Comments on: 'World of Warcraft' battles server problems
As online game draws more than 6 million subscribers, players find that it's going through growing pains.
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My biggest problem, and one I can not get them to answer is why it is acceptable for their customer service people to delete reports of problems on their service. They have done that twice to me for posts reporting outages that were not listed a known issues. (and I followed their posting guidelines)
I also filed that complaint with the BBB. Waiting to see what happens from that.
No response to their customer service address at wowcmfeedback@blizzard.com, billing@blizzard.com
The numbers tell it all:
16M Players @ $49.99 per game (current price) = $799,840,000
The minimum per person is $12.99, if everyone were to pay per 6 months.
Yearly Income: $2,494,080,000
Monthly Income: $207,840,000
Daily Income: $6,833,095
Hourly Income: $284,712
Why aren't the servers fixed? They don't care, they want more money, it is obvious.
They do need some improvements, but the game overall is remarkably short of major issues. 8+ years of EQ being live(plus ~3 for initial development) and the game isn't nearly as polished as WoW.
Saying that a company cares about money is more then just stating the obvious. It is redundant.
The numbers tell it all:
16M Players @ $49.99 per game (current price) = $799,840,000
The minimum per person is $12.99, if everyone were to pay per 6 months.
Yearly Income: $2,494,080,000
Monthly Income: $207,840,000
Daily Income: $6,833,095
Hourly Income: $284,712
Why aren't the servers fixed? They don't care, they want more money, it is obvious.
They do need some improvements, but the game overall is remarkably short of major issues. 8+ years of EQ being live(plus ~3 for initial development) and the game isn't nearly as polished as WoW.
Saying that a company cares about money is more then just stating the obvious. It is redundant.
--------------------------------
Ok, where to start. Let?s pretend that every time the servers drop and interfere with game play for (lets be fair here) 3 hours during prime time that we were afforded that day in account credit. Let?s play with some fancy numbers here.
$15 per month per account
= $0.50 per day per account
6,000,000 paid accounts
= $3,000,000 per day in account credit
How many times do you think the average (again lets be fair here) $200,000 per year employee would be allowed to say "Hey boss, we screwed up again and we lost another $3,000,000 today. Yup, just like those 3 days last week." before they were thrown out on their ear?
The average person that pays for this game would be unemployed if they had to report a $3000 loss due to incompetence 3 times in one week. I know we are credited for major downtime. What about the minor downtime? Anyone else want to see a few more days of free credit?
--------------------------------
--------------------------------
Ok, where to start. Let?s pretend that every time the servers drop and interfere with game play for (lets be fair here) 3 hours during prime time that we were afforded that day in account credit. Let?s play with some fancy numbers here.
$15 per month per account
= $0.50 per day per account
6,000,000 paid accounts
= $3,000,000 per day in account credit
How many times do you think the average (again lets be fair here) $200,000 per year employee would be allowed to say "Hey boss, we screwed up again and we lost another $3,000,000 today. Yup, just like those 3 days last week." before they were thrown out on their ear?
The average person that pays for this game would be unemployed if they had to report a $3000 loss due to incompetence 3 times in one week. I know we are credited for major downtime. What about the minor downtime? Anyone else want to see a few more days of free credit?
--------------------------------
Seems to me that problems were mostly ordinary and expected up until the patch earlier this year with the "war effort" and the AQ dungeon.
Appears that the development team, starting with that patch, attempted content beyond the servers' ability to handle, and more importantly did not have the tools or test methodology to discover that fact until the game was live -- such as the gate opening event repeatedly crashing every server it ran on.
I can't tell whether the upper managers at Blizzard and Vivendi are not getting information about how unplayable their game has become (ie accurate data is not being collected, or is being suppressed in the same way negative posts on the Blizzard forums are often deleted), or if they are simply indifferent (just let us get those systems we bought back in December live and everything will be fine...)
If Meg Whitman had left eBay's customers perceiving the downtime incident at eBay 5 years ago in the way North American WoW customers perceive WoW now, eBay would not be the business it is today.
I think the difference is the level of professional skill being brought to bear on the problem. There are lots of skilled people in the industry who understand capacity planning, who understand performance tuning, who understand networking and the Internet in technical detail. There are also a fair number of executives like Meg Whitman who have the drive to serve their customers well and earn their franchise in the industry. It's time for Blizzard to choose how much talent they're willing to apply to their $50M/month business. The current talent is well matched to a game a tenth that revenue.
Seems to me that problems were mostly ordinary and expected up until the patch earlier this year with the "war effort" and the AQ dungeon.
Appears that the development team, starting with that patch, attempted content beyond the servers' ability to handle, and more importantly did not have the tools or test methodology to discover that fact until the game was live -- such as the gate opening event repeatedly crashing every server it ran on.
I can't tell whether the upper managers at Blizzard and Vivendi are not getting information about how unplayable their game has become (ie accurate data is not being collected, or is being suppressed in the same way negative posts on the Blizzard forums are often deleted), or if they are simply indifferent (just let us get those systems we bought back in December live and everything will be fine...)
If Meg Whitman had left eBay's customers perceiving the downtime incident at eBay 5 years ago in the way North American WoW customers perceive WoW now, eBay would not be the business it is today.
I think the difference is the level of professional skill being brought to bear on the problem. There are lots of skilled people in the industry who understand capacity planning, who understand performance tuning, who understand networking and the Internet in technical detail. There are also a fair number of executives like Meg Whitman who have the drive to serve their customers well and earn their franchise in the industry. It's time for Blizzard to choose how much talent they're willing to apply to their $50M/month business. The current talent is well matched to a game a tenth that revenue.
Also, their ban policy makes no sense, you'd have to experience it to believe it. It's so horrible I can't even describe it without feeling angry again.
Also, their ban policy makes no sense, you'd have to experience it to believe it. It's so horrible I can't even describe it without feeling angry again.
It is certain for one thing, They target children, no other game these days MMPORPG are going for cutesy wootsy graphics like Wow, yes It may be because that it is how it always looked, but I back this up by saying, they take away the credit card requirement,
This is the Only reason they have such a large data base, other companies are more careful and less careless about who they just let wondering onto there servers. Blizzard hows aloud free reign of Farmers/hackers/In-game junk mail spammers the list goes on, Now if you brought back the credit care requirement alot of people who have quit already and still are (which they don't want you to know about) Blizzard would be going out of business with this game.
They targeted the children shonra (this is proven by the maturity of everyday online chat it's appalling, nothing but imature kids talking about spit and fart jokes or chuck Norris, it's gotten outrageous to the point there is a name for it called "Barren chat" (Barren chat has come from the area call "The Barrens" in horde territory where most of the children are and spam abouslte crap about nothing and just being imature and that's all they do all day not even play.
What's more is Blizzard delete ALL posts that even minutely resemble something against there game having problems.
I STRONGLY advise ANYONE NOT to go anywhere near this game!!
My Personal exp, the first week I activated my full payed account, it got changed to a trial, then to a full account then to a trial I rung them up and they shrugged me off as if to say I didn't pay, then I had to ring them back up in my time over and over to get it through to them I did, when they finally did acknowledge I payed it was activated 5 days later, then the servers crashed time and time again.
I have NOW canceled my account and will NEVER touch another product of Blizzard Entertainment again...Why? Because there customer service to real time players is utterly APPALLING!
Alot of it is ripped off everquest anyway (3 year player of EQ1)
NEVER TOUCH THIS GAME OR COMPANY! EVER!!
-Crashes so much so you wonder why you bothered
-Lag spikes (Game pauses can be from anywhere 5 seconds to 5 minutes)
-Apalling customer support in the way of feedback of any problems happening, leaving you in the dark
-Shrug you off with any form of problem
-In-game Spam of people trying to sell wow gold for real money.
-Hackers galor/Known of accounts beeing hacked into easly, things changed and deleted
-Majority of the populace is imature (this isn't a bad thing if your a kid.....but that's what Blizzard play on the children)
-A higher then though attitude.
-NOTHING IS EVER FIXED! (You'll understand what I mean if you try to stick through all the ******** in the 2 weeks free trial they give you)
STRONGLY ADVISE ANYONE NOT TO GO NEAR THIS COMPANY!!!
(This is a long post because all I have said just now as been deleted in parts across the wow forums, so now I finaly get to say my peace)
The spelling, grammar and word usage throughout this comment is atrocious. It's barely legible and the only readability comes from going over a few of the words several times to try and guess what they are. "Shonra"?? What is that? "Genre"?
Obviously this example of World of Warcraft is far from the usual experience and I myself play the game on a daily basis. I would take this comment at face value and consider the education level of the writer.
WoW is not outrageous, nor is it full of hackers. I've been playing for two years and I've never had any of the problems being described here.
It is certain for one thing, They target children, no other game these days MMPORPG are going for cutesy wootsy graphics like Wow, yes It may be because that it is how it always looked, but I back this up by saying, they take away the credit card requirement,
This is the Only reason they have such a large data base, other companies are more careful and less careless about who they just let wondering onto there servers. Blizzard hows aloud free reign of Farmers/hackers/In-game junk mail spammers the list goes on, Now if you brought back the credit care requirement alot of people who have quit already and still are (which they don't want you to know about) Blizzard would be going out of business with this game.
They targeted the children shonra (this is proven by the maturity of everyday online chat it's appalling, nothing but imature kids talking about spit and fart jokes or chuck Norris, it's gotten outrageous to the point there is a name for it called "Barren chat" (Barren chat has come from the area call "The Barrens" in horde territory where most of the children are and spam abouslte crap about nothing and just being imature and that's all they do all day not even play.
What's more is Blizzard delete ALL posts that even minutely resemble something against there game having problems.
I STRONGLY advise ANYONE NOT to go anywhere near this game!!
My Personal exp, the first week I activated my full payed account, it got changed to a trial, then to a full account then to a trial I rung them up and they shrugged me off as if to say I didn't pay, then I had to ring them back up in my time over and over to get it through to them I did, when they finally did acknowledge I payed it was activated 5 days later, then the servers crashed time and time again.
I have NOW canceled my account and will NEVER touch another product of Blizzard Entertainment again...Why? Because there customer service to real time players is utterly APPALLING!
Alot of it is ripped off everquest anyway (3 year player of EQ1)
NEVER TOUCH THIS GAME OR COMPANY! EVER!!
-Crashes so much so you wonder why you bothered
-Lag spikes (Game pauses can be from anywhere 5 seconds to 5 minutes)
-Apalling customer support in the way of feedback of any problems happening, leaving you in the dark
-Shrug you off with any form of problem
-In-game Spam of people trying to sell wow gold for real money.
-Hackers galor/Known of accounts beeing hacked into easly, things changed and deleted
-Majority of the populace is imature (this isn't a bad thing if your a kid.....but that's what Blizzard play on the children)
-A higher then though attitude.
-NOTHING IS EVER FIXED! (You'll understand what I mean if you try to stick through all the ******** in the 2 weeks free trial they give you)
STRONGLY ADVISE ANYONE NOT TO GO NEAR THIS COMPANY!!!
(This is a long post because all I have said just now as been deleted in parts across the wow forums, so now I finaly get to say my peace)
The spelling, grammar and word usage throughout this comment is atrocious. It's barely legible and the only readability comes from going over a few of the words several times to try and guess what they are. "Shonra"?? What is that? "Genre"?
Obviously this example of World of Warcraft is far from the usual experience and I myself play the game on a daily basis. I would take this comment at face value and consider the education level of the writer.
WoW is not outrageous, nor is it full of hackers. I've been playing for two years and I've never had any of the problems being described here.
The topic in question is provided by the link below. Under that I have broken it down and expressed my views on the reasons I strongly believe to be posted by a Blizzard Employ.
http://news.com.com/5208-1043-0.html?forumID=1&threadID=16296&messageID=139754&start=-1
Let us analize this...
tdeckert states:
"I have been playing WOW for quite a long time now. Yes, there are on rare occasion downtimes, lag, or wait times but the vast majority of time I play, everything runs the way it should."
My Opinion:
Yes there are occasions where there are problems, every game has them, NOT as much as Blizzards World of Warcraft!! You may of experince minimal problems, well you are the 1% of this shonra, majority of people are and have experinced major problems...which leads me to the next point below.
tdeckert States:
"I know there are the occasional hard luck stories of a lost account or something so yes, on occasion a few folks have very legitimate reasons to complain, but with over 6 million accounts, we have to be realistic and recognize there is no way to avoid that."
My Opinion:
I liked the part of the "but with over 6 million accounts, we have to be realistic and recognize there is no way to avoid that" sounds to me he is including all the alts and every chacter that was created and deleted even if it didn't make it past lvl 1 lol. Very broad figures yet he seems so certain this is to be the precise figures.
tdeckert States:
I have been in the computer field my whole career, a good part of it in the supercomputing/clustering environments, so I know a little bit about large scale, high performance system environments.
One thing I do know that is that most people have absolutely NO IDEA how complex it is to run something like the WOW universe for 6 Million + people. The techs that I have worked with and that play WOW are usually much more forgiving than non-tech players.
My thoughts: There he goes again, so sure of the +6 million people, damn, this guy is acurate, I wonder where he does his figures, mate if you were really in the computer bizz,
You of all people should know that those figures don't add up to 6 mil + without counting the currently deleted and remade alts, previously made chacters and so forth, You make it sound like that's how many people that they have on at this time. Which is wrong.
"The techs that I have worked with and that play WOW are usually much more forgiving than non-tech players."
Haven't you ever heard the saying in big buisness "The Customer is always right".
tdeckert States:
"I have been playing online games for a number of years and as far as I am concerned, WOW has had more uptime and better performance than any online games that have come before in my experience."
My opinion: This I laughed at, litteraly, he's saying that 90% of the wow populace is happy? That everyone who is stating that World of warcraft has problems is just ************? I think not.
Go play another game and one that isn't some second hand quaility ************ so you can just come back and say "Well I did play another game and wow is more stable" just like you claim that people creating 5 alts makes that counts as 5 other chacters, when adding up the numbers you can't keep claim to the ones that have been deleted mate.
Shall I continue...
You state:
"People complain all day long if they cant log in one night or they have a little lag or something, but they don't complain driving through 45 minutes of traffic to sit through a so-so movie that lasted 90 minutes and costs $20.00+ with soda/popcorn, etc."
My Opinion: Let me break this down.
"People complain all day long if they cant log in one night or they have a little lag or something"
WRONG!!!! MAJORLY WRONG! How about you add in the fact down time can range from anywhere between 1 hour and 10 and these are not including the times we aren't warned about, you could be dropped off and expect nothing.
Don't expect there servers to be up when they say, ALWAYS expect to add another 5 or 10 hours so to speak. Mainly 1 or 2 but this can and will raise up to about 10 at times, even longer, today it raised to an aprox of 17 hours of downtime because of corrupted files *they claim*
Doesn't this just scream unstability.
Let us continue down this whindy path of ************ from this guy.
tdeckert states:
"We need to kick back and take a real hard look at Return on Investment of time and cost vs. enjoyment."
My thoughts:
So your saying it costs more to upkeep then it does to pay for the enjoyment of the game therefor the profit isn't as big as people say it is? ************ and by the way What enjoyment? the constant problems that are NEVER resolved (always come up a week or so down the track even the next day on many occasions).
tdeckert states:
"I think folks have become spoiled as to what they feel they should expect and are entitled to and often forget there is a difference between a single player game that resides standalone on their PC and a MMORPG the size and scope of WOW. Two very different beasts."
My thoughts: Please, you're pulling a strings from a very OVER broad prespective, of course you can't compare the simpleness of a single player game to a MMORPG so don't make it sound like such a big thing.
You want to know what it takes to run a proper MMORPG LEARN from other companies before you run your mouth saying "I don't know what's going on because I haven't been in this buisness before (large scale) So let's compare it to a single player game, Yea smart move.
As for spoiled? ***, we expect what we pay for! Alot of people on other MMPORPG's have exp Quality so we know the standard of quality that is what we expect of WoW quality, in the service, in the customer support.
In everything you say you represent as a buisness as a whole, WE EXPECT QUALITY! Not quanity, I couldn't give 2 ***** if you have 3 trillion people online, it means **** when a company is so outragiously appalling with bugs, crashes, problems POOR POOR customer support, it AIN'T worth it. If you don't provide a quality product, you become known as rip off underhanded cheap skates, and then people stop buying your product, then you go backrupt or go out with less money then before or not make half as much as you would of liked to.
tdeckert States:
$15.00 a month for virtually unlimited entertainment in the best MMORPG (my opinion of course) is one heck of a deal as far as I am concerned.
My Opinion:
Here's a list of other things you could spend $15 bucks on, and don't forget to add the other countries currency mate not just your own, Aka, Australia/Newzeland (which to my knowelege pay around $35), Japan, Russia, ect...
-Go out to lunch
-See a movie
-Pay for petrol to drive to the beach with mates (way more priceless enetertainment then the seemingly Virtualy unlimited entertainment that wow can bring as he claims)
-Buy clothes
-Buy something new
-Get something fixed
-Treat yourself
-Pay extra on the bills
-SAVE IT (This I'm gonna be doing from now on instead of spending it on World of Warcraft, and when another game comes out, gonna spend it on it)
-To much else to list.
Continuing...
tdeckert states:
"I think people need to keep things in perspective and enjoy the fact that we have such games like WOW and others that are breaking new ground everyday in computing practices and technology."
My Opinion:
He says such games like wow and "others" what are these "others" why are you so focussed on pointing out WoW? Why not just say something like
I think people need to keep things in perspective and enjoy the fact that we have such games like WOW/Everquest/Anarky online/FFXI Online/ Warhammer coming up/ and others that are and have come before that have breaking new ground everyday in computing practices and technology."
Maybe I'm picky, I think not I'm a very strong believe in give credit were credit is due, Evequest for 1 was the set the standard for the MMORPG shonra, then came FFXI with it's own fantastic imense world and unique quality.
Considering the fact all throughout this post he has nothing but praised Blizzards World of Warcraft without ONCE taking into consideration the actual problems that ARE there, You are in denial buddy.
Go play Everquest 2/FFXI/Warhammer online/Hell I would recommend Runescape over this junk lol, Seriously I have never played a game with so many problems and will never again touch a product of Blizzard Entertainment.
You want the real story, take it from the people in these posts explaining to you about there 1st hand exp in problems they have had to go through while playing Blizzards World of warcraft, the horrific lag/poor customer support/constant server crashes and lag.
So before you listen to this guy which Obviously to me sounds straight out like a Hired Blizzard employee to try to nulify the fact that people are ABLE TO EXPRESS THERE VIEWS WITHOUT GETTING THEM DELETED!!!
Added note: I have seen a hell of alot of take off, from Everquest into the World of Warcraft, so much so, I don't see any origniality anymore about the game.
I leave you with this, do not believe all the hype or people who come on these forums hyping up wow, that is all it is, hype, 6 million users can't be wrong? Right? Seriously this game has problems.
Listen to the people who are explaining to you the first hand prespective to these problems, who have played it and been there!! They don't say this without reason, I myself can vouche for that, I to experinced these same problems!! and I just canceled my account 5 hours ago!!
There ARE other options.
http://www.eve-online.com/
http://www.warhammeronline.com/english/home/index.php
http://everquest2.station.sony.com/
If you are having trouble looking for something new, just use www.google.com for a search of MMORPG's, or go into your local gaming store an ask for an alternative.
Thankyou for your time =D
I never saw myself playing video games or online games. I bought a WoW account because I felt my son was safer playing in a registered game rather than Runescape or any other free online game. He had me create a character and I was hooked. I loved the game. I happily put up with all the server downtime, extended maintenace times (4 x's in the last 10 days... 2 full days, Tuesday & Thursday!, lags, unfair changes to PvP rank improvement, knowing they were trying to improve the game.
When I tried to login on Friday BOTH my accounts had been suspended. I followed their links, tried to login to my account info for answers.
There weren't any answers, other than to say I had done something that gave me an advantage over other players and my account had been suspended as a result.
I have no idea what they are talking about... I didn't have one of those many bots I've seen in AV. The only 2 things I've downloaded in the last 2 weeks are Vent and Cosmos...both approved add ons.
I call customer service... of course I heard over and over while on hold for 30+ minutes that the customer support people could not change suspended accounts. I just wanted to understand why so I could fix it! Or even why my emails to the appropriate department had gone unanswered for more than 24 hours.
When I finally reached some one, they admitted that many of Blizzard's emails did not get through to their customers. They had a copy of it, couldn't read it to me but could send it. After much playing around, they explained they typically recommended their customers go through the trouble of opening a Gmail account becuase Blizzard they knew Blizzard emails got through to Gmail accounts. Nothing like making the customer go through more hassle to pay a monthly fee x2 accounts.
When I finally got the email, it provided no further explanation.
36 hours later I got an email response:
"Thank you for your inquiry. I have thoroughly reviewed the evidence concerning the policy infraction in question, and determined that the suspension is merited. Due to the intricacy of such investigations, there may be an extended delay between the prohibited behavior and the start of the suspension. Privacy concerns prevent us from releasing information about our internal procedures and investigation methods. Unfortunately, we will be unable to reduce or rescind the account action under any circumstances. I apologize for any inconvenience you may have experienced. Thank you for your time and attention"
So if you can tell what I have done wrong from the above...please share. It would take any idiot one look at my equipment and gold to realize I do not have an unfair advantage.
I suspect whatever they look at could be percieved as breaking privacy laws and they are covering their butts.
So meanwhile, my ban will be lifted on Monday (because they ban us over the weekend) and I have no idea what is on my computer that created this problem in the first place.
I feel as though I've been thrown in jail without understanding the charges. I'm not even allowed to speak to the people filing the charges. Kangaroo Court.
I will no longer be defending Blizzard's downtime, customer support & service online or elsewhere.
If Blizzard had any knowledge of customer service this type of issue would never occur. This is unacceptable treatment of a reliable paying client who has never intentionally broken the rules.
Thank you for the previous post of other online games because I will look into them before I allow Blizzard to treat me as a common criminal again.
The topic in question is provided by the link below. Under that I have broken it down and expressed my views on the reasons I strongly believe to be posted by a Blizzard Employ.
http://news.com.com/5208-1043-0.html?forumID=1&threadID=16296&messageID=139754&start=-1
Let us analize this...
tdeckert states:
"I have been playing WOW for quite a long time now. Yes, there are on rare occasion downtimes, lag, or wait times but the vast majority of time I play, everything runs the way it should."
My Opinion:
Yes there are occasions where there are problems, every game has them, NOT as much as Blizzards World of Warcraft!! You may of experince minimal problems, well you are the 1% of this shonra, majority of people are and have experinced major problems...which leads me to the next point below.
tdeckert States:
"I know there are the occasional hard luck stories of a lost account or something so yes, on occasion a few folks have very legitimate reasons to complain, but with over 6 million accounts, we have to be realistic and recognize there is no way to avoid that."
My Opinion:
I liked the part of the "but with over 6 million accounts, we have to be realistic and recognize there is no way to avoid that" sounds to me he is including all the alts and every chacter that was created and deleted even if it didn't make it past lvl 1 lol. Very broad figures yet he seems so certain this is to be the precise figures.
tdeckert States:
I have been in the computer field my whole career, a good part of it in the supercomputing/clustering environments, so I know a little bit about large scale, high performance system environments.
One thing I do know that is that most people have absolutely NO IDEA how complex it is to run something like the WOW universe for 6 Million + people. The techs that I have worked with and that play WOW are usually much more forgiving than non-tech players.
My thoughts: There he goes again, so sure of the +6 million people, damn, this guy is acurate, I wonder where he does his figures, mate if you were really in the computer bizz,
You of all people should know that those figures don't add up to 6 mil + without counting the currently deleted and remade alts, previously made chacters and so forth, You make it sound like that's how many people that they have on at this time. Which is wrong.
"The techs that I have worked with and that play WOW are usually much more forgiving than non-tech players."
Haven't you ever heard the saying in big buisness "The Customer is always right".
tdeckert States:
"I have been playing online games for a number of years and as far as I am concerned, WOW has had more uptime and better performance than any online games that have come before in my experience."
My opinion: This I laughed at, litteraly, he's saying that 90% of the wow populace is happy? That everyone who is stating that World of warcraft has problems is just ************? I think not.
Go play another game and one that isn't some second hand quaility ************ so you can just come back and say "Well I did play another game and wow is more stable" just like you claim that people creating 5 alts makes that counts as 5 other chacters, when adding up the numbers you can't keep claim to the ones that have been deleted mate.
Shall I continue...
You state:
"People complain all day long if they cant log in one night or they have a little lag or something, but they don't complain driving through 45 minutes of traffic to sit through a so-so movie that lasted 90 minutes and costs $20.00+ with soda/popcorn, etc."
My Opinion: Let me break this down.
"People complain all day long if they cant log in one night or they have a little lag or something"
WRONG!!!! MAJORLY WRONG! How about you add in the fact down time can range from anywhere between 1 hour and 10 and these are not including the times we aren't warned about, you could be dropped off and expect nothing.
Don't expect there servers to be up when they say, ALWAYS expect to add another 5 or 10 hours so to speak. Mainly 1 or 2 but this can and will raise up to about 10 at times, even longer, today it raised to an aprox of 17 hours of downtime because of corrupted files *they claim*
Doesn't this just scream unstability.
Let us continue down this whindy path of ************ from this guy.
tdeckert states:
"We need to kick back and take a real hard look at Return on Investment of time and cost vs. enjoyment."
My thoughts:
So your saying it costs more to upkeep then it does to pay for the enjoyment of the game therefor the profit isn't as big as people say it is? ************ and by the way What enjoyment? the constant problems that are NEVER resolved (always come up a week or so down the track even the next day on many occasions).
tdeckert states:
"I think folks have become spoiled as to what they feel they should expect and are entitled to and often forget there is a difference between a single player game that resides standalone on their PC and a MMORPG the size and scope of WOW. Two very different beasts."
My thoughts: Please, you're pulling a strings from a very OVER broad prespective, of course you can't compare the simpleness of a single player game to a MMORPG so don't make it sound like such a big thing.
You want to know what it takes to run a proper MMORPG LEARN from other companies before you run your mouth saying "I don't know what's going on because I haven't been in this buisness before (large scale) So let's compare it to a single player game, Yea smart move.
As for spoiled? ***, we expect what we pay for! Alot of people on other MMPORPG's have exp Quality so we know the standard of quality that is what we expect of WoW quality, in the service, in the customer support.
In everything you say you represent as a buisness as a whole, WE EXPECT QUALITY! Not quanity, I couldn't give 2 ***** if you have 3 trillion people online, it means **** when a company is so outragiously appalling with bugs, crashes, problems POOR POOR customer support, it AIN'T worth it. If you don't provide a quality product, you become known as rip off underhanded cheap skates, and then people stop buying your product, then you go backrupt or go out with less money then before or not make half as much as you would of liked to.
tdeckert States:
$15.00 a month for virtually unlimited entertainment in the best MMORPG (my opinion of course) is one heck of a deal as far as I am concerned.
My Opinion:
Here's a list of other things you could spend $15 bucks on, and don't forget to add the other countries currency mate not just your own, Aka, Australia/Newzeland (which to my knowelege pay around $35), Japan, Russia, ect...
-Go out to lunch
-See a movie
-Pay for petrol to drive to the beach with mates (way more priceless enetertainment then the seemingly Virtualy unlimited entertainment that wow can bring as he claims)
-Buy clothes
-Buy something new
-Get something fixed
-Treat yourself
-Pay extra on the bills
-SAVE IT (This I'm gonna be doing from now on instead of spending it on World of Warcraft, and when another game comes out, gonna spend it on it)
-To much else to list.
Continuing...
tdeckert states:
"I think people need to keep things in perspective and enjoy the fact that we have such games like WOW and others that are breaking new ground everyday in computing practices and technology."
My Opinion:
He says such games like wow and "others" what are these "others" why are you so focussed on pointing out WoW? Why not just say something like
I think people need to keep things in perspective and enjoy the fact that we have such games like WOW/Everquest/Anarky online/FFXI Online/ Warhammer coming up/ and others that are and have come before that have breaking new ground everyday in computing practices and technology."
Maybe I'm picky, I think not I'm a very strong believe in give credit were credit is due, Evequest for 1 was the set the standard for the MMORPG shonra, then came FFXI with it's own fantastic imense world and unique quality.
Considering the fact all throughout this post he has nothing but praised Blizzards World of Warcraft without ONCE taking into consideration the actual problems that ARE there, You are in denial buddy.
Go play Everquest 2/FFXI/Warhammer online/Hell I would recommend Runescape over this junk lol, Seriously I have never played a game with so many problems and will never again touch a product of Blizzard Entertainment.
You want the real story, take it from the people in these posts explaining to you about there 1st hand exp in problems they have had to go through while playing Blizzards World of warcraft, the horrific lag/poor customer support/constant server crashes and lag.
So before you listen to this guy which Obviously to me sounds straight out like a Hired Blizzard employee to try to nulify the fact that people are ABLE TO EXPRESS THERE VIEWS WITHOUT GETTING THEM DELETED!!!
Added note: I have seen a hell of alot of take off, from Everquest into the World of Warcraft, so much so, I don't see any origniality anymore about the game.
I leave you with this, do not believe all the hype or people who come on these forums hyping up wow, that is all it is, hype, 6 million users can't be wrong? Right? Seriously this game has problems.
Listen to the people who are explaining to you the first hand prespective to these problems, who have played it and been there!! They don't say this without reason, I myself can vouche for that, I to experinced these same problems!! and I just canceled my account 5 hours ago!!
There ARE other options.
http://www.eve-online.com/
http://www.warhammeronline.com/english/home/index.php
http://everquest2.station.sony.com/
If you are having trouble looking for something new, just use www.google.com for a search of MMORPG's, or go into your local gaming store an ask for an alternative.
Thankyou for your time =D
I never saw myself playing video games or online games. I bought a WoW account because I felt my son was safer playing in a registered game rather than Runescape or any other free online game. He had me create a character and I was hooked. I loved the game. I happily put up with all the server downtime, extended maintenace times (4 x's in the last 10 days... 2 full days, Tuesday & Thursday!, lags, unfair changes to PvP rank improvement, knowing they were trying to improve the game.
When I tried to login on Friday BOTH my accounts had been suspended. I followed their links, tried to login to my account info for answers.
There weren't any answers, other than to say I had done something that gave me an advantage over other players and my account had been suspended as a result.
I have no idea what they are talking about... I didn't have one of those many bots I've seen in AV. The only 2 things I've downloaded in the last 2 weeks are Vent and Cosmos...both approved add ons.
I call customer service... of course I heard over and over while on hold for 30+ minutes that the customer support people could not change suspended accounts. I just wanted to understand why so I could fix it! Or even why my emails to the appropriate department had gone unanswered for more than 24 hours.
When I finally reached some one, they admitted that many of Blizzard's emails did not get through to their customers. They had a copy of it, couldn't read it to me but could send it. After much playing around, they explained they typically recommended their customers go through the trouble of opening a Gmail account becuase Blizzard they knew Blizzard emails got through to Gmail accounts. Nothing like making the customer go through more hassle to pay a monthly fee x2 accounts.
When I finally got the email, it provided no further explanation.
36 hours later I got an email response:
"Thank you for your inquiry. I have thoroughly reviewed the evidence concerning the policy infraction in question, and determined that the suspension is merited. Due to the intricacy of such investigations, there may be an extended delay between the prohibited behavior and the start of the suspension. Privacy concerns prevent us from releasing information about our internal procedures and investigation methods. Unfortunately, we will be unable to reduce or rescind the account action under any circumstances. I apologize for any inconvenience you may have experienced. Thank you for your time and attention"
So if you can tell what I have done wrong from the above...please share. It would take any idiot one look at my equipment and gold to realize I do not have an unfair advantage.
I suspect whatever they look at could be percieved as breaking privacy laws and they are covering their butts.
So meanwhile, my ban will be lifted on Monday (because they ban us over the weekend) and I have no idea what is on my computer that created this problem in the first place.
I feel as though I've been thrown in jail without understanding the charges. I'm not even allowed to speak to the people filing the charges. Kangaroo Court.
I will no longer be defending Blizzard's downtime, customer support & service online or elsewhere.
If Blizzard had any knowledge of customer service this type of issue would never occur. This is unacceptable treatment of a reliable paying client who has never intentionally broken the rules.
Thank you for the previous post of other online games because I will look into them before I allow Blizzard to treat me as a common criminal again.
http://www.icedragonslair.com
http://www.icedragonslair.com
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