Interesting, Post from Safehouse

[Vedrix]

Naathan

Registered Member

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Join Date: May 2004

GM seems to have some issues to air out.
Posted: 12-03-05, 12:29 AM

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Hello everyone. I thought I would swing by and deliver you the news personally...

I am no longer with Sony Online Entertainmnt as of today:

As most of you know from XXX server - I used to be a very active GM with events, personal investigations of your issues rather than brushing you off and/or actively hunting down hackers/exploiters...

You have seen over the last few months that I have made less of an appearance on the server to becoming a rare spawn.

This is due to SOE changing their policies, not in game but on the floor - internally - with the way the CS department is run. For the most part - it is structured pretty good but the policies are being conveyed in such a way that is making the GM staff basically turn and say something like:

WTF?

As a result, some of the GMs there - both from EQ and EQ2 have altogether quit and gone to Sigil (Vanguard) because the incentive there is much more than the incentive at SOE, as have various other employees from different departments. New employees to the company will be walking into the new system, they won't know SOE like we did.

The policy change I'll mention, (because it effects YOU), is with the handling of tickets and the way that is done... Before - when the ticket count in the queue was like 500+ GM's, in addition to answering tickets, could also hold events, do side projects, etc and still get the work done that needed to be done. But now they are pushing GM's to basically grind tickets like telemarketers grind phonecalls. (Sorry, if that is what I wanted to do I'd do it for $20 an hour at some seedy telemarketing company). How does that effect you? Well - they are pushing for faster response times while keeping the quality as high as possible (of the canned responses they use I mean)...

Here is an example... (I haven't verified this myself, but it's the word on the floor and it makes sense so I'm going with it).

We also supply the CS for Final Fantasy. However - word has it - for every ticket they answer, Sony gets paid $25. So - last month or so there was a roll over... (For those of you that don't know - SOE uses temporary employees that may or may not get rolled over to the actual company. Most just get laid off when they hire more India GM's - I'll get into that in a second). So back to the roll over - 5 FF GM's got rolled over... Think about that - $25 a ticket and lets say you answer 80 tickets in a day, and you times that by 5 people... That's like... $10K. The rest of the SOE CS - do not have a price on their head such as that so no one from EQ or EQ2 got rolled over. (Not even me - yes - I was also a temp)...

When I lashed back from that directly to the Managers and brought that up directly - they denied it of course. But with the push for their CS to respond faster/better to the queue now (and mind you the queue now is about 100-200 maximum these days so it doesn't make a whole lot of sense unless....................) it makes me think they are trying to sell their CS services to other companies that may be thinking about coming out with MMO's. Don't get me wrong - I could be totally mistaken and crazy here...

India GM's...

Submit a tcket - chances are the first bonehead response you get will be from a India GM... Something like: "I don't know ****, but hang on while I forward this ticket to an American GM who can give you a canned response." Don't get me wrong - there are a few GM's on the American side that kick ass such as GM Darcfae, GM Dartuan, the other guy... I can't remember his GM name at the moment. I don't really pay attention to the rest... Oh - the rest. LOL. That includes about 5-10. Yeah, there are about............ 5-10 American GM's on the floor g/t. The rest are all India GM's staged out of..... Cambodia? I can't remember but it doesn't really matter anyway... :p

Well... In the end - it's been fun playing games for a living and Xegony is "easily" the best server of the bunch... (Trust my words - other servers suck - I say that based on the tickets I read every day). Not to mention there are the coolest people you'll meet - on Xegony. I know that from personal experiences as I have met some of you - and in more ways than one but uh... ...yeah - that's confidential :p LOL

Anyway.............................

Oh - why am I no longer there? Lets just say I am a very outspoken, street wise individual with an attitude. So when the changes came across the board - people knew how I felt pretty fast. Namely the managers...
...and I was a little bitter about not being rolled over as well so my "performance" dropped... I guess I didn't really see a point anymore after all that in maintaining the standard...

So all you hackers and exploiters out there... Take a deep breath - because there is "no one" in the company that even came close to being as good as I was at tracking you, catching you, and sticking a hot iron right up your ass as a reminder to please stop using hacks and/or ban your little account... You're good to go now... Just don't be stupid and do it right in front of a GM like some of you are notorious for doing...

So that's it... My run is over...



Gotta love SOE if this is what their own GM's feel about their employer.

[Whipsnade]

could you post the link to this?

[Ylyrra]

I searched for it.. it appears to have been deleted... perhaps..

The most recent thread started by Naathan was on 9/14/04 regarding new aa's for OoW.

Think someone from Safehouse mod staff is on the payroll of SoE?

Yly

[Vedrix]

[Noircogi]

This guy seems like no super-star to me. His communication skills are very weak. I'm guessing they fired him because of poor performance and now he's trying to make them look bad, but failing.

[Chakkorisi]

I'd have to agree with Noir . . . this person seems full of anger and very arrogant.

I haven't had the need to interface with CS many times, but I have had on several occasions. Each time I have had to deal with CS, my issues were always resolved in a VERY timely and professional fashion.

One such instance was when I transferred an account from Trib to Bert. They (CS or tech support) transferred the wrong characters . . . at $75 a character to transfer no less. In any event, within a few minutes of contacting CS, I had the correct character transferred.

Did I get lucky with CS? Maybe? Is it as bad as this clown portrays? I highly doubt it . . .

Chakk

[Sakharra]

This is link but you have to be voted in to have access to this part of board send me a tell in game and I will give you my info so you can look at it

So basically, everyone should be voted in to have access to it but you'll cheerfully give away your infor so anyone could see it?

Actually that statement shows a rather poor understanding of how The Safehouse works. Root Cellar access only requires that a warden confirm the person being granted access actually played a rogue...

[Yroc Morf]

Ohs Nos... the safehouse is no longer safe.

[Sakharra]

If I sent enough tells, I bet I could get access back in to the ES forums

How do you feel about that?

I know, its different, I guess. I mean, giving your info to allow access to a forum deemed private by those who own it would be wrong yes?

[Yroc Morf]

/shrug. It is not like this .. or that is CISC

[Theoso]

I have a lvl 31 rogue. Do I qualify?

[Memzin]

hehe my rogue works in the bazaar at level 5 .. would she qualify?? LOL