Please let GMs do things again ):

Support Customer Support
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I don’t know if this is the correct forum for this topic, so feel free to move this to General if necessary, but I just really want to say I miss when CS was allowed to actually help—like, “press a button and a problem is fixed” type of help. This isn’t like a doomer post about how CS is terrible at their job or anything—I appreciate the work CS puts in, and I know this isn’t easy.

This is a plea to whoever is in charge of CS to please loosen the restrictive rules about what a GM is able to do. When I go to CS, it’s not for things that I can solve with wowhead/a Google search/etc. I go to CS for things where I need a human to take sympathy on me in an extenuating circumstance and help me with a problem I can’t fix myself. 90% of the time, when I contact a GM asking for something simple, I’m told they’re not allowed to help. For simple things that 10 years ago, they would have.

The most recent example of this is that I was running LFR Antorus and my loot got stolen by the game freeze bug that everyone has been encountering recently. I didn’t get any loot, but I was still locked out for this week. I asked to have my lockout removed for the boss I killed (not for current content! Just for a legacy LFR!), so I could just do it again, and I was told this isn’t allowed. (I didn’t bother asking them to just plop the loot in my bags, because I’m already aware, from past experiences, that they’re also not allowed to do this.) Essentially, though it was in more polite terms, the response was “tough luck.” I do one single legacy raid boss per week for a chance at a drop that I need by February 2nd, and I was cheated out of this week’s loot (meaning I have only one more reset to pray I get the item I need), and the response was “tough luck.”

I 100% believe the GM and don’t blame them for not being able to take action. They’re just following the rules. But I question the need for such strict rules to exist in the first place. Why else would I go to a GM at all, if not in the hopes that they will say “gee, your situation is unique, and that shouldn’t have happened—it doesn’t hurt anybody if I just fix it, so I’ll do you a quick favor here.” This is the way it used to be, and it felt like there was a much kinder, more empathetic attitude toward the playerbase back then.

If a person abuses that kindness, it’ll be obvious in the number of tickets they put in requesting things—but I think for most people, they just need a little help once in a blue moon. But when they ask for it, they’re told “that’s understandably frustrating and unfair and I’m sorry, but we’re not allowed to do anything for you.”

This is a feeling I’ve had for many years now, and I just needed to express it. I love this game, and I genuinely do appreciate the people who work on it. But this recent trend (can I even call it recent anymore? It’s been like this for years) of completely neutering the GM role to be unable to perform even basic tasks out of the goodness of their hearts just makes the game feel colder than it used to be. It’s like they’re not allowed to demonstrate humanity.

I know this is very “old man yells at cloud” energy, and that it probably won’t go anywhere, but I figured I may as well try. Hopefully others can (respectfully) echo the sentiment below.

This is not an invitation for people to get toxic and talk about how they hate CS and Blizzard as a whole etc etc. Understand that the people who work here are just following rules, and we shouldn’t attack them for that—but we also shouldn’t just roll over and accept it when we feel those rules are unnecessarily restrictive and damaging to the relationship between Blizzard and its playerbase.

Thank you.

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That was never a thing, that’d break the system and have folks just farm something for BiS within a month. GMs ain’t there to give loot, reset stuff because they want it redo something, or something like that.

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GMs used to be able to put items in your bags in extenuating circumstances, but it isn’t allowed anymore. I can’t say whether they were allowed to reset lockouts, but even if they never were—why not? Perhaps that rule can exist for current content to prevent abuse with, like you said, BiS gear, but what is the need for having that rule for legacy raids?

It’s really as simple as: I killed a legacy boss and a glitch stole my (entirely useless to everyone except me) loot. Realistically, a GM should be able to help me with that. If they can’t, then there’s something fundamentally wrong with the GM rules, and they need to be changed.

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I’m not sure if you’re talking about the CS forums or customer support in general, but the CS forums here are for player-to-player support, overseen by moderators who don’t have any authority to make such changes. General Discussion is where you’d want this because that’s where the feedback is collected.

Also, while I know firsthand how irritating it is to have the servers crash and screw up a dungeon or raid run, GMs don’t give out loot for broken lockouts and I am not aware of any point where they have.

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This was never the process. They’ve never had a “Fix It” button.

It’s always been that they can only what the Devs say they can do. A lot of the things GM’s did in the past: recovering items, taking chat reports, getting characters unstuck…are all things that are now self-service options. That’s why GM’s don’t do them anymore, because it’s a waste of time to do it when the player has the power to do it themselves, and much faster.

In your opinion. But even so, telling you to check out other resources is a good FIRST step, much like Tech Support having you check that your computer is plugged in and powered on.

This is not a thing. There’s no “I could do it, but I don’t feel sorry enough for the player yet”.

This is a very new situation. It literally happened last night. QA needs time to fix whatever went wrong, and then they can discuss possible compensation.

This is also not a thing. This is your interpretation because you were told no while not waiting for the process to be complete. Your impatience is not a Blizzard crisis.

This is not accurate. They were allowed to assign loot…when their logs showed that they should. That is apparently not what’s happening in this case, but we don’t really know because it’s a fresh issue.

When they fix the issue, the loot may show up automatically. If a GM has intervened before that, now you got two pieces of loot when you should’ve had one. That causes more problems than it solves.

Let them fix the issue and examine what happened.

Because it’s not allowed, and never has been. I’m not sure what you want here, but your whole complaint is that they aren’t taking pity on you and giving you what you want? It has NEVER worked that way. They will do everything they can…within the policies and procedures that must follow or lose their jobs. You’re not worth them getting fired over.

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It isn’t as simple as you think it is; WoW has systems linked to one another in the background. If a GM did something like reset/add something, other things can break with that, which would make things worse. More so when there’s quests for items/achievements link to kills.

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I am afraid that is not something they have ever allowed the GMs to do. They do not have the tools to alter lockouts. They never have.

It certainly is horrible that this can happen and very frustrating. Losing loot and not being able to repeat the kill can ruin a raid week.

That is not something GMs have ever fixed though. There are quite a few things they do not touch, and have never touched. I think a lot of this view of CS comes down to a misunderstanding about what the role of a GM is at Blizzard, or even what it was. It is not a “fix everything a player wants” role. They have limits put in place by the Developers.

  • GMs do not give game hints so a lot of tickets fall under that and get sent to Wowhead for people to sort out where they are on a quest chain, etc.
  • GMs do not take bug reports, or fix bugs. That is the role of QA. Bug reports are done via the bug report forums or in-game tool. Bugs are fixed when the Devs fix them. For older content that can be…almost never if they are low priority.
  • GMs are not the path to provide feedback to Developers. That is done via the in-game feedback tool, Discussion forums, or various other social media sources, streams, etc.
  • GMs have never been allowed to touch Achievements with very very rare exceptions given to them by the Devs.
  • GMs do not get involved in loot disputes and never have, but if a scam has taken place they can penalize the person and remove the loot. They don’t give the loot to anyone else though.
  • GMs can not reset lockouts and have never been able to.
  • GMs are limited to their own logs showing game data. They can not, even for things they do control, grant things not backed by the logs. Like, they can’t just give someone an item if the game logs don’t show it being looted/dropped and assigned to them.

Some of the things GMs used to do, but no longer do, are because the tools were given to the players to use themselves, or the Devs changed the game systems to prevent issues/give players multiple “are you sure” stops.

  • Character restore tool
  • Mail restore tool
  • Item restore tool
  • Unstuck tool (works in most cases so only escalated ones need a GM)
  • Refunds - now set up to automatically refund it quickly if the purchase meets the Refund Policy.
  • “Bought wrong item” has checks in place and 2 hour sellback.
  • Postmaster mails items from raids that the player does not pick up if that player was properly on the loot table and logs. Not applicable to Classic I don’t think.

That is just off the top of my head… but hopefully it helps set expectations and give some clarity on what GMs could do, and currently can/can’t do. For the most part, GMs handle Billing and Account services/access not in-game tools.

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So uhh what happens if it just didn’t drop for you? You’re never guaranteed any specific drop.

Any loot though should have been mailed to you, at least in normal circumstances. Gold, currency, and other items like that dont but gear does. Have you check your mail on the affected character?

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I was debating putting it in General, but I figured this was a better shot of somebody who actually works in CS seeing it and speaking to someone at their office about it. :[ It doesn’t really feel like anything in General gets “heard”—it’s mostly just inane chatter, not genuine feedback about CS.

I can’t speak to raid loot specifically (this particular situation is a new experience for me), so it is possible that there are different rules regarding boss drops versus regular items that could be dropped into your bags.

Right—but what about extenuating circumstances, like mine? I’m not saying it’s bad to have self-service options, but I am saying it’s bad to, as a policy, not allow GMs to help in situations where the self-service options can’t be used.

There isn’t now because of all the rules in place. But there used to be. I used to be able to submit a ticket about a unique situation, and have a GM go “ah that stinks and I feel for you, so here, I’ll help out. This is a one-time favor so don’t get used to it!”

This I’ll admit is a fair point. I hope that they do offer compensation, though forgive me for doubting it when similar issues in the past have gotten the answer of “oops, sorry.” But you’re right—perhaps I’m wrong, and perhaps there will be compensation given. I really hope you’re right.

I’m not complaining about the CS representative. They did all they could, and I appreciate that. I don’t want anyone to get fired over the issue, obviously. I’m simply saying I think they should be allowed to see an extenuating circumstance and take pity without being fired for it. I don’t see this as an issue with the individual, but with the policy as a whole.

All I’m asking for is that GMs be given the ability to make conscious, compassionate decisions. This isn’t a singular issue; my recent example is just my most recent frustration, but I’ve had similar things happen over the years and have received increasingly useless responses—through no fault of the employees, but through fault of extremely strict rules.

I do appreciate the thorough explanation/response. I suppose this then alters my issue slightly, to more so be: why must these rules exist? Regardless of when they were implemented, why should they be there? I just don’t think it’s compassionate to have rules that are so rigid and unforgiving. There should be flexibility, that’s all. I don’t think that’s outlandish to ask for.

Then at least I know I tried everything I could, and I was given every opportunity that the game should have allowed me. I’d be bummed, but at least I wouldn’t feel like something unfair had happened to me.

Yes—many times in fact, including 12+ hours later. According to others, no loot lost this way has been getting mailed. I’ve already submitted a bug report on it, so no worries there.

Anyway, I guess what my whole summary is: I don’t like that there isn’t more flexibility in how CS is handled. I’ll admit that this particular issue is a fresh one and I’m happy to wait a few days to see if it is fixed & I end up getting my loot.

But I wouldn’t have made this topic if I’d only ever had one issue. I made it because I’ve had several issues over the years, ones which the situation is essentially “I need help with something small, and it genuinely wouldn’t impact anyone if you helped me because it has nothing to do with current content/gear/etc,” and have consistently in recent years received the “we’re sorry but we aren’t allowed to do anything for you” response.

It just feels very inhuman, that a GM can’t look at special cases and make decisions based on their own gut instinct. You can argue with me till we’re both blue in the face about what old GMs could do vs what new GMs could do, but it simply comes down to: they should be allowed to have more flexibility. It’s how I feel, and it’s how I’ll always feel, and I was hoping it might be heard and understood.

I know some people here may be sticklers for the rules, but I’m not—I always think people should be allowed to softly bend rules when the circumstance calls for it. I think that makes the world more human. But I accept that not everyone feels that way, I suppose. It saddens me, but I can accept it.

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You don’t have “extenuating circumstances”. You encountered a bug that many others encountered, and as far as I know, they are still working on not only fixing the bug, but examining the damages it may have done. NO ONE gets any resolution before these things are determined.

“Extenuating circumstances” is something like “I paid for my subscription, then I got sent on military duty”. It’s not “I encountered a bug and I want my stuff right this second”.

No, there wasn’t. Blizzard GM’s have always been bound by what the Developers allow them to do. When GM’s used to do something and now they aren’t allowed, there is a good reason for it, such as “the players have the option to do it themselves now” or “the playerbase abused this too much”.

Yes, they can give one-time exceptions, but again, ONLY what the Developers allow them to do. Wanting your loot right this instant because of a bug thy are trying to fix is not one of those circumstances.

There are still rules to giving those one-time exceptions. It’s not given out of pity or any other reason. Only because the situation falls into the policies in place, as it has always been.

Their policies are not based on “pity”, and quite frankly, trying to appeal to that lowest denominator is beneath you. This has been a well-worded, respectful post, and FWIW, I personally can appreciate that (and the position you’re in). But it’s not a situation for “pity”.

They always make conscious, compassionate decisions. However, even with all the compassion in the world, sometimes the answer is still “no”, or in this particular case, “you need to be patient and wait for the process to play out”. No one is denying it’s frustrating, but there’s nothing that “compassion” or “pity” can do to solve it.

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That is a valid question and I can see why you would ask it. This forum serves as an Information Desk to explain the support system, explain policies, explain account services, etc. So sharing info on that is certianly something people here will try to do.

The answer to your question though is “because that is how the WoW Developers have decided it would work”. The game devs are the ones who set policy, not CS. CS does not have the ability to change that.

What does drive changes, is the number of unique contacts about an issue - such as “bought wrong item”. That caused the Devs to develop a sell back 2 hour timer and warnings not to modify the item or equip it. Those contacts shows players had an issue they could not solve themselves so the Devs game them the tools to do it.

In your case, the situation is not unique I am afraid. There has been a long standing policy against touching the lockouts, and that was set by Devs. The GMs can’t do it. The reason would be related to in-game impacts either on the system functionality, or the possibility for abuse.

The answer is to run it again next week.

Customer support cannot grant loot and cannot reset dungeon or raid lockouts to make your character become eligible.

Missed Loot

While in Personal or Group Loot, loot items will be automatically pushed to your inventory if you win one. If your inventory is full or you are disconnected during the encounter, the Postmaster will send you the loot to your mailbox, with some limitations. Learn more in our Postmaster Didn’t Send Loot support article.

There is no Personal Loot in WoW Classic. You must loot corpses yourself. If you skip a loot it will not be sent to your mailbox. Customer Support doesn’t assist with recovering skipped loot.

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As stated earlier, I’m perfectly happy to conceded that this loot bug is something worth waiting for. I’ll reserve my judgment on this particular matter until we hear more about it later down the line.

But I think what I have a problem with is “only what the developers allow them to do.” I just don’t like the idea that they have to follow such strict rules. Maybe that makes me a hippy or something idk LOL, I can accept if my feelings are a bit too hippy-dippy ahahhaha.

I don’t think pity is beneath anyone. Pity is a bit of a loaded word, often seen as a bad thing, but I don’t think it’s bad. Everybody has situations in life where they’re having a bad day, and they want someone to empathize with them and help them out. That’s all pity really is, and I don’t think there’s anything inherently wrong with that. I understand that this company is very much a corporation, but I can’t help it if I wish that everything wasn’t so heavily policy/rule-oriented. I like guidelines, but I’m not big on strict policy/rules.

Thank you, I appreciate that. I hope this particular situation (which was kind of a straw-that-broke-the-camel’s-back situation for me) is resolved in a satisfying way, and I am happy to wait for that. I do apologize for jumping the gun a bit! It wasn’t really this issue in particular that got me riled, but more so the multitude of issues I’ve had over the recent years with CS policy/rules.

I accept that this is the answer—I just personally don’t think it should be (though in this specific instance, I recognize that it’s a new unprecedented situation so I’m happy to wait and see if it gets fixed and compensated properly… because these are extenuating circumstances, and as stated, I believe in extenuating circumstances).

But I appreciate you laying out all the facts about what the rules are. If anything, having a deeper understanding of the exact rules makes it easier for me to be able to plainly state with certainty that I simply don’t agree with the rules and hope they are adjusted some day. Though of course I won’t hold my breath. Regardless, thank you for your thorough explanation.

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Allowing GM’s to do something because they “take pity” on someone will not ever happen. For a really good reason: it wouldn’t be fair to everyone else. If they are allowed to give you an item because they feel sorry for you, now they have to give an item to everyone who asks. It doesn’t work that way. It has to be equally fair to everyone.

Yes, bugs suck, and the game has been in absolutely terrible shape recently. But that’s on the developers, not GM’s, and that’s something where we have to evaluate for ourselves if the bad technical state of the game makes it worth continuing to play or not.

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In general I think this is a mindset I can never really get behind. Maybe I’m just living in la-la land but I am generally the type of person who would say if you see somebody having a hard time, you throw em a bone.

Imo: help as many people as possible! You won’t be able to help everyone equally, but the more people you can help, the better. Equity > equality, imo. What’s right is more important than what’s equal. But I know the wow playerbase would probably explode into hateful drivel if they caught a whiff of anything being not completely rigidly equal all the time.

Anyway, this topic is resolved, so there’s no point really going further with it. Things are as they are, I’ve stated I dislike the way they are, and… well, that’s really it I guess!

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They do help as many as possible within the limits. The limits exist to prevent abuse and exploitation though, and to prevent GMs being able to change things that can backfire later when bugs are fixed.

You would not believe the number of people who will try to get a GM to give them something that is not backed by logs. It may be because of a bug, or disconnect, or whatever - but they don’t let GMs do anything without logs to prevent players, and GMs from abusing the system.

Frustrating for sure, but they really do try to help where they can. What I personally feel is a failure right now is the response template system that does not explain why a GM can’t assist with X. It is not because they don’t want to. They really really want to help. It is because they can’t.

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I do genuinely believe they want to help, and they try to do all they are allowed to do. And I do agree that some people are serial abusers of kindness and will try to exploit the situation for personal gain. I just don’t believe that the abusers should be a reason to make things worse for everybody else, personally. Especially in situations where you’re not looking at current content at all, tbh.

I think a lot of the concerns about exploitation can be done away with if you treat, for instance, legacy expansion matters differently from current expansion matters. This is just a small example, obviously, but it’s an important one I think… where context and circumstances are important. I do understand, though I disagree with, the reasoning behind wanting to make blanket rules in order to prevent bad actors from taking advantage.

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Sometimes the answer is just no.

Why are the GMs bound by rules set forth by the devs? Why do the devs set such rules? It’s a long list of possibilities. It could break the character - immediately, after they fix the bug, or randomly at some indeterminate time in the future.

They’re not making rules just to be mean, there’s a reason behind them all. They’re not going to tell you what those reasons are, because then everyone’s just going to yell “well, then, fix the code so X can be done!” Sometimes, there’s just no changing the code to allow it to be poked by the GMs, and the GMs just have to be hands off. Having a GM poke live code is always going to be very risky business.

I think you’d agree that missing out on a piece or two of loot is better than not being able to play your character at all because a GM tried to fix the problem, and now your character’s busted. From what we’ve seen on the forums, those tend to take weeks or even months for a dev and/or DBA to dig into why your character is busted and fix it.

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Aside from the repeatedly stated dev restrictions and things like this could break the game reasons, I can imagine it’s also to make things fair across the board for everyone. Other businesses have rules of operations, why should this be any different?

I’m not being argumentative, this is just my 27 years of retail coming out and seeing this as entitled. You can’t understand the mindset of strict rules, and I can’t understand your mindset.

I’ve been the victim of various bugs through my twenty years of playing, but I’ve just accepted it and moved on.

Thems the breaks. Best of luck on your next drop.

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Definitely tbh—I would absolutely consider this a valid reason for being unable to do something. If the game mechanics restrict it, that’s perfectly reasonable. If rigid, inflexible rules for the sake of “absolute 100% fairness” restrict it, I don’t agree with it. I think they should only have completely strict rules in place when the rules are to prevent game-breaking—not to ensure everyone everywhere is treated 100% equally.

Unfortunate situations don’t affect people equally in this game, so I don’t think the responses to those unfortunate situations should be forced to meet rigid equality standards either. The fact that we don’t know which reason is actually the justification is a flaw to me, because in my view, only one reason is a good one while the other isn’t humane enough.

50% of people getting a solution is better than 0% of people getting a solution, imo. Unless, of course, it actually breaks the game. But if the reason is just “well we can’t let the GMs help you with something small and non-game-breaking, because what if there isn’t 100% exact equality with the other morbillion players?” then that’s just not a reason I’ll ever be able to get behind, I’m afraid.

I get this take—it’s logical, but I simply don’t agree with it. I think it’s too corporate of a mindset, and doesn’t allow for humanity/flexibility. I’ll always be against that, and against the corporate-ification of the company as a whole. I think it’s a societal flaw in general that we’re too focused on doing what is strictly surface-level “equal” instead of doing the most good, but that’s getting real existential with it and I don’t feel like doing that in a WoW forum ahahaha.

That’s fine—it’s really just gonna have to be an “agree to disagree” situation here.

I’m afraid that’s really all any of this is at this point. Me hippie! :angry: Me no like corporate! :angry: Me shake fist angrily at the sky! :muscle: :angry: I understand that this is how it is, but I’m still gonna be firm about the fact that I dislike it immensely and would prefer a change of mindset. It may never change, and I’ll simply deal with that—but I’ll also still hold fast to my opinions.

I recognize that this is particular issue is very small in the grand scheme of things, and though it had an unsatisfying conclusion (the official response, as of last night, is “the bug is fixed now, but there will be no compensation for loot loss”), the broader issue as a whole is something that’s been bothering me for years. So yeah, in this instance—I’ll just try again next week, womp womp. It happens. Not a big deal. If this was a singular instance, meh. I’d be bummed, but meh.

But I’m overall unhappy with the general policies, so I’m making that known. There have been a lot of really minor issues that I’ve had over the years, and after pretty much all of them getting the “tough luck” response, it kinda just adds up to a general feeling of frustration with the way CS is fundamentally designed. In a way, the smaller the issue, the more frustrating it is to have it dismissed—cuz it’s like damn, this is so tiny and inconsequential but it’s still not allowed. I think it’s worth expressing that frustration in a constructive way, in the hopes that someone will care.

I guess that’s what it all boils down to. Wanting to feel cared for as a player. Something I used to feel in this game, and something I don’t feel anymore. Again, very “old man yells at cloud” of me, but it’s a basic truth of my personal experience over the past few years, and I think it’s okay to talk about that in a healthy fashion. I know a lot of people are really unsatisfied with the robotic feeling they tend to get from CS interactions, and I think there needs to be some kind of constructive criticism of that, or else it’s just a lot of people getting more and more fed up with the way things are handled. And they’re more likely to get really irrationally angry and vitriolic lol and that doesn’t help anybody, so I hope at least this conversation is more useful than that.

But really, in short: I get that some people prefer there to be strict rules. I just do not. I don’t think anybody here is gonna be swayed one way or another, but I appreciate those who have been sympathetic and respectful in their arguments. I believe this discussion has run its course in full, so thank you all for your contributions.

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Not unreasonable, but your whole premise of “I want to feel cared for” seems to be “give me things when I ask”. It doesn’t work that way.

You’re “cared for” by the fact that they treat all players equal, regardless of race, gender, but most importantly, the amount of money you spend or the length of time you’ve been a customer. You’re “cared for” by the fact that the have an appeals process to correct mistakes and a feedback process that allows players to give suggestions (and implementing suggestions like RDF, traditional talent trees, classic WoW, player housing).

To your issue, you’re “cared for” by the fact that they see that there was a bug in the game after maintenance, and they are moving heaven and Azeroth to fix it and compensate players in a fair and consistent way.

Sometimes, the answer is no. That doesn’t mean they don’t care, or they need to have “compassion” or “pity”. It just means that the answer is no. Not saying that’s the answer in this particular circumstance, but it could be. If that affects your enjoyment of the game and the desire to give them more money, that’s understandable. But it’s not going to change the “no” into a “yes”.

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