I get it. New expansion, new problems. World servers going down, authentication servers fail, etc.
I am someone with copious amounts of understanding. But I’m also someone who has spent many years working in roles that prioritize customer service.
The near radio silence from Blizzard about the issues yesterday were not great, and today it’s even worse. Even just a “we’re working on it” post on Twitter and/or the forums would be enough for most people. Better would be “working on it. next update will be in 1 hour” kind of thing.
This is bog standard customer service practice and y’all should REALLY have this sorted by now.
I’ll add that I’m happy to have a discussion with anyone at Blizz about this. I don’t mean this in a condescending way - I’d legit be happy to help and lend experience from what I’ve learned over the years.
I work in customer service for my day job and I couldn’t imagine screwing up something so freaking bad that I completely ignore the customer and don’t say a word - this is supposed to be a AAA game developer and they can’t even be bothered to care about the customer base that can’t even play/login to the damn game.
One thing a lot of people don’t seem to understand is that this forum? The only staff here are the SFAs. When they have information, they are more than happy to share that information.
The Devs and folks who are working on this stuff? Personally, I’d rather them be working to get things fixed than posting every fifteen minutes but that is me. But the Devs regardless, they’re not great with the communicating part on any front. So people coming here with this sort of mentality or offering, as it were, it doesn’t do any good. The people who need to see this won’t. This is literally the only forum where feedback and suggestions are not accepted. General Discussion, every other forum on this site? Yup. The in-game suggestion and feedback interface, yup. Here, you’re speaking to your fellow players and the handful of SFAs when they’re on the clock.
That would be why I included a mention of their Twitter account that is specifically for customer support. Incidentally, it posted nothing about the outage we had today.
“The Devs and folks who are working on this stuff? Personally, I’d rather them be working to get things fixed than posting every fifteen minutes but that is me. But the Devs regardless, they’re not great with the communicating part on any front.”
is what they replied when asked about any update to include a twitter post.
My reference was to the person trying to insinuate that the devs update the twitter and not a designated PR employee.
So i would encourage you to read the entire thread and not one sentence before chiming in.
Well, you see. There is @BlizzardCS and @WarcraftDevs. Obviously, Devs will respond to the Devs account. BlizzardCS, those are the same SFAs that post here.
This is a Customer Support forum, is it not? I think it’s safe to assume a criticism of lack of communication in the context of customer support will reach the ears of whoever manages the BlizzardCS twitter account.
If it doesn’t then that just means there’s another layer to the customer support issues.
Customer Support is a forum for players to assist other players. Yes, we have some very helpful SFAs, again, when they’re on the clock, but think of this forum as more of an infodesk. We players who hang out here are happy to give other folks whatever assistance we can or at the very least point them in the proper direction to where their issues can be dealt with or addressed in the event that it is something outside of our hands.
Customer Support is not Customer Service.
People tend to come here because our SFAs are the most interactive Blues that people see. Unfortunately, it leads to a lot of incorrect assumptions as to what can and cannot be accomplished here. These dozens of threads with people complaining about servers being down, boats not appearing and all of that? They really should all be in the Bug Reports forum so the proper staff can see them. Especially now that the SFAs have likely clocked out for the day, it’s just the silent mods and us players. But Bug Reports is generally a one-way venue of communication. Only very, very rarely do you see any Blue interaction over there and usually that’s when a thread originates here and is moved over there.
And just because I feel like it needs to be said before someone comes in here with guns blazing - this isn’t to gatekeep anything. It’s to try and make sure people are truly being heard and their issues addressed. It’s what we do here. Try and get people in the proper places so as to get the best help they can.
Let me point you up a couple of posts where Mirasol helpfully posted threads about the current issues.
As I stated, the SFAs are likely clocked out for the day, so I wouldn’t count on any further Blue posts here until they return in the morning. Now, just because they are not here 24/7 does not mean that there isn’t a whole host of staff working around the clock to try and get these issues fixed as quickly as they possibly can.
You’re welcome to believe as you’d like, but in this instance, you are mistaken. The avenues to ensure your feedback will be heard have been laid out for you as clearly as possible. I do wish you all the best.
Another hallmark of bare bones customer service would be that a complaint about customer service posted in a Customer Support forum would not fall on deaf ears.
Customers should not be responsible for understanding the nuances between a Customer Support forum and a CS twitter account that you are underscoring here.