f13.net

Nice to see WoW picking up where Abashi left off.  I especially love the GM's "oh, we know that's a bug, that's why we can't help you with it" line.

http://www.warguild.net/cms/modules/coppermine/albums/userpics/10039/AwesomeCustomerService.jpg

I don't understand what was bugged in that issue.

Your supervisor
Give them to me
Now


Whatever they're paying those GMs, it's not enough. The amount of retardation they must deal with in a single day is staggering to consider.

That's not unusual, but they probably ought to send their CSRs on this (http://www.ouellette-online.com/workindex.html#A) course if that's the best they can manage.

Is anyone else clear on what the issue was? I've missed it. I see a GM saying, we can't help you, and another guy saying you did it in Beta. Oh well if they did it in BETA it must apply to the live game, right? I don't think people understand what Beta is.

My understanding is that a group was trying to raid an area and got split between two instances.  The group simply wanted to be placed together in the same instance such that they could finish the raid.  Feel free to correct me if I got it wrong.

I feel for these guys... their bosses hand down directives knowing they don't have to face the fire from the customer for enforcing them.  If you ever have to deal with a GM, try not to shoot the messenger.

Pretty much goes for any type of customer service job.

You people take all the fun out of petitioning GMs.

Dudes, Blizzard has an official policy not to help players who are getting fucked by a known even though they have shown that they have to ability to do so.  The guild was split into two different versions of the same instance because of a known bug, and policy is not to fix that problem because it is a known bug.  WTF?  

No, it's not the GM's fault, it's Blizzard's fault.  But if you tell your GM staff "hey, we know about this bug but if people ask you to help them, tell them 'we know all about your bug and yeah it sucks but we aren't gonna help you even though we can because...well, because we just don't wanna.  No, you can't talk to anyone higher up, but feel free to send an e-mail to lol_you_know_this_will_be_insta_deleted@blizzard.com have a nice day'" you know damn well that players are going to go off on them.  

In any event, I don't think the player in this case overracted at all.  He didn't curse or insult the guy.   He was initially completely and utterly stunned, which I would be if I was told "Its a known bug, that's why I can't help you with it."  Then he said "let your boss know that your customer service is terrible" which is just an objectively true fact of the universe.

This is worse than anything I've seen SoE do, excepting the Mystere shindig.  It, along with bugged lockout timers and obvious missing progression steps, is part of Blizzard frantically attempting to cockblock their players from completing current content until they actually finish content that Blizz claims is already in the game.  It's Vex Thal keys and Plane of Earth B all over again.


I think they understand quite clearly that they are beta testing right now.

Conspiracy theories aside, have you considered the possibility that solving an incident of this bug might be very difficult in "real time"?

What if there's no easy way to move players from one instance to another?

Nah, that's not likely. Let's just go with "Blizzard hates you, wah wah wah."

Ever hear of a workaround? Your customer has a legitimate problem with a broken game element.  If the mechanic isn't fixable, perhaps you should consider a) offering them a compromise (i.e. allowing them to restart the encounter together in the same instance) or b) eliminating access to the problem area until such a time when the problem could be fixed.  

MMOG's being the crack addiction that they are, most houses realize that they have some latitude in dealing with such issues.  The complaint here isn't that Blizzard is evil, it's that they are aware of a problem and have done nothing to minimize their customer's exposure to a bad experience with said problem.  To make the situation worse, the apathetic GM supervisor is forcing their staff to offer customers a non-fix knowing full well that the customer will take out their frustration on the GM rather than the supervisor.

1. Report the problem and request assistance.  

2. If they can't help request an accomodation.

3. If no compromise is offered, consider your options.  

You're right though... as frustrated as you get with the GM, there's no reason to be an ass about it.

With all the money Blizzard is raking in from this launch, their first priority should be extravagant support.  In my experience, the two biggest retention-breakers are:  horrible technical bugs, and bad/insulting support.  If I were on their management team, I would go for overkill on the support this close to launch, and scale back later if need be.  If your retention is incredible, maybe you won't need to scale back at all.

Shit, this is NOTHING like Abashi-style GM'ing. If it was, the GM would have threatened to ban the guy if he kept sending tells, and when he did send tells, the GM would have banned the guy, banned his entire guild, and then sent an unkillable dragon with death touch rampaging through six town zones for three hours.

That'd be fine, except the guy notes that GM's WERE doing this for people during the beta period.  So it is possible.  Heck, the GM as much as says that he'd like to help them, but policy forbids him from doing so.  Not technology, policy.

Just sayin'.

And Haemish, I don't think abashi was ever a GM.  And frankly, if it takes that for a company to end up where SOE is now, which, forums-wise, is second to CoH.  The dev tracker there lists lots of sane posts daily by the CSRs, and even actual devs posting questions and clarifications regarding posts of bugged quests from the big content patch they did a couple weeks ago.

Of course, the more you do, the more players expectations go up...  

Alkiera

Abashi wasn't a GM that I know of. I'm just saying that comparing this GM's evil quotient to Abashi was way off.

I'm sure GMs in beta had a lot more powers than what they do now.  GMs that did that in beta were probably closely tied to the developers that wanted to witness people taking on these harder raid instances. You're comparing two different situations.  One situation where they desperately needed data points and one where they have your credit card. Once you're out of beta, special favors that could help testing are replaced with cold hard policy.

Should there be an expectation of better service in this situation? Sho 'nuff! The guy seemed ill equiped to handle the situation and probably should have some sort of stock reply on a cue card for this and just refuse further conversation.  Most of your bargain basement CSRs aren't bright enough to go toe to toe with a pissed off ub0r.

It's worse than simply being split between instances. You are split between instances... then each split is locked into a group for the instance such that you cannot simply leave the instance and try again for about a week or so unless you wanna try with 1/2 a raid.. What this means is that if a raiding guild(s) get a raid together and get a split, that's your endgame on hold for about a week.

About the policy, it is the right one for the problem they have created for themselves. From what I have heard (rumor and supposition though it is) there is only 1 GM per server, per shift. If this GM had to teleport players everytime they decided to say "fuck the bug, lets roll the dice and waste a GM's time to fix us after" (plus all the "you do it for that/them, why not for this/us?") then the GM response time would be even more crap than it is now.

Of course the REAL solutions would fall into one of 3 reasonable alternatives: 1) get more GM's so they have time to deal with this shit 2) get it fixed like right now 3) lock the instance until you can fix it. If the above 3 aren't possible then the option they have now is fair and good. Of course, you'd have difficulty convincing me 1 and 3 are not possible, so yeah...

And this was not a bad GM response at all. Infact, I would say it was a FANTASTIC GM response. He talked the issue through fully, he talked with his collegues in an attempt to find a more acceptable solution, he empathised with the player, he was very patient, and he even asked if he had any other problems before he left. It's the policy that's wrong, not the GM. Not at all.

This reminds me of the bug that used to hit the Plane of Fear every once in a while. After a patch or a server reset, the zone wouldn't repop, and you'd have to get a GM to manually repop the zone for you. And they would too. That latsted for 2-3 years at least.

I had a lot of different and varying GM experiences during my time playing EQ.  They were either extremely helpful and would go out of their way to make sure your play experience wasn't ruined.  Hell, we had a GM kill 2 mobs in the Plane of Growth to allow us to CR and leave. However, they could also invoke the "I cannot help thee", "I will not reimburse you for that", or "I don't feel like checking the logs right now".  It was a wildly inconsistent experience.

That's why a unified policy is a good thing. Even if it is a shitty policy.

The intermediate solution is to get rid of the lockout timers on instances unless you beat the instance, which is what Tigole swore up and down they would do before release.  

I really think that this is part of an intentional cockblocking strategy to keep power gamers away from the fact that they are just about finished with all the content that actually exists.

EDIT: Tigole to the rescue http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.aspx?fn=wow-general&t=1039976&p=1&tmp=1#post1039976
so this should be fixed one of the three patches they will put out over the next year.

Holy fuck, that's a crapload of pretty big bugs, especially when you consider how important raids are to the endgame of MMOG's of this type.

This whole endgame problem amazes me. Didn't Onyxia work in beta? it occurs to me that this has everything to do with Shadowbane.

She "worked" - if worked= beat the shit out of people. That whole 'hatchlings got messed up due to some other change' thing is funny though. Reminds me of OSI fixing the snoop bug and then magic missle did 90 dmg. wtg.

Eh...this is turning out like every other MMORPG release. Been there, done that.

Content that was promised not delivered, delivered way late, or in poor fashion...surprising!

Also applies to: plumbers, electricians, mechanics, authors, and prom dates.  It's really a problem with people.

Yes and no. She "worked" because they rolled back the lockout timers to 6 hours. Which they only did for the "kill a raid boss" competitions.

All this over bad customer service? You know what I do when I get bad customer service? I take my business elsewhere. Someday gamers will grow up and learn to let their money do the talking... and walking as necessary. It's a might powerful tool.

At a convenience store, where you've invested maybe 5 minutes, sure.

An MMOG is more like a vocational school, where they've provided the context for you to build up a legacy.  Quitting to make a point is doable, but definitely more painful given the investment you've put in so far.

Games make it difficult by their very nature as well. With many other things you can just leave and bring your business to somoene else without losing too much. With games you can't really do that because they are all different to an extent. If you like WoW but don't like the CS that Blizzard has provided you can't just play WoW with a different company. If you don't like the CS you either play and put up with it, move to an inferior alternative for you (because if it was better you'd be playing it instead), or just not play at all. Those aren't anything like going to over a few blocks to shop at another supermarket, or getting your car serviced somewhere else.

It's not painful. It's a fucking game. If it's painful, then that would be the realization that you wasted days upon days of your life for absolutely nothing. And that's exactly what it is... nothing. It's a virtual avatar, data really, that will be gone when the servers go dark someday. Investment of time can be painful if you end up feeling that you've invested it poorly. That's why people don't quit. If they keep playing, they don't ever have to address the reality of a wasted life. But that's just my opinion. I could be wrong.

There are multitudes of games and other leisure activities available in the world today. I find it hard to believe that WoW is so good that you can't find something just as entertaining to do with your spare time. Step back and look at the big picture. There's a whole world out beyond the confines of the MMOG and online gaming genres. ;)

If find it hard to believe you could be so patronizing on a gaming message board. People other than you actually do make choices about whether playing a game is a fun way to spend time or not.

World of Warcraft is video game and a "hobby". A great number of people derive real enjoyment from playing it. Just because these players don't run and cancel subscriptions over some random guy's sob customer service story doesn't make them mindless, addicted victims.

At my favorite restaurant, I've gotten bad service every once in a while. What if I want to go back there because I love the food or the ambiance?

I meant that guy should cancel. Instead of sobbing about it, if it really bothers him that much.

As to the restaurant thing, I can agree with you. If I get bad service once in a while, I can still go. And I probably would because, well, it's my favorite restaurant and there are more reasons for that than just service. But people have a threshold and once that is reached, why would you continue to go? Would you stand outside and complain to other people coming to eat about how bad your experience was? Would you whine and moan and groan and make a spectacle of yourself? Perhaps, you would, but I would take my money and business somewhere else. To each their own.

Lastly, apologies if I came across as patronizing. I was just trying to share some experience of my own. It's more than just gaming, it's a community. ;)

Sorry about the harsh tone of the earlier message.

I just think that people get a little hysterical about customer service. And on message boards like this, you see:

"If there was evidence of bad customer service, you should immediately quit a game or else you are contributing to the downfall of MMORPGs"

I view it like i look at financial numbers:  Gross Fun - Aggravation from Servers/Support/Other = Net Fun .

I totally agree with that. I have no patience for people who endlessly sob about their pet theory of how <insert gaming company here> ruined their lives.

My point was that your flip solution of "don't like it? quit!" isn't quite as easy as it is in other areas.  

There are other things to do, though, fortunately, like do something else for awhile in the game, or get some fresh air (Heaven forfend).  But apparently whining is more fun for some people.

Well it would help if there were people who did something besides race to the end game as fast as humanly possible for bragging rights as well.

It would help because then people wouldn't know the endgame didn't work or was non-existent?

I never really cared that EQs endgame was always (at least post-Velious) a not-nearly finshed, buggy shitfest because I was always at least half an expansion behind the true uberguilders.  By the time I got to the content, it was mostly decent, and I never ricked running out of content ahead of me.  

This shit actually worries me in WoW because I am not actually very far behind them (because of teh content consumption rate) and Blizzard has been slow as shit to patch, much less add new content, in the past.

Not shocking in the slightest. We all knew that Blizzard would not be able to keep up with demand (they could still prove me wrong... with my luck, they've got some 20 zone ace up their sleeve that they've managed to keep hush-hush about ;). Hell, I think Turbine is really the only MMOG dev that has ever really kept up with demand and that was only with AC1. At some point, even they were overcome by player demands also.

So you think WoW's customer service is woeful?

Let's take a page from a new asshole CS, same as the old asshole CS. My wife has recently gone back to EQ after finishing RE4. Yeah, I know, I mock her for it incessantly, but she enjoys it. So after yesterday's patch, she can't login anymore. Frankly, I'd take that as a good thing, but she goes into their tech support chat room, and is greeted by assloads of other poor sods who can't login either. From completely different servers and stuff. The beleagured CSR's waffle between "I don't know what's wrong" to "It's your ISP... yes, ALL of you."

Same as it ever was.

lol This is total Crap.


GM #1: Hi. It's on our end. We don't know what's going on. Delete 5 files but nothing more.


GM #2: Hi. Please open ports 1063 - 65,000 and wait. If you try logging in for a solid hour you may actually get ON and oh yes, it is our fault since the patch earlier yesterday.

So..which of these am I supposed to do?


Why the hell did I ever re-up my EQ account? For what reason.

Adddiction. I need help.

/rant ongoing

It annoys/amuses me that GMs will stun you one way or another by either completely fixing your problem, or being completely useless.  

I wish they'd be more consistent, but you can sometimes get a nice surprise.

GM_Numbnuts #2: Hi. Please compromise your network security by setting your router to wide fucking open and wait. Don't mind the fact that thousands of trojans can hit you in that range. It's more important that you give yourself a chance at connecting to our shit-tastic product that we label a game in order to keep siphoning cash from your wallet.


But that's just my little poetic interpretation. I would suggest you do neither and wait until they fix what they fucked up. Oh, and demand a pro-rated refund of your monthly fee for every day you are unable to access their service.

The funny thing is like minutes after posting this, I got in. So maybe someone bought a new hamster for the wheel running the Karana server over in San Diego.  I used to be a Guide for this game twice over, you'd think I'd come to expect and understand this shit fully but noo.

Patch Day on Everquest. A four day event all the 12#!#!#!@#!#! time.


Ahh but at least now I can play, until Guild Wars comes out. Then I'm SO gone.

I had to petition a GM today.  I fell through a rift in time and space and landed dead.  I went to my corpse and and stood right on it but no option to recover popped up.  I went back to where that angel thingy was but it wouldn't speak to me.  I waited for over an hour for a GM but no one turned up.  Am I surprised?  No.  Not one of my 6 petitions have ever been answered, although I have received emails for 3 of them apologising for not helping me.  Whoop.

On a positive note... EB has readjusted their ship date for GW to 3/22.  Yay!

Oh yeah for sure. When it comes to incessant bitching you really have to sit back and ask yourself if it's worth it. I was saying that the option to leave is a little harder than somewhere else, but I do concede it's not the end of the world. Personally I've never had bad CS on a MMOG that would make me want to quit a game. I've had the runaround for a few minor things, but nothing fun-breaking.

Oh, and when did Haemish marry SuperPopTart?

July, 2004.  Only took them 7 years, too!  It still makes me misty-eyed.

Sniff.

All of my petitions have been answered.  Of course, none while I was actually still playing, but none of them were actual do or die situations.

"Orgasmdonor" on Shadowsong is likely enjoying his new GM supplied name.  I probably should have let that one fly just for the irony of it.  Anyone with that kind of in game name probably has never even seen female genetalia that wasn't rendered on their computer.

On Alleria, I was guilded with a guy who had a somewhat objectionable name (Fook).

He was shocked when he logged on one day to find his character renamed to   Delageleril.

If I worked at Blizzard, i would volunteer for renaming duty just to come up with names like that.

genitalia


But hey, as long as you're seeing it, it really doesn't matter how you spell it. ;)

I'm pretty sure Rasix has seen the actual thing more than the word, and a damn sight more than the Orgasmdonor had seen either the word or the object.

Depends on what kind you're talking about. I have a feeling that lonely Orgasmdonor gets a good look as his junk quite frequently.

He waited until I became a virgin again. Ya know, the whole 7 year thing? And really it was more like 2 years in game time.


SIGNE! How have you been, girl? It's a sad place gaming without another female :( Though there are so many in EQ, there are so few just like you.

I still play WoW from time to time, although mostly everyone has buggered off.  I don't know where they all got to.   Luckily, GW is nearly right around the corner.  Hopefully, I'll remember how to play the damn thing.  I look forward to killing off my friends and family in a game, again.  I'm particularly lethal after laundry.  Maybe we'll use TS and distract them with our chatter.  

Oh, how we'll laugh.

We'll set up a time right after you do laundry and I do dishes, we'll log into TS and onto GW and blast everyone away with our witty commentary and playing skills. Yep Mhmmmm.


We shall chortle.

.

Last release date I heard/read was April, 2005.  That's a very big corner.

EB changed their ship date to March, and some have it even earlier.  The April date is SO two days ago!

I'm still banking on Tuesday, March 15th.

March 15 sounds reasonable.  Some places seem to have dates in mid February, but that could just be lack of any updating.  I'm seeing nearly all the retailers having different dates, none of which seem to be April anymore.  Bestbuy seems the earliest at 2/5, although you have 2/1 for the deluxe above... which is weird.

March 15th is just a guess going on the fact that they haven't announced a March WPE and it's about a month after the "content"-rich February WPE.

They're releasing it on the Ides of March? How amusing.

Btw, I'll be happy to guild up with all of ya on that one....

"I LONG for COMBAT!!" - Some random WC VO.

March 15. So it will be cool to bash GW around mid-April, then?

So hard to keep track of teh trendey.