Interesting article, talks about the biggest threat to sucessful online gaming is customer service.

http://www.gamesindustry.biz/content_page.php?section_name=new&aid=1915

Bad customer service runs everywhere not just gaming.

Im in customer service (in a way) an have been for years and I msut say that msot of the games I have tryed online have jsut plain sucked when it came to problems. When you bring them up they get ignored...*cough PLanetSide...cough*

I agree that most people are just whiners and you can't solve that, but there are some legitimate issues on the public Planetside forum, and they go unanswered.

If they are going to have a PR guy then he needs to whore the forums. All people need to know is yes we agree that's a problem or we'll look into it.

Its called have a running list of known buggs adn what the status is weather its in test, being checked out or fixed even...would make a whole hell of a lot of people happy with that.

They tried to convince Sporkfire to make a weekly post with that info in it but he said he could not since he does not know what the Programmers are doing. Plus, he did not want to become an answering machine replying to every single post like a robot and giving out false hope of it being introduced/fixed anytime soon.

Ok then he could do a weekly update that the programmers give him to let us know what is happening. My god how dare you have to actually have to respond to the gamers that pay to play your game! :rolleyes:

All it takes it a little thinking, we dont ask much, just want to know whats happening and when things might be fixed.

Actually you know damn well the programmers are using some kind of bug-tracking system. They could just give him access to it so that he can at least say yes to questions.

Actually he also said there are no weekly updates, but rather they come in when the programmers feel ready to give out that info.

ROFL now thats a line of BS if I ever heard one, NO comapny can run like that no matter what its doing, the managers have to have some way to track progress and there is only one group of programers that doesnt have to do update reports and thode are hackers. Corp. hackers dont due to the nature of the job and the fact they are paid as much or more then the CEO's.

Providing public bug lists and priority reports sounds good on the surface, but it actually spawns more bitching. It just gives the flamewhores something to gnaw on. Too many people don't agree on bug priority, or priority over enhancements, or they just complain that an item isn't fixed yet. In the end, it doesn't pay to release that info.

Thats what the delete button is for :).

I'm not saying that they publicly publish those lists. But at least make them available to spork so that he can give a 'It's being worked on' and then locking a thread.