Guild Wars 2

Add another person to the “didnt continue the bugged storyline”. I work on software development for a living, when we logged in and saw my wife’s character had her quest line changed we stopped advancing the quest right there. It is a simple thing to fix, unless you decide to continue down the chain thereby making the rollback more complicated. Now the direct steps to doing so I cannot say, being unfamiliar with the setup of their db, but it certainly should not be impossible.

Customers were impacted by bugs in the software they sold, it happens daily. Now it is up to them to mitigate the damage, if they care to do so. They have given an answer that it is impossible to fix the problem, which many people find shocking. Being in the business of creating software applications I have a decent understanding of what is possible. Now there could be many reasons for their statement, perhaps they actually use Customer Service reps to write the code. Maybe they fired all the coders and have nobody to do any fixes. Perhaps all of their coding is done offshore and is sub-standard handling issues. All of those would tell the impacted customers the company would fix it if they could, instead of sounding like they arent even going to bother to try. Telling customer it is impossible works if they have no clue about software development. The fact that the “fix” is going in on 10/22 lets me know they have coders who can resolve issues. The fact that it is, or SHOULD be, a fixable issue and they have deemed it impossible tells me they either are incompetent (I doubt) or just don’t want to bother with it. Hell, given one 3 week sprint I could probably have their impossible task resolved so I don’t think it is a matter of can’t but more of won’t.

They have a thread of 12 pages of customers whom they’ve told to delete their characters. 12 pages of most likely unhappy customers. 12 pages of customers who could have been thrilled if they would have taken the time to explain why they are refusing to help them. 12 pages of customers who may have been loyal if they actually went in and corrected the issue that they knew about for over a month and didnt bother to inform users with a login message or such. I repeat 12 pages of customers because if 12 pages of customers are too many for them to address, they are in the wrong business.

It took this long for my wife and I to hit level 30, their solution is to delete and start over. My immediate thought is why would I bother, if the solution to bug impacts is to inconvenience the customer. How am I going to feel when I get back to 30 and something else happens. Or 40. or 70. The conversations we have had with ArenaNet CS have told us they will not help customers impacted by a known bug that has not been fixed. Hence the thread.

And I am happy they have you as a fanboi that can jump from thread to thread blindly defending them. It doesn’t make you or them right, but they may be happy to have at least one blindly loyal customer.

Edit: Yes, agree they have been VERY polite. The posts and CS folks have been polite, I dont think we’ve said they were rude. They just havent been very effective.

Jeffrey, wouldn’t it be a great idea to put a message up on login informing users that the game is bugged and you guys have no intention of fixing the bugged players…so they dont play grouped with anyone unless they want to lose control of the path their character takes.

Endless Dreamer, you are wrong. Or you don’t know the difference between the jobs customer service and software developers do? Or you don’t understand how software applications are made…or supported. Or all of the above.

My CS people make around $25 an hour, my developers more than double that. My CS guys handle trouble tickets and correct errors when customers make them. When the customers come across a bug it gets reported to the engineering teams…who then fix them. If my customers have data issues they get resolved for them, regardless if it means a dba had to manually update tables or an engineer has to to write new code. Because if our application doesn’t work correctly our customers will look for another that will.

And while you may feel that “Im not spending any money on a company that can’t be bothered to do their job” is not mature…that is reality. Customers do not support poorly run businesses, and they internet is full of barely populated games that are good examples of that. It isn’t like we are a bunch of idiots who decided to argue in a thread that has nothing to do with us…that apparently is the ‘mature’ person. We are customers being treated poorly and pointing that fact out.

I do not understand the logic in refusing to assist your customers who have been on the unfortunate end of a bug in your application. “Sorry, just start over and you should be okay” is a horrible response to people who have had a bug ruin their character at level 30 or 70. So now, the specifics…

My wife and I play together, she is a sylvari mesmer and I a ranger. We enjoy our play time together and I managed to convince her to give WoW a rest to try GW2. We were having fun and she was convincing me to expand our character spots so we could try all the stories and different class combos. However at level 30 it all came crashing down.

We would take turn ‘hosting’ the personal story and talk about which path we would travel. It was nice not having to do the same task twice and we really were enjoying the game. At the end of a game night we decided to follow Cai and the Order of Whispers so that is what I selected and she accepted the advancement. However when we logged on the next day to play I was on Cai’s path and she had to talk to Brayth. ( I believe the names are accurate and spelled correctly.) So we abandoned our story and she logged a ticket in game for help. A few days later she logged a report on the bug forum. Apparently Sylvari can bug at level 30 and 70 and select your path for you regardless of what you selected. There is no assistance in the pinned 12 page thread for this issue.

Another player sent me a link to a locked thread, where they were told that ArenaNet can’t tell if a player was bugged or just chose that path. I am not sure what the big issue is changing a players path if they have not continued the quest chain, but apparently ArenaNet’s solution is to have players delete their character and try again. They have stated they have ‘fixed’ the bug, but if there are scores of players stuck on the wrong path you havent fixed the bug you have simply prevented (hopefully) more people from falling prey to it…and said screw off to the customers reporting it. Surely this cannot be your business model, I will not unlock any new content if this is the support you plan to provide. Fool me once, shame on you…

Is the final answer from ArenaNet that they will not fix players impacted by this bug? 12 pages of unhappy customers and the response appears to be “Sorry, delete and level to 30 (or 70!!!) again”?