GW2 - Poorest Account Security ever?

[Shadylol]

Judging from some of the posts on the official forums about account compromise tickets that are being resolved, I'm not far off the mark that many of the new CS employees they're having to hire to handle this increased workload... are extremely inexperienced.

Can't really fault Arena Net for having employees that are human.

No, but you can fault them for hiring people that aren't... good at doing what they're supposed to do

[DrakeWurrum]

No, but you can fault them for hiring people that aren't... good at doing what they're supposed to do

To be fair, most people who are even willing to work customer support are minimum wagers to begin with, and are not exactly the "cream of the crop" when it comes to the workforce. I've known several Blizzard GMs first hand who would go to work high. One or two would go to work drunk, but those usually get fired pretty quick.

[Abstieg]

Or perhaps they're completely incompetent and, as with my example, out of their depth when it comes to CS?

Hey, I just got a new office job, completely unfamiliar with the systems and processes, and make a lot of errors and need to ask a lot of questions as I go along. Unfortunately, it's a necessary step in hiring new people.

[DrakeWurrum]

Hey, I just got a new office job, completely unfamiliar with the systems and processes, and make a lot of errors and need to ask a lot of questions as I go along. Unfortunately, it's a necessary step in hiring new people.

Exactly. And let's not forget how ridiculously stressful it is to work customer service, especially if you're not used to dealing with angry people for 8 hours a day.

---------- Post added 2012-09-12 at 05:24 PM ----------

Want to put this out there in regards to people receiving e-mail responses...this is from somebody else who posted on the official forums about their issue (honestly not sure how, maybe a friend's account, or maybe he has two accounts?)

Response Via Email (Lance) 09/07/2012 05:04 PM

Hello,
Thanks for contacting Guild Wars 2! After a quick review of your ticket, we feel that the information below could resolve your issue. Your ticket has not been closed and you will receive an additional reply as soon as we are able. However, if the information below does resolve your issue please close your ticket to confirm that you no longer need our assistance. Doing so will assist us in helping everyone in a timely manner.

[Remilia]

What we do know.

Anet has no roll back system for any compromise accounts. A process that should always be there and not sparing a few TByte of data to achieve so is dumb.

Their site security comprises of an open sessionid with no attempt to hide it. Just logon and look at your browser address.

The verification has your userid (why......) and a session id which isnt to begin with secure. A temporary id would be sufficient for your basic need.

[Shadylol]

To be fair, most people who are even willing to work customer support are minimum wagers to begin with, and are not exactly the "cream of the crop" when it comes to the workforce. I've known several Blizzard GMs first hand who would go to work high. One or two would go to work drunk, but those usually get fired pretty quick.

This is like the third time today I've seen you tell us about how you're a Game Master in WoW (or used to be), so I have kind of a nagging question. Did you guys actually use GM Island for something, or was it always just sort of there?

You used to be able to "/who gm", and see one or two people there every so often on retail, but that might've just been people that swam there/exploited there. I've been there a few times, but I just think the place is hideous, and maybe it's the emus screwing up a file somewhere, but the textures always look goofed on the terrain

[zaphon]

You've clearly either not made a support ticket in GW2, or they've changed their process in the past few days. Either way, submitting a report tells you that they can't respond do you directly, but they'll investigate the bug (or whatever you reported), and all support has more than "absolutely nothing" to do with NCSoft support, since it's... dealt with... by... NCSOft suport... ...

...

Wait, did you report a "bug" in game, or did you visit support.guildwars2.com and actually create a support ticket (which requires a different login from both your GW2 account and your NCSoft master account)? As what you describe is the latter, as they don't send you a response to "bug reports", however if you open a support ticket, they do respond to you (in about 3 days).

[Deleted]

Work as a teacher for 1 day, and you'll never complain about customer service again. I promise you that.

[Fenlnir]

Or perhaps they're completely incompetent and, as with my example, out of their depth when it comes to CS?

I don't think you've ever worked as a CS temp. Or a phone rep. It has got to be the MOST stressful thing to do until you have seen enough to actually be able to do something. And yes, being a teacher is no where near the same. I don't think any school on the damn planet offers a degree in dealing with people who want to whine, while teaching requires a degree, in at least one subject. I'll kindly direct you to http://www.cracked.com/blog/5-idioti...er-service_p2/ for how you should deal with customer service.

That just sounds odd. I wonder if what they're doing to "increase" the size of their support team is borrowing, either temporarily or permanently, support people from NCSoft.

They might just be pulling in temps, as I pointed out above. Hell, when I had problems with SWTOR, I talked to people in three different states, as temps are pretty cheap compared to full CS staff, especially for small issues, similar to yours. But I hope they didn't gather up people from NCsoft support, because it's garbage.

Work as a teacher for 1 day, and you'll never complain about customer service again.

Work in CS for a day, and you'll see that getting on a child's level is easier than dealing with most adults.

[Remilia]

Also forgot the compromised data base from some unknown not reported site that no one knows what it is other than ANet
Soooo what is it.

[Abstieg]

Work as a teacher for 1 day, and you'll never complain about customer service again.

Work a year with City Year. Same thing as teachers, but paid even less.

[Deleted]

I don't think you've ever worked as a CS temp. Or a phone rep. It has got to be the MOST stressful thing to do until you have seen enough to actually be able to do something. And yes, being a teacher is no where near the same. I don't think any school on the damn planet offers a degree in dealing with people who want to whine, while teaching requires a degree, in at least one subject. I'll kindly direct you to http://www.cracked.com/blog/5-idioti...er-service_p2/ for how you should deal with customer service.


They might just be pulling in temps, as I pointed out above. Hell, when I had problems with SWTOR, I talked to people in three different states, as temps are pretty cheap compared to full CS staff, especially for small issues, similar to yours. But I hope they didn't gather up people from NCsoft support, because it's garbage.


Work in CS for a day, and you'll see that getting on a child's level is easier than dealing with most adults.

I'm a teacher. I think I know a fair bit about stress. Perhaps one of our superstar forum goers should try it one day and see how long they last. I wish I could follow a script all day and if someone was harassing me just put the phone down on them.

[DrakeWurrum]

I would like to point out:

My account was compromised, took about 24 hours to get access restored.
I did loose all my characters and “stuff”, so I am not all that motivated anymore to play since they have no ability to restore items or characters…

about 11 minutes ago

Apparently some people are getting helped faster than others, which is obviously expected considering that some tickets are just faster than others. I'm desperately hoping they have put getting their rollback system online as top priority. They've already created such a bad first impression from how many bugs the game has had at launch, this is only going to make it worse.

[Shadylol]

Work in CS for a day, and you'll see that getting on a child's level is easier than dealing with most adults.

When you're a teacher, there's an obligation to actually... teach something, and if you fail at that, you've harmed society by providing an unsubstantial education. CSRs just have to answer questions, and "try their best", while the worst thing that can happen to is someone yells at you over the phone

[Abstieg]

I'm a teacher. I think I know a fair bit about stress. Perhaps one of our superstar forum goers should try it one day and see how long they last. I wish I could follow a script all day and if someone was harassing me just put the phone down on them.

Did it for a year. Next?

[Deleted]

Did it for a year. Next?

Why did you quit? (and how long did it take to complete the US equivalent of the PGCE)

[DrakeWurrum]

Did you guys actually use GM Island for something, or was it always just sort of there?

AFAIK, GM Island is/was just there for a GM's characters to "idle" at, which were used from the GM ticket... program... thingy, so that GMs could actually chat with the person who opened with the ticket. Blizzard basically had to "hack" their own game to make the ticket system work.

It seems like they've dramatically improved something, considering chatting with a GM now has official blue text with a little logo next to it and everything, so I wonder if they removed GM Island with Cataclysm.

[Abstieg]

Why did you quit?

City Year. Did a year of service but didn't get selected for a second year.

[mmines]

Wow this makes me think about not picking it up in the future, sure you use the same password for things but you never even got notified about an email change? That just seems really bad. I'm not one to have separate emails for everything, just seems like to much work but I do have different passwords for everything.

[DrakeWurrum]

When you're a teacher, there's an obligation to actually... teach something, and if you fail at that, you've harmed society by providing an unsubstantial education. CSRs just have to answer questions, and "try their best", while the worst thing that can happen to is someone yells at you over the phone

Actually, the worst thing that could happen is you get fired. IIRC, Blizzard's CS department operates in "teams" of GMs, all placed on the same row of computers, with a supervisor at the end of the row, and every week they have little meetings to discuss the little reports you can get (you know, that extra little feedback thing after your ticket is closed, that most people ignore?), as well as tickets they just pull up that they notice as either being really well done... or really poorly done. Blizzard monitors every action their GMs do, so if a GM fucks up, there's no covering it up.

People do make some pretty bad mistakes without getting fired, but I imagine they're only going to be... so lenient.