Hey,
I came here today to talk about my experience within one week of "playing" Star Wars - The Old Republic.
First off, I want to say that my account is very old, basically from when the game launched. Getting my password and account name back was no problem and all worked fine through my registered email adress.
Getting back into the game, questing through the compelling storylines and zones felt very rewarding. The game runs a lot smoother than I remember it when I played it like 8 years ago and the classes are just a delight. They just feel so well rounded and optimized.
Then my first character hit roughly lvl 20 and I tried to log back in the next day. The system asked me to validate my email adress which I did. Nothing happened, no new emails were sent to me with further steps to unlock my character for play again. At that point I was still downloading the game so I waited if that might fix the issue, which it didn't.
My connection is pretty slow so I had time leveling up a couple of different characters which all ran into the same wall in no time. Frustration was beginning to pile up high. I became a subscriber because I enjoyed playing a lot and I said to myself that I'm gonna continue playing anyway once the Issues with the validation have been fixed in hopes that this might take care of the validation problem that I encountered or at least to being able to contact support via tickets because I don't want to have to call anybody for stuff like this.
Turns out I didn't need tickets at all. I dug up a "fix" for this "problem", which had me create another email adress not previously used for SWTOR (and or EA (not sure)), go to my account settings then change my referential email adress to the new one, log into the email account and validate it as my new SWTOR email adress, then log out from the SWTOR website before I switched it back to my old email adress so no further complications would arise at the SWTOR account servers. Did that and got a validation email to ensure that this email adress (my original one) was the one I want as referential in my SWTOR account which I validated. Interesting and fun sidenote. The post I found the fix in was from 2013 and there are a lot of people that ran into those issues which are still kicking up to today so let that sink in.
From then on I was able to play for a couple of days which I really enjoyed. Not having to deal with almost anything except not being able to log onto my main for multiple days because it was stuck in some game phase the servers propably couldn't place it back into so it was stuck in limbo and I on the loading screen at roughly 20% progress until the game disconnected me and told me the servers were down which they weren't.
So I went on and opened a support ticket for that which first was answered by a response to use the hotline to call them after 1 day which I replied to that I subscribed also for the "luxus" of not having to call people for issues like that. I stated everything in my first ticket already and couldn't do more to describe or fix the issue so I was baffled why I needed to call anybody as if they would get more information out of me. So another 2 days later where this newly made main already became some alt that I didn't care about anymore a very friendly support team member invited me to a live-chat which I accepted. Despite me stating in my initial ticket that my character was stuck in a not re-enterable phase which made it impossible for me to log back in and that they please should move him back to the fleet that staff member initially sent me a standart response for characters that are stuck between objects, that I just should log onto that character and use the unstuck button and I had to explain again what the actual issue was.
Guess it is not being taught to read what people are writing in those tickets at the job training because that would at least explain the first generic response to use the EA support hotline.
After this very friendly lady understood what my true issue was and explained to me that she could fix it and she just needs me to log off for half an hour and I was so over that character at this point that I said it wasn't worth the hazzle especially since I was in the mid of a Flashpoint during our conversation (but that's not on her since I told her that I have time for our live-chat while I did that Flashpoint). She then asked me if she could help me with anything else, I thanked her for her time said "No" and we bid each other farewell.
The server restart on friday morning which was one day after this took care of the issue anyway so I am able to log back onto this character now without me having to wait for another half hour.
Other than that everything went fine... for one day.
Do you guys remember when I stated how I fixed the issue with the validation of my characters by switching my email-adress on my account out and back in again?
Now you have a brief moment to guess what happened...
...
...
Exactly. The system requires a one time password because "We don't recognize the computer you are using. We have sent a One-Time Password..." (using the exact same computer from the exact same acces point with the exact same IP and guess where it is sending this email with the one time password to.
Yes, you guessed right again. Not to my original adress which I reinstated on my SWTOR account but I'm guessing to the one I had to made up to fix my initial issue with the validation which I don't remember the name nor the password since everything worked and I was able to validate the original email adress on my account.
Now wait for the little cherry on top. You'll never guess it. With the one time password requirement i'm not even able to contact ingame ticket support because the launcher has no built in support button that you can click and you cannot get into the games main menu without the one time password.
I'm at a loss for words right now. I've played a lot of games in my life which required to deal with online support and never ever have I faced a worse support and buggy account system than in SWTOR.
I am now forced to call the support anyway. Seems like they got what they wanted in the end, me calling them to pay some extra money on the support line. Good job. I applaud to you. You did it.
At this point I just feel violated that the game is so good it got me hooked enough to put up with this farce.
Have a nice day.
