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.