Inside Community Relations at NCsoft

jkdove writes "Many citizens of today virtual worlds are often faced with challenges of not only life and limb, but of the very fabric which holds thier worlds together at the seams. When the world breaks down on you or simply feel the breath of god a bit too closely on the back of your neck, it's time to call in customer support. There are many who believe that the big companies don't listen to the hardworking, money paying customers. We were able to sit down with Rich Weil, the Online Community Relations Manager at NCsoft and hear the human side of what doesn't get said in an email from a CSR."

Just thought I'd make note about NCSoft

[sampspoon]

I bought Lineage 2 a few months back because it was $10 at gamestop and well hey, $10 can't be that bad. Install the game, find out the cd key was actually in use. Wrote in a support ticket stating I had just purchased the title and that the key was in use, provided the key as well as my contact information. I knew I would be questioned and they escalated my ticket to which I never heard a response in 2 days from.
So I called in and the guy said that the cd key was actually IN USE SUBSCRIBED CURRENTLY! I was

Re:Just thought I'd make note about NCSoft

[snuf23]

I know it sucks for them to require photographic evidence - but how do you propse the verify your purchase? I really don't think a phone number to a store to talk to someone who's identity they can't verify is a good way to lock out the account and turn the key over to you.
I realize that you were the one being screwed in this case, but it works both ways. Otherwise someone with a keygen could call them and pull the same stunt and get an account turned over to them. MMOs have to be VERY careful about deactivating accounts to to supposed key theft.
Personally I would have requested a different copy from GameStop - or for them to provide a camera to create the images to submit. After all they sold you a defective product. If they refused to do either of those than get your money back.

Re:Just thought I'd make note about NCSoft

[CTD]

"Personally I would have requested a different copy from GameStop"

This matches well with the policies of most retailers who will only exchange a game that has been opened for a like title. Easy way out.

Re:Just thought I'd make note about NCSoft

[patio11]

As a former customer service droid, this was just a massive failure from a business perspective. Look at the business case here: They just spent two support phone calls (thats ~$6 an incident if they were less than 10 minutes and handled in the USA, once you add in all the costs associated with running a CS operation), lost a prospective account ($12-15 a month for an average of 3-6 months, 95% of that is profit, cost of aquisition is generally high and this was a bird already in hand), and over what? Ove

Re:Just thought I'd make note about NCSoft

[patio11]

There is ZERO incentive for NCSoft to deactivate the *paying* account even if it was created using a keygen. They're paying you money now, why tell them "Take your money and leave, we don't work with pirates!" You should just tell the legitimate customer "Sorry sir, technical difficulties, your new CD key is $GENERATE_RESERVED_KEY." Fundamentally, their business model doesn't even really rely on the box sales (and certainly not for a 5+ year old game, where they see pennies on the dollar from retail): th

Re:Just thought I'd make note about NCSoft

[sampspoon]

Aftetr the whole incident occured I looked closer at the box and noticed the box originally had a square clear sticker sealing the case but there was a circulr clear sticker on there. Lots of sticky residue around it. The game had been bought previous and returned.

Seeing as the game is so ancient, I had bought the collectors edition because I didn't want to install off 6 cds or whatever it is plus the dvd was more updated which means less patching. I ended up having to get a full refund from the store. All

Re:Just thought I'd make note about NCSoft

[KDR_11k]

I was in the open beta, you're not missing anything. The game is 10% fighting and 90% waiting for your HP/MP to regenerate. I've met one person who enjoyed it, he played on a third party server that gives 12x experience for all kills. It's one huge grindfest and from what I've read plagued with farmers everywhere nowadays.

I cry BS on this supposed CSR process

[Gel214th]

I've played city of heroes for about 6 - 7 months now, gotten a character to level 43 of 50, another to 18 and a few more low level alternate characters.
From the time I joined, in each and every issue they have been reducing the power of the Heroes. Issue 5 was perhaps the largest single reduction in power in a game beside SWG. Defense for heroes were reduced by as much as 60% in some cases.Issue 5 altered the playstyle of the entire game, and we as players were told that

1) It was better for us
2) It was how

Re:I cry BS on this supposed CSR process

[KDR_11k]

How useful are numbers really? I mean, if you know you have "163 strength", what does that mean? Only people who look up the calculations involved know what that means anyway (except the "more is better" bit, obviously). Many console Rail Playing Games have numbers for everything but they are almost meaningless because you don't know what they mean. What happens when your magic defense goes from 30 to 35? Is that linear, logarythmic, is it subtracted from another number, what? D&D games often hand you t

Re:I cry BS on this supposed CSR process

[Gel214th]

I could explain the reasoning for this, but it's straying from the point. The post was in relation to CSR response, the claim of an integrated network of listening and responding to the playerbase made by NCSoft. I gave two examples when a response was sought by customers, promised by CSR staff, and never delivered. The post was also to show the contradictions and downright disingenuous responses (in my view) by the CSR staff and Dev staff (would they be one and the same in the case of CoH?) in certain inst

Too many nerfs

[cove209]

I quit CoH a few months ago after one too many nerfs. Their dev team pretty much does what they want to, damm the customers.

We'll see how long it takes their customer base to drop below their break even point.