… As if millions of bank accounts suddenly cried out in terror and were suddenly silenced. I fear something terrible has happened.

Now if you follow the MMO blogosphere closely you’ll likely have noticed a bit of a kerfuffle recently with regard to a little incident involving Warhammer Online and its billing practices. For those not in the know many accounts with active (and inactive) subscriptions to the flagging MMO were recently charged well in excess of their agreed upon frequency. Just to give you an idea of what that means, there have been reported cases of accounts being charged for several years in advance!

In some cases these charges resulted in overcharges on people’s credit cards which naturally resulted in a great deal of misfortune for those burdened with the unfortunate necessity of paying one’s bills. I could go on but suffice to say that Mythic has a major PR mess on their hands here, not to mention a serious legal problem. But I haven’t played WAR since its first month of release so why is it I am bringing all this up?

(more…)

Game by Night has a great post up detailing some of the various ways WAR players can go about resolving the billing issue with Mythic Entertainment.

If you’re a WAR player who lives in America, then this is probably the most helpful resource you’ll need to get your issue resolved with the utmost haste. For players outside the United States, you may want to weigh the long distance charges ahead of you if you follow some of the steps outlined by Chris of Game by Night, and perhaps simply resign yourself to the waiting game if nothing else can be done.

Anyway, best of luck to all the WAR players out there. If you have the time, you may want to go to Game by Night yourself and drop a comment on the post if your issue is being resolved more quickly.

Recent events and developments have impressed upon me the need to write about something that isn’t normally talked about when it comes to MMO games. That is, defining some barriers to entry in the MMO world.

This is the first in a short series of articles that aims to discuss certain aspects of MMOs that would, unfortunately, keep people from being a part of that game they want to be in.

The first barrier to entry in an MMO must certainly come not from the game itself, but from the means by which one enters the game they wish to play. That is, the account management and subscription page, or its equivalent.

Basically, I see two potential barriers to entry here: one is when you can’t sign up for or subscribe to the game you want to play, and the other is when you have to jump through technical hoops to make the system work for you in the first place.

The first is easy to describe, as my previous entries on LOTRO may have shown. Essentially, when one is unable to create even a trial account for a game, or is unable to subscribe to it, that places undue stress on the person who wants to play.

Now, downtimes for account registration and subscription are not uncommon. Even the giant we call World of Warcraft must have issues at times. When the only way to find out, however, is to attempt to create an account, then we have an issue that needs rectifying.

First off, a means by which the company in charge of account creation and subscription can test the system should be implemented in order to keep a close watch on it. This is doubly important when you’re offering free trials, as you turn away potential revenue when someone who wants to try your game can’t do so.

Second, making sure that any issues are visibly seen by the public would be much appreciated. It might annoy some people, but knowing that the system is down and that the company is acknowledging the issue on the main site rather than in some obscure part of the forums would be useful as well because, at the very least, subscribers and non-subscribers would immediately know that the issue is there, it is being addressed and there is an estimated time for a fix. Besides, most sites won’t even let non-subscribers post in their forums to ask if the account management page is down to begin with.

Now we come to what I feel is the more daunting barrier to entry when it comes to account management and subscription: jumping through technical hoops to get the job done.

Allow me to explain: imagine that you are an average gamer with the usual knowledge of technical information regarding browsing, gaming, and other sorts of esoteric techie knowledge. Now, imagine trying to get into the game you want to play for the first time, only to be greeted by a screen that prompts you to update your computer’s browser and allow for javascript and cookies to be enabled.

We’re not done yet. Imagine that you checked those settings and already set them to the appropriate levels to allow for the game to initiate the account setup process. Yes, this is still the part where you register for an account.

Imagine it still doesn’t work, and you contact their support center for assistance, and a day and a half after sending your email, you get a response from them telling you to update your service packs as well and basically bring everything, including their specific browser of choice (let’s say Internet Explorer for kicks), to the latest upgrades.

And it still doesn’t work.

And you have to send them an email again explaining the issue in detail once again so that there’s no miscommunication.

Are you annoyed yet?

You probably are, and the above-mentioned experience actually happened to me for the beta of an up-and-coming game which I won’t disclose. Now, seeing as this is beta, I’m inclined to give them the benefit of the doubt, but imagine if that were a newly-released game, and you had to go through that, and the support agent who emailed you didn’t explain how to enable cookies or javascript or upgrade the system and you had no idea how to do it yourself. Wouldn’t your patience wear a little thin by that time?

Mine would.

Unfortunately, this second one doesn’t have any clear-cut answers to alleviate it, other than additional tweaking of the most basic of systems to ensure it doesn’t happen to people. Heck, I’d even recommend additional further training of support folk or the creation of special technical templates so they can explain their answers fully and in detail to help the customer, but that’s just a suggestion and not a flat-out solution to a glaring issue.

All in all, these two barriers to entry are the most fundamental, for they are barriers that keep one from even experiencing the game to begin with. They definitely need solutions, but at the very least, someone needs to be paying attention to these issues so that they can be remedied to begin with.

So I’ve spent ten days on Middle-Earth, and I quite liked the experience as a whole, even with those hiccups I experienced during the attempt to get the game to work for me. Compared to World of Warcraft, the game is more relaxed, making me feel as if I was welcome to make alternate characters and not rush the experience.

Thanks to the Founder Trial I received, I also was pleased to get a hang of the auction house and mailing system, which worked fine and allowed me to send important goods to my alt characters and vice versa. Enhanced gathering and creation tools for the win, indeed.

I also received some good news from Turbine themselves, who’ve sent me an email regarding the ways with which I can go and add a credit card to my account. It still means I might not be able to play for another week because my credit card is still en route to me, but that’s alright. I’m not entirely sure how the process will go though, seeing as I either have to call their number or fax them my details. I suppose calling them would be the best option though, if I can get permission to do so.

So to recap, in ten days, I’ve managed to enjoy Middle-Earth, save a little kid from the barrow downs, take down a conspiracy between brigands and orcs to disrupt Bree, learned how freaking HUGE the Shire area is, and gotten feedback from Turbine on my worries about subscribing to the game.

All in all, that was an excellent ten days. Hopefully, I can have many more in Middle-Earth.

Sigh… been wondering if I should post this since I started reading the information available here on the forums, and I thought, “I really have everything to gain if I can figure out how to subscribe to the game.”

Here’s the situation:

I live in the Philippines, and the only retailer here that sells original games not only has no stock left for LOTRO, but also doesn’t sell the prepaid cards.

I received a founder’s referral from a twitter buddy who lives in one of the territories that is supported by Turbine.

I found a post at ( http://forums.lotro.com/showthread.php?t=281296 ) which mentions that credit card subscriptions can only be done if you live in the US, Canada, New Zealand, or Australia.

I freak out internally. I check the My Account page, and try the Buy now Button, and it’s true.

Then I remembered the PayByCash option. Well, just checked PayByCash’s site, and attempted to purchase 90 days of play… and apparently, my IP address or something indicates to the site that I’m in a restricted country.

Below is the text from the error message:

Given all this information, I’m running out of hope that I can play the game beyond the ten day trial. As I can see it, the only way I can find to play this game is if I use Western Union or some other service to send money to my uncle in the States so he can buy prepaid cards for me en masse, if LOTRO prepaid cards are still being sold on the cheap.

Thing is, I don’t think he’ll accede to my request seeing as his family’s also strapped for cash because of the recession.

I could try calling up customer support to setup a subscription, but if they give me a “no” answer, then I’ll have made a long distance call at some odd hour of the morning just to be rejected again.

I don’t want to give up on LOTRO, but unless, by some miracle, the Community manager for LOTRO steps in (she contacted me via Twitter) and finds some loophole for me to play the game, I think I’m out of options.

I know it’s silly to want to play a game this badly, but I really think it’s a great game based on some astounding literature, and I’d like to be a part of it.

Within the past three days, I’ve managed to learn how persevering I am and patient with regard to setbacks, mostly because Turbine is having issues of its own with its Trial account and subscription systems. I can understand that.

I can even accept the fact that my connection or some part of the connection between my router and gls.lotro.com is pinging back asterisks: that’s the nature of the internet connection that people face sometimes.

What I can’t accept is going through all these hoops to get into a game just to be pushed back at this very last, and perhaps most important, turn.

In any event, it’s 3:32 am where I’m at now. I’m drained, both physically and mentally, and I hope that, when I wake up in five to eight hours’ time, something will have changed. Maybe something small, or something miraculous, but just something…

Perhaps something as preordained as a young hobbit picking up a ring that could save or damn the world.

Godspeed to you all.

———–

I woke up this morning to a direct message from Meghan Rodberg, Senior Community Manager at Turbine. She forwarded my post to the Account Supervisor to see if he could help and told me she would get back to me after a day or so.

I don’t know if it was my persistence that did the trick, or luck, or whatnot, but I learned the value of knowing when to keep a cool head and analyze the situation and when to let your emotion guide the way. As I see it, I had exhausted all logical and hypothetical options, so a plea based on the experience I’d gone through seemed like the only course of action left: a mild, tired rant, so to speak.

Honestly, even if I don’t get into LOTRO at this point, this is the kind of customer service experience that really makes me feel like I’m valued as a consumer. I doubt they can do this for every customer, and I doubt anyone can logistically pull off such a task as to make the customer service experience a positive one despite experiencing setbacks, but one thing I will say is this: for all its issues at the moment, Turbine has earned my respect and support for trying.