Howdy, Stranger!
It looks like you're new here. If you want to get involved, click one of these buttons!
Quick Links
I hate to start another SOE thread but....
anarchyart
Member Posts: 5,378
Well I had a particular problem with my Station pass account, and I wanted to tell it because, well it mattered to me. If you don't care, change threads right now or don't flame me.
My gf bought me Star Wars TE a couple weeks ago and I loved it. It was great for n00bys to start out and the game was wide open possiblities of fun. When I went to register though, if I put it on my first station account, I wouldnt have gotten the free month subscriptions which I believed I deserved, so I made a second station account and off I went.
Well at work I was reading this site and everyone bashing EQ2 got me interested again. So when I went home I installed it. When I went to try and play it on my second account, it said that this copy of EQ2 was registered to a different account (of course). So I just put it on my first account and played. I was enjoying it tremendously I might add: it seems since launch the game has blossomed into this amazing vibrant wonderland yadda yadda, I really was quite blown away.
But of course I can't afford to have 2 station accounts so I emailed customer service asking if
A) they could change my SWG:TE game over to my first account or
Change EQ2 over to my second station account
...thus enabling me to have both games on one account so I can afford to have the station pass and play them both.
Well you know what's coming next: Support emailed me and said this
Unfortunately, once an account key has been registered to an account, it can
no longer be registered to any other account. It is permanently consumed
upon the initial use.
However if you want to register Total experience to "my first account" you may
want to buy another copy and register the key to it.
This will upgrade the account with both expansions and ingame items
available in Total experience pack.
TE is the 3rd copy of SWG I own by the way.
So I emailed them back and said, in these exact words
"Well then I'm cancelling both accounts. God forbid anyone at your customer
service center should treat me like a human being and take the 5 minutes it
would take to change one of my copies of the games I bought to the other
account.
If it isn't worth your time, why should I waste mine?
Regretfully,
My name, former customer"
It didn't make me happy to do that, it made me sad. I understand the problems with accounts and registrations, but I only want to have one open account. It's sad that their high paid support staff couldn't be human and take a few minutes to help another human.
Comments
I ran into a problem similar to that when playing EQ. My dad got me hooked on EQ, had all the expansions, and then he stopped playing. Me, having no expansions, wanted his account. I asked Customer Support if they could transfer the game to this account. They said no. I ended up just playing on his account for a while.
Not quite as bad as yours... But how much work is it to hit a few switches?
I pretty much had the same exact problem anarchyart, I started a new account for my TTE for the free month instead of activating the expansions on my old account. I went to customer support and asked if they could change the expansion activations(this was like a few days after I started a new account), but the difference is you got a no and I got a yes. Now as you can probably guess nothing happened, wasn't even informed that they couldn't do it, I wasn't really dissapointed at all because I knew it was too good to be true, like SOE would pass up the chance of trying to force me to buy another TTE box.
----------------------------------
MMOs Retired From: Earth and Beyond, Project Entropia, There, A Tale in the Desert, Star Wars Galaxies, World of Warcraft, Eve Online, City of Heroes/Villains.
MMOs Currently (worth) Playing: None.
MMO hopefuls: Age of Conan.
Hehe, put your 15 a month into netflix/blockbuster and watch a bunch of movies until a good MMO gets released.
----------------------------------
MMOs Retired From: Earth and Beyond, Project Entropia, There, A Tale in the Desert, Star Wars Galaxies, World of Warcraft, Eve Online, City of Heroes/Villains.
MMOs Currently (worth) Playing: None.
MMO hopefuls: Age of Conan.
First, you could have put it on your first station account and gotten the free month as long as you did not switch your subscription to station pass. Sony does not care if you pay individual subscription fees for each of their games. Only if you already pay for a station pass account do you forfeit the free month. I used to play EQ and recently started playing EQ2 on the same account. No problem with the free month.
Second, although I understand you wanting to recoup part of your expense by using your free month, with a station pass account you just recoup the first month's subscription fee over 2-3 months since you are only paying $22 a month to play any and all games, instead of $30.
I realize you didn't plan at the time to return to EQ2, but (1) you made the error in judgment in opening a new account because it is no secret that SOE doesn't/can't combine accounts and (2) if you forego the station pass benefit just to get your free month, you are being penny wise and pound foolish, as the old saying goes.
----------------------------------
MMOs Retired From: Earth and Beyond, Project Entropia, There, A Tale in the Desert, Star Wars Galaxies, World of Warcraft, Eve Online, City of Heroes/Villains.
MMOs Currently (worth) Playing: None.
MMO hopefuls: Age of Conan.
Sorry to hear that ! See PM.
Have fun
Erillion
---------------------------------------------
Don't click here...no2
I feel for you, but this is totally your fault. The net profit on MMORPGS is not really that high to begin with. The complexitity of them switching accounts for you is far greater than most people realize. No, they are not going to let some 1st or 2nd level support guy fuck with the database. That means they have to have someone who earns much more per hour to fix the problem. It is much more cost effective for them to lose you as a customer than it is for them to switch accounts for you. If the demand was higher for this service then it might be different. As far as changing characters on accunts or galaxies, it is $30-60 for the service. I am sure that they had someone write a script for it, so now 1st or 2nd level support can complete this process. This is available because of demand. I know it sucks not to get the "free" month, but I gurantee that SOE would be losing money to give the "free" month on the Station Acess pass. If you didn't want anything but SWG, you should have cancelled station access, added SWG to that account, and then only played SWG. If at any time you wanted to play the other games again, then it is simple enough to go from a station pass subscription to station access.
I don't think any gaming company would actually reply differently, as any transition requires time and the existence of tools that will allow Customer Support to implement such a change, that apparently SOE does not have and I see no reason to bother creating such a tool. Since accounts are considered to be strictly for personal use and not transferable, it is reasonable that such transfers are not allowed (they could be used to add an account you bought with real money from another player, violating EULA), as well as game key transfers to transfer expansion packs from one account to another.
Currently playing:
* City of Heroes: Deggial, Assault Rifle/Devices Blaster. Server: Defiant.
* City of Villains: Snakeroot, Plant/Thorns Dominator. Server: Defiant.
Question:
If you already are paying for an All-Access-Pass, why do you want the free month?
Oh, you where not currently subscribing to your all-access-pass?
Cant you just start a SWG only account and then move it later to the Station Pass at your own convenience? If I ever try a SoE product again, I will prolly not bother to check my EQ2 and EQ codes (differents accounts anyways), if they want to even think of maybe having a chance for the Station Pass with me (buzz sound, nearly impossible), they will needs to make sure I can merge my old EQ with my old EQ2 and whatever new product is registered on it own...hehe. I am not believing 1 moment this All-Access will ever interest me, putting additionnal barriers(that I didnt even realise exist) would not be helping to achieve the goal they has.
Weird...if you want peoples on such a plan and register all accounts to 1, you should have a merging system.
But again, SoE and logic are 2 differents entity and rarely meet.
- "If I understand you well, you are telling me until next time. " - Ren
~Greatness~
Currently Playing:
Nothing
It's not the ease of doing it. It's to help prevent the wholesale selling of characters. In fact, *NO* MMORPG I'm aware of will let you transfer characters from one account to another.
Chris Mattern
I have never heard of a MMORPG that allows this, so I don't know why you are so mad abou this. BTW this is done to avoid fraud. Shoot imagine if someone got a hold of your account's info (stolen) and this was allowed, You would never see that account ever again.
God forbid anyone at your customer
service center should treat me like a human being and take the 5 minutes it
would take to change one of my copies of the games I bought to the other
account.
Hah Takes more than 5 minutes. Why do you think few games allow character transfer, but make you pay like $50. Although not the same but similiar. Plus you have the issue of fraud and having to prove you had both accounts, which is a pain in its own.
Also it is your fault for not reading the Station Access FAQ. Clearly mentions everything you did.
Okay.. this does not make a lot of sense to me. If you already had one station account that you were paying for, why would you start another to get the free month, when if you had j just added TE to your first station account, which you were already paying for, you would not have had to pay anything more,,,,, ever.
======================
It's just me, so open the door.
A: It's fraud prevention.
B: You should have asked first.
I knew you couldn't do this the day I bought my SWG account and hooked it up to my original EQ account. If you ask questions, you get answers. If you don't, apparently you then pout when you don't get your way.
/shrug. No big deal. So go play some other game where they also won't allow you to do this.
Habit is not to be flung out the window by any man, but coaxed down the stairs one step at a time. - Mark Twain
As a matter of fact, I had a similar, though totally opposite, experience with Sony:
I came back to Everquest 2 at the beginning of Summer. I had played at release and had quit in late January. I had also played EQ way back when, for several years, before finally leaving that. So, I had my original EQ account, plus my EQ2 account when I first bought it, and when I was planning on coming back I wanted to get Station Pass and bring all these under one heading.
I called SOE, got through in about five minutes, and was helped by a very helpful and courteous individual (wish I could recall his name, but I didn't write it down). They said it wasn't a problem, they rolled my old EQ1 account and my EQ2 account into a new station access account (using my EQ2 account username/password), and I haven't had a problem since.
So, is it possible for them to roll old accounts into a new one? Must be, since I did it and didn't have a problem. So I'm not sure what happened to your effort to do so. Strange thing with SOE customer service is that it seems to depend on who you call and what day you call -- which is, well, strange.
To clarify, I started without any SOE subscriptions at all. I then got SWG:TE and had to register it to a new account to get the free month (or so I thought). I then became impatient and wanted to play EQ2 also, so I installed EQ2 but it wouldn't let me play EQ2 on the same account as SWG:TE as EQ2 was already registered to my original station account, which was inactive.
Bah, it's confusing I know. And I realize the mistake was mine. I should have bit the bullet and not worried about the free month subscription but I felt I deserved it. I don't see why they couldn't just merge the two accounts into one somehow, but then I am not a programmer. I went to play SWG on my original station account and JTL and RotW wasn't enabled because they were on the second account that I foolishly made to get the free month subscription. Pennywise and pound foolish indeed.
The mistake was mine for sure, but the rocket scientists at SOE were unable to fix my mistake, and for that I feel both stupid and dissatisfied. Mostly I'm sad though because I was loving EQ2 and SWG like never before. I don't hold any grudge to SOE or anything because I'm an adult, but I still cancelled the accounts. Perhaps some day, someone will be able to do the impossible and merge the two accounts into one. It really sounds easy to me, but alas I am just a consumer and not worth the time apparently at this juncture. Meh.
Actually what you described is a important matter SoE has to look at.
Many people who want all access are in same boat.Since all access is a relatively recent thing and not well explained and only now really having so much choice it was not until recently so popular.
I think SoE should recognize that many have used different account usernames for different games over the years.
They should take this into account.I mean come on"mr.j.b.smith of yadda address" is paying for 2 games for many months.Clearly its easy to see that despite different usernames he is the same person and they should combine the names to one.
I know what original poster is saying is true because just last week i convinced a friend who is on SWG to try EQ2 and he had a PS account he quit a year ago on different username (same registered address,name and CC details).
Despite talking to a CSR live he got a similar reply.
Um.... SOE does allow you to move characters from one account to another. It costs $50 I think.
What they're not letting him do is merge his accounts from two different SOE plans together on 1 plan. Which is wacked.
Currently Playing: Dungeons and Dragons Online.
Sig image Pending
Still in: A couple Betas
Do what I did and resub to Eve Online