Customer Service and the Persistent Feeling of Disrespect

I wanted to talk about a situation we have on the Mischief server, and it's causing some issues. The 'omm' mission is not working as expected, and it's quite a problem for many of us.
I was thinking, if you compare it to something like Netflix, you know, if they suddenly remove a popular show like 'Breaking Bad,' they would be all over it! They would send emails, tweet about it, maybe even offer some refunds. But in our gaming world, it's just silent. No apologies, nothing.
Even though they put that "Confirmed" label on it, we're all wondering, "Will they do something about it, or is it just for show?" I know I am.
So, I have a few suggestions:

1. Maybe Daybreak can start talking to us? Just tell us you know there's an issue, and you're working on it.
2. It would be great if we could get an idea of when 'omm' is going to be fixed. It helps us plan our game time, you know?
3. A simple "Sorry, guys" can make a big difference. We're not asking for a lot, just some acknowledgment.

Fellow players, feel free to share your thoughts and experiences. Our voices count, and maybe if we all speak up, we'll get the help we need.
In conclusion, Daybreak, please do something about this issue on the Mischief server

/plays the violin

/adds a lone trumpet

In seriousness, communication from devs to players can be better. And I have this odd feeling of having said the same thing before, and of reading comments from others about the same issue.

Mmm...no. Because people are selfish greedy fatherless children all the time, this has been proven to be false time after time after time after time. Heck, even your own post is hypocritical to your own claim

They've acknowledged it as per your 2nd point. It's been confirmed. They know about it, its been acknowledged. And yet you're still in here making demands that it gets fixed.

Im going to assume with both the next expansion and UF unlocking on Mischief in 4 weeks, it's not high on their honey-do list

Are you having a bad day?

Not even in the slightest

Every time you log in you agree to the terms of service, and by continuing to log in that agreement means you accept that stuff may not be working, see below quote box.

It is 100% true that communication could be better, that's been the case since the game was launched, probably even before it was. The amount of quality communication we get has waxed & waned over time.

But the people employed by the game company generally do the best they can with what they have in terms of tools, experience, and time - what they can't control is how many colleagues they have assisting them on all the various tasks needed.

I don't think the active developers, coders & artists disrespect their customers in general although rare isolated incidents have happened, I myself have experienced such an incident, but developers are humans & occasionally they make mistakes and allow their frustrations to override their professionalism, but on the whole the developers are aiming to provide their customers with a fun entertaining product and they really don't like it when the game doesn't do that either.

As for customer service, the team do fix bugs, some bugs are harder to fix than others, some bugs are lower in impact than others and get lowered priority, bug fixing is analogous to triage - they try to fix the most game-breaking things first and if they have time and find some "easy" to fix bugs they might allocate time to the "easy wins" as well because even a bunch of small bugs with low impact can be really annoying.
The most important thing to remember as a customer is that they can't fix a bug until they understand what causes it in the first place, and that can be the most difficult & time-consuming stage of any bug, sometimes this stage will see a lot of questions asked about what causes it, sometimes it can be a long time before anything is said about it because they are busy still figuring it out and don't have any news about progress as they haven't made any.

There are far older bugs that need fixing named in Dranik Scar being one. They have confirmed OOM is broken they will get to it when they have time same as other bugs.

are you expecting to get a month of playtime for free because 1 mission is down for a few hours? Per your example, netflix doesn't give a month free because 1 show is off the list.

I do agree though that more time addressing bugs in the game would be nice. Though an interesting dichotomy arises. There are bugs scattered across the expacs. However only partial bug time can be spent on old (tlp stuff). Otherwise bug fixing services won't impact people on live

Netflix stopped showing a series I liked. The only "confirmed" it got was that it would not be returning. There was no "in progress" It is gone. Because there is nothing else in Netflix that made that $8 a month worth it so I cancelled them.

EQ has thousands of bugs. Each player who is experiencing a bug of any sort feels theirs is the only bug that matters and more so when a couple friends or even an entire server is having the same bug.

They are working on all bugs. Some take longer than others. Yours is no more important than any of the others as they are all important to someone.

For example, we who do not play on TLP don't care about your bug just like you do not care about bugs that affect us on live or test.

So buck up. Quit insulting CS as you have in your other posts and it will get fixed. Eventually.

And if it doesn't then you can refer to my first sentence and if that mission is the only thing you care about in this game you are more than free to cancel.

We all agree to the ToS and understand things break. These facts, however, do not ease the sense of frustration when we set our minds to a task in the little time some of us have to play. Maybe this was the intent of the OP?

If anyone thinks the developers are not aware of what the game means to so many people and how valuable everyone's time they spend in it is they are sorely mistaken.
Labelling the developers as being disrespectful of their players is a blatant attempt to goad the developers into action through disparagement.
Then the OP basically called for other players to jump on that bandwagon.
Players do not need encouragement to complain they already air their views fairly comprehensively, what he was seeking was support from other players to also complain about the thing he is not happy about and amplify view the devs are disrespectful to punish the devs for not fixing it sooner.
What is not needed is an over dramatization of any individual problems, okay some content isn't working and you are disappointed, had he stopped at saying just that it would be totally fine.
But in an attempt to add weight to his "cause" he went overboard.

In what world would Netflix give people refunds if a show is suddenly removed from it? They remove shows from the service all the time, lol.

Yep, I'm thinking Daredevil, etc.

After watching BlizzCon all weekend, (I miss Holly Longdale) it's refreshing to see a major MMO studio talk about how they care about players and value their community. Whether it's true or not, at least they are making the effort to publicy state it.

I know there are many jaded players here who have given up hope of this happening on the sceptered isle of EverQuest where communication seems to go only in one direction. But smaller MMO studios should be able to care just as much as big ones.

It's easier to develop relationships with smaller businesses such as bakers, gardeners, butchers, and craft shops than big faceless companies like Google or Amazon. You get to know their names and they know you. There's a barista who makes my coffee perfecly everyday when I pull up at the booth with my two golden doodles. I know her name and she knows my name. It costs nothing to be a decent person and to care about your fellow human beings. We're all on the good ship Norrath together. It would be really nice if the devs could communicate more and mingle with those us down in steerage a tad more often.

You're never too big of a company or too small of a company not to care about your customers.

There's a big difference between feeling disrespected and devs actually disrepecting players. In today's world it's very easy to feel disrespected by big corporations when problems happen when you are paying for goods and services.

Let's cut the original poster some slack. It takes a lot of guts to come to the forums and bring up issues like this because generally there are apologists that come out of the woodwork and pile on and play ForumQuest PVP. When this happens most non-ForumQuest people get so beaten down, they never come back because to be honest: it's an echochamber around here. We should not be discouraging new players. We should be encouraging them.

Darkpaw needs all the new customers it can get for EQ. In fact we all do. We should be bending over backwards to be welcoming and inclusive of others who are not as patient or as knowledgable as we are.

Frankly, I think the answer is for Daybreak to hire more people to act as liasons between the players the Darkpaw. I think we are down one community manager as Accendo is no longer with Darkpaw. Our current community manager(s) are working crazy hours and doing all kinds of other things too that are non-community related as I've seen the actual job descriptions for community managers. A lack of proper staffing has been a perennial problem once SOE was sold to Daybreak. They need to start hiring more people. It's just that simple.

Yes, feeling disrespected is within a persons control.

Being disrespected is not.

Hopefully you understand the key difference.

You can if you wish, I'm not going to.

It takes guts to come to forums & bring up issues?

I am so sorry if anyone has felt beaten down, how about I help repair all that devastating damage by holding hands with you & singing Kumbaja while we clang finger cymbals & meditate on comfy cusions in a beautiful yurt with a rainbow overhead & watch as a dove flutters by with an olive branch in its beak and pastel blue butterflys dance in the trancendental shimmers of equinox sun rays. And breathe in, and breathe out, let your spirit soar away from all the pain the forum has caused you, you are free little bird, fly free back to your happy place where everyone loves you.

From where I am sitting Darkpaw is only interested in looking after the people who are already playing here, they are happy if former players return but they have almost no serious interest in actively seeking out genuinely new players.
Seeking new players is what EQ3 will be for anyway.
Just like a very large portion of the remaining players have I have always encouraged people to play EQ, I even tried getting my own kids to give it a go, and just like many EQ vets I've given new folks gear & plat & advice and powerlevelled them some and pointed them at resouces like the many youtube vids, and the few remaining websites with game info on them. Like Allakhazam & the excellent EQResource, and I waste hours trying to encourage Darkpaw to cater to new players better by considering options to make catching up to live better.
But fact is, the vast majority of new players I did come across did not stick around, the game is just not new player friendly at all and the huge timesink required to reach the level of the majority of players is a big ask, and very disheartening, until Darkpaw take catching up for new players seriously I don't think any of us can either, we are just peeing into the wind and getting wet for the trouble.

Things are rarely "that simple", more people would be nice but I don't think we should forget that the current top tier of people consist of the two responsible for a lot of staff being laid off when SoE sold Daybreak, hiring more people is something they only consider doing when they absolutely have to.

I remember during a BlizzCon a number of years ago when the Red Shirt guy asked a question during the WoW Q & A segment. He pointed out a small lore NPC name problem that wasn't game breaking on a massive scale. But, it was an bug nonetheless.

After both WoW devs realized that they had made a mistake one of them said:

"Thanks for pointing that out, we're gonna get that fixed."

They didn't ignore him. They didn't put it on a TO DO LIST. They didn't forget about it.The bug was fixed in the next patch.

That's how it's done ladies and gentlemen. That's how you show you care. You don't make excuses, you don't put your head in the sand. You fix the problem. The Blizzard WoW team gained a lot of street cred that day because they listenened, admiited they were wrong, and they took action. The video went viral as well. This just goes to show you that honesty, humility, and kindness go a long way and cost nothing.

Well, in every TLP for the past few years, and now on Oakwynd, Siren's Grotto is infested with bots large anon groups of brilliant true-box players who play 24x7 with each character doing the exact same thing 24x7. In Multiple Picks.

Just saying that it doesn't take a Sherlock Holmes to watch them for a bit to know what they are doing, and this has nothing to do with stellar customer service and what not. Neither should it need copious amount of "video proof" or whatever. What is known to every player should be know to the GMs.