Irony Much?

How's this for irony?


Some of you already know there's quite a healthy little City of Heroes community within other games. There's around 20 members in our little group and we cover both sides of the Atlantic – and that in itself is ironic enough, given that I have to use a different medium to communicate with a player of the same game because he or she happens to play on a different cluster.


So we often talk about the game and we've introduced a few new subscribers over time – I think there are about 4 confirmed continuing subs introduced via this group in the last 6 months or so. Nothing ground-breaking but a cool little community where we chat about our latest 50s, share the odd pic of costumes and discuss the merits of various builds, powers and A.T.'s


Obviously being in a wider environment we often get to chatting with people who haven't played the game. So one of our little group decides she'd like to play the game – she's in Las Vegas but decided she'd like to join my team, which meant she'd have to play on the EU servers. In and of itself not a problem, after all it's the internet and that's global. So I send her a trial code via the referral system.


She downloads the game, logs in and loves it. Has so much fun that she signs up for six months within a week of starting to play the game. It's here that the problems start. Firstly she has all kinds of trouble actually subscribing. Her card is denied a couple of times and she gets a suspected fraud warning when all she is trying to do is subscribe to the game.


She enlists some GM help and they are helpful and friendly and get her set up. She has no problem now. Except that she wants the Ninja Run Power – and she still hasn't been able to buy that booster – the GM's seem to be unable to help in this instance and at the time of writing it's still unresolved, but the bottom line is there's a customer wants to spend REAL MONEY and is being seriously thwarted.


I'm also noticing that I'm not getting the credit for the referral. I'm simply getting a GM response pointing me at the “refer a friend” link on the web site. So I've done what I'm meant to do, my friend did what they are meant to do, we have 2 customers trying very hard to pay money and have a fun experience and it's actually quite shocking at how difficult that is proving to be.


I have no doubt that were my friend in Vegas to have paid for a US version of the game she'd have had far fewer problems – but then she and I wouldn't be able to team together, which then defeats the object and diminishes the experience for both of us.


Now, clearly there's a few problems here. Normally I'd say “sign up to the forums and see if you can get any other player advice.” Except that frankly these forums are so borked both in terms of rules and regulations and technically I'm not going to tell my friend, who's already pretty ticked off with the broken websites of NCSoft to do something that's gonna piss her off even more.


Put it another way Paragon Studios: If you'd had the troubles my friend has had, and then got spontaneously logged out of a forum whilst trying to explain that, would you carry on with this game?


In closing I'll post one final thought: Over the last six months or so I've been watching the NCSoft Share Price. It goes from strength to strength with a line that moves up and to the right contunually. Not bad during a global recession. But I just wonder this; do the NCSoft shareholders know how bloody difficult it is for customers to buy their product?

"You got to dig it to dig it, you dig?"
Thelonious Monk

Also they have to actually pay for a month - applying credit from a box apparently doesn't count and then before you know it they've gone beyond the time limit. Frankly, I've given up on referrals. I've gotten a half-dozen people into the game and not gotten credit for any of them for one reason or another. I just tell people to download the trial now.

I really hope your friend gets her troubles ironed out and starts having fun very soon. I know how frustrating it can be when a friend has any problem with the game, especially early on.

Well I'm less bothered about the referral credit but let's face it the whole system is borked and it becomes pointlessly over complex.

My friend is still ticked off because she's had so many problems buying 2 items, the game itself and then a booster.

I notice that the thread by The Ocho is like six weeks old now... and surely accepting money should be a business' first priority, so that's an exceedingly poor show that it's not been fixed. It tells me that NCSoft generally have a huge problem with their web process and procedure.

"You got to dig it to dig it, you dig?"
Thelonious Monk

Yeah, the store is pretty messed up. And if it doesn't get fixed by December then my account gets deactivated because I can't change my credit card info!

I approve of this thread and I encourage everyone to keep bumping it until the issue is resolved.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Scarlet Shocker that which is not forbidden is obviously permitted.

Also, you got this so backwards I can't see straight anymore.

This wouldn't be so bad, if we didn't continually see threads and complaints about these issues. Seriously, NCSoft, I know credit card fraud is a problem, but why do you continue to make it so difficult for real people to give you money?

--NT

They didn't fix this last night, did they? Gotta keep the thread bumped 'n' stuff.

This is indeed highly ridiculous. I certainly hope that fixing the store, or at least the support system that tells us why we're having problems and how to fix it, is top priority for NCSoft.

As a customer in Asia, I've gone through the same frustrating thing.

The whole worlds banking system needs to get it's collective head out of it's @rse and stop dicking around, really...

But no, that would require common sense, of course...
Ye gods...Humanity. So smart, and at the same time so smegging dense at the same damn time.

Hope the issue gets sorted, either way.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Zwillinger GG, I would tell you that "I am killing you with my mind", but I couldn't find an emoticon to properly express my sentiment.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Captain_Photon NOTE: The Incarnate System is basically farming for IOs on a larger scale, and with more obtrusive lore.

I had a payment rejected not too long ago. Any updates on this?

I got logged out of the forums again. I tried to log back in, but it told me my credentials were incorrect. I thought it was just that stupid bug from the other thread I'm religiously bumping, but then I remembered my account was actually due to lapse today.

No problem, I thought. I'll just go back in and add some more time using the same credit card I've been using for the past 4 years. Eh, what's this? My payment was declined? Something about "risk management assessment"? I've heard of other people having this problem; people who want to buy the game but can't.

Screw you, NCsoft.

What I did instead was head over to GameTimeZone, which has online-purchaseable time card serial codes for both the US and EU sides of the pond. Not only that, but the 60-day option comes to $24.99, which is a $5 savings over buying two individual months through NCsoft directly through credit card... In fact, doing the math, it's $12.50 per month, which is even cheaper than NCsoft's rate of $12.95 per month for the 6-month subscription.

If anyone has problems making payments, I highly recommend using either this site or some other like it. Hopefully that gets their attention, what with them actually losing money for every customer who has to take this route. I'm all about a full $15 every month, but if NCsoft refuses my money, then I'll let someone else have it in exchange for game time.

EDIT:
Heh, kinda funny, but when I posted this reply, it took forever for the forums to refresh, and when it did I'd been logged out again.

EDIT2:
Aaaand, it seems to have submitted the post twice.

Whee, forum fail double-post.

What the hell is the sales team doing? Ugh.

You know...

I'm starting to think the complete Incarnate system and Issue 20 have the entire team so entranced and preoccupied that Nothing else matters until it is finished mindset has set in.