Did they massively downsize the workforce or outsource CS to a foreign country for cost reduction/profit increase? I get Daybreak having to maximize profits, but you rake in a ton. Should be able to afford some tactful CS/Social folks or a good training platform to interact with the public. I've been at this game on and off since late '99, early 2000, even put in a few years as a Guide/Senior Guide, but the experience I've seen in the last 3 days since I came back for Corinav for both customer service as well as development has been severely shoddy. Canned responses that don't even address the people by name for name policies that aren't reflected in the public-facing policy, i.e. we don't do custom surnames anymore, except the policy states that CS doesn't do name changes..I'm not changing my name, I'm creating it, and since when don't you offer grave accented names anymore? It's literally one command. It's also something one of those 1500 cost potions can't fix. Then there's the lack of transparency when it comes to the poor launch performance of Corinav. Even the live stream was having issues logging in and staying in. These are run through pre-prod before going live, right? Also apparently there's some ghost rollback on one of the live servers that have some folks angry without a response from DB. As someone else who works at a SaaS company, having the dev AND CS hat on one person doesn't work when your customer needs to interact with you, and you can only open so many TLP servers to re-boost interest so many times.
They rake in a ton? Im willing to bet its been more off than on for you, or its been quite some time.
That's all you took out of this, is how much Daybreak is making, not their practices when it comes to customer service, or transparency? Yes, it's been a while. About 8 months. And then before that, a couple years. Still, with the release of TLP servers, they do have a steady revenue between subscriptions and krono/other microtransaction purchases.
I petitioned for and received a custom surname last year. I think (like many things with customer support tickets) it depends who answers it and their mood.
I took out of it you aint really been on much lately if you think they are rolling in the dough. If you believe half the whiners on here that say they are quitting because of so and so nerf AND taking their 20 paid box sets with them, DB income is not near what it was in their hay day. All we hear is skeleton crew this, sh*tastic expansions that are just copy and paste old zones, not to mention being delivered half baked. Mebbe the doom and gloom is getting to me but things sure dont seem like they did 15 years ago.
I've only had the need to petition once or twice since DBG took over. I first received the canned response. A few days later, though, I did get a response from a real person. I hope that's true for you, as well.
- Petitions made politely, with most/all of the information to resolve the issue and you'll almost always get a quick and polite reply back. - Petitions with things like "You suck, I did this quest and didn't get my reward! Fix this garbage now!" will very likely get the petition thrown back in your face. - Posts on the forums with reasonable requests, reasonable questions, and being polite will often get a reply from people like Ngreth, Absor, Dzarn, etc. - Posts with "OMG the devs suck, should be fired. They want to shut the game down so they're just killing us! (this one is probably my favourite tbh)" aren't going to get you anywhere, might even get you a sarcastic reply right back in your face. As for "they rake in a ton", you have access to their financials? Didn't know that.
I submitted a petition two weeks ago and got a response and a resolution within 8 hours. CS is fine IMO.
When it was soe we never had bugs... oh wait. I remember one time my main lost 8 levels because the server that tracked whether I bought the new expansion lost data. It took them a month (and 3 petitions) to fix it and in the meantime I couldnt play him.
I'll bite. The reason I wrote this was this petition: It's not so much the reply. I can accept that. There's no personality behind it. It's a generic super professional response with no reasoning behind it. In fact, even in the naming policy does it not state that CS doesn't do this anymore. I mean, I had heard from others in game when I said what I wanted, they said Daybreak doesn't do that anymore, but I figured it was just dependent on who answered, not as an official policy, because it's not on their official policy that they don't assist with customizing surnames, like ones that require a grave accent such as a dark elf surname. Several folks in game have told me the last time they heard of this happening was a few years ago. I can go into my previous cases that I've had to interact with support and there is a vast difference in communication style. Me Hi team! I'm requesting assistance to add a grace accent (the ` character) to my surname. You see, I come from a long line of T`Kirk's and I'm afraid that if I don't carry on the lineage, it may be lost forever, as I am the last of the T'Kirk's of Ak'anon. Could one of you fine gentlemen bestow my wonderful surname on myself please? Me Monday at 12:08 grave accent*..sorry. It appears that my studies for special characters has slipped. My father would be most displeased if he hadn't been stuck down by Meldrath's minotaur henchmen. GM Dalgras Monday at 18:07 Greetings Traveler, I regret to inform you that due to changes in our policy, we are no longer assisting with customizing surnames. If the surname is unable to be obtained via the /surname command, you'll have to find a different name. If you have any further questions or concerns, feel free to contact us again and thank you for playing EverQuest! Sincerely, GM Dalgras
To answer your question. Yes, Daybreak is owned by an investment company (Columbus Nova) and they have downsized and they have changed their policies about assisting customers. Essentially they don't help customers.
They laid off a bunch of people a year or two ago. But they're also advertising for new hires. So the answer is: I don't know.
Try petitioning again. I've only had to a couple times in the DBG era, and GM Dunbar has been amazingly quick and helpful.
You're throwing a big fit over a single character within a surname and the fact that Daybreak support no longer does that sort of thing in game when it was just a courtesy in the first place? I think you need to evaluate your priorities in life and take a long look at what is really important in the scheme of things. I for one am thankful the game is still around and that we get patches every month, some content every year and some stuff to do in the game. Could it be better? Of course but so can anything. I think there are much more important things to focus on than a character within a surname. You're also way off base with your anger about devs and CS being the same. That's two different departments that are completely separate of each other. Customer Service handles every Daybreak game and there are unrelated separate dev teams for each individual game. GM is just an in game title with the functions of GMs and there are very very few of them anymore even on TLP servers. In April of 2015 when Columbus Nova took over they let go of 45% of the SOE staff and made a lot of policy changes regarding what customer service can and can't do in game from that point forward for all games. If you want to be angry blame the parent company and not the people at Daybreak.
What does being frustrated with a company's customer service have to do with priorities in life? If we're going for generalizations, you definitely beat me. While this is a singular issue for me, it's not for several others. I'm just echoing other's frustrations with Daybreak's customer service department, primarily because this time, it did affect my immediate response. If you want me to just chalk up any ticket response I get to some investment company making procedural changes, that's just not going to happen. It's not Columbus Nova that responded to me, just like when I respond to customers in the company I work for, it's not my investment company that I work for and speak on behalf of. The fun part about interacting with the public is the ability to bend the rules or make exceptions to leave a good impression. If I was rude about it, or it's an unrealistic request, sure, quote the rules. It's literally one command and some log work to track time billed, and would take about 15-20 minutes of someone's time. Maybe it's because I'm not a hardcore EQ player where I devote my time solely to this game alone that I haven't noticed the lowered frequency with which there are customer service agents available or some of the policy changes, but that doesn't mean I need to re-prioritize my whole life, or think of a larger picture behind one poor interaction. I didn't know anything about Columbus Nova, or a layoff of staff or any policy changes that are a few years old. I rarely interact with staff in any game I play, so excuse me if I didn't do a metric ton of research on the company as a whole before I blew a gasket. I had heard through various in-game chats that CS wasn't really into the good customer experience anymore, and this interaction confirmed it for me personally. I got my question answered here regarding the downsizing done at DB. The point still stands that I had a crappy experience and I'm unhappy about it. There's nothing anyone here can do about that, and frankly, I'm already done harping on not being able to get my surname. The unhappy resolution of my ticket was just a precursor to the reason I created this post. I wanted to know more about policy changes and transparency, or lack thereof, because of tongue-in-cheek comments in in-game chat, to other posts in other sites as well as these forums, for as infrequent as I play or interact with staff, I've noticed the difference.
#1 Per naming policy: Updated March 6 2018 "Character names must be at least four (4) characters in length, begin with a capitalized letter, and cannot include numeric characters (0 - 9) or special characters." That grace accent (the ` character)is a special character. #2 Per naming policy: "Do not pick a name that violates anyone's trademarks, publicity rights or other proprietary rights." The TKirk could for Star Trek but that would be a stretch. So I don't think its this one. #3 All this is under https://help.daybreakgames.com/hc/en-us/articles/230628107-EverQuest-Naming-Policy and clearly available so you don't have to go digging. So if you totally ignore the policy and proceed to bother CS with a request - which is your right - then they are going to respond nicely - which they did - keeping in mind you are not the only request they have that day. They answer hundreds if not thousands of requests day in and day out and if many of the responses are canned then that only saves them the waste of time to answer the ones that are already answered in policy rules. In addition many times a petition answer could be to interact with other players in the game to see what the answer should be. Which you state you had already done and been told they do not customize names anymore. #4 So how I read this whole complaint is that you are upset you did not get what you want. Such is life. I see nothing wrong with DBG response. It was polite. But firm. Kinda like a parent who has told their kid for the 1000th time that no, you cannot have that toy. If that is bad customer service then you have never spoken with your cable or phone company.
