Wow... What a load of gibberish...
Quote Originally Posted by Dawnseeker View Post
Let me begin by disclaiming. Evony is a startup company and the game itself is less than a year old. We're also getting started with a wildly popular massively-multiplayer online game, whereas most gaming companies with anywhere near our number of users got started in the days before internet gaming, and certainly before the explosion of MMOs. Not only that, but we weren't prepared for just how popular Evony would be. I mean we knew it was great, but we didn't know just how many people would agree and just how quickly! This puts us "behind the 8-ball" in terms of staffing, both for customer service and bug reports.
The game may be "wildly popular" but I don't think its particularly well liked. Most people I see talking about Evony, don't really have much good to say about it, and that's the people that haven't quit yet. Being a startup company doesn't excuse you for bad customer service.
Quote Originally Posted by Dawnseeker View Post
We're actually very pleased that our players have such high expectations of us. Players in many fly-by-night games would just accept bugs and poor service without much thought before moving on to the next game. We're glad that our players tend to see us as a serious, customer-oriented operation and that they make demands on us accordingly.
Uhhhm... I'm pretty sure most people have a problem because they feel you AREN'T customer oriented.
Quote Originally Posted by Dawnseeker View Post
I assure you that our goal is to meet that demand, and -- more than that -- to exceed player expectations.
Well your goals comes across as "Milk money from customers before they realise it's not worth it". Highlighting this has been the recent Christmas and new years schemes, which user overly complex and under explained packages, resulting in people either having to ignore their "gifts" or pay to open them. By the time people realised that opening the package had to be paid for, it was way too late, and they'd already given you the cash. Congratulations it worked.
Quote Originally Posted by Dawnseeker View Post
You're right that we have been delinquent in some areas, but I promise it is not for lack of trying. We have been slow to respond to some in-game issues, but much of that is because they will be resolved or become irrelevant in Age II. Yes, I'm talking about Age II again, but its a big deal and players will find a lot of bugs and other issues resolved when Age II is released.
Strange... I swear you said that you aren't a fly by night games company that accepts bugs and poor service then moves on.
Quote Originally Posted by Dawnseeker View Post
This is another reason that certain issues may be put on the back burner for right now. As a startup company we simply don't have the staff to dedicate to hunting down every bug and resolving every problem that arises. We try to fight fires as they come and deal with major issues. Sometimes that means some of the small things get lost in the shuffle. We know that nothing seems small when it is happening to you and we are constantly working to improve and expand our service. I would like all of our players to feel that they matter and are taken care of.
Unfortunately, the things you see as "Small things" are generally the huge things to the players. You may look at the game on a grander scale, looking towards progressing to generate further income, but players see the game as it currently is, and the flaws that it has are the most important.
Quote Originally Posted by Dawnseeker View Post
We try to give compensation when service outages are extreme and out of the ordinary. It is simply not feasible to give out compensation to every player, every time something happens to them. Once again, we focus on the large issues and the fact that we have given out compensation on numerous occasions speaks to the fact that we do care about our players and that our goal is to make you all happy.
We don't expect compensation for everything that happens, I think the point here was that since it costs you guys nothing, you could be a little bit more generous when individual players are put through a bad time. I personally have no grips with the compensation as I don't feel I've required any, but seeing the Christmas "gifts" I can understand why people feel you guys have a lack of generosity.
Quote Originally Posted by Dawnseeker View Post
If players violate the game rules, they will be banned. We have banned very few accounts on the first violation, hoping that a warning suspension will serve to let players know that we're on to them and that they should modify their behavior. If they continue to cheat, we have to ban them, both to make sure that future threats are taken seriously, and to protect the players who don't cheat.
I've not encountered anything that requires this, but the above all sounds fine.
Quote Originally Posted by Dawnseeker View Post
On the forums we welcome free speech and -- yes! -- criticism as long as the tone is not incendiary and the forum rules are followed. You may not like all the rules, but they are there for a reason and we constantly struggle to toe the line between freedom and limitations. You may be surprised to learn that discussions on whether or not to delete a thread or issue an infraction are frequent in the moderator chat channel. We want to give players as much freedom as possible within the framework of the rules that have been establish to promote this game.
It would not be in any company's interest to allow speech on its forums which is likely to be harmful to its revenue. Microsoft won't allow you to go to its forums and write about how terrible Windows 7 is and demand that everyone reading the post should return the software for a refund. Neither will we allow such posts on our forums. Allowing such posts would not only be bad business, but it would be bad for our players. Bad business means less revenue, which means less staff and less production.
That said, we invite honest criticism and open debate as long as the tone is proper. If things turn into flamefests, they will be shut down. That's just how things go around here.
But what if the honest criticism is that the service delivered really is bad? You can't say you invite honest criticism if you also say that if we criticise your product, its bad for business and thus not allowed.
Quote Originally Posted by Dawnseeker View Post
Our customers do have a strong voice in the community. Much of what we do is based on player feedback. Most of what we do isn't. Its not because we don't value feedback, but because the developers have a creative vision for the game that is both awesome and successful. You're not being ignored, but a game developed solely by the players would be pretty boring. Players love what we've done and we want to build on that success by incorporating your ideas into our vision. Its a team effort and, in many ways, every player is part of that team.
But judging by the negative reaction to many server merges, you clearly aren't listening enough. I would think that regardless of if you are "a serious, customer-oriented operation" or a company milking its players for every penny, the last thing you would want is to lose players on that kind of scale. Perhaps server merging should the option to move on to either the new servers, or a selection of other server with free space. I've heard rumours that my server will be merging soon, and if its even one tenth as bad as some of the experiences with merges I've read on here, then you'll be losing another paying player too. And I doubt I'll be alone.