Blizzard Doesn’t Get It, Blizzard Doesn’t Care, and Blizzard Has Become Too Focused On Money And Not On The Customers Who Give It To Them

That was a hell of a title wasn’t it.

I’m just getting so fed up.  I’ve had comments that I’m too whiny, and quite frankly I don’t really give a rip.  I am who I am and if you don’t want to read it, don’t.  If you want to write your own blog and deal with the public, go ahead.  Comments are held in moderation until I approve them so do yourself a favour.  Save your breath, save your energy.  Anything that rubs me the wrong way doesn’t get posted, and you can gripe and bitch about it all you want it’s not going to do you any good.

The bottom line is I don’t give two cents about your opinion and that’s fine because this blog doesn’t cost you anything.  Playing World of Warcraft does cost you something though.  In fact it costs a good sum of money.  So you’d expect a certain amount of empathy and customer service from them.  Hell, I work in a customer service job and I could speak volumes about all the things you’re “supposed” to do for your customers and the way you’re supposed to handle them.  In fact, I just finished a four-part course on the subject.

I don’t know how the rest of the servers are doing, but Bloodhoof is a mess.  To put it simply, you just can’t run instances during prime time.  ”Additional instances cannot be launched.  Please try again later”, or something like that is always the result.  About six times in the last week, I’ve spent more than half an hour doing what has lovingly been called “The Instance Hokey Pokey”.  You know what I’m talking about.  You put your right foot in, you put your right foot out… etc etc etc.  Running back and forth through the instance portal waiting for a “slot” to free up so the rest of your group can get in and run the instance.  This hasn’t been an isolated occurrence.  It happens virtually every evening — no pun intended.

I’ve submitted two tickets about this.  This is the response I get:

Greetings Gweedo,

Thank you for contacting the World of Warcraft Game Master Department.

Issue Reported: *WHEN* are you going to fix this “Additional instances cannot be launched” problem? It’s been TWO WEEKS since I’ve been able to run an instance on schedule! This is UNACCEPTABLE service to PAYING CUSTOMERS! I don’t want the “We’re working hard” and “your patience is appreciated” speech. I work for a cell phone provider as a national sales rep, and if our customers stopped having the ability to say… text message… for this period of time, we’d go bankrupt! WORK HARDER!

We are aware of the situation you reported, and we are currently working on a solution. Please check the World of Warcraft website (http://www.worldofwarcraft.com) for future updates and corrections. We appreciate your patience.

You can also check our forums (“http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/forums/”) where you can discuss game issues with other players.

Thank you again for contacting us. We hope you continue to enjoy your experience in World of Warcraft!

*** Please do not respond to this email as all conversations on this matter would be best handled online. ***

Regards,
Alfoln
Game Master
Blizzard Entertainment
http://www.worldofwarcraft.com

Nice.  He essentially gave me the answer I told him I had no interest in hearing.  Lippy little number, yes?

I don’t know what the root cause of the problem is, because our server isn’t in queue these days.  Or at least very infrequently.  We’re not heavily overpopulated.  So I would guess that the problem is likely commercial gold farmers who are tieing up instances and/or players who are “soloing” older instances to make money for themselves.

Is it time to put a three-member party minimum on instances?  Does Blizzard need to start being aggressive with gold farmers instead of just talking about it?  Would an increased in-game GM presence (i.e. any presence at all) act as any kind of deterrent to farmers and other misbehaviour?   I think the answers to all of these questions are yes.   I’ve said it for a long time.

Hopefully some day soon they’ll learn.