So, hello, I have multiple times opened tickets in these years of playing wow, in game and in forum, aswell private messages and similar stuff, and the answer/support response time, are extremely long, and boring and it's barely impossible to have a decent conversation real time with a gm, and when your problem is a little bit complex then "unstuck my char please" imagine how long will it take to open ticket, waiting for answer, opened a new one re-writing everything and waiting again a new reply (even maybe from another gm) and so on.
Now don't get me wrong: I KNOW there are an insane amount of tickets opened even for the dumbest things, and having an instant reply would be impossible (even for blizzard retail it took some while I remember) but some things really trigger me...
For example you can stay online almost 24/7 for 3 days straight and no reply, then you log off and the day after and you find a reply once you enter the game, which in most of cases didn't help your situation and forces you to open a ticket again, repeating the process. Can't you (GMs) just reply when the character is online, so at least we can have some kind of conversation in case something doesn't go in the right way? Saves time for both us and you GMs
Also, some replies are bot like, noticed this in forum, in game, and in ban appeals, it's like there is a software reading some keywords and putting auto copy/paste reply (happened to me different times). This is not helpful because not only the reply completely misses the focus of the question, but also you wasted time writing support and waiting for an human reply. Feels like contacting the eBay support..
Forum section "Ask gms" are filled with topics with literally ZERO replies, meanwhile you can clearly see some gm/moderator online, even replying to other topics in real time, like "what music do you like", "how many times did you wipe your *** today?" and other stuff no one gives a ****. So I don't get this priority system. I think if the gm/moderator is online on the forum he must prioritize his job and then when finished he can reply to whatever he wants. You know, first job, then the fun.
Finally, I opened this topic because I have an in-game ticket opened in game since this morning, now its 5 pm and while I was writing I was randomly tabbing to check the situation and what I found was only the server-spam announcements of the hide and seek game. I mean, really??? Is this a new form of trolling the players or what?
And please don't delete the topic, let the other people see and eventually comment the situation, I can be offended/called ***** or paranoic or whatever you want but I think I have the freedom to speak and I didn't offend anyone I'm just writing down my experience and the title has a question mark at the end.
Thats it. Thanks for reading, have a nice game everyone.
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Member
GM faking being busy?
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Moderator
GMs' job is in-game. They have no obligation to check the Forums and even less to post reply to threads.
Moderators' job is to moderate the Forums, meaning making sure the rules are being followed and enforcing them when they aren't. The replies we post are completely out of each individual Moderator's choice, not an integral part of our job.
The section - which is called Ask the Staff, not GMs - is meant to be handled by the Community Managers, not by Moderators or GMs.
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Member
I don't know exactly how the "gm" status works here, or there, or on retail so I just said my impression, assuming a gm role covers both the game and the forum sections but ok I can stand with that. It's obvious they are not forced to reply topics, but regardin the ingame ticket, imagine this scenario: in a restaurant someone ask for a pizza replace because he found a dead rat on the top of it, so he put a message on the kitchen asking for new one (or at least some explanation), but the chef who is exactly there ignores the request and keeps talking in the kitchen with other members. The customer obviously sees the scene and he is definitely pissed because hes not thinking anymore "I just need to wait patiently", hes now thinking "wtf the dude is right there and he is telling jokes to the waiter?"
Same with my ticket, still waiting since hours, but in game the gm is doing the hide and seek event, where does he find that time to do that, and most of all, is it so important to do compared to do player assistance? Or is that guy a "fake gm" that can't do anything ingame other than trivia quiz or hide and seek events and that's why tickets don't get response?
Another thing I forgot: a Moderator said in multiple topics to contact GM "xxx" about issue "yyy", and it is exactly what I did, I waited with patience for days only to get a copy paste reply that was saying "open a ticket/appeal on website, bye". Sigh. So I opened the ticket, waited 4 days, and got another copy pasta reply, baiscally it's a back and forth game that goes forever, without solution or real talk, until you give up and realize that you are wasting time. Why is that a copy paste you may ask? Well, the text is exactly the same, so that should be enough, but most disturbing is that the message was not even read!
How I know? Because I attached a video proof, a private video i uploaded on youtube, recording some events in game, and guess what, it still has 0 views after 1 week, so what's the point if I spend time and effort asking support, giving evidences that dont even get checked? I mean a video with 0 views in a ticket...even if it's **** it should be at least checked 1 time, can't believe in a back and forth of at least 3 person (private message) the video has still 0 views..Counting also the ticket I made after, which is readable by every gm, it should at least have some views, at least one.
About the forum/moderators it's ok, I just didn't know the roles exactly so apologizes.
But what I experienced and wrote up here should be fixed somehow.. I think?Edited: December 21, 2017
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Moderator
Imagine this scenario now: the chef isn't in the kitchen anymore (in-game); after dealing with hundreds of customers that sent complains because their fork is broken (because they are holding it the wrong way), that the lettuce isn't in the right angle or shape, or that the food is taking too long for them to swallow, they already are done with their day of work; they are just hanging out for a few minutes in the common area before leaving, as their duty is already done, it's on the next chef now. The fact a GM might come to the Forums reply to something irrelevant doesn't means they are slacking on their duty in-game, just that they aren't on duty at the time, as no GM works 24/7.
I can't comment on the rest as, besides forwarding players to who should be able to assist them with certain issues, Moderators aren't part of the ticket process, be them in-game or website Support ones.
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Member
I perfectly understand the GM point of view, I know there are tons of useless tickets that are just a waste of time for the gms and an insult for the human race (maybe 80% of them? I don't know). So yes maybe then the chef will say "oh whatever it will be again someone who forgot how to eat with the fork, cba now", while meanwhile 1 out of 10-20 has really a giant rat on the pizza and hes the one who really needs help. But you can't prevent stupid tickets to be opened so if there is a number of tickets too high to handle for the gms online average, this can definitely slower the process of cleaning/replying to them.
I just though about this: why don't you try to "hire" semi-gms that have no power on the game but when they are free they can clean trash tickets and leave the real ones to the gms? I think this could be a great idea. Maybe one guy deletes trash tickets, and another one double-check the tickets deleted by the guy, just to be sure he didn't do mistakes. Some guys helping with the tickets on their free time.
I would do it honestly, considering today I stood in darnassus like 6 hours straight doing nothing (still standing..), at least I could do something and help the community in some way, I'm sure there are many people who would like to do this, I don't think they are busy (game talking) 100% of the time they are logged in, just take a look at capital cities, tons of char doing nothing on their mount. U know.. "what could I do while I wait for the tank to join rdf? I could help cleaning tickets, or replying to the easiest ones"..Or when I literally finished what I needed to do and I'm just jumping around in elwyn forest or orgrimmar for no reason..This is time "wasted", I mean for sure you can log in and randomly chat, observe the clouds, do a ride on the zeppelin, it's a game...but you can also use that time in a better way, if you have nothing else to do, maybe you find it interesting?
I personally say I would do it. (Now I don't know your requirements for testing a new moderator/helper/whatever.. but well I said I would do it, just tickets, I dont need powers like teleport or gm island or other stuff. I would be also very happy to to see someone here in the topic offering himself aswell for this "job", for real, it's something that benefit all of us at the end.
(It's obvious you can't give the power of deleting/replying tickets to the first randoms, but I don't think it's a bad idea to introduce a new "gm rank", it could be one step ahead into the overall happyness?)
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Moderator
You focused on the wrong part. It's not about how many of the tickets are unnecessary, but that GMs still follow a work schedule, they have hours they are committed to their job in-game, which also means those hours have a beginning and end. If they were to stick to "checking just another one in case this one is important" they'd never leave. At that point, it's up to each of them whether they stay past their required hours or not.
We already have the Forums for player assistance that doesn't requires GM powers. There's a whole section where players help each other and answer questions and solve doubts. A few players are around there answering stuff all the time, and all other players are free to either ask their own questions there or to use some of their time giving answers. Things that require GM permissions - which include in-game tickets - will remain only accessible to the Staff, though.
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Member
Doesn't work that way, I did ask of information regarding this. If that is what you want, you can apply for GM. Now to question about Gm's and more detailed information of tickets etc you can find here
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Member
I understand.
Yes but if forum has 20 questions I guess tickets in game are 200.. Thats why I proposed a gm-powerless-rank only for tickets (not even the weakest power, just the ability to read and reply ticket), and avaible for everyone who wants to help gms' work, beause most of people use tickets when they have an issue. I myself reply sometimes on the forum, I even ask sometimes and that's ok...but it's not like an in-game ticket, I mean I didn't see (at least for now) someone opening a topic for "I deleted my hearthstone, where do I buy it plz??? And why i have an icon of my armor always red under the map??", questions like these, or a bit more serious can be replied by the community and leave the hard stuff for gms. Thats why I suggested a very low gm-rank powerless, but whatever,it's up to you.
@Justmarried
Actually I am not qualified for doing a gm, even if it would be interesting, I mean I can solve basic problems and help new players, maybe other stuff..but regarding serious reports, that require knowledge of server, scripting, mangos, or idk what else, im totally useless so im the first to say "i cannot do the gm"
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Member
Just some questions, since I have 0 clues about what happens in the gm's screen when opening the tickets..
1) Are they sorted by char name, time elapsed, something?
2) Editing for some reason my ticket will reset the elapsed time? (assuming more elapsed=more priority?)
2) Can the gm see if the player is online at the moment of opening ticket, so he can start a live chat instead of giving a responde that is unable to reply?
3) Can the gm see my status like "oh he is afk i can skip to another ticket"?
In few words, best advices to not fail when opening tickets in game? Like: don't go afk, dont go battleground, don't edit the ticket..something like this...
Thanks appreciated every reply from the beginning.
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Member
Bidoofherox , i understand your frustration as i have gone through it recently too. Had a faction at neutral and the "at war" was still on. They took around 5 days to help me with 5 ingame replies which said , try deleting wtf folder and try disabling addons(ofc everyone tries that before writing a ticket). Anyways i finally got help because the ingame replies seemed like they never understood my problem but i also made a website ticket from the support system and that fixed me problem. Took time , i almost gave up but they fixed it. So keep trying. Ingame tickets sucks ... they also suggested me to make a bugtracker report for a problem only I had. Just make a website ticket and probably a more knowledgeable staff will help you with it. Good luck. Dont give up.
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Member
To answer each question.
1) Are they sorted by char name, time elapsed, something?
They are sorted by both.
2) Editing for some reason my ticket will reset the elapsed time? (assuming more elapsed=more priority?)
Don't look at times on your ticket, they are not working as should. But no it won't reset anything.
2) Can the gm see if the player is online at the moment of opening ticket, so he can start a live chat instead of giving a responde that is unable to reply?
Yes gm's can see if the player is online and if player is online, then they will whisper to solve the issue instead of mail answer.
3) Can the gm see my status like "oh he is afk i can skip to another ticket"?
If you are online, even as AFK you will receive whisper. However if you won't answer they will leave the response of your issue/question as mail.
So hope this answered your questions.
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Member
Thanks Justmarried for the detailed replies!
So ok, I just need to wait I guess, it's almost 2 days straight now..I try to stay online as long as I can, in the case the gm open a whisper instead of a "closed reply", but It's hard specially when you have nothing to do in game. I hope they will not answer when I log out that would be funny xD
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Member
Sometimes it does take some time to get answer yes since tons of tickets and gm's are humans after all so they can't be in-game answering tickets all the time on all realms at same time. Therefore I would say just wait for it while you play and just go off when you feel like and if that is the case, you will get message in mail.
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Member
I don't care much about wait time, as long as my issue get resolved at the end.
What I am saying is I hope the gm reading my ticket (or someone else with similar problems) doesnt give a reply while the char is offline, when it's 100% obvious that a little chat is needed to solve the case, so better wait and try when the char is online rather than giving a useless reply that leads only to another ticket opened and another time wasted, for the user and for the next gm picking up ticket. This happened few times in the past.
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Member
I don't know if Obnoxious told you this as well but,
GM's work in-game, that's their job - now look at the GM group, there's 9 GM's. And there's 7 realms out of which two have over 10k people online. One GM is supposed to be logged for 4-6 hours (taken from the GM application), so you can assume that people can't always sit 6 hours because of irl stuff, irl job etc. It's impossible to cover so much ground with 9 people, so obviously there'll be some wait time. Also they're not required to post anything on forum.
Those guys that make events such as hide and seek etc are community managers, they're not GMs. (Whole different role).
