best support I've ever seen...

NOT?

I'm wondering how people like the support, the GW-support team is giving us?
And I don't mean the regular and free updates we get, which I really appreciate.

I mean: How does support answer to your problems? Do they solve them? Do they read your requests carefully? Do they understand what you want? Are they quick, reliable?

I have had a lot of contact with several supporters of all kinds of companies over the past years and all I can say is: seen one, seen'em all.

I have about 6 requests so far, including characters getting stuck somewhere, enemies doing hyperspace jumps (one moment 50 meters in the distance, the next already behind you), one open request about abusive names, and so far none of my problems that I encountered in the game have been solved.

What I really don't like (and that addresses almost any support-team I got into contact with) is the wide spread "Don't call us, we'll call you" mentality.

You report abusive names, you make suggestions, you file in errors and what do you usually get:

"If we don't hear from you in the next 72 hours we'll assume the call to be closed"

I know that they keep telling you that a "closed call" doesn't mean it's no longer researched, but recently, I got doubts.

What is your experience?

beats me. i have no REAL complaints. Im very happy with this game and a few things got to me and I bitch a lil bout them but in the end Im happy to have a kick ass game to play and nothing I say will change policy so i don't worry about it. (i'm a sheep)

The "hyperspace jumps" that enemies do usually happen to me during when my connection hiccups (usually doing stuff on my other laptop while playing guildwars on my normal comp, so I can see when the connection goes screwy), it's pretty widespread, and I don't see how opening a support ticket would help, as they certainly know about it.

As for getting stuck, I've never seen this happen to a player character, and I've gotten quite a few hours in this game. If it's henchmen you're talking about, they actually seem to have fixed that in the last patch. Still, I don't see the point in calling support for this sort of thing and expecting a reply back (you can simply warp to a town), though I can certainly see how it would useful to ANet to hear about the particulars of such bugs.

As for name violations, they don't hurt you, and children shouldn't be playing online games anyways, so I really think it's a moot point. Enforcing the naming policy when they're probably swamped with reports of naming violations is probably very difficult for them, especially considering they can't higher as many GM's as a game that charges monthly.

The "we'll call you" mentality is perfect for a game that doesn't charge monthly, as they only have a few GM's on call, and they have to picky about what they respond to.

If you talk about the /bug command - it is double edged blade (of extingtion :P)
This is not ordinary MMOPRG so you cant expect the GM, Consouler or whatever it is to come and resquire you. Thus a stuck is equal to restarting the mission (or activating the next cut scene). Anyway when stuck try to click around with the mouse - the pathfinding often unstucks me.

/Bug is not "Page a GM".

About the hyperspace jumps they are only visual - enemy moves for 1-2 secs max then returns back to its place. The bad side is that you attack him and see how you character moves past the enemy and running somewhere there (the real position of the enemy). All other issues are caused by some lag minor bugs - (returning to previous postion and etc). I guess it is some sort of hard to fix bug - deep in the engine roots caused by latency so its fixing may be slow and taking a lot of effort.

All bugs are stored in some log I guess and reading them requires A LOT of time. Some players report thing such as "OMG I DIED THIS GAME SUX RETURN MY MONEY" and sort of - which is pure flood.


Don't tell me you are using the phone support! I never use it. (except for local I-net provider problems) Especialy for things that cannot be fixed that easily.

Or you talk about the mail support?

Anywey GW is one of the bugfree-est stable-est issue-less online games I have played so far. Never experianced a server crash, no server, major bug that brings unplayability or similar issues.

I remember when my buddies were unhappy because when they make a raid the server began to lag and later often crashed or in UO the insurance bug that is known since AoS and it's "power" is like cancel the player to never play UO again or the "hyperspace jumps walking" on Anarchy Online and so and so ....

That hyperspace-ticket was my first ticket ever. I was new.

Maybe you're lacking the clumsyness I have.
Getting stuck is quite easy in pre-Ascalon if your a Ranger witha pet an Gwen on your side.
I got stuck between a tree and a river. Gwen and my pet followed me and wouldn't move.
Stuck!

Porting to town using the map is a workaround, but do you really want to see 2 hours+ going to waste on a longer mission just because your character can walk through rock, trees, other players/henchmen, but can't walk through your pet?

Not really. In that one mission where you have to break Evenia out of her cell, that fenced area where those cow-like things rush out is still a good place for henchmen to get stuck.

It's not the names the hurt me so much.
What really hurts me is, that names like
"<firstname> the banger"
or
"*arsch*" something
gets accepted for a name, when a prefectly harmless name like "Mayweed" get's rejected.

This makes a black-list with terms to be blocked totally useless

They can hire me. I would do it for free.

And then anohter 2000 players will complain you that you didn't answer their ticket for name abusing in 1 hour :PP

I've never had a question that wasn't answered within 5 days. And so far I have asked about 7 questions.One person actually researched one of my questions on several different websites.


Yah, I'de say this is the best support I have ever seen. Maybe you should try playing another game where it takes the GMs weeks or even months to get back to you?

BTW: I submitted a name report and it was answered within 10 hours. They WILL NOT MAIL YOU BACK ON THEIR JUDICIAL DECISION ON ACCOUNTS.
Perhaps your reports are just too trivial for response. (IE: Reporting lag)

That IS fast.

Done that, been there.

Where is the line between trivial and non-trivial?

Well i dont have to pay monthly, so i have no complains, so i think they are doing a darn good job, Keep up the great work Anet

Non-trivial name report: Mr [Insert filterskipped swear word]
Trivial name report: Mr Poo Head

Non-Trivial Bug Report: Found a bug that makes you die instantly when casting a certain spell with a certain helpful effect on you or some such.

Trivial bug report: "I lagged and it placed a model of a Mergoyle on the target the Mergoyles that were running at us were about to attack" or "A boss jumped 5 feet and I had to walk over to it"

So basically, any software that doesn't charge a monthly fee is not to be complained about?

Exactly... well not quite, everyone seems to want everything right now and are very impatent, which im sure makes the people at Anet very frustrated, people should be happy Anet actualy takes time to read and fix things

i got my $56.99's worth so i have nothing to complain about, and there is one reason why, because im not paying monthly i learn to look past the little flaws.. when you have played D2 as long as i have it kinda becomes second nature

I still can't quite figure out how a game that takes so much maintenance can have no monthly fees. I mean... how the heck are the servers being maintained? Off of the measly purchase fee we paid for it? That's pretty impressive imo.

yes it is, i think too many people take the no fees for granted, a game like this only comes once in a great while

Well, considering that the server doesn't have to maintain a whole world and that games are instanced...

And why shouldn't they? The game is advertised with "no_fee-guarantee".

Unfortunately I would guess there are hundreds and hundreds of support emails a day, and you never know how many people are actually have the tasks of answering/resolving them. I would guess with the lack of monthly service charge...not too many. Also I would guess that these people probably do other things as well.

I don't know what the situation is there, but I have seen the barrage of customer service tickets on a MMORPG and it generally isn't pretty. I'm not defending them in any way, but given the monthly pricing or lack there of...some concessions have to be made.

I had an issue with the Friend's List many moons ago when I first bought the game. I sent a question off to the support team and within five minutes had a reply from a real person. I sent a second message and they answered again within five minutes. It turned out that I was just confused on how the Friend's List worked and they explained it to me.

My issue was handled promptly and professionally to such a degree that I was totally flabbergasted. I say kudos to the support team.

One thing to remember as well: While your ticket may be of the utmost importance to you, they may be receiving hundreds just like it. I'm thinking here of the recent lag issues on the European servers. Some of the "they're not responding to my request" stuff could be related to the fact that they're working hundreds of tickets that are exactly the same.

Lack of response doesn't mean lack of action.

It's better than wow's customer support.
Tried twice to get in game support for a problem with a quest, and both times the ticket just vanished.
In the end I tried emailing them, from the support site, eventually a few days later I got a reply saying that the server couldn't handle my email as it had no space ... gave up at that point and deleted the quest.