With presently an acclaimed 13 million subscribers and growing, Blizzard has their hands full trying to take care of their customers' issues. Whether a character is stuck in the game, or an account has been hacked, Blizzard has to deal with it to keep the customer paying. With these kinds of issues, Blizzard does eventually get the customer taken care of... even though it took over 1 month in my case for one particular issue.
However, when it comes to addressing obvious customer concerns, that don't necessarily make it impossible to play the game, but less pleasurable at times, Blizzard fails tremendously. As a paying customer, I ask myself, "why do I continue to play the game?" as many of you might. Well, it after playing the game for quite a while, I've made relationships with other players, whose company I do enjoy while playing and chatting in Ventrilo. To give up the game means that I would also have to give that time up; something that I'm not willing to do at the moment. Additionally, I hope, even if greed is the motivating factor, that Blizzard will eventually address the issues of multiple paying customers in hopes to improve customer retention. However, as time continues to pass, I have less and less faith that this will happen. I am of the firm opinion, that Blizzard is comfortable with the number of subscribers that they have - even such that they would not be too concerned with losing a few over gripes such as mine. You see, when the customer base is in the tens of millions, what does Blizzard care if a few are discontent with their service? Well, I'm of the opinion that there are more just like me that are tired of waiting in queue for 35 minutes to get into a battleground, or an hour to get logged into a server that they are paying monthly to access. Here is another example. Have you ever waited for 35 minutes to get into a battleground only to find that the game has already started and your team is losing with 25% of the players botting or AFK? It is commonplace in my battlegroup. Also common is waiting for the queue only to find that, once in the battleground, my team has several less players that the opposing and, because of such, the opposing team gets an unfair lead on points and consequently wins the battleground.
What if you don't care about the battlegrounds and you'd just rather mine or pick plants? Well, Blizzard has failed the casual farmer, by doing absolutely nothing about the botting problem. Prior to the 4.0 release, this was a big issue. It still is after the release. Sure, Blizzard came out and said that they would monitor the situation, but if that is what they have done, it is ALL they have done because there isn't a day that I've been mining or picking where I haven't seen a mine or flower disappear from before me (in a non-phased zone) multiple times.
Well, you get the point. With Blizzard's customer base continually growing with World of Warcraft, and now their new release of Starcraft II, one would think that Blizzard is actually expanding the ranks of customer service representatives.... not exactly. In recent months, Blizzard laid off a large number of employees and has not yet replaced them. It should come as no surprise that when a Game Master responds to a petition, he or she does so after about 72 hours of waiting and, consequentely, by in-game email; since the user is most likely logged off by that time. Additionally, that response has a high probability of being a form mail that is the same everytime. Usually, it is something to this effect, "We're sorry .... blah blah blah. We value you as a client... blah blah blah.. We try to make the game fun to play blah blah blah, and are taking action to resolve your concern blah blah blah, but we can't tell you what we are doing to resolve your concern blah blah blah, due to privacy blah blah blah (as though I know Tom from Dick or Harry anyway). We assure you that someone will see your complaint blah blah blah and would like to thank you for bringing this to our attention blah blah blah. Have a nice day in Azeroth and may the land smile upon you today and bring you blah blah blah." It's the same every time. Surely, after getting the same form letter 10 times, I should feel the love right? Wrong. Blizzard is only concerned about doing a mediocre job at servicing the client because they are comfortable with the millions they have. If you have not started playing the game, my recommendation is DON'T. Go to school, learn a trade skill, or develop the ones you already have.
Feel free to respond whether you agree or disagree. We want to hear what you have to say about Blizzard.
