The Complete Utter Nightmare that is SWTOR Customer Support

[Deleted]

It's funny that people expect new games to be perfect without bugs like WoW is after 7 years of developement. How was WoW's customer support in Vanilla?

Though this is a bad situation, missing a whole character.

Why do people even say this? it is as if you are implying that we should wait 6/7 years for their customer support to be of any use, because thats how long it taken blizzard to get their act together. Not that i agree with your comment, but it really is a ridiculous excuse for SWTOR not being amazing because 'it was worse in vanilla'. i don't know if you've realised this, but we are in 2012. Games aren't made at the standard that 'vanilla' was back in 2004.

OT: from your point of view i can see why it is a pain in the ass, but i guess i'd have to see for myself if i encounter any problems myself.

[Deleted]

You don't speak down to them. Any problem you're experiencing is not their fault. Tell them that you understand that fact, be impeccably polite, while swearing profusely (meanwhile mentioning you're not swearing at them, and again you understand it's not their fault). The 6th guy I talked to about my problem was Scottish. At the end of our conversation (before he passed me to the Irish guy), I apologized for being a pain and he said "No, no need, you've been a right gentleman."

You'll always get someone who gets your frustration and it doesn't really bother them, it's quite nice when you do get that person .

[Redcinder]

Don't kid yourself WoW has a lot of bugs and balancing issues.
Don't compare it to WoW 7 years ago? ok I'll compare it to last years WoW. How many dungeons and raids did Cata bring to the table at launch? Hell how many did Cata bring overall? How much time did Blizz need to fix ele, enh shamans? Hell they didn't find a good fix for the warriors rage and don't get me started on paladins or the 1 button arcane mages that used to piss me off. You tell me how much customer service did the shamans get? They were WoW's underdogs for years and all the answers to their problems was "working as intended". How many times have they waited for a patch to fix their problems and only got another slap to the face with yet another nerf after already being at the bottom of the dps charts? I know I was an ele shaman.

Your arised issues are all but useless You say Shamans and Warriors were bugged but they still have and to this day hold competitive DPS in comparison to other classes. Wow is the MOST BALANCED MMO out there and because you cant play your char to its potential you call balancing issues or bugs.... 2 Words....

Get Out

Thanks

[Roxinius]

Not likely. I'm educated.

No such thing as an educated troll as I said before you aren't the only person having issues there is a line and you don't get to jump to the front

[belfpala]

Thanks for proving my point.

The fact that I had to talk to so many people? Not a big deal. I'm used to it. I spend half my day doing that. The first 4-5 only took a minute or two each and passed me on up once I politely explained my problem and gave them the specific solution I had in mind.

[weirdman]

Yes because you're the only person having an issue they can only do so much when they have hundreds of thousands i've people with issues because Bioware/EA even with extensive beta testing still cant create a stable game. News flash you aren't special you're just another person in a line of people they are pretending to and not helping

Fixed that for you bud, no need to thank me.

[Farbod]

What some of you fail to realize is that one does not enjoy calling CS numerous times. It is not fun opening several tickets regarding the same issue. Its not enjoyable to sit on hold for 20 minutes listening to the same star wars theme just to have to explain the situation a third time to someone who barely speaks the same language as you.

Check the forums. The majority of posts are people that have had their problems COMPLETELY ignored. I have friends and guidies that quit the game because of the issues they had to deal with.

You say that if I did things the correct way, I wouldve been helped in a quicker and easier fashion. I disagree. Im willing to bet that if I did things the correct way, Id still be missing my main character and Id probably have quit the game altogether...

[Stevegasm]

From the POV of a former tech support agent, I could see why things are sour right now. It's a new product, they have no way to know how much people they need to hire, which is a much more delicate balance than you may think, especially if they do not outsource their support. The trick is hiring enough to deal with the initial surge, while not hiring too much that they need to lay off workers. Not to mention that most of the agents you are dealing with are probably green as well. And being a new product, they don't have a complete handle on what problems they will have, nor will they have a good database going to deal with it. Even a seasoned tech support agent would have trouble support a project of such a huge scope. Training more people takes time (HP spent 3 weeks average for support on their products when I was employed by an outsourcer they contracted back in 2002-2004). I happened to be good enough at my job to be placed into supporting designjet printers, a new contract for the company, and the printers are worth more than a car. Even with four weeks of training and HP babystepping us into it, it took us a few months to get a good handle on the product line. Hell, everytime the call centre received a new contract, the first few months always had terrible satisfaction scores. I'm not even going to fathom how much time it will take to get a handle on an MMO though. I mean, if something as simple as an all in one printer can take a few months for a team of 60 to 120 to handle, program as complex as an MMO, I won't even guess.

Those people on the phone aren't even programmers or anything. Just customer support. About all they can probably do right now is collect data, get as much detail about a problem as they can, and then forward that to the software engineers who will actually figure out a fix. Asking a supervisor usually slows everything down. They aren't always technical, and if they are, they are the ones who help the front line techs (basically, the entire ticket queue is slowed down significantly when a senior tech has to deal with a customer).

Also, in creating that many tickets, you're just asking for trouble. Anytime I got a call, and saw that much tickets in such a short span of time, the first thing I would think is "okay, here is a customer I probably do not want to deal with." Generally, people with a lot of tickets are horrible to deal with, whether it was justified or not. Unless it's an easy fix that a lot of people happened to overlook, I would find the best way to get rid of the caller. Call centre jobs suck ass, and I'll find a way to dump a terrible call if I feel like it'll dampen my day. No matter how mad you are, even if it's justified, never treat those who serve you like garbage, especially if they serve your food (I learned this working both in tech support and in the restaurant biz).

I'm not saying you're right or wrong, Farbod, I'm just trying to give you some perspective on how things are on the other side of the fence. Providing your side of the story is the 100% truth, I would say your frustration is justified. Those are some shitty problems. Maybe it's because I worked in the customer service industry for several years throughout my life, I am more forgiving than most. You found a gamebreaking bug, and I'm sure they are looking into it. But these things take time. It would be cool to get your crafting skill back, but from what I understand, even in a game as old as WoW, their CMs are even unable to restore a lost profession. You just seem to happen to have horrid luck. I experience the 4th profession thing all the time, but I just quit the game, and open it back up again, and all is well again.

But yeah, the TLDR (aka important points): New game, new problems, new CMs (tech support), no one knows shit, no databases of problems, oh, and popular game. No idea how many people they need to do good service. Yeah, the customer support is going to be gawdaweful until they find their feet. New restaurants, stores, etc face the same problems, a sensible customer cuts them a little slack during the first little while (most people call this the honeymoon period where it's okay to be a screw up because you're new). Give it six months time, if it's still the same way, then yeah, we got some serious problems.

[Bauwagast]

I've contacted the SW:TOR customer service a couple of times regarding bugs/imbalances in the game, and it seemed to be alright, but one of the tickets got a stupid response, as if the person at the other end hadn't bothered reading through the ticket at all.

It was about the space quest "Clouds of Vonduru" that is made a lot harder when you get the proton torpedo upgrade at 50, since it refuses to let you use normal missiles on the shield generators, but wants you to do a 3 second target tracking with your mouse cursor on each of them, to lock on, which is pretty hard with the screen swirving around all the time, so you can shoot the torpedos. You really are much better off just unequipping the proton torpedo launcher for this quest, which is silly.
I contacted the customer service pointing this out, and got a reply that asked me to reset my UI and specify what the quest name, character name were, and to specify the problem, although I'd just done that, then to create a new ticket with the word "hedgehog", so they could find it more easily. It just ticks me off when it feels like the person at the other end just doesn't make an effort /violin.

[Redcinder]

so let me get this strait...2012 WoW is flawless and with no bugs now? 7 years had led Blizz to transform this game into to a flawless fame with no bugs and no hiccups what so ever? I'm no fandoy for ToR although I like it a lot and I admit it has problems but saying that WoW is perfect is stupid. Hell there are still bugs that were in beta and you can still find them in the game now.

You may not be a TOR fanboi but your obviously a WoW hater so opinion invalid...

[Roxinius]

Fixed that for you bud, no need to thank me.

Keep trolling because this game is far more stable then any other know at launch so gg troll stfu

[Potato Bus]

Kisho and Stevegasm nailed it.

Also wanted to add this thought: you encountered a bug that caused the loss of your profession. It's possible it may happen again if they restore it before fixing the problem (which would make you feel worse: your current situation or getting your profession restored just to lose it again 2 days later?). If there's a hole in your boat, do you sit there with a bucket throwing water out of the boat constantly while more pours in? No, you work on plugging the hole first, and then tossing out a lot less water after the problem's been fixed. Don't discount the possibility that your issue is in a waiting queue until the actual problem has been fixed via a patch.

[gerdts]

LOL. Yes I want sympathy. I really couldnt care less what you have experienced. Count yourself lucky. If you would like a screen shot of my tickets and problems, I have actually documented them incase it could help me get them resolved.

I was a huge Bioware fan, and recommended games like Mass Effect and KOTOR to all my friends. I was looking forward to SWTOR for a long time and was excited when I started playing. While I expect bugs to persist and expect there to be some delays with support, I never expected to be treated the way I have been. Tickets closed and ignored and even hung up on by customer support while I was waiting on hold.

I really dont give a rats ass about your sympathy... Just hoping posts like mine actually get Bioware to take some notice and improve their horrid support...

Post like your post do nothing but show how impatient and unrealistic people like you are. This helps nothing. This accomplishes nothing, and in reality is just fodder for the forums. I lol you.

[Deleted]

Why do most posts have to turn into a wow vs swtor thread >.> it really is annoying. Where here to discuss the Customer Support, not how wow compares to swtor in every way...

[Wonderwuman]

I hope you get baned for opening 21 tickets in less then 2 weeks, much less opening 10 tickets at once. This reminds me of the guy in wow who i think got baned on the fourm and got smacked down by one of the fourm mods casue he opened over 400 tickets with in a year.

[Cairhiin]

The guy is understandably frustrated maybe you will feel the same way when you have to open 10 tickets and make however many calls just to get some simple help that would take a wow GM 2 mins .

Two minnutes you are joking right? In my 7 years of WoW I've only ever had one successful interaction with a GM. All the other time I got answers to a question I never asked, or I needed to wait 2-3 days and I just closed to ticket. There's no way you got serviced in 2 minutes.

[slammer619]

I really dont give a rats ass about your sympathy... Just hoping posts like mine actually get Bioware to take some notice and improve their horrid support...

I do not think Bioware can see your post from over here.

[Farbod]

I hope you get baned for opening 21 tickets in less then 2 weeks, much less opening 10 tickets at once. This reminds me of the guy in wow who i think got baned on the fourm and got smacked down by one of the fourm mods casue he opened over 400 tickets with in a year.

If I didnt, I wouldnt have a character to play. So even if I do get banned, changes very little... Thanks for your opinion though, I was running out of toilet paper...

[Sebbah]

You may not be a TOR fanboi but your obviously a WoW hater so opinion invalid...

No i'm not a hater. I had great times in WoW. I admit it's a great game maybe the best out there but for me it's not the greatest anymore. Anyone who's crying about the customer service of ToR rely needs to read what Stevegasm wrote in his post. Everything he said is spot on.
Even if i don't like WoW anymore I do hope that there will be competitions between WoW and ToR because that in the end is a good thing for the customer and I hope all of you know why and how.

[belfpala]

I hope you get baned for opening 21 tickets in less then 2 weeks, much less opening 10 tickets at once. This reminds me of the guy in wow who i think got baned on the fourm and got smacked down by one of the fourm mods casue he opened over 400 tickets with in a year.

What? I've probably opened like 40 reporting various bugs and annoyances (for example, higher level quests often send you back to low level worlds, but you can't buy current level medpacks or stims on thos worlds; easy fix to that, if you think about it for a minute). I'm not expecting a response to any of them, just hoping they pass them up.