FAO GOA (and anyone else who cares)

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Talifer

Guest
My opinion of GOA is pretty low anyway, but an incident that happened to one of my guild mates has really made it hit rock bottom. I am disgusted at GOAs response and attitude to the entire situation.

We organised a guild Sidi raid, some weeks ago now, in which we managed to get a Bane (The funky looking scout/minstrel 1h thruster which looks like a blue glowing spear, in case you didn't know). A week or so later we had an internal guild lotto and the Bane went to one of our scouts. The scout in question picked up his prize with an alt the following week, when we decided to go on a summoner raid. We arranged to meet outside castle Sauvage, the scout arrived and also brought his alt with the Bane so he could transfer it to his main character. He transferred the Bane and logged the alt, the Bane now being on his main scout char. Now many of you might remember what then happened that day, since we alerted most of Albion ;), but the zone crashed and all of albion rushed to Excalibur expecting invading mids. Who knows what's coming next? ;). Since the alt who had been carrying the Bane logged, that character was saved (without Bane). The rest of us, including the main scout char, were still in game when the zone crash occurred and we were reset back to our last save spot. Yep the last save point was before the Bane transfer. The result? Neither the alt or scout now has the Bane it is lost in the ether surrounding GOAs dodgy hardware.

I'll save you the less than helpful email responses from GOA, but at the end of the day they refuse to give back an item lost through their fault, not the players fault. He didn't accidentally sell the item, he didn't salvage it by mistake, he wasn't scammed out of it. The zone crashed, not a pre arranged server reset, the zone crashed and this crash caused the lose of his item.

This incident doesn't just affect one member of our guild either, we had 2 1/2 groups at the raid to get that item and now the guild has lost it.

I want to know from GOA what exactly their policy is on these situations because the RightNow responses are a joke. So if Kemor or Zargar is reading can you please clarify. Is loss of an item due to your servers not coping with the game tough luck? If it happened the other way and he'd logged the scout and not the alt and ended up with two Banes I'd wager you'd be removing the duplicate pretty sharpish.

But what I really want is for the item 20 people from my guild fought to obtain and had removed from our possession through an incident completely out of our control, to be replaced?

Anyone else had a similar occurrence and did GOA replace the item, I'd like to know if we are being singled out here.

Talifer
 
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Cap'n Sissyfoo

Guest
If the server crashed then the chances are that although they may have logs of the transfer taking place they probably won't have any logs of what happened to the item afterwards. For all they know it could have been passed onto someone else, sold, destroyed or salvaged. It would make sense not to give you a free item which, for all they know, is sitting in someone else's vault.

It may sound tight fisted but a tragic truth in the online world is that the number of honest players are heavily outweighed by the number of greedy, dishonest players. If someone were to find out that GOA refunded this item then word would spread and after the next server crash GOA would be swamped with 'I traded my EBOP onto an alt but lost it in the crash' complaints...or something similar.
 
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Talifer

Guest
It would not be very hard to track an item.

Player A has item: check his logs see who he traded it to -> Player B

Player B: check his logs, see who he traded it to -> Noone, has he still got it? No. End of trace.

If they have logs of trades then the loss of the item can be proved. Because at some point a character has to be saved with the item, so his logs are intact.

If this item were a dartmoor axe then fair enough

A) It's no big log
B) Searching for such a common item would be difficult

But this is a much rarer item, even if the logs can't be checked (Which I don't believe) it should be possible to count every Bane on the server.

Talifer
 
V

Vell

Guest
No, because the logs for player B don't exist, because the zone crashed. As Foo says, there is no trace of the item after being passed to player B, absolutely anything could have happened to it. It makes sense that GOA won't replace it.
 
A

angrykid

Guest
The item was passed on to player B, which was in the same zone. Minutes after the crash of zone happens. If they by any chance can track down if he died, was killed or in any way could find out if he left the zone, then OK. no item back. but if not, then I would think that they should investigate some more. If it proves that item was not traded, nor player did leave the zone, then it's actually 99% certain that it has not been traded, dropped, sold or whatever.

You got my biggest symphati, talifer. :-(
 
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Talifer

Guest
Originally posted by Vell
No, because the logs for player B don't exist, because the zone crashed. As Foo says, there is no trace of the item after being passed to player B, absolutely anything could have happened to it. It makes sense that GOA won't replace it.

You're not thinking logically here.

The only logs that player B loses are those that were made during the crash, after that his logs will be intact. This makes it very, very easy to check if someone is making a false claim, because at some point you have a log of a trade. Therefore if there is no trace of the item after being passed to player B, then the item vanished in the crash.

e.g. False claim

Player A passes item to Player B

Player B claims he lost the item during the crash (which he didn't)
After the crash Player B has to get rid of the item somehow! So he trades it, this trade is recorded. If he doesn't trade it then it's still on him, either way it's very simple to work out he's lying.

In a real claim you have logs of

Player A passes item to Player B

Player B claims he lost the item during the crash (which he did).
After the crash Player B doesn't have the item, so it's not on him and he has no trade log showing he passed it on.

So you see the lack of logs is not a problem.

[Edit] Here's a simpler way to think of it. Check player A logs -> He traded an item with player B. Check player B logs -> No such trade exists. Hmmmm a one sided trade, something funny there.

Talifer
 
O

orlan

Guest
im not very populare on bw but i decided to post here anyways on goas side as ur bane is gone so is the log, but imagine they give u bane.. how long do u think it would take before ppl beginning to send false logs to goas servers to get a free bane? if theres no proof of the item is lost in the ld they cant help u its a policy / security question, how ever i do think that they got item id's on all items even dartmoor axe's not sure tho , so yes they might be able to track it, but again.. the person who had it ld'ed cause of a zonecrash , and his char wasnt saved. tobad..

oh and when u press Accept at the CoC u accept the fact that goa owns ur ass. (not in those words)

sorry for the loss but dont set ur thoughts to high to get bane back
:(:(:(:(:(:(:(:(:(
 
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Talifer

Guest
See my explaination above, I think it's a pretty trivial task to work out if the item is really lost or if it's a false claim (at which point you can start warning/banning people for trying to scam GOA).

Talifer
 
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Vell

Guest
Originally posted by Talifer

e.g. False claim

Player A passes item to Player B

Player B claims he lost the item during the crash (which he didn't)
After the crash Player B has to get rid of the item somehow! So he trades it, this trade is recorded. If he doesn't trade it then it's still on him, either way it's very simple to work out he's lying.

False claim: Player A passes it to player B. Logs exist of this because player A quit and therefore the server saves the log and trade. Then player B passes to player C, but doesn't leave the game. Therefore the log of this trade was not saved, and thus it cannot be proved that the item wasn't passed to someone else.

The server crashed = no logs = no proof. As far as GOA are concerned he could have done anything with it before the server crashed.

Yes, it's very harsh, but there's nothing that can be done i think.
 
C

Cap'n Sissyfoo

Guest
Regardless of whether there are logs or not, I know that most online game companies don't bother with replacing lost items because:

a) The time spent checking logs for said item is better spent doing other things
b) It opens a sluice gate for more claims, 90% of which are probably false. See point a).

It sucks that you lost the item but a company like GOA needs to stick to their policy or all hell will break loose.

I sincerely doubt that checking through logs is a 'trivial task'. Of course, I don't know how GOA's logs are organised but a online game I worked for had nasty as hell logs and scanning them for lost items or evidence of cheating was time consuming. The company also said that all claims of lost cash/items would be dealt with which meant that I had well over 100 e-mails a day with people complaining about missing loot/ships etc. The game had around 1000 players give or take and the process of refunding/scanning logs took up almost an entire day which left feck all time to do any other work around the game. Now, take that scenario and apply it to DAoC where you have around 11 servers with approx 2000+ players online on each and then imagine how many e-mails they would have to deal with regarding lost items whether it be through player/server fault. You think GOA are slow now?
 
W

-Wedge-

Guest
Mythic replaces items that where lost due to game-bugs... At least as far as I know they do...

Also, I'm pretty sure everything is logged... They can probably tell you exactly what you did for the 30 mins you where online sunday evening... (actions are probably saved via the 'game-save' method)

Which should show them that the alt gave the weapon away, and then it should show that the item never got places into the inventory of the main char... (as logs of the alt have the transaction, yet logs of the main dont)

However... The bigger question is not if its possible... But can GOA produce that information...

RightNow cant even tell me how focus on a staff works... They cant give me an estimate on when /gc autoremove will work...

Tbh, GOA sucks unshaved donkey balls...

However, I do suggest instead of using RightNow, mail Kemor/Zargar directly (kemor@goa.com / zargar@goa.com)... You might get further...
 
T

Talifer

Guest
Originally posted by Vell
False claim: Player A passes it to player B. Logs exist of this because player A quit and therefore the server saves the log and trade. Then player B passes to player C, but doesn't leave the game. Therefore the log of this trade was not saved, and thus it cannot be proved that the item wasn't passed to someone else.

The server crashed = no logs = no proof. As far as GOA are concerned he could have done anything with it before the server crashed.

Yes, it's very harsh, but there's nothing that can be done i think.

Player A has a log of the trade with player B

Player B has no such log

Player C has a log of a trade with Player B

Player B has no such log

This concludes Player A passed to B and player B passed to C, case solved. Again logic prevails. Item transfers can be traced through the system and the validity of a claim confirmed by looking at the presence and absence of logs.

Whether this action is trivial of course depends on the system, but an initial test should be possible in a matter of a minute as long as the player can give an accurate time/date of the incident. All GOA need to do is pull both player logs up for this time and check if a trade exists on both sides. If it does, case dismissed no loss of item. If it doesn't case dismissed item refunded. If they want to go into more detail than that that's up to GOA. In my opinion there is nothing stopping the validation of such a claim from a technical standpoint, and remember this is from a zone crash

A) If GOA keep the server stable this wont happen
B) Incidents like this aren't coming in everyday, zone crashes aren't that common anymore.

I feel GOA are taking the easiest (stroke laziest) approach they can, i.e. tough luck and I'm very disappointed at the lack of customer service. It's not my fault the zone reset it's GOAs fault (Or maybe Mythic if you want to get technical but that's still GOAs responsibility not mine).

Talifer
 
X

Xandax

Guest
Originally posted by Talifer
Player A has a log of the trade with player B

Player B has no such log

Player C has a log of a trade with Player B

Player B has no such log

This concludes Player A passed to B and player B passed to C, case solved. Again logic prevails. Item transfers can be traced through the system and the validity of a claim confirmed by looking at the presence and absence of logs.
<snip>

Only if you reason that player C log still exists, it could dissapere just as Player B's did.

Although I feel for your loss, I must say I admit it would be hard for companies to set a precedens in returning items to the game that they can't track. And the lack of customer service have been apparent from about day 1 in the game.

But even other games have a strict policy about not returning items into the game if they are lost by some sort of mishap.

But it sucks for sure to loose a valurable item in such a manner :(
 
C

Cap'n Sissyfoo

Guest
For all GOA know, Player B could have been holding onto Bane for a friend and passed it onto Player C. When the server crashed the logs were lost and you claim that Bane was lost also. However, if they were to look for the trading trail they would lose track of it at Player A.

Player A -> (Player B) -> (Player C/Player X)

...except that there would be no way to verify who player C or even if there WAS a player C (which there wasn't). All they know is that Player A gave Bane to someone and after that there is no trace of what happened to it. It could be sat in player C's vault and you guys are just trying to get an extra Bane out of them. There is no way to prove that it was lost and no way to prove that it has been hoarded somewhere safe.

All they have is your word and a log of Player A trading with someone and, no offense, that just ain't enough.

You may have some luck with Kemor or Zargar but I would be quite surprised if they gave you back the item.
 
L

leoric

Guest
Talifer i feel your pain mate :( Arguing your point with people on here isnt getting no-one anywhere fast, But as the Cap'n says, Its alot of logs too search through :(
 
T

Talifer

Guest
OK you guys need further logic I see ;)

It is impossible for the final player in a passing chain NOT to have a log, if he doesn't have a log then he crashed along with everyone else and as such loses the item he was given. Therefore either the item does not get passed to anyone or the final player has a log of the trade.

So we can presume two things if someone is lying:

A) Someone will have a log of trading the item TO someone and the matching log from the other player is missing

B) Someone will have a log of trading the item FROM someone and the matching log from the other player is missing

On top of that all this activity has to be accomplished within the space of the last player save and the crash, which isn't very long, I'd say 30 minutes worth of logs at most. So basically IF this complicated chain of passing was more than two people, the most GOA have to do is scan 30 mintues of logs to check for any trades of this particular item. If there are an even number of one sided trades then it's a lie (Remember it's not really a scam because players have no idea that the zone is going to crash, unless they cause it which is a whole new kettle of fish).

So the arguments about GOA not being able to track an item are moot, you're arguments about tracking are starting to go around in circles now.

It is possible to track items, the question is should/do GOA replace items lost due to THEIR server having a fit. I have no quarms about non replacement of accidentily sold/repair/traded items, that's the players own fault, zone crashes are GOAs fault and they have a duty to fix them.

Talifer
 
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Cap'n Sissyfoo

Guest
Odds are pretty bloody high that the item has been lost/deleted but should they spend time going through the logs and checking to find out? No. Why? Because, like I said before, it will open a flood of e-mails about people losing items in various different circumstances and wanting a refund. Even if they stated that they would only refund items on the grounds that they were mysteriously lost during a server crash it would still pave the way for opportunistic people who will try and make an easy buck after there has been a server crash. Some may even go so far as to set up item swapping during a relic raid on the off chance that there could be a server crash.

I realise that this is all very 'what iffy' but stunts similar to this have been known to happen and there are some people who would stoop to any depths to cheat the system. I've seen some pretty amazing crap in my time. That is why it is easier and safer to flat out deny any refunds of lost items whether it be through server crash, player fault or some other glitch in the game.

You may think that they are taking the easy way out but that is too bad.
 
B

bob007

Guest
Thaught i'd add GoA's helpful replies...

Hello,


We didn't give back items, armors or money that have been lost, salvaged or sold in the game.


Yours sincerely,
---------------------------------------------
European Dark Age of Camelot Customer Support

Upon restating the claim in a little better wording, The reply given was as follows.....
Hello,


If you want to cancell your account we invite you to go on the following adress :


https://billing.camelot-europe.com/www/login.php?game=daoc&language=en



Yours sincerely,
---------------------------------------------
European Dark Age of Camelot Customer Support

Last reply and latest...

Hello,


As I alredy told you we will unfortunately not give you back your item.



Yours sincerely,
---------------------------------------------
European Dark Age of Camelot Customer Support

In short, If they screw up, its your fault. And if you not happy with that, Cancel.... Customer support rocks.
 
B

Bridge Trent

Guest
Similar response to what happened to the relic keep doors that reset after a zone crash that had been upgraded to level 10 isnt it? Or is my memory failing me?
 
D

Draylor

Guest
Looks very similar to a exchange I had with RightNow not so long ago.

Starts with the support guy totally failing to understand a well described problem, and leads into cut'n'paste of the same "No, we cant be bothered" responses.

Its clearly FAR too much to expect a little assistance from them when problems occur that are completely outwith players control :rolleyes:

It may be the case that the zone crash also caused no logs to exist of this event - in which case I could just about accept that theres nothing they can do about it (since no proof exists). But since they cant even be bothered to give an explanation Ill consider this to be another example of laziness being more important than providing valid support.
 
C

Conchabar

Guest
seriously cant belive this the goa story just gets worse every day:(
 
G

greenfingers

Guest
Originally posted by Talifer
it should be possible to count every Bane on the server.

I don't think there are more then 20 .. sooooo yea ... !!!


and.... I GOT ONE ! :p


19 more to go GOA :)
 
M

MesS°

Guest
Bane is cursed, cursed i tell you... Iwe heard of 2 ppl who have lost bane from there inventory... 1 is a ingame friend, so i highly doubt we are talking about something doggy... cuuuurrrsseeddd !!11
 
S

sheph

Guest
well GOA make some weird stuff but this isnt their problem

look at it this way

this is a computer game

u knew this when u bought it

computers are not stable things

they depend on constant supply of pure energy

they are made by humans with flaws

computer go down and crash sometimes

the unexpected results of crashes is a part of all computer games

if u cant live with this go play boardgames

stop whine

byebye
 
T

Talifer

Guest
Originally posted by Cap'n Sissyfoo
Odds are pretty bloody high that the item has been lost/deleted but should they spend time going through the logs and checking to find out? No. Why? Because, like I said before, it will open a flood of e-mails about people losing items in various different circumstances and wanting a refund. Even if they stated that they would only refund items on the grounds that they were mysteriously lost during a server crash it would still pave the way for opportunistic people who will try and make an easy buck after there has been a server crash. Some may even go so far as to set up item swapping during a relic raid on the off chance that there could be a server crash.

I realise that this is all very 'what iffy' but stunts similar to this have been known to happen and there are some people who would stoop to any depths to cheat the system. I've seen some pretty amazing crap in my time. That is why it is easier and safer to flat out deny any refunds of lost items whether it be through server crash, player fault or some other glitch in the game.

You may think that they are taking the easy way out but that is too bad.

Well I did write a long response but at the end of the day the point about log files is moot. You seem to be defending another companies way of logging a game and thus the policies, neither of us know what the log files look like so unless GOA tell us there's no point arguing about it. The easiest way to solve the log file question is to confirm what Wedge says above, if Mythic can search log files and replace items lost due to zone crashes GOA have no excuse. Can anyone confirm this?

It's like arguing that CSRs take up too much time that would be best spent doing something else. Mythic provide them and still develop the game, GOA are only patching what Mythic write, there's really no excuse for GOA not to have them.

But tell me this, at the company you work(ed) for did you ever send responses like the ones above?

The responses above leave you wondering whether

A) There is non return policy on items regardless of how they were lost
B) The support person even read the emails being sent to him or doesn't really understand English all that well.
C) The support person is not actually a person but a small monkey with a row of auto response buttons he bashes when a light tells him an email just came in

The last one is a joke obviously, but I really don't think the support person made any attempt to understand the problem. There's two issues here and these are the main reasons why I brought this up on BW.

Firstly, what the hell is GOAs policy! We can argue about log files all day, but it's irrelevant if we don't know what policy they are enforcing. Since the RightNow responses are, well... less than informative, I have no idea whether the person at the other end is enforcing some blanket rule that items are never replaced regardless. Or whether he/she still believes the item was sold/salvage by mistake.

Secondly this kind of customer support, well it's a contradiction in terms. Why isn't GOAs customer support at least on a par with Mythic.

I was hoping maybe, just maybe, Kemor or Zalgar might be able to clarify GOAs stance on such an incident because RightNow cannot give an acceptable response to a simple question.

Is this policy or misunderstanding?

Should I make all future transfers between characters in Tepok's Mine just in case the zone should crash.

We can only discuss the merits and technical aspects of the policy once we know what it is

Talifer
 
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Talifer

Guest
Originally posted by sheph
well GOA make some weird stuff but this isnt their problem

look at it this way

this is a computer game

u knew this when u bought it

computers are not stable things

they depend on constant supply of pure energy

they are made by humans with flaws

computer go down and crash sometimes

the unexpected results of crashes is a part of all computer games

if u cant live with this go play boardgames

stop whine

byebye

I don't pay someone a monthly subscription to play my board games. Games crash, indeed, and when my DAoC client crashes it's a pain, losing all the qbars I just changed and the settings I adjusted. But I can redo them, it could well be a fault with my OS or my own hardware, it happens. But when the service I'm paying for crashes with irretrievable loss then that's different. I suppose you weren't bothered when GOA got hacked and you couldn't play while they sorted out the passwords? People hack, that's life, it's not like GOA should have had better security or something surely?
And when they sorted the passwords out what did they do? They gave people back the money they had paid for a service they did not get. Why did they do that, it's a game it's not their fault is it? I also assume you didn't want the Excalibur server upgraded right? Computers crash that's life we have to accept it's going to happen, just live without relic raids.

It's called customer service, a company tries to provide a smooth, seamless service, in the most part they manage it, but when things slip by they compensate for their errors.

[Edit: My sarcasm was a little too subtle ]

Talifer
 
A

asorek

Guest
Talifer ffs u lost the item, get over it and stop whining about it.
 
D

Demolay

Guest
I know what u all sayin but shoe on other foot etc hes makin a point on a forum that not everyone reads but may make him feel better...
 

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