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Well they certainely know how to annoy many players
ojustaboo
Member UncommonPosts: 65
It's always the same with things like MMOs. simple things done badly that the average 3 year old will tell you will back fire badly.
Lets look at the past 24 hrs.
Everyone knows (or should know) that when an mmo launches, unexpected downtime is a given, it is almost guaranteed to happen with zero notice and is something we have to put up with if we want to play this sort of game.
So when the US server was down for something like 14 hrs Wednesday, while a few people went ballistic, most people understood they hadn't taken it down just to annoy people.
Wednesday on the EU server, they disabled in game mail and all guild activity to stop the same problems occurring on the EU server that happened on the US server (banks emptying, people logging in to find they were on other peoples accounts, duplicate items being mailed)
Just as I got to go online Wednesday night, 10:30 pm GMT, they took the server down for a few hrs,to add a patch so that guilds would work again. OK a pain, but unavoidable.
Thursday night, it's 7:50 pm in England, I've been playing for about 20 mins and a message along the lines of the following flashes across the screen followed by the servers going down at 8pm
We would like to thank you for your participation in our early access, the servers are now being taken down for 3 - 4 hrs in preparation for the live launch tomorrow
A lot of very unhappy people. This wasn't emergency maintenance, this was a planned thing that they gave 10 mins notice of and did it to the EU server in prime EU play time.
Then they make the following announcement trying to pacify people
We want all of you to know that everyone who was part of Early Access will be granted an extended grace period until Sunday at 8AM EDT/12PM (noon) GMT before being required to transition your account to live. This will cover those who purchased ESO from an online retailer and won't be getting your box shipped in time and also gives anyone in Early Access who purchased digitally more Early Access time.
I posted a comment at the time that the message was unclear and could mean a number of things but if it means what I suspect it means, a lot of players wont realise and will be unhappy. And it did mean that.
For most people it looked like we are being told that if we bought retail, they are giving us an extra couple of days to enter our code, but based on what happened in the past, anything ordered direct from Zenimax, the player didn't have to do anything, so most of these players presumed they would simply get a couple of extra days added before their 30 days started counting down.
Person after person when the game went live set up their subscription only to find the 30 days started counting down immediately.
Zenimax could have simply posted something along the lines of the following yeaterday
to compensate those players still waiting for their retail codes and to give early access a few extra days, please do not set up your subscriptions until Sunday as we have allowed the game to be played without one for an extra couple of days.
Note, as soon as you take out a subscription your 30 days start counting down
which would have solved this for most, but no, player after player taking out subs and realising too late they have lost out on a couple of days. Might only be a couple of days but it's the principle.
Then when hoards of people complained the EU server was taken down for scheduled maintenance, Zenimax said this wouldn't be the norm, normal maintenance would be scheduled twice a week, one of them being 9am BST Sunday. This went down like a tone of bricks, person after person saying that its their main play time
Bringing down the game during European prime-time is not something we do lightly, and it is not our intent for it to be the norm. This is a bit of a unique case for launch day. When we have our weekly maintenances, which may not always be needed weekly, the one for the European megaserver is scheduled for Tuesdays at 13:00 BST (14:00 CEST) and Sundays at 09:00 BST (10:00 CEST.)
And finally we come to the subscription and 30 day free play time.
Many people spent $80 on preordering, which included 30 days of free game time.
The wording said something along the lines of
PRODUCT DETAILS
30 days of game time included
Subscription and account for The Elder Scrolls Online required
A persistent internet connection is required to play
Most people took this to mean they are telling us it's a subscription based game, in order to continue playing after the first 30 days we need to pay.
But no, not according to Zenimax.
They are saying we need to take out a subscription in order to have access to our 30 days included game time. Not such a big deal for those paying by credit card as they could simply cancel before payment is taken, but those paying with game cards effectively are having to buy the game, then buy an additional 30 day game card in order to get access to their included 30 days. Meaning they have no choice but have 60 days of play time. People are fuming.
When people queried this they were told
All players are required to set up and choose a subscription plan starting on Sunday, April 6th. Those players not eligible for Early Access will be asked to register their game code and set up a payment method or redeem a game-time card on their account starting on Thursday, April 3rd, at 7:00 p.m. EST.
The 30 days of free game time are granted to all players who fill out their billing information and select a subscription plan. A player will not be billed for that subscription until the 30 days of free access has expired. Subscribing players can find more information about their billing cycle by logging into My Account. The information will be available on the right-side column of this page.
Please note that the 3 days and 5 days of early access are not included in the 30 days of free game time. These were additional benefits to players who pre-purchased or preordered the game.
Yet Peter Hines said on another forum when discussing this game
If you dont like the game, of course youre not subscribing to it, says Hines. You get the game, you get your first month without having to pay for a subscription to see is this thing a thing I like? If your approach that you want to take is that, for example, you love Skyrim, you played it for 125 hours, but after three or four weeks you were done, then you can do the exact same thing in Elder Scrolls Online.
You can buy it, play the hell out of it for four weeks and go Eh! Im done. I did everything I wanted to do, I did a bunch of single-player stuff, I did a bunch of PVP, and now Im out. Then youre out. The subscription is irrelevant. The initial purchase is exactly the same as any other PC game because you dont have to pay for the subscription until your 30 days is up.
And just to really really really annoy their player base, rather than let us know they are taking out a $1 or £1 payment which will be refunded asap, to authorise the card,
They are telling us we are being charged 0.00 but actually instantly authorising the full amount.
Again if you have a credit card with available balance it's not too bad, but some people have debit cards, live to a tight budget, have planned to say take out 3 months sub in a months time, don't get paid for 2 weeks, only to find Zenimax has taken out the full amount, and while they get it back within a few hrs or days, it is causing them to go overdrawn and get bank charges etc.
All of this is so easily avoidable and is causing a huge backlash.
Comments
Yup..to all of it. Only part I have seen them screw up on. Hopefully they will get this straightened out for their own sake. XD
Their inexperience in running an MMO is what is causing most of this. I do agree OP your points are valid. I wonder how the console players who are unused to subs will react to these issues.
Final Fantasy online was the most recent subscription based game I played, where I gave them no credit card details whatsoever.
And no, it's not exactly the same as other companies in the market. Yes, you are required to make an account in other games, obviously, but they only request credit card when they need to bill you. And in the case of ESO, they have already billed you for te first month.
Just because we like a game, does not mean that we have to excuse shady practices.
It's not a shady practice. It's a temp charge to ensure the card is valid. It is not a permanent charge. They have posted that it isn't a permanent charge unless you use a service that doesn't allow temp charges. It is no different than when you run your card at a gas pump. It does a pre-authorization for around 70 bucks, and if you only get $30 then the permanent charge will show 30. Yes, they should have set it to around a dollar since it is just to make sure the card is valid, but either way it isn't a real charge on the account. The only ones it should cause any issues for is those who have less than 15 dollars in their account, and any decent bank will refund overdraft fees on a pre-authorization charge.
edit: Here is the link to the posting on it. http://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/discussion/67461/bank-account-being-charged#latest
A lot of games do require you to enter credit card details but they do not bill you until the free month is up and only if you decide to sub. This is why they are causing issues.
Why take the full sub amount if it is to test the card ? Amateurish and people who are unused to subs like console players might balk further.
While they may be honest mistakes and poor handling it will ultimately have an impact and we shall have to see the subscription numbers and retention for us to see if any of this had any negative impact. If you are trying to introduce a subscription to a new market like consoles you should try your level best not to spook them.
I just read the email I got when I redeemed my code and set up a future payments subscription. It reads as follows:
'By redeeming your product code today, which includes an initial 30 days of game play, you have acknowledged that this game requires you to enter into a paid subscription plan. After your initial 30 days of included access, you will be charged for a recurring subscription in accordance with the plan selected above, subject to cancellation by you at any time. No refunds or credits for partial months.'
Yet I was charged £8.99 immediately, and not after the 30 days as mentioned above. Naturally, I've sent in a ticket (phone support waiting time is estimated at an hour, and I don't fancy that).
So yeah, breach of terms already. Not a good sign. Heh
And those with no credit cards (not all countries love credit cards like the US and most of the UK) that if they like the game after 30 days, will be playing with game cards?
As it stands they have to buy an additional 30 day game card and enter that code to get access to the included 30 days.
Sure they get 60 days but some players wont want to play after 30 days, and it is not how Peter Hines their head of marketing said it would work,.
The server downtime complaint is the lack of notice for a PLANNED downtime. One of my guild members cancelled going for a night out only 30 mins before they shut the servers down. Sure in a new launch he took a gamble that it could go down for an emergency patch etc, but not for something that was planned.
And when people complained about the lack of announcement, we are also being told Sunday morning EU time is when regular maintenance will be done, again many players don't go out and get drunk Saturday night and lie in half the day Sunday, many don't go to church. For many Sunday morning is a little bit of me time when they actually get to play for a bit
I have played numerous sub games before and any with included days on initial purchase did not require me to give my details to redeem those days.
As for the comment on a gas station, it doesn't work like that in the UK, we pay after we fill up, plus I suspect when you do get gas in the US, you are aware of how much is getting preauthorised before it is done. The ESO sub is saying you will be charged 0.00, no mention of pre-authorising and then some people are getting screwed. Not all banks in all countries are as willing to hand back charges as you think.
Well at least some of us have gotten to play during early access. I make my character. Get them to look how I like. Then get stuck trying to come up with a name that isn't already taken. No problem, I'll just look something up online. While I'm doing this the ESO tab is flashing and, "Poof", I'm kicked out of the game and servers are down.Total play time so far is 0. It's happened to me twice already, but I really don't care. I'll get to try it sometime this weekend..... I hope.
Name these games. Someone named Final Fantasy. I can't speak for that one since I didn't play it. I do remember that WoW, SWG, EQ2, AoC, EVE, and SWTOR have all required a CC to be entered up front.
Interestingly enough, on the final beta weekend I finally received my new gaming laptop and the first thing I really did was try to install the ESO beta client on it. I had all sorts of weird issues with disconnects and other problems until finally the operating system (Windows 8) got corrupted and the entire mess became unrecoverable.
Couldn't discern if there was a laptop hardware issue, general issue with Windows 8, driver set up errors, or the ESO beta install, so I became frustrated and sent the laptop back to the vendor for a full refund and decided to start over with a new firm.
The vendor and I were leaning towards a Windows 8/hardware issue, but now I'm sort of wondering if it was the ESO beta client install that fubar'd the laptop.
"True friends stab you in the front." | Oscar Wilde
"I need to finish" - Christian Wolff: The Accountant
Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions. Pvbs 18:2, NIV
Don't just play games, inhabit virtual worlds™
"This is the most intelligent, well qualified and articulate response to a post I have ever seen on these forums. It's a shame most people here won't have the attention span to read past the second line." - Anon
I mean it is possible, I have never heard of a game shutting down a computer. But then again I never heard of people getting access to random peoples characters, or mmos that charge you 15 dollars upfront on their free 30 days.
[quote] Originally posted by Traugar
To quote someone from the official forum
http://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/discussion/67461/bank-account-being-charged/p1
And SWTOR did allow me to play without setting up a subscription as did TERA. Others say so too on the official forum thread. Cant remember exactly with EQ2, I played their trial without giving them any such info, bought the game but it was a while ago now. It was after launch but before F2P
Someone else has also said TSW didn't require this, and others have said RIFT also didn't
And again people often play games using pre-paid cards, do these also have to enter credit card details?
Many people mnyself included ordered direct from zenimax, they already have my credit card details, I even had to give them the last 4 digits in order to change my login name. They know my card is legit, so why do I need to take out a subscription for my included 30 days?
Have to agree with cheyane here. The main issue is Zenimax' lack of experience regarding MMOs. They should have hired an expert to get basics like correct/clear information, server status page, forums setup and forums maintenance pages etc.
So they have to learn it the hard way. Unfortunate for us and Zenimax.
All of those required cards to set up an account with the possible exception of TERA (I didn't play that one). WoW most definitely did prior to its free under level 20 thing. The only time any of them didn't require it was during a free trial. If you came into wow or the others on a trial then no you wouldn't of had to until your trial was about out, but new games don't have trials so it really doesn't compare.
Actually no, you don't. I'm afraid he's right on that one.
Lets start with WoW, since it's still a subscription game:
http://us.battle.net/wow/en/forum/topic/6678688497
Final Fantasy is also a subscription game right now. I purchased a box through steam, never entered any credit card details.
Just name any other company you like and you will see that, same with their policy on deluxe/pre order items etc, Zenimax is definitely not following the expected industry standards. Unfortunately for us, they don't improve them.
Most major MMO launches have had MUCH worse starts than we've seen with ESO so far.
This one has been pretty good overall.
Long ago and far away, the folks at CCP released a patch/upgrade that disabled XP users computers, lots of jocularity ensued as you might imagine.
"CCP's latest major patch to the EVE-Online client, Trinity, comes with an optional DX9-enhanced graphics patch that dramatically improves the visual quality of the in-game graphics through remade models, textures, and HDR. It also has an unfortunate bug: the incredibly stupid choice of boot.ini as a game configuration file, coupled with an errant extra backslash in the installer configuration. The result is that anyone who installs the enhanced graphics patch overwrites the windows XP c:oot.ini file with the EVE client configuration file, bricking the machine on the next boot."
http://beta.slashdot.org/story/94151
"True friends stab you in the front." | Oscar Wilde
"I need to finish" - Christian Wolff: The Accountant
Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions. Pvbs 18:2, NIV
Don't just play games, inhabit virtual worlds™
"This is the most intelligent, well qualified and articulate response to a post I have ever seen on these forums. It's a shame most people here won't have the attention span to read past the second line." - Anon
You don't now, and I even said you haven't had to since they started doing trials. However, you did have to have one at the start of BC if you didn't come in on a trial.
Here is the same conversation happening at SWTOR launch where people were complaining about entering card numbers, and swearing that they had never had to do it before. Here again we have them saying that they have never done it before, and using TOR as an example of a game that they didn't. http://www.mmorpg.com/discussion2.cfm/thread/336158/30-day-of-game-time-included-Not-really.html.
If you like we can go back to wow's launch and probably see people making the same complaints then.
Always love seeing these posts.
This game at every turn is screwed up. I think if anyone was able to log on and get the name they wanted in the 5 day early access would have thought it was a 'good' launch, even if they never got to actually play the game. these comments show why the Fleecing of America (and other countries) and American Greed have o many stories to tell. Because people are gullible and have zero expectations.
This game has faltered and stumbled at every turn. How people can continually defend it blindly is beyond comprehension.
Sure some of these things happen.But not ALL of them happen to the same game.
This game is, has, and always will be a straight up cash grab Looking to capatalize on a serious name recognition campaign to extarct as much money out of you as they can at every possible juncture.
Why people are so surprised is beyod me. I have said it over and over again in these forums and in others. But its always labeled as 'hate'. No its called having a brain and recognizing what is going on.
I said it (as have many) that this game will be straight up free to play in a very short order. The time table for that switch gets shorter and shorter as ZoS continues stumbles and bumbles. Have they done ANYTHING right yet? Thats not hyperbole or a rhetorical question I am being serious. I have played full blown expansion mods of major games made by guys in their basements that are better than what I have seen from ESO. Granted theyre not MMOs, but really a lot of these issues ZOS are having arent BECAUSE its an MMO but because of ZoS and their lack of whatever. Whatever because their failures are on so many fronts I cant sufficiently list all the things they apparently lack.
I wanted this game to be decent, I certainly wanted more from it than what I saw. I also said the game itself isnt horrible, its just average (at best). Certainly not sub worthy and why I didnt get it. I also thought (predicted) it would be free to play or buy to play soon enough anyway so I wasnt in any real hurry to fork over 80 bux and a sub to get first crack at it. Every time I open an ESO topic my decision to wait is supported over and over again.
But in the end if ZoS sold a lot of boxes (I dotn think they did) and made/make a lot of money (dont think they have) then it wont matter because the next company will still be green lit to deliver crap like this (in all areas) and think (rightfully so) they can get away with it.
SWOTOR SHOULD have been enough to slow people down, now maybe with SWOTOR AND ESo both getting released half finished with a lot of other issues besides people may have finally seen enough. Doubt it though.
They don't get a pass. Period! They knew full well about trying to charge customers upfront before launch. I'm so....sick of the BS. Stop defending what can't be defended. Charging players full price for the box, lying about the free 30 access, and then playing the bluffing game is just wrong. Zenimax knew from the beginning and was hoping that players would blindly go alone with their plan.
Read my blog http://sanmonocobra.blogspot.com/
Agree with everything OP said. Frankly, they could handle this stuff better.
It's a good thing I read this post actually, I won't register my "live key" for another 2 weeks probably then. I have taken all the names I wanted during early access, and I won't have time to play for a bit of time after this weekend, so if I can use my early access till then, that's perfect.
Also hope their sort some shit out before I use my free 30 days.
This and as we all love to say (when it suits us) the forums are a vast minority of players. So if people dont read the forums and dont notice it and it doesnt get reversed how many people will be paying extra for their 'free' month?
I think thats why they made i the full amount hoping hose that dont catch it now will just see it (when/if they do ever check their accounts) and see it as a normal sub fee. And not do some math and look at the dates.