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An Age of Conan player tricked a naïve, Funcom-employed Game Master (an in-game customer service representative) into pursuing cybersex with him. The player posed as a female playing a male character and enticed the male GM with flirtatious remarks and innuendos. After the GM fully threw himself into the moment, the player revealed that he was male, and that the conversation had been a prank.

Friends of the player posted screenshots of the conversation on MMORPG's forums, and the ensuing controversy led Funcom to fire the GM for unacceptable behavior and violation of the customer service guidelines. Destructoid then interviewed the prankster and hosted the unedited version of the conversation screenshots.

Frankly, we're not sure who is the bigger jackass -- the GM for his unprofessional behavior, or the player for baiting him into it. Everyone seems to have his or her own unique interpretation of this fiasco.

[Via Big Download]

SOE and the EverQuest II community are celebrating the ten year anniversary of EverQuest's Guide program. Guides are folks who volunteer to provide customer support to players, as well as host in-game events. Rremember back in the day when Qeynos Hills was invaded by skeletons, and all the newbies died before higher levels came in from the Karanas to save the day? That event was the work of Guides!

An article over at EverQuest II Players heralds the celebration with memories from both a former and a current Guide Liaison, as well as a story by well-known Elder Guide Ozymandias honoring all the folks who have served the community over the years. The story is written like an historical lore entry. It contains a few references to legendary names that should be familiar to EverQuest veterans.

Volunteer guides are a very old tradition in MMOs. Of course there were the Wizards of the MUD era. But after that, both Meridian 59 and Ultima Online made use of volunteer customer service and event folks too.

It happens to the best of us. We try to be careful, we try to be conscientious, and then the unthinkable happens: your MMO account gets hacked. You log in to find your virtual life has been torn asunder. What happens then? Sean Sands, over at the Gamers with Jobs site, walks us through the ordeal of having his World of Warcraft account hacked.

Sean reminds us that the most important thing to do is to keep things in perspective. Most likely the person that hacked you was just doing their job. It probably wasn't malicious, and unfocused rage never helped anyone resolve their problems. Moreover, Blizzard is well aware of the problems inherent to the account breach issue. They've got a polished, professional team ready to give you back your stuff in a timely fashion. In fact, as Sean notes, it may be that they're a bit ... too practiced at this.

The problem of account hacking is universal. We suggest you check out some of the security resources WoW Insider has on hand for World of Warcraft fans, as many of them can be transposed to another game. in the meantime, have you had any experiences with hacked accounts? What happened and ... most importantly ... did you get your stuff back?

Are you a glutton for punishment? Do your friends and family often remark about how rewarding it is to berate you with insults and make nonsensical demands that far outstrip your capacities to fulfill? Do you have exceptional attention to detail, with encyclopedic knowledge of the proper bust sizes for a game's various races? If you answered yes to these questions, we might have a position for you!

According to a message sent out via the Warhammer Herald, EA Mythic is looking to hire some trustworthy Warhammer Online CSRs to start working in the Fairfax, VA facility starting this August. The listing makes mention of benefits and opportunity for growth, which is frankly more than we were expecting from a company that was gobbled up by the EA monolith not long ago. (As you might remember, EA has a less than stellar reputation for treating its employees well.) In any case, if any of you Massively readers gets the job, be sure to regale us all with your tales misfortune and lunacy!

Funcom is hiring for seven Age of Conan-related positions -- three in Europe, and four in the United States.

The European opportunities are all "community coordinator" positions, and bilingual candidates are preferred. If you're looking for work in the United States, you can apply for one of Funcom's customer service positions. The Durham, NC office seeks CS reps in the English, French, German, or Spanish languages.

Funcom is facing some serious community and customer service issues right now, such as exploits and ensuing bans. We don't doubt that the current staff is overwhelmed by all that's going on. Bringing in reinforcements is probably a good call.

Not long after launch day, Age of Conan, fell victim to such exploits. One involved the Demonologist class and leveling, and the other was a severe duping exploit via the trader system. Funcom is now under scrutiny for their handling of the situation. In many cases, Funcom opted to ban now, and suspend players for investigatory purposes before determining the final outcome. The aftermath from their decision had players crying foul, claiming that they did nothing wrong. In this interview with Ten Ton Hammer, the Senior Customer Service & QA Manager for Age of Conan explains the situation and admits that some suspended accounts were free from any illicit activity and reinstated. Some players are still awaiting word on their fate.

How do you think Funcom is handling the situation?

Sony Online Entertainment is hiring for a few positions, and is soliciting resumés on its game forums.

Specifically, it's looking for customer support representatives to work with knowledge base articles for Free Realms and Vanguard. The job descriptions note that SOE's knowledge base articles are extremely important because they're the first and most common point of contact for customers. The CSRs will be responsible for producing, reviewing, and regionalizing knowledge base content.

The jobs appear to be entry level -- only a couple of years of gaming experience and a high school diploma are required. So if you know your MMO stuff, you live in or near San Diego (or are willing to move there, presumably), and you're out of work, e-mail SOE your resumé. You never know; it might be good.

In Pirates of the Burning Sea, finding yourself deep in unfriendly waters without a working compass can be a scary matter. When doubloons vanish, new servers fail to transfer characters, or installations freeze, even the nicest of pirates can start spitting out some nasty language. That 1-800 number or email to a random operator can sometimes lead to even more frustration as emails go unanswered and phone calls remain on hold. For Pirates of the Burning Sea, our glimpse into this dark world of customer service is provided by Misha.

In a recent PotBS devlog, Misha talks about customer service and gives players an update to the source of, or solution to, their troubles. Backlogs, angry pirates shooting cannons, and parrot droppings are major problems, but that is not stopping the team from getting down to business. They have setup a new tier system to get problems solved, offer more foreign language options, and are working on improving their research techniques. There is also a handy PotBS support page with FAQs and solutions to common problems. So if you find yourself all alone on some sandy beach with no rum and no way home, the folks at PotBS want you to know they are launching the rescue party and will arrive shortly.

Some games offer two tiers of membership, free and premium. Some are free-to-play with microtransactions. Some are subscription-based, but have free-trial periods. Customer service and technical support costs the same whether someone's paying or not, though.

Should the free-trials and free users get the same amount of customer care and technical support as the paying players? Should it not matter? If free/free-trial users get less or no support does that encourage them or discourage them from upgrading to paying for the game? Shower us with your collective wisdom!

MMOCrunch has a customer service horror story up about trying to get their credit card info back from Turbine. After Mike canceled his Lord of the Rings Online account, he tried to get his credit card information off of Turbine's servers, but they told him that if he did that, he would never be able to play his copy of that game ever again. They told him that once he "deactivated the account," he would never, ever be able to reactivate it again.

Now, there aren't that many companies out there that will actually delete your credit card information and let you keep your account-- I'm told that NCSoft will let you "remove card" from your account, but that's pretty much it. So Turbine's inability to remove the card from the account isn't surprising. What is surprising, however, is that by deactivating your account, they remove the ability to ever play with that disc's key again. Turbine's LotRO EULA says nothing about canceling your account, either, although it does say that if they "are unable to verify or authenticate any information you provide to us," then they can "terminate your license to the Software."

But whether it's legal or not, what's the point of spending $50 on a game disc when, after canceling your subscription, that disc becomes a coaster? Not cool for Turbine to break the game you paid for just because you'd like to keep your credit card information as safe as possible.