Disappointed by lousy service, you could be next. Beware.

well, thank you for trying, but for a service/mmo we pay for, these things shouldn't happen in the first place.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by AcaciaTyrannia

well, thank you for trying, but for a service/mmo we pay for, these things shouldn't happen in the first place.

---

My $43,000 car breaks down occasionally.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by AcaciaTyrannia

well, thank you for trying, but for a service/mmo we pay for, these things shouldn't happen in the first place.

---

No two PCs are the same. SE can support their software, and their servers, but it's unreasonable to demand that SE be experts in every permutation of PC hardware their software could run on.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Elexia

My $43,000 car breaks down occasionally.

---

people want perfection or not to pay

nothing is perfect though and anything can go wrong, ESPECIALY with computers and their programs

Honestly, I would have built a new computer before I deleted my character.

But, since I don't like to play on laptops, I have a decent computer on each level of my house, so I guess I wouldn't have to. This same issue happened to me a while back, but since I only used one character, I didn't know I could have logged into another character, and I didn't have my small collection of desktops. So, I went out, got an SSD, new install, back in the game in 24 hours.

+1 to everyone that attempted to help this person. It's nice to have a community like this, where people say more than "That sucks".

I read every post, and not one person said "guess you're SOL, better delete character (/laughs to self)"

(Sorry in advance for the large post)

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Majidah

Hello.
I'm writing this because a friend from my LS is unable to log in on his character.
This happened after the market wards from Balmung crashed with him inside of them.

It seems other people are able to log in with his account, but that he is unable to.

He contacted SE's support and all they could tell him was to reset his network, redownloaded the game, prayed to Dionysus the god of hard-parties.

He's very chill about the whole issue, but I'm outraged.
Not just because it happened to him, but because another member from our linkshell suffered a power outage and had the exact same thing happened to him.

He ended up deleting his character and creating a new one.

If something like that were to happen to my two year old character I'd rage quit.

Bottom line.
They are long term paying customers who've stood for this game in its worse. Its outrageous SE won't offer them a fix to these problems.
And what's even worse: anyone could be next. You could be next.

---

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by AcaciaTyrannia

We've already tried logging on his character and moving it. He crashed in the wards, but right now I think he's camped out in Gridania. he still can't log on.

---

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by AcaciaTyrannia

Once again, since people want to post without reading.

Both of us have un-installed and re-installed. For the 5th time, it is a problem on SoE's end because it's a problem with the character connecting to --thier--- server. If it was a problem on my end or his end we wouldn't be able to log on alt characters, and even after spending a week on the phone with SoE they even told me there was nothing I could do and they "May find a solution at a later date."

I'll say it a 6th time since reading isn't america's favorite past time anymore.

We both uninstalled, it is not a client side problem according to SoE, they tried to blame my ISP but I've been playing successfully for the last year with no problems, and the other player having the same problem has a completely different ISP.

---

I've been reading through this thread and based on the given info, there are only a few things you can do.

If you can log into the game and enter the character selection lobby, then the problem does not lie in the network connection or the modem. Since you've been able to reach the character selection lobby, you can safely say that the connection itself works fine. No need to call the ISP or reset your modem. If you cannot log into the game at all, then it's an entirely different story.

If you are sitting in the character selection lobby and you cannot log into the game with Character A, try Character B. If Character B will log in just fine on your machine, then there is still a chance that the data of Character A has been corrupted on the SE Server. In order to find that out, grab another PC/Laptop and try logging in on that machince. Don't call the SE Customer Support just yet... If you can log in with Character A on the other machine, then the problem does not lie at the SE Server because Character A itself is fine. If not, call the SE Customer Support.

But let's say that you were able to log in with Character A on another machine. Then it's either a matter of a corrupt cache for Character A or a file of the FFXIV Client has been corrupted. Either way, both issues will only occur locally, which SE cannot solve. They can only advise you to check some stuff, which in most cases will be "Reinstall game". But there is one thing you can do before reinstalling the game.

To be on the safe side, i would suggest removing the Character cache first. The reason why is that if you uninstall the game, there is no guarantee that the Character cache will be deleted. Installing and updating the game take a long time, so if you can avoid it then please do. You can find the "User"-files like cache, settings, etc in the following folders:

"%USERPROFILE%\My Documents\My Games\FINAL FANTASY XIV\user"

In that folder you will find sub folders with names consisting of numeric and alpha-numeric character, forming an ID. If you delete that folder (personally i would rename the folder or move it to another location) and log in again, the game will create a new folder with fresh files. If the Character cache contained a corrupt file, then the problem should be solved.

If that's not the case, then the chances are that a critical file from the client has been corrupted. Only then should you reinstall the game.

If that doesn't solve it, it's possible that the HDD has a bad sector in that specific area of the HDD. I know it sounds far fetched, but that's the only thing you can try after the above. You don't have to bother cleaning the Windows Registry for this, because the only think SE seems to store in there is the language you've selected when installing the game.

I know you've already tried calling the SE Customer Support, reinstalling the game (several times) and even deleting your character.

But to be honest... Please, please, please, please... Never delete your character. If you can't log in with your character, but you can on a different machine, then its not your character. It would be such a waste to delete all you progress and re-doing everything you've done so far. Problems like this can be fixed. With either the wall of text i've written above, or (in case you can't log in with you character, even on other machines) having SE do a "rollback" of your character till the point where the crash/outage occurred.

These are my 2 cents, ok... Let's make it a dollar...

I hope this will help you (or others) in the future.

- Cait.

tbh, I would never in a million years, delete my char. My char in XI is still there in fact. I haven't touched that game in over 3 years. Chances are whatever the problem is, it has nothing to do with your character data on SE's end.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Judge_Xero

Honestly, I would have built a new computer before I deleted my character.

But, since I don't like to play on laptops, I have a decent computer on each level of my house, so I guess I wouldn't have to. This same issue happened to me a while back, but since I only used one character, I didn't know I could have logged into another character, and I didn't have my small collection of desktops. So, I went out, got an SSD, new install, back in the game in 24 hours.

+1 to everyone that attempted to help this person. It's nice to have a community like this, where people say more than "That sucks".

I read every post, and not one person said "guess you're SOL, better delete character (/laughs to self)"

---

Which is funny considering the last SoE person I talked to pretty much said "Wow, this is wierd! Good luck!" and hung up.

but for the most part the sentiment from the community has been helpful, and even though it hasn't been, it's the thought that counts.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by AcaciaTyrannia

Which is funny considering the last SoE person I talked to pretty much said "Wow, this is wierd! Good luck!" and hung up.

---

wait, SoE?

your playing the wrong game

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Molly_Millions

tbh, I would never in a million years, delete my char. My char in XI is still there in fact. I haven't touched that game in over 3 years. Chances are whatever the problem is, it has nothing to do with your character data on SE's end.

---

I deleted my XI and XIV characters...and I now wish I hadn't.

But it isn't taking me too long to get back to the point I was at before.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Eekiki

I deleted my XI and XIV characters...and I now wish I hadn't.

But it isn't taking me too long to get back to the point I was at before.

---

No kidding. Not only would I be pissed about losing all my hard-earned progress but I'd have to rebuild my rep on Balmung. Ugh!

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Alhanelem

YOU COULD BE NEXT! QUIT WHILE YOU CAN!

Seriously OP... Just because you had an issue doesn't mean everyone will.

---

I stopped reading your post right there, because you obviously did not read the thread. I clearly stated that this happened to two of my ls mates, not me.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Reyko

Now I Obviously don't post much on the forums however in this case I thought I would mention that all of your character data is stored in the "My Documents\My Games\FFXIV\" folder and if you are able to log into another char on your account and other ppl are able to log into your stuck char on their computer the most likely problem is the character files stored in that folder. Deleting your char and recreating will "resolve" this but only because you are no longer using these particular files any more. Also Uninstalling/Reinstalling FFXIV does NOT remove these files. It's been said many times in this thread already but what it comes down to is that if other ppl can log into your char and you can log into your mules then SE is not responsible for this problem. Just to be clear : Not placing blame at anyone's feet however due to the character files being placed in the my documents folder this is often overlooked when troubleshooting.

---

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Naelle

One last tidbit I left out of first post. Using Revo make sure you choose the Advanced option after clicking uninstall. It will scan your HDD and remove all information from the FFXIV install. Just uninstalling and reinstalling does not remove the character data. This is why your UI and macros remain. Until you completely remove EVERYTHING (Meaning your new characters UI and macro will be back to default) that character will be unplayable.

---

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Aldora

(Sorry in advance for the large post)








I've been reading through this thread and based on the given info, there are only a few things you can do.

If you can log into the game and enter the character selection lobby, then the problem does not lie in the network connection or the modem. Since you've been able to reach the character selection lobby, you can safely say that the connection itself works fine. No need to call the ISP or reset your modem. If you cannot log into the game at all, then it's an entirely different story.

If you are sitting in the character selection lobby and you cannot log into the game with Character A, try Character B. If Character B will log in just fine on your machine, then there is still a chance that the data of Character A has been corrupted on the SE Server. In order to find that out, grab another PC/Laptop and try logging in on that machince. Don't call the SE Customer Support just yet... If you can log in with Character A on the other machine, then the problem does not lie at the SE Server because Character A itself is fine. If not, call the SE Customer Support.

But let's say that you were able to log in with Character A on another machine. Then it's either a matter of a corrupt cache for Character A or a file of the FFXIV Client has been corrupted. Either way, both issues will only occur locally, which SE cannot solve. They can only advise you to check some stuff, which in most cases will be "Reinstall game". But there is one thing you can do before reinstalling the game.

To be on the safe side, i would suggest removing the Character cache first. The reason why is that if you uninstall the game, there is no guarantee that the Character cache will be deleted. Installing and updating the game take a long time, so if you can avoid it then please do. You can find the "User"-files like cache, settings, etc in the following folders:

"%USERPROFILE%\My Documents\My Games\FINAL FANTASY XIV\user"

In that folder you will find sub folders with names consisting of numeric and alpha-numeric character, forming an ID. If you delete that folder (personally i would rename the folder or move it to another location) and log in again, the game will create a new folder with fresh files. If the Character cache contained a corrupt file, then the problem should be solved.

If that's not the case, then the chances are that a critical file from the client has been corrupted. Only then should you reinstall the game.

If that doesn't solve it, it's possible that the HDD has a bad sector in that specific area of the HDD. I know it sounds far fetched, but that's the only thing you can try after the above. You don't have to bother cleaning the Windows Registry for this, because the only think SE seems to store in there is the language you've selected when installing the game.

I know you've already tried calling the SE Customer Support, reinstalling the game (several times) and even deleting your character.

But to be honest... Please, please, please, please... Never delete your character. If you can't log in with your character, but you can on a different machine, then its not your character. It would be such a waste to delete all you progress and re-doing everything you've done so far. Problems like this can be fixed. With either the wall of text i've written above, or (in case you can't log in with you character, even on other machines) having SE do a "rollback" of your character till the point where the crash/outage occurred.

These are my 2 cents, ok... Let's make it a dollar...

I hope this will help you (or others) in the future.

- Cait.

---

Thanks a lot for the suggestions guys! I will forward this to my friend and see if he has tried this.

---

Other than that, I think people are missing the point of the thread. Its not really about whose fault the character issue is, but SE's inability to walk the user through it in order to fix said issue.

Hi Majidah ^^/

One of my posts from my thread in Tech Support was quoted by Amy earlier. I've had this issue for over 90 days. Of course, I have this attitude that customer service should, you know, actually do their jobs. So instead of giving up, I've bitched and complained and bumped 2 threads daily. I've actually gotten a response that soon SE will try a server reset to see if they fix my character.

I've done EVERYTHING possible, and Phone Tech support has admitted as much. I've reinstalled, port forwarded, everything. To prove a point, I've attempted to login from 2 computers in Kentucky, and my laptop while in Michigan (Grad student, so I move between KY and MI) and I had my friend in Canada attempt to log me in (Which the forum mods rudely chewed me out for doing). The issue for me, however, was that on no occasion could my 1 specific main character be logged in. No one could log him in. My other characters work fine.

After a long period of time, and support from some wonderful people (Doomcky, Amy, and Babydoll) I did get my response from SE saying they will take action.

http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...l=1#post753857

Bayo, Camate, Rukkirra, Okipuit, I know you guys read these posts. You gotta tell Wada to look at its customer service policies. Out of the 3 phone support agents I talked to, only Agent Justin was really that proactive in helping me, and giving me additional support. The time it takes for customer service to address these issues in not good. SE as a whole, not just the Dev Team, needs to address some customer service issues. I'm willing to wait things out. Most people aren't. 90 days is a long time to get any response in regard to an issue that is not on my side.

SE customer service has always been...I don't even know the word...horrible? When I've encountered bugs in XIV (like the AF bugs, finishing the battle and not getting armor, etc) I never got any response...furthermore there is no way to call a GM in game. Only if you are "stuck"

...What is this, 2000 when MMO first came out? Let's get with the times please, GM's should be doing more then simply moving people. They should be able to assist with a wide range of issues imho. I love how they tell me go contact customer support...instead of simply providing a number for me to call from the Help Desk. Or.."Go post on the forums" which also gets no response. >.>

When I played XI since release until 2011, I had to watch countless friends struggle with the awful customer support. Most of them just gave up and quit..never to come back. I don't blame them.

While returning to Aion I had forgotton my user name and password...it was very easy for me to contact customer support and they responded with my info in 10 minutes! I've had friends who forgot their password in XI and never got it back...ever. I have never EVER in all my years of dealing with SE's MMO heard one positive story of their customer service..I think that speaks for itself.

I've never played wow but I've heard nothing but praise from their customer service and GM's. Maybe SE can learn a thing or two from them? :o Anyway sorry for writing so much, just makes me sad SE still has not fixed their icky customer service :(

I had a friend on Leviathan in XI who managed to get XI shut down for an hour long emergency maintenance. There was a glitch in the THF version of Maat. Normally a successful Steal should win the battle, but for her, it just resulted in Maat Asuran Fisting her to death. Took her about 30 days of complaining to get something done. I took a lot of inspiration from her.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Babydoll

I have never EVER in all my years of dealing with SE's MMO heard one positive story of their customer service..I think that speaks for itself.

---

Lost my Account Data in FFXI due a time where i didnt play, so i called the Support and it took 15 Minutes to get all the Data i needed to reactivate my Character. Positive enough? I've never had any bad Stories with the Customer Support, just that you dont hear positive Stories, doesnt mean they dont exist.

I would be surprised to see people running around in the Forums all about "how awesome.. i just experienced something nice with the customer support". Its normal that people usually pull out the bad stories over the good ones.

For every positive experience you have, you on average tell ~4 people. For every negative experience you have, you on average tell ~20 people.

However for those other companies, the positive info coming out out weighs the bad. SE on the other hand has an overwhelmingly bad reputation in customer support with almost no good info coming out anywhere. I've had acceptable experiences with their support in XI. But in XIV... Well, I quote Bill Clinton from the Simpson's Episode Saddlesore Galactica, "If things don't go your way, just complain until your dreams come true."

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Nero

Lost my Account Data in FFXI due a time where i didnt play, so i called the Support and it took 15 Minutes to get all the Data i needed to reactivate my Character. Positive enough? I've never had any bad Stories with the Customer Support, just that you dont hear positive Stories, doesnt mean they dont exist.

I would be surprised to see people running around in the Forums all about "how awesome.. i just experienced something nice with the customer support". Its normal that people usually pull out the bad stories over the good ones.

---

Well...yes..exactly :o That is why I said "I have never heard..." hehe because well, I haven't! :o

I have a lot lot lot of friends and acquaintances on XI and yes...yours is the first positive story I have yet to hear! They would try to reactivate and come back often..and yes, I have never heard of it taking less then several weeks. So the odds of me hearing a good one were high. I had lot of buddies trying to get their account back and I would always ask them on MSN or POL, "Did they give you the account back yet!?" and then "Nope..not yet, still waitin Cesil" >.>

That is really great that they did that for you...there is hope yet that they will/can improve upon their customer service. <3

Meh I forgot to mention..in my last post I did say, "I've never played wow but I've heard nothing but praise from their customer service and GM's. " o.O So yeah I have heard positive stories..just not from...SE...>.>...

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by ShepardG

In this "laptop scenario" the individual never changed his IP or his IP range. It was the same network, as he had been playing on, in his previous laptop. New laptop comes in the mail, he installs XIV, logs in, doesn't use token, and gets the "account verification e-mail".
So if it's not reporting his MAC on login, it's reporting his computers IP? From his router? However his router hasnt dropped the IP from his ISP... So SE is having him verify his account from a new computer on the same local network?

But again, the major focus of this thread topic is ignored, to accuse folks of their own mistakes. SE's NA customer service is sub par, and it had been for a long time. I'm not saying its the people answering the phones either. Its the command and control at the top. It's a Japanese game, with Japanese accounts (aka, your account might be NA or EU but a Japanese company owns it). This causes all technical/support/account issues to be sent to Japan, creating a horrible overhead, increased resolution period, and overall unhappy players.
You personally may have never had to deal with them but from the folks who have, they'll agree that it's beneath what a million dollar company should be providing for its consumers.
give up some of the command and controll to a NA service center and an EU service center. It would ease the burden greatly, on not only the account technicians but the playerbase as well.

---

Interesting. Sure the router didn't change the IP at the same time? Going by your description I assume the router has NAT and the Laptop was using an internal IP.
Using a MAC adress for authentication is normaly only used for software that costs much more. ANd in my opinion something really stupid. I get anyed over this everytime I change a malfunctioning NIC on a system and afterwards I get calls about sofware not working anymore.
Thought that they use MAC is impossible cause I changed my NIC. But I forgott I'm ussing the RSA Token which means I'm not getting that security "feature" anyway.

SE customer support crappy? Sure nothing to argue there.
I remember an other game (another company) where they had a statment on there support site telling people that get a certain bug to report it so they could analyse the problem. I went ahead and collected information with special IT support sofware to get as much information as possible to help them, then the support suggested to reinstall the game etc. I did all the stupid stuff for days, till I nearly screamed at them telling them what the problem is and that it's useless what they suggest. After contacting there internal superior they agreed and closed the case...
I hate support in generell. Most of the time those people just neet to be able to read questions from a screen, click yes or no depending on the answer of the customer and then the system shows them the next question they need to ask the customer. I rarly met any support where people actually had more skills then reading. Sometimes even 3th lvl support gives me the feeling of growing brain cancer.
On the other hand also know it from the perspective of the supporter. You actually never know who that person is thats asking for your support. They could be IT profesionel and know what there are doing or they could be someone that's not even able to press the power button on the PC. And yes such people really exist.

So I never really got the feeling that customer support in any company is usefull for me...

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Babydoll

Well...yes..exactly :o That is why I said "I have never heard..." hehe because well, I haven't! :o

I have a lot lot lot of friends and acquaintances on XI and yes...yours is the first positive story I have yet to hear! They would try to reactivate and come back often..and yes, I have never heard of it taking less then several weeks. So the odds of me hearing a good one were high. I had lot of buddies trying to get their account back and I would always ask them on MSN or POL, "Did they give you the account back yet!?" and then "Nope..not yet, still waitin Cesil" >.>

That is really great that they did that for you...there is hope yet that they will/can improve upon their customer service. <3

---

The only reason why I can think of SE dragging their heels with giving people their account info is if the person couldn't prove the account was theirs. They ask for like 5 things such as name, reg code for base game etc D: I've known people have a lot of trouble with this if they've been gone for a long time and lost this info so we can't pin all the blame on SE's customer service. If you have the info, you can get your account back within 10minutes easy D:

To be honest, I've only had one bad experience with SE customer service and that was in XI when I couldn't log into my main character for 3 days (the same kind of error the OP is experiencing where it'd hang at the loading screen). The GM said he had no idea what was going on, but wasn't very helpful in helping to find a resolution. That being said, I've had nothing but stellar experience with SE customer service other times ; ;. Maybe I'm lucky? I don't know D: haha

I am just VERY glad that Se customer service is not like SWTOR's :p (And if you played that game too, I'm sure you can agree with me there XD haha).

@ OP -- I really hope your friend's issue is resolved soon. It sucks balls when things like this happen ; ;

As I've said, the problem more than anything is SE policy. The requiring information for recovery makes sense to me, but even in XI, I heard countless horror stories about connection issues or bugs. And I just firmly believe Tech Support should be able to do more than tell me to forward the ports on my router, try to log in some place else, delete the user folder, un/reinstall. Honestly, I was shocked the first time I called tech support about my issue and they said "Yeah... We've run through everything we have for your error. The only thing we can do now is tell you to post on the forums and hope for a response." That's an exact quote too. I was specifically told "HOPE" for a response. That tells me even tech support didn't have confidence in the ability of customer service to deal with issues.

Luckily, I through enough of a fit, supervisors were notified of my issue. But there's an inconsistency in "What to do" between SE departments. Here's where I got really mad. Phone tech support told me post in [Bug Report] forums. So I did. 1st mod answers "We're doing maintenance right now. Tell me what happens after we finish." So I comply, and I still can't log in. Next mod posts "Let's move this to tech support and see if they can help you out!!" At which point I get mad because the mods were obviously not reading the part about tech support telling me to post there. So I made ANOTHER thread, they locked it, and chastised me saying it was a tech support issue, they won't deal with it, and that it's against TOS to let other people try to log on my account.

The departments need a unified message, not conflicting ones. The Tech Support is actually in a different building from the bug-report and community teams... No... They should be close to each other so they can have a unified policy... Also, the fact I've managed to talk to the same agent 3 times, with only 2 other agents tells me the tech support team is not THAT big. It can't take that much effort to house them all in one building on a different floor.

/popcorn


This beats the hell out of work

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by TheVedis

people want perfection or not to pay

nothing is perfect though and anything can go wrong, ESPECIALY with computers and their programs

---

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Elexia

My $43,000 car breaks down occasionally.

---

Other things do as well. I'll say one thing these complaints about bad customer service have genuine backing to them though some of them haven't been completely bad. I will say like I said in the lock out thread don't say it's poor support for petty reasons such as policy and what not. It's not like they have that ability to wave a magic wand to be able to fix everything. Saying maybe they should revamp their customer support. I'm alright but to say it's poor no poor customer service is when the agent literally tells you to go fuck yourself because you're a fucking idiot that can't do anything right (using that a an example)

I agree with some of the other posts for one if they can log in from another computer with that same character it sounds like either A: a curropted Data file for that character or even B: A bad sector on the harddrive where that character information is put. When I was playing 11 on my old laptop I would run into an issue where I think I was trying to get to Cid's place or go to specific area and the game would just crash on me giving me an error. I contacted their support online and gave them their error code and it was a bad sector on my hard drive I reinstalled the game and everything was peachy. I wasn't crashing anymore. And sometimes in then end you do have to do a complete reformat of hdd because of multiple bad sectors when you reformat it erases (well not completely) everything and moves the bad sectors to where they are unwriteable. Sometimes that's good to do as well. Delete the character don't do that unless you could care less about what you have done and who you did it with. That should be the final straw even after reformatting the hard drive.

Edit: on that note... maybe I should talk to my site manager at my job to see if they could get in touch with se na and see if they want to change to my company and use us as customer support... *evil grin*

Quote:

---

I stopped reading your post right there.

---

I stopped reading your post right there. [/sarcasm] You have clearly nothing better to do than not read people's posts. Just because I mis-stated you, does not mean I didn't read the post. That being said, I addressed the crux of your post which was "wah wah, better watch out or SE might treat you like crap!"

Why are you reporting on someone else's issue anyway? How do you even know they're telling an accurate account of what happened? This is a he said, she said. Why cant you let these two LS mates speak for themselves?

I'm not saying SE is perfect, but why do you feel the need to "warn" people about something that didn't even happen to you, but rather was assumed to have happened to some other people?