We need GM Police - Blue Tracker

#0 - March 21, 2007, 9:15 p.m.

From the 2 years of reading various GM responses to players on these forums and from what I have wittnessed ingame, I have come to the conclusion that WoW has absolutely no GM Police roaming their servers. They have GM inveistagotrs and GM 1 on 1 customer support; but there is no one to police and make sure the servers remain in peace.

There have been way too many times on my server that we have a person spamming the trade channel with rascist, sexist, or ust plan stupid comments that offend everyone. 20 people send in tickets but then we have to wait 30 minutes to an hour before any action takes place.

This could be avoided instantly if there were a GM Police watching the channels and zones who would see this. He could take care of the problem quickly and it would save the other GMs the hassle of reading through 20 tickets regarding the same problem.

WoW has 50+ servers right now. The method of GM waiting for complaint tickets and fixing each problem personally on a 1 on 1 basses witht he customer is an obsolete waste of man power. This method only works on ner servers with low population. One person per a server could do the job of 20 just by actively patroling the servers.

GM Police's functions are simple. They hover about invisibly , (or even visible), jumping from various ingame channels and zones making sure players are not harrassing each other, misusing channels, and alos making sure certain quest and creatures are not buggy and clogging up the server.

When a GM Police sees something out of the ordinary, they make their presence known and fix the problem publicly. These are important.

In conclusion the GM Police would cut the amount of harrassment and dispute tickets in half. Their presence will inform and reinforce rules set in each server to all players. The amount of players who publicly harrass and spam channels would be dramatically lowered. Lastly, the other Blizzard GMs will be able to spend their time answering real ticket calls for stolen accounts, buggy quest etc.

Batta

#7 - March 21, 2007, 10:09 p.m.

Plitoa, let me first begin by stating that the ideal of your proposal is very genuine and ultimately positive. The focus of your point seems to be centered around the objective of making our duties more proactive and responsive to various cosmetic issues (malfunctioning NPCs, etc) and harassment scenarios, which is a valid assertion. With this being said, the proposal lacks a few fundamental elements: general feasibility concerning staffing and cost effectiveness. Allow me to elaborate:

Q u o t e:
WoW has 50+ servers right now. The method of GM waiting for complaint tickets and fixing each problem personally on a 1 on 1 basses witht he customer is an obsolete waste of man power. This method only works on ner servers with low population. One person per a server could do the job of 20 just by actively patroling the servers.

WoW in the US actually has much closer to 300 hundred realms now. Consider that is required for us to be a 24/7 Support department to keep up with the fact that each realm experiences very little downtime, and is consistently fairly populated at all hours of the day. In order to designate "GM Police," one for each realm and faction, you're suggesting we have a minimum of close to 600 Game Masters on staff 24 hours a day. According to your proposal, this does not include those Game Masters who would be left to address petitions. If three shifts are to be used to cover all hours of the day (morning, night, overnight) for our "GM Police," we're talking a minimum of 1,600-1,800 employees--again, not including those taking tickets. While I'm unable to divulge specific numbers of employees working here, I can assure you our entire Game Master staff comprises of less than half the number required to maintain the logistics of your suggestion.

Put simply, it isn't feasible to police at random in the game on all realms at all times. What we have devised instead is a complex petition system and corresponding GM Support Tool which helps us to identify pertinent issues and extreme instances of harassment as quickly as possible. Using this method, we can use a much smaller pool of employees who can address petitions from any/all realms at once according to the time in which each petition is submitted. A global petition system of this nature allows us to very accurately determine what types of issues are circulating across the realms, as opposed to individuals maintaining the "policing" of individual realms, which would ultimately make it much more difficult to maintain a standardized service for all realms.

Batta

#18 - March 21, 2007, 11:54 p.m.

Well, do also keep in mind that we do have "police" of sorts roaming around the game at random times for various reasons. Also be aware that you would never know it.

I can't tell you how many times I've left my Game Master character auto-following a player for extended periods in such a way that it would be nearly impossible for the player to shake my trail. If I do not find what I'm trying to find, the player would never know the difference. We are out in the game world when we need to be.

Batta

#20 - March 21, 2007, 11:56 p.m.

Q u o t e:
Diruo, if you live in Irvine California, blizz is in fact currently hiring more GMs.

http://www.blizzard.com/jobopp/customer-service-representative.shtml

Not only Irvine, CA anymore. ; )

Batta

#23 - March 21, 2007, 11:58 p.m.

Q u o t e:

/fret

Do you ever do this just to have something to watch while answering other tickets? :)

I definitely did that once or twice, though we do not want to put any additional strain on our realms, nor is it time efficient to do so. : )

Batta

#25 - March 21, 2007, 11:59 p.m.

Q u o t e:

omgomgomg where else??

http://www.blizzard.com/jobopp/customer-service-representative-tx.shtml

Batta

#28 - March 22, 2007, midnight

Q u o t e:
Austin? No,no, you were supposed to expand to East Coast silly.

= (

But... we're compromising to meet you halfway!