It was just a typical Monday — I had nothing to do and, of course, World of Warcraft’s authentication/login server was hosed so Lisa and I couldn’t play until well after midnight (its a sign of just how sick our addiction is that we were still awake trying to logon that late.)
The bottom line is that while WoW is incredible, Blizzard sucks.
And it doesn’t just suck because of the downtime. Rather, it is how it handles the downtime — or fails to handle it, to be more accurate.
When I switched this website over to Conversant several years ago, initially there was a lot of downtime. The problem turned out to be some faulty components in the server — they were replaced and life went on as before.
As frustrating as the downtime was, it was ameliorated to a large extent by Macrobyte’s customer support which always let me know they took the problem very seriously and were working as hard as they could to isolate the problem. From my experience, both as a customer and providing technical support to others, if you are earnest, honest and forthright, people will generally give you the benefit of the doubt and give you room to do your job.
What I absolutely hate is to be blown off as a customer. In contrast to Macrobyte, take McDonald’s. Recently I was at a McDonald’s with a breakfast order and I needed to return to work ASAP. My food is actually all prepared — the Egg McMuffin comes down the chute, the hash browns are made. But 10 minutes later I still don’t have my food. The person behind the counter who should be throwing my food in a bag has spent the last 10 minutes going in the back, grabbing some creamers, and is refilling the creamer holder one creamer at a time. The managers are huddled off in a side office joking about something, and the cashier is oblivious. Which is when I walked out without my food — there are plenty of other places to obtain breakfast.
Unfortunately, Blizzard is more like McDonald’s than Macrobyte. Blizzard has had repeated problems with their login/authentication servers. I don’t know what’s involved in that sort of technology and I don’t want to know. When you’re raking in tens of millions of dollars for an online game as Blizzard is, you should damn well make sure your customers can log in. More importantly, you should have a game plan for what you’re going to do when they can’t and provide some sort of explanation.
Instead, first Blizzard pretty much refuses to communicate about the problem and the communication they do offer is PR bullshit. So a screen will come up saying, “We are aware some people are having difficulties logging in.” Some people? Based on forum comments and my completely unscientific survey of WoW players from around the country, it was pretty much everyone.
The same message urged people not to abort the login attempt when it appeared to hang but instead urged them to hang in there “for a few more moments.” Unfortunately what this meant was you might wait half an hour before getting the disconnect message.
The support in the forums was even worse. As I said this is an ongoing problem, and has been a huge problem for several weeks on Monday nights. Blizzard takes the servers down for maintenance every Tuesday and at that time they updated PVP stats which determine relative ranks between players. As a result, one theory is that a lot of people try to log in Monday night to get a few more PVP kills before the next day’s calculations. This apparently overwhelms the login/authentication server (either that or its one hell of a coincidence that the game is unavailable practically ever Monday evening).
But despite this, the technical support people in Blizzard’s forums resort to blaming the user. I read a number of threads, for example, for the first people who had trouble logging in. So they’d report that the would see a connecting/authenticating/handshaking screen which would take a long time and then disconnect — exactly what players have experienced that past few weeks.
The responses I read from Blizzard support were basically to the effect that it couldn’t be a server issue so it must be a problem with that person’s computer. In one thread the Blizzard support technician had the player uninstall her user interface mods, uninstall her video driver and queried her about what version of driver she was using for her network card. But the problem had nothing to do with any of that — it was entirely a problem with Blizzard’s servers.
At the moment, Blizzard probably doesn’t care and it really doesn’t have to. WoW is so much better (IMO) than similar games that it is just not going to lose many people with its callous indifference. If something comes along that is even close, however, that indifference might cost them a lot of customers. They may be saving money now by not investing much in customer support, but it could still cost them in the long run. If that was my business, I wouldn’t want to take that risk, but Blizzard apparently does not have such qualms.
fuck you
Now that’s a serious fanboy.
No, no, you’re doing it wrong. It’s “UR GAY!” Man. Where is Internet troll culture these days?
Amen man. Seriously, Blizzard has become so fucking complacent, arrogant and apathetic. Just like Nintendo and Sony back when they were banking on monopoly and fanboy loyalty.
Maintenance is a joke.
Customer service is rock bottom.
They’re sitting on over $3 billion in raw, unspent capital.
I love the excuses the fanbois make:
Eleven million customers: Bullshit. Try maybe four to six in America and, they aren’t all packed into one server.
Tons O’ Code: Just like every other MMO/multi-user application out there, that doesn’t fuck up this much while having a mere fraction of the resources and support. It’s not the code, it’s the idiots writing it.
The forums are a joke, you can’t confront Blizzard -who cleverly forced customer service into a public forum- without the brain-dead fanboi board users (who are about as dumb as gamers can get) bullying the thread into obscurity -while defying all logic and consumer dignity- in favor of defending a heartless corporation that doesn’t care about them.
The CM’s are just about one-half step above an automated recording. When one chooses to respond, it’s either PR crap like you said; a really idiotic solution that they know won’t help; or a sarcastic response to a really shitty post/while demanding good responses, that, they will promptly ignore.
When their poor logic is countered, they simply leave and ignore or, tell you to post the same question again, while closing the current thread.
I think the max I.Q. for a CM is 73.
The only thing these Community Managers “manage” to do with any regularity or competence, is fuck the place up, fucky style.
The boards a troll’s paradise and Blizzard’s CM’s prefer it that way. Why answer a question when a fanboi can make up one for you?
See you on Aion.
Indeed fuck blizzard they are really pieces of shit sitting on their lazy ass I can’t retrieve password no more cuz I’ve been hacked 2 times already and I was stressed when I was making the NEW one so I don’t remember no more what it was plus when I called them it was “Please be aware that we are fucking retarded you have to wait a fucking 30 min just cus we’re lazy.” and suddenly, they went home and sat on their fat lazy asses watching their shit!
Agree with you, I’m waiting reply from billing service 48+ hours blizzard support sucks.
you stereotypes are pathetic
you really think you are the only ones with problems?
dumb little shits
go play warhammer or aion and cry about them
Cunt,
Let’s see fanboy troll stereotype list:
Retarded “edgy” name? Check.
Trolling? Check.
Internet tourrettes? Check.
Obligatory Warhammer/Aion hate? Check.
Getting personally offended by attacks against unrelated game company? Check.
Go play *insert random game*? Check.
Poor punctuation? Check.
Desperation? Check.
been waiting for 7 days now for a response from tech support, billing took 10 days to answer whether or not i can use paypal from Australia to pat for a cd key (answer NO).
still cant login- if this was any Teleco cmpnay (and with a monthly subsciption of about 15-20 it is comparable) tech support would have solved problems by now.
Only problems I have had with blizzard is an attempt to fix my hacked account, I went through the necessary steps and sent in my complaint, after 7+ days Blizz messages me and says, We are sorry, but we cannot find your account on the European server list, hmm, maybe that’s because I don’t play on a European server, and didn’t write that I did. I managed to change my account password and stop the hacker from accessing my account myself, with no help from blizzard (theres glad the hacker was a complete retard who was faulted by a password change, after the 3rd time). In all I don’t believe Blizz support is 100% incompetent, but for 15 dollars a month from millions of people all over the world, they could, and should, be doing a hell of a lot more for customers support.
Blizzard sucks there are so fucking slow the got to many fanboys/kids that trolling the forum all day.
Atm am play Mortal online and the dont event have money for a test live server
and the support there are great. can chat with right away and petition its pretty
fast to. mailing answear day after.
What’s worse is that they admit themselves they’re lazy, look at this retrieved from an Account Investigation email (my account was hacked when i went on holidays).
STEP 3: VERIFY YOUR SUBMISSION WAS RECEIVED
We will contact you with further instructions once we have received and processed your submission. If you do not receive a reply within 48 hours of submitting this form, please resend it from the address listed above.
Note: “If you do not receive a reply within 48 hours of submitting this form, please resend it from the address listed above.”
Equals: “Sometimes were so lazy we don’t read your shit, please try again later”
Its too bad I don’t have a copy of a ticket that said something along the lines of “all the items that could have been restored have been sent to your characters.” I got nothing… lost all my gear, gold everything and they couldn’t recover a cent.
I quit Wow, and I feel much better!
Quit, stop sending these bitches money, and feel much better about yourself!
Even better, get all of your friends to quit with you.
I honestly don’t care how good a product is, I won’t give an asshole money.
why would you?
Yes, I played Warcraft, but when they started really pissing me off I quit.
It’s the only sane thing to do.
Blizzard sucks so fucking much, when they make the kind of money that they do they should fucking fix their own game… its riddiculus, worst game designers ever.
I agree that blizzard are assholes, I haven’t been able to effectively play for 3 months. I did everything they said to do including reinstall wow on a new computer.