GM quits and Whistleblows SonyFollow

SOE deleted the following posting off their Station.com site but i received numerous emails requesting the information so here is the posting. It was copied of a hunters forum and posted on our guild website.


"Hello everyone. I thought I would swing by and deliver you the news personally...

I am no longer with Sony Online Entertainmnt as of today:

As most of you know from XXX server - I used to be a very active GM with events, personal investigations of your issues rather than brushing you off and/or actively hunting down hackers/exploiters...

You have seen over the last few months that I have made less of an appearance on the server to becoming a rare spawn.

This is due to SOE changing their policies, not in game but on the floor - internally - with the way the CS department is run. For the most part - it is structured pretty good but the policies are being conveyed in such a way that is making the GM staff basically turn and say something like:

WTF?

As a result, some of the GMs there - both from EQ and EQ2 have altogether quit and gone to Sigil (Vanguard) because the incentive there is much more than the incentive at SOE, as have various other employees from different departments. New employees to the company will be walking into the new system, they won't know SOE like we did.

The policy change I'll mention, (because it effects YOU), is with the handling of tickets and the way that is done... Before - when the ticket count in the queue was like 500+ GM's, in addition to answering tickets, could also hold events, do side projects, etc and still get the work done that needed to be done. But now they are pushing GM's to basically grind tickets like telemarketers grind phonecalls. (Sorry, if that is what I wanted to do I'd do it for $20 an hour at some seedy telemarketing company). How does that effect you? Well - they are pushing for faster response times while keeping the quality as high as possible (of the canned responses they use I mean)...

Here is an example... (I haven't verified this myself, but it's the word on the floor and it makes sense so I'm going with it).

We also supply the CS for Final Fantasy. However - word has it - for every ticket they answer, Sony gets paid $25. So - last month or so there was a roll over... (For those of you that don't know - SOE uses temporary employees that may or may not get rolled over to the actual company. Most just get laid off when they hire more India GM's - I'll get into that in a second). So back to the roll over - 5 FF GM's got rolled over... Think about that - $25 a ticket and lets say you answer 80 tickets in a day, and you times that by 5 people... That's like... $10K. The rest of the SOE CS - do not have a price on their head such as that so no one from EQ or EQ2 got rolled over. (Not even me - yes - I was also a temp)...

When I lashed back from that directly to the Managers and brought that up directly - they denied it of course. But with the push for their CS to respond faster/better to the queue now (and mind you the queue now is about 100-200 maximum these days so it doesn't make a whole lot of sense unless....................) it makes me think they are trying to sell their CS services to other companies that may be thinking about coming out with MMO's. Don't get me wrong - I could be totally mistaken and crazy here...

India GM's...

Submit a tcket - chances are the first bonehead response you get will be from a India GM... Something like: "I don't know ****, but hang on while I forward this ticket to an American GM who can give you a canned response." Don't get me wrong - there are a few GM's on the American side that kick *** such as GM Darcfae, GM Dartuan, the other guy... I can't remember his GM name at the moment. I don't really pay attention to the rest... Oh - the rest. LOL. That includes about 5-10. Yeah, there are about............ 5-10 American GM's on the floor g/t. The rest are all India GM's staged out of..... Cambodia? I can't remember but it doesn't really matter anyway...

Well... In the end - it's been fun playing games for a living and Xegony is "easily" the best server of the bunch... (Trust my words - other servers suck - I say that based on the tickets I read every day). Not to mention there are the coolest people you'll meet - on Xegony. I know that from personal experiences as I have met some of you - and in more ways than one but uh... ...yeah - that's confidential LOL

Anyway.............................

Oh - why am I no longer there? Lets just say I am a very outspoken, street wise individual with an attitude. So when the changes came across the board - people knew how I felt pretty fast. Namely the managers...
...and I was a little bitter about not being rolled over as well so my "performance" dropped... I guess I didn't really see a point anymore after all that in maintaining the standard...

So all you hackers and exploiters out there... Take a deep breath - because there is "no one" in the company that even came close to being as good as I was at tracking you, catching you, and sticking a hot iron right up your *** as a reminder to please stop using hacks and/or ban your little account... You're good to go now... Just don't be stupid and do it right in front of a GM like some of you are notorious for doing...

So that's it... My run is over...



And for all of you who think your EQ chat is private.

Quote:
One more thing - (and yes you're typing usually sucked ***)...

Some of you know about the /snoop command GM's use to see anything you type, read, hear, etc etc... Basically - when they /snoop you - your chat boxes become their chat boxes.

Some of you have gotten smart and now use AIM or YAHOO to chat while playing, or use Teamspeak or whatever... But not only the suspected hackers out there are being /snoop'ed.

How many of you ever found a nice quiet corner in one of the rooms in POK to cyber someone?

LOL

What do you think GM's do when they are bored? Sometimes, in addition to events, they cruise the server looking for "interesting" looking situations such as a male and a female characters sitting face to face in a room back in the far corner of a zone and they will /snoop you to see what you are talking about...

More often than not - it's another case of cybering going on... If it's really good, they print out their logs and share it with the other GM's and who knows where it goes from there...

Food for thought...

GM's have a LOT of power with the commands they have access to so beware the bored GM..."




Edited, Thu Dec 15 17:28:01 2005 by Kinyenya

/yawn

I always cybered in /say and /emote anyway.

Did you know that the NSA monitors all phone calls and IM traffic in the US?

It's important that you construct your protective foil helmet correctly.


http://people.csail.mit.edu/rahimi/helmet/

If you are telling me that the new "boiler room" GMs telling me "I can't help you" are worse than the personal Server GM we previously enjoyed that used to RP with us, and started every /petition response with a personal "how can I help?" /tell.. well.. no ****.

Edited, Thu Dec 15 17:47:47 2005 by Felicite

I skimmed it, but can't bring myself to care.

What racist stuff? Was it edited out?

Build it right.
Build it solid.
Get the plans.
http://zapatopi.net/afdb/
For the finest in protective wear.

Edited, Thu Dec 15 21:45:12 2005 by phnxkeep

Sorry Rey,

I must have been on vacation when they changed the meaning of the word "staged" to mean "born". I took that to mean that the GMs were WORKING in Cambodia or somewhere else but that it didnt matter as far as the story was concerned.
I am hoping this was just an honest mistake on your part and not just another case of improper use of the race card.

The easiest way for GMs not to "see someone's cyber" is for them to do it by themselves! =P

I have felt the CS with Everquest has went WAY down over the years. I remember back when eq1 was still fairly new you could get a answer to a petition in no time. Now you can expect to wait DAYS and get some canned BS answer that half the time doesn't even come close to solveing your problem.

That is why I get so upset when they up the fees of the game. They charge more and more for the game and they offer you less and less. When is the last time we got a new free zone (no the remade lavastorm and neriak doesn't count since they was to assist with a expansion and offer nothing new). I think the last free zone was Stonebrunt mountains and it came out what around the luclin era?

And I always figured a GM or anybody with SOE could read anything being said. Thats why I always laugh when you see some ****** auctioning off his/her account in game.

The SOE forums are a joke. Anything they feel is in the least bit negative about the game or their company gets deleted. Bunch of dictators over there!

Veksar with PoP/LoY (somewhere in there) but point taken.

..... So did presidents clinton and carter. I am sure in the coming weeks they will also discover so did reagen adn bush sr. Of course nowhere in the news reports does it talk about how this authority was implemented. Or about the judicial review afterward. They know the full story has very little sex appeal and wouldnt sell papers or draw viewers.