Customer Service and solutions

#0 - Oct. 22, 2010, 1:11 a.m.

Greetings,

I have found a fix for the unplayable status of the game we all love to play.

I canceled my account about 2 days ago and it fixed my problems.

I didn't open any tickets, and this is the first forum post I have made concerning the latest patch. I just want to vent some things that most probably won't even read, but that's okay. I need to do this for satisfaction.

My Husband and 2 of my kids also have wow accounts. That's 4 accounts total including my own. I could have closed all of these accounts, but my kids love to play WoW and I couldn't bring myself to do it.... not yet.
If these problems are not fixed very soon, every account that comes off my card each month will in fact be closed.
My oldest son lives in another state and is in college. We use wow as one of our means to stay in touch. We can get that feeling that he is with us when we do things together on wow, even though he really isn't "with" us. WoW gives us that gift. We don't have a lot of money right now, as many folks don't, so I cannot spoil my kids with gifts as would normally be done. On wow though, I can send them gifts and give them gold and it helps me feel like I have given them something, even though I truly haven't. I will stop there before I get too mushy mushy on here, I don't want to be flamed or harassed. Please understand though, WoW has been a part of mine and my families lives for a long time, since 2005 to be exact. We bought it for my oldest son in Feb 2005 and that purchase has lead to 3 more accounts over the years.

Now, It seems to me that blizzard has chosen to disregard a large portion of the player base that keeps this beast rolling. If it wasn't for the players posting and complaining on these forums, World of Warcraft wouldn't be what it is today.

How has blizzard disregarded a large portion of the player base you might ask?

Boasting that there are 12 MILLION subscribers on the website, then release a patch that is so incredibly messed up, then allow it to continue for this long is insulting to me. The way customers are being treated is deplorable. People having to wait for DAYS to get assistance?! Are you kidding me? It's an outrage!
This is why I didn't bother opening any tickets. It takes a couple of days as it is to get any response without mention of wow being unplayable lately.

The Hallow's Eve event is one of the events that my family looks most forward to. We can't even do it without freezing up because we can't be near anything you have to click on.
This isn't my problem, it's Blizzard's problem...

"Oh but there are work arounds"

No thanks..
It isn't my problem! My family shouldn't HAVE to put in some work around to fix a problem that blizzard should have corrected already. They get 14.99 a month for that from each and everyone of these loyal customers. (less depending on how you choose to pay)

Alright, I needed to toss my 2 cents out there. I could say more, but I'd be surprised if anyone even reads this far.
If you did read this far...Thanks for your time.
Regards,
an Ex-customer.

#38 - Oct. 22, 2010, 4:02 a.m.

I have to admit, Zannadee, I am confused by your post. I have read, and read, and read again, and I'm really truly clueless on how you are able to judge the level of customer service we provide when, by your own admission, you have made no previous effort to contact us.

We cannot provide customer service without your initiation. We cannot know an individual is having an issue unless they tell us. For us to blindly contact each of our 12 million players to see if they're doing alright is simply a logistical nightmare, beyond being downright impractical. I'm afraid we do not currently have mind readers or mediums on staff.

This patch has caused many, many unforeseen issues, but that is the nature of a massive patch such as this. A patch that is designed to set up for the destruction of Azeroth as you've known it. A patch that, to many, has felt like a fresh start. Smaller patches, even major content patches during an expansion, tend to create similar problems. But when something of this magnitude hits, no amount of testing on the PTR or our internal servers is a substitute for how that information will react to live servers. Players will always find something, bug or otherwise, that we may not have foreseen. I've definitely experienced this in my days as a Game Master both here at Blizzard and other related endeavors.

Allow me to get geeky here: Say I'm a game master for a table-top game. I've taken a lot of time, weeks, months even, to write out an adventure for a group of players. I've put twists and turns everywhere, thought out and written out multiple story lines and tangents and endings, even come up with my own rules for every possible situation I could think up.

No matter how much I think about it, or how much time I spend on it, I cannot account for the minds or machinations of the 4-6 players that sit down to play that game. Someone will come up with a tactic I could not have imagined. Or someone will turn the story on its head and go in another direction I could not have possibly anticipated. This is because I am not one of those 4-6 people - they think differently than I do, and operate differently from the way I do.

Programming can work a lot like that. You can put in all these variables to account for what should happen, but no programmer is able to account for what will happen. As familiar as you may be with hardware OR software, things can pop up that you didn't expect because you didn't think it was a possibility.

The best choice in that situation is to be flexible while trying to maintain an environment that is still playable and enjoyable. You don't want to stop the game until you can come up with something to fix it - you improvise a bit in the mean time (similar to providing available work-arounds), and sometimes that's obvious to your players. But you're still trying to work on a way to make it all fit together in the end.

That being said, I'm sad to hear that you have decided to drop something you feel is ultimately important as a bond between you and your family over the issues we have experienced in the past week. Some of them have been resolved. Some of them are still awaiting final resolution. Some fixes take more than a realm restart to implement, and in a lot of cases, that's what even our Game Masters and other employees are waiting on. We'll continue to try our best at doing what we do. If you feel that we could be doing better, then I encourage you to post in our Suggestions forums if you have concerns about development or policies, or to e-mail wowgmfeedback-us@blizzard.com if it is in regards to the way one of our Customer Service Representatives has interacted with you.

We do value the voice of each and every one of our players, and for that, I thank you for taking the time to post this. Best of luck to you in all you pursue.