No. It leads to people trying to armchair their way around the facts to get what they want. This will not change. You don’t have to like it, but you have to live with it. If you want “change” talking about it here will do No good, as the Blue posters are not Devs, nor are they liaisons to the Devs to pass along information. If you want to see something changed you can go post about it in General.
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Here is a question though, how would you know if it wouldn’t provide an unfair advantage or break the game?
As mentioned: There is restrictions in place for what Game Masters can do for a reason.
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I will live with it, of course—but I’ll also provide my dissenting opinion on the matter, in the hopes that some day it changes. If it doesn’t, of course I will live with it. Why does that mean I shouldn’t try to provide my opinion?
I think I’ll use the in-game suggestion feature instead, as mentioned above. GD is a cesspool hahaha I’d rather avoid toxicity. People here have been very reasonable and professional in their interactions for the most part, and I very much doubt that would be the case in GD.
Well, ideally, they’d simply say so. “Hey sorry I’d like to help but this is actually a useful item, so I can’t just hand it out.” “Hey sorry I’d like to help but can’t because it would cause all the auctioneers in Stormwind to transform into kobolds.” Ok! Np GM, I appreciate the effort.
The whole point of this is I’d like them to be able to use their judgment in situations where it’s very obvious that it wouldn’t cause any harm.
But that is the thing. You don’t know whether it would or wouldn’t cause harm.
You do not have access to the inner workings of the development of World of Warcraft. You do not know how things really fully work. In fact, none of us does. We don’t know whether granting someone an item will cause harm, or not. We don’t know whether it could cause for a new bug to emerge, or doesn’t. And on top of that, even if it didn’t do harm or didn’t break the game, it could take away a lot of the Game Masters time to help resolve player issues they actually may have.
Game Masters will only grant items if they can verify within their logs that you have actually obtained that item, and the item restoration isn’t allowing you to grab it, assuming none of the restrictions of the item restoration is applied. They will not simply just grant an item because you want it, because there is no knowing for any of us what harm will come to actually receiving an item if we did not originally obtain.
EDIT: And also to add, the restrictions on what Game Masters can do, are set in place by the development. It is up to development to make changes to these restrictions for what Game Masters can or can not do.
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No, I don’t. Which is why I’d like them to tell me, if there is a way in which an action would cause harm. If they’ve been told by developers, “hey don’t do this thing because it will break the game,” that’s fine. I’d just like them to say that.
If they’ve been told “hey this won’t break the game but you can’t do it because every situation must be regarded as equal even if the circumstances are different,” then that’s what I have a problem with.
You’re right, I don’t know the inner workings/reasons for these rules. Which is why I’d like them to just tell me why they can’t do certain things. And if, as I suspect, some of those reasons are simply “because all cases must be held to the exact same standard regardless of any other details” and not due to any actual game breaking… well then, I don’t think those reasons are very good, and they should be changed. That’s all I’m saying.
Just to touch on this, I’m fairly certain I saw it mentioned above but don’t think you’ve acknowledged it, game masters cover the entire range of Blizzard games:
- World of Warcraft (4-6 different variants, depending on how you look at them)
- Diablo 2: Resurrected, Diablo 3, Diablo: Immortal, Diablo 4
- Warcraft Rumble
- Warcraft I, II, and III Reforged
- Overwatch 2
- Starcraft Remastered, Starcraft II
- Hearthstone
- Heroes of the Storm (albeit probably in limited capacity after the game was put on life support in 2022)
- Bethesda’s Avowed was recently added to the roster
- Crash Bandicoot 4
- SEVEN different Call of Duty titles (and possibly some other Activision games I’m forgetting that operate within the Battle.Net ecosystem on PC)
That’s already a monumental workload of 26 (!!!) games minimum that they are responsible for offering support for. Each of them with their own distinct sets of policies and some, if not all, with additional policies already granting exceptions.
Adding what you’re asking for (for their singular largest game, content-wise) would simply be a soul-crushing amount of work for them in addition to being the antithesis to a call center-adjacent kind of job. The entire workflow of an operation like that is to keep metrics “perfect.” Call/response times under a certain number of minutes, the number of petitions you “resolve” in an hour, the higher the better. What you’re asking for could very well be the shuttering of game master support altogether. Not that I’m claiming that’s how it works at Blizzard, but for just ONE of those games that has millions of daily/monthly active users, I wouldn’t be surprised in the slightest.
At the very least, imagine quadrupling the baseline response time. We already see time and again that a perfectly reasonable response time of 48-72 hours is inconceivable to people waiting for those responses, I don’t think anyone would be too happy with a minimum of a week’s wait for a response. And that’s before the expected spike in wait times at new releases.
But looking at the other side of that coin, if you’re asking them to just add that line to their ticket responses to placate players instead of putting in the footwork of finding out why as I interpreted it to be, then that’s another story, much more reasonable.
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Honestly… I think this is a flaw of the support system in general. I think more money, more care, should be invested in CS—hiring more people, having them work on specific games, etc. CS is crucial for games, and to learn that they just force all GMs to cover all Actiblizz games… that’s so disheartening to hear. I’m coming out of this with a deeper understanding of how Blizzard’s CS works… and that deeper understanding makes me quite sad. 
I really hope they some day see the value in investing far more resources into this area. These people are undoubtedly overworked as it is. I don’t want to make their jobs harder—I just want there to be more GMs so that the level of time and care I’m asking for is more feasible.
Thank you for breaking this down for me. It’s depressing, but I appreciate having more knowledge on the specifics.
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Yet, they’re still bound by policy allowed by the developers. Additional GM’s or money thrown at CS won’t change a thing unless policies are changed.
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Just adding onto what Nephe had mentioned, and even if the policies did change, they wouldn’t change it to just grant players items of there wish without playing the game to earn those items.
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With the exception of WoW though, they only offer Billing and Battlenet Account support. So think of those as selling 26 products and providing billing support for them. They also access support to the Battlenet account we use to shop that store and access our games.
There are no exceptions for any other games because there is no in-game support for anything else.
The only game they provide in-game support for is WoW, and that is limited.
They do but they don’t. They support the Battlenet Account and Billing for the Digital Store and any games that use Blizzard for in-game sales. The only support for Activision they offer is for digital store sales using a Battlenet Account.
Activision does their own game support, if there is any. Activision also handles any and all anti cheat for their games.
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That’s true—but I don’t think the policies can change until they throw more money at CS. Because it seems like right now, there just aren’t enough GMs to manage the level of careful consideration I’d like to see tickets receive. If they were to change the policies without increasing CS funding, these already overworked GMs would be swamped, and it’d take even longer than it already does to get responses.
That’s good at least… I still think they’re overworked though, and wish they could have more coworkers to ease the burden.
I get that feeling too, but reality is we have no idea how many people work as GMs for Blizzard. Those numbers are not public that I am aware of. I hesitate to say they “need more people” without knowing for sure how many they actually have, and what the tasking looks like day to day and surge to surge. It is easy to assume, and it is probably true, but I still try to be careful in what I say.
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I completely agree with this. The policies they have in place are there primarily because of the size of the customer base and they can no longer offer personalized support. I’m dating myself here, but I used to listen to a radio show by an individual called Clark Howard, and one of the things he said stuck with me and has rung true over and over again: “The larger a company gets, the worse it gets.” Or something like that, I’m sure I’m not getting is quote 100% right.
What is infuriating to me is that providing the ability to GMs to offer reasonable compensation for issues CAUSED BY BLIZZARD is not going to unduly damage the game. If I order food from Doordash and it never gets to my house, I can easily use an automated process to get a refund on it or a credit to my account without any hassle at all - it is a big reason I am a happy and continuing customer of theirs. Yes, people do scam Doordash this way, but clearly it has not caused the company undue harm.
So what if a player ends up with an extra piece of gear or some currency they didn’t actually earn? The good will and word of mouth from players that are actually helped by a GM when something like this occurs BY FAR outweighs any shenanigans people might get up to. Time and time again this is proven by companies that prioritize customer happiness over bottom line.
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Because people can and will try to abuse the good will of places. People can and will lie to others to get what they want. May as well try to talk one’s way into getting some of the rare stuff to put up on the AH. May as well try to get the new rare mount from the raid.
You can say it doesn’t do any harm, but that’s just coming from more a selfish view as you got what you want and it’d empower others to try work the system to get what they want.
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I get this, and it is a real concern, but they have records for a reason. Surely if someone does this repeatedly, that person can be put on a sort of blacklist to longer receive the benefit of the doubt. I only really see this level of abuse being an actual issue if a person does it repeatedly, and if they do… then they can get caught doing that very easily.
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But again, how can you possibly know this beyond a shadow of a doubt?
WoW is massive. WoW is also ancient by gaming standards. There are millions upon millions of lines of code keeping this game running. You absolutely cannot say with assurance that nothing will happen, and the rules are in place specifically to get ahead of a player’s personalized version of “well, wait and see.”
The fix to that possible damage could be even more troublesome.
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My point is that “beyond a shadow of a doubt” works well in our legal system, but not necessary here. Yeah, people will try to game the system, but that happens everywhere, and companies like Amazon and DoorDash still prioritize keeping customers happy because it works. The goodwill they earn outweighs the rare scammer.
Blizzard could easily limit what GMs can compensate—like only fixing stuff they broke or replacing non-tradeable items. It’s not like GMs would be handing out rare mounts left and right. Plus, they can track repeat offenders and shut that down fast.
At the end of the day, it’s about trust. If Blizzard doesn’t have our backs when they screw up, why should players stick around? A little extra loot here and there won’t wreck the game, but ignoring paying customers definitely will.
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A 3D printing and casting company I used to order from would occassionally throw a random miscast/misprinted item in your order for free as a little treat/gift. Was never anything big but it was “free”.
This behavior grew to be expected, with the seller getting abusive emails and threats for not including the “free bonus item” in their order. Despite that never being what was meant.
“so what if…” means one person gets it, then another person hopes to have the same error, then more people hear about it and more people are intentionally plaguing the system asking for theirs. Bad actors and people looking to pull one over on others instantly ruin the “good word of mouth”.
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I get the point you’re trying to make, but this example doesn’t really fit. That company wasn’t addressing issues they caused; they were giving out freebies as a bonus. It’s a completely different situation. Blizzard isn’t tossing in “extra loot” for fun—we’re talking about fixing problems they caused, like bugs or server issues, where players didn’t get what they earned.
If someone orders a 3D print and the company sends the wrong item or it arrives broken, fixing that isn’t a freebie—it’s basic customer service. Blizzard would just be doing the same thing. And sure, bad actors might try to abuse it, but that’s manageable with good policies: track patterns, limit compensation to non-tradeable items, and shut down repeat offenders.
Fixing their mistakes isn’t about creating “bonus loot expectations”; it’s about respecting players’ time and making things right when the system fails. Players aren’t asking for handouts—they’re asking Blizzard to own their mistakes. That’s what builds trust and keeps people loyal.
so things that traditionally GM’s can’t help with. They don’t hand out loot if it can’t been seen on logs as having dropped and even then I am fairly sure that is a rare occurrence.
“thank you for solving the issue you caused, now where is my compensation?” is COMMON in this forum and others.
It would entirely be seen as required if it started. People already expect free game time for basic server maintenance on Tuesdays. This would be no different.
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