Drinking and dancing

Many, if not most, DDO players don’t have much good to say about the quality of Turbine’s customer service, especially when it comes to getting a help ticket response from a GM. A while back, I posted about an awesome GM experience I had. Last night I encountered a GM who gave me laughs to rival that first one.

First, a little background… Dissy made her first trip to Storm Horns last night; I was looking for about 180K XP to get her leveled up to 25 so she could wear her blue dragonscale armor (she ended up leveling in eChrono with Ninja and Abs, and the armor looks GREAT with her hair, shield and Elyd Edge). She was singing her way through the snowy mountaintops when she got a tell from a friend who shall remain nameless, who was slightly – OK, more than slightly – inebriated. And I’m SO going to embarrass him here before I get to the GM part, just because I can. LOL

So, Nameless started yelling at me for not joining his guild, because he kept trying to talk to me in guild chat. Then he wanted me to send him a party invite so he wouldn’t have to type (which kinda made me sad, because his drunken typos were cracking me up). I sent him an invite, but it didn’t work – all I got back from him was a tell that said something like, “tlepaxorang.” (He later told me that was supposed to be, “Stop teleporting!”) Turned out that he was getting the “can’t add to the party when any member is teleporting” message. Neither of us was teleporting, though, and I noticed he was on a lvl 17 toon. Dissy, being lvl 24, was in epic Storm Horns, so I thought maybe he couldn’t join because he was under level.

He was sober enough to switch to an epic-level toon… and same result. I told him I’d try putting up an LFM, and got something like, “I’m not joining your party unless you put, ‘[toon name] only, everybody else f*** off’ in the LFM.” (My spelling is MUCH better than his was. :D) We argued about this for a bit, and I finally went with, “[toon name] only. He says everybody else should eff off. Sorry. :(”

And it STILL didn’t work. So I took the LFM down as fast as I could, recalled out, and THEN I was finally able to add him. He ran in circles around me on the bridge in Eveningstar until he got dizzy, ran off the edge and forgot how to get back up. But we finally made it into Storm Horns and teleported back up to the snowy area.

Now, Nameless knows I get lost easily. I’ve followed him around Storm Horns before, and he zips from explorer point to explorer point with unerring accuracy… or at least, he does when he’s sober. I knew he was REALLY drunk last night when he said, “Where are we going?” I said, “I need all the explorers from 22 on up except for 43 and 44.” He replied, “No. I mean, where are those?” I said, “East.” And he said, “Which way is east?” Trust me – when Nameless is asking ME for directions, something’s definitely wrong.

We got as far as the entrance to Breaking the Ranks – which wasn’t very far, as we’d TPed to the northwest marker when we went in – when Nameless suddenly said, “It’s time.” I was wondering, time for what? And then he said, “seeppy tiem.” And he stopped right there at the Netherese Central Camp, and that was the last he talked, typed or moved for the rest of the night.

About that time, Ninja sent me a tell asking if she could join the party. So I tried to add her and the “can’t add party members while teleporting” bug kicked in again. (May or may not be relevant – when Nameless went beddy-bye, Dissy summoned the owlbear, who never appeared on the party list). Dissy was still about 40K short of level 25, so Ninja told me to come run eChrono with her.

So I typed in party chat – just in case Nameless was conscious at all – that I was dropping to run eChrono, recalled out, and… couldn’t drop. SAME “teleporting” bug. I logged Dissy out, logged Char in, and then rebooted DDO and brought Dissy back in – same damn thing. And I couldn’t dismiss Nameless, because now HE had the star AND he was still in the dungeon.

I figured it was high time to fill out a support ticket. What follows is a great convo I had with the GM who responded. Per Turbine policy, I won’t name him (or her, for all I know). I doubt s/he will read this… but Mr./Ms. GM, THANK YOU! I was laughing so hard I could barely type back to you by the end.   🙂

GM: Greetings Discordette! I am a Game Master for online support and will be with you momentarily. You can reply to my messages by typing /r and entering your message.

GM: Are you still stuck in the party?

Me: Yep! It’s ironic, earlier I couldn’t ADD people to my party.

Me: (Error) You can’t create, destroy, or modify a party while any members are teleporting.

Me: That’s what I’m getting when I try to drop.

GM: Alright I need you to try to invite *PlaceholderToon to the party.

A wizard suddenly appears on the ship in front of me… and waves to me. And no, “PlaceholderToon” is definitely not his real name.

Me: I can’t, because my friend’s got the star – and he’s passed out drunk. LOL

GM: Any way you can wake him up? I can only fix this if I can get invited to the party.

I type in party chat; I yell, “[Nameless], wake up!” on voice. No response.

Me: Well, I’m talking to him on voice, but I’m not getting anything back.

Me: Nada. I just yelled, “[Nameless], wake up!” over voice, and nothing.

GM: I’m really sorry, we’re gonna have to wait for him to wake up, or get disconnected.

Either the GM manages to disconnect Nameless, or, with perfect timing, he DCs due to inactivity. I quickly send a party invite to the placeholder toon standing in front of me. For a minute or two, nothing happens.

Me: OK, sent the invite… don’t tell me, let me guess, you got the teleporting message. LOL

I send another party invite. This one goes through.

GM: OK make me the leader.

I’ve already dismissed Nameless, which gave me the star back. Just for the heck of it, I buff up the GM’s placeholder wizard with the full works… and he starts dancing. I successfully – though to be honest with a bit of regret, ’cause I’m having fun – drop party.

GM: There you go.

Me: Oops, hit Leave too fast – but it worked. And your wizard has some buffs. LOL

GM: That works too, as long as you are out of the party.

GM: Is there anything else I can help you with?

Me: That may be the most bizarre bug I’ve ever encountered. LOL

Me: Nope, that’ll do it. Thank you! 😀

GM: It is pretty rare but it happens once in a while.

GM: You’re welcome, have a great day!

Me: You too! That wizzy’s all buffed, take him out and kill stuff. 😉

GM: Unfortunately this one is going away after this. He was made just to fix this problem.

GM: But I’m sure he will be happy with those buffs on whatever plane of existence he ends up on!

If anyone from Turbine happens to read this post – THIS is exactly what you want your GMs to do. He (or she) was polite and friendly. When it looked like he might not be able to fix the problem, he told me why and apologized. Even if I were STILL stuck in party, I would have come away feeling like at least someone tried to help me. The dancing wizard taking his buffs to his new plane of existence was just the icing on the cake. Bravo, Mr. or Ms. GM. You made my night! 🙂

Nameless – YOU know who you are. No one else needs to. I’m not going to call you out publicly, because I understand what a rough night it was for you and why you were drinking. I hope you’re not upset that I posted this; I did it because I’ve been going through quite a rough patch myself and you were completely cracking me up last night. Thank you for the laughs. 🙂

tl;dr – My friend got drunk and was funny. Then I couldn’t drop party, filled out a ticket and got a GM who was just as funny. It made for an awesome night.