What Blizzard do better

[Tahana]

Sorry but I challenge your memory and request you take off your rose colored glasses. I played that game from about the middle of BC into Cata. I can remember tickets taking multiple days to get a response. I remember hack restores taking WEEKS. I remember sitting in phone queue for HOURS to correct billing issues.

 

I am not a game basher, but I find your post disingenuous and quite honestly full of falsehoods.

 

I remember a quest in WoW in STV where you had to take a dagger under water to an alter. That quest was bugged for almost the whole of the Wrath xpac.

 

Finally I can point to many many posts on their forums where players did not receive a resolution that made them happy..

 

While I admit this game has its flaws, all games have their flaws and none are perfect by any stretch of the imagination. I will also admit that their customer service department needs some work, but again it isn't the worst by far.

[Asuka]

Which, if they were projecting millions of players and they were, should be enough to handle millions of players.

 

 

Hopefully enough to handle 1.7 million + player base? Is that a trick question?

 

 

Probably, gotta love shift work. If you're launching ANYTHING, game or not, and expecting millions of buyers / subscripers you bet your bottom dollar someone's job was to work out a rough number of tickets that would be filed each day and determine how many csr's to hire. Whichever VP was responsible for that failed. And once you realized you WAY underestimated you go into overdirve to staff up the loss.

 

I worked at a customer service call centre for AT&T Wireless, then Cingular then AT&T again. Wanna know something? When the Motorola Razer launched some VP at AT&T/Cingular went "This thing is going to sell, it tested really well. We should up staffing at our call centers". The center I worked for went on a recruiting spree to fill staffing needs for expectected call volume.

 

And I'll say it one more time. On many other fronts, Congratulations BW! You did do a pretty great job imo. I was impressed by the ammount of content available at launch and was pretty happy I didn't have to wait long in queues, no unexpected server shut downs that randomly left the server down for hours on end with no notice (I'm looking at you Blizzard!). So again, lots and lots of good. But Customer Service? Bad, shape up BW!

 

You're comparing multi-billion dollar companies to video game developer. Verizon makes $25billion a quarter while AT&T is revenues are $31billion a quarter. EA's revenues? About 1% of Verizon and AT&T for an entire year. AT&T & Verizon can afford to have a billion call centers around the world and 1000s of CSRs

[Knewt]

Alright the game just came out not a few months ago. For those that are starting this what WoW does better and what not you should really stop. Considering this is Bio's first their very first mmo they are doing good. Really the only complainers are those that have played the mmo's of the past and are expecting the same service and quality appearance.

They charge the same amount of money every month. I expect the same service. So far, Bioware/EA has failed at customer service. They even have a dev trolling people yesterday. Bioware needs to get a clue and improve their customer service.

[Knewt]

As previously stated, Blizz customer support at the start was probably about the same level as BW's is now, "Thanks for the report, we'll look into it and get it fixed in future". You have to remember, that BW's CS teams are probably quite small at the moment, they will probably expand in future once the game gets a steady footing and begins to grow, and then we'll most likely see an increase in the level of support.

There is a major difference between WoW customer support in 2004 and TOR support in 2012. In 2004, the 250,000 people who joined WoW at launch were completely unprecedented. No MMO in history had ever had that many customers. While TOR's 1.7 million subscribers is impressive and a record at launch, it is not a historical number for total subscribers. They are treating this game like Mass Effect or Madden. The customer support required for a single player game is significantly lower than a MMO. EA/Bioware didn't learn from previous MMO failures (hello there Mythic) and provide sufficient customer support for this game.

[Faefrost]

This is not to flame anybody, and is merely meant as a constructive criticism of both Blizzard and Biowares strengths and weaknesses in their release products.

 

What did Blizzard do better?

 

In a nutshell they began at a better starting place. People fail to realize this when they look at WoW, and look at Blizzards prior games, and then look at SWTOR and look at Biowares. Blizzards prior game experiences left them with a much deeper and refined pool of knowledge for making an MMO than Biowares did.

 

While Blizzard did not make any true RPG's, they instead made several fairly massive online games. Warcraft, Starcraft and Diablo. Now while these were not persistent world MMO's, they did teach Blizzard a great deal about managing online games. It taught them all sorts of important lessons about security, about managing the client, about the pure evil that their playerbase is capable of. Battle.Net taught them how to handle the online components and provide proper support and services. An MMO was just scaling up from that and adding an RPG framework (which they had a lot of from Diablo anyway). While wildly diferent seeming games, the online RTS's gave Blizzard superb expertise for building WoW.

 

Whereas Bioware came at it from the completely opposite direction. They are a superb RPG company. Possibly the best in the world. But they have had little to no experience in the online side of things, and quite frankly it shows in SWTOR. Yes SWTOR is a fantastic game. And give credit, much of that is because of the wonderful RPG experience it delivers. Well head and shoulders above average. Which is good, because the underlying game systems are riddled with rookie mistakes which show up constantly. You can see how much the story drives the game, without anyone ever completely finding the answer to "what next" in development. Not having the RTS experience Bioware never had to learn some of the subtler lessons of balancing subsystems, hence the mess that was crafting at release. Or the vast discrepancies in ease of certain types of gear acquisition. (Not that Blizzard didn't make and learn from plenty of these mistakes along the way). Things like poor engine choices and design, or lots of little subtle things such as very basic commands or features missing for no clear reason other than the designers did not realize they are important in these sorts of environments.

 

I am confident that Bioware will get their feet under them. (Just so long as the core underlying flaws in the games horrid engine can be overcome). They have been showing a willingness to learn, communicate and correct, which is a good starting point.

 

Really the absolute worst thing about them has from day one been the shear and total lack of anything even marginally resembling customer service. There is no response to tickets, ever. NONE. No basic functionality. No chance or hope of support anywhere. That alone is a guaranteed loss of any subscriptions that bump up against their CS department, and is something that desperately needs to be improved. Bioware was ready to tell a huge sweeping story. They hired a bunch of people who collectively had made a lot of games. But very very few of them had ever actually taken the games all the way into a live environment, and they seemed ill prepared or inexperienced at what happens next when they game actually gets a huge number of screaming fanboys inside it.

Edited March 9, 2012 by Faefrost

[Asuka]

Ok, I'll compare it to a different company instead of game if that makes it easier... Wal-Mart has better customer service then BW does. I can return something to Wal-Mart without proof of purchase as long as they sell that same product and it isn't software. BW won't even lend a sympathetic ear, they'll just tell you "Yep, it's a bug. Thanks for telling us."

 

Well, I agree, Wal-Mart has great customer service.

 

They blow WoW right out of the water.

 

And I don't have to wait a week for a GM to respond.

 

Wal-Mart is also a $500billion dollar/yr company while Activision Blizzard is about $3billion and change a year.

[dnomz]

 

[Asuka]

With that basic principle you are saying that because they couldn't staff their game to address the possible issues that customers may encounter that you will be providing a pass for them, consider it acceptable, and all is fine business model? That is morally and ethically ridiculous model.

 

That's right. That's the way it is. It's not financially possible for a game company to hire that many people nor possible to pay more than mediocre pay so the pay is mediocre. As I said previously, GMs get paid $10-$12 an hour average while Leads get a few dollars more. This covers the newb fresh out of high school and going to college. Can't make a living off that, even on the east coast where one of my friends was a GM and making $22k a year. The pay is nothing and the job thankless so even getting good people is extremely difficult.

[Necrolepsy]

Then go give your money to Bobby Kotick and his puppet Mike Morhaime.

 

Bioware developers actually have design goals and stick to them but do influence changes based on community feedback.

 

Whereas Blizzard's design goals are community feedback entirely, they have no ideas of their own, it's pathetic.

 

I used the 7 day scroll of resurrection in WoW, I very very quickly remembered why I quit. I'm spending the rest of my time in WoW trolling /2.

[Katsushika]

That's right. That's the way it is. It's not financially possible for a game company to hire that many people nor possible to pay more than mediocre pay so the pay is mediocre. As I said previously, GMs get paid $10-$12 an hour average while Leads get a few dollars more. This covers the newb fresh out of high school and going to college. Can't make a living off that, even on the east coast where one of my friends was a GM and making $22k a year. The pay is nothing and the job thankless so even getting good people is extremely difficult.

 

this should have all been budgeted pre game release though, in my honest opinion and the opinion of a fair few guildies is that the Bioware team spent the best part of 5 years having a jolly creaming over story-lines realising at the last moment thy actually had a game people could play had to be released.

 

The guild summit all they should have done to save the tripe they spun was to put on the projector. 'We messed up endgame, go level an alt' because that sums this game up.

[Tadshackles]

/disagree.

 

You had a poor experience. Sorry.

 

Last week, I put in a ticket at about 9pm server time that "I would like to beg for a name change on my character... ect ect" When I looged in after work the next morning, I had a blank name on my main and was able to rename it.

 

Other than that, I was once stuck so bad that /stuck wouldn't work and it was on a space station so I couldn't quick travel and my fleet pass had six hours left on CD...

 

Put in ticket, went to bed. woke up and checked it and my toon was on its ship.

 

I have had a great experience with SWTOR cust. service. Sorry you have not.

[Distracted]

/disagree.

 

You had a poor experience. Sorry.

 

Last week, I put in a ticket at about 9pm server time that "I would like to beg for a name change on my character... ect ect" When I looged in after work the next morning, I had a blank name on my main and was able to rename it.

 

Other than that, I was once stuck so bad that /stuck wouldn't work and it was on a space station so I couldn't quick travel and my fleet pass had six hours left on CD...

 

Put in ticket, went to bed. woke up and checked it and my toon was on its ship.

 

I have had a great experience with SWTOR cust. service. Sorry you have not.

 

It's good to hear at least someone has had a plesant experiance with this games customer service, although this could be a rare exception. Refer to my signature for an example of poor customer service.

[Rami__]

Eh, the OP is not seeing things in context. Regardless of the game or who made it, a CS team will have X staff receiving Y amount of tickets / hour and able to deal with Z amount of tickets per hour.

 

- X: the amount of CS staff, will be lower at launch due to budget and training requirements

- Y: the amount of tickets submitter per hour, will be very high post-launch for months, decreases over time (rather goes into a sine style pattern based upon content releases)

- Z: increases over time, training gets better, people individually get more experience so more tickets are solved faster

 

There is no magic button for a new game, because someone else did it for 7 years doesn't mean it's going to be as good because it's not even the same thing. The way CS happens will differ in virtually every instance. Tools differ, better tools are made.

 

In the case of the operation not providing the title, the simple answer is, imho, that the CS department does not currently possess a tool to grant or remove titles ad-hoc. I'm sure that capability can be coded but I can't blame anyone that this didn't make the launch road map.

 

Your complaint is, in essence, unrealistic. They *might* have programmed a tool for title adding/removing already, but that would have been geared to situations that would only come about due to bugs (bugs they didn't know about until a little while ago). I dare say such a tool is already on a board somewhere, perhaps already in coding. Firstly though, those devs will be creating a fix for the issue itself, making band-aids comes later.

 

Hopefully this insight will mean you never have to make such a misinformed complaint again

[Logisitcs]

 

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

 

 

A paladin tank NEEDED on a DPS weapon (a 2-hander) and a HEALING trinket, he won both, he did it to spite me and my friend who needed the gear. I put in a ticket and stated how could the paladin need on THREE items for THREE different specs when the game only supports dual spec? I was told there was nothing they could do about it and to sod off

 

The quest in Uldum where I have to drag the elite through the eggs so they could harm him, well guess what INVISIBLE baby crocs were bugging out and killing me! Couldn't compete the quest, and due to the linear nature of that zone I COULD NOT COMPLETE THE ZONE! Put in a ticket, was told there's nothing they could do, I asked if they could auto-complete the quest for me they said no.

 

Please SHUT UP, GM's there are the worse and can't be bothered to lift their finger to do anything except jerk off

[Elwacko]

what Blizzard really did better...... they took a war based video game with a HUGE following, and made it into ANOTHER war based video game! (snicker)

 

they already had a huge gaming community, was pretty simple actually.

[TKMaster]

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.

 

Had ypu played WoW at / shortly after launch, you'd have experianced the same CS.

Edited March 9, 2012 by TKMaster

[asbalana]

A paladin tank NEEDED on a DPS weapon (a 2-hander) and a HEALING trinket, he won both, he did it to spite me and my friend who needed the gear. I put in a ticket and stated how could the paladin need on THREE items for THREE different specs when the game only supports dual spec? I was told there was nothing they could do about it and to sod off

 

The quest in Uldum where I have to drag the elite through the eggs so they could harm him, well guess what INVISIBLE baby crocs were bugging out and killing me! Couldn't compete the quest, and due to the linear nature of that zone I COULD NOT COMPLETE THE ZONE! Put in a ticket, was told there's nothing they could do, I asked if they could auto-complete the quest for me they said no.

 

Please SHUT UP, GM's there are the worse and can't be bothered to lift their finger to do anything except jerk off

 

LOL, I went through that Uldum quest about five times on different alts and did not have a problem. The two times I tried it on my first 85, I did get killed. You then get the timing of running through the eggs and realize that you have to kill all of the mobs in the area first before going after the elite so you don't aggo them while you are running. Also one time, before I started (on my demo lock) I saw a Warrior run in and try to fight the elite. He got stomped. When he came back and looked like he was going to try it that way again, I invited him to party. We took the elite down as a pair with no problem at all and no need for eggs. The quest is actually a lot easier than some in swtor.

 

One of the mistakes that was made in WOW in Cata is that the quest lines did become more linear (like most of the lines in swtor) and indeed if you get stuck on a quest you are stymied and cannot go on. I must say, of all of the new areas in Cata, I liked Uldum the best. Even though there was linearity in the questing, the world was open and I could go anywhere and explore and mine / herb. I also got a kick out of the Indiana Jones look alike quest line although again it was entirely linear.

 

My experience with CS in WOW was great although I only had to submit three tickets over the time that I played. I submitted two tickets so far in swtor and ended up with a long delayed response on each that was not helpful. On one problem, I actually found a work around a few days later and updated the ticket to say never mind. At this point, if I have a problem in swtor, I don't bother to submit a ticket.

 

As far as NEEDING on not needed gear, you will find that in any game you play. I have not found much of that in either game and have been lucky in that when I've pugged, I have met some good peole (again in both games). It is just the luck of the draw.

[jimmymurry]

Yeah we got shafted on EV HM @ the Pylons. Filed a very thorough ticket. Generic copy and paste saying sorry. I've never played other MMOS but I have been told it is not like this in Rift or WoW.

[Duhakalock]

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.

 

and so can you? go buy one lazy.

 

Id like to contribute, that Bliz CS has only improved their game recently, I cannot even remember how many times Ive had week long tickets in TBC and wrath.

Edited March 9, 2012 by Duhakalock

[Osicat]

Also note that if you had a ticket going and you loged off you where sure that when you loged in the gear you missed/wanted to get transfered to a mate due to loot misstake or whatever WOULD BEEN SORTED. I mean in 5,5 years in wow i never got a answer "sorry but we cnat transfere your loot to another member of the grp, kinda or "sorry we lost your credits in the mail system"