I petitioned.  We had trouble a few days ago, and I petitioned, yet after three hours still had no response.  Another member petitioned earlier that same day, and after seven hours had no response.  Even so, this time, I received a response from a guide almost immediately.  I explained the problem, and received this gem:

He said he would bump my petition up to his GM.  A GM never contacted me.

Surprisingly (or perhaps not so surprisingly, considering where we are) a developer showed up.  He took a look at the problem and assured us it would be fixed by the time we raided again.  That's great - but that doesn't help us today.  An entire raiding day wasted, hundreds of man hours lost, yet nothing could be done?  He said he had the commands to help us, but policy prevented it.

Imagine falling off a boat, and an engineer arriving and saying he'd have it fixed so you couldn't fall off tomorrow, but union rules prevented him from saving you from drowning.  Have a nice day!

When I started playing EQ, the game was cheaper, it used more bandwidth, it had fewer subscribers, and it had good support.  Today, it's more expensive, uses less bandwidth, has far more subscribers...and has no support of any kind.  That is, no support unless you abandon your friends and move to Stormhammer.

Fix this.  Change the policies so devs can help out in cutting edge zones.  Hire more GM's, and create a real centralized petition queue - having GM's move from server to server isn't working.  Have petitions stay in the queue until they are handled.  When I have a problem with other companies, they work to make it right.  Make it right.

In DAoC, players can see the number of GM's servicing the queue at any time, as well as the average wait for a response and how many petitions are ahead of them in the queue.  EQ has copied and outdone every good thing from DAoC except for customer service.  Finish the job.

Currently the profit margin for EQ is in excess of 50%.  Half the added cash from the last price hike would fund a GM for every server, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.  With a centralized queue, I'd be happy with half that many GM's. 

I'm fine with Plane of Time being beta.  The alternative is a zone that gets tested thoroughly in beta, and is spoiled from the start.  I'm fine with running into bugs.  As a programmer myself, I expect them.  I'm quite happy with the dev team's speed and effeciency in fixing these bugs.  I even assume that the GM's themselves are doing a good job (I certainly haven't seen anything that suggests otherwise, since I'd have to actually see a GM for this to happen).  It's the policies that are at fault here.  Fix the policies, and the people following them will set things straight.