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Buddy Key Frozen after TWO days! Not Happy :(
kparton
Member Posts: 104
Hi all,
Please forgive the following Post, its more of a vent and useful info for prospective trialists who are thinging of trying Age of Conan.
I received a buddy key from a friend on friday to which I went and used and setup my AoC account. He said I could borrow his Install Disc's too but he was unable to locate them so I purchased the EU download option for £2.40.
Just before I begin downloading I cancel the reacurring subscription (I have no idea if i'm going to carry on playing a game i've not played yet 
) and then begin downloading. Its far too slow for my liking so I find a torrent and use that to download all 14GB of data.
So Fast forward to Sunday night....
I have never been so anxious and patient in my life, I really really wanted to give this game a try but I swear what happened to me yesterday has just pissed me off the point i'm seeing red mist.... my Torrent is at 98% complete (thats 1 day 23 hours and downloading done) and I receive an email from Age of Conan Customer Support telling me my account have been FROZEN!.
The email says that I never cancelled my subscription so the problem must be either a failed payment or i've been banned. The £2.40 was taken from my account and I've not even been in the game to get banned!
I have no idea where AoC CS is based but in my country (England), this is unacceptable. I have sent an email to CS asking them why but have yet to get a reply.
IF FUNCOM DO NOT WANT PEOPLE TO PLAY AGE OF CONAN THEN JUST FRIGGING TELL THEM INSTEAD OF BEING COWARDLY AND STEALTH FREEZING THIER ACCOUNT FOR NO REASON.
/Vent off
I just wanted to try the game ffs, is this because I cancelled the reaccuring Subs?
Comments
The reason you got "banned" probably had something to do with the torrent which may have had a 3rd party program attached or something similar. I only say this because everyone else that has used a buddy has been fine. Also, there are currently no stand alone patches for AoC and you have to use their patcher (I've tried downloading off torrent and it still patches the whole xx gigs).
What you should do to remedy this situation is e-mail funcom at [email protected] and explain to them the situation in great detail. Most of the time when something like this happens they extend people's play times to make up for the wait (sometimes as much as 2 weeks) and have been very good with their CS as far as the actual e-mail system is concerned.
After you've done so, please reply to this thread either way and say what happened. If it got fixed and you are happy then people should know, but if FC gives you the cold shoulder, then people need to know as well.
Games:
Currently playing:Nothing
Will play: Darkfall: Unholy Wars
Past games:
Guild Wars 2 - Xpiher Duminous
Xpiher's GW2
GW 1 - Xpiher Duminous
Darkfall - Xpiher Duminous (NA) retired
AoC - Xpiher (Tyranny) retired
Warhammer - Xpiher
Thanks for the reply mate but it cannot be that as I havent even installed the game yet. Its finished downloading at 11:25pm last night and havent had chance to get it on my computer.
Well either way, e-mail them. They have been really good about sorting out this stuff in the past. It could have been automatic ban bug. I don't think FC doesn't want you playing AoC
Games:
Currently playing:Nothing
Will play: Darkfall: Unholy Wars
Past games:
Guild Wars 2 - Xpiher Duminous
Xpiher's GW2
GW 1 - Xpiher Duminous
Darkfall - Xpiher Duminous (NA) retired
AoC - Xpiher (Tyranny) retired
Warhammer - Xpiher
Thanks for the reply mate but it cannot be that as I havent even installed the game yet. Its finished downloading at 11:25pm last night and havent had chance to get it on my computer.
Well either way, e-mail them. They have been really good about sorting out this stuff in the past. It could have been automatic ban bug. I don't think FC doesn't want you playing AoC
Hehe, I have done and I hope they come through for me even though I feel like I've been punched my the school bully and had my dinner money nicked off me.
Hello,
its very sad what happend and I can imagine how you feel. I know you have probably tried that, but if not, try to login into the game to see if your account is really unplayable. Maybe that email is some automatic reaction on your subs. cancel.
If you really cant login into a game, I am sure that CS can help you. If you didnt get answer after 24hrs in work days, try to send mail again tomorow. I sometimes didnt get reply on mails send on weekends (maybe they get lost in huge amount of mails).
_____________________________
Mundus vult decipi, ergo decipiatur.
I feel your pain and dissapointment. I just uninstalled the game myself and it sucks that you never got the opportunity to judge the game for urself. If AOC CS doesn't reply to your email feel free to rate the game's CS at a 1. Hopefully that will make you feel a little better knowing you warned the next guy who trys this game.
You did the right thing coming to this forum. There are 3-4 guys who post on here who also work for Funcom, so they will expedite your issue so you can post about how it got fixed on here
You did the right thing coming to this forum. There are 3-4 guys who post on here who also work for Funcom, so they will expedite your issue so you can post about how it got fixed on here
Sarcastic poster is Sarcastic...
This might have been a joke but I actually saw this happen. My friend was complaining to me about an issue he was having with his inventory and he had sent email to support but nothing happened. Then he came here and started a thread about it and BOOM it was fixed the next day. He never got a reply from support. I'll try to dig up that thread somewhere...
I never liked FC devs coming here and pretending to be "regular gamers who like AoC" but if they can help fix some of the issues people are having then they are not all bad. I just hope they wouldn't hide behind aliases.
-----------------------------
Originally posted by Frobner
"Massive sieges" "mounted combat" and "spellweaving" are just few words that spring to mind when I hear the word AOC.... But the word FAILURE will always top the list.
Whoever "froze" your account did you a big favor. The game is horrible and it would have been a waste of your time. My guess is that your account was froze because of something with the credit card company. I remember at launch alot of folks had problems with credit cards because it was a foriegn company taking money from bank accounts. Some banks flag it for fraud so maybe that had something to do with it. Anyways...consider yourself lucky.
Well, I can tell from your post you have tried the game and have formed an opinion on it.
I am hoping to be give nthe chance to form an opinion myself...which has not started very well for Funcom...no one likes to be messed around especially from the beginning. I spend two days downloading 14GB of data, no one was able to browse the interent at home because of this and I wanted to play so bad I wan't going to throttle it either.
I guess the old saying "First Impressions Last Forever" hold true here today.
Well, I can tell from your post you have tried the game and have formed an opinion on it.
I am hoping to be give nthe chance to form an opinion myself...which has not started very well for Funcom...no one likes to be messed around especially from the beginning. I spend two days downloading 14GB of data, no one was able to browse the interent at home because of this and I wanted to play so bad I wan't going to throttle it either.
I guess the old saying "First Impressions Last Forever" hold true here today.
Hammr is correct. The game can be fun for a short time but it lacks the depth needed to keep any serious gamer interested long term. This is about the level of service you can expect once you become a paying customer. I cant tell you how many times I waited 2 days for my ticket to be responded to only to have the request closed while still in the " you are next " state. Its one of a myriad of reasons that I left the game.
Look on the main page in general forums and youll see a post about Funcom having fired 70% of the NA staff. I cant see this doing anything good for anyone. If the staff isnt there to service the NA customers, one can only assume they will task some of the EU folks with these responsibilities.
And in response to your last statement here :
I wanted to love this game and call it my new MMO home. I knew there were major issues with the game and at first they seemed to be very serious about addressing issues. As I played I noticed the OOM issues and then began to post on them. My posts were moved or deleted from the forums outright and Funcom chose not to respond to any of them or any others on this same issue. This was back in June of this year. In the spetember they began admitting there was an issue and then removed the issue for most players with the late september patch.
This wasnt the only issue I had that Funcom treated in such a manner. This is the SOP ( standard operating procedure ) at Funcom. If this is the kind of service you feel you can live with, be my guest.
Having paid subs to FunCom over the course of 7 years, I can tell you this is the level of Customer Service you can expect. They lose a lot of players over issues exactly like this.
Why did I pay them for so long if their CS is so awful? Well Anarchy Online is , buggy, laggy, has class balance issues and other 'launch day' problems. All of that can be overlooked and worked around when the game is fun, deep and compelling.
Sadly Age of Conan has none of that going for it. A few holes in the leveling curve and out of memory errors aren't large enough issues make the head honcho quit the company in disgrace and leave the game industry or make 80% of the player base not continue to subscribe.
There are a handfull of folks who post here who will tell you everything is great now, the patches turned it all around, but if that were true you'd see more of the people who bought the box and invested a LOT of money upgrading their comps just to play, come back and sub. AoC's downfall is in it's core design. A bad launch, missing content and more bugs than most MMOs are small concerns in comparison.
Caveat Emptor
You can also poke me and I will get on this for you. It does seem the problem happen with maybe the payment because "Frozen" is not the same as being "Banned". These are two different flags all together and I'm sure we (or CS) can find out why for you.
I believe I can toss you a few extended trials or at least a few more buddy keys to try it out. The system is not always perfect and sometimes issues do happen but we will look into it.
Glen ''Famine'' Swan
Senior Assistant Community Manager - Funcom
This is just BS... I PAID for my account a few days ago and today I get an e-mail stating that they "froze" my account.
EDIT:
And, yes, of course I'm contacting customer service. Still, I honestly don't understand why this happened since I was successfully billed for my subscription.
Also, before anyone accuses me of bashing the game, I actually LIKE AoC and will gladly continue playing if this is resolved in a timely manner by a CS agent. I'm just very frustrated by this.
EDIT #2:
Well, they did fix it, so I guess all is well in that regard.
I think alot of things that people dont understand is that every mmo company has problems. The key is how a company solves problems in the shortest amount of time possible and make the customer happy. Here lies the problem with Funcom. Funcom is so incompetent that problems like these linger on and on and never really get fixed.
Take the guy who talked about memory leaks a few posts above. Instead of aggreeing with the guy and said something like "We understand its a big problem and were working on the fix and were sorry." Their forum nazis lock or delete his thread all together which in turn pisses him off and hits the cancel button.
IMO AoC can be an awsome mmo but not by Funcom. They lack the vision, leadership, and have almost no respect for people who buy their products and services. Unless Funcom changes their ways (and I dont think they have a chance to) they will go bankrupt. Thier credibility is pretty much shot in the mmo community.
IMO AoC is lacking at the core and unless there was an AoC2 with a complete revamp of the underlying systems, it will always be lacking. I was in from day 1 with the CE edition and out as soon as the boredom set in (best part was the soundtrack). Personally I never had any issues with CS so I can't remark on that but the game as a whole is a beautiful but empty time sink. Again, IMO.
This might have been a joke but I actually saw this happen. My friend was complaining to me about an issue he was having with his inventory and he had sent email to support but nothing happened. Then he came here and started a thread about it and BOOM it was fixed the next day. He never got a reply from support. I'll try to dig up that thread somewhere...
I never liked FC devs coming here and pretending to be "regular gamers who like AoC" but if they can help fix some of the issues people are having then they are not all bad. I just hope they wouldn't hide behind aliases.
*plays X-files theme*
Well, thankfully my CS ticket was responded too last night about 8pm GMT, which was less than 24 hours so thanks to Customer Service for their prompt response.
Apparently my account was frozen because I cancelled the reaccuring subscription before the £2.40 (EU Download) fee was processed.....I have two major problems with this:
Firstly, I created my account in the day at work and I also cancelled no more than two minutes after that. I never even thought about purchasing the EU Download add on until late that evening so how could me Cancelling my subscription at around 10am effect someing I purchased at 6pm that evening?
Secondly, and this is the most obvious, If the payment Failed for the EU Download then shouldn't Funcom have just removed the link for the download and removed the extra two days from my buddy 5 day trial?
That buddy pass was free, given to me by a friend and no matter what happens with extra add on payments, those FIVE DAYS should not be frozen.
However the Customer Service rep did reactivate my account which I thank him/her for sincerly. I did have to laugh at the 1.25GB patch I had to download afterwards
You did the right thing coming to this forum. There are 3-4 guys who post on here who also work for Funcom, so they will expedite your issue so you can post about how it got fixed on here
Sarcastic poster is Sarcastic...
But correct
I think alot of things that people dont understand is that every mmo company has problems. The key is how a company solves problems in the shortest amount of time possible and make the customer happy. Here lies the problem with Funcom. Funcom is so incompetent that problems like these linger on and on and never really get fixed.
Take the guy who talked about memory leaks a few posts above. Instead of aggreeing with the guy and said something like "We understand its a big problem and were working on the fix and were sorry." Their forum nazis lock or delete his thread all together which in turn pisses him off and hits the cancel button.
IMO AoC can be an awsome mmo but not by Funcom. They lack the vision, leadership, and have almost no respect for people who buy their products and services. Unless Funcom changes their ways (and I dont think they have a chance to) they will go bankrupt. Thier credibility is pretty much shot in the mmo community.
The second paragraph is dead on. It was ONE of my deciding factors in whether or not to continue to pay. Nothing happened to me personally but watching how they handled others, including in game friends, really put a bad taste in my mouth.
Good luck to the OP.
If anyone has access to the official AoC forums maybe they could post "For prompt and personal customer service post your problem at MMORPG.com". Paying customers deserve this kind of one on one effective CS that Famine performs here.
It's impressive how quickly the issues get solved when they are posted on a public forum that FC has no control over moderation.
You did the right thing coming to this forum. There are 3-4 guys who post on here who also work for Funcom, so they will expedite your issue so you can post about how it got fixed on here
Oh look, it got fixed
ROFL