Unnaceptable ETA for Support Tickets

How can an overpriced game that charges an expensive monthly fee have the absolute worse support a game can have?

I have a ticket whose ETA was around 30 days so I opened other tickets with unrelated categories with the former issue because I won’t accept waiting the time it takes to have to pay for an additional month to play. WoW support is an absolute circus and before you can even get to contact with someone you need to pass through a lot of garbage automated system responses which provide zero help.

Blizzard fix you god damn support system, players ain’t paying for you to settle harassment cases, they are paying to play a game and expect its bugs to be corrected within hours, not days.

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Support got swamped by 2 major game launches and some other issues, happened all at once so I wouldn’t say it’s “worse” just unlucky timing that increased queues massively.

So what’s the problem you have that you’re creating multiple tickets for, which I may add is slowing down the queue for everyone else?

The average displayed time is the oldest ticket in queue and yours may be answered faster, the estimated time is about 10 days.

I want to state as well that I apologize the support team who does not have any fault of the horrible management this game has been taking by not hiring enough devs.

My problem is with a bug I found in the ‘Cleansing the Mother Tree’ questline. Essentially, when I got to Stage 7, the Portal to Stormwind didn’t open, so I hearthed to Stormwind. By doing so, the questline reset.

Now I’m stuck with it because, when I go back to Hyjal it restarts and at some point, I gotta give the Corrupted G’Hanir to Lyessa. The problem is, since I got to Stage 6 once, I no longer have the corrupted version. This is very likely a bug that might be solvable by checking the current item the player has and start the quest at Stage 7 if you already have the uncorrupted version.

I should add I also cant abandon the quest, for some reason.

I opened multiple tickets to see which is the first to be handled. I will close all others when my problem is solved. I did this because its unnaceptable and quite unethical that the ETA is 30 days and that forces me to pay for additional time just to have my issue fixed.

Well this may seem like a stretch since someone else also bugged out on the last stage and hearthstoned like you did, you mentioned you tried to give the Corrupted G’hanir to Lyessa so turning it in is entirely impossible?

There’s also this comment:

Otherwise the ETA will be 10ish days for a ticket answer or if someone else can figure it out.

Unfortunately, the quest isn’t finished and I can’t give it because its not the Corrupted G’Hanir anymore, I have the cleansed version. I found a comment there of someone who seems to be in the same boat:

A word to the wise - DO NOT enter Hyjal by any means until you go there THROUGH the Dreamway as the quest instructs.

I ended up in Hyjal by using
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and was thrown into the Scenario, so I completed it and exchanged my Corrupted G’Hanir for the artifact weapon version via the scenario. This has left me unable to complete the quest, as even though I’ve since gone through the Dreamway and gone as far as I can in the Scenario, I end up stuck when I need to give up my Corrupted G’Hanir (since I no longer own it). I’m on my third ticket about the issue currently.

Be smart. Don’t be like me. Go to the Dreamway and through the proper Hyjal portal, kids.

This just shows how bad Blizzard’s support is. Proably after someone sees my ticket they will make pointless questions that I already explained in my ticket I cant do (such as restarting the quest). 10 days is a lot of time for a game that costs what WoW costs. Private WoW servers probably solve these issues in less time but I guess this is the WoW we have.

I want to thank you however for trying to help as much as you can. If only Blizzard could be like that.

Mhm, if it was only WoW GM’s I think the issue would’ve been solved faster too but generally GM’s these days support all Blizzard games. That also bloats up the ticket queue since they get OW2 tickets for example.

Looks at impending Dragonflight expansion that will add an even more serious strain as well.

I hope you get an answer soon’ish, nothing you can do but wait for now.

Thanks for all the help you provided :slight_smile:

The only reason I am doing this questline in the first place is so my druid can have a mountable fly form.

I still don’t get why you are opening tickets, in fact why more than one, to report a bug, that’s the wrong thing to do.

What Blizzard need to do is have a person or two go through the tickets, closing the ones they cannot help with with a general message saying they cannot help and a warning opening another will result in the ability to make tickets removed.

They need to be harsh about it as these people who open tickets when they know it’s something Blizzard cannot help with over and over again will get them banned from making tickets.

So your solution is to punish players who report bugs and open multiple tickets just so they can get acceptable ETA times?

I am paying a monthly subscription for a game. So I should have to probably pay for another subscription before Blizzard can be bothered to fix their bugs? This is a problem a GM can solve by giving me the corrupted version of the item. And the bug is fixed by adding a check on the player inventory to determine the quest stage.

If the support system wasn’t trash, people wouldn’t be opening multiple tickets just to see if they can speed support. What Blizzard needs to do is to increase their support team and cut corners elsewhere cause we are paying a lot to play this game.

If they ban me from the support system I’ll simply go to paypal and open a dispute, since I am being robbed money for a AAA game, managed by a billion dollar company which is not providing the services they claim to be providing.

Bugs need to be reported in the correct manner. That is via the in-game bug reporting tool, which sends the bug report directly to the developers in California.

GM’s are not Developers, and cannot fix bugs, as they don’t have access to the codebase to push a fix through. Nor does Blizzard allow them to push bug reports through to the developers. So reporting a bug through the ticketing system, serves only one purpose, to clog up the ticketing system.

This is a reasonable request, I will agree.

This is not. It’s not something a GM can do, nor something they should be allowed to do. Any fixes need to come from the developers, and that requires that you report the bug in the correct manner.

Plus unless you have access to their codebase (which you don’t), you can’t really say that the fix is “that simple”. Even if it was, the fix would need to be tested, retested, tested again, in all possible permutations, folded into the game code, compiled, and pushed out to millions in a patch or hotfix. I can’t imagine that being anywhere near “simple”.

If you do that, Blizzard will ban your accounts, permanently, and without appeal, as other players have found out. The forums are littered with posts from people who instigated a dispute, or a chargeback, and found their accounts closed. Some even threatening to sue, and strangely, not one of them ever came back to say they won.

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Note that I also reported the bug through the form that asked me to submit a bug.

But fixing the bug and helping me overcome it are two different things, a GM can simply swap my item with the correct item as I suggested. The tickets I opened are for overcoming the bug, not requesting to fix it as I’m not expecting GM’s to fix the bug. What I was expecting is to get a GM or whatever the current equivalent of it is these days.

I only said I was going to dispute if they banned me from the support ticketing system as it is Blizzard’s fault for their slow response. Also I am within legal rights to get my money back if Blizzard is not delivering their part of the service and also ends up banning me from the support system.

If Blizzard really bans people just because they threaten with legal action then its a far worse company than I thought.

Yes. Bugs are reported ingame and one ticket is more than enough as extra ones are put on the end of the queue and add to the ticket times.

Oh you’re one of those people.

They MIGHT be able to but we don’t know what GMs are allowed and not allowed to do, and is it really simple? Do YOU know what adding or removing the item will do to your character? No? then shut up as you are assuming it’s simple, it’s probably a lot more difficult and could stop you logging in on your character, you cannot know what will happen or the problems it may cause.

No, it’s people making multiple tickets and ticketing over things that are unable to be fixed, like “open thekal or gehennas” tickets. Also Blizzard GMs work on all the games.

They don’t even have to have a ticketing system or answer them within a certain timescale.

They are trying to answer tickets as soon as possible but people like you make it harder and the queue longer.

My ticket can be fixed. I have input everything they asked me, I specified the exact steps I took and what I was expecting vs what happened, which is the information that is tipical in any support ticket. I even pointed where the problem is, a GM can trivially switch my item to the correct one or mark the quest as finished.

Or what? Am I never going to be allowed to finish this quest because there’s a bug in the game? What else should I provide in the ticket? Should I reverse engineer the game code and try to figure where the bug is? Is that it?

I’d like to point that while:

Blizzard must in some way provide the services they claim to provide. It doesn’t have to be a ticketing system but they are required to provide support as they are providing a service.

You don’t feel like you have rights as a consumer? I gladly payed the subscription so far (since WotLK) because WoW was worth that price to me. But if I’m paying for something I feel like I should also have the right to a form of support when things go bad. I’m personally a developer, I am aware that software has bugs, but this is a big company that needs to solve them and provide players a solution.

Is this some kind of outlandish expectation? Expecting a game I pay for regularly (and you too) works? I honestly understand that opening multiple tickets of different categories may increase load on the system but its the only viable way I have of getting a response. I was told Blizzard prioritizes payment tickets over all (which I don’t know if its true or false, but if it is, it is ethically questionable).

You cannot know if Blizzard GMs are allowed to fix it and you cannot know if they “trivially switch my item” that it will cause other problem you know nothing about.

Actually legally they don’t.

I do but some people think that because they pay the have the right to demand anything they want.

It wouldn’t be the first time.

Unless you’re a developer for Blizzard, this has absolutely zero relevance.

I’m sorry if demanding for their broken questline to be fixed is a lot. Or for a GM to solve my problem. Or to expect the ETA for a ticket to be less than a month. But I will keep making these demands regardless.

That is news to me, to be honest. I always thought quest problems would get solved sooner or later. What an absolute crap of a company Blizzard is after all. It speaks wonders about the game leads as well.

It might be difficult, neither of us can know for certain. There was a 2007 TBC quest in retail that was never fixed, involving killing Elite elementals and not getting credit for the kills. It should have given a decent ring as a reward.

We don’t know what might be needed to solve the problem, it could be huge, it could be small or they might not be allowed to do it.

I used to work on a technical helpline, not at Blizzard, and sometimes I did things I shouldn’t and got official warnings.

I can see exactly where you’re coming from, but it really doesn’t help. As well as increasing the load on the system and making the wait longer for others, they will only respond to the first so opening the others is pointless.
As others have said, if they can fix it, they will. Whether they still have the ability to do such things I don’ t know.
Remember GMs are people. They want to help and don’t want to say ‘no’ to everything … but they have rules they have to keep as to what they can and can’t do especially as some things can unexpectedly break a character completely. I should imagine the stress they’re under at the moment is enormous and that they’re getting threatening tickets from people.

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I didn’t write any threatening content in the tickets. In fact I tried to explain my problem as well as I could. I completely condone harassing the understaffed GMs that try their best to solve these problems. I used multiple tickets with the intent of having the only that gets answered the quickest and then close the others.

If you honestly can think of a better way to show Blizzard they need to increase their support team, please let me know. Playing by the rules and accepting these unacceptable ETA times is not the solution however. This is a problem created by Blizzard cutting corners and laying of staff instead of cutting corners elsewhere. If everyone accepts it nice and well what will incentive Blizzard to improve their horrible support?

I’m not mad at the GMs. I’m mad at Blizzard’s incompetence.

That wasn’t aimed at you but a general description of what’s going on.
I honestly don’t know the way to get to someone who can look into what’s going on. I can’t see them taking on more staff … they certainly can’t do it temporarily as they have to be trained and have all sorts of checks because of the personal information they handle. This was a sort of perfect storm where a whole load of things in most of their games happened at once … there probably should have been someone way high up who noticed the timings and spread them out more. Too late now but hopefully for the future, someone will do so.