Bad Server. My E-mail rant + Reply

[Vulgra]

Just felt like sharing my e-mail rant and the reply I got, don't bother reading if you don't want to.

Yesturday I was trying to help run our favorite shammie's alt through SM Cath, and as could be expected, the servers crapped out hardcore, locked up our systems, crashed wow, and eventually lag-spiked so hard, that for 5 mins we were helpless. So helpless my lvl 60 Rogue with full Shadowcraft+dalrends+duel 15 agil chants + DMC:Heroism got raped by a single lvl 44 elite. After waiting for 20 mins to log back in to find my dead char, I got fed up and emailed blizzard:

"Server: Doomhammer
Issue:I'm getting rather fed-up/tired/annoyed/etc with the logins. When I get landed in a que, it annoys me, but at least I get an idea of when I MIGHT be able to play the game I'm paying a monthly fee to play. But, when I get stuck, looking at "Handshaking" for 15+ mins, I can't help but want my HAND BACK. When I then get stuck "retreving character list" for 20 or so mins, I can't help but wonder if it would be more efficient for me to get a list of ALL profiles on the server, and manually LOCATE it myself.
Better yet, when I finally find my char list, and chose which char I wanna play, getting STUCK on the loading screen with a FULL LOADING bar for another 15-30 mins, is really quite pathetic. By the time I can finally see my char she is already AFK. YET: my friends don't see me as ONLINE untill I finally DO get logged in on my char. I have already missed a raid with the guild I've applied to, due to my attempting to login a mere 45 mins prior to raid. There was NO queue.
I got locked at all three points, and could not get in in time to raid. In fact I spent nearly an hour just trying to send them a tell to explain why I wasn't online and at BWL like I was supposed to be. 5 million active accounts? $10-15 a month? that's a large sum of money. Spend some of it on making the servers work right. Adding more servers doesn't solve the problems you already have on the exsisting servers. it's like a bandaid on a shotgun blast to the stomach.
Sincerely,
A Concerned Customer

P.S. I look forward to your generic "blah blah, we know about "blah blah" we're working on "yadda yadda" response which will be of absolutely no help to me. Thnx."

Suprisingly, less than a day later I got a reply:

"Hello,
We wanted to let you know that we are aware of the performance issues some players have been experiencing recently, including: realm queues, slow character-list retrieval, and loot lag, and keep you informed of the steps we're taking to alleviate the problems. During the holiday season, thousands of new players created accounts and many players reactivated their dormant accounts, pushing our daily concurrency to the highest levels we have seen since World of Warcraft launched. This increase in concurrency increased pressure on our systems, causing the issues listed above.

We began preparing for this increase in players prior to the holidays, and we would like to share our plans with you. The first step is to target some of our ongoing code improvements specifically at decreasing pressure on World of Warcraft's system infrastructure. We have been making and will continue to make code improvements throughout the life of the game, but our goal with these specific changes will be to help streamline how item creation impacts the database, which will help mitigate some of the issues. The second and more impactful step will be to add new hardware to increase performance. This increase will significantly improve the current level of performance, and, combined with the code improvements, should alleviate the issues listed above.

In order to accommodate the further growth of our player base, we have plans in motion to open a new World of Warcraft site a few months from now. This will allow us to bring a large number of new realms online for the new players, as well as any players who join in anticipation of The Burning Crusade. In addition, we will begin to replace our current systems with the newest top-of-the-line components, with the goal of further increasing performance across all realms.

As always, we remain committed to delivering the best possible service for you, and we will do everything necessary to ensure that World of Warcraft continues to provide an experience that you have to come to expect from all Blizzard games. We appreciate your patience as we work to make the changes discussed here over the weeks and months ahead.

http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/threa ... ost6635412


Sincerely,

Justin K.
Blizzard Entertainment
Technical Support Representative


Customer satisfaction is a top priority here at Blizzard Entertainment, and we would like your feedback on the level of service you have received. Please feel free to provide such feedback at the following web address:"

To be honest, while at the root, it was a generic "fuck you we don't care" reply, I was shocked that they actually claim to be doing some things that MIGHT help out. But for the most part, like I've told my gf when she gets on my case about cussing out my comp when I"m stuck loading:
"If I wanted to view a loading screen for 20 mins at a time instead of playing a game, I could do that for free, I'm paying $15 a month for this Poorly animated POS loading screen."

Anywho.

[Doomsayer]

don't let their cute reply fool you, it's been written and sent to thousands of other customers. it's the same nonspecific we're working on it bullshit they throw at everyone, if you beleive a word of it then you're falling for their crap.

here's what they're really doing-nothing. yep nothing, they know in two weeks the holiday rush of people will thin out, the war effort quests will be done and casual players will go back to playing les. the kiddies will go back to school and the servers will rebalance themselves. then they'll just open up transfers for the ten or so realms that are the worst still, and then they'll claim that they did a lot to help us out.

[Vulgra]

I know, I was just shocked they put hte effort into making a reply longer than "F-U we have your money and that's all that matters"

[Doomsayer]

if you can't give them a good short answer, then smother them in bullshit. that's the blizzard pr motto.

[Idyaar]

Yea. I am sure they wrote that letter in October so they would have it for when the servers puked during the holidays.