#0 - June 29, 2010, 6:06 a.m.
I have played World of Warcraft since release, and up until the release of Burning Crusade it was a great experience. Continuing on, the game has become, for lack of a better word, dummed down. Whilst Cataclysm may hold hope for changes in game mechanics, it is too little too late for myself. This can be attributed to the woeful customer service of Blizzard.
Unfortunately, the service provided within and outside of World of Warcraft has been woefully inadequate and going downhill month by month. Perhaps not so much for Americans or those who are lucky enough to live around a similar time zone, but most definitely for myself as an Australian.
The layer cake was started with the ignorance of Blizzard and chosen public representatives towards the possible addition of Australian shore based servers. Even now we still have no official word on the why for and whens, we have been given west coast servers with the server time adjusted to AEST, however this has done little in the way of progression since the shutdown occurs on peak time for Australian and Oceanic players. To basically refine the response from Blizzard, we are being ignored.
Moving on. In-game petitions. Most recently I have had the lovely task of placing petitions that have lasted upwards of 3 to 4 weeks. This has not directly affected me in a detrimental way. However the manner and way in which my petitions have been serviced, has. The moments when I was speaking with a GM directly, I don't seem to be able to make any leeway other than, someone else will help you, but my ticket disappears into the nether, never to be seen again.
Other times, I am graced with a "You were busy in game" message. Unfortunately I wasn't, so obviously waiting for 5 days on that ticket in particular didn't even warrant a 5 minute conversation. The issue was still outstanding even after lodging a second ticket, which again magically traversed into the nether, never to be seen by whomever it was required to fix.
Server restarts, downtimes and so on. There was a time in classic where you used to credit accounts 24 hours play time for 24 hours lost. Now, maybe Im being a tightass here. But Im not the one with a multi-million dollar profit margin.
Leading me to the most recent issues. Out of game support, or, lack of. I spent the past 7 days attempting to contact Blizzard by phone - an ancient technique of communication I know. But when I pay monthly royalties to a company, I would prefer instant communication as opposed to tickets that go missing and emails never responded - more on this in a moment. I was honoured to listen that your call centre queue was experiencing high amounts of call volumes, and is not accepting any further calls. The first day, I waited patiently, as you do at 2am in the morning. 3am, and the same message. Very well, sleep time - luckily this was the beginning of my weekend. I wake on the morrow to attempt at 9am, 10am, 11am and finally 11:59am before your call centre closes. Still, the same message. So I email as the autotomic lady requests that I do.
I continue for the remainder of the weekend to call every 30 minutes excluding the time I have to sleep. Then my week starts, which because I work in a call centre myself, limits the remote possibility of contacting you and sitting on hold for any period of time. Thankfully, again you were too busy to accept my call to the queue.
7 days later, no email response, no progress on phone. This leads me to write a very frustrated thread to which many a self righteous and trolling player enticed themselves upon. Me being in the frustration mood I was, I unfortunately fed them.
Today, through some miracle, after hitting redial for the 176th time...yes, I counted....I managed to get into the queue. Progress perhaps? I think not. After waiting approximately 50 minutes on hold, to the disdain of my fellow colleagues, I finally reached a non enthusiastic, uncaring, apathetic representative.
According to your representative I have no option except to mail/fax/scanemail my personal ID. This gentlemen and ladies, is absurd, why you ask? Because I enquired if it was possible to cancel my account. That was, but you cannot reset my security app. So how would you know what official Australian identification looks like, and further more, what do you have to compare or even clarify if it was simply made using photoshop to look like the real deal.
The top 5 big banks in Australia that utilise the same technology of security tokens and applications can do an over the phone check to disable it, allowing access to financial funds, but you cannot. Your procedures allow for a griefer to close an account with limited details, but cause a massive pain in the ass and identity risk for the real person to jump through hoops. This absurb procedure is one I will not follow the rabbit down simply because I do not show my personal information to anyone I do not trust. And quite frankly guys, I wouldn't entrust my pet rock with customer service.
So I took the logical option. I have cancelled my account. The reason, Customer Service and the ridiculous procedures necessary to play a game.
To those self-righteous, trollers and all other things in between - I bid you farewell and a feast on my writings above.
To customer services reps, or perhaps the passer by blue. I would love to hear your thoughts on my thread. But I wont hold my breath, I know how you guys love to ignore difficult situations, or Australians for that matter.
