Social Networking is all abuzz in the online world.  Where once it was a struggle to get people to just use email, now more and more people have their Myspace accounts, Facebook pages and tweet their day away.  This absolutely applies to SOE customers as you are already online and leading the way.  

In my world it is always about how to better serve the customer and make their encounters the best possible experience possible.  We are always looking for ways to improve,  and adding “social networking” to that interaction might just be one of those ways.

At a conference I recently attended there was a lot of discussion surrounding this and some interesting data was discussed in regards to the different generations and their acceptance of social networking and the accumulations of contacts on the Internet. In other words, people have already moved away from the phone, and are moving from email to text (especially teenagers, one statistic I have seen shows teenagers text on average 42 texts a day), but what is next?  How do customers want to communicate, how they want to get help, how can we better listen to the voice of the customer?

For example, here are some of the thoughts on the different generations and their preferred communication methods:

Baby Boomers (born 1946 – 1964)

• Today: Prefer phone and primary method of communication
• Can’t understand why someone would want to share personal details online (blogs, communities, etc.)
• Pulled into social media by kids (Generation Y)
• Social media = necessary requirement to feel connected to kids

Generation X (born 1964 – 1979)

• Today: Prefer email and phone, growing uptake with other communication channels
• Utilizing some social media services more than others (example –LinkedIn, eHarmony)
• Walls between “on” and “offline” world
• Social media = necessary to stay current at work and career

Generation Y (born 1980 – present)

• Today: prefer text (chat and SMS), twitter, other forms of instant digital communication
• Redefining concept of “friends” — More casual relationships
• No walls between “on” and “offline” world — one in the same
• Social media = part of who they are

How customers will want to get their information, use information and communicate with companies and especially support is shifting.  Over the past few months I have been fascinated with Twitter and how it is used to communicate and relay information.  How we at SOE can use this as well as other “social media” applications and services is yet to be determined.  But feel free to follow me @MutatoSOE and drop me a line about how it can be used to support the games and customers best, or to just tweet about your support experience in general.

-Brad “Mutato” Wilcox
Executive Director, Global Customer Service

We are always looking and talking around the department of examples of customer service that we each personally receive in our everyday lives and how it compares and contrasts to SOE.   Rich “Greeblen” Schmelter, our Customer Support Manager for EverQuest/EverQuest II and EverQuest Online Adventures, had an interesting customer experience at a medical imaging facility recently.

Here is how Rich recounts his experience:

“Recently, I found myself in a situation where my customer expectations were far exceeded, and in a place where you normally don’t think of yourself necessarily as a “customer”.

A couple weeks ago, I had an appointment with a medical imaging facility to get a scan to check up on a recent health issue.  For those unfamiliar with this process, it is where they put you in a big MRI machine and inject a type of dye into your bloodstream though an IV so they can see your circulation better.  It’s serious business and can be an intimidating process, and the fact that it takes place in a clinical environment affects the experience.

When I arrived, I went into the office and was mentally prepared for the same less then desirable experience I had when I’d done this previously at a different location.  I walked into the waiting room and nothing was out of place.  Moderately comfortable plastic chairs, dusty silk plants, white painted walls with health posters and pamphlets placed at strategic locations, magazines on the veneer coffee tables that were months old with the mailing address cut off of their covers, a little TV in the corner playing a video on healthy eating.  Like I said before, “clinical”.  This was essentially every doctor’s office I’d ever been in at any point in my life.

I went up to the counter to check in and was standing behind a customer that was speaking with one the receptionist behind the typical plexi-glass window.  They were speaking in Spanish so I had no idea what they were saying, but after only 2 minutes of waiting, another staff member went to the adjacent window and beckoned me forward.  My mind clicked, “Hmmm, something’s different here. That was pretty quick.” 

She was very polite and attentive and had me filling out the necessary paperwork quickly.  I sat down, filled out the 3 forms, turned them back in, and settled back into the plastic chair facing the double doors I would soon go through, waiting my turn while thumbing through a magazine from November 2007 and listening to the cheery woman on the video explain how to make black bean burgers, which apparently is a very healthy vegetarian meal that’s good for folks with high cholesterol (in case you were wondering).

When my name was called by the receptionist, I got up and walked up to her and she greeted me by name and had me follow her through the double doors.  That’s when everything changed.  I was faced with a truly different environment that took me unexpectedly.  It was kind of akin to the scene in the original Charlie and the Chocolate Factory movie where the guests went from the plain hallway into the main candy room with the chocolate river.  Well, not really like that, but the experience of walking from a plain, boring, sterile environment into a completely different, but comforting environment was marked.  The walls were no longer white, they were a soothing mocha color, the lighting was soft, but bright enough to see.  The receptionist stood in front of me and gave me her full attention while she explained the order of events for my appointment.  She even asked me if I had to use the restroom and showed me where it was if I needed to use it while I was there.

We walked to the left down the hallway and through a door in a glass wall that separated the entry hallway with the double doors from another waiting area.  To the immediate left was the changing area where you put on those silly hospital gowns that wrap all the way around (thank goodness no open back gown!).  To my surprise, the waiting area in this part of the office had very nice big couch and a couple of lazy boy recliner style chairs.  On the end tables, there were scented candles and one of those little waterfall things making bubbling noises.  There was even soft, soothing music coming from somewhere.  Someone clearly had gone to a great amount of trouble to make this area as comforting as possible. 

I changed into the gown and when I came out, the receptionist was waiting for me.  I noticed there was a metal detector wand hanging on the wall and joked with a chuckle “So are you going to check me for weapons or something?”  Unfazed, she replied that they used the metal detector to check for objects that had to be removed before MRIs and that senior citizen women who have had their hair done recently often have numerous tiny bobby pins that are tucked here and there that you can’t see to remove.  Her reply was more descriptive then that but I was surprised at the detail she went into when most people would have replied to my lame joke with a simple “no”.

I went into the waiting area and sat on the couch.  I noticed that the temperature in this area had also been adjusted so that people waiting would not get cold.  Mounted on the wall across from the seating area were pictures of the different types imaging they do at the facility.  They were presented in a way which both highlighted their scientific purpose but also displayed them in an artistic fashion.  While I waited, I looked at these fascinating images until a nurse came to get me for my IV.  This actually turned out to be the staff member that checked me in earlier.

She led me into another room back up the hall and she had me sit down while she prepared to start my IV.  This area had all the regular equipment you see in a doctor’s office, but it was similarly decorated and lighted as the area I’d just been in and was very comfortable.  The nurse was also very attentive (more so then usual) and we had a little conversation while she prepped me for my scan.

Then it was back to the waiting room for a few moments before the technician came to lead me back into the area where the scan would take place.  He introduced himself and shook my hand and then we walked down the hall further to the scanning area.  As we left, I heard the beeping tones of the metal detector wand and looked over my shoulder to see the receptionist scanning an elderly woman’s hair hunting for tiny bobby pins.

When we arrived in the room at the end of the hall, I laid down on the table that moves through the machine and listened while the technician explained the process of the scan and the nurse hooked up my IV to the machine that injects the dye.  Within about 10 min, the scan was complete and the nurse came in and took the IV out and I went back to change into my regular clothes.  As I left, the receptionist met me at the double doors and answered a couple questions I had before handing me a little bag and saying goodbye.  My immediate thought was “Who gives out a schwag bag at a doctor’s office?”  Then, it was back through the double doors and into the “real” world again. 

Throughout the whole experience I had at this facility, there were two main things that stood out in my mind.  First was the focus and attention to detail that every single person that I encountered had.  When I was with them, they were 100% focused on me and making sure I was being taken care of (I also witnessed this when they were with other people).  Second, was the effort they put into creating an environment that was welcoming and comforting to their customers.  I’m certain that this environment also positively affected each employee at that facility as well, adding to the level of service they were inclined to give to everyone that came in to their office. 

While I hope that I was able to describe my experience well enough to impart the feeling of customer satisfaction that I had, rest assured that when I left the facility and drove back to work, I was still in amazement at everything I had witnessed and had definitely felt that my customer expectations had been exceeded. ”

Attention to detail, making each person feel important, and exceeding customer expectations are the cornerstones of the support that we are striving for at SOE.  This is a great example of how it can be done in a place where you would least expect it.

Brad “Mutato” Wilcox
Executive Director of Global Customer Service

From time to time players email me with questions in regards to support or I will see questions returned from the feedback surveys that we send out.   Here are some common questions we get and some answers:

Is buying and selling coin (platinum, gold, etc.) against the rules?

Yes, absolutely, ‘just say no’ to all 3rd party game services, that sell items, coin and do power leveling.  Besides it being against our terms of service and may result in actions taken against your account, it also puts your account security in jeopardy.  The sole exception currently is our EQ2 Live Gamer enabled servers, from which you can use the Live Gamer service.

What do I do if Station Launcher stops during an update?

Make sure you are running the program as an administrator if you are using Vista.  Also, if you have the program running continually in your task bar you may want to exit out of it completely and then start the launcher again.  Lastly, have you ‘rebooted’, sounds old school but rebooting can solve so many problems.

Obama or McCain?

I am not going to touch that one with a 10 foot pole.

How do I become a GM?

We are almost continually hiring for GM support and Technical Support Agents.   If you are interested and live in the San Diego area you should check out our online Career section at http://www.soe.com/en/careers.vm .  There all jobs and information will be listed.

Why can’t subscribe/purchase with my credit/debit card?

Be sure and check all your name and address information and that it exactly match what your financial institution has on file, including your 9 digit zip code, and the 3 digit code (where applicable).  Also, some banks will automatically block some of your online transactions, so give them a call (you can usually find the number on the back of your card), and let them know you are trying to make a purchase.  They will need the amount and the company name that are coming through.

Is your glass half-full or half-empty?

It is 95% of the time half-full!  I am a big believer in the fact that you decide at each situation how you will act and react and you decide if you will be happy and positive or sad and pessimistic.  I look at anything that happens to or around me as either a blessing or a learning experience to improve upon.

Do Froglocks really taste like chicken?

Yes, and wookies taste like mutton.

Weekly we have CS staff meetings with the management team to discuss the current happenings of the CS department.  The upcoming promotions, game updates and services that we need to support and we also trade off with each person taking a turn in presenting a topic in regards to customer service, management and leadership.

This week, one of our tech support supervisors presented a topic discussing the differences in how we all perceive things; especially how it relates to the service we receive from companies.  In summary it details how people perceive quality in many different ways, and that regardless of how good you believe your offerings or projected solutions are, your clients and customer will be responding to ‘quality in perception’ even more than ‘quality in fact’.

This is so true in the support of MMO gaming business.   If you look at “quality in fact” that we provide at SOE, we are constantly working to maintain and improve quality.  We are constantly looking at our customer service offerings to see what we can do better.  We look at our competitors to make sure we are in-line or better, and we look at what we believe are the customer expectations to make sure we are in-line or better.  We have supervisors that are constantly monitoring the quality of the agents and GMs, as well as a quality assurance group that does nothing but reviews of tickets to make sure they are to quality standards with an in-depth matrix of critiria.   All of this is reported back to the individual agents as well as the management teams so that good work can be rewarded and improvement plans can be created for deficiencies.  This is one of the key performance indicators that we look at daily, weekly and monthly and constantly work to improve.

But this ‘quality in perception’ can be very difficult to identify and address.  One is good service from one customer is not always good service to another.  We have many different kinds of customer, with different opinions and expectations.

Let’s just look at this last weeks highlights:

We have customer complaints because of things that are outside of the Customer Support realm of influence (i.e. do you really think CS is responsible or participates in the gold farming/selling?  If that is a multi-million dollar market, I have say I have yet to see any GM quit and move to the Bahamas just because they can, or for that matter drive anything into the parking lot that resembles an Italian or German car, we are strictly American or Japanese economy cars here folks).

Some customers hold CS responsible for their own actions, but demand resolution according to their set of standards.  For example, customers will complain that they received no help from CS after they have been banned for using hacks and 3^rd party software repeatedly, gaining unfair advantages in games, or customers will complain that they received no help from CS after being suspended for shouting vulgar and obscene language in public chat channels and claiming it was their cat walking across their keyboards.  While I know there are some talented cats out there, and I believe that everyone deserves a second chance, our actions have consequences and interfering with the play and entertainment value of others always needs to be taken into consideration.

Some customers hold CS responsible for not being able to change the laws of logic, physics, and minimum system specifications: 

• Yes, when it says “Internet Connection Required” and “Additional Subscription Fees Required” on the box you purchased from the store, that is what it really means.  We can’t flip a switch and make it a one player game with no need of an Internet connection, and we can’t flip a switch and make the game have no subscription fees (well okay maybe we can do that one, but our finance group doesn’t like that.) 
• No we can’t guarantee that you will be able to install and play Vanguard on the computer you just found at a garage sale that is running Windows 95 on 512K RAM, a 20 MB Hard Drive, a CD ROM player right above the 5 ¼  inch floppy drive, and that it might have a video and sound card but you’re not really sure.
• Ditto for both examples above, even if the guy from Wal-Mart said it should work fine.

“Quality in Perception” is addressed in part by the customer satisfaction surveys that we send out after someone has contacted our support group.   I am sure many of you have received one of these, and provided your insight in how we can do better.   We also provide “feedback” categories within the ticketing system whereby you can submit feedback.  After all no matter how good we think we are or are not doing it is the customer’s opinion that really matters.   I personally read the surveys each week to see what the customer is thinking, and what may have been experienced that is outside of my ‘perception’.   It is a very valuable tool.  I enjoy hearing what we can do to improve our customer service, and for that matter our games, which we will promptly accumulate, categorize and pass on to the respective development team.

Data from such surveys and the feedback are then reviewed and acted upon so we can improve this ‘quality in fact” and  ‘quality in perception’.   

The bottom line is we are here to assist you in making sure gaming experience is as fun and entertaining as it can be.  Every contact that we have with each customer, and every decision we make is in good faith and with good intent to the customer.  You can’t please everyone, all the time, but we can sure try. The next time you contact our support team; don’t hesitate to let us know how we are doing.

Brad “Mutato” Wilcox

Executive Director of Customer Service

I have a quote by Jeff Bezos, founder and CEO of Amazon.com taped to my door that says: “If you make customers unhappy in the physical world, they might each tell 6 friends.  If you make customers unhappy on the Internet, they can each tell 6,000 friends.”

I have been involved with customer support with many different companies for many years.  This creates an interesting consumer experience in my daily life as I am constantly evaluating the service I receive as a consumer.  This is important, as I believe that one evaluates each customer experience they receive not against other like companies but comprehensively against any and all experiences they have had in their lifetime.

I recently returned from a business trip where I was able to evaluate my own customer experience at a major hotel chain (Radisson).   While my perspective may be a bit different based on being a part of the “Customer Support” industry, and I may believe I know how people should be treated, I find I have to remember that each company has its own challenges in its back office that the public doesn’t get to see. 

The Radisson experience was an interesting one.  I had stayed at this hotel before, so upon making the reservation had asked for a room at the back of the building because the front of the building has a busy street and the noises from the traffic made sleeping a lot more difficult.  Upon checking in I found that there were no rooms available at the back of the building, but they did move me to the top floor (7th floor not so high) to escape some of the noise, and to check back tomorrow and they would see if a room at the back of the building had become available.

Although, a great customer experience to me would be the hotel telling me if a room at the back of the building had become available, I checked back 3 or 4 times that day always being told to check back later, and never having a good result.   The second day brought the similar experience of ‘check back later’, with the same result, no room available.  By the 3rd day, I became a little more persistent, but I still didn’t get a room.  After calling the front desk for the 3rd time that day and told I was still out of luck, I then experienced an ‘interesting’ customer experience.  There was a knock at my room door, and upon answering it, someone from housekeeping was there with some earplugs compliments of the concierge.

Was this an insult, a bad customer experience?  Or was this a sincere effort by the front desk to make my stay more enjoyable?   I am not sure. I have to be honest and gave the “earplug maneuver” the benefit of the doubt, and that the action was done with good intent and for that matter, the last night at the hotel those earplugs worked perfectly.  I did not get the solution I was looking for, but I did get a solution that worked.   But I would have appreciated more of an explanation, and I let my confusion and satisfaction level be known on the survey that the company emailed me.  Let’s not forget I am also telling those ‘6,000 friends’ of my experience.

Again I believe that we measure each customer experience we have with all those that we have had previously.   I want your customer experience with SOE to be the best customer experience you can have.   There will surely be things we can do and can’t do, and you can’t make everyone happy all of the time, but there is a lot that we can do.   Let me know how your SOE customer experiences go!

Brad “Mutato” Wilcox
Executive Director of Global Customer Service

Back in December I introduced myself as the Knowledge Base Administrator, and also stated some goals that we were striving for with increasing our front line customer service, the Knowledge Base. One of the key things that go hand-in-hand with the KB is our support site. This is the shell in which you, our customers, often interface with our articles and FAQs.

As with most Web pages, the site goes under a makeover every now and then to help keep things fresh and exciting. Along with that however, these pages in particular are vital to helping you in finding the assistance needed in a way that leaves you with a satisfied experience, not a frustrated one. Unfortunately, for a while there, we received a lot of feedback that this was not happening, and in fact that it was quite difficult to navigate the site.

Taking this information in hand, our Customer Service and Web Presence groups worked together to create a whole new set of support pages (the ones you see up today in fact). The site was designed with a specific eye toward ease of use for our customers by centralizing numerous functions and areas of interest into product specific pages and icons. This enabled us to bring some key KB articles up to the forefront, making them very easy to locate, and also highlighting sections of other sites that might have the information desired.

It took months of work with the re-design and organization to present these new pages, but we are very pleased with the result. There will likely be some further fine tuning and adjustment to help enhance your customer experience, but for the most part, we believe that we have drastically increased the function and appeal of what these pages are meant to do. The site has been up for a few weeks now, and so far seems to have been well received. I’d like to extend my thanks to the web presence group for their hard work and effort involved in this project, and to our many customers that provided the feedback and motivation that drove it. I hope you all enjoy them as much as I do.

Chris “Arandall” Cabral
Knowledge Base Administrator

This week we have the pleasure of hearing from Lyman Tuttle, our Account Administrator here at SOE.  Lyman does a fantastic job in handling some of the harder CS issues that come in.  Take it away Lyman… 

Hello, I’m Lyman Tuttle.  Those of you who already know me probably think of me as the Lord of NO.  I have it on good authority that some of you think of me in terms that are both physically impossible, and morally reprehensible.  I just wanted to set the record straight, so you could get an idea of what the real Lyman is like.

First off, I’m a fun guy.  I mean it. I’m a really fun guy! To prove it, I’ve included a few pictures of me in my daily life.

Here I am hosting my local canasta club.  You probably can’t tell from the picture, but I’m holding a winning hand.

Hey, and everyone loves bowling right?  Strike!!! 

My first love though, has always been bird calling. This is me doing the Pied-billed Grebe in a Washington state competition a few years back.  

Here are some tips, rules and thoughts to make your customer support experience better, without even talking to a customer support representative:

1. The SOE knowledge base contains a plethora of information in various languages, that can assist you with simple answers to simple questions.  Be sure and check there first before contacting support personnel.  We are constantly anticipating what players will be asking, what players are asking, and what the top issues are and creating new articles every day.   

2. Stop right now and change your password.  Account security is your responsibility and as much as you trust your guild, friends, neighbor, raid leader, girl friend, boy friend, uncle’s-cousin’s-neighbor’s-dog, wife, husband, etc. remember that bad things happen to those that share their password and account information.  Stop what you are doing right, take 2.5 minutes and change your password.  Here is a link to help you make this happen.   Also this day and age it is critical that you have installed on your computing a brand name virus and spyware checking program to assure the security and safety of your computer system and data.

3. One of the cool features for the SOE knowledge base is the ability to subscribe to articles so that when they are updated, you automatically get notified.  You can do this at the bottom of each article by clicking on the “Notify Me by Email is this Answer is Updated” button. (Be sure you are logged into the system).   Once subscribed each time the subject matter expert updates the article you will be notified.  This is very useful for things like;  “Top Known Issues”, “Scheduled Downtime” and many more.

4. Before reporting a “bad name” run it by the “Mom Rule”.   The “Mom Rule” states that the name in question would not only need to truly offend your mom, but that she would understand the offensive nature of the name, and not need to Google it.

5. If you have cancelled your account, either online or by calling us.  You can verify that it has been cancelled by logging into the “My Account” section on Station.com and check the “Subscriptions Info”. 

6. Phone support is open Monday through Friday from 10 a.m. to 7 p.m. (excluding holidays).  Phone support is only for technical and account issues, however when using this option for your method of communication remember that the phones will usually be busiest at 10 a.m.  Save yourself some wait time (even though our hold music rocks!) and call around 2 p.m.  That way not only is your wait time shorter, but the agents have just been fed and will be in a much more amiable mood.  While your at it, tell them Brad sent you, it may or may not help.
 

Brad “Mutato” Wilcox
Executive Director of Global Customer Service
 

To understand the story I am about to tell, you must know that I am a gamer.  I always have what I call “the game of the moment,” but there are some stand-by games that I always go back to.   Ultima Online opened up new horizons for me in the world of gaming, and when EverQuest came along I was hooked.  Some of my fondest memories are corpse recoveries in Hate, grinding in Chardok and playing until the early morning hours with a consistent group of family (sister, a couple brother-in-laws) and friends.  We all still were able to hold jobs, make it through college and raise families.  But gaming and EverQuest was a big time sink for what free time we had left.

A few months ago (right after the last EQ2 Expansion, Rise of Kunark) I started a new character (not for the first time) with my two sons (the first time with them).  They both play on their own, and I do as well, but the idea behind this would be that we would only play these characters when we were grouped together.  We started a well balanced group of three Sarnak’s and begin exploring the lands of Timorous Deep…watch out Norrath here we come.

Because of schedules (school for them, work for me), and their mom (my wife’s) household rules and regulations, our group play time is pretty much limited to Friday and Saturday nights once the mom takes the girls (their sisters, my daughters) out to a girly movie and we are left on our own.

It has been a fantastic experience and some good quality time spent with my sons in a different environment than the usual youth football and Little League Baseball that we usually enjoy.   It is interesting to see their take on the game and the interaction with the game, they love the collection quests and attacking anything that moves just as long as it gets them experience, where  as I am much more a linear player that wants to progress through a quest line to get my reward. 

These are the same boys that grew up watching me play EverQuest and hiding when they saw the Cyclops in the Ocean of Tears, or a Giant Spider in West Karana.   One of them once got a question wrong on a geography quiz when he was asked to name the continents on a world map and confused Antartica with Antonica.  I couldn’t have been more proud, but “the Mom” didn’t think that was too funny.

A good 50% of the enjoyment from the game comes from the conversations that we have outside of the game in regards to where we can go next, or what do we want to do next, continually planning our next game night.  Outside observers, like at baseball practice, when we are discussing strategies to complete the current Heritage Quest, or what zone we want to go to next, are amazed and confounded at the same time.  They want to know what language we are talking and what country we are visiting. 

Recently, my parents were in town visiting.  As we were eating dinner one night, a side conversation erupted with the boys as to the events that occurred the night before while playing EQ2.  I joined in the conversation as well, giving my insight and then trying to explain to the entire table what we were talking about.  The explanation was lost on most, but my Mom just smiled and said that it was like déjà vu to her, as she used to sit there and hear the siblings talk about their gaming adventures and now a whole new generation is doing the same. 

I hadn’t thought of it that way before, and she was right.   My youngest son was only 4 months old when I rolled that first dwarf-cleric, (I know better now) and got lost in Butcherblock.   My older son would have been 3 years old and more interested in hiding the mouse in his Tonka truck, then collection quests. 

The fact that EQ recently celebrated its 9^th Anniversary  and still has such a strong community and presence is incredible, I wonder what game or games my sons will get to experience with their sons.  I wouldn’t be surprised if it were EverQuest.

Brad “Mutato” Wilcox
Executive Director Global Customer Service

One aspect of the customer service world at SOE that always gathers comments is that of gold sellers, credit spammers, botters, farmers, real money traders, hackers, exploiters or whatever you would like to call them.  This is a topic that you always see on various threads on the forums as well as a multitude of tickets in the queues. Let me get straight to the point and set the record straight as there are so many rumors in regards to what we do or don’t do with the players and accounts associated with these actions. First and foremost, we do take action against such accounts and players.  In fact just last week we banned over 12,000 subscriptions (not free accounts or trial accounts but active subscriptions) across the SOE catalog of games (EverQuest II 5,929, Star Wars Galaxies 3,800, Vanguard 572, EverQuest 346, etc.).   This isn’t a one time shot; this is a regular result of the time and manpower we put into combating the cheating in each game.    How this comes about is three fold: 

• Bleke on Antonia Bayle
• Over Lord on Butcherblock
• Buobao on Guk
• Onyx on Kithicor
• Bougon of Hate on Nagafen
• Jeweles on Venekor
• Enlightcn on Vox
• S H E on Vox

   I tell you all this to let you know that we are working diligently to remove this element from the games, but also as a word of warning to not support this behavior.   The only reason they exist is people continue to purchase items from these individuals and companies.  Doing so is not only a violation of our code of conduct and terms of service, and could result in action taken against your subscription, but more important there are real world examples of credit card fraud associated with this activity.  We continually see hundreds of stolen credit cards used by these individuals to purchase accounts that are then used for the above actions.   This will be an ongoing battle, and we will do whatever we can to lessen the impact of this behavior within each of the games.  This isn’t just a Customer Support task, we work together with the developer teams, community teams, and legal teams, and will continue to do so to assure that SOE games continue to be as fun and entertaining. 

Brad “Mutato” Wilcox

Executive Director of Customer Support