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The Truth about Sony Online Entertainment (SOE)
Drakaeon
Member Posts: 630
I am going to try to spell this out, real simple, for everyone here. I hate all this "OMFG SWG SUCKS! I'M NOT GETTING EQ2 NOW!"
First off, no one cares. If you are going to whine that much, stay the hell away from Everquest II, it will simply make it a better game for the people playing.
Moving on. There is one simple thing you have to understand. Sony Online Entertainment (SOE) has many different branches. A seperate team works on the different games. No two games have the same team. The Customer Service Representatives, the development team, etc. are all different.
What exactly does this mean?
It means that Star Wars:Galaxies does not equal Everquest.
Everquest does not equal Planetside.
Planetside does not equal Star Wars:Galaxies.
And Everquest, Star Wars:Galaxies, and Planetside do not equal Everquest II.
Is some understandment coming?
Not only are they all seperate teams, but the teams are seperated too. None of the teams are even in the same building.
What is the conclusion?
The conclusion is that it is absolutely impossible to be able to tell what Everquest II's customer service is going to be like, dispite previous dealings with any form of Sony Online Entertainment (SOE). There is only one way to tell what they will be like, and it is even not 100% accurate. This way is to have meet them, as many people from major websites and game related companies have been able to do.
Why is this still inaccurate? It is still inaccurate because of the fact that they have not meet them under the conditions of an eight hour say after recieving 100 or so bug reports from players (I am not saying there will be that many bugs).
That is the conclusion that should be reached using this information. If you disagree, you are wrong. It is simple.
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Finwe on microphones in MMOs: "it'd eliminate l33t speak....But it would bring in ebonics."
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lol funny
i agree to the SWG SUCKS IM NOT GETTING EQ2! Part, to those people that did it: nobody cares! If you want to vent, go im yourself.
--Fear The Master--
The one, the only, Intelacer
AIM: MasterIntel88
MSN: Intelacer@hotmail.com
--Fear The Master--
The one, the only, Intelacer
AIM: MasterIntel88
MSN: Intelacer@hotmail.com
Actually, no. You are wrong. Try doing your homework before telling people to do theirs.
Finwe on microphones in MMOs: "it'd eliminate l33t speak....But it would bring in ebonics."
LMAO! OH FUNNY STUFF, sorry, things like this amuse me, it reminds me of Jerry Springer...
JERRY JERRY JERRY JERRY
--Fear The Master--
The one, the only, Intelacer
AIM: MasterIntel88
MSN: Intelacer@hotmail.com
--Fear The Master--
The one, the only, Intelacer
AIM: MasterIntel88
MSN: Intelacer@hotmail.com
Actually SOE America has two offices, one in San Diego and one Houston (I know it's in Texas, not Houston for sure). However, most of Sony's actual customer service is outsourced to various call centers, hence, this is why we recieve such poor service. Drakeon, this is no flame to you at all, just making a defensive point for everyone else. I for one am not going to EQ2 because of negative experiences with SOE as a whole. I have played EQ, Planetside and SWG. They do all have in common the atrocious customer service that SOE provides.
In a slight defense to the devs, it may not necessarily be their fault. With how we must go through petitions, emails, phone calls, etc., it's a wonder if many of the devs even recieve troubleshooting notifications at all.
Well..my point?
Let's say you try a new restaurant the first time and it's horrible service and horrible food, but you say "Well, it was my first time it was a fluke possibly" so you go back a second time and try again. The second time is just as bad, if not worse, but still you give them the benefit of the doubt and try number 3. It still is horrible. Would you ever go back? Would you feel that you have been cheated out of the $14.99 that you paid for your meal? You only recieved partial of what was promised, your food, but everything else was horrible, even the food itself.
I like to get for what I pay for, and I don't feel that paying $15.00/month is worth what I get from the service of SOE.
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33.333333333333336% of me is a huge nerd! How about you?
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You are wrong because you aren't posting a fact. The fact is that they are all in seperate buildings and their affiliation with each other goes no deeper than being a branch of Sony Online Entertainment (SOE).
If you are going to continue to parade your "fact", then please provide back-up. I know you will ask me to do the same, however, I would need to return to San Diego to take the picture. You could always pay for my flight, though.
I see what you are saying here. However, in a response to your example, I would not go back to that restraunt, but I would try the same restraunt in a different location.
Your example perfectly backed my point. There is this pizza place, Villa Monte, close to me. It is terrible. I hate it and never eat there after a couple of horrible attempts. There is an other Villa Monte, same parent company, about 20 minutes away from me. This one is actually the best pizza with in a close proximity of my house. The only way for me to get better than this, would be to go an hour or so away from my house. Not happening.
Sure SOE can have different teams to produce different games.SOE can even have different teams to produce different areas of a single game.
But considering Sony is one of the largest corporations in the world it is acceptable to me that they would try to save money somewhere.It has to start somehwere and they are apparently starting with customer service.
This is a trend that has been going on for years.Its not just in the mmo industry either.This is everywhere.We sacrifice customer service for better prices or something else.
Say what you will about how each game they develop has a different team.It doesnt matter when it comes to corporate decision making.The games they develop become so popular it simply does not matter how many quit there is always someone else to replace the one that quit.
Can you imagine the amount of customer service reps it would take to handle petitions on a game with say 200,000 customers?Why would they pay someone to do it when they dont have to?
Want to ENJOY an mmo?
Dont start a guild and dont be a leader or volunteer to be coleader or captain.
Just play the damn game:)
That is a very good point because it is true. Customer service is lacking in basically all of the "big" games out there.
However, the point of this thread is that you are completely unable to judge Everquest II's customer service by previous Sony Online Entertainment (SOE) games.
Keyword there is "if."
I see what you are saying here. However, in a response to your example, I would not go back to that restraunt, but I would try the same restraunt in a different location.
Your example perfectly backed my point. There is this pizza place, Villa Monte, close to me. It is terrible. I hate it and never eat there after a couple of horrible attempts. There is an other Villa Monte, same parent company, about 20 minutes away from me. This one is actually the best pizza with in a close proximity of my house. The only way for me to get better than this, would be to go an hour or so away from my house. Not happening.
But, Let's say Taco Bell had the worst food ever, (JUST AN EXAMPLE!), And this is taco bell all around. No matter where you would go, all the same basic idea's, and meat and such is sent to every branch. All of these SOE customer reps learn the same things, have the same manuals, just not the exact same exact answers and questions that could be asked and such. If the whole HQ sucks, it's mostly going to go throughout the whole business. (Thank god this isn't true for Taco Bell)
Finwe on microphones in MMOs: "it'd eliminate l33t speak....But it would bring in ebonics."
SOe's customer service is in India... (I dont really know, and I really dont have anything against SOE... I was juust bored lol...)
But that is just it, they don't all learn the same thing. The service recieved depends on the:
1) System used
and
2) The person's mood.
Different people have different moods. If you hire a bunch of people who hate their job, they are not going to be nice to deal with.
Now that I said that, Taco Bell does suck and you can not compare this to a fast-food chain because fast-food chains are all the same, while restraunts in the same chain differ according to the waiters and chefs.
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Another prime example. If you read the review of City of Heroes that is the newest news article at this time, the customer service section states that it has good service. I investiged their forums and people do indeed compliment this customer service.
Now, City of Heroes is made by a branch off of NCSoft. What else did NCSoft make? If you guessed Lineage II, you would be right. I played Lineage II, and have three friends who still do. The customer service is, ugh, atrocious. Worse than SOE could ever be. The NCSoft that is associate with Lineage II is completely different than the one associated with City of Heroes.
It is the same way with Sony Online Entertainment and all of it's games.
Finwe on microphones in MMOs: "it'd eliminate l33t speak....But it would bring in ebonics."
Finwe on microphones in MMOs: "it'd eliminate l33t speak....But it would bring in ebonics."
Thank you for realizing the point of my post.
Not to mention, I didn't find the customer service in Everquest too bad. It took them around a half-hour to get me unstuck, but they did it. They also banned a couple of cheaters I pointed them to.
(How did I know they were cheaters? For Lineage II, I signed up for a exploits site so I could give them all the info on new exploits in a hope they would fix them and make the game better. Did they? Not really. Anyways, the site also had Everquest on it, and in a few of the screen shots some of the people showed their names. Idiots.)
Keyword there is "if."
That's why I Capitalized IF. But this whole thread is speculation.
MacDonalds is 1 company with many many different branches. Yet each branch has a written policy on how to make each type of burger,salad etc etc. It is the exact same copy that is given to everyone. A certain burger needs to be made a certain way every time.
This is much how SoE operates. The used their CS model from Everquest and with a bit of tweaking it became the SWG policy. You will note that countless numbers of folks have voiced complaints about SWG Customer Service. Much the same as in EQ. There are wholesale bannings going on in both games.
And the end all and be all is that if you dislike somone complaining about a game company such as SoE then feel free to not read the thread
Eheem, well you see SoE is no garage company even a minimal of economic study should tell you that cpmanies of these sizes have bussiness plans, rules and conducts that span the WHOLE company. These things do not happen by fluke, even if there were ever so many teams or whatever each of them have little or nothing to say when it comes to how they handle customers. They act on a ruleset over wich they have proposal power only.
Same with MCdonalds or microsoft or whatever company you shoose for an anology, they might differ slightly depending on location but branch offices or own restuarants have mostly ZERO say when it comes to bussiness model decisions.
Same with SoE of course, so your statement is 100% wrong, it will be almost exactly the same and if they change it they will change it across the company, not just for EQ2. Now bussiness study of this sort is just not everyones cup of tea and the conclusion you draw could very well be correct based on observation. But big companies just can not work on that basis hence they have centralised rules for almost everything.
If I thought you were interested i would point you in the direction of relevant litterature but I do not think this is the case.
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Originally posted by Jerek_
I wonder if you honestly even believe what you type, or if you live in a made up world of facts.
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If EQII is going to have the same CS as EQ, SWG, and DAoC, I will be very happy. Imo, if players petition only important thing, and try to get info and solutions from other player, game guides, and forums first, then CS could be superb. I have maxed level characters on EQ, SWG and DAoC, and I barely made a petition. New games have tons of bugs, and I expect EQII to have tons of CS to support the first couple months of release.
About those innocent people being banned for cheating, I will be pissed if that happens to me. I still doubt if they r all innocent. I wouldnt doubt if a few mistakes were made tho.
Both sides are partly right.
SoE does have some policy and some general way of handling things, no matter in which game you play.
However, it is not the same persons that apply those rules, thereby there is a little room for personnal interpretation, especially if the funds are lower and the project get less interest from SoE general direction.
Saying that any other game lack because of 1 particuliar game is extreme, you dont leave place for any grey zones. Saying that the customer service will be completely different from 1 game to another is also extreme, they have the same generals rules to apply, they just dont read them the same way.
All in all, CS in SoE is pretty good as far as I can tell. The dev team is disconnected from their players based and they are the whores of the big guilds, but that have nothing to do with CS! Without checking hard, I will assume LDoN was enforced on the dev team by CS, until someone prove me wrong, I will assume the LDoN is a direct expension from the CS pressions on the devs. LDoN is the only expension that see me play many twinks while I see nothing for my main toon, which is quite a lot in itself.
However, 1 of my friend delete a 60ish toon and they never restore it, which is very bad IMO. Players will do dumb things like deleting their toons on a brash decision, all toons a certain level+ should be save in a special directory and export from the server for future needs.
- "Coercing? No no, I assure you, they are willing to bring my bags and pay public transportation just to help me, it is true!''
- "If I understand you well, you are telling me until next time. " - Ren
Looks like some people are still trying to say it will be bad. Some people have gotten it, though.
Let me point this out : I did not say that the CS is going to be awesome, I said you can not judge the CS until the game is out. That is because the teams that work on the game are different and it isn't the same people. Same people, even when given the same instructions, work differently. Only fictional robots can do the same under the same situations.
Well you could translate my post into 3 different restauraunts as they were three different games.
My reason is that I had bad experiences with SOE, maybe you have or haven't, but I don't want to chance it. Now I am not saying EQ2 is going to be a bad game, rather it looks great. But there is starting to be a lot more fish in the mmorpg sea.
edit: And vrtldv that was my point, they outsource customer service to India. Why? Because India is the cheapest place to do it. EA, Dell, AOL, and I am sure many more outsource to India as well. One of the major problems I have when talking to customer service for SOE is that I can barely understand the person.
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33.333333333333336% of me is a huge nerd! How about you?
Killer 100%
Achiever 53%
Explorer 33%
Socializer 13%
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