An Open Letter To NCSoft Support

To Whom It May Concern,

I have had a maddeningly annoying exchange with NCSoft Technical support. Here is the short of it.

1)Night before i17 my computer system plays CoH normally. NO Connection Issues.

2)Right after the i17 update, with no changes having been made to my computer at all, CoH now has connection issues which make the game unplayable on my system.

3)At their request I provide them with lots of information about my system and network hardware and software versions etc.

4)Technical Support has me check any and all drivers and firmware. Everything was up to date. Reinstalling said drivers has no effect.

5)Technical Support has me turn off just about every service and process which is not a Microsoft service or process. No effect.

5)While remaining adamant that this is their software issue I continue to follow their recommendations and download and run two programs. Game Adviser and PingPlotter.

6)After some more interactions NCSoft advises me to purchase a new router/modem saying the problem is on my end. I point out that my laptop plays CoH just fine. They reiterate their position that despite the i17 update immediately proceeding the issues the problem is on my end - even if my laptop works fine.

7)NCSoft runs a patch on May 4th (today) after which the problems with connection seem to have intensified.

8)I then decide to use PingPlotter to trace www.hulu.com and compare data from CoH. If my system or network is the problem then it will certainly show up in data gathered from other sites.

9) After running a trace on Hulu I start up CoH and run a new trace so the data I compare is from a similar time of day. CoH runs fine with NO connection issues. ?!?!? I have make NO CHANGES to my system since having tried to run CoH after todays patch. This does include a restart of my system post patch but not inbetween the post patch restart and the second test later in the day. So, no system changes or restarts between earlier today's test after the patch and the latter attempt to compare Hulu traffic to CoH traffic.

Poof, no announcements of a change, no hint of a coming change from customer service that would perhaps fix my issues from NCSoft Technical support - remember I am supposed to be out buying new network hardware... Just Poof my system now magically runs CoH w/o connection issues.

From a Project Manager and a Technical Coordinator's perspective (yes I have done both in an IT environment) there are a lot of things wrong with this. From a customer service perspective there is a TON wrong with this.

I would like someone, anyone, who works for NCSoft, to try and make a cogent explanation as to why one moment I am supposed to be out buying new network hardware at the insistence of NCSoft Technical Support and the next moment where everything works as it should. What happened and how it was fixed? Why is NCSoft telling me I need new hardware when it was perfectly obvious to anyone keeping score that the update was the issue? If I hadn't known better I would have gone out and purchased a new modem/router and thought that it was the fix for my problems. I would have spent ~$100s and never known that the fix actually occurred on NCSoft's end.

Thank you for reading.

If your laptop worked fine on your end, and your main computer didn't, the problem isn't going to be found on the outside of your net connection. It's going to be on your personal computer, or in your personal networking system.

So lay off. You don't know what your are talking about, and from what you've posted here, everybody in NCSoft's technical support did everything right.

But what fixed it and what was the problem?

If it was just some chance event, what do you want from customer support? They can't predict these things. Hey, maybe buying a new router would have fixed it!

Did you read everything? My system now plays CoH just fine. Did it fix itself? Work though the logic of it. And NO I am not going to lay off until someone comes up with something cogent. Which you did not just do.

In my experience as a Technical Coordinator things just don't happen by chance when you are talking about computers.

Given the situation NCSoft Technical Support did everything right except be logical and work the problem from that perspective. They pedantically followed steps to solve the problem. So, while the steps may have been appropriate for a different situation they were a waste of my time and theirs. Perhaps the problem here is internal to NCSoft and has more to do with the communication between their stakeholder groups.

Count me in as someone who has been having connectivity issues with just CoX. I'm also extremely technically savvy and very rarely have any connectivity issues at all. I suppose it's all on my end though *snicker*

We'll see....

I'm not trying to rain on anybody's parade. I'm certain the people are really having issues, but I'm having none at all. This suggests to me that the game servers themselves are functioning normally. This might be a case of one of the nodes inbetween having a problem. It wouldn't be the first time that has happened.

To give a little more information for comparison, I live in the Boston area using a Comcast cable connection. I frequent Champion and Freedom.

I am having the same issues as the OP... before i17 everything worked fine after i17 the lag was so maddening I could not play. After following the instructiong given on another thread and reducing my graphics to the lowest settings I am able to play the game at a better pace before I get the lag bug back.

I have done nothing to my laptop other than let the i17 download and now its to the point where I was with the sync bug issue had me.

Hopefully when I get home whatever patch the OP mention will fix my problems as well.

Having worked in desktop support for a number of companies, let me say that in my personal experience logic and computer problems are very rarely connected.

Given what I know of the situation, which is very little, I can understand the OP's frustration. However without seeing all the information available to both parties, and hearing recordings of the interactions between the two I can't comment too much. I'm sorry we didn't perform to your expectations in this instance, and hopefully we will do a better job in the future.

Let me share a little story from my own personal life that might shed some light on this process.

I used to, like most folks during that time, connect to the internet via dial up connection. Every day, my connection would be fine until roughly a certain time of night when on an internal hop in my isp (according to tracert) I would start experiencing 70-90% packet loss.

At the time I was working as a webmaster for a very large company whose websites received upwards of 1.5 million discrete visitors a day. I was pretty savvy about tech issues, and figured this had to be a problem internal to the ISP. I mean it didn't turn up on the first hop, happened regularly, and I got back consistent results that suggested to me it was a specific problem on their end.

Of course every time I talked to support, they couldn't find a trace of problem on their end. I knew it was them because it was always the same hop that had the problem, always at the same time, and I hadn't changed anything. I went through all the diagnostics on my end, used different machines, etc. and it kept happening.

After about a month I just stopped using the computer during those times, because I pretty much was only interested in online gaming at that period and it just wasn't viable.

Months later I decided to use my data line for a voice conversation for some reason or other, and it happened to be in the same time period in which I would experience the huge packet loss. Turns out I could hear my neighbor conversing with her elderly father on her phone clearly during this time frame (which she evidently did every day at the same time). It seems that her phone line and mine had become wrapped and there was some conductivity between the lines blending our signals.

I still don't know why this didn't cause other problems that I didn't experience, or why tracert always showed the packet loss as coming only during the 2nd hop. It doesn't make sense to me, probably never will. I called the phone company and got the problem addressed.

I'm not saying this was the OP's fault at all, what I am trying to suggest is with so many interacting parts, isolating the exact problem can be the most maddeningly frustrating experience both with for the user and the person trying to support them. I'm never satisfied that we did the best we could, but I do ask for patience because we are trying to do our best.

If folks ever have a problematic interaction, I always support users communicating that back to us. Without feedback we can't continue to improve our processes. The forums of the game probably aren't the best area to do so however, so I'll go ahead and lock this thread.

Thanks,