Anyone who has dealt with the customer service of World of Warcraft in recent years could be glad if they weren’t just met with an automated response. But there are still Game Masters and support staff who can bring back a hint of the charm from the old days.
Who needed help from Blizzard’s customer service? The WoW fan YoloLifeSaving wanted to restore the two daggers Fear and Vengeance in order to complete the legendary quest line associated with the blades for rogues.
The first four requests were answered by Blizzard’s customer service with automated texts that hardly had anything to do with the topic. Anyone who had to contact WoW support in recent years can definitely relate to the player’s frustration over such standard responses – because that has become more of a rule than an exception.
WoW has often been declared dead – here are some examples:
Community celebrates GM
How has Blizzard’s customer service proven itself? Finally, on the fifth ticket, YoloLifeSaving ended up with Game Master “Oyomeunwot”, and their response reminded of better times (via Reddit). The greeting itself radiated the appreciation that was once the standard for GMs:
“Greetings, legendary hero! I am Game Master Oyomeunwot. I was summoned for the quest to assist a very valuable player from Blizzard’s universe with a quest. Let’s get started.”
In the next section, the Blizzard employee briefly summarizes what the player’s problem is and that it would be easy for Oyomeunwot to resolve this hurdle.
“Aaaaaaand done! I can make an exception just for you so you can add the items to your character. Get them from the mailbox, and then you can easily continue mastering the quest.”
The cherry on top, in addition to the numerous emotes and special characters, is the Game Master’s farewell: “As a small side note, I want to tell you that we are grateful that you are a part of our universe. I wish you a fantastic time and exciting, thrilling adventures!”
“They used to all be like that. That was part of the charm”
How does the community react? The 2,118 upvotes and 280 comments indicate that the GM’s response struck a chord. This becomes even more evident through the concrete reactions:
- Xenavire writes (via Reddit): “A GM who doesn’t care about being seen as cringe just rides their own wave. That is really nice to see.”
- Is_Unable remembers (via Reddit): “They used to all be like that. That was part of the charm.”
- Character_Writer779 feels the wave of nostalgia as well (via Reddit): “Is this GM a time traveler? This reads like old GM support when real people used to do this job.”
However, there are also a number of Reddit users who are sure that there is an AI behind this message that has simply been well-trained. TheOffensiveSparrow even writes (via Reddit) that they received a similar response from another GM.
How was WoW customer service in the good old days? When player numbers for WoW skyrocketed in the early years, Blizzard invested a lot of money to build large support teams at various locations. For Germany, the team in Versailles, France was responsible for a long time. Many of the support staff and Game Masters were passionate WoW fans.
That the support staff were WoW fans was evident in direct contact with customer service. The friendliness and enthusiasm that resonates in Oyomeunwot’s response was standard. Moreover, the employees were also happy to come up with little ideas to brighten the customer’s day.
In one case, a Game Master came up with an entertaining role-play context to free a character from a dungeon (via Reddit). In a second case, a character that had to die due to a nasty bug was placed far away from the coast of Stranglethorn Vale – how delightfully mean (via Reddit).
Heartwarming is the story of the WoW player lyncati, who was wonderfully welcomed back to WoW by a Game Master after some misfortunes (via imgur.com). Occasionally, Blizzard employees also passed on small gifts, such as a pet or 30 days of game time (via imgur.com). Or they would tell humorous jokes at farewell.
What has changed? Due to declining player numbers and long (and thus expensive) development phases of other Blizzard titles, the Activision leadership eventually set a course for cost-cutting for Blizzard. Various waves of layoffs repeatedly affected support. The Versailles location was shut down in 2020 – a heavy blow for the European WoW community.
The acquisition by Microsoft unfortunately did not bring the hoped-for improvement of the situation, but rather further extensive layoffs – almost 2,000 employees had to go. In January 2024, it was also reported that a large part of the remaining customer support had been eliminated to outsource customer service to external companies. Microsoft lays off 1,900 employees in the gaming sector: “Painful decision”
