The WAH, 3/1/09 - The Treehouse of WAR Customer Service

[PhoenixRed]

Let's take a trip back in time this week to almost three years ago, and a developer quote from Mark Jacobs with some interesting bolded passages:

Originally Posted by Mbj

Folks,

Let me make one thing clear from the contract:

GOA's level and quality of support must equal or exceed Mythic support

If they don't do that, the deal is off. Now, does that clear things up a bit?

Also, for those that are saying that GOA failed to bring lots of customers to the game, that is total nonsense. At its peak, DAoC subscribers in Europe dwarfed all the competition. Our numbers there (which at the time was a far less robust market than it is today) were better than we expected them to be. If GOA had handled Italy and other territories from the beginning, our numbers would have been even higher.

Again, I'm not saying that GOA was perfect, they weren't, Mythic wasn't perfect either. We both have learned a lot over the last 5 years and we expect to learn even more over the next two. We have contract language that assures that GOA's support and effort will not only be even better than last time but that it will have to be the equal or better than Mythic's support. If that isn't good enough for those that are complaining or worrying, than there is nothing more I or anyone can say that will change your mind. And when that happens, I will stop talking about it because it is pointless.

Mark

http://www.warhammeralliance.com/for...&postcount=137

Now, back to the present.

It's no secret that lately, with new features such as official forums, incentives for the recruit-a-friend program, and PTS access, that GOA appears to be a step behind Mythic in terms of providing the "equal or better" service that Mark so boldly claimed when the first news surfaced of an agreement between Mythic and GOA so long ago.

GOA's equity with the customer base hasn't always been at a high level, even before this. During open beta there was unexpected downtime as GOA's servers opened days later than Mythic's. Customer interaction between GOA's representatives and its customers hasn't always been rosy, with Iain and now Nic and Magnus not always being received with warmth regarding their answers to questions about the level of service as compared to North America. In fact, GOA has been under fire for quite some time now regarding just about anything that is offered for WAR, and the quote of "equal or better service" echoes constantly with every delay that is apparent in GOA's actions.

As a North American player, not to mention what I do for Warhammer Alliance, I've been privy to this issue for quite some time. And like everyone else, I have an opinion about it based upon what I've seen.

I've come to the conclusion that the relationship between Mythic and GOA is akin to that of the relationship between an outgoing child and a shy, less assertive one. You might have seen this kind of thing when you were growing up. Two kids who are attached at the hip - one of them outgoing, bold, always leading the way, and the other, more passive, following in the ongoing kid's lead, and sometimes, struggling to keep up.

Let's say one of outgoing kid Mythic's big projects is to build a treehouse - one of customer service for other neighborhood kids to play in, always being expanded to ever higher branches. Shy kid GOA participates in this project as best they can - after all, Mythic is a friend and the completion of such a project means that other kids will notice how neat the treehouse is. But sometimes, kid GOA struggles to meet kid Mythic's continuous expansion and building projects, creating the impression that they can't keep up despite kid Mythic's reassurances to the neighborhood children.

The whole point of this analogy is simple as it poses a direct question - and that question is, is this really a partnership of equality? Is this really a relationship where "equal or better" service is even possible?

Let's step away from these sort of comparisons for a second and look at some of the things that have happened regarding the level of service our EU customers have received. Now these are all second hand accounts, but from multiple accounts from EU players, they appear to be accurate:

-During closed beta, Mythic assigned an "Elder Test server" with "Elder Beta testers" as a means of gaining more focused feedback from a more senior beta tester userbase while still recruiting more testers for a larger pool of beta phases. The EU was also supposed to receive the same sort of server for EU senior beta testers to play on - but a decision was rendered by Mythic that only one elder beta test server, the North American one, was necessary. EU beta testers never got to provide the same kind of focused feedback in beta that the US beta testers did through the Elder program.

-It's widely known that four classes were cut from the final release of the game, and are just now in the process of being included again. The announcement of these cuts, and the need to coordinate efforts to answer questions and herd the playerbase, however, was not synchronized between Mythic and GOA. Accounts from EU beta players note that Mythic announced the cuts early, doing so on a day when key GOA representatives normally responsible for communicating with players were not in the office - in fact, they were out promoting WAR, and struggled, in between interviews, to answer community questions.

-Mythic possesses a small focus group of testers called "Core Testers", who according to a post by Mark, are "a small (150) group of players who have signed NDAs and have been part of our early testing program" - set to test things prior to public testing. For Bitter Rivals and the Slayer/Choppa, the same kind of early testing was slated to be given to EU players, and GOA had sent out selection emails to a small number of testers. But a cancellation/apology email was then sent by GOA, citing "a last-minute change" from Mythic that now required the test be "covered by an NDA agreement". With no ability for GOA's legal department to process this change in time for early testing, GOA had no choice but to cancel the test.

-Recently, Mythic has launched official forums. GOA is also launching them, but the unification of the EU and US communities is made difficult by among other things, stricter standards in the EU regarding transmission of private data to countries outside of it. With NA-based Mythic being the authentication source for EU account information, this has made the official forum launch seem disjointed and unequal, with equivalent official EU forums for the PTS not open.

While GOA has taken a lot of grief over the level of service they have provided its customers in the EU, I cannot help but wonder how "equal or better" service is even feasible, given the fact that at times, some of Mythic's decisions constantly seem ahead of GOA's, forcing GOA to play what seems to be an eternal game of catchup. After all it is GOA who is the first line of defense, and therefore the first line of frustration, that EU players go to when they do not receive the level of service their NA brethren do.

GOA, of course, also has work to do to raise their opinion of them among the playerbase. While Nic and Magnus have done their best to communicate with players, acknowledge problems, and solve issues (sometimes with extremely short notice and with quick response time for which they are to be commended), things like the GOA accidental auto-renew of subscriptions on some accounts, past reputation problems, and delays are all things that have hurt the GOA reputation among players.

Both Mythic and GOA have work to do here to repair the treehouse of customer service they've built. They should be in better communication and treat each other like equals, not as one leading the other. Mythic needs to stop making decisions that appear to cripple GOA's ability to provide good service and hurt GOA's reputation more than Mythic's. GOA needs to continue to improve their support infrastructure and work to remove skepticism of their service by quickly responding to and dealing with problems. But both entities need to begin treating this as a real, true partnership. It's unrealistic and foolish to hold Mark to a quote from three years ago and do something extreme like end the Mythic-GOA partnership. It's clear Mythic and GOA already work closely with one another and that the association will not be ending anytime soon.

But if they are going to build a treehouse, they need to build it together with "equal or better" service to each other as well as the players.

[Transience]

Thanks for bringing these issues to the light of the front page, instead of them being in a dark corner of the misc forums. I'm sure many will appreciate this. Many players are feeling this way and voicing our opinions hasn't really made the situation any better. I personally have given up complaining and am enjoying the game as it is. Day after doesn't bother me so much anymore

[Skyldig]

Originally Posted by Transience

Thanks for bringing these issues to the light of the front page, instead of them being in a dark corner of the misc forums. I'm sure many will appreciate this. Many players are feeling this way and voicing our opinions hasn't really made the situation any better. I personally have given up complaining and am enjoying the game as it is. Day after doesn't bother me so much anymore

I was going to make a long post here, but this guys said all I wanted to say in a few sentences.

Great post PhoenixRed...

[Grrblt]

We still have a flash-based website that breaks all the time. Almost two years after we started complaining about it.

[Fiale]

I feel sorry for GOA to a point. The users were willing to give them a clean slate and on the lead up to the CE pre -release date everyone was getting excited. The only fly in the oinment was that NA had been able to verify their accounts and codes for a few months and even a few days before game going live we were still uable to.

We kept pestering GOA when we could do it to get responses "in plenty of time" - in reality it was on the same day as early release, there promises that their servers and authentication pages could cater for more people at one time than there were keys currently in the world proved fataly flawed, and their release was a wet paper bag and not the fan fare NA one.

We said we told you so, they got defensive and said we were unrealistic in our exectations (never a good thing). MJB stepped in, the CEO of GOA had to issue a statement - but the key thing was that thier cleanslate was tarnished the very fist opening few minutes.

I am not sure if EU customers will ever have a love affair with GOA - but hopefuly in the future WaR can at least repair a lot of ill feeling.

I guess it depends on how much Mythic run gun-ho with thier ideas and wants to their NA customers with what is thier game, and how quickly after hearing the starting gun go off, GOA can realise what happened, put downthier coffee, put on their trainers, catch up the Mythic dot on the horizon and then ask "what we doing this time ?" -

[Disease]

Also GOA doesn't have anything to say when it comes to the game itself, they just host it. Mythic designed it and they are responsible for any upcoming patches, content, fixes ect. Which raises another issue - what about game feedback provided by European players? GOA is about to launch their forums, but will developers come and post on them? Will they read our feedback? Will they discuss changes with us? Considering what happened during beta testing I'm pretty sure they won't.

PS. Europe didn't get their slayer/choppa head codes yet. I was told by a CSR that GOA contacted Mythic about this but the later remained silent. Just like the OP said, often people blame GOA for that which is not in their hands.

[Calelith]

Originally Posted by Fiale

I feel sorry for GOA to a point. The users were willing to give them a clean slate and on the lead up to the CE pre -release date everyone was getting excited. The only fly in the oinment was that NA had been able to verify their accounts and codes for a few months and even a few days before game going live we were still uable to.

We kept pestering GOA when we could do it to get responses "in plenty of time" - in reality it was on the same day as early release, there promises that their servers and authentication pages could cater for more people at one time than there were keys currently in the world proved fataly flawed, and their release was a wet paper bag and not the fan fare NA one.

We said we told you so, they got defensive and said we were unrealistic in our exectations (never a good thing). MJB stepped in, the CEO of GOA had to issue a statement - but the key thing was that thier cleanslate was tarnished the very fist opening few minutes.

I am not sure if EU customers will ever have a love affair with GOA - but hopefuly in the future WaR can at least repair a lot of ill feeling.

I guess it depends on how much Mythic run gun-ho with thier ideas and wants to their NA customers with what is thier game, and how quickly after hearing the starting gun go off, GOA can realise what happened, put downthier coffee, put on their trainers, catch up the Mythic dot on the horizon and then ask "what we doing this time ?" -

Agreed.

TBH when i look at the problems i have and have had with GOA only the CE beta fiasco was there fault, the rest is Mythics.

As said they seem to start the race whilst GOA are still getting changed, which then leads to GOA being behind from the off, which then leads to the EU community getting angry which finally leads to people being against GOA.

DaoC might have had a strong EU community, but Mythic have through their 'incompetence' have crippled the EU community.

Look at the servers, at launch they where all high/high, then they went to med/high when the servers got bigger. Now we have 7 servers that never get higher than med/med.

This game had the potential to do great things, but at the current rate it will be dead in Europe before it has the chance.

[Thulf]

Good post, Frank. Hell, people that read my blog know that i regularly take out the finger (or stick) and bash GOA for things that are not right towards their service... like for example the EU Realm War Pages that only offer half the functionality then the US version does. But after communicating more with Nic & Magnus (GOA), who are doing a great job IMO, i get more and more the impression some things are very difficult for GOA. And NO, the two did not mention this, its just my impression.

To me it looks as well like Mythic is going ahead and doing "their" thing, while not thinking enough about or communicating with their EU partner. So GOA is running after them trying to accommodate the EU playerbase as much as they can. Of course it is easier for Mythic to release information or set up different programs with special ingame promo items. Being the developer of this game they can just do it and don't have to consult anyone. I doubt these kind of plans are communicated way ahead to give GOA the chance to set up their own program (in five different languages as well) at the same time. Why not take a spin and sometimes give GOA some juicy ingame details to release a short time ahead of the US, would that hurt? IF Mythic would inform GOA ahead about eg. programs like the "recruit-a-friend win an ingame pet" program, GOA would be stupid not to respond by setting up their own at the same time.

The newly announced forums *could* make things better. The EU CMs will get a private forum with better access to the US devs to ask questions and also to sum-up feedback/concerns from the EU playerbase. While the US Oracle program gives better direct access for some players to the devs, the EU veteran version announced a better access to the Community Team. On the PTS GOA did send in some CSRs to reply to players that did send in feedback, i was really surprised about this, good move.

What can or should GOA do IMO? To get a huge respect boost, after some screw-ups that were entirely their own fault, they should throw some money on their website and the EU Realm War pages and offer a service that is similar to the US. This is something they don't need to ask permission to do, just take some money, hire good people and present us with a great website. And please stop to do bad copy/paste jobs when it comes to news/patchnotes - hire someone to do this properly so you can actually read it and not all the pictures get cut out etc. When there is some info, usually i read the herald.
In addition GOA should use their "official" news possibilities more. They already started by promoting some info from the community the US did not had or picked up afterwards. They should use this possibility more and create professional content for the players to enjoy, entertain and educate.

[Malom]

I kinda wish the game was hosted and developed locally within the EU.

Why?

I live about an hour away from Warhammer World, which if anyone has been to, will know a lot of the companies (GW's) background. In the UK at least, the TT game has a strong following after all these years, and it's actually a shame to see a fruit of one of these concepts be slowly deported overseas.

I'd never wish it the other way around, but I guess I'm in the same boat as everyone else in this. Simply tired of feeling second rate.

Some official response to this would be much obliged.

Mal

[Lionduck]

I don't understand why you guys are caring so much about the support of GOA.

What kind of service or support do you need? The mythic support team is good enough *for whatever service you may possibly need*

Why are you being so nit-picky...?

I could care less about the support team if the game itself isn't up to part with the current standard yet.

[BluepaiN]

First of all, great article that sums it all up very well!

#Lionduck

If you havent noticed, EU players are pretty much neglegted and I wont go into details with what is missing. To boil it down, we just want the same privileges as the US-customers. Nothing more, nothing less.

[LeonHart]

Originally Posted by Lionduck

I don't understand *snip*

I suppose you never will, then.

Excellent post, I'm sory to admit I never really thought of it this way before. Kudos. Now get back to that DPS AM!

[Ran4glory]

Originally Posted by Lionduck

I don't understand why you guys are caring so much about the support of GOA.

What kind of service or support do you need? The mythic support team is good enough *for whatever service you may possibly need*

Why are you being so nit-picky...?

I could care less about the support team if the game itself isn't up to part with the current standard yet.

And honestly the game is up to par for a pvp based game. There are no serious class imbalances to note (I've seen, in duels, every class, with the exception of zealot, beat every other class) and the game centers itself on player vs player combat.

The bug we generally see from people is this "End game is boring" or "Orvr is boring, it's the same thing over and over". PvP games are SUPPOSED to be set in the same locations and surroundings, it's not the backdrop that changes (like a pve based game) but the interactions. Every encounter is different when you are combating another live person and so this game creates it's uniqueness as such.

And on the subject of endgame; We have to many PVE mindsets in WAR. Players leave contested areas to farm gear in other areas and then they complain that "it's the same thing over and over". Well no sh**... they make it that way. I enjoy the pushes and defenses of cities, forts, keeps, and hell even a floating rock in Thunder Mountain. I may be "old-school" but I just like the competition. I don't mind 6 vs 24ing an order zerg and I'll 1 v 1 all day long if I have to.

PvP games are based off of player interactions and WAR does it just fine. Sure there are a few little bugs here and there but honestly it's not enough to put a dent in the entertainment this game offers to players wanting competition.


Sorry to deflect a tad just had that on the tip of my tongue.

[idris]

Good post!

[PhoenixRed]

Originally Posted by Lionduck

I don't understand why you guys are caring so much about the support of GOA.

What kind of service or support do you need? The mythic support team is good enough *for whatever service you may possibly need*

Why are you being so nit-picky...?

I could care less about the support team if the game itself isn't up to part with the current standard yet.

Let's use another analogy just to give you perspective on this issue.

Say you go to a restaurant. For the sake of argument let's make it old school and put in a smoking and a non-smoking section. The restaurant started out non-smoking but added a smoking section because there was a lucrative opportunity to create a section for smokers. Each section has its own staff, although it's worthy to note that the kitchen is in the non-smoking section of the restaurant.

Let's say you're a smoker, which means you get put in the smoking section of the restaurant. When you look at the non-smoking section of the restaurant, you can see that because the kitchen is located there, the food comes to the customers faster. The menus are easy to read and the waiter or waitress is able to directly shout to the kitchen in order to get orders in faster. Obviously, the non-smokers are very happy.

In the smoking section, the wait staff is a greater distance from the kitchen, so they get your food to you slower. The menu is xeroxed from the non-smokers menu so it's difficult to read, and the waiter or waitress has to run your order to the kitchen themselves. Meanwhile, you've probably shortened your lifespan 3 times as much as you could have because you've gone through 3 cigarettes waiting for your service.

Now throw in the fact that the non-smoking section's staff makes a quick decision to change their menus to a number-based system and increase efficiency, and also use radios so they don't have to shout to the kitchen anymore. They don't tell the smoker section's staff right away and they make the changes before the smoking section can figure out how to re-xerox the menus to the new method and get radios of their own - although their section is in a bit of a dead zone so the signal doesn't carry as well. The smoking section's staff is doing their best, but struggling to keep up with a new standard that was set up with little to no consulting.

Meanwhile, you have a lot of angry customers in one section, and while the non-smokers are generally satisfied they can't help but see that a lot of smokers are storming out of the restaurant, standing outside the front of it, and loudly proclaiming the screwups of the restaurant as a whole so that other smokers or non-smokers don't patronize the restaurant at all. Even if the food is good, it's difficult to not to notice something is wrong.

Now admittedly, your first question would be "what kind of restaurant or business would run like that?", and my answer would be, "Warhammer Online". Almost as disturbing as the problems I highlight in the article are the sometimes insensitive nature of some of the North American audience, who become annoyed/angry/defensive because they aren't experiencing the issues the European audience is.

Why should we care? Because as a worldwide released game, Mythic made their bed and they need to sleep in it and take responsibility for it. And because of a worldwide audience, if one part of the world finds the service dismal, then the whole of the product suffers. What is, for example, World of Warcraft without its players outside of North America? Still respectable and successful, but not as lauded and successful as it could be.

Sorry - not caring just isn't an option, unless you like a restaurant that operates at serving only half their customers properly.