Pay by Game Card? read this:Follow

Well, part of the reason for starting this thread was to make people who paid their account by Game Card aware of a policy which SOE does not make known in any way. At the end of the day, I guess not very many people use the cards anyway and in true modern fashion, since it does not effect most people, whether it's right or wrong is irrelevant.

Another reason for starting the thread was to check in on the court of public opinion and submit the idea to a jury of peers for consideration. The "am I wrong here?" voice that people hear in the back of their head from time to time. The verdict is in, I guess I am an ******* after all.
Naturally enough, that's not exactly the verdict anyone wants to hear, but the jury has spoken. I am a little disappointed at the idea that I am convicted on my on-line manners and not on the right or wrong of the matter but so be it.
Since I have taken no pains to hide my identity, I would hope I would at least get the customary speech in the dock that any convict gets.


I think the manner in which I dealt with SOE is important to explain. Important, not because EQ is important or forming a guild or any of that (it is not, at the end of the day after all) but because this is a perfect microcosm here of modern customer service and dispute resolution.
I am probably the oldest poster here, I'll bet. I remember when you had a problem with the gas company, you went to their office, you met a middle aged lady named "Rita" or "Marge" (who reminded you a little of your aunt) and you exchanged pleasantries and got to the point.
Rita would try to resolve the problem while you were there, if the problem did not get resolved you were given an avenue of redress further up the food chain until your problem was resolved in some way. You thanked her for her time and trouble and went on.
About ten years ago or more, everyone decided we were going to text, e-mail or chat our way through business and life in general. The problem with that approach is that you never got to meet Rita or Marge and get to interact with her as a person, nor her you.
Instead 90% of all human communication went out the window. No facial expressions, no body language and no demeanor clues. Communication reduced to typed words on a white screen.
Naturally, communication has suffered GREATLY as a result.
Corporate America (and to a lesser extent government) took it a step further, why have an office at all? and why pay Rita or Marge (presumably an employee with an intimate knowledge of procedures, policies and who to go to). She was expensive. Instead they could hire people with little or no skills for little or no pay to type company responses on-line, or better yet, automate all responses.
In the cases where (presumably at SOE) there are still actual people manning the keyboards, since they have fewer skills and are so much further down the food-chain, they could not possibly be entrusted with making decisions to set matters right, empowering (to use the tired expression) those people to actually resolve disputes for customers would be out of the question.

Now, obviously, a lot of the responses I gave to SOE CS would NEVER have been made to Rita, but that is the whole point here. Thay are not Rita. They are just typed words on a page, empowered to do NOTHING to resolve your dispute, and can end all discussion at a keystroke. Obviously escalating your problem to a higher echelon has also been dispensed with entirely; and why not? Who are you going to complain to?
When all human contact has been removed, no avenue for redress (and please hold your posts, work arounds are not avenues of redress) has been given and you have been told to "go F*** yourself, is there anything else I can do for you today?" just before being cut off, some people's response might rise to things that you would never say to a person in front of you. All of this because we as a society, have decided that this is the newer and better way to do business.

I wonder if jchapin begins a business meeting by calling the competitor across the table an ***?
Probably not, because he is actually there facing the person and can make full use of the other 90% of human communication to his advantage. It is a fact that we can all think and speak much, much faster than the fastest typist and we can adjust our speech and tone in response to our conversants facial expressions.
Some people, apparently myself included, are not very good at the "new" communication. and some never will be. Given a ten foot brick wall with a one inch hole to shout through, one will become frustrated and start to act like an ***.
Sony gives you no way to escalate a concern, no way to right a wrong and no one to contact any further. And they are certainly not alone in this.

So possibly guilty as charged as to abusing SOE staff, but I was operating in the model they forced on me. Nevertheless I apologize (and have done so to eqcs@soe.com).

As for everyone else who missed the point of this is wrong and SOE feels no pressure to change it, I don't know what to say. Apparently the idea that something is right or wrong no longer has the importance it once had. Not one person's post about "subscriptions" applies to this at all. When you do not subscribe to Time, they do not rip out the last page when you buy it on a newstand, when you fail to subscribe to the opera, they do not kick you out before the last scene after paying full price for tickets. As for a comitted customer, just how many years to you have to be a customer to be considered comitted? This "subscription" idea does not even apply here. The issue is being denied game content for the same amount of money paid as a "subscriber". While being a subscriber to a magazine or the performing arts does, in many cases, entitle you to extras the general public does not get, I doubt most players would consider the ability to form a guild an "extra". So despite any magazine based analogies, I am going to continue to believe that this policy is wrong. In addition, the idea that when you encounter a wrong you can search for a way to redress it is now considered whining if it becomes "obvious" that it is not going to be addressed. Perhaps it is the idea that overthinking something is "whining", I don't know.

So, /shrug. Bid you all adieu for now.
For those of you that don't sense it, this is just the last in a loooong list of SOE's mismanagement of our world. They may own the servers but it is our world, we made it.
Pop right in after a server crash when no one is there and see how much of a "world" it is.
The people that play with me and know me know that I am not an *** or a whiner and I have met so many cool people in EQ and had so much fun I will probably dive back in again, despite detesting SOE. But about 3/4 of my old friends have not. They have just "walked away" as so many less interested players so blithely suggest and as you all know the game has suffered dramatically for it.
And they all walked away because of an issue not like this, per se, but because of SOE CS or the game became stale under SOE management. My wife played since launch and got me into the game, she is gone. Along with her entire guild. Used to be several hundred people only two years ago. WoW has been the main benificiary, of course. Anyone who denys that this is the case, has not been on for a year. Why do you think people have left in droves?
When all of us "asses" and "whiners" have gone I hope the last 11 of you continue to enjoy Norrath as much as I have for the past two years. I actually survived the WoW/EQ2 plague of 2004, I am still hoping to be there at the end, but it won't be for the customer service.
The problem has never been EQ, it has always been SOE.

What if you bought the game card with a credit card .....P

The customer is always right. A good business gets & keeps lots of customers with phrases like "what can I do to make it right?".

I can almost predict when a local restaurant is going out of business, because of lousy service. It's because the customer is no longer right or valued. They argue that the steak is well done when you say it isn't, and that they don't have time to make sure your salad doesn't include onions, they can't give you separate bills, blah blah. We brought 20 people into a breakfast buffet one morning and they refused to provide us with well done bacon, they didn't have time. It's a stupid little thing, but it's an indication of attitute, and sure enough they lost customers right and left and closed. Because people do take their business elsewhere.

I bet some of these places haven't a clue why they lost customers, because valuing a customer is no longer a common concept. They say an unhappy customer spreads the word real fast.

SO maybe I would not have been as hard on the peon, but I would have used the phone and tried to make my point. There are still people around and supervisors if you can find them.

Just me but um I wouldnt treat a cc subscriber any different than a cc subscriber. for 1 the cc sub. can just cancel it next week so its a 50/50 with them. a gc sub. is money spent not money-that-might-be-spent-if-i-pay-the-bills-and-the-wifey-lets-me-keep-getting-charged.i know a few guys who got screwy bills from soe becouse of their accts so its not like they are treating cc users better,theyr just treating um different. as to how to solve the problem*puts on thinking cap* get one of your friends that is a cc sub. to start the guild and then give lead over to u.....is that possible???? Seems like an easy way around the system maybe to easy..........*boggles*

See, this is what you have based an argument on and have asked us to judge you on. It's really grasping. There are lots of things that don't get written into the rules, whether an oversite or a conscious decision that it didn't warrant a line in the rulebook (whatever that is for EQ??). Is what you're looking for a statement in the EULA or something on the website or the readme file? Maybe SOE could add a line somewhere on the gamecard that says "users of game card my forfiet some priveledges entitled to subscription holders"?

If it's suggestions to SOE you want to make, there are channels to do that. They incorporate player suggestions into the game all the time.

But you didn't come here to sell us on suggestions to improve our game. You can here whining about customer service. You said yourself there are somethings customer service can't do - making changes to rules, written or otherwise is one of them.

I'm sorry if you feel we judged you harshly.

I pay by credit card. I have 3 accounts that I play off and on. I may log on a cleric to rez me after a death, or buff outside a group or whatever, sometimes I go weeks without playing those characters, but they are nice to have if you need them. If I need them, and the account is de-activated, I re-activate it and before I leave SOE's convoluted billing menu, I cancel it. That way, I don't have to worry about my CC being charged at the end of subscription period for an account I may or may not use for 6 weeks. It wouldn't help in your case, doing it my way, because my account is canceled, but I can't stand SOE's lack of customer service, and it's my way of making sure they can't ***** me.

I certainly did not say EQ was going to die because of one policy, or that EQ was on the verge of collapse. But even big businesses needs to be concered about their customers. The effect is more immediate in a small business.

Can any1 confirm that you can actually start a guild and pass lead on to some1 else???? Think that would help out buddy over here.

yes and no in answer to can you create a guild and pass it to someone else.

Yes someone can create it and then make you the leader instead of them, problem with this is the creator of the guild has it soulmarked to their account. So if for any reason they decide they want it back or to just destroy and disband it they basically can.

This can help you start if you want to do it, but human nature being what it is bears risk that you would not have if you were able to just create the guild on your own account.

I have known a few bad situations where the orginal GL quit for a year or so sick of EQ came back and wanted power back and destroyed all that the guild they founded but did not help prosper had created.

Sort of the Patrick Henry complex, his *** was great at creating discord and getting us to seperate from England but after like Declaration of Independence his **** dont even show up historically. Some people are idea people some are builders, some are both, rare like the amidextrious are the both but usually somewhere along the line most of your true "ubah" guilds encountered one or two or they would have never made it there. As to the idea people there are prolly 10k+ guilds that are defunct or really should be defunct on EQ that 10 accounts once upon a time agreed to support and build on.

Very interesting Elinda!