Preorder Expansions taken away then deleveled

It wasn't directed at you either, but rather at Leerah's assertion that a door left open for ten days is an invitation to a party.

Bottom line: SOE screwed up. You also screwed up. You would not have been able to screw up if SOE hadn't, so they get the larger portion of the blame. SOE is looking to what can be done about it.

Look, I have an account that has been on an annual subscription since Firiona Vie was just a gleam in her father's eye. I have another account that was F2P until about two months ago. I leveled up a character on that account so I could use it as a warm body for getting instances for my toons on my gold account. Two months ago I went gold on my F2P account and considered purchasing RoF. I decided to wait for the new expansion. I have pre-ordered for both accounts. When I pre-ordered for my warm body account I noticed I seem to have access to VoA and RoF. Three guesses as to what I did NOT do.

And you would know since this has apparently been an issue before- but people like myself who quit long before that (for me it was after PoP) wouldn't know to question it.

Customer soe via CSS Web 09/13/2013 07:37 AM
My character level was rolled back to level 90 last night.
I returned to the game after 5 or more years away and preordered the newest expansion because in game people were saying that by preordering the other zones and level restrictions were removed. I was just level 70 when I came back. I spent all weekend the double exp weekend leveling and have finally reached 92+66%. I used almost every bit of the money I saved up, bought and sold 3 SC cards for plat ($45), and purchased Fear touched armor and rings etc for level 92. I log in to my account last night and see I am level 90 with almost every piece of gear being Yellow. I, in no way, want to cheat, scam, or abuse the system you have set in place for limiting the progression of characters. In 2 months time, I have invested $125 into my account ($40 for expansion, $40 for Gold, and $45 for 3-SC cards. I understand that the CotF is not live yet and have not been billed, but your welcome to take the money now if it will solve my problem. My concern is that I have deleted all my old gear and now I am unable to use my character. I have a little bit of plat left but not enough to buy all the gear I need. Im frustrated and wish you would have at least told us that the "bug" that let us have the previous expansions on preorder was about to be fixed and be aware that your level and gear may change. I had no idea that I was doing anything wrong, or that I would be affected by the "You didnt buy all the expansions so you cant level past 90" bug. I found several of my items available at the parcel restoration vendors but I am unwilling to pay $20 to get my old gear back.

If we cannot work out a solution, I want to know how to cancel my preorder and my gold status.
__________________________________________________
Greetings #######,
Thank you for contacting Sony Online Entertainment. There was a bug that we discovered that gave players access to content to the Rain of Fear expansion content without having purchased it if they pre-ordered the Call of the Forsaken expansion. This was not intended and we corrected it. But don't worry. You didn't actually lose anything. Once you are actually charged for the Call of the Forsaken expansion, your character will be at the place it was before. You can have the content now but you would need to purchase the Rain of Fear expansion. I am sorry for the confusion. If you have any more questions or concerns, please let me know.
___________________________________________________________________
Customer soe via CSS Web 09/13/2013 11:22 AM
Well, I knew all this already.

#1 How do I cancel my 3 month gold membership early with refund of the unused 2 months of gameplay?
#2 How do I cancel my preorder of CoTF.
_____________________________________________________
If you would like a partial refund of $23.98 for the membership time, I will need you to fill out the information below. As for canceling the pre-order, the link below shows you how to do that.

- Your Real Name:
- Station Username:
- Name on Credit Card:
- The last 4 digits of the Credit Card used on the account:
- Full Billing Address:
- Current answer to security question:
- Email Address:
_____________________________________________________
Customer soe via CSS Web 09/13/2013 11:30 AM
So, let me get this straight.
You would rather that I cancel my gold membership and cancel my preorder of CoTF instead of granting me 20ish tokens of restoration?
______________________________________________________
Greetings ########,
Granting you any tokens of restoration would be completely up to our in-game team to decide. If you would like, I can open a new ticket for you to them. As far as your request for a refund, we can offer that to you if you would like. But that would be up to you. Let me know what you would like me to do.
______________________________________________________
Customer soe via CSS Web 09/13/2013 11:35 AM
I found several of my items available at the parcel restoration vendors but I am unwilling to pay $20 to get my old gear back.

the sentance above is the next to last sentance I posted in the original ticket. I was asking you to help me get my level 90 gear back so that I could continue to enjoy the game at level 90. As it is now I have very expensive gear I cannot use.

After the last message the CSR never responded.

As usual though, the people who make the decisions, rather than being cool headed and thinking things through just punish everyone for the sins of the few. This type of behavior is how most of the game is handled. There are countless examples. The claim items are free to them and losing a few is a small price to pay to keep from punishing those who don't break the rules.

Not their fault you deleted the gear. I've never had problems getting items restored, even after they added the tokens to the marketplace. If you ha gone about this differently you'd probably have all your items back for free

This is a awesome example of what not to do for good customer relations/service

First off the people this affects is returning players that HAVE previously quit and new players. (These are the people SoE should be going out of their way to make happy) this series of events only serves to anger people who have commited to purchase a product. (The term money in the bank comes to mind)

Occasionally a company will go out of their way to make a paying customer happy.

Eg) a person takes their car in for servicing and when the customer picks up the car it has been washed.

The end result is the customer is happy that the dealership has gone above and beyond what was expected.

Eg2) customer picks up car and it was fixed as expected at expected price

Result is customer is satisfied with a job well done

Eg3) customer picks up car and sees it has been washed. He then thanks the service manager for washing the car. The service manager says, "the car should have never been washed" and proceeds to throw dirt on the car to rectify their error.

End result the car was fixed as expected but the customer will never be seen again.

It's a bad practice when the Cure kills the patient.

How terrible is it that a person who has committed to pay gets tossed a small bone?

Except for instead of just throwing dirt on your car now, they've taken your wheels so now your car is useless.

It sucks for the people who were not exploiting but lets face it, Nobody was supposed to have access and SoE fixed it. Preorders have never worked like this in the past, no reason they would start now. Everyone will regain their missing levels when it goes live unless SoE does something earlier. Everyone is currently back to where they should be. Don't see what all the complaining is about to be honest

Copy and pasted from another of my posts:

"None of this makes any sense. I was missing RoF and pre-ordered because I was under the impression that I got access to RoF if I did... so, I log in today and Im back to lvl 95 with max vitality and 100% exp but I cant lvl and Im missing RoF. Why?!? How is this MY fault that SoE screwed up. I lost all that exp I had and can no longer get into Shards. This is ridiculous. SoE screwed us over SERIOUSLY. If they didnt want us having VoA or RoF if we pre-ordered, then it should have said that IN THE PRE-ORDER... not after I have spent much time lvling my character and now he is back to lvl 95. Hell, my brother has it even worse. His 100 Shaman is now 95 and cant use ANY of his gear. Thanks SoE.

Also, I have been paying for Gold because I had access to RoF... so basically I just wasted $30 the past 2 months. I dont know about you guys, but I want either my money back for expansion and the 2 months of Gold, or I want to be able to have my characters put back to where they were and to be able to use RoF. Makes absolutely no sense why we cant use RoF (or VoA in other peoples cases) if we pre-ordered the expansion.

I have been playing for a very long time, so I know SoE is usually pretty good about "compensation", I am just quite annoyed and venting a bit."

The thing is this: (copied from above) "Greetings #######,
Thank you for contacting Sony Online Entertainment. There was a bug that we discovered that gave players access to content to the Rain of Fear expansion content without having purchased it if they pre-ordered the Call of the Forsaken expansion. This was not intended and we corrected it. But don't worry. You didn't actually lose anything. Once you are actually charged for the Call of the Forsaken expansion, your character will be at the place it was before. You can have the content now but you would need to purchase the Rain of Fear expansion. I am sorry for the confusion. If you have any more questions or concerns, please let me know"

First off... this is YOUR fault SoE, not ours. If you didnt want us to be able to have access to RoF then you should have said so on the Pre-Order page. I, like many others, came back to the game recently and used the Pre-order to "catch up" with all my RL friends that are playing. I get past lvl 95 and get spells and everything else and suddenly you take it all away? I call MAJOR BS. This is the absolute WORST customer service I have ever seen. You guys screwed up. Not us. And we are being told "Oh, dont worry, once its live you will be put back where you were", but in the mean time those of us who got screwed are stuck with gear and spells we cant use, so we have characters we cant play and to fix this you want us to spend another, what, $40 on an expansion we already are going to get in the Pre-Order? LMFAO!!!! You have got to be joking. Did I miss something? Is this a late April Fools joke? It must be if you think for half a second ANYONE is going to do that... no, instead you are going to have 5 million support tickets asking for a refund for the Gold accounts, Chronos, and the "Pre-Order". I for one simply want my character put back where he was RIGHT NOW and demand compensation because he is unplayable right now, so I am losing out on all the Daily exp and Lesson of Devoted's I COULD be using. But instead, I we are stuck with unplayable characters. No. Plain and simple. Many of us are paying customers and have been around since 1998. We demand better. We demand that you put it back how it was before the rollback and then apologize to us for your mistake. You big wigs at SoE must understand that YOU screwed up. Not us. Punish yourselves. Fire the guys who put the Pre-Order up how it was. DO NOT punish the players for YOUR mistake. If you want the Pre-Order to not allow us access to VoA and/or RoF, fine. Grandfather those of us who have already purchased it into it so we have access, then fix your Pre-Order page and MAKE SURE it says on there that access to VoA and RoF is not granted until the expansion is released.

Perhaps if you logged in and your character was naked and AAs disabled just to be promised it would be fixed in an unknown amount of time when the expansion really comes out, you would see.

So you come back after a long break of not playing and see that you can pre-order the newest expansion and get the older ones for free with it. You don't lurk on the boards all the time like most of us, so are not part of the conversations here. You pre-order, nothing is said there about what you do or do not get, level up in a few days, buy new gear, destroy your old gear or tribute it, which is what 99% or more of players would do, and buy gold memberships to get more out of your time or spend plat getting kronos.

Then you log in, have lost all levels over 90, have lost all your gear since it no longer affects you being too low to us it, and many of your AAs will no longer work. This effectively stops your playing entirely for most people for up to two months. Upset you come to the boards and are told by the normal types that you suck and it's all your fault even though SOE has now publicly apologized and accepted fault for the mixup.

You really can't see why anyone would be upset?

Nail on the head.

If it's only a few days until release and my card is charged for the new expansion, my character is restored and everything is fine, I have no problem. But if it's weeks, out of a monthly membership, then we deserve a refund on the account time for not being able to play at all. People simply can't play and we are paying for the service, or lack thereof.

A solution is to create an agreement and allow those affected to opt in charging their cards now so they can play their characters and enjoy the content we intended to pay for. The chumps trying to scam will not pay and their access will be limited.

With people like you here, I feel like I can not constantly refresh this thread... Thank you.

Additionally, some people probably don't really realize which features are a part of what expansion sometimes. The way I found out was because NONE of my hotkeys would work. I couldn't figure it out, but then it came to me when I tried to zone into Shard's Landing to get my Alaran language up.

I've been gone for 7 years, with my friends trying to get me to come back every few months over that period. I finally agree to come back, have a gold account, pre-order the expansion so I can play with my friends, only to have the expansions they're playing in taken away. Is this supposed to encourage people to come back? I would imagine that returning players are probably the single biggest paid growth area for EQ at this point. Even if we pay, if we can't play with our friends, why come back?

As a former guild and raid leader, I could probably talk a couple more people into coming back, but why would I want to encourage them to feel exploited too? There's no reason why SOE can't unlock the old content for people that preordered, particularly if they're on gold accounts. Instead of having a public relations win, they've done the opposite, intentionally antagonizing paying customers, losing a lot of good will.

The solution is simple, re-enable the expansions for those that preordered if they have gold accounts. We're trying to give you money, we obviously want to pay you. Do the right thing by your customers.

Personally, I believe SoE screwed up by allowing people to Pre-Order but NOT charging them. Thats like going to a car dealership and buying a car and they sign over the title to you without getting any of your information. Who does that? SoE needs to fix this, and fast. There are many, many players who effected by this who didnt "cheat" them by taking advantage of this. Those that did should have their accounts reset, not us players who followed the rules of the Pre-Order but are not getting punished for the actions of the few. This isnt the military. I have been there and done that. You can not punish people for following your own Pre-Order you had up. Fire your own guys and rollback the accounts of those who cancelled their orders after they /claim the items. Would you throw everyone in jail because they were in the bank at the time some knucklehead robbed them? No. So dont throw those of us standing there in jail.

Exactly. Makes no sense at all why they would take this away instead of just saying, "oops, we made a mistake that we will learn from and on the next expansion we will make sure people KNOW that "old" content isnt unlocked until relase date." Instead, they are pissing off everyone who ordered and was above lvl 90. Nice work SoE.

Just found out about this debacle. I now have a level 90 warrior with almost no gear, when I buy new gear I use the old for tribute. As of now I have lost over 25,000 HP and 2500 AC. This makes the game unplayable. I hope Sony takes this into consideration when they finally release a statement as to how they are going to move forward. We pre-ordered in good faith, I expect Sony to act in good faith as well. I believe the gear we had when we were at the level we were rolled back to should be returned or charge us and let us get on with our EQ lives

No game grants you stuff before you pay. It's not how preorders work anywhere. I would never expect to get any part of what the expansion/game says until it charges me unless it says Get access to this right now! If I had access to something I didn't expect I would question the heck out of it. I wouldn't run around deleting all of my items without a care in the world. SoE definitely screwed up, but it sounds like a large number of people acted pretty ignorantly doing real stupid stuff, and are now throwing hissyfits. Oh well

I can't go back to clicking items outside bags! I won't go back!