The Trouble with Blizzard Support - Part II

So now that we know Blizzard's customer support is really lame, what should they do? Well I have some ideas.

First off, Blizzard really needs to back up accounts. Weekly at a minimum. Daily would be better. Then when this sort of thing happens, a customer can be up and running in a couple of days instead of a couple of weeks. In addition, just think how much time and money would be saved. It can't be very effective to have game masters essentially restoring everything by hand.

Second, Blizzard needs to log usage patterns. For example, say I log in from the same IP address between 9am and 11pm server time every day. And blizzard tracks that information. Then I suddenly log in from a different IP address at 3AM and start selling all my blue and purple gear. Hmmmm. Maybe something is up? Possibly? This should be a very easy thing to implement. If suspicious things start happening, a Blizzard game master should be notified and the account should be monitored.

Third, Blizzard needs to give game masters a little more power. If four guild members from a guild think an account has been hacked, maybe it would be a good idea if they could act? If you had the usage data described above it would be easy to figure out if someone is getting hacked.

Finally, if Blizzard doesn't do any of the above, they could at least e-mail customers with the status of the investigation every couple of days. Then at least a player with a hacked account would know they are working on fixing things. Leaving people hanging for days is just plain stupid. Just think if your phone went out or your power. Would you be ok with them getting back to you sometime in the next two weeks?

Blizzard needs to address some of these issues. They are the king of the hill right now, but if you don't treat your customers right, you are not gonna build any loyalty. And if you don't do that, as soon as the next good MMORPG comes out, they will wish they had treated folks a little bit better.