Yesterday the Orsinium DLC for Elder Scrolls Online (ESO) has been released. The patching as such on Monday (evening) went rather smooth, and apparently everything was fine afterwards. Today I was contemplating of purchasing the ESOPlus subscription, partly to support the currently frequent updates and patching even minor glitches in the game, partly to get some crowns, to pay for the Orsinium DLC.
But then the terror started ... the whole Steam (as game distribution platform) -- ESO (the game itself) -- elderscrollsonline.com (as store for purchases for DLCs and in game purchases) is just sooo messed up.
At first I couldn't login, because apparently I forgot the password for elderscrollsonline.com. Not a problem, just reset the password. But lo! before sending an email to the email account I have to enter the answer to security question ... greaaat idea! You really think I can remember that damned security question, when I can't remember my password? Really?
After countless tries of passwords I have used in the past and their variations, I finally managed to login to elderscrollsonline.com. First things things, I am going to change the security question and write it down then. But lo! before making a new security question/answer combination, you have to answer the old one. And that's even if you're already logged in and can change various account settings, you cannot change the so-called security question easily. This is simply bad user interface design. Now what you can do, is to open a support ticket, to get the security question reset. But for that you have a answer a myriad of questions which is exchanged via an unsecured email ... great job of passing along sensitive information and making the whole process more secure.
The the next shenanigan was on the horizon. I was logged in and wanted to acquire an ESOPlus membership for 3-4 months. But apparently since I had acquired ESO initially on Steam, my ownership of ESO is not properly registered at elderscrollsonline.com, and henceforth I am not entitled (or eligible for) the ESOPlus membership in the shop ..and the whole concept of purchasing so-called crowns in the elderscrollsonline.com shop, for which in turn I can then start the game, and then with these newly acquired crowns buy the DLC from within the game is just a mess of a concept ... but maybe ZOS was a bit too afraid to be sued by amazon.com for their One-Click-Buy patent.
THIS WHOLE SHOP/WEBSITE/SYSTEM OF ZOS NEEDS A SERIOUS OVERHAUL ...and by that I mean a user friendly, non-intrusive way of interacting with the user (and by that I mean: your customers). I wanted to spent so (more) money there, but you are actively preventing me from doing that. Most likely, after I sort the problems out (as described above) I am buying the basic Orisinium DLC, but that's it ...
Other mayor annoyances at the moment:
- The downtime windows for maintenance are huge at the moment. Last week the hardware infrastructure was upgraded and the whole operation took ZeniMax Online Studios from GMT 08:00 AM to 10:00 PM. Which is a whooping 14 hours of downtime! That's huge! I work in IT as professional consultant, and this amount of time for a online system with several thousand users would not be tolerated by the customers I am working with. And there are ways to reduce these long times of downtime, by either gradually updating the systems and/or putting the new infrastructure in place in preparation and after switching to the new infrastructure, you then decommission the old hardware after the switchover. Yesterday for the Orsinium DLC another downtime was scheduled, this time for another 8 hours .... can you image an internet shopping site or an internet banking site going down for a total of more than 20 hours in two weeks??
- Finally the reason I am writing this, is that I have some time at my hands. The ESO launcher came up with an error message of incompatible versions, and I followed the instructions on the elderscrollsonline.com site and deleted a number of files (depot.version, ...) to allow the launcher to repair the ESO installation. But Io!, they poorly designed interface has the repair option well hidden in the middle of the screen in the tiniest font possible, so accidentally (and yes, for that you could blame me for once!), I hit "Install" in the ESO launcher. And then, instead of asking me the Launcher deleted the whole local installation on my PC and restarted the whole download/installation with 30+ GByte to download ... well done, ZOS, well done!
