So, I’m just wondering at this point What can Customer support In game GMs do? I have in game issues, like loot not being given from looting a chest (Most recently Sandworn chest in ZM, It consumed the key, and nothing got mailed.) All I got told was to Reset my UI, and the link provided led me to disabling read only settings. So, Yeah my question is What is support allowed to do. So I know in the future to just not even bother.
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Had you already looted the chest for that day?
Looking over the recent hotfix, the icon for the chest should disappear now once you have looted for that day.
The Sandworn Chest minimap icon will no longer appear once a player has looted the chest once that day.
Link: https://worldofwarcraft.com/en-us/news/23770463/hotfixes-march-10-2022
Also, here is the link for the Spotlight on GM help: Spotlight on: Game Master Help
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Hopefully this thread will help clarify.
It’s the second sticky thread:
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as a previously long standing player, I can say for a fact that this game is a shadow of it’s former self support wise and gameplay wise, sadly, no there probably isn’t much point in bothering next time unless it’s a reasonably big bug.
From reading around the support forums, they seem under the impression that there can’t be anything wrong with their support and game and that it must be players, that’s mostly coming from the attitude of a particular GM in their “answering” posts…great look.
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People always seem to look on the past with Rose colored glasses. It has been reiterated by support moderators though, that service really has not changed that much since the beginning. Tools have evolved, so have policies, but support essentially stays consistent.
The tools provided to GM staff by development are used judicially however. What you may have believed to be a snub by a ticket answer, probably was because the dev team would work long terms.
Ultimately, this is why you are provided a feedback survey when you get a ticket finalized. The development team do review surveys, and have changed policy based on feedback, as well as what ever fix they may have implemented to the issue at hand.
There never is an attempt to blame the players, or if there is, the mods usually do not take kindly to it.
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The problem with the view of the OP and your own, is that GMs can fix anything and everything and should default to giving into every player whim.
What is truth, however, is that there are limitations settled onto GMs that they must abide by. Set by the Devs, set by the even higher ups, it doesn’t matter. And just to further clarify, the SFAs you see replying here? They have nothing to do with any of that. They are more akin to an info desk. They provide help and insight where they can. If they tell someone it’s not something a GM can help with? Then it’s one of those things that they cannot do.
And I will close out by saying - not a single one of us is worth them losing their job and livelihood over. They have their rules. It’s not because they don’t want to help, it’s because they literally cannot.
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You do you with the rose tinted part, fact is fact. So sick of the bs demeaning term being thrown around by blizzard, like it can’t be accepted they had a good product that they developed poorly…Bit like Arnott’s and shapes, they made them “healthier” and destroyed the product for a good chunk of the customer base.
It truly has changed in the back end with regard to the amount of gm’s/staff, large scale lay offs over the years has diminished that, unless posts by blizzard and gaming news outlets over the years, all searchable, are lying?
Never once did i suggest “GMs can fix anything and everything and should default to giving into every player whim.”, if you conjured that from the original post, dunno how to help you.
Ah yes…green text community MVP, well aware, was the same essentially in the OLD forums…
Blue text actual blizzard staff…no way :o…nothing has changed in that regard, only thing that has changed is that they seem to be the ones answering for blizzard instead of in house staff being paid to do it.
Can’t speak for the OP, but I never once requested that they lose their job over it, again leaping to dumb conclusions, dunno what you’re on, but sounds fun.
Now to part where I can state for a fact, as have seen it happen in real time way back when, they can indeed fairly quickly, poke and test a reported botter and remove them, that people are reporting seeing some bots active for months or more, this suggests that they are not and are going after the software, anecdotally, this rarely works if at all…Ask their parent company about warzone, ask valve about half life, software will keep developing, id10ts will keep cheating and the only solution is actual visible and immediate punishment, not to let 1 go for 6 months in the hope you might catch 6 more for a “wave”.
If blizzard have internally neutered their support staff, my condolences.
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Last large GM layoff was 2012. As in a decade ago. There are now more GMs than back then as GMs also cover all their games and not usually just WoW.
You’ll find plenty of Blue posts here in this forum. Note that it’s not staffed 24/7 and coverage on weekends tends to be lighter.
As to the rest of your post, I’m really not too sure what your point is other than you’re not happy with the state of support, though you’ve not said what, if any issue that you might need support with.
If you’re talking about reporting bots and you feel they should play whack-a-mole, then it’s not at all effective either. It makes way more sense to ban and block programs. Will botting companies continue to update their illegal warez? Yep. Will players and hackers continue to use and support them? Probably.
Unfortunately, there’s not much that the GMs can do about that. There’s a whole Hacks team that handles this sort of stuff instead.
That’s why it’s important for us to report anyone we feel might be botting etc.
If you have any constructive suggestions to make, by all means, feel free to use the in-game suggestion feature or post over in the General forums.
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again, basic searching around suggests this to rather wrong…the layoff part, not the part about the GM’s spreading over multiple games.
The quality of assistance available from GM’s when you do get to speak to them, will admittedly vary based on experience of said GM and sure, no doubt rules have changed over the years, but it has gone from reasonable assistance to HEAVILY call centre script oriented assistance which is fairly subpar for a company that would be raking in as much as they are on sub fees alone, nevermind store revenue. Didn’t have to personally deal with them much, but I can say I have had help that it seems would not be given by today’s standard.
Beyond any of that, some of that reply was directed at the player reply, not the original green and to honest, this morning no, just vented frustration at the state of the game and having just read a series of a certain gm’s replies.
To be fair, no I shouldn’t really be posting at the moment, recent job loss due to covid bs(am vaxxed, so not that), recent losses and pre-existing mental health issues, not in a good spot atm.
So I will at least appologise for being overly aggressive, not necessarily my standpoint on fairly irrelvant to the thread topic issues with the game.
Best leave it here myself given the above.
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It’s not. There have certainly been other layoffs and many people just assume it also effected the GM team, but it was other areas within the organization and around the world. There hasn’t been a mass-GM layoff since 2012.
I can totally understand though, that things have indeed changed over the years. As WoW skyrocketed in players, it became less feasible to wait for a GM to show up in-game and play around with players, tell jokes and things like that.
With literally millions of players, they had to take a different approach than that of when they launched.
I’m genuinely sorry to hear about your working situation too. Things have definitely not been easy over the past couple of years for many.
I sincerely hope that things start to look up for you Neo.
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There are many things a GM can do, Neo.
Most bugs GMs can’t address directly - unless and until it is first replicated, next confirmed and only then and if our devs can give them a workaround that won’t break something else. True bugs can have some very odd side effects if you go poking at them before they are fixed.
This article pinned above goes into great depth on the things our GMs can assist - and those that we can’t.
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If I remember correctly, most of the layoffs at that time were in Ireland. Very little affecting the support in NA.
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I’m going to lock this one up, as I don’t think anything really productive is happening from this bumped discussion but I wanted to clarify a bit.
We did lose CS folks in the '12 reduction in force in North America, as well as our European offices. I’m not going into the details of the whys and such. The reasons for the RIF has been stated several times over the years and frankly, the actual facts seem to be of little importance to those trying to use our former co-workers and those we consider friends as part of their narrative.
That is the only significant reduction in force that CS in NA has had. There have been the occasional layoffs, but those have primarily impacted other departments.
I’m sorry if someone feels that our services have suffered over the years. As someone who has been here for most of those, I don’t see that. I know where we were and where we are now and while nothing is perfect, I do feel we overall are in a better place than we were in years past.
Our staff does a great deal to help players as they are able to. They have more tools and policies that allow them to do more in many cases and other tools that allow players to help themselves (i.e. Character Undelete, Item Restoration, Automated Refund Requests, etc…) so that they don’t always need to contact a GM, which allows our staff to help address more complicated issues.
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