I filled out a Customer Service Survey this morning, after receiving a 'prompt and short and accurate' reply from Blizzard.

For me, I have gotten over my 2 fallen heroes on the same night as I lost them. I just shake my head over the standard of service nowadays.

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My issue was fallen Hardcore heroes. I believe my 2 heroes die in an unfair way in a short timeframe due to the same reason. I elaborated at length of the circumstances, and provided two links to my story (one is on RMT forum showing my passion for hardcore and how well I was making progress at Hardcore).

The answer I got from your CS, is simply:
"Customer Support cannot revive fallen hardcore heroes for any reason."

THIS is not a good customer service. It does not convince me that you value your customers.
You may refuse to revive fallen hardcore heroes at the end. However, surely you can do better in making me feel satisfied. Do I have to tell you how?

Instead of the standard reply, can you please write a little bit more, saying at least you understand and sympatize my situation. You may then say no, and what you think of my proposed solution for the future. Right now, my feeling is that you just look at the broad nature of the issue and copy and paste a standard NO answer.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I don't believe your fallen heroes should be revived. There is a clear and strict policy in place, and you knew it when you started playing hardcore. This is not a front towards you, I just honestly believe that no one is exempt from the rules that are in place here.

How is it bad customer service for them to follow the rules that have been in place since the game was released? Why should they break the rules for you?

Posted by Buzzell at 01/28/2013 05:49 PM

I don't believe your fallen heroes should be revived. There is a clear and strict policy in place, and you knew it when you started playing hardcore. This is not a front towards you, I just honestly believe that no one is exempt from the rules that are in place here.

@Buzzell you are right.

I didn't expect an exemption for me. I accepted the policy. I didn't even frown when the first "weird disconnection" happened and I accepted my faith. The second disconnection just acted as a discouragement to proceed further. My ticket to Blizzard is more like a venue for me to vent my feelings.

@Blizzard is right too, I just feel that they could have said it better.

Posted by tsukiyomi at 01/28/2013 05:56 PM

How is it bad customer service for them to follow the rules that have been in place since the game was released? Why should they break the rules for you?

As above.

They don't have to break their rules. I just feel that they could show a little bit more 'heart' in their replies. Now it seems like an auto-reply message to me.

Can someone please give this guy a hug? :)

On a serious note, you knew going into it that the characters weren't going to be restored. If you were Blizzard, and every day you had 100+ requests (guessing) to revive hardcore characters from people really passionate about this game, do you know how that eventually feels?

I work in customer service, and while it's never easy to see someone upset, you do become "numb" to it eventually. He is also speaking for Blizzard when he enforces the rules, and if they take anything other than a no-nonsense stance on it, there will just be more requests, more hopefuls.

You need to look to forums and friends, they give you hugs. Blizzard will just tell you to play the game.

@nuhertz

Thanks for the hug :)

I worked in a consultancy field and we were careful to not upset our clients. I also understand about the big picture of handling various similar requests.

So, what's in between? I just feel that their 'standard no-nonsense reply' is too short! Maybe they could still make it a standard no-nonsense reply, but show a bit of love (however fake it is), a bit longer?

I also did try to be as constructive as possible. In my ticket I was also suggesting how they could improve the hardcore game, and the annoying part is that, as you can see from the "standard reply", they don't even acknowledge that you have made a suggestion. They could have said something like "we have also considered your suggestion", or "you also have a suggestion, I suggest you forward this in another forum since here is not a right place etc etc. Like you said, they might become "numb" and there is no longer person-to-person talk.

I would be especially annoyed with you, because you know better. However, it stills sucks, sorry for your loss. :)

@nuhertz

You wouldn't have to be annoyed with me, since I only direct to facts, not person. And I probably won't let you feel annoyed in the first place, but rather win you over to help me get what I want :P

It doesn't suck bad. Both toons probably worth a couple of millions in gears and loots but gold is not a concern to me (I don't sell gold, I am skillful in building up gold and I will just spend them on my toons). I went to sleep soundly immediately after that.

@douvinsky

Had I been playing HC that day, I too would of died, had a few disconnects that same day.

I think what I took away from your experience is that if I were to try a different character after dying from disconnect, I'd probably just create a new Level 1 character...just in case.

I know how you feel douvinsky, (well to an extent since I never had two DC deaths in one night). After much hard work and effort you go down to some internet/server problem. You felt it was unfair and needed to vent. The response from Blizz didn't help either.

A lot of ppl who play HC feels that their system regarding DC is not optimal, but it's what we got. I'm just glad in the end you came over it.

I actually agree with you. I don't think it's good customer service. I don't think it's bad, but it's not good. I guess at the end of the day, it's such a common complaint that the response is completely canned and it's probably logistically impossible to personalize each message. It's pretty common for most large companies to deal with complaints in this manner though, especially for ones as relatively trivial as "in-game" issues. @douvinsky never said the customer service was bad; he just asked if it is good. And I don't think it is.

Hardcore is kinda like mountain climbing or something. You go in knowing the risks and issues beyond your control, but you accept them and just try to prepare the best you can. It's actually terrible for a game like Diablo because it's neverending. Unless your only goal is to beat the game on Inferno, you're almost guaranteed to die at some point. So it's actually like climbing a neverending mountain... which sucks.

Or taking a knife and stabbing it in between your fingers over and over again. Yeah, that's hardcore.

@Metta

Thanks, I feel that you understand what I was trying to say.

I think leveling up 5 classes to 60 in Hardcore at MP10 is what I want to do, should I want to resume Hardcore. I enjoy the exciting journey from 1 - 60.

First off, sorry for your loss.

I lost 2 high lvl HC chars before, and I know how much it stings, even if your mindset is correct and you accept it, it still sucks.

As for your ticket. I agree with how you feel, but I also can't say I'm one bit surprised with the response you received. I have never received any "unscripted" response from anything I have sent in. But I'm guessing the counter for number of tickets goes up faster than the seconds digit on a watch.

No offense though but it is due to people like you (or rather tickets like you sent in) that they simply can't respond to any tickets in a meaningful way.
Here is my reasoning.
You knew going into it that they won't fix the problem. So you sat down and started writing a ticket that someone had to sit down and read, and respond too. With no actual expectation of it doing anything.
They get millions of these and they simply can't personalize them.
If people would just chill for 3 seconds before firing off a ticket, tickets might mean something again.



But I have done similar things. Just have a rough day. And then something stupid in D3/SC2/WOW just is the last straw, and you fire off a ticket to complain. So I guess I'm as much at fault as you are.

@Bort

You got it right too. My situation is not unique and there are probably millions of similar situations. They can't create exception for all, and I did not expect an exemption except 1 in a million chance. I guess at that time I just want to write something.

I did have a thought (& suggested) that why not allow disconnection to not kill your hardcore toons, but instead send them to the last checkpoint.

The con is that this will allows players to cheat deaths by intentionally disconnect.
The pros are that you won't lose your HC toons by natural disconnections. More players with unstable connection may then want to have a go at HC and experience the heart pumping actions. Players, even if they cheat deaths, they knew that they have cheated death and run away from the battle timidly. Even this, I don't see this as a major issue or unfairness between players, as majority of HC players I believe just want the heart pumping actions that they experience, without worrying about fairness about another player's experience (I could be wrong since I am new).

@douvinsky

No group hug here, but I'll offer you a chance to lay with us in our next "puppy pile".

Either that, of if you're ever in the western new york area, i can hook you up with a professional "snuggler".

@baccarat0809

Slurrp.

One example/occurance does not mean Blizzard's customer service is horrible. Sure it kind of sucks that that was the response, but it's at the least warranted if you can imagine how many tickets get submitted for the same reason every day.

I actually did the same thing after losing my first monk due to lag and was pissed so I sent in a ticket basically saying "I don't know if there's anything you can do about my hardcore monk dying because of lag, but because it died that way I figured I'd at least ask. And if you can't do anything I guess I can't do anything but accept that and be on my merry way." This was my response:

Hey there!

Im Game Master Iezokh and I just read over your ticket. I am sorry to hear about the tragic death of your Hardcore character. :(

Currently, the support provided by the Game Master Department is limited to a few specific situations such as account compromises, harassment reports, and bug reports.

Hardcore in Diablo is just that though and comes with warnings that the death of your character will result in it being gone forever. This applies no matter what caused the character to die. While I understand a disconnect or lag that caused a death would be extremely frustrating, Game Masters are unable to recover characters in any case.

We understand that many of our players have come to expect certain services which are offered under other Blizzard titles, but each of our games has a unique support structure and at this time the Game Master staff is unable to provide these types of restorations for Diablo.

Im really sorry for the trouble this caused you. While Ive provided a very brief explanation of our stance on restorations, I wanted to let you know that we do have a more detailed article on our support site that goes into the specifics of our policies on these requests. You can find this article at:

<http://us.battle.net/support/en/article/diablo-iii-restorations>

If you would like assistance in preventing disconnects and connectivity issues, please see our online knowledgebase article on connection troubleshooting here: <http://us.battle.net/support/en/article/frequent-disconnects-21010>

I wish you the best of luck on your next character and hope you continue to enjoy Diablo!

Regards,
Game Master Iezokh
Customer Services
Blizzard Entertainment
www.blizzard.com/support

@NightCrawler9

The response you get, is GOOD CUSTOMER SERVICE.

- it personalises (although it says "Iezokh and I" then with the signing at the bottom only mentions Iezokh... lol?)
- it sympatizes
- it explains their scope
- it explains Hardcore specifically (& sympatizes again)
- it explains customer's expectation and whether they can meet it given the 'unique support structure' and 'at this time'
- it sympatizes again
- it provides further references
- it ends with a best of luck message

This is my expectation of a response from a big company like Blizzard (no matter it has been a standardized long response). I just didn't expect mine was a simple "Customer Support cannot revive fallen hardcore heroes for any reason."