Best Job Ever: GM

Where else do you get to be absolutely useless and still get a paycheck?

Way back when they introduced "escrow" (brilliant), Nini paid her rent up for the month via escrow and went on with her day. She came home a day or two later and found her rent unpaid, went to enter her apartment, and had to pay out of pocket. Where the hell did the escrow go?

A ticket issued, a GM response... nope sorry, we can't do anything for you though it shows right here in our logs that yep you added money to the escrow on X date.

A new ticket issued, yet another useless GM.

In this case, I felt more than a little sick - its not the issue of some in-game gold I care about, but the fact that the loss was there on record, they knew it, and refused to reimburse me the money. Pardon the cliché, but it's the principal of the matter at hand.

Swallowing a dose of bitterness and realizing that we're pretty much on our own in the game and if there's a bug, well, fuck you customer, I got over it and went on my way. I mean what can I do? Post one of the usual "I'm quitting" threads? Accomplishes nothing and I don't want to quit the game over a minimal amount of gold.


So time passes and I've been lucky enough to not have any serious issues other than a missing shard or two, that requires a GM. Then, a week or so ago I bid on some vulcanized shoulders for Fala in a DKP auction.

They have this nutty proc on them that is an *out of encounter AE.* I didn't realize this at the time I bid, but when the teasing started I looked again and sure enough, out of encoutner proc. Ok, so suffice it to say, not the best piece of gear one could aquire but c'mon, with a proc like that, would you pass them up? They're just too wierd to not test. So I hung on to them, waiting to ding 43 so I could equip them and see the proc in action.



Too fun, huh?

So she dings 43, and there's nuttiness going on in guild and officer chat. I attune them, right click, thought I hit "equip" and looked over at chat... click the accept button (errrr I'm going to have to doublecheck now, IS there an accept button to equip? eh oh) and look back and she's still wearing the same shoulderpads...hmm? Look in my bag...no shoulderpads... remembered a little "dink" noise and realized ohhhhhhhh mother of...grrr! I deleted them!! /thump head on desk

Someone says "petition!" I go ehhh their rules are kinda funky, they won't restore items...but yet while looking through the petition tabs, sure enough, they have an option for restoring accidentally deleted items...ok, if it's against policy, why on earth is that option? So, crossing my fingers, I write out a petition explaining the problem and promising Fala's firstborn.

GM responds... says I'm sorry to hear you accidentally deleted X item, give me a moment to investigate... then comes back and says "I see you did delete it today at X time..." I said yep... he says give me a moment please, then comes back to say sorry, it's against our policy to restore accidentally or purposely deleted items.

OK, do you think you could have discerned that in the first place from my ticket? I mean, I wrote it all out there for you: I deleted an item, I'd like it restored. You responded saying "I'm sorry to hear you deleted an item" then "Yes you did delete an item" and NOW you go look and see it's not your policy?

Instead we have to do the pauses and oh I'll check on it first, and get my hopes up.

The shoulders being deleted sucked, and it was my error. I can live with that.

Their policy is: we don't restore deleted items. I can also live with that -though I think it f'ing sucks. Who deletes a fabled on purpose??

But... the best part was, after all that "well maybe I can help you, oh look, you're legitimate, well nope can't help you." He comes out with "I really feel sorry I can't help you. Is there anything else I can help you with today?"

I had that joking line in that wedding spoof where the father of the bride tells the useless GM wedding planner: "haven't you met your quota of nothing for the day?" - I wanted to use that one right then. I said "other than restoring my fabled shoulders that were accidentally deleted, no you can't help me. Have a nice day" (mentally add: dick!)

Mik tells me "well, keep trying till you get a GM worth their salt" but at that point, I thought "if I get one more like this guy, I'll really be upset, so there's no point." I mean, I wish I had that tenacity to keep dealing with assholes and going around in circles till I get what I want, but I knew it would just frustrate me and dishearten me even more.


The whole thing made me feel like crap. It made me realize that ok, while this was my mistake, you're really on your own (fine for RL, but is that ok for a game you pay 40$ a month between 2 accounts to play?). If whim strikes them, all the time and effort you've put into building your character "in the world" is down the tubes. If something goes wrong in the game, you're on your own. That doesn't make me feel good about the game, not to mention how much of my time has been vacuumed into it. Is the in game community worth it? Oh heck yeah, but y'know, THAT is not made up of the game developers, owners, etc.

So I wonder how Vanguard's CS is going to be run and if it will be better, or the same, etc. I'm definitely curious, though it'd be hard as hell to start from scratch after - by that time - getting more than one Character to 70.

Before I started writing this, also, I thought well, at least they returned shards ok - they were good for that, at least. Well, they took shards out of the game...so, really, GM's, what the hell do you do with yourselves now, other than destroy morale? This is really inviting so much satire... I hope someone has more time and creativity on their hands, because I promise you, anything ripping on a GM, I'll enjoy.


Such piss poor stuff comes out of SOE these days - their art department has a spaghetti strainer for quality control, their expansions are rushed and buggy, their raid content buggy and unfixed, spells broken, items broken or just nuts (take the shoulders, for example...an out of encounter AE for a proc on a fighter's armor? WTF?)... instead of fixing some classes, they nerf others... the game has been steadily "dumbed down" since it's inception and will continue to be dumbed down into WoW at the rate we're going.

Bar the loss I'd feel over the community, my guild, and friends... Elder Scrolls: Oblivion is looking better every day, and I'll definitely give Vanguard's demo a shot at the least.

Ouch. I sound like "one of the whiners" and I agree, atm, I AM one of the whiners, but, for the moment, I don't care. :P

In the meantime, I suppose I'll have to go the "co-dependant girlfriend" route and just have to lower my expectations. Expecting them to act in a way that doesn't make you feel fucked later is just unrealistic and starry eyed.