I finally got a response back from support and I was able to log in. In all actuality, the response time from NCSoft wasn’t bad. Their fatal flaw was in their lack of communication. I went over 36 hours without an update after asking for one, twice. Now, they may have been working on it. They may have had to wait for something before they could resolve my issue. I wouldn’t have known as they didn’t communicate with me. If I had known I would have been far more forgiving. When you don’t talk to your users they tend to think you are ignoring them and that looks poorly on you.
That said, I do think NCSoft responded in a timely enough manner compared to my other customer service issues this last month.
Grades:
Initial Response Time: A
Overall Response Time: B-
Communication: C-
Overall (not an average): C
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UPDATE: 7/13/2010 @ 11:04PM
One whole day without a peep from NCSoft and Guild Wars Support. I sent in two requests to the ticket looking for an update and received nothing. My ticket is lost and drifting much like the fans of Auto Assault and Tabula Rasa.
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BACKGROUND
I bought Guild Wars on a whim last night. Court and I were bored and looking for something to play and we didn’t want to pay another monthly fee so I mentioned Guild Wars. I picked up the Trilogy from PlayNC directly which was more expensive but got me playing a bit quicker.
After buying the pack I went to apply my serial to an account. I was, given the option of upgrading an old trial account I had or starting a whole new account and I was thinking that I should just start a new account. That was when I read the NCSoft’s little tip on the bottom of the screen that told me it was smarter to upgrade an existing account. So, I followed their advice and upgraded my account.
I grabbed the client, installed, and a short while later I was looking at the login screen. That was when I discovered that, in the interest of security, I would need to enter my account name, password, and the name of a character on the account. Now, keep in mind, this was a trial account in which I probably just used a throwaway name. I ran through all of my regulars but none of them worked. The only reason I upgraded the account was because NCSoft suggested it. Perhaps, they could have also said: “Oh, by the way, don’t upgrade an account if you can’t remember your characters’ names because you will never be able to log in!” That tip would have been good to know. I went to the NCSoft’s support site and found that, sure enough, this is a problem they have had before. I went ahead and opened a ticket according to their specifications and sent it up. Happily, I received an update an hour later from GM Merrick telling me:
I am escalating your ticket to our Guild Wars senior staff members to assist you further. Once they have reviewed your question, one of them will contact you as soon as possible.
That was last night.
Since then, I have heard nothing. I don’t know about you but spending $40 on a game I can’t use makes me a little frustrated. I stayed positive, though, and sent a very polite request asking for an update.
Support Staff,
I am following up to see if there has been any progress on this ticket. I purchased a game key and used it to update a trial account that I had used for a short while six months ago. I was unaware of the Character Name requirement during login and have run through my usual combination of names without success.
If there is anything else you need from me to speed resolution of this ticket, please let me know.
Thank you
That was several hours ago and still nothing.
When I get back this evening, we’ll see if anything has changed. If not, I will update them and my little saga here. If I am going to be pissed off, I might as well make a game of it.
Ah yes, cloud computing. We’re almost there. The PC is, as they say, dead.
Now, all my data will be stored – safely and securely – behind the gateways of corporations who sole goal is to make money off of me. The internet as a place dissolves into the ether and what remains are billions of devices all connected to the master server, always sharing, always updating. It’s a world where data, public and private, is available all the time – anywhere – for the right price.
I know. Privacy is a myth. The very idea of privacy on the Internet is anathema to some. For others the cat is simply out of the bag. It’s too late to stop the speeding train and if we don’t get on, we’re liable to get squashed.
I worry sometimes that privacy becomes a red herring for greater concerns. I spend a lot of time talking about the evolution of literature and media. I argue strenuously for the evolution of digital literature and narratives that do more than simply try to replace products that already exist. Even with all my argument and belief in those mediums the truth is that the internet, and the cloud, is limited. It only knows what we feed it and most of us, in some way or another, feed it a steady diet of lies. Some lies are little, others gargantuan, but we all shape what we say about ourselves in some way or another. We are children of advertising. We know what sells.
My name, real or not, is a pseudonym. Who I am here is a creation, a myth generated by me and by those around me. I retain privacy not by refraining from using the products. Rather, I hold certain parts of me, and of my person, sacred. I do not post everything. I keep some data private and off the cloud. I do encrypt and I only trust products and hardware that I own not a service that I rent. I may use such services, but I accept that the data I place there could be gone tomorrow.
That is the key here. The cloud doesn’t have to be as negative as I fear it may end up being. Some things should be shared. Some things should be put out there for the world to play with and engage. In those ways the cloud will enhance and help but only if we as users and consumers understand that there is a strict delineation between what we own and what we share. We are not what we share, that is simply a narrative we write about a character named after ourselves. In that sense, some things can and should be available in the cloud, others are neither important enough nor sensitive enough to warrant strict management. The rest requires another way, a way that we understood not too long ago.
Those sad archaic PCs, relics of a lost yesterday, they already are our clouds and we seem to have forgotten that. I run a system that makes what I ran five years ago seem ancient. It and the other systems I manage inside my own home form my cloud. If you ask me that is what we should be doing. We should be doing what Opera and Tonido have been trying to do by making it easier to set up as our PCs as virtual clouds instead of fleeing our machines for the supposed benevolence of corporations who are rarely as benevolent as we would like. Power comes in being able to create and in owning the tools of creation and management. Owning an iPad or an Android phone only gives you the ability to consume someone else’s product. Even using the creative tools included in those platforms makes you little more than a consumer. That cool video has to be shared on some site and, if the current paradigm holds, it won’t be one you own.
That is the wonderful world of cloud computing as it is today: a world of clients all begging to connect to their master servers. It gives me the shivers just thinking about it.
This was in response to a question about allowing unsigned applications in the next iPhone OS.
There is so much wrong with this I don’t even know at what point to start. First off, Steve Job is an idiot for making this comment. Flat out, this has to be the most idiotic justification for limiting unsigned apps I have ever heard. You know what I am doing while typing this, I’m streaming porn to my wife’s iPhone (no worries, both hands are on the keyboard). Isn’t it Stevie boy who’s been preaching about the wonders of HTML 5? Guess what that Hi-Def video that is so touted is going to be playing you turtlenecked prude, PORN! The iPhone has been a tremendous porn device and you know that is probably the one thing that closed off POS has going for it.
Any company that feels it should limit what I can and cannot view on hardware that I purchase is not a company I trust. I like to be in control of what I view and don’t view. I like to control which applications I install and I do not want or need some moralizing hipster telling me what is or is not appropriate. Maybe I don’t like Apple’s software. Maybe, just maybe, somebody did it better. It doesn’t matter. In Apple’s closed system you are stuck with exactly what Apple believes you should have. This is not a system I would consider worthwhile. Now, the main poobah himself is telling us that one of the those things we shouldn’t have is porn.
Well Steve, get fucked. Make it into a video. It might do you some good.
