Community

Sep 15, 2010 -- 12:16PM, P1NBACK wrote:

Sep 15, 2010 -- 11:51AM, embertiger wrote:

There's a difference between one article being rescheduled a week before it was supposed to go live and several articles being delayed mere hours before they were going to go live (after one had even been hyped), plus major updates to tools being pushed farther and farther back.  Compile that with a diminishing quantity and quality of articles and no new tools or debut content.  You have to see why people are getting frusterated.

Email CS. Thanks.

I might be the only one, but has anyone here ever got a response from CS on any issue to do with lateness, lack of features, incorrect data and so on that didn't receive anything but the standard form response of 'thanks for making us aware, we aren't going to tell you what we're going to do about it' (I paraphrase of course, but its the bare bones of the responses they send out on these matters). 

While they may well tally them and have an internal records of number of complaints they certainly don't manage to make the customers feel 'serviced'.

So P1nback, on what level is e-mailing CS the only sane thing to do?  Although from the amount of WotC interaction on the boards (improved though it is) the net result of a board posting and e-mailing CS amounts to the exact same amount of wasted effort.

For all the 'listening' WotC claim to do (and in my heart of hearts I believe that they are doing) it doesn't yield any better result than talking to a brick wall.

Sep 15, 2010 -- 11:41AM, AsmodeusLore wrote:

Sep 15, 2010 -- 11:32AM, Myztek wrote:

...They may not use the word promise, but when you create an expectation in people, you should meet it.
...

Emphasis mine.

I would like to respectfully disagree.

You need to look at the individual articles as previews, and the compiled magazine as the finished product.  If you look at it that way, then you realize that they are pretty much doing exactly what you are saying.  They are producing the articles weeks ahead of the time when they must be ready, and giving themselves a buffer to make edits, correcdtions, and finish up anything that got delayed.

I believe you're in the very small minority with your interpretation of what is occuring.  That VAST majority see these materials as released when first published on the internet and available to customers, not on the second release in compiled form.

The final product, the compiled magazine, has never been late.

And MOST Insiders never look at the compiled magazine as a compiled unit.  Most look at the individual articles as they were posted.  Do I have data to back that up?  No.  But common sense says it is so. 

Finally, the reason I posted that reminder was specifically so that people did not start to expect an article to be released on the day that it appears on the calendar.  If you are expecting it to, then you have an expectation that is not aligned with what the company has been telling you.  It has been stated repeatedly that the calendar is not a promise, and you should not be surprised if something slips.

Fine print, boilerplate, caveats and other things that attempt to push customers away from common sense are quite often the source of anger. 

If you put something on a calendar, common sense tells us that the event will occur on the day indicated on the calendar.  You can caveat all you want, but regardless of what you say, common sense tells us we have a delivery date planned.  If you fail to deliver on that date, regardless of the caveat, you're going to tick off people that had an expectation of delivery.

WotC is a business made up of gaming professionals.  A professional is expected to be able to provide their product on time and in high quality.  Professionals tell their customers what they can expect out of their product and when it will be delivered.  Good professionals deliver on time.

WotC has - for many years - failed to provide when people have reasonably believed something is coming.  WotC never PROMISED a VTT, but there sure were a lot of customers that expected to have it within a few months of signing up.  WotC never PROMISED that all their articles would be released on time, but many (most?) people seem to expect WotC to produce on schedule.  WotC never PROMISED to have CB updates every month and on time, but that expectation is there as well.  WotC never promised to release a full suite of tools into the adventure tools, but a lot of people have that expectation.  Those expectations are there based upon WotC's marketing and common sense. 

WotC needs to figure out how to make promises people want to hear and then live up to those promises if it wants to keep clients happy.  That is the only way to keep customers returning.

Sep 15, 2010 -- 11:32AM, Myztek wrote:

  Instead, we're getting the high school book report - late, poorly edited and sometimes not at all.

   Don't insult hard working students  with the quaility and work delivered on time by the pros at WOTC.  I bet high school students could do a much better better job at running DDi and getting stuff out on time.

   I said in another thread, WOTC knew, and planned for the Dark Sun and essensals stuff to come out at this time. Its there responsablity to make sure the DDi part gets updated with it. But what do customers get instead? First WOTC says the sept. update would be later, on Sept. 21. Now they are saying it won't be until October?   This leaves people that sub expire this mounth SOL. They are paying for a month but not getting anything from it.