Tech support open today
by Eliah Hecht 
Apr 18th 2009 at 1:00PM
In the aftermath of one of the biggest patches WoW has ever seen, many realms are still experiencing some technical issues. Talents and items are going missing, world and instance servers are down, and I've heard at least one report of trash mobs in Naxxramas suddenly breaking out in song.
Okay, I might have made that one up. The point still stands: problems exist in the realms right now. Blizzard knows this too, and they've decided to keep their technical support department open today until 7 PM Pacific time (10 PM Eastern). Usually they're only open on weekdays. Support will be available over the phone, through email, and in the tech support forums, as usual. Eyonix has posted a list of the methods to contact tech support, so check it out if you're having problems.
Filed under: Bugs
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Ninth Apr 18th 2009 1:12PM
Blizzard has some of the greatest ideas and games around. I’m definitely hooked on their products as I’m sure anyone else that is reading this post. The latest patch (3.1) has some wonderful changes that add so much more to the game. With a New dungeon, Dual spec, Character changes, and the Argent Tournament. Heck, even my horse can swim now. Awesome job on the changes you did. It will be interesting to watch all these changes unfold as everyone gets use to them.
But, at last the criticism. I don’t understand how such great patch content can go so horribly wrong when applying it to the live servers. I hear some say it’s just because the servers are overloaded. But that should not be a problem. Blizzard is well aware of how many customers they have. And to be in this business, I’m sure they have adequate hardware to support them. Locking out servers when they are full and having a waiting queue if they are at max capacity is just a few things that make it hard to accept that excuse. Bugs and having a couple servers with issues is understandable to a point. But having unplanned extended down time and a random stall on all servers is somewhat frustrating to the customer. I also hear that this is the largest patch ever and that’s why there are so many problems. To me, that is more of a reason for blizzard to want to get it right or split up the patch. Larger patches will always have more possibility of extra problems/issues. Customers should be their main concern, and if it is. Then they are “Thinking like the customer” which also goes with the statement “The customer is always right”.
Well they get resolved? Sure, Blizzard has some of the best people in the business working on it. But personally, I would love to see all the great content that they dream up be applied without so many problems leaving a bad taste in my mouth and wondering if I should even trust the changes yet. We shouldn’t have to automatically look at our characters and wonder… Is my gear still there, is my money still there, can I log on today, can we finish a dungeon today or is it a waste of time. It’s better for us, it’s better for them, and it’s better for everyone that blizzard gets the deployment process right.
This is a great attempt for them to help the customer considering their past performance.
The Better Business Bureau Gives Blizzard a surprising rating of F.
http://www.la.bbb.org/businessreport.aspx?companyid=13050668
Better Business Bureau Gives ‘Electronic Arts’ One of blizzards competitors a rating of A.
Kaphik Apr 18th 2009 1:38PM
That is the most ridiculous rating I have ever seen, and is so completely off the mark. I have never found Blizzard to not respond to legitimate customer complaints. I bet those complaints the BBB received were from people QQing about arena and class nerfs.
Verit Apr 18th 2009 6:07PM
A lot has to do with their testing strategy. Back when I was a consultant for a software company that supported accounting apps we would write the database upsize scripts (because of feature changes - database itself would have to be altered for these features), test data all day long internally and then deploy it - and all hell would break lose (sometimes... many customers it just worked).
A better strategy I found was to setup two systems - one with the current version, and one with the updated version and test that internally, and if the customer was willing - have them test as well (many of my clients did this!). It was a very careful process because bugs in accounting data actually cost customers real money (think office space...) and downtime cost customers even more money.
Blizzard has the setup the updated version and test part right (that is the PTR), however they aren't testing live data - at least not with us. If they were smart, they'd actually QA a backup copy of every single live database from every single realm under heavy load. The reason for this is - live data may have bugs, bad data or stuff like that - that they haven't accounted for, and when updating the live realms these bugs are triggered and cause all kinds of fun on the client side.
What I'm talking about is incredibly time intensive - and were talking about massive huge file groups that I'm sure take hours to move around and restore to a test realm. Honestly the way its done now is probably the best, most efficient way of doing things as it stands.
Ametrine Apr 18th 2009 1:34PM
Made it up?
Aww, singing Naxx mobs would be awesome.
Superthrust Apr 18th 2009 2:20PM
they might as well be singing...
Last night on Winterhoof, horde side, my guild was attempting to clear out our weekly naxx. During Thaddius, Fuegan and Stall decided to DROP WHAT THEY WERE DOING (fighting us), then, run near the entrance and just stand there.
Eventually, while we were questioning what had happend, the power nodes killed us. When we came back in, we downed them and we thought for a moment that we might have it. We thought wrong. During the fight to thaddius, he suddenly healed, killed us all, then continued to spew bolts of lighting, changing polarities and waving his hands around. From the way things looked, it kinda looked like he was dancing at a rave.
All i needed to add was some house or heavy trance music, and it would have worked out...
Tumleren Apr 18th 2009 1:54PM
Strangely, I haven't had a single problem with post-3.1 yet. All my talent points are there, the servers are working like a charm and everything is in order (except a bug in Azjol-Nerub yesterday, with the giant spider actually being killed by the mobs it's fighting) - Not even my addons have been giving me trouble, all except Gatherer and DBM were working after installing 3.1
The Observer Apr 18th 2009 3:40PM
This isn't a 3.1 bug - I've noticed this happening on another occasion a few months ago. I was running heroic AN with my guild. Well, we were all a little goofy that night for various reasons and when Hadronox's own adds killed him we just about peed ourselves laughing. We didn't even get our badge!
I don't even know if it's actually a "bug". There must be some way to trigger it, because I think that's how you get the one achievement for killing him before the tunnels are webbed over.
Khabarach Apr 18th 2009 3:05PM
Just had a guildie manage to complete the Damage Control achievement....while healing in OS. oO
Zanaji Apr 19th 2009 6:29PM
I miss being able to click on prefession links other than my own. Did they fix that? I and don't tell me it's my addons, I disabled all of them.
:(