Let's be positive - customer support

I've reamed on City of Heroes a lot recently, to the point where I'm sure some people started wondering "Well what the hell are you still doing there if you hate the game, then?" The truth, though, is that I don't hate the game. In fact, without a doubt I can say that, for me, this is easily the best game ever. In fact, it's so good that I take certain things for granted (like that it runs O.o), and it's only when I try some other game, especially another MMO that I think back to my time here and realise "Wow... I had it pretty good back there. What am I even doing trying out other games?"

I want to talk about customer support for a while. I know people love to hate our own and keep on inventing new reasons why, but you know what? You people go to hell! Certainly I've had to wait for an hour for a GM to show up and certainly I've had problems that weren't fixed, but at least every time I had people at least try to help me. Trying Dungeon Fighter Online a few days ago, this could not have been farther from the case.

It looked like a good game, and it was free to play (or rather, "free" to play), so I tried it. Downloaded, installed, updated (for three frikkin hours at 10KB/s), ran the game and promptly got a runtime error. "The application cause the Runtime to terminate in an unexpected manner. Please contact the application's developers for further information." And so I did. I filed a support ticket as I would here, quoted my error and waited. Their response? "We're sorry, but the game is not supported outside the US for the moment. Look for another version." Up yours! I'm not gonna' wait for another version! If you can't be arsed to help me, I'm can't be arsed to play your game!

This then reminded me of all the good experiences I've had with our own support team, even if people would have you believe they're the worst. The most recent example I remember is filing a ticket that the Microsoft Language Bar crashed my game when I tried to use it, which made typing in Bulgarian impossible. I filed a ticket and got a response to the effect of "Well, the game is only supported in English so you shouldn't be trying to do that, but let's see if we can't solve your problem anyway." After a few back-and-forth attempts, they ended up unable to help me after all, but you know what? They tried, and that counts for a LOT. I asked for help with something that wasn't supported at all and STILL customer support tried to help me. That counts for a LOT in my book. And, even better, no more than two-three months down the line, I tried using my Microsoft Language Bar and it no longer crashed my game. It's fixed now, and whether or not my filing a ticket about it made a difference, I'm still glad I did, and I'm still impressed with how they treated me.

And this isn't the first time I've had a GM nice enough to go out of his way on my account. I mean, think about it - how many times have we summoned GMs to help us find that one last enemy on a map? That isn't a customer support problem, not technically, but they would still help us every time. Find the last glowie or enemy, and either teleport that to us, or teleport us to it. I've had a GM come get me out of the trench behind the Terra Volta reactor where you can't get out without some form of vertical travel. I've had a GM finish my mission and give me my reward when it's bugged.

And now, we even have Arbiter Kim, who prowls the forums looking for bugs to forward to the development team. To say I am happy and impressed is an understatement. People rag on customer support so much, but I, personally, am incredibly impressed with them, and very impressed with the general communication we have with our development team. Where else can you go up to a developer, state a bug, and see it fixed a while later?

It's a pity I never truly appreciate that when I try another game and find so much lacking.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Arcanaville Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.

My biggest concern with Customer support was the apparent inability to get bugs through to the Dev team

Arbiter Kim's hiring was a great step at rectifying that.

I dont like waiting for a hour to fix a broken spawn, and its only rarely I have seen a wait that bad (the one at the end of a Doc Q a year or so ago would have been annoying at 5 mins, let alone an hour), but understand that sometimes the queue fills up. The Majorityof times it has been under 10 mins -15 mins which is certainly good.

Just yesterday on Guardian when the Greater Mystic Aspect spawned inside the landscape again, a GM showed up before the timer ran out ( GM_Sharon I think ) and yanked the thing out where we could get at it. Everyone was quite happy with her.

I've had nothing but good experiences with the help desk. Usually I need help with badges not being awarded or similar bugs. I try and be as clear and polite as possible, and always thank them after they help me out.

I am disoriented and confused by the close proximity of the name 'Samuel_Tow' with the phrase "Let's be positive".

=(