What CS?

[Heartsong_Steelsoul]

Imagine this scenario:

"hello Mr. GM, sir, I lost 50pp when I opened my inventory, it must have been a bug, as I have my log files... as to looting 50pp from a hill giant and now it's gone..."

"ummm, no you didn't... get the heck out of here, loser"

"can I speak to your manager, Mr. GM"

"I don't have one, haha"

YOU HAVE BEEN DISCONNECTED

Okay, now let's imagine it how it really is (assuming that they, indeed, cannot confirm your plat loss):


"hello Mr. GM, sir, I lost 50pp when I opened my inventory, it must have been a bug, as I have my log files... as to looting 50pp from a hill giant and now it's gone..."

"Give me a moment to check our logs... when was the last time you had the money, where were you, etc, etc..."

"I'm very sorry, but I cannot find a record of you having this money and it disappearing mysteriously. *frown*"

"can I speak to your manager, Mr. GM - I think you're lying!"

"I'm very sorry to hear that you think that, but here is an email where you can contact a head GM (or whatever title)"

At least, from the GM's I've dealt with...

[Taushar]

It seems to me to be useless to try to guess how much money SOE makes off of EQ. 30% profit margin may be too high. Even 5% may be too high - might be too low, as well. Given rising costs of high end bandwidth, equipment maintenance and replacement, renewing service contracts, taxes, insurances, employees, etc, etc, etc... and given that we (as far as I know) don't know anything about the budget sheets at SOE, we're just spitting *ahem* in the wind, so to speak.

I am just making a guess at using industry standard figures (pardon my MBA backgroud). I read a lot on business and the stats I got is from those well known business journals and magazines. Of course SoE can be making zero margins or even loss. Then someone in the game industry is making obscene amount of money to skew the industry figure. Since SoE has one of the largest base of game customers and one of few who has steady revenue stream business model, I would assume they have a large influence on the game industry. Granted that the game industry is a $3 billion industry and $100 million seems small, however that figure includes things like game paddle manufacturer for PS 2 to game strategy guides. The figure I got on margin was for games only. I don't think I am way way off on figures, but i could be wrong.

Taushar

[Itek]

Taushar-

Again, how did the application to become a guide go? (Probably won't get a response for a couple weeks once you send it in, but don't worry, at least NOW you get a response one way or the other. Previously you NEVER heard anything if you had been rejected.)

First "industry standard" for gaming is nowhere NEAR the "industry standard" for other software firms. Pardon the fact that one of my best friends in real life RUNS an online game company. I know what he makes.

Second 450,000 accounts does NOT mean each and every one of those accounts sends in 13 bucks a month. (Name all the people that you know USED to play EQ and don't anymore. There is a guy in my guild that didn't pay for 8 months... all his characters went *poof* and he didn't want the hassel of trying to get SOE to rebuild the characters from old tapes.)

Third it's pretty easy to find out what SOE CS GMs make. It's peanuts. PEA-NUTS. Compared to the cost of living in San Diego California is nearly criminal what they pay these folks.

Fourth it's the MANAGERS that set the policies, and fire folks for breaking them. You met someone who didn't seem to want to help. Be reasonable. What's easier... telling you "no, sorry, we don't reimburse for items dropped on the ground, or lost due to link death, or consumed by spell bugs in ways we don't log" ... or saying "what the heck, it's only 4 pieces of cultural metal, have a nice day."

They would LOVE to be able to be nice. But that would get the GMs walked on like the welcome mat at Disneyland. They are following ORDERS written by George Scotto. You have a problem with the orders, take it up with him. (By the way, good luck.) He's the head of the department, and has a pretty thick... skin.

Let's ask Lilosh...

(made up conversation)

Itek: "Hey, your bank charged me fees for bounced checks because it neglected to tell me a deposit bounced when I asked before leaving on my honeymoon."
Lilosh: *types* "Hmm... yessss... Deposit #567 bounced and then Checks #3, 4, 5, and 6 bounced as a result of the NSF problem."
Itek: "But I did a balence inquiry the morning after Deposit #567 and it showed on my account."
Lilosh: "Sorry, that was a -pending- balence not the -current- balence."
Itek: "I think you should refund the fees, it was your mistake for telling me the check had cleared when it hadn't."

.....

Now let's examine two different endings.

Lilosh: *thinks* Hmm... This guy is going to be irate, and the bank makes a ton of money anyway, so I guess to avoid the NASTY conversation we are about to have....
Lilosh: "Ok Mr. Itek, I have canceled those fees for you, and we will call the people you wrote the checks to to explain it was our error, and also update the credit unions so your credit rating isn't damaged by this."
Itek: "Thanks."

-OR-

Lilosh: *thinks* Poor bugger... he just doesn't understand to never trust a bank when it comes to "fee schedules" and "balence inquiries" ....
Lilosh: "I'm sorry sir. Our balence inquiry of the date in question clearly shows Deposit #567 was -pending- so we are not responsible for the error. You will need to pay the fees we have charged you, make payment for the returned checks, probably paying additional fees to the merchants, and by the way your credit rating has just taken a major hit, and you have no recourse. Thank you for banking with Uber-Bank."
Itek: "..."

Now, in which of these two sceneraios does Lilosh get fired? And in which one is the bank's policy Lilosh's fault?

[Taushar]

Again, how did the application to become a guide go? (Probably won't get a response for a couple weeks once you send it in, but don't worry, at least NOW you get a response one way or the other. Previously you NEVER heard anything if you had been rejected.)

I have not idea why you keep bringing this up. Some of us work 10-12 hours a day for 5-6 days a week. EQ is our only entertainment we can afford, time wise. I have no desire to be a guide. My job is to deal with customers all the time and if my services to customers lack, I would hear about it from them. If pay a company for a product, I would expect them to provide the support to my satisfaction. I have no clue why my application to being a guide has anything to do with this.

First "industry standard" for gaming is nowhere NEAR the "industry standard" for other software firms. Pardon the fact that one of my best friends in real life RUNS an online game company. I know what he makes.

Well, is your friend's company one of the largest game software companies in the world? As I said, these are industry averages. Someone who rakes in 100s of millions of dollars would have a larger impact on the industry stats than your friend who works in a company with 10 people who's revenue is less than a million a year struggling to get things going. No comparison here.

Second 450,000 accounts does NOT mean each and every one of those accounts sends in 13 bucks a month. (Name all the people that you know USED to play EQ and don't anymore. There is a guy in my guild that didn't pay for 8 months... all his characters went *poof* and he didn't want the hassel of trying to get SOE to rebuild the characters from old tapes.)

This is straight from SoE, they said there are 450,000 active accounts. Of course it's subject to some inflated numbers ala AOL but I am pretty sure they are not stupid enough to boast these numbers in public when IRS can easily look at them say, hmm you said 450,000 customers but you have revenue of less than $10 million reported. Time for an audit.

Third it's pretty easy to find out what SOE CS GMs make. It's peanuts. PEA-NUTS. Compared to the cost of living in San Diego California is nearly criminal what they pay these folks.

This has very little to do with my financial data I presented. Matter of fact, it supports my data. If they are paying them very little, they would have more money left in their bank. They should spend money things like giving raises to CS GMs to motivate them or hire more to provide more coverage.

Fourth it's the MANAGERS that set the policies, and fire folks for breaking them. You met someone who didn't seem to want to help. Be reasonable. What's easier... telling you "no, sorry, we don't reimburse for items dropped on the ground, or lost due to link death, or consumed by spell bugs in ways we don't log" ... or saying "what the heck, it's only 4 pieces of cultural metal, have a nice day."

True, but I'd bet you would be unhappy if it was an item you spent days to get, like an epic item and was told the same thing as if you lost the 4 pieces of cultural metal. The question is, would they make more effort if the item takes a lot of time and pps to get vs. something trivial? I personally do not abuse the system, only petitioned maybe 6 times in 2.5 years of playing. I know some people do abuse it but I only petition if an item I lost is something I took more than several days of hunting or questing to get. I just don't have time to waste days of doings again because they do not have efficient system to be able to track all players items.

They would LOVE to be able to be nice. But that would get the GMs walked on like the welcome mat at Disneyland. They are following ORDERS written by George Scotto. You have a problem with the orders, take it up with him. (By the way, good luck.) He's the head of the department, and has a pretty thick... skin.

Again, there is the problem I have been trying to point out. I never said that it is the faults of GM. I always presented this as a company problem at SoE, not individual or department. Company culture dictates the level of the support they feel is needed for the customer. They as a company need to change the way they deal with customers. OMG, I actually agreed with you on this.

Let's ask Lilosh...

(made up conversation)

Itek: "Hey, your bank charged me fees for bounced checks because it neglected to tell me a deposit bounced when I asked before leaving on my honeymoon."
Lilosh: *types* "Hmm... yessss... Deposit #567 bounced and then Checks #3, 4, 5, and 6 bounced as a result of the NSF problem."
Itek: "But I did a balence inquiry the morning after Deposit #567 and it showed on my account."
Lilosh: "Sorry, that was a -pending- balence not the -current- balence."
Itek: "I think you should refund the fees, it was your mistake for telling me the check had cleared when it hadn't."

.....

Now let's examine two different endings.

Lilosh: *thinks* Hmm... This guy is going to be irate, and the bank makes a ton of money anyway, so I guess to avoid the NASTY conversation we are about to have....
Lilosh: "Ok Mr. Itek, I have canceled those fees for you, and we will call the people you wrote the checks to to explain it was our error, and also update the credit unions so your credit rating isn't damaged by this."
Itek: "Thanks."

-OR-

Lilosh: *thinks* Poor bugger... he just doesn't understand to never trust a bank when it comes to "fee schedules" and "balence inquiries" ....
Lilosh: "I'm sorry sir. Our balence inquiry of the date in question clearly shows Deposit #567 was -pending- so we are not responsible for the error. You will need to pay the fees we have charged you, make payment for the returned checks, probably paying additional fees to the merchants, and by the way your credit rating has just taken a major hit, and you have no recourse. Thank you for banking with Uber-Bank."
Itek: "..."

Now, in which of these two sceneraios does Lilosh get fired? And in which one is the bank's policy Lilosh's fault?

Believe it or not, this actually happened to me. I talked to the a bank and they did the first scenario. I was not happy with not knowing the fact that the limits of the pending depends on who you are as a customer. This is all a subjective decision from each branch's manager, at least the banks I deal with. I talked to the manager and she reversed the charges on bounced check. Luckily it was only one check I wrote to a family member. That's what I call a customer service. They were able to make some judgement call on the spot rather than following some script and that made the difference between an irate customer ready to take the account elsewhere or one who was satisfied and stayed with the bank.

Taushar

[Itek]

Taushar-

PM me and I will continue to discuss this with you in email.

I will not be reading this thread further.

[Linea]

Again, how did the application to become a guide go? (Probably won't get a response for a couple weeks once you send it in, but don't worry, at least NOW you get a response one way or the other. Previously you NEVER heard anything if you had been rejected.)

I have not idea why you keep bringing this up. Some of us work 10-12 hours a day for 5-6 days a week. EQ is our only entertainment we can afford, time wise. I have no desire to be a guide. My job is to deal with customers all the time and if my services to customers lack, I would hear about it from them. If pay a company for a product, I would expect them to provide the support to my satisfaction. I have no clue why my application to being a guide has anything to do with this.

this goes back to the "did you vote? no? then quit bitching about who is president" question. if you arent going to help fix it then you dont have much call to be complaining.

[Daethaan]

The "vote or don't complain" analogy is a pretty big stretch with EQ.

EQ is a service. People are paying for this service and have reasonable expectations that with this service will be adequate quality control and customer service. To say to someone to become a guide or don't complain would be more akin to saying "become a politician or don't complain about the president" or "you don't like this bank's policy, open your own bank." Neither is very realistic.

The fact is consumers are "voting" when they pay for a product or service. Now you could say "don't play EQ then." But why should someone abandon a character they have invested time in when nothing on their part has changed. If it's the service itself that has declined over the years, why should the customer be punished. If there are X many more players then there use to be and X many more petitions in the queue then they should get X many more people to answer them. If necessary, then raise the fee to play the game... which they did, so where are the results?

[Linea]

you dont think being the president is a service? you think its all riding around in limos and posing for Time?

if you have a problem with a politician, WRITE THEM A LETTER. they dont give a **** about you if you dont vote. its when you are a voter that your opinion counts. but they arent gonna care if you complain about how bad a politician you are to some random guy in Idaho.

by continuing to play everquest you are registering yourself as a voter. they will listen to you, but not if you are voting to ten thousand random people on an internet board. get off your butt and write a letter to someone who actually cares how you feel.

and until you do have the guts to become a guide dont assume its all laughing at peoples misfortunes and deciding which zones it would be fun to reset. theres a lot more to it than that

[Grimina]

You came so close, and yet missed the point Linea. What the president does is a service no one said it wasn't...as a matter of fact the poster implied that with his comparison. By voting for president you invest in his service. By PAYING for EQ you invest in their service.

When you vote to get someone elected...do you then also have to run for mayor in order to have the right to complain about the president? No you don't. So WHY would you have to apply to be a guide in order to complain about the game since you've already "voted" when you bought the game in the first place?

Voting for President shows you have vested entrance in the outcome, elected politicians have a duty to uphold the interest of their voters. Paying your $13 a month shows you have a vested interest in the outcome, SOE has a duty to uphold the interest of their paying customers.

You don't have to work for the Government to "matter" to them...you don't have to work for SOE to "matter" to them. THEY have to work for you...because you made them what they are. You got them elected, you pay their bills. If you didn't vote, or don't pay for the game...then they don't work for you and THEN you couldn't complain if they didn't do what you wanted.

Grimmy

[Saleani]

THERE CAN ONLY BE A CERTAIN NUMBER OF PETITIONS IN THE QUE AT ANY ONE TIME ON ANY ONE SERVER.

They can't, simply CAN'T keep petitions around until you come back. They would quickly fill up the "bin" and be unable to answer new petitions. Think you don't like waiting 30 minutes for a guide to open your petitions? Try this one on for size...

Itek: "Sorry for being rude, but I put in a petition an hour ago and there are 4 guides on."
Lirius: "Sorry, the QUE is full. We can't open any new petitions until these 30 people who haven't been on in two days come back so we can talk to them."

Actually, that (queue-lock) was fixed when moving to the new UI, it was related to the old UI. It shows petitions in 3 colors (red for things only GMs can resolve), Yellow for things like name changes, and green for the (yet) unanswered. A couple of months ago, something was supposedly changed in the petition queue so that the petitions stay in the system even after you log out. But its somewhat buggy (no? really? I would have never guessed!), so if you use /q or /camp desktop to leave the game, it removes your petition.

Logs are kept of when you do trades, when and what you loot, when you press delete, when you go link dead (so thing twice before /q after looting the valuable stuffs). Will there be folks trying to scam the system saying "ooh, I lost 15 levels and 200 AAs when I ordered LDoN" ? Yes, wil they get away with it? No.

If there is an upper limit to the number of petitions in the queue, I have not seen it. It ain't fun seing 70+ petitions automagically appear in the queue because some jerk decided to grief a PoP flagging raid. Was it malicious behavior? Did they just "want to watch" and do something stupid? Did they "want to watch" and something someone else did cause the problem? Did the event change in the last patch and the outsider who wanted to watch got blamed by the entire raid and now got flamed on their server message board?

Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.
- Hanlon's Razor

and

There is more stupidity than hydrogen in the universe, and it has a longer shelf life.
- Frank Zappa

If something is broken or bugged, do a /bug and /feedback when you spot it. And everytime you spot it. Not every GM or guide is a tradeskiller, nor do they know everything about the game. /bug and /feedback head straight to the developers. If you /petition a bug, then it ends up on a report and a few days later gets to the developers.

And I will leave you with this final thought.....

I personally think we developed language because of our deep need to complain.
- Lily Tomlin

[Dunthor Warsmith]

Have you applied to be a guide?

Yes. Good for you. Hope you like it.

No. Shut up then.

Anyone over the age of 18 and with 2 characters over level 10 can be a guide. Don't like not seeing guides on? Don't like petitions that go unanswered? Apply to be a guide TODAY. Don't think about it. Don't read the next post.

You applied to be a guide yesterday right?

Good...

Let's try to remember a couple things...

1) Guides are volunteers. Period.

Are there any requirements of maintaining your position as a guide? Such as minimum amount of time currently played, or minimum time spent as a guide? I looked over the guide application and FAQ, and couldn't find it, but I thought when I'd read before when I'd looked over the application when the first ad got posted in the eqnews.txt that there was a minimum requirment for time/week spent on the guide account being a Guide.

Also, what do they do about hiatuses (hiati?)? Sick leave? (I'm not talking about "just don't feel like it", since if you sign up, you do commit to it)

Since I don't have that as a fact, I will take it as an assumption. And, assuming that, I cannot reasonably be a guide. If I cannot be a guide, then it seems by this logic, people akin to me have no rights within the system. And that, to me, is fundamentally wrong; I don't know if its your statements that are incorrect, or if its the system that's incorrect, but for a *paid service* that seems fundamentally wrong (especially since they (originally, at least) emphasized the *equality* and *level playing field* ... but I haven't heard that in a long time).

So what rights does someone like me have? From what I can tell, my position does not have the right to disagree with the status quo. So, since I lack the ability to try to change it personally (since I can't be a guide), and I lack the ability to voice my opinion (since I'm not a guide), there is absolutely nothing I can do about the Customer Service of EQ?

True, rants on the PSR do little to actually change the status of CS. But when you take away the right to complain, it makes it very hard to fix anything - how can you even try to fix something when you don't know what the problems are? Thought-out complaints about the system directed along the proper venues to Sony are probably the only way any of this has much chance of getting changed. If you're within the system (Guide, GM), you're limited in what you can say because your job is on the line. If your outside the system, you don't have a right to say anything. Doesn't seem like there's much room for progress...

-----

Why don't I think I could be a guide (holding aside the fact that I don't think I could take it mentally)? I often wind up with only ~3hours a week to play EQ. If I were a guide (and there were any sort of minimum times), all my EQ time would wind up being spend Guiding during those weeks. So, essentially, I wind up paying them for the right to work for them ~3 hours a week?
(Sure, I have my 40+ hour weeks too, but life varies a lot with plenty of times where life is busy, even excluding illness)

Then there is the question of sick leave. I've had chronic illness for the last ~3 years, which can unexpectedly reduce available time to *nothing*, and doctor's visits and the occasional procedure can cause significant loss of time. Would they tolerate and maintain a guide who could be out sick for a month straight? and could be out sick for over 50% of a 6month period or so?

I've taken a 1-2 month haitus a few times during my EQ career as well (with the account active) - would I have to quit the guide program every time I just didn't feel like playing EQ for {insert minimum timeframe for required Guiding time here} and reapply as soon as I got back?

-----

I've tried to be non-personal, but I couldn't find a word to use instead of "I" many places. I don't mean this as personally just about me - I mean regarding many of the wide range of "casual players" who barely have time to irregularly get in a very little EQ, and committing to more would be impractical. The group who, for example, if the guide program where a required aspect of EQ would be literally forced to quit.

Its dissappointing Itek is no longer reading this, but maybe there will be someone else still who can answer this confusion for me.

[Saleani]

Are there any requirements of maintaining your position as a guide?

6 hours per week. Some do a lot more, some hover around 6 average. Sony has stated very clearly that there will never be another guide program for any other game they make.

Don't apply to be a guide because you want to make Sony fix things. Become the next Furor if you want to make Sony fix things. Apply to be a guide if you enjoy helping others.

If you get chronic illnesses, I would advise you to avoid the guide program, there are some real jerks who can stress folks out pretty bad. And if your situation is like a friend of mine, a bad case of stress can knock her out for days (like a real bad wipe in PoFear taking 2 evenings for CR = trip to the hospital for stress attack and a week out of work).