I suppose some consider this a technicality, but we pay for access to the servers.
We don’t pay for forums, knowledge base articles, support, etc.
Should a company offer it as a decent business model? YES. However, we don’t technically pay for it and they can remove it at any time.
The current ticket system can be confusing. If you don’t know how to navigate it, then it is easy to get lost or have a ticket put in under the wrong category. That matters as category impacts priority in queue.
The CS forum is an Information Desk where people can ask questions about support services, policies, and how to navigate the ticket system.
The fact that people NEED help with the ticket system is… not ideal from my point of view. The system is better than having a single giant unfiltered bucket, but not as optimal as it could be.
I just wish they would actually tell people WHY they can’t make a ticket for something.
- Blizzard GMs are not allowed to give game hints. Please consult X.
- Blizzard GMs are not allowed to swap out quest rewards.
- Blizzard GMs do not fix individual Bugs and it is not a way to report bugs.
Etc. It is fine that they don’t, and never did, offer some things. Educating people even when telling them “no” is helpful though. At least then they know WHY they can’t get what they want, and won’t put in another ticket like that.
The most useful resource on what they can and can’t help with is here
Yes. They had two means to contact Support. GM tickets, and a phone line for Billing/Account & some Tech Support help. Problem was that people called the phone line for everything. GM jokes, scream at Blizzard, complain about a game feature, chat about the game, appeals, game hints, etc. The phone lines were normally busy, and if you got in the wait was often 2 hours. If you could even get in to queue, it was not a good experience - and it used a lot of (new then) cell phone minutes.
They went to Call Back (pre-covid) and Live Chat for those Billing/Account issues. The rest are directed to tickets in hopefully proper categories.
That change was over 10 years ago now. I don’t remember what year that actually happened.