_ESO wrote: »

Nearly 5000 posts in this forum with complaints, bugs, inability to log in, etc less than two weeks into the games existence. Not a true shock but still a lot of problems.

But how many people are REALLY surprised? Even the most blind fan of this game knew there were problems going in. Obviously the same old problems are still there, but the new ones that have arisen are the ones that are mind blowing. But not all that shocking.

ZOS has never made an MMO therefore they have never had to deal with customers or servicing customers. So the way theyre handling it (or lack thereof) isnt a shock either.

Seriously anyone that has followed the development of this game without blinders on saw these things coming or could anticipate how they might be handled given a 'worst case' scenario.

I just hope everyone who feels let down remembers this the next time a game is hyped to high heaven and everyone is willing to throw their money into a company and a game that is clearly not ready for release.

I thought SWOTOR woke people up but it wasnt enough. Hopefully the implosion of this game will open enough eyes so that these gaming companies look to have a quality product, which goes beyond the game itself and how they handle all of the business surrounding the game.

how are these forums any different to any other gaming forum? Doesn't matter if its an RPG, MMO, FPS all gaming forums look like these. Either some of these people are completely new to gaming or just are living with tin foil hats on their heads.

Having an external company handle customer service is no different than having one under their banner. they are still hiring new people to help deal with new people, on a new game.

This game has been one of the most stable launches of an mmo in ages, that doesnt mean it is flawless, that doesnt mean their isnt teething problem or game crushing big ones. Once again those things arent new to the world of gaming. You use the figure of 5000, no idea where that is from but given this game is supposed to have 5 milliion accounts at launch, that isnt a huge percentage of problems.

People need to stop trying to make this into a "sky is falling" thing, especially when all the greats like WoW, EQ2, DAoC, SWTOR all had exactly the same things.

Players are expecting perfection and that the customer services are capable of inhuman amounts of time management. Time is the answer to problems, if people werent willing to have these issues then perhaps they should have delayed getting into the game.

You make this about ESO, yet what we see here is typical of any gaming launch. Should a game launch without any issues, no bugs, everyone can play, SURE, in a perfect world we can also have world peace... doesnt mean it will ever happen.

shadyjane62 wrote: »

I just saw that ZOS outsourced the customer to an Oracle owned company. I lol so hard I peed my panties. I told my husband he just looked at me and said get a refund this game is toast. Don't know if it's true but it would explain everything.

sorry how exactly does having an external company handling the first stage of customer services a bad thing, that it spells doom for the game completely? So many massive companies outsource their help to overseas

You would very shock how many companies you think you are calling to get help, arent even located in the same country, let alone part of the official company you believe you are calling.

wiz12268b14_ESO wrote: »

Just because every other game had the same thing it doesnt mean every game that will ever come out should have them also. I guess hackers and bots are OK too? because every other game has also had them?

This right here is something that can't be avoided because of the nature of the media. I don't want to go into the methods used to create any of those things and inadvertently give someone the information of how to do these things, but it's very very hard to completely eradicate them, and likely it's actually impossible.

Bottom line is before the game was released it looked like a cash grab with how they set everything in motion.

Now after the game has launched it looks even more like a cash grab. But now there is some sort of 'proof'.

They really cant seriously think they will retain any sort of players with what is going on can they?

I said it well before launch (basically when they announced the CE paywall and pre order wall stuff) that theyre catering to a very specific player base. One that has a blind allegiance to this title. Not even ES but ESO itself. Those that look at the game as if it can do no wrong. Which I never understood how people could do it for something like this. Because they have followed it? Because they have time (and sadly emotion) vested in it?

How people can become so obsessed and taken in by a game before its release is beyond me. But we see it time and time again. ESO is just the latest.

But those are the people who will be milked and will foot the bill for any progress the game makes going forward. Until its eventual transformation to free to play. Which may or may not mean anything. If the game is still unplayable performance wise, and boring and generic playstyle wise then it will go the way of the other games out there. Which is sad. Because IPs that would make awesome MMOs are dwindling down. And none of them to date has been done 'correctly'.

So again this looks like the usual case of "give us all your money up front and hope we fix everything along the way to make it worth paying a sub for'. Except they dont even look like theyre making an effort. Excuses of third party issues are fine and all but where is ZoS in this? Nearly two weeks in and its crickets. Other than three stickied announcements up top there isnt much being said.

byghostlightrwb17_ESO wrote: »

sorry how exactly does having an external company handling the first stage of customer services a bad thing, that it spells doom for the game completely?

Consider the complaints about the Tier 1 support. They have reportedly closed tickets with canned responses that have no bearing on the issue the support ticket was submitted for.

It gives the impression that the Tier 1s are closing tickets for high ticket closure rates rather than customer satisfaction and problem resolution rate.

Problems and crying on official forums? Welcome to the net. Check out, just for fun, riots forum for LoL. It is a complete and utter desaster. You might think this game is unpopular and completely bug-ridden.

Paradox: the more the pigs fly in the forum, the more popular (maybe good) is the game.

We all expect problems at launch, even big ones effecting small amount of people. But the support team combined with the incredibly slow bug fixing is just insane. Week 2 and we can't access end-game content because ONE npc that people can SEE isn't talking to players, that literally can NOT be a hard thing to fix, temp fix it, I don't care, give her the voice of that female from Bleakrock with the squirrel, nobody would mind, make the character model a creeper from Minecraft, just slap a bandage on it and call it good. Instead, they risk thousands of players who can't progress leaving the game and not looking back, no matter what they promise in the future. Fans of the genre have Dark Souls II on PC to look forward to this month, while MMO fans have WS and EQN:LM to hop on right over the horizon, and with the first month being this crippling, I don't see much positive "you should get this" coming from people.

Not to sound... important, by any means, but factor this. I know about a dozen people that love MMOs, and haven't bought ESO. They've asked me and my group if it's worth grabbing. At launch and prerelease I was all for it and pulled a few into it, now since the rest of the game isn't working and about 5 days since the groundskeeper bug and it hasn't been fixed, such a minor issue not being able to be fixed, I'm turning people away from it. If they can't fix this, they sure as hell aren't going to be quick when real issues arise.

Now picture the thousands of players in my shoes, with a lot of MMO experience, a lot of friends, and either groundskeeper bug or login issues or character issues preventing them from playing the game, they're not resubbing because they know the future isn't bright with such slow response time, and they're not going to be recommending the game.

I'd literally *** myself if this game is still around with a $15 sub in 6 months. I absolutely loved playing it, but MMOs aren't about putting up with a bug, people play them pretty seriously. If raiding was a thing right now, and another random bug came up preventing people from getting boss credit, or dungeons being shut down for days, that's game breaking stuff that is miles more coding than one npc's ability to interact with players.

MMO launches should have lag, rollbacks, queues, bugged items and quest areas, but anything preventing players from furthering... anything... gets immediate attention, and maybe a 10 hour server maintenance to fix it, even if it's a temporary fix. I could still enjoy the game with guild functionality gone, or in-game mail not working (though that was a pain in the ass!) we all expect crap like that, this is just something else.

Here's to hoping Wildstar's support is ready for the massive influx of hungry MMOers in the next few months

er... how can we not compare a game made by a company with zero mmo experience to a game made by a company with zero mmo experience?

Now to not sound like an ass, or be an ass, can you state some things you've noticed in this game that make you say this?

"The more I play ESO the more I see that the devs at Zennimax know exactly what an mmo is ..."

again, not to come off like a complete ***, I'm really curious what people see in this to say something like that. I love a lot of aspects of this game, but I wouldn't agree with that remark, so I'm looking for aspects that support it. Again, sorry >.<

What many seem to miss in the complaints is that we know launches can be troublesome, it's the lack of any real customer service and/or communication that has people upset.

I, like others stated in this thread, have been warning friends away from this game. My suggestion to anyone asking is to wait at least three months before trying it. And, honestly, if the customer service doesn't improve, I can't see this game lasting long.