As the Community Manager, Ravel may not have been informed by other departments exactly what was to take place. Do you really want Ravel to get down on her knees and beg forgiveness.
As the Community Manager, Ravel may not have been informed by other departments exactly what was to take place. Do you really want Ravel to get down on her knees and beg forgiveness.
Absolutely not, especially given this is not of Ravels making. I completely agree with Ozzys post copied below re the corporate language used in many communications these days.Originally Posted by swiftly
As the Community Manager, Ravel may not have been informed by other departments exactly what was to take place. Do you really want Ravel to get down on her knees and beg forgiveness.
Possibly a more appropriate post on the home page would have been along the lines of.....
Due to a an unscheduled technical issue the game is currently unavailable to players that log in via Uplay. We are sorry for any disruption this causes affected players.
After all, the above would appear to be factual (assumption based upon the downtime not being publicised on Uplay either), to the point and does in fact recognise the disruption this causes. And, being sorry for an external event doesn't imply guilt or give anyone the right to compensation but does go a long way to showing empathy to the community you are there to support!
This... this... a thousand times this! I honestly could not have put it better myself.
"Patience and understanding" are a lot easier to come by when it is actually possible to detect an element of contrition... something that is entirely lacking from legally sanitised language that is obviously more concerned with avoiding blame than actually showing any form of sympathy to the consumer.
And to answer you specifically, swiftly: No... I do not expect anyone to get down on their knees and beg for forgiveness. I do, however, expect important news such as this to be communicated in an honest and timely fashion.
Either this event was planned in advance, in which case the news item was less than timely, or it was unscheduled, in which case the news item was less than honest. Either of these circumstances warrants someone turning round and actually apologising for the inconvenience.
I wonder if it's some company policy never to admit that anything is wrong and never to apologise. Can you shed any light on the Ravel or is the existence of such a policy not to be disclosed? It would be nice if we got some posts "sorry, we made a misstake" or "sorry, we messed up" every now and then. Like when the explorers did not work. We were told it was just visual. When we said that it wasn't we were told that it's still only visual. Then there came a patch that fixed it and some mostly useless free stuff was given in game. It doesn't have to be personal, a "we" is enough. Because who messed up isn't really important, just that someone somewhere acknowledges that someone did in fact mess up would be nice.
They don't need to point to a single individual. It is obvious that someone messed up so the company as a whole should at least acknowledge that something went wrong and apologise. Ravel's job is to speak on behalf of the company so she should be authorised to apologise on behalf of the company as well.
Guys, when it is my fault, I will apologise. I am far from perfect and I am capable of assuming responsibility.
However, in this case, a server upgrade was being performed which meant all Uplay services became unavailable. Due to miscommunication and this global maintenance being short notice, announcements were posted after the start of the upgrade. This happened on a global scale for all games using Uplay login.
To be perfectly honest, I was grateful I was logged in at the time and able to post any news at all, since Uplay login being down affects BBs aswell.
All I can promise is we are working to avoid this type of situation in the future and we will do our best to provide timely updates when it comes to planned downtime.
You, yourself, said we have every right to be upset... by logical extension that means you believe we deserve an apology. So if you, as our duly appointed representative of BB (and by extension Ubisoft), is not going to apologise to us, who is?
As for the issue of the server upgrade itself... Short notice or not, it is utterly moronic that some sort of "server upgrade" should happen and there not be a SINGLE WORD about it on the uplay.com front page. The whole situation just beggars belief, Ravel. It is unprofessional in the extreme. Bad feelings cause a lack of confidence about investing real money in this, or any other, Ubisoft game and they are not just bought off with a few freebies from the plumber.
Last edited by Ozzymandeus; 09.10.14 at 15:55.
Hi Ozzymandeus - while there was nothing on their front page, there was an announcement in their news and announcements section here.Short notice or not, it is utterly moronic that some sort of "server upgrade" should happen and there not be a SINGLE WORD about it on the uplay.com front page.
While you may consider your anger/disappointment valid you are now directing it in the wrong direction. As stated it was a global issue not caused by TSO, and as such this is the wrong forum to be venting in.
I'm as hacked off as the rest of you, but please don't turn on those who are trying to help you.
This has been a familiar story for 3 years now, all the way back to BB Azariel, where information from BB Hq is sporadic or non-existent, and UPlay are just a law unto themselves, we got the same nasty surprise yet again on M&M Legacy and the Kingdoms of Posterior beta.
Playing several other language versions, the French get as little info as we do (apart from 1 guy a few years back who seemed to get the info even before the German CMs). The only difference is that BB's own announcements are timely on German forums but not elsewhere, but UPlay foul ups are ubiquitous. But even the German CMs have copped some flak recently, as anyone who read and translated the recent Livechat just after the gamescom event, learned some very interesting words there.
These communication problems are dreadful though, and instead of improving instead the "chain of command" seems to be getting more and more obscure by the day, not just on info coming to us, but the whole feedback/bug reporting appears to be in disarray, like many I barely see the point any more.
On a personal note though, the "plumber" bribe just riled me up even more, that got dropped on us very quickly, yet I am still fighting to get paid for items replaced that bugs have removed from the game.
We love our new CM.
Newfoundland: 20th November 2011 to 25th November 2014. RIP
It was good while it lasted.
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