Polite Petition to Goa for Improvement in Service

[Jaret Dozybard]

Hello Freddies people

On Prydwen.net there is a long thread which centres on game design and Goa service. It starts off cross and modifies into a more measured discussion, seems like it hit a nerve judging by many people's replies. This is the link: http://www.prydwen.net/forum/showthread.php?t=19930

As a result I have started a petition to Goa to look at and improve Rightnow and the customer coverage. It's only half the battle, the other half is getting Mythic to address some of the in game bugs, but it's a start.

I hope people will sign up as there seems to be some reasoned and fairly deeply felt feelings that the service at the moment is not providing people's needs. Some without doubt is game design limitations or flaw, some is Goa's administration.

It is anonymous, if you sign up your email is *not* published. There is also room to make you own comments if you wish.

If enough people sign up I will forward it in 3 weeks time, that should give me enough time to track down the CEO

This is the petition link: http://www.petitiononline.com/DaocGoa1/

This is the text of the petition:

To the CEO and Executives of Goa.com


1) We on the English speaking servers would like you to fund full time, 24/7 Customer Service representation to ensure that game mistakes and bugs can be sorted out fast, avoiding much wasted effort and time and deep frustration on the players’ part

2) We would like you improve the service of RightNow by
a) avoiding stock replies
b) reading and addressing the issues raised by players. This will not always be the answer an individual would like to hear, naturally; however reasonable queries and problems should be answered in a reasonable fashion
c) dealing with billing problems and queries fast and accurately
d) an accurate complaints procedure

3) Feedback from the EU servers of problems of game design, implementation and bugs to Mythic.

4) A more transparent means of contacting you, i.e. providing at least an address and preferably a phone number as well, with English language speakers

5) a regular customer satisfaction survey


Yours sincerely


----

Jaret Dozybard Bard, Hib Pryd

 

[Maular]

All i can say is

It really isnt a bad service, keep it up GoA

 

[fortunefish]

go away... i love this game and goa are gonna givf up if u keep moanin, go back to prydwen.net imho :touch:


VIVA GOA

still dling nf ffs but im sitting here watching the 133 hour dl and it never gets boaring

 

[haarewin]

go away... i love this game and goa are gonna givf up if u keep moanin, go back to prydwen.net imho :touch:

sure, jaret is the only person to complain about goa ever.
and the people at prydwen.net are any worse than your average FH viewer.
ok!

 

[sko]

GoA laughs at your addicted asses!

 

[Kami]

1. Sko has a point.
2. Rightnow has always been very good for me. Never had a problem with it and that's with me using it 4 or 5 times now.

 

[Naetha]

I think people would be a lot happier if you directed the petition towards Opentransit, or the powers that be that decided that Opentransit was the best service provider for them.

 

[Tilda]

I've never had a problem with RN, nor Subs. i think GM cover is currently very good, GM's are around from 7 or am until 11~pm. Do Mythic even do propper 24 hour tech support?

Tilda

 

[Jaret Dozybard]

The reason behind trying to get Goa to fund more CSRs, is to get them to cover weekends too. They don't at the moment, at least not all the time, as I know by hard experience, since I got just under 2fg to come and help with an arti on a sunday afternnon (pretty prime time), we got there, and it was bugged (all sorts of stuff can be said about why didnt you check it etc, if you want to go into that follow the prydwen link). Without a CSR there was nothing to do but give up after everyone wasting a couple of hours. Its only one example, but there have been many mroe recently, the number of bugs seems high for some reason.

You don't have to sign if you don't want to, its to give people the option.

It seemed from the thread on Prydwen that there was quite a high level of dissatisfaction, someone suggested to give FH people the option too. If not enough people sign then it will be clear that most are satisfied - QED no problem.

I'm leaving game, due to a combination of extremely bad luck, the game taking over my life far too much and the fact that in my personal opinion CSR coverage is not adequate and the knock-on effects. However, I spent 3 years playing and I'm making an effort to do something that imho would improve the game play overall.

 

[Esoteric]

Want 3rd Server
Want Christmas Hats
Want 3rd Server

GoA Service aint bad they just need to kick opentransits ass into gear.

 

[Esselinithia]

I've never had a problem with RN, nor Subs. i think GM cover is currently very good, GM's are around from 7 or am until 11~pm. Do Mythic even do propper 24 hour tech support?

Tilda

And as a moderator you should play GOA.COM right?

Their nice service includes: You cannot invite friends to game since to buy the game your frieds would have to learn fench, then get to a french only webshop they should understand the policy of the page (that is a legally binding contact) follow a french instealler, read and understand a french licence (legally binding contract) know french laws to understand it well, then by editing a file patch to language they did understand even before. Sending an email to distributors in the region telling them why it is worth to keep a few copies in stock, and advertising them at daoc page in return would cost some time to implement, and the customer is already addicted so doesn't deserve support, if he is english speaking and not french.

Rightnow is a nice support tool. I see no real problems with it, but to set up it, and have a friendly and working support you need more than a good tool. Interesting, that on some old loading screens I seen a french ISP mentioned, if an ISP has a share in goa.com bussiness, ruiting to other ISPs is their bussiness. Oh, their main uplink has problems, and they cannot place the servers at different locations / networks with different routing either.

Goa.com knew, that on french and german language market they have little competition on english language market there are many other games. Looks like they think it isn't worth focusing on the english language market, but since they get the english language files before translating, need to provide global coverage in europe and english language product is needed, they run the servers they have to run, but don't care for it...

 

[Elewyth]

Rightnow is a nice support tool. I see no real problems with it, but to set up it, and have a friendly and working support you need more than a good tool. Interesting, that on some old loading screens I seen a french ISP mentioned, if an ISP has a share in goa.com bussiness, ruiting to other ISPs is their bussiness. Oh, their main uplink has problems, and they cannot place the servers at different locations / networks with different routing either.

The French ISP you refer to is Wanadoo, this is infact Freeserve which is infact a UK ISP.. they re-branded to Wanadoo when they got bought out.

And as a moderator you should play GOA.COM right?

Their nice service includes: You cannot invite friends to game since to buy the game your frieds would have to learn fench, then get to a french only webshop they should understand the policy of the page (that is a legally binding contact) follow a french instealler, read and understand a french licence (legally binding contract) know french laws to understand it well, then by editing a file patch to language they did understand even before.

or you could ofc GOOGLE DAOC FFS!! is it really that hard?
http://www.play.com/play247.asp?searchtype=PC&searchstring=Dark+Age+of+Camelot&page=search
www.amazon.co.uk
www.eb.games.uk

there are hundreds!! of UK or Europe distributors with DAOC IN STOCK.. just because theyre site links to a french website doesnt mean you HAVE to buy it from them, any idiot with 2 braincells can type "BUY DAOC" into Google and search around..
i really wish people would engage theyre brain cells before posting crud like this.

 

[Grayedd]

The French ISP you refer to is Wanadoo, this is infact Freeserve which is infact a UK ISP.. they re-branded to Wanadoo when they got bought out.

.

Wanadoo is owned by France Telecom who I think own or have interests in OpenTransit - mmm need I say more

 

[old.Whoodoo]

We on the English speaking servers would like you to fund full time, 24/7 Customer Service

First reason it wont get signed by sain people, you would like them to fund it, wait a frikken minute, you mean "We on the English speaking servers would like from our own pockets and hard earnt cash to fund full time, 24/7 Customer Service". No I wouldnt, Im happy with what I pay and so are 99% of the peeps playing, including a lot of under 16s who dont have uber cash to spend.

2) We would like you improve the service of RightNow by
a) avoiding stock replies
b) reading and addressing the issues raised by players. This will not always be the answer an individual would like to hear, naturally; however reasonable queries and problems should be answered in a reasonable fashion

The majority of questions do get answered, yes a few slip by, but considering the amount of right idiots who spam Rightnow with "my connection sucks, fix it!" and "my level 20 cant hit a level 50 QQ" or "what colour nail polish goes with my purple pyjamas?", the answers any helpdesk would give WILL be short and to the point. "Its fixed" is more than sufficient, while "stop bothering us with twat questions" would be more appropriate.

c) dealing with billing problems and queries fast and accurately

most first need to learn the right proceedure, mailign subscriptionATgoaDOTcom and not Rightnow'ing it. Also that FH is not the place to bring greivances.

d) an accurate complaints procedure

Its called Rightnow, and again its how you use it, not what answers you get.

3) Feedback from the EU servers of problems of game design, implementation and bugs to Mythic.

Join the VN forums, thats what they do there. GOA do feedback to the US FYI!

4) A more transparent means of contacting you, i.e. providing at least an address and preferably a phone number as well, with English language speakers

This ones really funny, put up with some of the idiots on here, dont make me laugh. Then theres abuse calls, hiring people who speak the 3 (soon 4) languages...this sounds funnier the more I think about it...then you have to hire enough, then youll want 24/7 support, so were talking say 100 more employees, all on say £15k, 3 shift rota, thats an extra £4,500,000 a year, fancy paying the bill, I think not....tell me another funny one...oh here it comes..

5) a regular customer satisfaction survey

/em picks himself off the floor still laughing. What do you really think will be entered onto this, come on, you really expect sensible answers, well thought judgements and opinions or just a bunch of chavs who think its funny to write "GOA are twats" while looking at the bra section of the argos website?!? LOL, I think you misjudge the ideals of the kinds of people who would use it. In life, make a mistake, it sticks and everyone knows it, do something good, its easily forgetten and unrewarded.

Go ahead and sign this, pay more money to GOA, maybe get one of them to loose his job, or maybe GOA will say "sod this you ungrateful bastages!" and close DAoC, oh what heros you are.

 

[Gamah]

Hahah you got pwned by the mighty whoodooooooooooooooooo!!

 

[Esselinithia]

Wanadoo is owned by France Telecom who I think own or have interests in OpenTransit - mmm need I say more

And guess how much Old.Elewyth is willing to lie to protect goa.com? A lot of the companies we checkedfor shippin even with searches, and most of them serve only UK with english version, when you spent enough time with it, you either give up or ask support, when the support in email sends you a link to french store as the placethat ships to whole europe and they don't know others that is a problem no? Maybe if it is a well know and often repeated problem and they still don't have an english language web store listed...

 

[Jayce]

The French ISP you refer to is Wanadoo, this is infact Freeserve which is infact a UK ISP.. they re-branded to Wanadoo when they got bought out.

Wanadoo is in fact owned by France Telecom and is in fact a french ISP. They did indeed buy Freeserve as a way to expand into the UK.

 

[old.Whoodoo]

Wanadoo is in fact owned by France Telecom and is in fact a french ISP. They did indeed buy Freeserve as a way to expand into the UK.

Having a bloody tunnel to em, and sharing our electricity with em is bad enough, now they take over our phones too dammit!

 

[Jayce]

Having a bloody tunnel to em, and sharing our electricity with em is bad enough, now they take over our phones too dammit!

Equant now also provide networking solutions in the UK. Who are owned by France Telecom too !

 

[old.Whoodoo]

Equant now also provide networking solutions in the UK. Who are owned by France Telecom too !

STOP i live 10 miles from the damn tunnel, its bad enough I can smell the garlic from here!

 

[Esselinithia]

First reason it wont get signed by sain people, you would like them to fund it, wait a frikken minute, you mean "We on the English speaking servers would like from our own pockets and hard earnt cash to fund full time, 24/7 Customer Service". No I wouldnt, Im happy with what I pay and so are 99% of the peeps playing, including a lot of under 16s who dont have uber cash to spend.

...

This ones really funny, put up with some of the idiots on here, dont make me laugh. Then theres abuse calls, hiring people who speak the 3 (soon 4) languages...this sounds funnier the more I think about it...then you have to hire enough, then youll want 24/7 support, so were talking say 100 more employees, all on say £15k, 3 shift rota, thats an extra £4,500,000 a year, fancy paying the bill, I think not....tell me another funny one...oh here it comes..

/em picks himself off the floor still laughing. What do you really think will be entered onto this, come on, you really expect sensible answers, well thought judgements and opinions or just a bunch of chavs who think its funny to write "GOA are twats" while looking at the bra section of the argos website?!? LOL, I think you misjudge the ideals of the kinds of people who would use it. In life, make a mistake, it sticks and everyone knows it, do something good, its easily forgetten and unrewarded.

Go ahead and sign this, pay more money to GOA, maybe get one of them to loose his job, or maybe GOA will say "sod this you ungrateful bastages!" and close DAoC, oh what heros you are.

24/7 support: Rightnow is here 24/7 and if you report a bug with a pop it won't get insta fixed, and I think it is enough if goa.com helps the ones on the encounter after the bug which happened before. I think in this case goa did a nice job, availability of their game, missing functions, etc. are a problem and ignoring some bugs are problem as well. But if it is a bug they can't do anything but say sorry and report it to Mythic, and *you can report the bug as well*

What is said about support is basically true. Except goa doesn't do pretty basic things. In many cases, the first line of support is here to filter the questions, and answer the majority of them, if your problem looks like geniune, and you had data to support it, say 24 hours traceroute grapsh to support the claim that the networking problems are on the side of their provider so only they can work to fix it, that is the time, when the first staff should mark the incident, and a secound staff should pick up. Why?

Most questions can be answered from a support database, and the stock replies are good, so even unskilled staff can be used to provide the support. If there are logs / screenshots / traceroute data / etc. speaks about a real problem that probably won't be answered by stock replies. So it is best forwarded. The 2nd team should be have some basic skills at least and they shouldn't be tired by a lot of stupid questions, etc. And a 3rd team should be here to update the answers database and handle problems.

Phone support: I am totally against it. An internet based chat, perhaps with optional voice chat, if the problem warrants it and it is reported on rightnow and the staff sees it looks more reasonable. Yet when I open a manual of a random game I have here, it has phone numbers for support. Say in Baldurs Gate 1 maual I found phone numbers, in Warcraft 3 manuals I found phone numbers, Neverwinter Nights I found phone numbers. How it happens? None of the games have a monthly fee? And some of the support system is 24/7 some parts aren't. You have the support line in multiple countries and multiple languages. How it is possible?

They belong to a publisher who has enough customers and enough products to make it work. Mythic have made morethan one game, DaOC isn't their first game, nor it is their last. Lets see GOA.COM:

GOA is also the game channel for Wanadoo.fr . A community of nearly 500,000 players visits this channel each month. Leader in its category in France, the service is a reference for all gamers looking for a vast game catalog, that can be accessed in less than 3 clicks.

1st: They pretty much looks like a part of Wanadoo, and wanadoo already have phone support where it has service.

2nd: They deal with other games, from game rental to web based and downloadable games and more, so their portfolio is almost as wide as the portfolio of many publishers.

3rd: You might ask, why they do it? I think direct profit from all goa bussinesses can be about 50% of the reason, the other 50% is simple, wanadoo wants to sell more broadband access and have to show its customers why it is good.

If you advertise their net service with huge gaming communities, and other services, they as ISP can gain customers, and essentially this leads to them, and their carrier (say Opentransit) grow, and it is important. GOA and DAOC is low cost, low risk and low profit operation for a big telecom company. And probably most decision making doesn't come at goa.com levels but wanadoo levels, yet since they don't want to associate your problems with wanadoo service, they don't let you to use the call center that is already here.

I think it looks quite differently than the scenario you painted. And also shows why EU servers have bigger population counts, why no proper distribution, etc. the reason is simple: Because there is no publisher behind daoc europe, but there is a telco behind it. And for a telco, it is easy: if their statistics looks worse than statistics for competitors they lose big money. Guess how it looks in their reports that they have more customers per server for their online games departement that any competitors, less support staff can maintain the community? It makes them look stable and professional and can drive stock price up.

They need volunteers instead of professionals for many jobs for this very reason, they don't investigate a few incidents but send it to Mythic and what user lost is his loss, etc. for the same reason. It works about the same for all big national telcos who found themselves on a free market, with a lot of investors on their backs.

Yes, in many cases goa.com does a bad service, sometimes they aren't professional. But would you yell at the people who fight to keep his job, because investors want less employees / 100.000 customers? if the telco is nice and does outsourcing you just lose a few benefits and not your job, but your career gets limited. It is how it works.

I think the problems you speak about are simple: would wanadoo communicate failure, with massive customer loss and loss of a service or try to improve it, under pressure? I think the later is better for stock price and money for the very rich decision making people. And they can use it for expansion. But would they listen to goa.com people? No. Would they listen to enough wanadoo customers, and possibility of very visible problems even at telco level if they don't make these customers happy? Would they listen if a big company says, they are thinking about getting a new communications partner because wanadoo looks bad because such incidents? Think you got the point.

 

[Esselinithia]

Equant now also provide networking solutions in the UK. Who are owned by France Telecom too !

See how small the company behind goa is? How hard it would be to finance proper service if they would find, if they don't you take another ISP, another telco both at home and at work? As long as they don't see pressure they won't act and little petitions are nothing.

 

[Esselinithia]

One more quote:

- By regular mail :
Wanadoo – GOA –
48 rue Camille Desmoulins 92791 Issy les Moulineaux Cedex 9

I think you can see the wanaddo name and the french address, and you can trace that which national telco is behind Wanadoo.

 

[old.Whoodoo]

Phone support: I am totally against it. An internet based chat, perhaps with optional voice chat, if the problem warrants it and it is reported on rightnow and the staff sees it looks more reasonable. Yet when I open a manual of a random game I have here, it has phone numbers for support. Say in Baldurs Gate 1 maual I found phone numbers, in Warcraft 3 manuals I found phone numbers, Neverwinter Nights I found phone numbers. How it happens? None of the games have a monthly fee? And some of the support system is 24/7 some parts aren't. You have the support line in multiple countries and multiple languages. How it is possible?

Games of this nature are simple to support, as 90% are "I cant start it" = "get DX9 / drivers / a new PC". MMORPGs are ever changing, the problems are wide and varied. So a phone call to them is a doddle...now compare that to how many DAoC players would phone them. You cant please all the people all the time.

The best census you can do on DAoC, simple, the player base. It may fall from time to time, but 300k people cant be wrong, and still keep paying.

 

[Zede]

Like 90% of the people who play, I ve never had cause to use RightNow, and any problem in game ( Eryins Charm mob not popping for example, Respawn of Xanxicar..) have been sorted out by a GM quite quickly.

For years Ultima Online has about 30+ people per server who acted as GMs, and they had certain "powers" to reset encounters, sort out player disputes etc... only thing I can think of that may aliviate some of peoples problems, without it costing a fortune.

 

[Formash]

All i can say is

It really isnt a bad service, keep it up GoA

same here - not had anything bad to say about them tbh.
RIghtnow have always sorted my problems more or less in 48 hours - which is fine for me.

So it ISN'T getting my signature on the petition.

 

[Esselinithia]

Games of this nature are simple to support, as 90% are "I cant start it" = "get DX9 / drivers / a new PC". MMORPGs are ever changing, the problems are wide and varied. So a phone call to them is a doddle...now compare that to how many DAoC players would phone them. You cant please all the people all the time.

The best census you can do on DAoC, simple, the player base. It may fall from time to time, but 300k people cant be wrong, and still keep paying.

Can I compare the player base with the player base of other games? And your support question complexity with questions you can ask about neverwinter nights? *points to scripting* I stay with daoc because of my friends, and I think this speaks about friends and not about goa. How many people stay for similar reasons?

 

[Formash]

How many people stay for similar reasons?

I barely play DAOC at the moment (once or twice a week), and i was commenting in an email to friends only this morning, saying , if it wasn't for them, i wouldn't be playing DAOC at all.

 

[Elewyth]

And guess how much Old.Elewyth is willing to lie to protect goa.com? A lot of the companies we checkedfor shippin even with searches, and most of them serve only UK with english version, when you spent enough time with it, you either give up or ask support, when the support in email sends you a link to french store as the placethat ships to whole europe and they don't know others that is a problem no? Maybe if it is a well know and often repeated problem and they still don't have an english language web store listed...

dude you really need to stop sniffing your doritos as u sit infront of your computer... you didnt search very hard then did you? there was a thread a while ago where people got together and listed over 30-40 online stores from Denmark/sweden/germany/uk and a few others.. they all shipped ANYWHERE in Europe within 7days.. granted with this kind of game you cant just walk into a shop and buy it... but hey guess what? i couldnt find a copy of Everquest in my shops either.. or Ultima Online... or Asherons Call....

No i dont think Goa has a problem... i think you have an attitude that no matter what people tell you.. you gonna whine about GOA no matter what.. people offer solutions to you and all you say is.... not my problem, its GOA, they wont lick my arse.. im the customer and i demand they do everything for me.. well this is the year 2004 not 1904... go out and do some work yourself.. find an online games shipper.. thereare LOTS.. but i guess if you cant be arsed then why should GOA be arsed helping you.

 

[[GOA]Erivoss]

erm fyi we aren't owned by Wanadoo anymore (hint... look at the logo's on the NF splashscreen....).

Even though they are owned by France Telecom like us, they are a separate company and we have no means of pressure on them. Much like the relationship we have with OpenTransit I might add.