Issues with horrific visions

Support Customer Support
1

Blizzard, You need to shape up because this is starting to get really annoying, and you’re offering nothing in return for putting your customers through hard times or annoying times.

  1. We have had lag issues.
  2. We have had bugs at every turn.
  3. We have had issues with faction changes, and server transfers.

I faction changed from alliance to horde, and got three extra cloak upgrades, so that my cloak was seven, when everyone else had a cloak at level five, blizzard reverted that as it was a bug.

And I can live with all of this, I truly can.

But what I can’t live with is, I was farming for hours to earn enough to get my rank six cloak rank, and the new assault gave me a boost, I was farming trash mobs, and the smallest of things to get enough currency to buy “Vessel of horrific visions” Only when I killed thrall, and I picked the quest up, I didn’t recieve my quest item, and I reported this to blizzard immediatly, and they said this was a bug, but couldn’t do anything to revert it, give me my vision back, or the cloak upgrade that I worked hard on getting.

All I got was:
Re-farm the currency and buy a new one and fill out a bug report

This I cannot live with, sure reverting bugs that give us major headstarts is fine, but when I farmed, and farmed, and farmed, only to end up having a bug not give me my cloak upgrade, and you fools doing completely and utterly nothing to fix it for me is unacceptable.

You can remove, and tweak items when its an actual bug that was not intended, that gives us things for free, and fast.

But you can’t add or tweak items when we actually farmed, and grinded for them and its a bug on your end.

And while I don’t do world first races, and other things, this might not be important, but too me it is, I farmed for it, I farmed to stay infront of others so I don’t have to be dragging people down in raids, or m+, or be fatigued by having to grind more than others because I slacked.

Now, I’m behind others and will always be behind those players who it worked for, and I dislike that, I might be somewhat casual, but I always keep my equipment up to date.

My neck is already 75, and I only started out with 2 paragon chests where people with six were only few percentages infront of me reaching 75, I like to show people I am dedicated, and I put a lot of effort into getting my characters up to date, and maxed out.

Which is why this is important to me, maybe I talked to a grumpy GM, or one who didn’t know what to do, but this is utterly wrong.

2 Likes
2

Those of us who watched Blizzcon back in November might have been fooled into believing that Blizzard were turning a new page following the farcical handling of the political gesturing of a pro-democracy supporter during one of the e-sports events. The very public apology from the president of Blizzard all sounded really good - surely this was now going to be the Blizzard that listens to the community and acts in a considered, calm and fair way to their paying customers.

What we’ve seen today wipes all of that clean away. What should have happened was this:

  1. Customer Support start seeing reports that a fair number of players (i.e. more than 1 or 2) are experiencing problems with the Horrific Vision instances (both daily ones in Vale and the main ones in the Heart Chamber)

  2. Investigation shows that this is a Blizzard side problem (this has largely been admitted in some GM posts although interestingly has only been alluded to in the forums).

  3. Steps are taken to fix the problem.

  4. Because the issue is a direct result of concerns that are directly under the control of Blizzard (i.e. bugs and/or an inability to cope with the higher than normal loads caused by weekend activity) they should have then found a way to resolve the tickets being raised by players to a satisfactory conclusion such that either instances were unlocked where players had been unable to access them at all in the first place, or currency was refunded where payers were in the instance but unable to complete or were kicked.

What actually happened:

  1. Customer Support start seeing reports that a fair number of players (i.e. more than 1 or 2) are experiencing problems with the Horrific Vision instances (both daily ones in Vale and the main ones in the Heart Chamber)

  2. For 2 to 3 hours CS post responses containing links to existing support material concerning client side issues that can cause the problems.

  3. Eventually CS concede that there are “Technical issues” that are “being investigated”.

  4. Around 6 hours later an “emergency maintenance” is announced which appears to fix the underlying problem.

  5. Everybody that has suffered as a result of the problems are told that “Customer support can’t do anything to recitfy the lost currency, hopefully it will be better tomorrow”.

I think it’s pretty obvious to see where Blizzard are failing customer expectations here - the attempts to “bat people away” with standard responses telling them to check their internet connections etc… No real desire to investigate and escalate further investigation until the complaints reach fever pitch. An absolutely appaling stock response to everyone who has lost currency in game as a result.

In the end you (Blizzard) will be judged on what you do, not what you say. Yesteday you took a massive step backwards again.

2 Likes
3

GM’s are pretty limited in what they are permitted to do to actually help players. The main reason they constantly tell us ‘Sorry, there’s nothing I can do, fill out a bug report’ is because the bug reports go to Blizz for investigation.

GM’s are like retail assistants in a shop, there is only so much they can do. Beyond that, you would have to contact HQ.

1 Like
4

It turns out at rank six you need to kill garona, and thrall, however the quest never says that, nothing tells you to kill other creatures in the vision, or my quest was bugged at the time.

The GM I talked to had no clue what he was talking about, as it was intended you wouldn’t get rank six if you only killed thrall, but nowhere on the quest text does it say anything different from the other quests.

It also never showed me a brown icon saying kill this, or do this to continue and get your objective, the developers rushed it out, bad quest wording, and most likely a small bug that didn’t show me what to do exactly.

This would stil be classified as a bug, as many others have reported they never saw, anything telling them to kill other creatures.

http://prntscr.com/qpv7jy
http://prntscr.com/qpv86f

Last screenshot is what slightly indicates that maybe you should go deeper, but as there was no sign of where I should go, or brown icons tracking the quest in the instance other than thrall.

The last text can be seen as the trash being the first step into the deep, and killing thrall consumed is delving deeper into the vision, like it did on all the other quests Surely you can solo these objectives, but for the majority that don’t have the gear, and without any indications making solo’able content maybe require a party/team and not the usual to rank up your cloak is to me a mystery, I farm hard, and get all the knowledge I need before doing things, and no-where in-game did it indicate I had to kill other bosses, or objectives.

Remember, wowhead, and other sources are not apart of the actual world of warcraft company, it is blizzards job to inform people properly in-game when they play, and the quest should say:

Kill thrall [X]
Kill Garona, or complete bonus objective [X]

The least they can do…

5

For a game that’s in it’s 15th year I would absolutely expect that the Customer Support team should have mechanisms available that enbables them to remedy cases like this where players have lost out through an issue that is wholey within the control of Blizzard. I understand that the CS staff can’t actually fix bugs in the game, but again I would expect the communication processes at Blizzard to be mature enough by now that CS are able to efficiently handle and escalate such issues to the engineering teams wherever in the world they happen to be.

If Customer Support staff are pretty limited in what they are permitted to do, why do we bother having them?

Although my frustration is with CS because I don’t believe they’ve handled this situation as well as they could/should have done, really the criticism must be levied at Blizzard in general. If they can’t get basic customer service right by now then something is pretty badly wrong at that company.

6

I’ve had the pleasure, sorry, misfortune of working in CS and having my hands tied to this extent and did so for almost 10 years. The sheer amount of sh*t CS reps are put through on a daily basis is enough to break some people. Being on the front line of a large company isn’t always smiles and sunshine, even though the staff look/sound like they’re having the time of their lives. You’re literally cannon fodder for the public. And believe me, if you decide to bend the already strict rules and use some initiative to try and push through or execute something that you feel is morally right and/or just in any given situation, buckle up, cuz the company doesn’t like that. You do as you are told and nothing more.

I’m not saying that this is how Blizz conduct their business cuz I wouldn’t know, but I know what it’s like to feel powerless towards a customer base because the big guys upstairs say “This is what you do, NOTHING else.”

I would get abuse hurled at me every damned day from customers just like us because of HQ’s rules and policies and it has scarred me, mentally. In the end I had to make the decision to leave that job for the sake of my health and sanity.

Your beef isn’t with the CS staff at all, it’s with HQ. You may well think it’s high time that they had more power to fix issues at a consumer level, but HQ won’t grant it. They’re handling it the way they’ve been TOLD to. :confused:

If Customer Support staff are pretty limited in what they are permitted to do, why do we bother having them?

This is pretty much what happened with the 800 staff layoff… CS and QA teams were just decimated and look at what we have now, a very broken patch and a frontline automated CS tool that only puts you through to a human being when a help document doesn’t fit.

7

Its a shame but I actually agree with much of what you say there. Blizzard’s operating strategy is clearly based on “everything working perfectly all of the time”, because it seems that as soon as a problem like the one on Saturday crops up they simply don’t have adequate processes and empowered support staff to be able to deal with them to an even remotely satisfactory level.

Not sure what this bodes for the future, but it doesn’t feel like a good place to be in for the community.

I have to also add that the fact that people were being locked out of the lesser vision quest in Vale when the instances weren’t even loading (so the player never actually got into the vision) just smacks of poor game design. Surely the lockout flag should trigger after the instance loads, not before?