Seriously Disappointed

Discussion in 'The Veterans' Lounge' started by Genjo, May 21, 2020.

  1. Genjo Lorekeeper

    I am not gonna troll the team or even make some big statements about owning extra days or whatever.

    I am seriously disappointed by the lack of customer service acknowledgment. Yes this is a 20 year old game, yes the code is old and whacky, yes the system have flaws and yes the team is most likley severly overworked and most likely underpayed but from just a simple CS point of view.

    Why would you not do something to acknowledge the cluster the last few days has been. I use to work in PR, good will actions can cost you nothing, but give you huge returns.

    Example - you planned to do a bonus event for the weekend. Change the narrative, example:

    We planned to start our memorial day bonus event on Friday, but due to the issues we are going to extend it to start tomorrow and end at noon on Wednesday when the new servers launch. While this doesnt fix all the issues, we hope that this helps deal with some of the players frustrations. Thank you for playing our game!

    This would cost you almost nothing, players would see you making a change to aknowledge a serious issue.

    Could have been a feather in the cap instead of creating another issue with player base.

    Happy to connect Darkpaw with some true PR professionals I know.
  2. Corwyhn Lionheart Guild Leader, Lions of the Heart

    They have done things in the past due to long outages. But they also tend to take some time to make that decision and I am sure they would want to ensure they have a handled on the actual problems first.

    All that being said its a 21 year old game and I don't think anyone should feel the need for CS love considering how much the game ISN'T DOWN for a 21 year old game that is still getting updates.
  3. The real Sandaormo Augur

    They could have taken 2 Months off. I wouldn't deem Everquest as essential and I am admittedly one of its biggest addicts. I want to sit back, relax in the knowledge that they are doing there best. You said it yourself 20 year old code on 20 year old servers, except that you can't just dismiss it. Its a reality they have to deal with.

    Now, please get the game back up and running so I can stop coming to these forums.
    minimind likes this.
  4. kizant Augur

    They seemed to handle things fine. What's all the complaining about?
  5. dreadlord Augur

    Because different folk have very different ideas about what 'fine' looks like. As the OP suggests, any PR professional would be horrified by what's happened/not happened. It's very widely accepted that
    a) Things will go wrong
    b) Things going wrong can actually be an opportunity to forget better goodwill/relationships with customers
    c) The big deal is communication. Not freebies (although some folk certainly like those); but communication. You may think a scant message every few hours is adequate. My company would have sacked/blacklisted anyone who hadn't got messages out on all channels every 5-10 minutes throughout the downtime. Personally, however old your architecture, I don't see any excuse for a lack of information
  6. kizant Augur

    They updated us whenever status and ETA changed. Why would updating the post every 5 to 10 minutes make sense if nothing changed since the last time? DPG seems to be at least as good as my electric company when the power is out.
  7. dreadlord Augur

    Really? I live in an area where the power goes out a fair bit. The following happens:
    I get a phone call seeing if I'm OK (within minutes of it going down)
    The electric company posts on its website
    It personally answers many hundreds of tweets as well as a stickied tweet
    It posts regular updates, about what's caused the problem; about Fred and Tom driving to the site of the problem, probably some pics of fred & Tom working on the problem; updates in their progress in solving the problem; many updates about how long the problem will take to fix 'not less than an hour' 'we're expecting within a couple of hours now' 'another issue means it will be...' etc. By now I will probably also have had a text and an email
    (there's probably stuff on other social media I don't use)
    At the end of it all I will get an email apologising, fully explaining what happened etc. If it's a big outage there will be a letter within a few days too

    The point of regular posting is to make people know 'we're in this together' 'we haven't forgotten you' and to give updates of a type we were told would not be available 'there's no way this will be less than 30 minutes' (so people can stop hammering the keyboard/light switch and go and do something else)
  8. minimind The Village Idiot

    I could tell you why I wouldn't do what you suggest.
    1. I wouldn't call the work of my staff a "cluster" to anyone but my staff and would only do that if it were a controllable work performance issue. Otherwise, you're just heeling morale down the drain during an already-stressful time.
    2. I'm never going to cave to foot-stomping customer demands publicly. It's akin to conceding to terrorists. If you show that enough yelling gets stuff done, all you'll get is screaming and demands.
    3. The outrage is small and temporary.
    Crucifying one's team to satisfy a minority outrage only serves to harm the product long term.
  9. Kutsuu Augur

    I'm sorry, but you really can't compare an online gaming service outage to a power outage. They aren't even in the same ballpark of impact. People who have at-home hospice care and are running on generators until it's back up or who have hundreds+ of dollars in their freezers/fridges, or who are without heat or AC during unsafe temperatures outside, may deeply care about getting updates every 5-10 minutes.

    Everquest is a video game service. There is no life and livelihood impact on you when it's down. Especially given the nature of the issues they were having, giving us an ETA, then updating if that ETA changed was completely fair and reasonable. There would be absolutely no purpose to posting updates every 5-10 or even 30 minutes. They kept us updated with ETAs and offered a postmortem when it was finished. Communication on their part was exactly what I would expect from a video game service provider.

    That aside, they could absolutely have extended or increased the originally planned XP bonus or something along those lines. It would be appreciated if they did.
  10. Fredescu Augur

    Wow. Where do you live? I've never heard of anything like that.

    DPG does not have a huge slick marketing machine. They don't work on an essential service. They have a small band of dedicated, passionate, and by now probably very tired, people working on old messy legacy software with limited ability to reuse those skills elsewhere. If you need your ego stroked by large companies, this might not be your game.

    Also DW, and employees not directly involved, were posting on Discord through most of it. Not giving ETAs beyond what was possible, but if company interaction is what you were looking for, it was happening.
  11. Kutsuu Augur


    I'm going to reply to this specific statement separately. This is a 'Wow! Really?' moment for me. They gave us very clear ETAs as soon as the downtime was extended. For example, the first one ( Current server downtime has been extended 6 hours to 4 PM PDT. We will update that ETA if there is more news. ).

    Once they'd given you the 6-hour ETA, you were seriously hammering the keyboard refreshing the page looking for a series of 5-30 minute updates to this???? Most sane people did something else for 6 hours, then refreshed to see if there was a new ETA or update. And sure enough, there it was ( Current server downtime has been extended 6 hours to 10 PM PDT. ). With the second one, they even provided an overview of what was happening and why.

    So it's clear that we had ETAs and updates from them as time went by. They regularly revisited the thread and posted any updates as they became available until the servers were back up. Yet there you were, hammering your keyboard. That's kinda scary my dude.
  12. dreadlord Augur

    No. That is not what I said in any shape or form
    In this particular instance (which was not the substantive issue)
    There were indeed the updates you mention
    And then - nada. A clear statement that they would not give any ETA *or* any 'it will be at least an hour' type numbers
    'we cannot give any guesstimate' - whether 5 minutes or 5 days.
    Now I find it hard to believe that's true.
    So,no, when there was a clear 'it will be 6 hours', I was not mashing the keyboard - but after that - well of course!
  13. dreadlord Augur

    I live in a semi-rural part of the UK.
    You don't need a 'huge marketing machine' - the electric company concerned have (the last I knew) had a communications dept of 2 full time staff and a work experience person (intern).
    I have never been informed that discord is now the correct official source of information. It seems to be the case, so that's where I'll be heading in future

    I don't think you can tell me a game I've played without a break for 20 years is not for me. however....
  14. kizant Augur

    Around here you get absolutely nothing from the power company unless you call them. And generally they'll report there's no problems for at least the first hour or two. Then their estimate is never correct. The only good thing recently is they added mobile alerts to tell you of changes and last time it went out for most of a day they sent the txt out like 6 hours after the power was back lol.

    Like others have said though. They should be rather different situations and I know the EQ devs aren't going to be getting paid extra for working around the clock like they where. Unlike some other professions.
    Corwyhn Lionheart and Xyphen like this.
  15. Fredescu Augur

    How do they personally call every customer within minutes of an outage with three people?

    Adding three people to staff would almost be a 10% increase for DPG.

    It's not. Major announcements occur in both places. It is a greater source for interaction with staff if that's what you seek. Occasionally you'll get more detail on minor things from them on Discord though, or occasionally more on the forums than Discord (bug reports for eg),


    I didn't.
  16. Xyphen Maximum Augur

    When the power lines go down where I live, all of the company's regional engineers hold hands and form a human circuit between my house and the nearest power plant. No wonder they have such a high turnover rate.
    Corwyhn Lionheart and Fredescu like this.
  17. Nennius Curmudgeon

    Shocking, simply shocking!
  18. I_Love_My_Bandwidth Mercslayer

    No matter what happens, complainers gonna complain.
  19. Sokki Still Won't Buff You!!

    Honestly, I feel like their PR has been a lot better than it has been. I remember extended down times where we didn't get a single post with an ETA or what was going on. At least we got updated ETA's and an idea of what was going on.

    The weekend bonus was probably scripted already. It's not like they decided to wait to flip the switch, it's probably on a set timer already. If anything they might extend it but to expect them to try and edit the bonus script while they're probably still ensuring everything else is back to normal isn't very realistic. And for the first server merge in how many years, I think it actually went pretty good.
  20. squidgod Augur

    It's just a dressed up demand for compensation.