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MMOrpg writer battles funcom support
johnny12343
Member UncommonPosts: 19
idk who it is but i just read the global talk, some writer from mmorpg got his conan account stolen and when he got it back all of his items were gone, gm couldnt help him. Same story thats happend to me and alot of others out there, hopefully this rereview he was talking about will get funcom to change their no compensation policy.... anyways just wanted to put i out there because i want this guy to do the review about what he said he would, if your with me on this or against it just talk it up, AOC is a awesome game, i got the limited edition God slayer expansion already, however funcom needs to work on their "people skills", also tell your stories if you got your items stolen or account hacked before- old john
Comments
The compensation policy is the same as any other game. If we can't see where the items have gone (in logs) then we can't reimburse the account. It's a pretty straight forward system that is designed to not be abused. If for some reason it didn't work that way, then everyone and their mother could *claim* they lost something and get it back free and clear.
Glen ''Famine'' Swan
Senior Assistant Community Manager - Funcom
While I have to agree with you there, your CS problems go far beyond this issue Famine.
Twice I have subbed to your game , release and again durin the initial server merge/DX 10 release time period. Twice I had log in problems after the first week or so and submitted service tickets and never once to this day have I ever recieved any sort of response from your CS department. During the release time frame I solved the problem by doing a complete hard drive wipe, which is no biggie cause I have a dedicated drive for games only. The second time I just deleted the game. I am stil waiting on any sort of response from your CS department, after 2 years I think I might just give up on getting one LOL.
But back to the OP I agree that compensation is a rare to never case but if your CS department was as strong as your marketing department you would have more active servers.
I miss DAoC
Odd how different people have completely different experiances. I have only ever had good service from Funcom's CS Dept and likewise thier GM's in-game.
Weird.
THE SECRET WORLD - PAY ONCE PLAY FOREVER - Give it a go!
http://www.thesecretworld.com/buy/
OR PM ME FOR A BUDDY KEY (need your email address).
I agree
Kinda scary that you can get your account hacked and Funcom won’t help. If it was a writer for mmorpg you know that they know about strong passwords and all that stuff and they still got hacked.
Also I have had good experiences with their customer support but they may need to look at their log system and make sure it is working properly. I realize why they have this system but being in customer service for 15 years I think sometimes you need to give the customer the benefit of the doubt.
I absolutely agree with you 100%
THE SECRET WORLD - PAY ONCE PLAY FOREVER - Give it a go!
http://www.thesecretworld.com/buy/
OR PM ME FOR A BUDDY KEY (need your email address).
The question here really should be... why can't you see where the items have gone to (in your logs) ? What sort of log system does not follow the movement of items and gold between accounts and characters ? I would say those logs would be perfect against goldsellers.
This is pretty basic. What Famine is really telling us is that they really don't give a dam. Cause if they would... they would have logs showing item and gold movements. Its that simple.
Hiding behind the famous "same as any other game".
I find that strange too. While playing Everquest as a monk main Tranquil Staff was an amazing weapon with like a 1 in a thousand drop chance off a mob 10-15 minute span that I think spawns randomly. Anyways my T Staff poofed and a few hours latter the GMs where able to track it down and replace it. I was so upset after spending weeks camping that item that actually droped that when it was lost I would have quit and was so happy after it was restored...to bad Sony bought EQ a bit latter as Veriont or whatevr was a great MMO company for a 1st gen old school MMO.
So I'm just supprised that games over 10 years old had technology to track down items that poof by hack or bugs and the new games with high end graphics do not.
Also on same topic I wonder why GMs are not enforcing other things that are easily trackable in most games - the client side hack program to give speed boost http://forums.ageofconan.com/showthread.php?t=215553. Or why AoC GMs would ban a guy after someone was making beyond mature comments to him in general chat http://forums.ageofconan.com/showthread.php?t=215503
Funcom has reviewed all of its assets relevant for
impairment testing. This process has led to
recognition of an impairment loss of around
3,1 MUSD for Age of Conan due to a decrease in
numbers of subscribers for the game. Funcom Q4 10 report.
http://forums.ageofconan.com/showpost.php?p=2926123&postcount=7 500 mains/alts on Tyranny in past 30 days - instead of merge servers let's open a new PvP server, again! http://forums-eu.ageofconan.com/showthread.php?t=106427
That doesn't make any sense though.
Why would we not want to help a customer? If they leave because of that, then we lose big. Every customer is given the best service that we can at the given time. If for some reason we can't help the customer, then it's because we really can't and not because we simply don't care to help.
Keep in mind that accounts get compromised all the time. It's a shame that it happens, but we do have policies that cover when this happens. It's not likely that such things will be fully restored in those cases, only because we can't determine if the user on the other end is actually the real user. Then of course you have cases where people share accounts for power leveling services or other RMT actions that we also can't confirm from our end.
The big thing however, is that we will help when we can. But, there is only so much we can do in some cases where the information we have just doesn't match up with the information given to us from the end user.
Glen ''Famine'' Swan
Senior Assistant Community Manager - Funcom
I would still like to know what happened to your log files. Do you not keep records of them?
I would like to see the story. I find this very hard to believe. I write for angryguildleader.com and Funcom has been nothing less than stellar. We work with a LOT of developers, and I can honestly say that Funcom is at the top in as far as working with the press. We writers do not go through "global talk" or other avenues. If he truly wrote for mmorpg.com then he has direct contact with folks at Funcom.
I am not a fanboi of any game, but I tell it like it is, and Funcom are insane good to us.
The fact that their even answering on these forums means they do care, so i dont think that charge can really be accurately used against them... personally im inclined to side with Funcom on this one, or at least, to give them the benefit of the doubt, if they can't do something, if the logs dont show the same things the player is complaining about, then i have to wonder why that is....
/agreed ty funcom
roll on the 11th may
Playing: FFXIV
Future: wishing for SWG 2, World of Warcraft Classic
Played: Most current and extinct MMO's - 18 Years in....
Interesting Fact - I own 27 Tarantula's
I don't know in this case. We do rely on logs and other sources of information, but we can't exactly promote each case to the public. We have to respect the end user and what actions happen on that level. That's also why issues like these are not easy to answer. I can't go and prove a open thread wrong and say, "Joe Blow was actually doing this even though he posted he was doing that!"
The point of my response here is that we follow pretty similar policies than every other MMO on the block. We don't go out of our way to piss of players for the sake of pissing them off. We take every option available to us in order to ensure they get the best customer satisfaction as possible. It's not always 100%, because no one really has 100% customer satisfaction. Therefore, we will always run into issues where a customer feels we didn't help them enough or not help them at all.
In closing here, our CS team is not composed of random people with just customer service backgrounds. Majority of our team, as well most teams in the game industry, are composed of all gamers who also work in the industry. They all have a good understanding of the average gamer or MMO player. When it comes to issues like these, they use their own experiences as well researched data in order to develop a policy that makes sense to the player and to the industry as a whole. As opposed to someone working in any other industry who might not actually use the product or other similar products they are currently providing customer service for.
Glen ''Famine'' Swan
Senior Assistant Community Manager - Funcom
I'm totally behind Funcom on this.
It's standard procedure, AoC is not alone in this respect. I know that other games follow the same rule. So I have no problems with it.
As I always say, follow these basic rules.
1, Always have a firewall, anti-virus and make sure they are both are up to date and working.
2, Never ever give out your user name or password to anybody, even if they say they are from the company.
3, Never enter your details into another program or website. Make sure it's the 100% genuine article.
4, Don't keep a copy of your details on your hard drive or any where it can be accessed remotely.
Remember these people are out to make a profit from your hard work. So it's up to you to secure it.
That's my lecture done for today, return tomorrow and I will tell you meaning of life.
I know for a fact that Funcom can track any item 99% of the time, when it falls into that 1% its usually means they being polite and stateing your basicly lieing about the event for whatever reason you may have or these events are just made up stories for forums for various reason which only the OPs know.
I've been a big Funcom supporter, I stayed through the ridiculous AO beta and launch and played for years and have been recently thinking about rejoining AoC but the above statement may have changed my mind. This is the same bullsh*t logic the MPAA and RIAA use against pirates. A blanket statement saying you can't help your players (yes I'm boiling this down I know) because some may be gold sellers or using power-leveling services is, to quote the late great John Wayne, ri-god-damn-diculous. Now the sad fact may be that you simply cannot help these customers but handling it like this, pretty much telling them you cannot control your game because of outside influences, is not helping. Quit passing the buck and get down to what anyone would expect from a subscription service, service. As far as how you handle these occurrences this needs to be addressed as well. This is not the glory days of EQ and UO where we really did not have a choice, we have almost too many at this point and your customers can and will leave if you cannot protect their investment of time and money, and it is an investment. I'm betting these weren't items easily obtained on a level 5 character.
As far as the logs go, if they are available and you want to keep your customer base happy why not check them? I'm betting it's a problem of costing Funcom too much to scroll through those logs to help these customers and possibly stop a thief. In closing, quit using the excuse that you aren't doing anything differently than your competition, that just doesn't fly. Try being an innovator.
P.S. Smiley faces do not help when you were just told your service provider cannot provide a safe service.
Played in some form:
UO til tram, AC, EQ, AO, WW2O, PS, SB, CoH, AC2, Hor, LoTRO, DDO, AoC, Aion, CO, STO
Playing: WoW (for gf), WAR
Waiting For: SWTOR, FFXVI
Hoping For: DCUO, Secret World, Earthrise
-S- (UO Sonoma)
Yeah we know about Cs...Please push Button 1 on your phone, if you want to pay your bill,Instant connect...No problem here..
Please push 2 if you want to sign up and pay for our game...Instant connect...No problem..
Push button 3 if you have a problem with billing..Waiting 20 minutes
Push button 4 if your account got hacked/stolen...Waiting many days..When you do get help..
Push button 5 to speak to alive rep...Now this is a Joke...They seldom pick up...lol And or speak broken english..
Push button 0 for other inquires..
There is no BEST service if you think there is push button 9!
Some people rob you at gun point..Others will rob you at "Ball Point Pen"
For the person who stated that thier presence on these forusm means they care.
Ansering on these forums only shows thay want to appear to care. If they were taking action on the complaint it would mean they really care. If Funcoms tech and CS staff was half as efficient as it's marketing department they would have never had to do merge servers. Lip service and lame excuses does not equal customer service. As others have pointed out, to believe the excuses would mean they keep no backups or login records.
I miss DAoC
Famine i mean no offense, however i don't think its worth hurting your loyal players in order to stop hackers and gold sellers. sure it may degrade the games economy if a few cheap skates get away with getting extra gold or armor but isn't it worth that cost if it helps keep people subbed and happy which will overall just help the game in general?
and your answer that its a mmo company standard is a lie,
NCsoft(a really bad mmo company) gets all missing items back to players who have had accounts stolen no matter how long ago the items went missing.
Blizzard entertainment will get items back to its users as long as the items can be proven to have once been owned by that player through logs.
as a representative of the community shouldn't you take the communities advice instead of throwing it aside saying "no we already have a system for that". Thats just bad business, theres a reason that over the centuries countries have gone from states of kings to full democracy and thats because we need to rely on others advice in order to achieve the best resolution.
and so "in closing"
, maybe its time to resolve this problem?
I once tried to get back my old account with two level 80s, 12month sub.. But they wont give it back, they just banned it and said I could not get it back if I cant say 4 digits of my card used to buy that.
I can offer pictures of game/gamecards used/passport, everything, beside a newspaper, but no no.
That's not good support. I supported you by paying for 12months.. And what I get?
yes this same situation happened to me, i luckily dug out a old box and found the expired credit card. then i logged in to find out i couldn't get my items back. (thats why i started this post) . it seems like everybody is having troubles with account retrievals, i devoted alot of heart to the game as well( not so much to get a 12 month sub) but i have played since launch and i proudly defended it but now i feel rather back stabbed or better yet i feel like hitler in those darkfall videos on youtube
http://www.ebaumsworld.com/video/watch/80516538/ haha still a good laugh
Why would funcom care if all your stuff got stolen when they stole all your below level 20 characters and all the stuff in/on and in the bank not even mentioning the time invested when they deemed your account inactive and buried the warning in the back of a newsletter rather than email you directly saying what was going to happen?
And then turn around and make unlimited free trials to lvl 20?
If this would have happened to me I would be very upset. I no longer have the card I purchased the game with and it has since been shredded. In this case you can still contact your bank and dispute the payment for the 12 month sub, since you never received the 12 months of service. Your bank should refund your money to your account and make Funcom pay it back.
I had horrible customer service with Funcom about a year ago. However, I recently had an excellent experience where everything was taken care of in a matter of a couple days and I was comped game time. I've personally witnessed a drastic improvement in the quality of Funcom's customer service.
I had my WoW account hacked and they were able to restore most of my items/gear, but there were still a small amount of common crafting mats that they didn't return. When I sent an e-mail asking what about the rest of my stuff, they said it wasn't worth their time to track down those items of trivial value. After that experience, I would say that Funcom is probably following a pretty standard policy.
All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing - Edmund Burke
Famine is talking about EULA here. Never in million years can he ever claim that EULA is here to protect he GAMER !! So for god sake do NOT use EULA to claim you can not track logs.
Again - It shows that FUNCOM does NOT care. Logs that track items and gold are ignored by 99% of all gaming developers even tho they are the best tools to track goldsellers and hackers. Its more profitable for the devs to IGNORE those. They make more money by keeping 0 employee looking for goldsellers and hackers and 1 employee answering the ppl that get hacked with..." we can not track those items". It has absolutly nothing to do with real support to a MMO game tho.
In other words.. you pay 15USD per month for zero support when you REALLY need it. Thats why MMOs are filled with goldsellers and hackers.