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Star Wars Galaxies Forums Turn Player-Only
mwbay writes "A note from the Star Wars Galaxies Forums indicates that starting today, SOE will be hiding the PC MMORPG's forums from the non-paying public. Raph Koster submitted this response [on the now-inaccessible forums]: 'It isn't really that we have anything to hide. We spend a lot of time on the
boards here talking to you, and I don't think we have been shy about confronting
controversial issues... But yeah, publicity is at the heart of it. The heart of the matter is
will a game's Internet forums ever be a source of
positive publicity post-launch? And I'd suggest to you that the answer is
no... Someone who isn't a player has no idea exactly how widespread a given issue is.' It is certainly well within SOE's rights to do what they want with their boards, but isn't this a bit extreme?"
This is the FIRST BOBA FETTPOST..h.EVER!!!!!
The way i see it they need more people to play. If people Think the game is good they will sign up. If they access the forums and see a lot of nnoise from a few squeeky wheels they may not.
Of course I can see a new market for public forums to take the place of the official forums.
In fact...
comment directly in my journal
At Simutronics, we chose to open up our formerly subscriber-only forums to the world, even knowing that the subjects that receive much traffic and attention in forums, nowadays, tends to be complaints or acerbicly worded suggestions, in large majority.
This is a bad move for people who want to get a better handle on what the game is all about (and whether or not it sucks) before actually paying money for it.
Surely there are ways to handle trolls (if that is even a problem) without restricting access to paying members only.
no thanks
Sadly, it's par for the course, particularly for SoE games. At least on SW:G you can still actually post in forums developers read. For EverQuest, you have to submit a question, and maybe, if the stars allign, and if they have a good bit of smoke to blow, your question will get posted and answered by a developer, after which there will be no further discussion.
Philip Sandifer's academic website
I would say that this is a really dumb idea on the part of SOE... With the player population as small as it is compared to what was expected, the last thing they need to do is block any possible curious people from getting questions answered about the game...
When Unreal 2 came out I was pretty torn about whether or not to buy it after hearing mixed reviews. The members of the infogrames (now atari) forums convinced me it would be worth my money. (truth is, i only moderatley enjoyed the game though...) This is not the only case of a forums encouraging me choice of a game in the past.
By blocking a lot of the perspective customers, they're really doing themselves harm rather than good... i'm not sure what they think this do...
If I was on the fence about Galaxies and went to the forums to check things out about it, I would definatly not buy it after reading them. Then again, I'm about to cancel anyway, I don't recommend it. Wait for World of Warcraft.
Is it just me or does it seem like they are trying to hide something? Of course everyone is going to praise the game pre-launch. Now, post-launch, people have actually gotten a chance to play it. And realized its not what they though.
It seems like maybe there's been so much negative feedback that they want to close the forums from the public to stop other potential players from getting discouraged. I haven't played the game. But I usually browse a game's forums when I'm deciding to buy a game or not.
Dont get me wrong its compleatly SOE's right to do what they want. It just seems a little shady.
Well this is well within their rights, though i think that moderating the boards and removing offensive posts may have served their purposes more than just telling non-customers to bugger off. Squelching dissent like this just makes the potential customers more likely to not buy the game since they will interpert this as Lucasarts deliberately trying to keep them in the dark as to potential game issues.
On Wall Street they say "buy low, sell high" On the pad we say, "buy high, sell high" Isn't that somehow better?
...will a game's Internet forums ever be a source of positive publicity post-launch?
./, game reviews... On their forum, they have at least some form of control over it (I assume).
:)
With the internet being what it is, do the producers really think that closing the forum is a good move? I assume that problems and negative opinions will be voiced in other forums, wikis, product sites,
The truth is out there and everyone will know it, eventually
My cats ate my karma. They also wrote this comment.
It's a good decision for exactly the reason stated.
Anyone going to a game's forum will find countless complaints and very little positivity, an unbalanced ratio that is of course NOT representative of the majority of players. It creates an inaccurate impression of what people think of the game, which in turn may discourage other people from playing it.
Now you may say that it's also 'hiding' the legitimate complaints from potential customers, and of course that's true. However, it has only come about after many years of openness from all (or nearly all?) games companies.
The reason is has got to this stage is that the vast majority of people posting on a game's forum will be very angry, very vocal, very rude and somewhat-obsessive. If you want to blame someone for this decision then blame them, because they have created the situation that is now being addressed.
To be clear: I don't *like* the decision, but I understand and agree with it.
I don't play SW: G but I can tell you from the point of view of a regular member of the Neverwinter Nights community that the community members at SWG are probably breathing a sigh of relief. The BioBoards are divided into both 'registered owner-only' and 'open to the public' forums. The open forums tend to be a morass of bad threads, off-topic posts and people making wild complaints, sometimes about a game they HAVEN'T EVEN PLAYED.
The registered owner forums are much more civilized. Which is not to say that we don't have our fair share of complaints about the game - we do. It's just that the public boards seem to encourage flamebait and trolling.
I have a lot of opinions about Cyborgs and Architects
"The heart of the matter is will a game's Internet forums ever be a source of positive publicity post-launch?" -- Raph Koster
Also, just as important, would a designer's desire to close off forums to the public be a sign of a worthwhile game? While it is true that most forums are plagued by trolls and screaming, petulant adolescents, hiding behind anonymity while they snipe at anything anyone holds dear, it's also the one of very few places to find an honest opinon about a given game.
Weapons of Mass Analysis
But Bioware makes something similar with the BioForums, only owners of the game can post, everyone can read it.. and you have the generic forum where everyone can post.
The Bioware thing is right IMHO, only owners can post I see the number of trolls decrease, but hiding the forums from the community? It's insane..
Everyone keeps saying "It is certainly well within SOE's rights to do what they want with their boards". While technically this is true, owning the forum and/or the equipment it runs on should not be used as an excuse to behave like a dicatator.
People get so caught up in their petty power struggles that they lose sight of the bigger picture. It's just like a business -- you may own the building and equipment, but your customers own you, because without customers you have no business. The same applies to on-line forums: Without users you have no forum.
they're utter, total complete nazis.
i remember i was in the digital cantina, a place where many come to rest and revive wounds and form hunting parties and such, and a player by the name of "Stud," yeah, Stud, was doing a provocative dance for another male player and blowing kisses (theres actually a command to blow a kiss to a certain player).
after this, he used a bug in the game to simulate willingful participation of sodomy.
there is no collision detection detection in the game for players, so if for example you ran up to a friend and continued to run instead of stopping in front of him, your player would literally run through your friend, the models can intersect without any problems.
well we were in the cantina, and obviously there are seats there, sitting being an option....
you select the seat, bring up the options menu associated with that item, and select "Sit." simple concept...
simple innocent function of the game.
not when you consider the ability to merge with players due to the lack of collision detection. the first guy whom "Stud" was blowing kisses to had been sitting in a chair near Stud. after his dance he took advantage of this 'merge ability' and sat in the same chair as the player he was hitting on. i think you know what im getting it.
there was no mistake about it or the intentions of thoes two players, they were simulating anal sex.
so, naturally, i made a few comments.
so what if i do? they're doing it in a public place (yes there are actual private homes in the game and you can lock other players from entering), its not only common sense but common practice to accept and understand the consequences.
things got rough, lots of pro-gay rights and anti-gay rhetoric were spurted, it got pretty brutal. afterwords, though i went on my way, let it go, and continued my search for beryllium copper so i could pick myself up one of thoes sweet composite armor suites.
next day, my login doesnt work. servers were up, not knowing where else to turn i opened my email with the intent of filing an inquiry, and notice an email from somthing like 'customerrellations@swg.com.'
in it was an enclosed, trite and painfuly succinct message informing me that my account had been suspended for 5 days.
lots of arguments to be made here, but my point is that they're nazis.
which they are.
I read about EQ-style time sinks, lots of walking. Content like lore and quests sounded rather sparse. Aside from humans and wookies, most of the races sounded like "random guy from the cantina" -- not gungans or jawas or things like that which would at least be recognizable as a Star Wars creature. No spaceships, though supposedly they're coming in a future expansion. Lots of going out to hunt random creatures to build up one's character.
It sounded like something that a lot of people were enjoying, but not really very "Star Wars"-ish in terms of the roleplay possibilities, and not something for me. By reading over the boards, I was able to determine before having to buy anything that I would be dissatisfied with this title, based on my own tastes and expectations.
You might look at this and think, "Sony lost a sale because you read the boards, closing them is a good move". But it's not. Sure, if I had bought the game and hated it, they might have made $50 more, but I would have been much more wary of buying anything from them in the future. After being burned, Sony would have a much higher burden of convincing me to buy their product next time around, and in the long run would lose much more money than they made.
Customers can use the forums just like they could before. Nothing, in that regards, has changed.
All it means is that those who don't pay for the SWG service don't get to use the SWG official boards.
It makes perfect sense to me.
And, as far as I can recall, you couldn't EVER post on the forums unless you were an SWG subscriber once the game went live. So it's not like anyone's being silenced.
One of the things I like to do before buying a game is go cruise the support forums and see how things are going. If you see lots of "Broken", "Wont Run" "Crashs" threads, gives a clue to wait till they patch.
;)
After being burned by Anarchy online and its patches, the only reason to lock forums is to hide problems. And dont even start with Tribes2 and its whole patch fiasco.
Tired of wasting my time on 50 dollar games, that have these huge amount of bugs. Time is starting to be more valuable to me these days, and 10 minutes reading a forum is better than wasting days on playing a broken, crap release.
Dont believe the excuses about non-regs posting, free registeration covers that. And bandwidth usage for non-players is another excuse. The truth is to hide the ammount of posts, hide the ammount of players, and hide the bugs.
OF course, I could be wrong.
As a game reviewer, I always check message boards dealing with a game I'm reviewing, mainly for reports on technical difficulties. So far I've been lucky, and most of the games I've played were very stable. However, sometimes (most recently with Republic: The Revolution), there is a widespread technical problem that's significant enough for me to take notice and mention it in my review. Over the course of my reviewing career I've nocised some interesting patterns:
1. The smaller the company the more positive the board. While this is not always the case, very often games from small publishers receive more praise. In addition, the developers tend to follow these boards more closely and are ready to answer any question or solve problems. Especially the Dramcatcher/Adventure Company and JoWooD boards are great examples of how game forums can have positive spin. In fact, as long as the developers sound helpful, I tend to buy games with known technical problems, because I'm confident that I'll be helped.
2. Scam and deception works, too. Remember Command & Conquer: Renegade? It was not a perfect game. In fact, it was piss-poor, deserving a fraction of sales it ultimatelly achieved. The reason for such high sales was that EA was censoring out all posts that mentioned technical and gameplay problems. Those who recognized this practice were booted off the forums, and those who came to check other players' reactions found only positive posts. SW:G falls into this category. While not as deceptive as EA, SOE is still trying to create the impression that the game is better than it really is. Most likely, the strategy will work.
This makes sense.
I'm sure they're under some pressure from management who are skiming the boards and seeing bad things.
This is probably the reason that the board admins have lately been cracking down a little too hard, IMHO.
Now that the boards are private, the admins will be able to lighten up. Information will again flow freely within the community, without bringing down the hammer of the skittish management types.
It is an unfortunately thing to have to do, however. I can only assume that Raph's wish is to be able to open the boards again once the 'Gamma Testing' is done.
Personally, I decided I wasn't interested when the developers said that being a Jedi was going to be next to impossible. Now, I understand why they did this. It's tough to have a universe where everyones a Jedi, and there's a risk that that would've happened. But... Jedi are a pretty big thing in the Star Wars universe, and they're what everyone wants to be. No one's going to pay $15 a month to be a baker or a dancer. Add to that the fact that so far there are no spaceships to fly around in (Yes, I know they're supposed to be added in later; but they're asking me to pay them now, not later), and you have very little Star Wars in your Star Wars game, as quite a bit of the movies are Jedi and people flying around in spaceships! As a result, I think the game is a tough sell, and the people running the forums are sensing that, and are getting worried. Hence the desire to eliminate bad PR.
The first thing I do when looking at buying a MMOG is go to the community forums.
The REAL story of the game is in there. I realise most of the posters are inflammatory, but I look past that to the facts they present: what kind of bugs, how bad are they and is the game any fun.
I have seen the bad posts and decided to buy anyway, an well informed decision. No MMOG is without bugs and the ones I seen were not fatal. (As with Shadowbane for example)
And you know what? The forums, taken in this light, were ABSOLUTELY SPOT ON. The issues they rant about were REAL and the impression I was given was about 98% accurate.
For all you who agree with their posts, excuse me but you have no idea what you are talking about. Advertising and promotion are absolute bollocks, more so in the gaming industry. I never pay attention to the box, so to speak. It is not even written by people who have played the game FFS.
Anyways, IMHO if I see an MMOG that has closed off its forums, I would definitely wonder why and quite franky I would have serious doubts about purchasing it.
Feh! I'm totally disgusted by the state of online games. I'm never going to spend another slim dime on forever beta games. SOE's latest censorship action just demonstrates their contempt for the current and new customers.
I installed linux the other day.
It didn't detect my sound card, a creative audigy gamer. So no sound or music.
It detected a video card but it's not MY video card (geforce2 ti 64mb). So no games.
It detected my ethernet card but couldn't initialize it. So no network or internet.
Basically I'm now stuck with a 2gig copy of vi.
Linux is worthless.
Windows seemed to do fine with all those things...
There is a LOT of subjective reasoning for locking threads in teh SWG message forums. Anything that criticizes SOE, SWG, the Developers, CSR's, or Moderators is promply locked to be buried in the multitude of posts from disgruntled players. There is no such thing as freedom of expression or pointing out flaws in the game, management's mistakes, CSR's shortfalls, or moderator's prejudice (by prejudice I mean they give their "pet" posters a lot of leway in their subject matter, but those that have valid points but not on the "in" list are sumarily locked...of course if you call their hand, they'll emphaticly deny it.) The fact is, SWG is a game that had a lot of potential, and because it has been nerfed so many times, each change that is supposed to promote "balance" consiquentially does more harm than good, as it unbalances many of the other professions in the process. Balance for the sake of balance is just stupid, and that's what the game is digressing into. On a final note. I was raised on a farm, many moons ago. If there was a sick animal that was terminal, we'd take it out back and shoot it. SWG is getting to the point SOE should consider doing the same.
Who cares about the ozone layer?...thanks to CFC's I can write my name......IN CHEESE!!!
On the official forums, they not only have control, but the ability to respond to negative threads with hundreds of replies. I never played EQ, so I have no prior experience with SOE, but so far I'm not impressed with their customer service.
It's nothing but crumpled porno and Ayn Rand.
There is a Yahoo! Group, the Allakhazam forum, SWG Warcry, the Stratics SWG board, and even the Lucasforums boards, among quite a few others. If you're thinking of learning more about the game, don't let Sony stiff-arm you, visit one of the other forums and start reading.
isn't this a bit extreme?
no.
Just got banned for posting in the SWG forums linking this article.
I posted the link, they locked it saying I was repoting. I checked, noone else has posted about article. I included my own view at the bottom.
I post saying there was none. I am locked, they say they want only "one thread" on the topic. Still no threads on the fact that slashdot is running an article on our community.
I repost without my own viewpoint (thinking this was the problem). Just the link, and my reasons for doing this and why I think they misunderstood me.
I am banned. Oh well.
Life goes on...and on....and on...
I think if they really wanted to accomplish something meaningful here they could have easily segregated the subscribers and the visitors with a simple icon. That way you could tell who was just talking out their ass and who was actually talking form experience. It would have also been an easy way to filter posts as well.
The way I see it, they just sealed off a huge publicity source. Most companies I know like word of mouth promotion if their product is any good.
You need a FREE iPod Nano
As a paying PlanetSide subscriber (a MMOG FPS), I find SOE distinctly user hostile and not to be trusted.
I'm not by any streach of the imagination a 'whinger' on the boards, but they constantly give misinformation, are not aware of bugs that virtually every user knows about and has been aware of for months (like doors that don't open [makeing capturing a base impossible, which is kind of the point of the game], your character being killed for no reason if you jump in certain areas of the game world [and then taking over 5 minutes to 'reset'], map exploits to allow several users to overload and crash the server [which, after 3 months, was 'kludged', it's still exploitable, but it's more difficult now]).
An example of the behavior displayed by them:
The current (new) Producer Dallas Dickinson, when asked in an interview, says by way of a reply that new players should familerise themself with the game world using the training levels provided. This idea sadly, is a joke. 'Training' levels have been quite standard fare since at least the origional Half Life. However, this suggestion requires some nerve on Dallas Dickinson's part because it's never worked - training has been broken since release 3+ months ago, they just can't be bothered to fix it (and it's broken for every single user, in a game that's as complex as PlanetSide (and few people realise the depth) it's really hurting the gameworld).
The worst thing about the bug management is they litteraly don't seem to have CVS or RCS in place! They can fix a bug, then introduce a new patch a few weeks later, and bang, the bug is back. This is happened a few times and is really annoying, it's now common to see 'X bug is back since Y patch' posts on the forums.
They introduced a Capture the Flag idea, to which almost everyone said in unison 'No, don't do that, we can play CTF for free, we want a proper warfare game, leave it alone, just tweak the existing gameplay, don't give us CTF WE DON'T WANT THAT.', they conducted numerous user instigated polls (using free online poll services) on the forum and results were always in the region of 100 against, 20 'For or Unsure', but they went adhead and did it anyway after vast amounts of moaning. It was supposed to bring the battle out into the field (and stop it being just around bases).
Of the minority that wanted it, they primarily defended it by saying it WASN'T capture the flag. Then the developers went and used a Flag icon and SOE started calling it CTF in interviews.
The problem with it is firstly, certainly IMO, there was no serious problem with battles not being out in the field (I've had many great battles out in the field, not just around bases), secondly it's a complete flop as it's entirely failed to bring the battle out into the field! You just grab the flag and 'run' (usually as a passanger in a vehicle driven by someone else). That's it, no battle in the field, the 'battles' are still taking place in the bases because you can 'decontruct' the 'flag' (aka the 'LLU') by re-securing the base, which is what people do (after all if a think is being driven away from you and has a head start, it's difficult to catch up with it, so why bother if you can just re-securing a single room in the base?).
My third issue with it (as many users, including myself, suggested was *perfectly fucking obvious from day one*, pardon my French) is that any idiot can pick up the LLU and run away with it. This *FREQUENTLY* happens, some idiot will pick it up and run in the wrong direction. The maps are 8k accross, idiots just ignore messages and and go in the opposite direction, dispite a *giant flashing line* telling them where to go, and constant popup messages informing them where they need to be. There is a timer on the 'flag' and this idoiocy can negate the work of a hundred people or more who have worked together for 20+ min to capture the damn base in the first place. Of course, now you can't trust the idiot who get's the 'flag' so people frequently team kill for it and fight ov
I was fortunate enough to get in on Planetside's beta. While sparse, I thought the dev's comments in the forums were somewhat informative and helpful.
However, the game itself lacked any depth. There were about 20 or so of us coming from Infantry, another (not good, IMO) SoE game, and by the release date we had had enough. We formed an outfit a month or so before release, had 50 members, a fairly active message board with 6 or so people on most of the time, and after release, exactly nobody bought the game that I'm aware of. There was 0 message traffic on our boards.
I'm glad they appeared to listen to the user feedback regarding a lattice system (is that still in the game?). However, the game seemed to lack any long term rewards. I am curious now, after it has been released, why do people keep playing? Do they go for battle rank or commander rank or continent lock or is there something more?
Infantry drove me absolutely insane because there seemed to be next to nil developer feedback, and the game (zone I played, at least) was stagnant.
It seems like a good option for the (pre)consumers would be to leave the forums open to the public but require a registered paying account to post messages. This should help get rid of unwarranted claims made by idiots while still letting the public see what the players think.
Or maybe they just don't want the public to know about the inner workings of the game until after they get some money.
Interestingly enough, not only does this move practically enrich the forum's discussions, but also hides the vast amounts of dissatisfaction floating around in the community. It's precisely a marketing move, imho. Being selected for one of the first 100 beta phase 1 participants, I can tell you I watched the game build up from get go to gold - and not much built up. The problem was that the Devs underestimated the dark side of the force, see... When I compare what the devs invisaged at the start of beta with what's in it now you see how much more they bit off than they could chew -> Player politics, proper PA systems, criminal factions, proper bounty hunting systems, custom missions, proper smuggling, proper vehicles (not just the single seat stuff they want to implement now) espionage, *interesting* combat and PvP concepts... Well you see my point. Beta was one long nerf-slide, watching a MUD get built on top of a graphics engine. They simply didn't have time to do things properly. Musicians can't write their own music, Chefs can't make their own recipes, Dancers can't bust their own moves, Doctors have a boring at best system to work with etc... However, I'm pretty sure the rest of lack of depth in SWG right now has to do with lack of space due to their strong relationship - what's a smuggler without a ship? Whats a bounty hunter without a ship? Who cares about being in the rebellion if you don't get to walk around on a Mon Cal Cruiser? I plan to check out SWG in about 2 years time... after the Space Expansion is released, and has had time to settle in. The Devs ARE working. Hard. Except they finally realised that SWG is roughly 4x as much work as they originally thought it'd be. Someday the game will be great, and maybe then they can open the boards, because all public dissatisfaction does now is give the game a bad reputation for when it actually achieves its long term design goals.
Actually, Simu's forums may have been part of the impetus for Sony's opposite decision.
Some members of Sony's Planetside team, including the head programmer, used to work at Simutronics. A subset of that group could only be described as "disgruntled"-- they have bitter personal gripes with the management at Simu, for reasons that seemed totally insignificant to me. Those one or two people have pushed to do everything as differently from Simutronics as possible, since the project started. If Simu had open forums, said persons wanted forums to be either closed or nonexistent.
The producers of Planetside overrode that decision by making a compromise. The agreement reached was to use the forums to generate buzz, up until the game reached a certain "critical mass" of subscribers. At that point they would restrict the forums to players only, in order to minimize negative word-of-mouth. (For instance, it's bad when an upset ex-player mouths off and convinces others to cancel their subscriptions.)
When word of this idea got to the Galaxies team, they decided it would be a good idea for them too. But because they have the Star Wars name, they decided they have better a built-in draw, and therefore don't need as big a community to be self-sustaining.
Apparently Galaxies has hit their "critical mass" of subscribers, and it's time to close those forums. The Planetside forums are still open either because someone changed his mind, or because they just haven't reached the triggering point yet.
Disclaimer: I used to work on the Planetside team for Verant, which is now SOE. That was way back when the game was still being called "Tanarus 2," so I don't have direct personal knowledge of recent developments, but I know all the people involved and I still talk to some of the team members. I'm posting as AC because I'm still covered under my unbelievably strict NDA.
I think SOE should have taken a more balanced approach to this new policy. As an SWG player, I read the forums and see the negative postings etc. But I also see the forums being used as a communication platform for the players (ie vendors "advertise" on the forums).
Non-players might have an interest in some of the content and to get a better impression of the game but do not need to see the discussions about games changes, recommendations and the intra-game communication mentioned above.
So maybe SOE should not have taken an all or nothing approach. There could be forums intended for the players (the majority) and forums for non-players. Then they would have the best of everything.
Honestly, you really would have to think SOE's employees are total idiots to think the decision will help stop negative comments about the game. There are plenty of game review sites and even specific SWG sites with public content on the topic.
Finally, I would like to say that SWG (like all MMORPGs) is a time sink. But for me, it is very cost effective entertainment! I now have no time to spend money on CDs (not that I will buy anything from those price-fixing, monopoly-having, child suing bastards at the RIAA), DVDs, movie theaters, shopping, eating out, etc. $15/mo is nothing compared to what I used to spend on my entertainment.
But alas, there are problems with the content in the game right now. I am sure this will get fixed and when it does, I have a developed character with enough money to take advantage of that content. This was always my approach.
I'm glad to see so many PlanetSiders speak the truth when it comes to SOE's aggressive, unfriendly and annoying tactics when it comes to community building on their forums and web site.
I was banned from PlanetSide for harassing their technical support. Despite harassing them so much that it warranted my removal from the game completely, SOE Tech Support NEVER responded to any of my problems, issues or posts until the day they told my they were cancelling my account.
SOE Tech Support won't talk to you unless you post in the right format. This includes cutting and pasting at least a couple lengthy log files. Problem is - my PS wasn't creating these log files. I tried to inform them of this. Got no response. I tried to describe all the crashes, mis-spawns, and other issues that made the game unplayable for me. No response.
I'm not a person who is easily aggravated. But when I paid $50 for a game and am being asked to shell out even more monthly - I don't think being able to A) play the game for more than hour without it crashing to the desktop and B) having a tech support capable of carrying on a conversation about it without having to jump through 15 hoops is too much to ask.
SOE clearly doesn't agree. It's your *privilege* to be playing their game, and their assistance in making it an enjoyable experience for you is really not their concern.
Nearly all of my posts, btw, were deleted from the forums. There's basically no evidence any of my complaints took place. That's another "interesting" tactic of the SOE forums.
I've never been banned from any game -ever-. Not for player killing, or behavior, or cheating, or anything.
And certainly not for complaining about tech support.
SWG forums turn player only? Good. Trust me, you aren't missing anything. Let's leave SOE to their fanbase who still supports all their beta development with a monthly fee.
dotslash?
SoE is known for not being too good in the area of customer relations. You can see that with EQ, PlanetSide, and now SW:G - the devs do talk, and often they mean well when they come and post things.
Their customer support, on the other hand, is mostly comprised of a bunch of clueless sacks of sand, who can't do anything but read from a script, and ban you if anything deviates. Generalised, but true.
SW:G has often had notices in the patcher posted if users could -please- delete their open trouble tickets (you're allowed to have.. one.. yes.. one ticket) because the poor CSR staff was overworked.
It's pretty sad if your ticket about items going missing, weird warping bugs, and your entire house just sorta up-and-disappearing sit in the queue for a week before being closed by a CSR without any explanation. Then re-filing it and having it closed again, and given a warning on your account.
I mean, if that doesn't scream "for the love of God someone send us on a customer relations training camp", I don't quite know what else to make of it.
There is no sig...