Galiaan Posted December 14, 2011 Share Posted December 14, 2011 Unfortunately, at the end of the day, Bioware/EA has dropped the ball in a big way and this has resulted in a customer relations/public relations nightmare. Regardless of the debate on who should/shouldn't get in early, it being 7 days instead of 5 the failure of communications to the customer base on progress of early access has been massive. I understand they may not have wanted to release what day has been invited or how many people this constituted. The people number would have been economically sensitive. However some simple metrics such as "x" % of pre-orders have received invites would have gone a long way. Now everyone is bent out of shape comparing pre-order dates and saying thing like "I know someone who bought the game last month and got access..." and "my servers empty why did Bioware go home early..." . The depth of anger of the forums is amazing. I lived through so many EQ1 expansion crashes and sudden patches waiting on the forums but the complaining was never like this. This whole dragged out and uncommunicative process has sensitized people to the point that every in game issue is going to a game breaker/deal breaker. At the end of the day this will impact on their subscriber base. I know my brief experience with customer service was less than stellar. I downloaded the game client and got the error message about not having an active subscription. I sent a polite email to customer service asking if I was supposed to be seeing this and how to subscribe and was actually told to go read the forum. I spent 30 years as an environmental manager in the oil industry. I had the happy job of answering environmental complaints. You don't tell someone to go to the internet and look. That's for troll chat... You answer their question as well as you can and if it's common enough, you have a ready to go answer. I helped write these for our CEO. Hopefully they'll have a debrief tonight and get on their A game tomorrow. Alienating your subscriber base before the public release date (it's semantics... if people are playing and it's not beta, the game has launched...) is not good business sense. I had the same experience days in advance, I was silly enough to send an e-mail to Origin in regards to when my release code would be sent, they directed me to SW:TOR forums, who at the time directed me to Origin - it took them over 2 weeks to actually put any information anywhere on the web regarding this, and as of today I have still not recieved any reply from Origin, even though I pointed out to them that they were leading me in circles. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Wren_Atticus Posted December 14, 2011 Share Posted December 14, 2011 Unfortunately, at the end of the day, Bioware/EA has dropped the ball in a big way and this has resulted in a customer relations/public relations nightmare. Regardless of the debate on who should/shouldn't get in early, it being 7 days instead of 5 the failure of communications to the customer base on progress of early access has been massive. I understand they may not have wanted to release what day has been invited or how many people this constituted. The people number would have been economically sensitive. However some simple metrics such as "x" % of pre-orders have received invites would have gone a long way. Now everyone is bent out of shape comparing pre-order dates and saying thing like "I know someone who bought the game last month and got access..." and "my servers empty why did Bioware go home early..." . The depth of anger of the forums is amazing. I lived through so many EQ1 expansion crashes and sudden patches waiting on the forums but the complaining was never like this. This whole dragged out and uncommunicative process has sensitized people to the point that every in game issue is going to a game breaker/deal breaker. At the end of the day this will impact on their subscriber base. I know my brief experience with customer service was less than stellar. I downloaded the game client and got the error message about not having an active subscription. I sent a polite email to customer service asking if I was supposed to be seeing this and how to subscribe and was actually told to go read the forum. I spent 30 years as an environmental manager in the oil industry. I had the happy job of answering environmental complaints. You don't tell someone to go to the internet and look. That's for troll chat... You answer their question as well as you can and if it's common enough, you have a ready to go answer. I helped write these for our CEO. Hopefully they'll have a debrief tonight and get on their A game tomorrow. Alienating your subscriber base before the public release date (it's semantics... if people are playing and it's not beta, the game has launched...) is not good business sense. Wrong. The only people who aren't happy with things are those who did not get in today. I did and I'm happy. But then again, I entered my code on July 22 according to site time. They extended early access from 5 days to 7 days, that is a GOOD thing. And how have they not been open about the access? They said you would know if you got in by e-mail. And they have been posting on their Facebook page everyime they sent out a wave of e-mails. AND they added a bonus wave. This isn't bad PR. This is "I didn't pre-order soon enough and didn't get in on Day 1 so I'm gonna huff and puff and cry and blame Bioware for being a big old *****-head". Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Shocklord Posted December 14, 2011 Share Posted December 14, 2011 Bios doing a GREAT job! No lag ingame, no server crashes, no kick to desktop...........And yes, im being serious...Ty Bio for a great first day...Ignore the crying Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Zenjim Posted December 14, 2011 Share Posted December 14, 2011 Unfortunately this intelligent post will get closed and lumped in with a thread full of spam and insanity. So much for forum organization BioWare. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Skoobie Posted December 14, 2011 Share Posted December 14, 2011 See, to someone who runs a company, what that tells me is how out of touch Bioware is with their player base. What MMO's has your company put out? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Aowar Posted December 14, 2011 Share Posted December 14, 2011 Wrong. The only people who aren't happy with things are those who did not get in today. I did and I'm happy. But then again, I entered my code on July 22 according to site time. They extended early access from 5 days to 7 days, that is a GOOD thing. And how have they not been open about the access? They said you would know if you got in by e-mail. And they have been posting on their Facebook page everyime they sent out a wave of e-mails. AND they added a bonus wave. This isn't bad PR. This is "I didn't pre-order soon enough and didn't get in on Day 1 so I'm gonna huff and puff and cry and blame Bioware for being a big old *****-head". How to respond to such nonsense.... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kunovega Posted December 14, 2011 Share Posted December 14, 2011 Worse, when they announced doing it this way numerous people tried to warn them of the disaster. All the did was lock everyone's threads. not quite: what they did was lock the thread and point out the fact that it was a repeat and that you should be posting in the correct threat that already existed for the topic theres a million people on or watching these forums, a little bit of "hey stop posting repeats" is completely understandable the fact people dont take 2 seconds to find a relevent thread to post in before opening their own just further goes to show off the ignorance level of what they are posting about the answers they were looking for were all around them if they bothered to you know: read and understand most QQers fail at both Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sinuouss Posted December 14, 2011 Share Posted December 14, 2011 I bet the vast majority of players don't care all that much. It was explicitly stated that it was first come first server. Most people are rational and don't feel entitled. If we wanted it bad enough, we would have preordered on day 1. I didn't want it badly enough so I have to wait. Am I disappointed, sure, but I don't feel cheated in the slightest. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Acesome Posted December 14, 2011 Share Posted December 14, 2011 Nah people are going to have their tantrum and forget about it a week after launch... PR nightmare? No. An impatient, ego centric consumer with an inflated sense of entitlement nightmare? Yes. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Galiaan Posted December 14, 2011 Share Posted December 14, 2011 not quite an exploit, more of an oversight and one that was reported repeatedly all throughout beta isnt all bugs that are explointed per definition an oversight? or did i miss something here? Its quite interesting that we still at splitting words here even though people made it to max level by doing nothing other then joining a pvp queue in less then 10 hours... I guess lets call it a "big oversight" and thank all the players that so blatantly made it obvious to everyone that there were an oversight in the game Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
beanzapper Posted December 14, 2011 Share Posted December 14, 2011 I agree, full-heartedly. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
skyst Posted December 14, 2011 Share Posted December 14, 2011 were complaining that a few people get 7 days, a few people get five days, and it looks like a few will get 1 or 2 days, dont play dumb. The servers are up and its pissing off everyone that didnt get in. Really this sums it up. I would have very little time to play until this weekend due to work and social obligations, yet I feel the tinge of frustration that I can't even log on for an hour to make a character and fool around while the servers are up and others are gaming. I feel that one of the largest upsetting factors is that the staggered admittance is not a constant process based on how their servers are working, rather 4 or 5 waves then they called it a day. Bleh... I just want to play with the character generator then go to bed! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mitchyslick Posted December 14, 2011 Share Posted December 14, 2011 How is Bioware doing exactly what they said they would do.....two days early....bad PR? The only thing this shows is how immature and clueless the SWTOR playerbase can be. That's the bad PR. Its bad PR because we can see that the servers are ****in empty, and we're all sitting here pissed off. Not only do they say empty, go watch a stream on twitch and see how many people you can spot. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cybor Posted December 14, 2011 Share Posted December 14, 2011 They extended the early access from 5 days to 7 to let fewer people in at a time to reduce server stress not to give us the customer 2 extra days btw Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
pmaura Posted December 14, 2011 Share Posted December 14, 2011 Its bad PR because the rumor mills and blogs... When you have 75% of 2 million agitated, the rumors spread and multiply... 75% if those two million are not agitated, only about 1% but that 1 is loud and whiinny. just like when your on a plane, all 200 people are quiet and well behaved but then a baby starts crying and ruins the whole flight. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Aowar Posted December 14, 2011 Share Posted December 14, 2011 not quite: what they did was lock the thread and point out the fact that it was a repeat and that you should be posting in the correct threat that already existed for the topic theres a million people on or watching these forums, a little bit of "hey stop posting repeats" is completely understandable the fact people dont take 2 seconds to find a relevent thread to post in before opening their own just further goes to show off the ignorance level of what they are posting about the answers they were looking for were all around them if they bothered to you know: read and understand most QQers fail at both No. They locked threads directed everyone to a huge thread that was completely ignored by Bioware obviously and now they are reaping their benefits. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Wren_Atticus Posted December 14, 2011 Share Posted December 14, 2011 How to respond to such nonsense.... Well you would respond with a valid counterpoint if you had one. And given your sign-up date on the site, I'm going to guess that you didn't pre-order in July and your ire is from that. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kaffeine Posted December 14, 2011 Share Posted December 14, 2011 As if the grace period fiasco and the whole red zone thing wasn't bad enough PR. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Yuuj Posted December 14, 2011 Share Posted December 14, 2011 I hate to break it to you OP, but you care way more about this staggering early access thing than the rest of us do. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Drewser Posted December 14, 2011 Share Posted December 14, 2011 How is Bioware doing exactly what they said they would do.....two days early....bad PR? The only thing this shows is how immature and clueless the SWTOR playerbase can be. That's the bad PR. Exactly. The player base looks like idiots. Not Bioware. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MeSTritus Posted December 14, 2011 Share Posted December 14, 2011 Wow, well your well written complaint is just really bad. This is a privileged, and I was one day off from getting it tonight. See me complaining about it? It just means I get to play tomorrow instead of tonight. I bet you $100 that bioware is not even going to talk about the immaturity in the forums in debriefing. I bet they say that the early release was a good success today and maybe someone will snicker that the fan base is just immature and absolutely ridiculous. Acting like a child that didn't get his cereal because of the toy inside is not going to make the parents see your side any different. Stupid post this was.... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kunovega Posted December 14, 2011 Share Posted December 14, 2011 isnt all bugs that are explointed per definition an oversight? or did i miss something here? Its quite interesting that we still at splitting words here even though people made it to max level by doing nothing other then joining a pvp queue in less then 10 hours... I guess lets call it a "big oversight" and thank all the players that so blatantly made it obvious to everyone that there were an oversight in the game we arent supposed to post the details of how to intentionally cause the issue but the real issue is that many people are accidently benefiting from the issue with no intention of actually exploiting it at the core it actually is a design feature, the trouble comes in when some people trigger it to happen and many benefit, whether they wanted to or not thats why i phrase it the way i do, its an exploitable design feature, that is not always your fault when you benefit from it you can be playing 100% legit and have it forced on you (potentially even by accident by the person triggering it if they were not aware of what they were causing because its that easy to do... as in, i know 100+ people who found this and reported it in beta, so how many more that i dont know also found it and reported it?) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sharard Posted December 14, 2011 Share Posted December 14, 2011 I plain dont see what they did wrong. I havnt seen any threads about people buying on the 21 and not getting in. This not a PR nightmare, its a how selfish and spoiled people are nightmare. I really worry about the community of this game if people are that unreasonable over a few days. Next month and on, there will be no way to really tell who was on day 1 or started on the 20th. By then, most people will have forgotten about this and will be just playing the game. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Munx Posted December 14, 2011 Share Posted December 14, 2011 Its bad PR because we can see that the servers are ****in empty, and we're all sitting here pissed off. Not only do they say empty, go watch a stream on twitch and see how many people you can spot. Exactly this.. I am fine with getting in later, but the fact that there is clearly space ALOT of space for more waves, mixed with them taking a 18! hour break for more waves, is to me atleast damn annoying, cause those 18 hours are 18 hours that would in the end have rubbed of on my ega. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Drewser Posted December 14, 2011 Share Posted December 14, 2011 Its bad PR because the rumor mills and blogs... When you have 75% of 2 million agitated, the rumors spread and multiply... You are clown if you think 75% of the pre-orders are agitated. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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