Hello Community Council!
We see this sort of question from time to time on the Customer Support forums. There have been multiple versions of the support website and ticket creation systems over the years. The current site is designed to surface information to players before they open a ticket, so that they can understand a policy or can get confirmation about an active bug. This sort of proactive information may make a ticket unnecessary, and players can get back to playing.
For the specific use case you mentioned about a Guild Name:
some guild names are now appearing as taken even though they do not exist.
We are not aware of any issues with guild names being unavailable when they otherwise should be. If you cannot use a name, it means someone else has already claimed it or the name contains restricted language. This is true for both characters and guilds. It looks like the Game Master who answered your ticket was able to confirm for you that the guild name is already in use and the support team has been able to make the name available to you because the entire guild was inactive.
But we can use this as an example of how one might navigate the support site to find an answer.
Scenario 1:
If I go to the support website homepage, the first thing I see is a search bar at the top of the page. I can use language similar to what was used in the ticket you submitted to search “I cannot use a guild name I want” and I will be taken to a page with some suggested articles (examples in English). There are a few different articles relating to guild names but one I see that stands out is “Release an Inactive Guild Name”. This article contains a link straight to a ticket creation form where you can request an exception to free up a guild name from a guild that is no longer active.
Scenario 2:
Alternatively, if I go to the Contact Support page and select World of Warcraft I am presented with a “Tell us about the issue” box. This is one of the more recent additions to the support site and will help categorize your ticket based on the description you provide. If I provide the same text from above (“I cannot use a guild name I want”) and hit Continue then the first article I am presented with is “Release an Inactive Guild Name”. These articles are presented, in part, because other players have asked comparable questions in the past and our support team was able to associate their request with this information. Ideally, one would see this recommendation and follow the link in the article to open a ticket. If you skip these recommendations and click on the I still need help, you can manually categorize your ticket.
At this point, you are right that we don’t have a Guilds and Communities category, but that decision was made because we’re mostly hands off with managing those social systems. The “Not Listed Here” categories are intended to fill the gap in specificity while still allowing players to be presented with information about their issue proactively in case it answers their question.
Our knowledge base has lots of articles like the “Release Inactive Guild Name” one which are intended to get you the information you need or point you in the direction you need to go. I would encourage you all to search for some key phrases of the ticket you are trying to create and see if you find something to address your topic first.
Finally, as I mentioned before, there have been multiple versions of these systems. We are not done! There are millions of players in the Blizzard community across all our games, and we want to make sure the support we offer them is easy to access, accurate, and timely. We will continue to evolve our knowledge base and support website as we review feedback, study trends in the customer service industry, and invest in new technologies.
Thanks for providing an opportunity to elaborate on our support philosophy with you all.