Thanks.
Now could you please make a judgement if this thread really belongs to "Assembly Hall" and not rather somewhere else?

their*

While I'm very happy to see that many of you speak kindly of us GMs and the support we provide, I can also understand many of the concerns raised in this thread. In regards to those, I want to add a few points to the discussion:

First of all, we actually do have a mixture of new and older GMs working in Customer Support. Even if the employee turnaround within Customer Support is relatively low (as most of us love to work on EVE and for CCP), there are always some GMs being recruited into other departments of the company and some that leave due to some other reasons. Those are replaced by fresh blood, which are very often EVE veterans and/or former ISD members that have performed well as such. That being said, of course we also need to look at many other skills to determine whether someone is well suited for customer support, such as good language skills and communication strengths. The guy who knows everything about EVE will not necessarily make the best GM This we know from experience.

Regarding our response times, we do our best to keep them down as possible, but of course this can vary on the petition category, the current load of incoming petitions at any given time and the issue at hand. But just to give you an idea of what you can usually expect, here are some average first response time numbers for our main petition categories.


All petition categories:

• Last 12 months = 32 hours and 31 minutes
• Last month = 16 hours and 31 minutes

Stuck petition categories:

• Last 12 months = 1 hour and 4 minutes
• Last month = 41 minutes

Billing & Account petition categories:

• Last 12 months = 22 hours and 6 minutes
• Last month = 12 hours and 6 minutes

Technical Support categories:

• Last 12 months =32 hours
• Last month = 11 hours and 52 minutes

Of course these are only averages and some petitions may need to wait for longer. Also these are only first response numbers and there may be more delay in between replies when petitions drag on/are escalated etc.

On reimbursement of losses in EVE, I'm not sure what to say as you have probably heard it all before. The fact remains that EVE is a very, very competitive game and in some aspects on the brink of what is technically possible, so our task is not always that easy. Of course we know that players lose ships and items to bugs and server issues, but we can simply not apply some kind of blanket "The customer is always right" method of deciding when to reimburse and when not to. We believe this would ruin the experience for everyone in the long run and thus we try to set clear policies that are equally fair to everyone (and equally unfair in some cases) and stick to them. Usually this means server log verification is required aka our logs show nothing

That being said, we will always keep working with the Dev teams on improving those logs/tools so that we have the verification needed in more cases and getting the bugs we are frequently exposed to through petitions fixed (with the current focus on EVE within the company, good things are happening in this area). Furthermore, we can keep working on finding the right balance between "canned responses" and manually typing up long personal and poetic replies to every petition with detailed explanations of everything and nothing, that would in turn slow the whole service down for everyone.

Finally, remember that if you are not happy with how your petition is handled, you can always request that a second opinion is given by another GM and/or a Senior GM.

And finally (again) ...use the rating tool to rate different aspects of our services after a petition is closed. It really helps us focus on where to improve and tells us how we are doing overall (overall rating for last year was 7.7 of 10 based on 63.731 rated petitions. Not all that bad but can of course be improved).

Winter is coming,
Lead GM Panzer

One question I have for GM Panzer:

In games I have played previously, the GM's work off an unofficial policy that first replacement request is always 'no', this then weeds out bogus claims. Only those players that demand an escalation are taken seriously, and then their petition is actually investigated.

Rather than ask if CCP applies this specific procedure, and create emo rage for the community services department - let me ask if this tends to be the industry standard on handling petitions, and if CCP has the same, or different/ more innovative approach to handling reimbursement requests? (Such as clearer filters to distinguish between items lost in a station/hangar and something lost due to combat?)

GM Panzer its been since 10/31 since my petition has been submitted and still no fix... This is just plain stupid. Every petition I have ever submitted has not been returned in my favor.... And NONE have been about ship losses. You can always make more ISK to get another ship... Rule #1 of EVE, Never fly anything you aren't prepared to lose... Do me a favor and take a look at my petition and see what you can do to help me out. Just once I would like a favorable reply from a GM. Your help in this matter would be greatly appreciated.

-I had a bug where I couldn't create a contract with a container. It kept claiming item X (which changed) couldn't be found. Different containers, different stuff in them. Repeatable for over a week. Did the GMs fix the problem? Move my stuff because I couldn't? Nope. I kept the stuff there for a week so the bug could be investigated expecting a reasonable response (i.e. "It's repeatable - grab it and kill the bug!" ). Didn't even get a "Thank You" . Bug report came back "Unable to replicate on any test system". Really? what a big surprise. What a waste.

sounds more like a bug than something for a petition? but still... you need to be able to reproduce an issue, otherwise "the developer cannot fix it" / the bug is basically not there / not important. currently, any bug you file for eve will be filtered/trashed by the bug hunters / developers if not reproducible. these are the current guidelines - at least that is what i am told after getting bugs of mine treated this way.

We don't have such a policy. We check each case and evaluate each claim. Such a system probably also weeds out a lot of genuine claims and we don't want to do that. If we are able to verify that a bug/error was a cause of a loss, we want to reimburse. Almost all items lost in EVE are lost in some sort of combat .

To put it bluntly, regardless of any bugs, server issues or any other situation out of a player's control they will not be reimbursed any market transactions they may make in EVE Online.

I'm just wondering, does anyone else agree with the fact that we need new GM's? Not once have I ever had a petition that I have put in, resolved in my favor by a GM. Not only that, but its weeks before I even get a response. Yes the GM's are more than happy to tell you no, give you some link to some rule, that sometimes has nothing to do with the issue that you are referring to. Then simply copy/paste pre-written scripts that all basically say, "I am sorry, I don't care, Not going to help you" In most other MMO's the GM's at least help sometimes. And most other GM's at least seem like they care about your issues. GM's here are impersonal and just don't care! We are the customers for this great game! I would like to hear from other players on their experiences from GM's most everyone I have talked to have negative opinions of them. And most agree, they just don't care.... Pilots of New Eden, we must unite and demand better customer service from a company that has liaisons that just paste scripts into windows and don't even want to help us! The whole point of a GM team should be fairness and willingness to help players. Lets hear your thoughts pilots and see if your opinion of the GM team is as low as mine?

What we need it new rules for posting.

People under 30 should be moderated by grownups.

The petition in question currently awaits your input.

It's a plan certainly but I know many 30+ year olds that are worse than 12 year olds when it comes to 'posting' (use the term loosely here...more like trolling).