T
Tenko
Guest
So you have 75 points in tailoring and thought you wanted to be a spellcrafter or alchemist? Read on, from the Camelot Herald
Back in June, at the Camelot Roundtable during a discussion of the new trade
skills, we said there was a possibility that we might allow people to reset
an unwanted tradeskill to zero, in order to take advantage of a skill they
might like better. Furthermore, in July, I said in a grab bag that we would
allow such resets to zero. But a lot of water had gone under the bridge
since then, and we've learned that such a reset is very likely a bad idea. And therefore, I am sorry to say that we will not be allowing tradeskill resets. Here's why:
We learned a lot from the respec implementation experience, and one of the biggest lessons was that people try things out, and discover that they liked the old way better. When we tell people "no, no do overs," they become angry and cancel their accounts. We don't want people to cancel their accounts, obviously, so we began evaluating each person's situation on a case by case basis.
Which leads to the next lesson learned - the fact that whenever we deal with
something on a case by case basis instead of by policy, the customer service time involved skyrockets. Actually, we already knew this one, which is why we try so hard to set a fair and customer friendly policy for things before a situation comes up. But in this case, we couldn't avoid the time spent and still feel as though we provided good service. And it was a lose-lose situation for us - we still made many people angry, even WHEN we did things case by case,
and all the rest of our customers (who needed help with things that had
nothing to do with respecs) saw their wait times double or even triple as
our customer service team staggered under the load. About the only thing not
impacted was our response time to customers stuck in the world - our
response time stayed terrific for those, but everything else slowed down to
a crawl for a few days.
And then there were the extremely intensive investigations. Many people
called, wrote, appealed, all to tell us that THEY did not respec their
characters, that a vengeful spouse/significant other/sibling/roommate had
done it instead. Others sent in claims of account hacking or theft. Although
it would be very easy to become jaded with so many claims, we're of the
opinion that it is best to sort through a hundred false claims if it means
making one innocent person happy. So again, much time was spent on
investigations, very few of which bore fruit.
Finally, in the court of public opinion, the respec was not universally
applauded. Despite having been one of the most requested features, and
despite much discussion with the community before the fact which had given
us the impression that people would be happy with just one chance to undo
old mistakes, the feedback since the respec has been very mixed. Most people
were thrilled, obviously. But many people are upset that they can't flip
back and forth between templates. Others feel we should offer them respecs
more often. And still others feel as though they liked their old template
better, and would have been happier had there never been a respec. While I
believe that the way things are now (with a line respec at 20 and 40) is far
better than no respec at all, and in fact all future customers will very
much enjoy having the option, it doesn't change the fact that implementing
the respecs in the first place caused a great deal of uproar.
So that's where we were as we discussed the tradeskill reset. At first (and
this is true of many things, Mythic is NOT a place where everyone always
agrees - if you've ever thought a certain thing, I promise you that someone
who works here agrees with you!) the mindset was, "we said they could,
therefore we must." With that as our starting point, we started trying to
work out our policies. What would we do when people decided they liked their
old trade better? What if they accidentally reset a trade they didn't WANT
to reset? What if someone's so-called friend reset their trade? How would
they prove it wasn't them?
That's when it was decided that perhaps we might be better off not doing a
reset. Even with multiple confirmation boxes, the impact on customers and
our own staff was projected to be extremely high.
I know this will not be a popular choice with some of you, and believe me, I
understand. For those of you crafters who have no more character spots left
on your account on your favorite server - our intent is that we WILL be adding those four new spots before Shrouded Isles goes live.
In short, I am sorry, but I have to go back on what I said in July, and I
hope that this explanation makes sense to you all. Thanks very much for your
patience, and I hope you're as excited to try the new trades as we are.
Back in June, at the Camelot Roundtable during a discussion of the new trade
skills, we said there was a possibility that we might allow people to reset
an unwanted tradeskill to zero, in order to take advantage of a skill they
might like better. Furthermore, in July, I said in a grab bag that we would
allow such resets to zero. But a lot of water had gone under the bridge
since then, and we've learned that such a reset is very likely a bad idea. And therefore, I am sorry to say that we will not be allowing tradeskill resets. Here's why:
We learned a lot from the respec implementation experience, and one of the biggest lessons was that people try things out, and discover that they liked the old way better. When we tell people "no, no do overs," they become angry and cancel their accounts. We don't want people to cancel their accounts, obviously, so we began evaluating each person's situation on a case by case basis.
Which leads to the next lesson learned - the fact that whenever we deal with
something on a case by case basis instead of by policy, the customer service time involved skyrockets. Actually, we already knew this one, which is why we try so hard to set a fair and customer friendly policy for things before a situation comes up. But in this case, we couldn't avoid the time spent and still feel as though we provided good service. And it was a lose-lose situation for us - we still made many people angry, even WHEN we did things case by case,
and all the rest of our customers (who needed help with things that had
nothing to do with respecs) saw their wait times double or even triple as
our customer service team staggered under the load. About the only thing not
impacted was our response time to customers stuck in the world - our
response time stayed terrific for those, but everything else slowed down to
a crawl for a few days.
And then there were the extremely intensive investigations. Many people
called, wrote, appealed, all to tell us that THEY did not respec their
characters, that a vengeful spouse/significant other/sibling/roommate had
done it instead. Others sent in claims of account hacking or theft. Although
it would be very easy to become jaded with so many claims, we're of the
opinion that it is best to sort through a hundred false claims if it means
making one innocent person happy. So again, much time was spent on
investigations, very few of which bore fruit.
Finally, in the court of public opinion, the respec was not universally
applauded. Despite having been one of the most requested features, and
despite much discussion with the community before the fact which had given
us the impression that people would be happy with just one chance to undo
old mistakes, the feedback since the respec has been very mixed. Most people
were thrilled, obviously. But many people are upset that they can't flip
back and forth between templates. Others feel we should offer them respecs
more often. And still others feel as though they liked their old template
better, and would have been happier had there never been a respec. While I
believe that the way things are now (with a line respec at 20 and 40) is far
better than no respec at all, and in fact all future customers will very
much enjoy having the option, it doesn't change the fact that implementing
the respecs in the first place caused a great deal of uproar.
So that's where we were as we discussed the tradeskill reset. At first (and
this is true of many things, Mythic is NOT a place where everyone always
agrees - if you've ever thought a certain thing, I promise you that someone
who works here agrees with you!) the mindset was, "we said they could,
therefore we must." With that as our starting point, we started trying to
work out our policies. What would we do when people decided they liked their
old trade better? What if they accidentally reset a trade they didn't WANT
to reset? What if someone's so-called friend reset their trade? How would
they prove it wasn't them?
That's when it was decided that perhaps we might be better off not doing a
reset. Even with multiple confirmation boxes, the impact on customers and
our own staff was projected to be extremely high.
I know this will not be a popular choice with some of you, and believe me, I
understand. For those of you crafters who have no more character spots left
on your account on your favorite server - our intent is that we WILL be adding those four new spots before Shrouded Isles goes live.
In short, I am sorry, but I have to go back on what I said in July, and I
hope that this explanation makes sense to you all. Thanks very much for your
patience, and I hope you're as excited to try the new trades as we are.
