What is the Difference Between a "Template" And "Bot Reply" From GMs?

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So, I haven’t submitted a ticket to Bliz for 3-4 months now, but I find myself :thinking: – A lot of players come to the CS forums, and complain that they can’t talk to a living :adult:.

Said complaint goes: “I am tired of the automated bot replies.” And ofc, the standard reply they get is: “It’s not a bot, it’s a template!” But, In the sense that a GM isn’t addressing their issue directly-- what’s the difference between a :robot:, and a GM who can’t be bothered to read a ticket or even write their own response?

It is true that the :mage: whom work for Blizzard have to press the MAGIC “send template” button, vs a supposed :robot: just auto-sending a reply. Yet, the result seems same-- only difference is semantics. :shushing_face:

My understanding is that we aren’t supposed to post GM conversations with players :speak_no_evil:, or :link: to other forums, so I am just going to give examples instead…

1: Player is banned for gold trading. However, the player in question is on a STARTER ACCOUNT and due to restrictions at the time (Cata/MoP), cannot hold more than 10 gold. The initial reply he gets, when appealing, is insistence that the “appropriate” measures were taken. The GM here clearly did no research into the issue, and it takes a second ticket/GM to correct the issue.

2: Player is complaining that Brewfest ended earlier than it should have. The response they get back is pretty unprofessional; looks like the GM didn’t even bother to spell check, and seemed disoriented to the point of insisting the player’s TRUE ISSUE was that tokens were deleted by accident, which the player never mentioned anywhere in their ticket. (this was classic, 2 years ago).

3: Player is appealing an account-wide silence, and is told that “after review of the silence penalty, and the reported chat lines, I can confirm the that evidence presented was correct.” The GM goes on to mention how even though things can get heated in OVERWATCH, players still need to adhere to policy… … The player AGAIN points out that they do not even own Overwatch.

Of the three instances, all of the “GMs” used “templates,” and never once did the initial responding “GM” deviate from what a :robot: might have-- after identifying a few keywords-- auto-sent…

Which brings me to another question: Why is it that when I got 3 paragraphs in, the forum suggestion-bot was INSISTENT that my thread was similar to a November 2018 thread entitled “Frost mages suck”?

Imo, the forum-bot clearly needs grease or something…

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An automated response, which will be indicated in the response, acknowledges there’s a wait, and often includes links where players can look up information for themselves. It’s often used for issues with quest or where a player might have found their own answers. It does state that if more help is required , to reopen the ticket, and is reviewed by a GM.

A template is simply a form letter a GM can reply with, keeping the answer constant between staff.

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Not liking a reply, especially one that explains that the response you got was a template (which was likely written by a person and not a template itself) doesn’t mean that they use a bot for replies. Templates are used by most large organizations as they often receive the same sorts of inquiries over and over. Providing a similar or identical reply actually is good customer service so that two players don’t get different answers for the exact same question.

Blizzard only uses automated replies for very specific ticket types where they will point you back to other resources for things like in-game hints, quest help etc.

As for your scenarios:

  1. Player is banned: These are almost 100% templated. They do not tend to deviate beyond the templates for account actions. That’s part of their current process. As to your assumption that a mistake was made, even starter accounts can be banned or suspended. That’s normal.

  2. GMs have ZERO control over how the game operates and cannot modify the start or end of any event. Feedback for events would be better suited on the General forums or using the in-game suggestion feature. Alternatively, the bug report feature in-game or the bug report forums for reporting it as a bug. If there were typos, then that’s not a template either.

  3. Again, account actions are handled via templates virtually 100% of the time. If they mentioned Overwatch, then that could have been a HUMAN oversight or mistake.

That’s the Discord software and Blizz doesn’t control how that works.

Hopefully, the above helps.

Edit: Totally didn’t see that Kozzae had replied while I was typing and putting a kid to bed :wink:

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Not for gold trading. That was physically impossible at the time.

Your suggestion for what the player should have done is the standard, ofc. However, the point was that the GM hooked into an issue that was never mentioned in the ticket, and had nothing to do with the issue at hand, and they then spun off from there as if they had hooked into a few keywords, and then generated a very poor reply. To continue that train of thought below–

That is to the point I am making: to penalize someone for something they said, in a game they don’t even own, across their whole account, is something you would expect from an automated system, not from a human being. The bar should not be that low, and if it is, is there a difference between the template and a would-be-bot?

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GM’s are human too. Mentioning another game in a reply isn’t the end of the world. It’s as simple as that. No grand conspiracy.

Mistakes are made all the time, everywhere. Nobody is perfect - which is part reason why the appeals process is in place.

Now the big question I’d be asking would be - just how verbose were the tickets that were submitted for each example?

So many times we see players coming here whining about GM’s not doing their jobs - only to find out that the tickets were essays, or failed to mention that actual issue/request at hand.

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I don’t think I can post the screenshots of them, not without breaking the rules of the forums, but the player’s tickets were all short and to the point. 1 or 2 wow-sized-paragraphs.

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The mistake was likely in the name of the game given. Not in the fact that they had actually violated the rules.

If you have feedback regarding a specific interaction with an actual GM, you’ll want to use the survey feature that is available when a ticket is closed.

Due to the way you have worded your OP, it sounds more like examples you have found on the forums or 3rd party sites and not your own experiences. If you have feedback regarding an experience you have personally had, you’ll want to use the survey feature that comes up when you have a ticket marked “resolved” as that feedback goes directly to the supervisor.

There simply are no bots. A few ticket types that get automated replies, but otherwise, you’ve actually provided many examples of human error. It happens.

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Sure, they’re human, but I can also see a bot generating “templates” based on keywords it finds in the ticket. That’s easily within the realm of possibility these days.

The thing is, everyone else sees it that way, and when their is no difference in the GM’s reply vs the bot’s reply-- well, the only difference is that the GM is hitting the “send” button himself instead of letting the system do it.

For all intents and purposes, the GM being human here hardly matters if all he does is copy and paste the same message the bot would.

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Most everyone else here has it all well in hand, but I wanted to point out this. You speak for yourself. “Everyone else” does not see it that way. You’re not a voice for anyone else, you’ve not been chosen to speak for a single other soul beyond yourself. Speaking for others is where things get twisted up and it’s unnecessary, when it boils right down to it. People are well able to voice their own concerns, but I would leave out “everyone else” and focus on what YOUR concerns are.

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Blizzard is being consistent with their messages to you. They are not sending you what you refer to as bot replies. Are they templates? Yeah most likely. There is no bot reply.

Does not matter if it is a starter account or not. Shouldn’t be buying gold in the first place. In addition, you were sent an email telling you why your account was actioned. They may not give you specifics and there is good reason for it. If Blizzard told us how they found out you were doing something – it would give us and other third parties insight on how to exploit it.

The events are on the in-game calendar. Use it.

Got reported and found out that the action was upheld by a human? Sounds like Blizzard is doing their job.

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And that’s all that actually matters. Again, if you have feedback for an actual interaction you’ve had with a GM, I’ve explained how to provide it.

This forum in particular isn’t actually a feedback forum. So you not liking the responses others have received isn’t going to reach the right people here.

And yes, it absolutely matters, in my opinion, that the responses are human. I mean, I could argue that your own posts here are generated by AI…what’s the point exactly?

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It is certainly possible that nothing at all is reviewed and a bot just sends out answers. But us and blues are telling you that it is a human being using that template and not a bot. If you don’t believe the answer you’re getting, then why bother asking? There’s no other way to prove it to you.

As for the rest - if a bot can actually evaluate something the same as a human and then send the same answer a human would, the GM does hardly matter. Big issue facing humanity in the future.

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I think this is probably the most important question the OP should be asking. I’ve had a handful of tickets submitted over the years, and kinda complicated ones. WoW licenses being moved (no longer able to be done), quest issues that did need approved GM intervention, and a few misc things. Everytime I was brief and concise and the problems were handled quickly and pleasantly.

Even two “wow paragraphs”, and I’m not sure what that means, could be too much. People, myself included, tend to add waay more to tickets than is needed.

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Your toon is from a RP realm. You know what two wow-paragraphs is-- c’mon! its the character limit the standard chat box in-game allows for.

Starter accounts could not have more than 10 gold back in cata. The game would physically stop you from going over 10g. As for the 2nd and 3rd thing you quote, the “GM” here hooked into key words and didn’t understand the base issue behind the ticket, and sent out an irrelevant template.

To reply to you both at once: My concern is that semantics don’t help anyone. If the only difference between a GM and a bot is that one manually pushes a button to send the same exact message, how is that helping the players?

Is this not a forum for players to help players, Perl? Many only come here once they have an issue-- once they are in hot water-- And frankly, it is easy to see why… These templates certainly do not help the players.

See! Someone gets it. If there is no difference between automated bot replies and templates, outside the GM hitting the send message button, then who are those templates really helping?

Should you who frequent these forums not be advocating AGAINST them?

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Botom line spreading lies about GM being bots is one of the most hated comments on these forums despite what reddit karrens say GMS have never been bots at any time in blizzards history yes they use templates but that doesnt make them bots.

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Templates are used to ensure information provided is uniform, and to save time.

If 100 tickets are all for the same issue, it’s inefficient to type out individual responses to each one.

Particularly when you consider how many players hate having to wait for tickets to be answered.

We’re actually against your conspiracy theory and being soo adamant that Blizzard uses bots systematically - even if your examples work against your argument.

There honestly isn’t a big conspiracy at play here. There really isn’t.

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No one is saying there is a conspiracy.

Yea, I am sure they are people-- flesh and blood-- on the other side of a monitor somewhere, but if they are going by keywords, and generating templates to send out, what makes them functionally different than a bot?

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Not in the slightest. Why? First and foremost because the templates work. They do cut down greatly on tickets that are outside of a GM’s purview, our SFAs have said this several times in the past. People create tickets for everything under the sun and then some. A lot of them unfortunately are not things a GM can address or even deal with. People don’t seem to understand that concept.

And even if we were supposed to be advocating against them, I’ll ask again why? No matter what we say here or anywhere else, people are far happier to believe the worst or whatever the latest greatest streamer screecher preaches. It would be about as pointless as this crusade you seem to be on. But whatever your reasoning, I’m going to leave you to it and only wish you well.

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There is person pressing buttons behind the scene, and not a script.

Do you understand now, or do we need to continue in circles?

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That’s my point. That is the only difference. They press a button to send the template vs a bot simply sending out the same template. Functionally speaking, that makes GM and bot identical in this role. And this isn’t to the benefit of the players.