I purchased and downloaded Anno 1503 and it didn't run on my computer. The third party launcher simply did nothing when I clicked play, and the .exe file kept giving me 6 .dll errors when it tried to run it directly.
I didn't feel like diagnosing the problem myself, so I contacted the purchase site company tech support hoping they might have some insight. I submitted a ticket and attached pictures of the errors. They emailed me back with a very robotic looking list of all the things I already read from the FAQ on their website, despite the fact I told them in the ticket that I already went over the FAQ and tried all of them. I humored them and went down the list telling them the unchanging results of each try.
They emailed me back again with another suggestion that I was sure wouldn't make any difference because, just like every other suggestion, it's not addressing the .dll errors specific to this problem. I tried their suggestion. Big surprise - It made no difference. They said if that didn't work to try playing it on a different computer. That is simply an unacceptable answer for me because I want to play it on my desktop, and that was the whole point of me contacting them in the first place. I want it to work on THIS computer.
The amount of ignorance and miscommunication they were displaying got me frustrated. I gave up with them and decided to fix it myself. After googling around a bit and not finding any other situations online that corresponded to my problem, I did an in-place Windows upgrade that completely replaced all the .dll files that were causing issues. Problem solved.
I gave the tech people one final reply saying that they really should have actually read my description of the problem, and before completely giving up, they should've suggested an in-place Windows upgrade. Because seriously, what are the chances that won't fix the problem?
I have worked in tech support. I understand why there are blanket replies that cover all the most common issues. I understand that user error is common. But that's no excuse for blatant ignorance.
If the tech person doesn't actually read your description of the problem, how are they supposed to even know what the problem is? And if they don't know what the problem is, how are they supposed to help you fix it? I believe that because of the amount of detail I put into my description of the problem, this tech person should have realized that maybe, just maybe, I was talking about things that might help them solve the issue.
Anyway, the abundance of ignorance made me feel the need to rant. So yeah. Rant over.
