The lack of support

[olympusmons]

Twice over the last two weeks I have fill out the email support page at the technical help web site for CIV III. And twice I am yet to receive any technical support nor aknowledgement that they are looking into my problem. Has anyone else recieve such awful service???

 

[Kimi]

Hmm.. only 2?

I have filled out 4 now - one about every 3 days, and have YET to get any kind of reply at all.

So far.. the game is so bug ridden I can't get it to work on any of 3 computers, and the vaunted email support is totally non responsive. And of course getting through on the phone is an exercise in futility.

 

[Zippo]

The problem with tech support is that there a literally millions of various hardware/software combinations out there and there's no way Infogrames can possibly know immediately what's happening on your specific machine.

That's still no excuse. The least they could do is set up an autoresponder to let you know they at least GOT your email.

I suggest posting your problem here if you haven't already.

 

[Dan Magaha FIRAXIS]

Firaxis does not provide support for the game, Infogrames does. Those of us from Firaxis who frequent the forums usually try to help people whenever we can, but it is Infogrames is who is responsible for supporting the game.

Dan

 

[Zippo]

My mistake.. I apologize.

 

[Kimi]

Originally posted by Dan Magaha FIRAXIS
Firaxis does not provide support for the game, Infogrames does.

Uhm.. they do?

I have yet to see any. Sent off my 5th form today, with still no response to any of the previous 4.

If this is the best support we can get, perhaps it is time to look for something better.

 

[Conan666]

Originally posted by Zippo
The problem with tech support is that there a literally millions of various hardware/software combinations out there and there's no way Infogrames can possibly know immediately what's happening on your specific machine.

As someone with plenty of Quality Assurance experience, I know the dillemma of either doing all testing and development on one cloned box versus trying to test every combination.

However, firmware specific problems are fairly rare when the software is written correctly. There are standards to how CPUs, coprocessors, memory management, video cards, and so on are supposed to work. Yeah, some popular cards like NVIDIA stray a little from the standards. But that why you hire people who know what they are doing if you are doing any hackish low level stuff, or you just don't do it.

In another week they'll be more threads and posts in this forum than there have been in the entire history of the civ II tech support forum.

But they'll fix the bugs. We're just the unwitting Beta testers.

Why do a good QA job when people will pay to be your QA? It is a gamble, and I'd like to be a fly on the wall at Firaxis these days to see whether they feel it has paid off.

Just my 30,000 Turkish Lira...