Do we need GMs?

Community General Discussion
1

# Introduction

First of all I would like to mention that I started playing WoW in late Wotlk, back then whenever you had a problem you could either ask in General chat or open a ticket and discuss about the situation with a GM.

Nowadays none of them even looks viable, on the first hand chats are just a channel to sell and advertize mostly boosts services in raid or M+. However, that’s not the biggest issue, on the other side I feel like we are just left ignored without any real channel of communication to discuss with people behind the game.

The only thing we really got is corporative answers without real answers on what is going on. Below I am going to expose some examples

# Example 1: Earthshield bug

There is an bug with shamans where shamans Earth shield drops after some seconds time to be applied for 2-3 times. This happens before M+ and arena. Latest scenario being the most annoying, consuming almost 20 seconds if not more just buffing, considering shaman needs to apply an insane amount of buffs having one that needs to be reapplied 6-8 times due to a bug decreases gameplay experience, specially in 3v3 where you play short games most of the time and you waste an insane amount of time just in that.

You can see that there are multiple topics in the forum about that:

  • https://us.forums.blizzard.com/en/wow/t/earthshield-bug-gets-removed-on-first-application/2075154
  • https://eu.forums.blizzard.com/en/wow/t/bug-shaman-earth-shield-bug/564828

The bug it has been there since at least the start of the season and what do we get?, just a corporative answer (https://eu.forums.blizzard.com/en/wow/t/bug-shaman-earth-shield-bug/564828/3) without real feedback.

# Example 2: Arena conquest conversion

Since a long time ago whenever a new PvP season starts you get conquest points converted into honor and then if you overflow the cap limit then it turns into some gold.

This season I experienced a problem where my conquest did not get converted into honor, opened a ticket and got surprised with the reply I got, left me thinking what GMs and service tickets are really for

https://imgur.com/a/G6qkgRD

# Example 3: Glorius tiranny

Basically there is this PvP weapon illusion(https://www.wowhead.com/item=120286/enchanters-illusion-glorious-tyranny) which was obtained by getting 2200 rating in any bracket during MoP, which I got. Later on when they added illusions they created one for this one as well. Giving it to people who got duelist title back in any season of MoP. This created two unfair situations:

  1. People who did not have access to the enchant, e.g got 2k1 where duelist cutoff was around 2k, 200 below the enchant requirements now have the illusion
  2. People who had the enchant like myself in s15 with around 2k2 where duelist cutoff was above that rating now does not have access to that cosmetic item.

Opened a ticket a couple times, they regret giving back that item because there was a small gap of time where you could trade it and they could not ensure i did not buy it in the Ah, even though I supplied the following proofs:

Got this character achievements gotten by order:

  1. Got to lvl 90
  2. Got ilvl achievement (just an extra item)
  3. Got 2.2 pvp achievement with that same character (and for the first time ever)

So that should be enought to proof that neither I bought it or got it with a twink account, they just refused to solve it, out of anger stopped playing for 2 entire expansions, they don’t realize how many people grinded like maniacs back in mop to get that and now all their effort is just underestimated or ignored.

  • https://us.forums.blizzard.com/en/wow/t/glorious-tyranny-illusion/1808184/16
  • https://eu.forums.blizzard.com/es/wow/t/gracias-por-desconfiar-de-tus-subscriptores-blizzard/9602

# Conclusion

I do not hope any GM reading this reallistically but I do want to hear your experiences in this regards if any

Also can’t include links so you have to copy and paste.

2

The subject matter is “Can GM’s help me with these issues?” These issues being “bugs” mainly. The answer is: “Depends”.

If it’s an issue that Developers have given them tools or instructions for, they may be allowed to assist in (time)limited fashion. Or the Developers themselves will set up a fix or put down a vendor for something more permanent.

If it’s not something that they’ve been either given a tool or instructions, generally GM’s are indeed off-hands.

An example where they can help:

  1. The item restoration went on cooldown but did not restore any items.
  2. If you provide them item names they will restore them if they can be found.

Then comes bug reporting, GM’s/CS team doesn’t handle nor forward bug reports as noticed you can directly fill them to the responsible QA/Devs team yourself. If it’s really problematic and current content they usually get prioritised for a fix.

An example where they can’t help:

  1. An item/achievement is bugged.
  2. There is no fix for it. Therefore GM’s cannot assist since they are unable to repair or award items due no policy being in place.

This all has been explained to you I see with the various linked Forum Blue or ticket answers, as example in your own linked one here in quite clear and concise detail.

In the past it used to be more simple and not as complicated/interlinked nowadays. One of the few recent problems that came up when GM’s did assist is when they flagged a toon as having completed a quest, but there weren’t any flags done later so it bricked their toon until a Developer could fix it.

Or a GM accidentally levelling a toon so it had to be manually be re-made from scratch with a team of Developers. That is one of the reasons why they got a Delevelling/Save point at the moment made by the Developers (only for GM duties, not meant for requesting develling services).

1 Like
3

I get the point that is not their responsabilities, but i may had explain myself poorly in some regards. What you just said about item restoration is some stuff that could be done with just a form and a program doing it by itself without human interaction for most cases. However I am more concerned about those kind of scenarios that I just mentioned that did not get fixed, and in some of them there is just not feedback or maybe intention to get fixed.

You just submit the bug form and all you receive is “Thanks for the submission” after that you are just praying. For instance with that PvP illusion it has been like that for so many years and at this point im sure it is going to stay that way forever. Yet there is no proper way of communication IMO.

Probably the title isn’t the best, that’s for sure but I wanted to make it a bit controversial to get some attention.

4

I get it, there are a lot of unfixed bugs.

Sometimes it is because a fix breaks other things, or it cannot be fixed without entirely developing new code. It takes up valuable devpower that must be allocated to what is a “need” vs “greed” and in your case, is more of a greed rather than a current content gamestopping bug.

There is, you submit bugs and they will check it over if it’s a bug and whether they should allocate people on it. Yes, it’s true they don’t say anything about whether if they will which is generally reflected on the patch notes if they managed to fix any bugs at the next patch.

There are a lot of people who submit feedback or bug reports, if they specifically react to only you or your general bug report you get angry others who ask “why is premading not fixed yet” or “LFG grants debuff, fix or unsub” posts in the same thread.

They don’t tend to atleast post in threads because of that unless they really need more info to fix things as seen on the major bug threads. Do chime in at the US bug report forum too, it’s free to create an US license + level 10 toon.

I recommend to keep reporting it every so often though and maybe they will fix it but don’t count on it.

5

This topic was automatically closed 30 days after the last reply. New replies are no longer allowed.