There are some awesome GMs, but most are not. Some of the worst cases in the past I've seen have been straight up racists GMs.
Example1: Some RMT called someone something along the lines of filthy NA. They GM'd it since it was clearly against TOS and was racially negative against their "place of origin" as stated in the rules. GM says it doesn't count because NA is not a race and they can be called filthy NA all day long.... NA is not a race. So the guy asks the GM.... so what if I call them filthy Chinese. GM: "You would be suspended."
Example2: "Holding" certain NMs to pull them into different time zones used to be a huge problem. So some NA linkshells complained about JP linkshells doing this literally for hours at a time to pull the respawn into JP primetime. Eventually someone of the NA LSs got warnings for harassment of GMs but over-reporting the issue. JP LSs were not reprimanded even though it was clearly against the rules. Later NA group... who had been complaining was slow to start... about 10 minutes into the fight they hadn't done any damage as they were waiting for people to get there.
GMs transported all members... including those out leveling and in other zones... to GM jail. They were held for several hours and told that they had created such a mess they would have to wait to talk to a senior GM. As I recall one person ended up with a permaban (due to a previous offense being on their record) and most got 72 hour suspensions and a blot on their record.
As for the billing stuff. Between my wife and I, having played for a 3 year period 2 years ago. We got double billed about 4 times. It's not a lot, but it sucks. You see... you have to pay for any alts you have. Since inventory sucks in the game (way better now, way worse then), but you get tons of stuff.... you need a lot.
I have more than the average to make good money sorting and selling junk. But when you've got two accounts with about 16 mules between them you're nearing 50 bucks. We got double billed on both accounts once which was terrible... nearly 100 bucks. We spend some time on the phone and they fixed that.
They are willing to fix the double billing without much complaint, but most other issues they may not. I've read many complaints about issues similar to yours where they literally say, "It's not my job" about fixing it.
All that aside, I really like the game. My quitting 2 years ago was based probably 10% of game frustration (stagnation and camping NMs/LFG for 6 hours at a time while not being able to do much else) and 90% horrible jadedness about SE as a company.
They still suck horribly at listening to the players. They take us for granted and ignore us. However, in my absence many things have been improved on greatly and many others fixed. Still, they have tons of little problems that could be fixed if they would just listen to the players.
Small example:
If you sell on the AH you have to look up your items slowly to figure out a reasonable price. If listing 7 different items this becomes taxing. They could simply add a feature where you check the price history by clicking the item once. Once you already have it listed... THEN you can check the price history of that item... but before listing you have to go through tons of menus manually.
If this were WoW... Blizzard would've noticed many addons fixing this or listened to player suggestions and added the feature so people didn't have to rely on addons. Not only is Blizzard's billing exquisitely simple... their GMs are ridiculously nice as opposed to the curt, cold, business-like GMs of FFXI (to say nothing of the rude and hateful ones), but they constantly fix things that could've gone without fixing simply because they realize they could make something more convenient.
They have one-on-one discussion with the playerbase (who are horrible horrible people) constantly with nearly immediate feedback.
SE needs to learn from this for FFXIV more than they need to learn anything else. I don't want FFXIV to be easy or a WoW clone. I just want them to learn some customer service and make a community site.
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Originally Posted by Yeargdribble
