Guild Deletion/Customer Service

Hey everyone,

I'm here today to bring to light some problems that EQ is having and hopefully get the attention of some devs or Jennifer Chan who can actually fix the problem. Recently I started a guild on the Vox server called The Guard of Divine Souls(The GoDS for short). We had close to 100 members the first night and the next day after the patch our guild was deleted! We put in tickets and within a few hours Ms. Chan herself was in our guild running scripts to put everything back! Amazing customer service! Got right on the problem and corrected it and it was awesome.

Now fast forward to the most recent patch: Myself and members of my guild logged on after the downtime(and then extra few hours of downtime) to see that our guild name had been changed to "On Our Own." Awesome... so I put in another support ticket hoping they can just correct the name. Then we noticed our guild hall was gone, our permissions in the guild, ranks, notes, tribute were all deleted. The Members were still there but it was as if we had just created the guild and mass invited people. I sent in another ticket explaining what was going on at 1733(quitting time was at 1730 I'm sure). I got a response the next morning from GM 'Woebot'(Justin C.) saying he wanted to update me - they didn't have an ETA and they were looking to the Devs for a fix. Awesome again - you can't fix it now and I understand that - do some research and get back to me later in the day. I get no response from GM Woebot or DB.

24 hours later I send a response to the ticket asking for compensation for the inconvenience(hey it's worth a shot) as we still haven't heard anything else. I get a response over in the afternoon(we're pushing 56ish hours now with no update) and Mr. Woebot decides because I've asked for compensation that my original ticket is no longer valid and needs no further looking into and CLOSES the ticket with no response other then to take to the forums to get the devs attenion(hear I am Justin...). Turns out Justin here just recreated our guild(with the original name), player housing zone, and migrated all the characters over to it. Oh, and he picked up our guild house and sent everything back to each member. However he didn't fix anything else. Just the name and created a new housing zone. He didn't move any of the other players houses to the new zone, he didn't tell us what he did. He just said to take to the forums and closed the ticket without even telling us what he had done.

As a CS representative that's unacceptable. He didn't actually fix anything, in fact he made it much much worse. And lo and behold, the Vox server crashed today 10/23 around noon(cst) and guess what happend... We all got kicked and logged into... you guessed it... NO GUILD... AGAIN... Our guild of over 220 members(yes inflated because of alts) just went *poof*. Now that's three times in around a month that our guild has been deleted, where we've had to reinvite people, recreate our guild hall(all decorations included), lost time trying to explain to everyone what's happened and assuage their fears and tell the that DB is going to fix it and I'm not even sure that's the case anymore. All of this and all Daybreak Support and Justin C 'Woebot' can say is "I encourage you to post on the official game forums here<linkToForums> The developers often look to the forums for feedback on game content and you may rally support from other players there too; which often helps your case with the developers."

This is completely ridiculous! But here I am asking for your support players, devs, GoDS of Norrath, everything that's good and holy, please ffs fix this - stop deleting guilds(we're not the only ones). For a company to act this way is completely shameful! This is how you're going to kill EQ, and there will be no ressurecting it if you continue down this path with no accountability for your employees like Justin, with devs who don't pay attention and allow patches to destroy players time in game multiple times without even a "we're sorry" or "we're working on it." Just closing tickets and making problems worse for no reason. Thanks for everything you 'Do' Daybreak(sarcasm heavily implied).

TL/DR? Daybreak customer service is awful and deleted my guild not once, but THREE times and we want it back! And with if everyone replies we may get their attention and it may actually happen!

A Pissed off Norrathian who wants his guild back,
Saurawn of Vox

Posting here to confirm that this post is correct. I am a member of the Guard of Divine Souls on the Vox Server and we have lost everything. This happened to me and everyone else who was online at the time. We were all disconnected from the server and when we logged back in our guild tag was gone. This and the other issues that have happened to our guild in the past month is just ridiculous. All we want is our guild tag back and to be able to play the game together like we wanted to which I do not think is too much to ask.

Pissed off Magician of the Vox Server, Xkoril Planestrider~ 105 Magician

Im also posting about this to. Im the co leader of The guard of divine souls. I just dont understand how u can do to the players of norrath. Slot of us pay a lot of money to play, and even more to get the grand guild hall up and running. To say the less im oissed off. And thats being nice. We all would have understand if it was once. But 3 times and close the ticket.... Thats nit right



Very unhsppy co leader of the GoDs... Of Vox Server 105 Warrior Linor

Its very sad how much time has been spent during these two problems.. Great way to spend a day off trying to get guild members together.

Very sad second co-leader of The GoDS here.. I'd just like to say that Saurawn has managed to bring together a group of players that truly care about the game and the other players around them into a guild that is not only about self-advancement, but coming together for the greater good of the the in-game world.

In the time that we haven't been repeatedly rebuilding our deleted guild (hall, roster, bank, etc - and you know this is time-consuming), we've been helping new and established players by way of sharing gear, items (which we all farmed and used our tradeskills to make), buffs, and knowledge. Norrath is a special place, and the community there is warm and helpful in general, unlike a lot of the toxic gaming communities around right now. We'd like to foster that spirit of cooperative gameplay and help to build the community back up, but you're really tying our hands here..
We had our guild about a day the first time it was deleted, and now, not even a month later, we're a day into deletion number 3, with no guild tag, no guild chat, no functioning guild hall, and no solution on the horizon.. Just a closed ticket..?? This really sucks, guys.. We're now scrambling to keep our guildmates in one spot, but I don't know how long an in-game chat channel and Discord can accomplish this before they start wandering off to older guilds that are immune to your rollback nonsense.

Please do the right thing.. This kind of will kill the game.

I noticed this kind of thing, and petitioned about it as far back (at least) as 10/12/16. I have seen guilds totally deleted and I have seen guilds having their names renamed to, with names ranging from a normal sounding name like "Council of Force" to the more bizarre sounding "Hare" , "Eccentric" and "Peepeep Pants" to name just a few. I do know that on my characters that are now in the guild renamed as "Council of Force", that if you do a /who on the characters, you will see the original guild name...but on the screen showing the character in EQ, above their head, and in the drop down guild member list box, the new guild name is displayed. It is a shame that Daybreak does not seem to making this much of a priority. I have 4 gold accounts and am not happy with the situation. I, for one, was lucky, as I did not have a bunch of valuable stuff in the guild banks, but I can just imagine the heartbreak for those who did.

Well my friend,

That was step 2 for us - the guild name being changed. You better hope that the server doesn't go down or they run another patch because you're likely to have it disappear altogether and be left at the mercy of a company who plainly does not care about their paying customers or our guilds. I hope it doesn't happen to you as well though - but I offer this advice: prepare yourself for the deletion of your guild. It might be a good idea to go ahead and set up an in-game channel so your members will have a place to communicate with each other when it's gone.

Best of luck,
Saurawn of Vox

Just to put it into perspective when my guild got deleted we had to wait 3 weeks for it to be fixed once. Then another couple weeks for the guild neighborhood to be fixed.

I suspect guilds are not getting renamed as much as they have some massive database issue and guild names are getting switched around somehow. This are definitely messed up on Vox where it sounds like most of the problems are happening and it looks like Daybreak still doesn't know how to fix what is going on. Its obvious the guild restoration tool they are using isn't fixing things if the database is messed up. Hopefully the vox database isn't corrupted beyond repair.

All that being said I do think Daybreak is trying to fix things for you permanently but it looks to me that its far beyond just restoring your guild with all the other stuff going on. I hope they figure it out and get it fixed for all the guilds suffering out there

I do think Daybreak should come out and explain what is actually going on though. I appreciate that it is in their interest to fix everything but communicating with everyone would be a good idea.

I'd like to start off by saying I sympathize with your situation. Losing a guild you worked hard to create is absolutely heartbreaking, and feeling like you're not getting the help you deserve only exacerbates the situation.

I'd also like to point out a couple things that aren't necessarily known by players who aren't frequent forum visitors. The Customer Service team (hereafter referred to simply as "CS") and the Development team are separate entities. Each has different powers, most of which are exclusive to one or the other. There are a wonderful list of reasons why this is necessary - you wouldn't want CS to go mucking around in the actual code, for example.

The CS team for EQ works unbelievably hard for this game. Others may disagree, but given the sheer number of petitions these guys are likely to handle on any given day (including weekends), I am amazed at how well they do. They really do not get enough credit for dealing with the thousands of unique issues that can crop up in a game like EQ on a daily basis. They have rules and procedures to follow, just like at any job, and sometimes their hands are tied in ways they can't control. This tragedy involving guilds is a good example of this. That's something that has to be handed off to the Devlopers, and very specifically the ones that work directly with the code.

EQ is developed by a small team of hard working, passionate, and caring developers. With completing the expansion by its release date the top priority at the moment, these guys and gals are working long, hard hours toward attaining that goal, in addition to all the normal fixes, glitches, and daily maintenance that goes along with a massive MMORPG like Everquest. The horrific and scary "character deletion" and "guild deletion" bugs on a select few servers fall into the "in addition to" category and, despite this, are being worked on and fixed as quickly as possible. Bugs like this aren't always an easy or clear fix, and it takes time to get them shored up.

I'm just a player like you. I understand how unbelievably frustrating it is when things out of your control come crashing down on your gameplay. I play on Test, where horrific disasters are a dime a dozen. I know from experience that when the feces hits the proverbial fan, the absolute best thing you can do to help the developers fix both your situation, and potentially everyone elses, is to keep a calm and thoughtful attitude, while also showing patience and understanding for the possibly monumental task of getting a fix in place.

The EQ Dev team loves the game. They want you to have fun. They are not your enemies, and neither is the CS team. Yes, this absolutely sucks, and yes you have a right to be upset. Coming to the forums and concisely explaining the issue is a great way to help address the problem. Making your forum name "pissed off whatever" and ****sploding is marginally less helpful.

I do hope your issue gets fixed soon, and that this sheds some perspective for people finding themselves with their own guild troubles.

Well said Gotwar.

Hopefully they fix this for y'all soon...Pretty amazing this guild problem has been going on since early October, apparently without a fix. Not good.

Another day and no help at all? What is going on?

Looked at News and Announcements and saw this

All EverQuest Live Servers will be brought offline on Wednesday, October 26th, 2016 at 6:30AM Pacific* for maintenance to the Guilds system. Servers are scheduled to be unavailable for approximately 6 hours.

Keep an eye on the EverQuest forums and social media for status updates and for news if additional downtime is needed.

Hope this is the one

While I agree overall with this what the devs do or can do all depends on calls from above at some point. One Producer wants to concentrate on communications another wants to do something else. Someone decided the devs should work on scaling raids in TBM which I still don't understand why time was wasted on. And a lot of initiatives on things like communications last a few months then fade away. It's the difference between a culture and an initiative.

I have also received some responses from eq peeps who don't feel apologizing for a mistake is needed or why communicating with one Daybreak game about a problem and not others is a problem in and of itself. I think some people do get burnt out.

I agree the Devs want to make EQ the best game it can be. If for no other reason then it looks great on a resume to say you made a 17 year old game shine or that when time come up for your yearly review you can show all the great things you did. I am not saying the game devs arent passionate but just pointing out there are other reasons for them to do the best job then can regardless of passion.

CS staff yeah I am pretty sure they work like crazy. I have worked with CS departments in the financial sector and those guys are all rated on metrics. Measure everything. And I do think that the CS staff 99% of the time try to find the best solutions they can find with the tools and options they have available.

Triton, Echoes in Eternity, Firestormers, Final Empire, Skulls.. they're all gone.

Seems folks are being kicked from guilds after patch. Thanks folks.

Yup i am gone from Triton

Valor of Unity is gone... we're a tiny guild, but we've been around for more than a dozen years.

Lots of guilds on Bertox missing - what did you do?

Same with Bristlebane server.