What Blizzard do better

[Osicat]

In many ways SWTOR is outstanding as a game and I enjoy it in so many ways. Still one thing bugger me, the GM/ticket system

 

I was playing wow for many years both hardcore and casual. Several times things just dint go as planned. Some loot got messed up, some bug prevented a title or accivment etc etc. What did you do? You made a ticket about it and a few hours worst case a day later you eather got a GM to talk to or a mail where your problem where solved. You goot that loot you deleted or dint loot, the title you dint get due to x mecanic etc was there or your problem one or another was solved.

 

In SWTOR ppl made numerous tickets about wich to change legacy name without have this solved. Bug prevent loot in any ways and aswer is in the type "we hope to solve this bugg in the road ahead" or whatever. The other evening we did Kara nightame in 1h 20 min but due to respawned 3rd boss we dint get the title as we had to reset in order to be alowed to enter, we made a ticket and answer was "than you for report this issue and we hope our team will solve this bugg in the future"

 

Well I have news for you, this is not enought. When ppl have a problem/issue and report they dont give a crap about how you will solve the issue ion the future or the fact they helped by report this. its not beta, its live and we play for it every month meaning we want our title/loot/changed sorted already.

 

Serious if it been a Blizzard GM they would soved your issue and left you happy about it.

 

Its like if I called my insurance company and reporting my car was broken. I now need a car assitance service to get me and my car to repair. They take a few days before answer then give me the answer "thank you for reporting your car broke, this will help us prevent more broken cars in the future and we also working on a fix so in the future you will easy get your picked up by the road and fixed". But but ***? I want my car fixed! This dont solv my current problem! I pay for you to help me when my car dont work!

 

KK ty

[netskink]

macros too.

 

Right now we are at an uneven playig field because those of us who do not do macros are up against those who do. They use hardware macros via their keyboard or mouse.

[Kesica]

I dont want macros

[Blotter]

Bugs. Happen.

 

MC did similar things when WoW was in its infancy. Don't pretend that 7 years of having a LIVE game, not just beta, which introduces its own issues and bugs and what-not, and being able to see how their game operates LIVE and address the issues that it introduced...don't pretend that didn't happen. This crap about comparing BW's product to Blizz's product as they both stand now is tinfoil hat nonsense. WoW runs smooth instances for the most part now because it's had 7 years to address the very same kinds of bugs, which DID exist in WoW, that you're complaining about in SWTOR. I'm sorry you experienced one, but "What Blizzard do better" is release an MMO seven years earlier. Period.

Edited March 8, 2012 by Blotter

[Meldwyn]

Their customer service tends to discourage players from reaching out to them vs. being accommodating and inviting. They appear dismissive and uninterested in issues players have.

 

Can they get better, absolutely. Are they willing to change, don't know.

[Osicat]

But Blotter, you shoot and miss target totaly. Im not complaning about buggs here, or even the game witch I love. What im complaning about is the fact when a problem occurred and a ticket is made the GM dont solve the problem. Instead they note the tiecket, thank you for posting and tells you it will be solved in theu future. What preventing the Gm form instantly solve your problem, give you the title/gear/namechange or whatever? Nothing prevent it as it in special cases been done. Its just the attitude from the GM/company that we dont solv teh smal problems we work on solve the system to prevent em from happen.

 

But for the little person it dont make him happier, he want to have hes prolem solved and feel somone litening to him. Its like if teh police never solved the smal crimes but only worked on sort the system to preent em form happen. whell then ppl who reported smal crims would feel liek noone helped em/care.

[zZeDz]

Bugs. Happen.

 

MC did similar things when WoW was in its infancy. Don't pretend that 7 years of having a LIVE game, not just beta, which introduces its own issues and bugs and what-not, and being able to see how their game operates LIVE and address the issues that it introduced...don't pretend that didn't happen. This crap about comparing BW's product to Blizz's product as they both stand now is tinfoil hat nonsense. WoW runs smooth instances for the most part now because it's had 7 years to address the very same kinds of bugs, which DID exist in WoW, that you're complaining about in SWTOR. I'm sorry you experienced one, but "What Blizzard do better" is release an MMO seven years earlier. Period.

 

Your argument doesnt make sense. He's not complaining about the bug, he's complaining about the customer service. And he's right, the GM's in SWTOR are useless, they dont solve problems, they are slow to respond and they are just naive/incompetant at times.

 

Comparing BW and Blizzards product is allways going to happen, they are direct competetors in the market and naturally if one is lacking in a certain department then it will be compared to the other. WoW has had 7 years live yeah ok, SWTOR has been in development for 5 years and the end game content looks like it has been designed in a week which is quite frankly disgraceful, even the LEAD designers at the summit didnt know *** they where talking about, but dont worry, somewhere down the road everything will be great.

[Blotter]

But Blotter, you shoot and miss target totaly. Im not complaning about buggs here, or even the game witch I love. What im complaning about is the fact when a problem occurred and a ticket is made the GM dont solve the problem. Instead they note the tiecket, thank you for posting and tells you it will be solved in theu future. What preventing the Gm form instantly solve your problem, give you the title/gear/namechange or whatever? Nothing prevent it as it in special cases been done. Its just the attitude from the GM/company that we dont solv teh smal problems we work on solve the system to prevent em from happen.

 

But for the little person it dont make him happier, he want to have hes prolem solved and feel somone litening to him. Its like if teh police never solved the smal crimes but only worked on sort the system to preent em form happen. whell then ppl who reported smal crims would feel liek noone helped em/care.

 

What more do you think they could do? Zap you and your entire operations group to the last boss? There's only so much they can fix on the fly. The problem with your complaint is that we're not talking about "I bought the wrong vendor item" here. In which case, and I've had it happen, they generally handle it within a couple days quet nicely. Your complaint is that an entire raid instance reset for some reason, because of a known bug that BW is busy trying to fix, but yuo seem to think that opening a ticket that BW's ticket people might not see for several hours or even a couple days (because yes, there are people before you), can get yuo an instant fix, placing you and your operations group in the exact same position in the operation as you were in before the reset. That's a whole lot to ask and likely not even possible for them to achieve with a couple quick clikcs of a few buttons. Even if they instantly respond, what yuo've done is report a bug, which generally isn't something that any GMs in any game fix on the spot for you unless it's game breaking for you and easy to reset. For your operations group, it wasn't game breaking...it jsut meant yuo had to start over. Given that you spent only a short hour and twenty minutes doing a nightmare mode in the first place, it's not the end of the world.

[Blotter]

Your argument doesnt make sense. He's not complaining about the bug, he's complaining about the customer service. And he's right, the GM's in SWTOR are useless, they dont solve problems, they are slow to respond and they are just naive/incompetant at times.

 

Comparing BW and Blizzards product is allways going to happen, they are direct competetors in the market and naturally if one is lacking in a certain department then it will be compared to the other. WoW has had 7 years live yeah ok, SWTOR has been in development for 5 years and the end game content looks like it has been designed in a week which is quite frankly disgraceful, even the LEAD designers at the summit didnt know *** they where talking about, but dont worry, somewhere down the road everything will be great.

 

Anecdotes =/ data. I've had issues solved quite readily and politely within a reasonable time frame (yes, a couple days is a reasonable time frame, for all you impatient now now now self-entitled types). It's the nature and scope of the reported problem that's at issue here. I still want an answer: what more do you think a CS representative with minor GM powers could do in response to someone reporting a bug of this scope and nature other than politely thank you for reporting the bug, tell you that they are aware of it and that they are trying to fix it in the future?

Edited March 8, 2012 by Blotter

[Dyraele]

Yes, I have the same issue. I love the game but some of the tickets just get pushed aside and even answered that they sent me an email which I did not get. To be fair though, I didn't have any different experience in WoW. SWTOR GMs will respond to me within a minute or two if it is urgent, which was better than my WoW experience. However, I am sure that experience is different for everyone.

[Vincynt]

I do agree that Customer Service in SWTOR is pretty damn bad. Blizzard's Customer Service was REALLY bad at the get go too. That however is no excuse, Blizzard learned and their CS grew and now is pretty decent. With everything in SWTOR being virtual BW is litterally never out any money to give a customer something they want like say a retailer would be. So I don't see what the big deal would be in just giving people what they want, short of handing out things that players didn't actually earn / achieve according to the current in game mechanic.

 

I do however understand that it takes a while to get a response. That's pretty common in any newly launched MMO. But once you realize you have a staffing shortage for the demand generally you would, I don't know, hire people?

[zZeDz]

How to put this simply for you. He does not care about the bug. Ofcourse they are trying to fix it. He made the ticket because he and his raid DID the timed run yet where not rewarded for it. His point was that if this where Blizzard employees then they would get a reply within a day and all raid members would have been awarded the title, not recieve a message completely ignoring the customer just stating that they know about the issue and are working on it, thats not good enough.

[Osicat]

What more do you think they could do? Zap you and your entire operations group to the last boss?

 

We did get al bosses down, in 1h 20mins, we did not get title, we reported and we did not get title fixed.

 

In witch way can you defend this? Its not about me me me its about get ressults of your tickets.

 

Put it in lesser words to minimize the canse you missunderstand.

[Icebaron]

Anecdotes =/ data. I've had issues solved quite readily and politely within a reasonable time frame (yes, a couple days is a reasonable time frame, for all you impatient now now now self-entitled types). It's the nature and scope of the reported problem that's at issue here. I still want an answer: what more do you think a CS representative with minor GM powers could do in response to someone reporting a bug of this scope and nature other than politely thank you for reporting the bug, tell you that they are aware of it and that they are trying to fix it in the future?

 

A couple of days is not a reasonable amount of time. I am not self entitiled for thinking that either when WoW resolves issues in a matter of hours in comparison. You are defending the undefendabe sir.

 

Besides, the complaint is they didn't resolve the issue at all. I've had an issue over a missing 40k credits take three weeks to not get resolved. Granted, who cares about a measly 40k credits. But WoW would of got me my 40k credits back in 3 hours, SWTOR takes three weeks to tell me that they can't do it.

[Dyraele]

I just want to remind all the responders to not take your WoW experience as the same as what everyone experienced. I certainly was not responded to within a day or 2 for non-critical matters a LOT fo times. I even had an urgent matter that I waited online for 3 hours and never got responded to, so I just logged off. I only played for a little under 2 years so it may have improved later, but don't put everyone into the same basket when it comes to experience.

[DawnAskham]

Anecdotes =/ data. I've had issues solved quite readily and politely within a reasonable time frame (yes, a couple days is a reasonable time frame, for all you impatient now now now self-entitled types). It's the nature and scope of the reported problem that's at issue here. I still want an answer: what more do you think a CS representative with minor GM powers could do in response to someone reporting a bug of this scope and nature other than politely thank you for reporting the bug, tell you that they are aware of it and that they are trying to fix it in the future?

 

Differences I've experienced...

 

WoW - Something bugs such that you cannot complete an activity or an item / loot is missing. You submit a ticket, a GM will resolve the issue which sometimes may even include working with you in-game to to complete / correct, such as updating your quest progress or restoring an item. The end result is a player that is happy with the outcome even though they had a negative experience, and even though the actual underlying bug may still be present. Players feel Blizzard cares about them and that Blizzard stands behind their product.

 

SWTOR - Something bugs such that you cannot complete an activity or an item / loot is missing. You submit a ticket, you get an auto response back with 'thanks for telling us we have bugs, your ticket is now closed'. No resolution or work-around for the issue. In this scenario players go from just disappointed and frustrated to pissed because not only did they have to deal with the original issue, but now they feel Bioware could care less about them and that Bioware isn't standing behind their product.

 

So while both games have bugs and problems that are only corrected with patches, Blizzard will work to ensure the player achieves an outcome in game as though the bug did not exist while Bioware does nothing to assist the player.

 

Edit to add: None of which is to say customer service is instant in either game, nor do I expect instant customer service (though it would be nice).

Edited March 8, 2012 by DawnAskham

[Quip]

I just checked with the hive mind and it seems that Blizzard do everything horribly and should all lose their jobs for killing kittens.

 

ONE OF US ONE OF US ONE OF US ONE OF US.

[Icebaron]

I just want to remind all the responders to not take your WoW experience as the same as what everyone experienced. I certainly was not responded to within a day or 2 for non-critical matters a LOT fo times. I even had an urgent matter that I waited online for 3 hours and never got responded to, so I just logged off. I only played for a little under 2 years so it may have improved later, but don't put everyone into the same basket when it comes to experience.

 

Six years at WoW, opened about 8 tickets. Longest I ever waited for a gm to come talk to me in game was 4 hours.

 

The only ticket I turned into to Bioware it took two weeks for an automated message to get to me, then another week for another automated message to say they were unable to verify the items mailed were lost.

 

Maybe others are having a better experience with GM's or something, but this really really soured me on Bioware. I feel they don't care about me as a customer, where WoW is just sitting there like an old girlfriend patiently waiting for me to return because she knows she has the better lovin.

[Muskaan]

Bugs. Happen.

 

MC did similar things when WoW was in its infancy. Don't pretend that 7 years of having a LIVE game, not just beta, which introduces its own issues and bugs and what-not, and being able to see how their game operates LIVE and address the issues that it introduced...don't pretend that didn't happen. This crap about comparing BW's product to Blizz's product as they both stand now is tinfoil hat nonsense. WoW runs smooth instances for the most part now because it's had 7 years to address the very same kinds of bugs, which DID exist in WoW, that you're complaining about in SWTOR. I'm sorry you experienced one, but "What Blizzard do better" is release an MMO seven years earlier. Period.

 

Per your logic, it effectively means that any new MMO will be inferior in quality to WoW and is doomed to failure because the new MMO will always be X years behind the market leader. Recall that the end-user i.e. the customer is paying the same subscription ($15 a month) for either product. So, why should the customer pay for an inferior product when they can get better service for the same cost. Alternatively, why would a company want to release a new MMO if they know that it's going to be a failure since it's always X years behind the market leader.

 

Or in case of SWTOR, is the Star Wars IP strong enough to brainwash the customer and keep them happy while they are literally being made to pay to beta test an unfinished and buggy product? So, in 7 years SWTOR will reach the state that WoW is now. Which means that every customer needs to pay 7 x 12 x 15 = 1260 dollars per head while they wait for BW to fix their bugs and poor processes? That's a lot of money to waste on hopes and promises. It would be way smarter to just unsub and come back 7 years later to see if the game is any better.

 

In reality, when a new product enters a market with a strong dominant market leader, the new product is expected to compete at equal footings with the market leader. In most cases, this is impossible since like you said, the market leader has a strong lead. So, the new product needs to offer incentives to sway the customers towards it and away from the market leader. In most cases it means a reduction in price compared to the ML. There are various other ways to try to make your product look more lucrative e.g. offering new features that the market leader does not have.

 

In case of SWTOR--

 

The price is same as the ML - same 15$ a month sub. So, no incentives in that front. Key feature - story. Is story good enough distinguishing feature to entice people? No it's not specially when the non-converging part (the unique class story) is around 10-20% of the character's leveling experience. The unique part is that it's a Star Wars IP. And that to me is the biggest selling point in the game. If it was not a SW MMO, given the current state, the game would have been dead already.

[Dyraele]

Differences I've experienced...

 

WoW - Something bugs such that you cannot complete an activity or an item / loot is missing. You submit a ticket, a GM will resolve the issue which sometimes may even include working with you in-game to to complete / correct, such as updating your quest progress or restoring an item. The end result is a player that is happy with the outcome even though they had a negative experience, and even though the actual underlying bug may still be present. Players feel Blizzard cares about them and that Blizzard stands behind their product.

 

SWTOR - Something bugs such that you cannot complete an activity or an item / loot is missing. You submit a ticket, you get an auto response back with 'thanks for telling us we have bugs, your ticket is now closed'. No resolution or work-around for the issue. In this scenario players go from just disappointed and frustrated to pissed because not only did they have to deal with the original issue, but now they feel Bioware could care less about them and that Bioware isn't standing behind their product.

 

So while both games have bugs and problems that are only corrected with patches, Blizzard will work to ensure the player achieves an outcome in game as though the bug did not exist while Bioware does nothing to assist the player.

 

Edit to add: None of which is to say customer service is instant in either game, nor do I expect instant customer service (though it would be nice).

 

Perfect example that not everyone has the same experience. I had twice been stuck in SWTOR which caused even /stuck to not work. I submitted a ticket and got a GM within 1 minute and the next time in about 4 minutes. I have not had any more urgent ones so my sample is small. In WoW, I had waiting times of minutes and hours, or no response at all, but that was a larger sample size, maybe 10 total. So, I am not sure I can say SWTOR is any better or worse for urgent needs, but I do know that Blizzard did a better job of handling the non-urgent ones, or at least made you feel like they did.

[Thugari]

A couple of days is not a reasonable amount of time. I am not self entitiled for thinking that either when WoW resolves issues in a matter of hours in comparison. You are defending the undefendabe sir.

 

Besides, the complaint is they didn't resolve the issue at all. I've had an issue over a missing 40k credits take three weeks to not get resolved. Granted, who cares about a measly 40k credits. But WoW would of got me my 40k credits back in 3 hours, SWTOR takes three weeks to tell me that they can't do it.

 

Did you encounter WoW's customer support when the game came out? I did.

it was a major horror story. If you think support here is bad, then you have no clue.

[Dyraele]

Six years at WoW, opened about 8 tickets. Longest I ever waited for a gm to come talk to me in game was 4 hours.

 

The only ticket I turned into to Bioware it took two weeks for an automated message to get to me, then another week for another automated message to say they were unable to verify the items mailed were lost.

 

Maybe others are having a better experience with GM's or something, but this really really soured me on Bioware. I feel they don't care about me as a customer, where WoW is just sitting there like an old girlfriend patiently waiting for me to return because she knows she has the better lovin.

 

Yes, I am one with different experiences, at least for urgent tickets. So, I cannot say who really is doing the better job as the ones having the problems will be the ones you see complaining. Therefore, I can't say if most people are experiencing what you are or what I am.

[Muskaan]

Perfect example that not everyone has the same experience. I had twice been stuck in SWTOR which caused even /stuck to not work. I submitted a ticket and got a GM within 1 minute and the next time in about 4 minutes. I have not had any more urgent ones so my sample is small. In WoW, I had waiting times of minutes and hours, or no response at all, but that was a larger sample size, maybe 10 total. So, I am not sure I can say SWTOR is any better or worse for urgent needs, but I do know that Blizzard did a better job of handling the non-urgent ones, or at least made you feel like they did.

 

Yes, they are very good at dealing with character is stuck problem since that has a definitive fix. My guildies have had similar experiences with quick customer service response when their toons get stuck.

 

However, they are also very bad when it comes to dealing with any issue that involves some investigation and decision making on their part. Loot distribution issue is one of them.

 

To me it seems to be more of an issue with BW setting up the correct protocol and processes with their CS team, rather than the CS team itself.

 

TLDR-- If it's not an easy fix or if they don't know the fix, they stall.

[Dyraele]

Yes, they are very good at dealing with character is stuck problem since that has a definitive fix. My guildies have had similar experiences with quick customer service response when their toons get stuck.

 

However, they are also very bad when it comes to dealing with any issue that involves some investigation and decision making on their part. Loot distribution issue is one of them.

 

To me it seems to be more of an issue with BW setting up the correct protocol and processes with their CS team, rather than the CS team itself.

 

TLDR-- If it's not an easy fix or if they don't know the fix, they stall.

 

Ah, that very well could be. Maybe over time they will get better the way it sounds like Blizzard did. Time will tell.

[Vincynt]

Ah, that very well could be. Maybe over time they will get better the way it sounds like Blizzard did. Time will tell.

 

They shouldn't need time to get customer service right though. It's an industry that's been around forever. I wouldn't expect a start up retailer to not do returns or exchanges because they were a new store and didn't have the experience with running a retailer that Wal-Mart has, maybe in time they'll get better? That's ridiclious. CS isn't hard if you give decent people good tools with an objective to make customers happy.