Howdy, Stranger!
It looks like you're new here. If you want to get involved, click one of these buttons!
Quick Links
Twenty-four minutes = Great Customer Service
MosesZD
Member UncommonPosts: 1,361
I'm not known for my soft-gloves treatment of game companies. I look at them, by-and-large, as one-step over dog-poo on the bottom of my shoes. So, today, I had an incredibly pleasent surprise with NCSoft.
I'd stopped playing GW1 after a power-supply short had fried my old computer late 2009. Took me a few months to replace it and since my GW1 disks were in the attic and I wasn't playing it much anyway... I just moved on... Today, on a whim, I decided to see if I could get my old account back. I'd forgotten all my old account details (log-in, characters, passwords, etc.) though I did have my old GW1 boxes with codes and knew my personal information including the security question answers.
So I logged in under a new (completely different) account I'd made to try Lineage II and it took them 24 minutes from the time I submitted a ticket to their response. It took me five minutes to rummage through the old-games storage box and answer their questions... After I responded, it took them 35 minutes to fix the whole problem including updating my e-mail, resetting my password and my getting everything straight...
Total turn-around time at NCSoft: Under one-hour. Time I put in, less than 10 minutes.
After dealing with EA, BioWare and Ubisoft, to name a few... At 51, I'm cynical enough to have written it off and understand I'd never see my characters again... I thought it was all over... And yet, here I am downloading the entire game and will be playing shortly.
Good job NCSoft. This is the kind of customer service that says you care about gamers as more than pocket-books to be plundered.
Comments
Nice. I was in a similar situation a couple of years ago and it took me a couple of days to get it straightened out. But that was mostly because I couldn't find the information they needed and had to hunt through old email address for some of it. I couldn't remember the log in information for that either. In the time it took them to get it resolved is about when I'd expect to get my first non-automated response from other companies (yeah you Blizz and EA). Did I mention it was resolved? EA has never even been able to pull off so much as that. They are able to close them though.
I've only needed NCSoft's help two or three times and I never had anything but praise for how the ticket was handled.
you got a little lucky and you were helped out well because of your problem and that you had the boxes. NCsoft has also gotten much better with customer service in the last few years. I had MANY serious issues with them in about 2004/2005 perhaps as late as 2006. Basically my hacked L2 account was used as a botter and by adena farmers and was eventually banned while I was playing WoW in the early days. I rebought the game as it was only 15 bucks and started a new account only to be threatened in the same week with it being closed because I didn't get written consent to get a new account... mind you I had tried to get my old account back but was quickly cut off and never warned about getting a new account. I vowed then never to deal with NCsoft again but Aion looked nice in the start and I went for it... account banned.. no explanation why.. again while i wasn't playing it BUT! I was able to get that account back recently on a whim, was given 15 days free time, logged in and my mailbox and AH were full of stuff from 2009! Also my husband forgot his GW1 char name and got it fixed in around 15 min.
So long story short... they seem to be good about customer service NOW.
This is a bit of an aside, but ANet has already stated that we will not be accessing GW2 through an NCSoft account, we'll be going directly through ANet support which, with regards to NCSoft's efficiency, still has me giddy.
Oderint, dum metuant.
Good write up! It is nice to see someone around my age playing and interested in the same things! Today is my birthday and I am now 53. I wish this rush of technology surronding the gaming industry had started 20 years earlier, I feel somewhat cheated out of what is to become of it. Imagine what my Grandsons will be doing in 20 years. I am happy for them.
Death is nothing to us, since when we are, Death has not come, and when death has come, we are not.
I never had any issue with NCSoft support either.
I bought Factions back in 2006 and played it for a month but it didn't grab me at the time. About a year ago I thought about reinstalling it and finishing the campaign. Even though I didn't have anything, I was able to download the client onto a new computer, reset the password, email customer support and provide them some information in order to get a character name for the security question and I was playing again in 24 hours.
I ended up having to contact them again a couple times about a technical issue I was having with the online store and I always got a response within a day.
My experience wasn't quite as timely as the OP's, but I was still happy with how things turned out each time.
"Gamers will no longer buy the argument that every MMO requires a subscription fee to offset server and bandwidth costs. It's not true you know it, and they know it." -Jeff Strain, co-founder of ArenaNet, 2007
hehe there's quite a few of us (52 here) and I expect my grandaughter will be playing within 10 years. Me and hubby were having a conversation the other day about the old old AOL days and I had to remind him that I was pretty sure that was at least 20 years ago:)
I had a similar good experience with NCSoft/GW1 - still had the boxes for all the campaigns plus two new boxes for Eye of the North but of course all the boxes were mixed together (mine and my hubbies). To top it all off I'd used none of my normal character names. They were very helpful and got me into the game very quickly and more importantly cheerfully! The only thing I remember being disgusted with is the codes inside the boxes were the scratch off kind - anyone else spoiled by game downloads - so much easier than having to type in codes that are hard to read.
I think the only game company which I've contacted is steam and they resolved my issue right away. But overall I haven't had any problems for which I needed support.
It's good to see NCSoft are good at their support. However, I am much happier knowing that ArenaNet will be handling the support for GW2.
Mission in life: Vanquish all MMORPG.com trolls - especially TESO, WOW and GW2 trolls.
Excellent turn around. AAfter years away from GW1 I was instructed to put in my characters name. I no longer held this information as time has wormed my brain. This was about 4 months ago and I contacted NCSoft. It did take them around 24 hours to make first response and then just several hours after that to grant me access to my old account. All of my characters were ready and waiting, as far as I can tell. When I was going through this process I was satisfied enough with the timeframe seeing as I have been dealing with Blizzard for several years before. To hear that they have improved upon their CS brings warm fuzzy feelings to my chest cavity.
Thats great news actually. I really hope they hire extra help to smoothen the first couple of weeks after launch. Maintaining that kind of response time will be important during the first month or so when tickets are submitted in large numbers.
I've played MMO's since 2002, had three occasions in all that time I've ever needed to contact CS, first was in SWG was stuck in a room with no way out (don't ask I have no idea, loaded in that way), this was in June of 03 launch time for SWG, took about 10 minutes or less to have a CSM load in and port me out. Second again SOE, not long after EQ2 launch was in a city going through a door and it closed pushing me into a wall, about a 10 minute wait for help, third, VG again SOE, stuck in terrain fell down into an aera that looked like a was under the world (nothing but water), again about a 10 minute wait. SOE is supposed to one of the worst and this was at launch for all of these games.
Moral of the story I've always found CS complaints to be hit or miss situations.
For every minute you are angry , you lose 60 seconds of happiness."-Emerson
For a game that doesn't have a sub fee... they've been pretty stellar.
...try to get the same help in a F2P... I DARE YOU
Also, if you know the right places to go, and you ask the right way, you can usually talk directly to the actual Devs as well. ...been doing it myself or years. (tho' I usually don't have much to say to them directly... just the regular "I agree", "ya'll made the right choice").