I think there's a lot of reason to be dissatisfied with Verant in
Customer-Service type issue. I agree with the general thread of Kit's
arguments that Verant presents an arrogant attitude towards their customer
base and, for the most part, the suggestions that players make regarding the
game in general.

A good friend of mine, a former member of my guild, has many close friends
who are executives of various Computer Game companies (so he is in position
to compare). He went to E3 and talked to Brad, Gordon, and Jeff Butler.
They really came off as described above. At one point - one of them made a
statement that my friend saw as a blatant lie regarding 51+ spell drops (and
subsequently was contradicted - one could argue it was an honest mistake as
opposed to a lie - but that's not my point here).

It's not surprising that given the success of Everquest - Verant developed
an arrogant attitude. By just about any measurement, they have achieved the
greatest success any Online Game has seen to date. I can't blame for that -
but that doesn't mean I can't or shouldn't criticize them.

This is my opinion, perhaps rational, perhaps irrational - but as a paying
customer I have every right to that opinion.

Right now - Verant basically has two competitors; UO which is a several
years older product and AC. AC came out about the same time (perhaps a bit
newer) and is an inferior product to begin with. But every indication I've
seen shows that they are WAY better than Verant as far as testing and
support (although I'll admit - this is based on only a few articles I've
read and beyond a small amount of beta-testing no first-hand experience).

Basically - we have very little baseline to compare how good a job Verant is
doing. That doesn't mean we aren't entitled to our opinions. .0001 % - not
sure I agree with that. One could assume that board posts are to some
degree a random sample of the customer base as a whole. Maybe not complexly
accurate - but certainly a lot more than .01 basis point.

In the near future - UOL will have their next generation product out. Other
competitors will be out in a year or so. It will be very interesting to
revisit this issue in 18 months.

I predict that the new offerings will do a better job dealing with
customers - even if they have EQ2 out - Verant will find out - they've done
a mediocre job at best at dealing with these types of issues and will be
playing catch-up.

Enough from me on this topic!

Slyde

-----Original Message-----
From: Jeffrey Sue [mailto:jsue@...]
Sent: Thursday, August 24, 2000 12:41 PM
To: eqbards@egroups.com
Subject: RE: [eqbards] Getting really Annoyed

At 11:10 AM 8/24/00 -0600, you wrote:

>I read the everwhine boards, the eqcaster's boards, and the vault boards
>pretty regularly. I don't believe Verant really uses the info at their
>disposal to make those judgments correctly. That's the whole point. They
>do have the info and I think they still make stupid decisions.
>
> Kit

how can you possibly make a judgement on whether the decision is stupid if
you have
0.0001% of the information available???

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