Thursday, September 13, 2012

CRZ - It Should be Optional

There are a great deal of people pushing back against blizzard for the implementation of the cross realm zones.  I've even asked everyone that does not like it to start putting in tickets every day on every character they have asking for the ability to disable the option.

I've been in a back and forth with a GM about it for days now and I refuse to let it go until I get what I want from them.  So I will share my experiences with you.

I have a good connection, a great computer, brand spanking new actually, and have never had problems with the game in any way really.  On the rare occasion if I have an issue it is usually my internet service provider having issues, not the game itself.

With the release of the cross realm zones I have experienced dozens of crashes from error 134 to lag spikes that just make me hang there until I force close and reboot.  I've had my computer completely crash as soon as I changed zones three times.  I have constant lag and can not even quest because of it.  If I try to interrupt a spell even if I am dead on balls accurate hitting the interrupt the millisecond the cast bar starts I will not interrupt the spell.  If I try to do the fire in the skies quest in molten front it will take me an hour because while I see myself hitting the targets directly, the game sees it as me not hitting them.

The game has reached a level of being completely unplayable.  There are so many other bugs that I can mention but nothing can beat the constant lag spikes.  Oddly enough the few characters I have that have not left stormwind or org since the release of cross realm zones do not have any problems what so ever.  It seems once my character leaves stormwind or org however that they are ruined forever.  Any character I have that has been out in the world has those lag issues now in anything I do.  While in the city, while in a random, while in a raid.  Going out in the world has ruined my ability to play those characters.

I can do randoms all day long with no lag or problems on a character that has not left stormwind since the introduction of the CRZ.  I've actually done that on one.  Ran looking for raid, both parts, to get used to my new skills and rotation and 6 dungeons.   Not one single lag spike at all.

Yet on a character that has been out in the world even once since the release of CRZs I can not even do one random without massive lag spikes.  If I go into a random with one of those characters I have been forced to restart at least once per run and have constant lag spikes every run.  They can't say there is no connection.  If every character that has not stepped out of the main city can do them with no problem and I can not even get one good run with any character that has, that means going out into the cross zone realm changed something in the setting or files that is causing it.

So I wrote this all out, with detailed information about my system and the errors and put in a ticket from the web site to blizzard asking simply, please remove me from the cross realm zones as I wish to be able to play the game again.

The response I got was the usual blizzard crap.  Delete the WTF folder.  You do know what WTF stands for right, what the fuck.  That was the response I had for that.  I did it however, I would do anything to stop these lag spikes that make the game impossible to have any fun playing the game.

After doing so I logged in and had the same problems.  I put in another ticket that said, I deleted the WTF flies as suggested and it has not helped, I am still experiencing errors, disconnects and lag spikes no matter where I am.  Could you please just put me back on my own server.

Next response they once again completely ignored my pleading to be returned to my own server were life was nice and there was no such thing as lag.  They did not even make a mention of it in their reply.  This time around they wanted me to rename the WTF and two other folders and try again.

I did just as they asked, even if all I wanted was to be on my own server, and logged in again.  Mounted up and took a fly around to see how things were working and disconnected once I changed zones.  At least it was not an error 134 this time, maybe we were getting somewhere.  I changed zones again, disconnected again.  This time when I logged back in not only had I been disconnected but it also dismounted me.  Thank god I was pretty darn high up and was on my druid, it gave me enough time to save a repair bill as I popped instant bird and headed back to fill out another reply.

I said, I did everything you asked, again, and it did not work, can you please, pretty please with a cherry on top, just let me get back on my own server so I can play again.  All I want to do is play.  Nothing you are offering me is helping me, your system is not ready for release.  Just leave me be and remove me from the cross realm zone.

Once again the GMs totally ignored my pleas.  I was still being nice about it.  I was not rude in any way.  I even made a joke with the cherry on top thing hoping that perhaps it might cheer up the GM and they would take mercy on my soul and let me play the game by putting me back on the server I belong on.  This time around, instead of actually addressing what I asked, they gave me detailed instructions on how to run a repair on the game itself.

Okay, so repair it is and repair it is that did not work either.  I popped on a character and used my hearth to get to dalaran because I wanted to do the dailies there.  I landed in the inn and everything seemed fine.  I walked out of the inn and headed to the fishing trainer to get the fishing daily and then had a benny hill moment.  In super speed, and with no control over my character, I moved backwards to the point where I first landed in dalaran when I hearthed in.  Admittedly it was humorous to watch, very much so, but it was also annoying when it happened a second and third time within 10 minutes.

Just add this to the huge pile of errors thanks to this cross realm zone crap.  I was now reaching the point that I no longer was going to be nice about it.  I was not going to ask to be removed from the cross realm zones.  I was going to demand it.  It was no longer a wait until we fix it thing, I just want to play the game I pay for.  Is that really that much to ask?

Before I put in another ticket I took it upon myself to try and remove another possibility of what might be causing the error and I lowered my graphics from ultra to low.  Mind you, I can have two copies of warcraft on ultra, one copy of rift at max as well and my browser open playing videos on youtube all at the same time and have not even come close to over loading my computer so I doubted that graphics were an issue, but you never know and I wanted to rule it out.  On low graphics I mounted up in dalaran and headed to icecrown, figured I would do a little mining while checking it out.

Before I even got to icecrown I had another benny hill moment and rewound all the way to when I turned in the fishing daily.  Flying backwards is funny with super fast wings flapping, but at this point it was more annoying.  I then tried it again and crossed from crystalsong forest into icecrown and disconnected.   I wanted to scream.  I logged back in to head back to dalaran and disconnected again crossing back into crystalsong forest from icecrown.  I was cursing the people at blizzard now, it was not a nice sight to see me at the moment, the words I said at that moment should never be said in mixed company.  I log back in and get to dalaran and put in another ticket.

I tried everything you asked of me, I said, please just put me on my server.  I paid to be on that server.  If you want to put me on another server you can pay for it.  I am sick of the errors and the game is completely unplayable.  Just put me on the server I paid to be on.  Do not tell me to try something else, just fix it and put me back on my server.

As you can tell, while still not rude, I was getting a little hot under the collar now.  Even worse when they sent me another message back telling me to try three things.  One was the WTF thing, for a second time which leads me to believe that whoever answered it did not look at things that were already tried.  Second was run the repair tool, been there and done that too.  Third was to disable all addons.  I was actually surprised that this was not the first thing they suggested.  It is blizzzards MO to always blame everything on addons.  I thought they told all GMs to always blame addons for everything.

So even if I told them not to give me any more suggestions to fix it they gave me one.  Even if I demanded to be put back on my server they ignored me again.  Either way, like an idiot, I did what they asked and disabled all addons.  Heck, I even removed them all, so there were no addons at all.  I changed the name of the folder so they could not effect anything even by freak accident.  It did nothing.  I still disconnected the second I left the city.  I still had lag spikes but guess what, they were higher now and more frequent.  Gee thanks for the awesome idea blizzard.

I left addons disabled, I redid everything they asked previously.  I deleted folders, ran repairs, renamed other folders, even added my little thing of setting the graphics really low.  I did it all at once this time.  And I log in on a character I have not tested with yet, so I knew I had a clean test subject, and left stormwind and crashed the second I left stormwind.  Mother F'N son of a B.

I restarted my addons up, put my graphics back up and logged back in knowing it was nothing what so ever on my side.  It was their crappy cross realm zones.  I put my need more help ticket in this time and I held no punches.

I have done everything you asked.  I am still crashing and I am still lagging.  Put my on my server.  Now.  I don't give a crap if you think cross realm zones are the best thing since sliced bread, they suck and I do not want to be on one.  Put me on my server now.  I am sick of you asking me to do things when it doesn't work because cross realm servers were not ready for release.

I get a mail back near instantly.  Kind of funny how I was online and the GM did not talk to me at all.  He just replied and I got the little message pop up.  Perhaps that is for the best, I really would have not had any kind words for him at all.

His response?  Try resetting your UI, follow the instructions below.

Nope, not doing it, not even going to pretend to do it.  Just put me back on my server.  This cross realm zone thing has to go, at least make it optional so I can say no and start playing the game again.

Next response, if you have a suggestion you can go to the forums and make it here and he gave me the link.

You stupid piece of shit.  It is not a suggestion.  Take me off the cross zone realm.  There is no suggestion in what I said there.  I am not asking for the option I am telling you I do not want to be a part of it.  What about that don't you understand?

I've received no reply since then.  I doubt I will.  They were actually very good with me trying to fix the error they created.  It just bugged me that they did not do the one thing that could have really fixed it.  Put me back on my server, the same one I paid to be on over four years ago and have not had any problems with ever.

There is a reason I was on that server, because it was smaller than my other server.  That is why I paid to be on that server.  That is why I do not play on the other server even if I still have three mostly unplayed now characters over there.  It was too crowded, there was lag and I could name a dozen other reasons, some even of a selfish nature like gathering and such, why I wanted to be on a smaller server.  None of that matters however.

What matters is I pay to be on the server I am on and they are not giving me what I paid for.  They moved me from a stable server with no issues and force me unto an unstable server with many technical issues using a new feature that is broken and should not have been released yet.

Easy fix, just make the cross realm zones optional.  If I do not want to get thrown on to another server, for whatever my reasons might be, allow me to stay on my own server.

I am not asking for anything special.  All I am asking for is the ability to play the game I pay to play and I can't do that now with the cross realm zone.

Is it too much to ask to be able to play a game I pay to play?  I don't think so.

Make cross realm zones optional.

I will choose the option to play if there was an option and that would mean I would not participate in cross realm zones as I can not play on them.  I should have that right.  I should be allowed to make that choice.  I pay for the ability to play and I should be able to play.  Seems fair to me.

Don't give up on blizzard.  We pay for the right to play.  Do not let them force cross realm zones on us.  Keep putting in tickets so we can get back on to our nice stable servers.  We deserve that because we pay for that.  So put in your tickets on every character every day and ask to be able to disable cross realm zones.

UPDATE:

I finally got a GM to actually talk to me instead of sending me tickets back with information.   I apologized for being frustrated and being rude but I was at my wits end.  He said he understood, it can be frustrating.

He spent a good 15 minutes with me and went over everything step by step.  I told him I did not want to have to go to a full install and he said he would make sure we did everything we could before we had to resort to that.

In the end he came up with an idea of what it might be and told me that many other people have had the same exact problem I am having.  It seems my internet service provider and the new patch are not getting along well.  While he could not give me a solution he was aware of the problem and told me they are working on it.

He also told me that he would pass along my displeasure for the CRZs and told me to not blame them for everything.  The 134 errors and some of the others could have been from that but the majority of the issues are because of the provider and the game not communicating well.

That was all I wanted.  Someone to actually address the problem and to understand I was upset with the patch.  Goes to show you that sometimes the GMs should take a few minutes to talk to people instead of just replying with tickets.

One person talked to me and that one person figured out what the problem was.  It is nice to see there are a few GMs that do their job well and help people.  So in the end, it was the CRZ and it was not the CRZ.  It was the CRZ coding and my internet provider that are not communicating which is causing the problem.  I would give the GMs name, but I'll just say thank you to him, he knows who he is and I doubt he would ever read this anyway.  

43 comments:

  1. For once being red-heades stepchildren helps, the mood in the EU is pretty sour enough as it is.

    With the grand-opening of MoP just two weeks from now, I can imagine Blizzard getting pretty frantic about this (behind closed doors of course). Good luck with your fight!

    P.S. I feel sorry for the donkey

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    1. I can't believe that I am going to have to attempt to play mists like this.

      Makes me think they really want people to quit if they put in things that cause these problems just before a release. A new release is hard enough, why add more problems with a dysfunctional addition to the game?

      It should just be completely disabled until they can correct all the errors.

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  2. I have not had issues like you've had with CRZ (yet, thank god) but I can imagine how frustrating it is. My main issue with CRZ came the other day, when I went to my favorite leather farm and found a couple guys from other servers there. Mind you, this place is not by any means empty all the time, but its rare you will see another person there, let alone two. So I'm all for disabling CRZ for this reason. Also, for this reason, I don't think making CRZ optional would work. Optional CRZ would help out for issues/cases like yours, but in mine, me choosing to opt out would not prevent farming/camping areas to revert back to pre CRZ. Kind of like the examples you had in an earlier post of the guy camping for the rare for months, and now there are 80 bajillion ppl camping it with him. With leveling 1-80 being dumbed down/nerfed so much anymore (where i can grab a mob of 3-4 same levels with no worries anymore), I don't see the need/purpose for add'l ppl fighting for your spawn/quest objectives. Great posts!

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    1. Thanks, glad you liked them.

      Making it optional might work for you. If you choose not to be part of it you would go back to being the only one of three instead of one of 20 farming that area.

      A friend in guild was complaining about that yesterday that he few around for an hour trying to get herbs and ended up with a little over one stack when he would normally get 20 or so stacks in that time minimum. He said there felt like dozens of people were there. He even started counting and noticed 8 different ones in the time we talked. I know the area he was in and if I ever saw more than 3, even when cataclysm was brand spanking new, it was rare.

      So that is another side factor that blizzard did not think about. This will screw up the economy of low population servers.

      If big server A has 10 to 1 people over small server B and they are out gathering. That would mean that for every one herb that went on the B market 10 went on the A market. So the A market would not see much of a difference while everything would become super scarce on the small one meaning greatly increased prices and lack of materials. Which in turn can destroy the server or push people to gold buy or item buy. Just another side effect that blizzard did not think about.

      They should have offered free transfers and merged servers and given the people the option to still play in a smaller realm if they so wished. This was a bad idea to try to cover up for the huge loss of players in the past 2 years.

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  3. Anon, Grumpy's GL:

    I have not had nearly the problems that Grumpy has had with CRZ. The part that I have had is the freeze up changing zones. The zone change skill spam stopped for any character that I disabled the chat setting about notifying skill updates. Come MoP I will want that check box filled again.

    Where I had trouble in the game was directly related to my first error 134, before the latest patch. It killed my WoW, and damn near killed my PC, but a complete WoW uninstall with maintenance work involving a new video card, a complete dusting out of my case and other standard assorted Microsoft tools and some non-standard tools suggested by Blizzard in their support pages got me back to re-installing WoW.

    That was neither easy nor fun. My Cata CD evidently came built in with an error that would not let me finish an installation of the game. I copied my wife's game over to my PC and went to install the MoP patch.

    Problem number ONE, the patch is large, so this winds up taking 26 hours on our DSL connection. Problem number TWO, the installation of the game patch would not work. Starting to get desperate I went to the technical support forums and read as many of the pertinent suggestions as I could. Finally found a solution to my install failure problem from a Green MVP poster (http://patchup.info/d3/tools/Win/) and got the launcher to work. Patch installation proceeded and subsequently, I got back to the game, with a few hours to spare before the guild officer meeting I had previously called.

    I know that my issues are not the same as Grumpy's precisely. But still I also know the level of frustration and anger he is feeling. For a variety of reasons, I don't want to be on other realms outside of Stormwind. The reasons don't really matter. I play on multiple servers as it is and that is what I pay for--the right to chose where and when I play. As it stands now, judging from the in game clock, I am never on my home realm outside of Stormwind, and in fact, I am not even sure my home realm even exists outside of SW any more.

    (continued below)

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    1. Maybe I should try the whole reinstall option, they have not suggested that one yet. I don't want to do it however and I should not have to because they released a faulty product.

      I know it is not my video card or computer as my computer is brand new and worked good, once I set it up right.

      It is the CRZ and I am sure of it. It changed something in my game flies and that is why there are 134 errors because it is reading something wrong. Like I am on a server where it is 7 PM and go to other server were it is 6 PM and it goes to read and errors because the data is not accurate.

      It is all a coding problem on their end and I doubt they even know how to fix it.

      With that in mind they should just disable it and wait until it works before releasing it again. And give an opt out option this time around. But again, I doubt that would ever happen because that would be proof that a fair deal of players do not want to deal with cross realm and they would never admit wasting all that time coding something people did not want.

      But you never know, they finally did admit that redesigning the old world and making linear questing was a big mistake, so who is to know if they would admit this was a mistake as well.

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    2. I would definitely try a full reinstall if you're still getting error 134s. I was getting them constantly as soon as I updated to patch 5.0.x.

      It was (another) 20GB to download for me, but the game ran perfectly for me since then. (no more 134s)

      Having said that, I haven't left Stormwind except for LFG...so maybe I've avoided the CRZ issue you're seeing.

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  4. Anon, Grumpy's GL:

    (continued from above)

    I am a hard-core gatherer and a quest seeker in my favored style of playing. I run dungeons with my guild mates to gear up, both them, and me but otherwise only run instances when I can solo them. The way the game is designed now there is absolutely no need to group for most outdoors stuff. The CRZ has all the disadvantages of life during Vanilla and none of the advantages of that time--to many folks competing for limited mobs and resources and none of the long term finding folks to join my guild advantages.

    I love playing WoW. It is my principal hobby at this point in my life. The CRZ nearly made me not purchase an upgrade to MoP, but in the end, I decided to do so anyway as I intend to see level 100 at the minimum for my main characters. But note this is really the only reason in the end that I purchased MoP. The expansion has five more levels on my long-term goal of seeing me with multiple level 100 characters and CRZ came close to making me abandon that goal. Very close to abandoning both the goal and the game, which is something that even with the disappointment that was Cata, I didn't think Blizzard could do.

    In the end, I know that if I want to see my long-term goal, I need to be able to accept CRZ, as I am sure that Blizzard won't change their minds on it. It is their way of addressing low population. So I am going to have to accept CRZ for now, but I can’t accept the lag, disconnect, skill spam, and so on that has accompanied the move to CRZ. These are technical problems that Blizzard needs to address and much sooner than later. If the MoP zones are CRZ, and being honest, I don't know that will be the case, the problems in the current CRZ areas will be magnified to the point of making MoP unplayable for a lot of folks.

    Grumpy has a brand new gaming rig, one that I would love to have, and his machine is being run ragged with CRZ induced errors. God help us all if the MoP zones are also CRZ, because it simply will be a disaster in my opinion.

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    1. Hearing it is pushing you to quit, when you are a die hard never quit type, means a lot. Me, I can be hot headed and quick to jump sometimes but not you, it must really be bad if you would even consider quitting over it.

      I can deal with a lot of the CRZ stuff. The node competition and rare competition I will hate for sure, but I can deal with it. What I can not deal with it lag. I pay for top machines for a reason, I have absolutely zero patience. If I hit a button and it does not react instantly, I stop playing. I hate lag and if there is any lag, even in the slightest, I have no desire to play this game.

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    2. Anon, Grumpy's GL:

      I agree to a large extent that making the game unusually lag causing is a serious offense on Blizzards part. The competition for resource nodes doesn't really worry me as I know about every trick in the book to getting my fair share and part of someone else' share too. I do worry that it will cause an already fragile community to fracture even further as I and folks like me dominant node gathering, cutting less skilled and or less patient players out of it.

      The lag factor however is something that Blizzard simply has to address. There is no way around it. It isn't arcane magical stuff we are talking about here, but simply making sure and certain that the machines used for servers and the connects to the net are the most modern and up to date possible. Some of this may not be entirely Blizzards fault but rather might well be with their contracting partner for providing the net connection they use for WoW. Regardless of whose fault it is, it still needs to be fixed--and much sooner than later.

      Also, yes, I did seriously consider whether the CRZ was the deal breaker for me. I am a life long gamer, and WoW has been the best game online or off, that I have found. I love playing it, I really do. In the end, I choose to pay for one of my two accounts to be upgraded to MoP and will soon have the other one upgraded also, either before or just after MoP is released.

      I do hope you can find patience enough to stick it out through this rough spot in regards to CRZ. I do think one way or another, Blizzard will eventually get it fixed. To paraphrase, as Churchill said about America, eventually the right thing is done, usually when all other options have been exhausted.

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    3. But will they do the right thing and will we think it is the right thing as well.

      To me, the right thing would be to completely disable CRZ until they can get it working correctly and then restart it up as an optional thing. That is the right thing.

      I can guarantee that my definition of the right thing and their definition of the right thing are not even remotely close to each other.

      There are various reasons for the CRZ but there are also various reasons for not having it. The ones for not having it outnumber the ones for having it 10 to 1 easily. Yet they still added it. Not only that, they added it in a non working condition. Shows they do not understand what the right thing is.

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  5. Anon, Grumpy's GL:

    LOL, no, it shows they haven't yet exhausted the list of all the wrong things to do yet...

    Seriously, I know it is hard to be patient, and despite my seeming endless supply of that quality, in truth I am no more patient than anyone else. I just hide my impatience better than a lot do I suppose. Learning to hide it has a lot to do with my wilder younger self I guess. Hehe, and no, I won't go into that, besides the statute of limitations has been reached on that long ago.

    No, I can't absolutely promise that technical fixes will make CRZ workable, but I strongly believe that will be the case and if I believe that to be so, then I have no other option than patience while I wait to see if it is so. In my case, both my subscriptions run out in January 2013, so there actually is a hard date at this time for my patience to be exhausted on this. If that time comes, and none of the CRZ issues have been resolved, then I may well let both my subscriptions lapse. Time and time only will tell on that, so in the meantime, patience...

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    1. I don't hide it because it is my job to complain about these things, notice that grumpy part in the title. ;)

      I would not mind as much if the problems that the CRZ caused did not carry on wherever I went now, as you noticed last night. I hate lagging and freezing everywhere I go thanks to whatever it did to my files.

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  6. Flaming GM's that are trying to help you is rude, stupid, and downright shameful. You’re asking for something that they can't do. “Remove me from CRZ” They don't have a magic switch to just pull you and you alone off. You may as well ask for magic beans. Grow up.

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    1. And telling someone to grow up under the cover of anonymity is so much more mature?

      If we keep writing them and they keep record of us writing them and how upset some people are over it then the chances of them changing it is a lot higher than just saying "oh well thanks anyway".

      The only way change happens is when you express displeasure. Sure, I could be more sensitive but after what I was going through I was upset and spoke as such. If you think there is something wrong with that then that is your problem, not mine. I am human, excuse me.

      Do you think things are ever changed if people do not raise their voice a little so they can be heard, express their concerns and express themselves with passion? Nope, nothing has ever been changed by people saying "I don't like it but okay whatever you say."

      Things are changed when they express them selves saying they are not going to stop until their voice is heard.

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    2. I had pretty much the EXACT same reaction reading this post, though I wanted to be a bit more tactful about it. It's not something GMs can handle, yelling at them does you no more good than yelling at the mailman for giving you a jury duty summons, it's not his fault, he can't fix it, and all it's gonna do is get you shitty service in the future

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    3. I stand by what I said. No one ever enacted change by sitting in a corner and saying nothing to anyone.

      You need to speak up to be heard. All I wanted was one of them, any of them, to tell me that they understood my problem, or at least heard it, but they ignored it. That is not good customer service. I know they can not move me, they are just reading out of a book on what to do, but one of them, any of them could have said, I have no power to do that. Instead they totally skipped over the request each time instead of answering it accurately.

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    4. I told you to grow up because you were acting like a petulant child. Being upset with something is not carte blanche to be a dick. You should always treat people the way you want to be treated. I agree that It’s perfectly legitimate to want to express your displeasure with something but the way you handled it was 100% wrong and encouraging others to treat GM’s this way is downright unacceptable. Being “grumpy” /= being a dick. “Don’t be a dick!” TM Wil Wheaton.

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    5. And I was being a dick out of anger. My own fault for losing my cool and letting it get to me. It could have been cooled down at the beginning if a GM had actually talked to me instead of just C&Ping the standing company line.

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    6. Being angry doesn't excuse the way you behaved and it certainly doesn’t excuse you coming to your forum and glorifying beating down CSR’s. If anything since it’s a typing medium you should have pulled back taken however long you needed to cool down and presented yourself as an adult. Often times a CSR has to go thru the standard procedures before they can start to deviate from them.

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    7. I am not sure you are reading the same thing I wrote. I only said one really bad thing. I was rude, but not the way you are making it sound. I would be willing to bet you have said 100 times worse to people many times. If anything I showed amazing restraint for how angry I was about crashing over and over and getting no real assistance except the company line.

      As for coming here, I was not glorifying anything, I was saying what happened. If I was trying to glorifying anything I would have made myself out to have been a perfect gentlemen the whole time. The truth is an amazing thing, and as an adult, I know how to tell the truth and admit I was a jerk.

      There is a huge difference between what I said and what you perceive it to be.

      If you read the update you will see that the first time someone actually talked to me and helped me and didn't just give the company line the problem was figured out.

      So, in the end, I had all rights to be upset with the way they were treating me. The first GM should have helped me instead of C&Ped some BS that had nothing to do with my problem.

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    8. No there is not, You ask them over and over again to do something you know damn well that they couldn't do. Then proceed to get angry that they don't do it. Yes I'm sure this person solved your problem but have you ever dealt with tech support before They ALWAYS make you run thru the most basic fix's first your a smart guy I know you know this you were just looking for reasons to get upset. You've been called on it not only by me but by others here and FYI no I don't treat and say worse things to CSR's its a shitty job and I treat them with the utmost respect.

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    9. The last guy, the one I spoke to, even addressed the CRZ issue as well. He acknowledged I said something about it and said there was nothing he could do.

      That is what I wanted, that is what every GM before ignored. I just wanted what I was saying to be heard and they did not even once say, sorry, we can not do that. This is the reason I got upset.

      I am sorry, but I find it impossible to believe you have never lost your temper and raised your voice or said something rude to a person in the service industry and there is absolutely nothing you can say that would convince me otherwise.

      There are only 2 ways that is possible. You have never had the occasion to deal with someone that refused to address your problem or you are lying. If it is #1 you are extremely lucky, if it is #2, you are trying to make themselves look better than they really are on the internet.], which usually works in reverse. I had respect for you calling out my rudeness as I was, you lost every bit of that by trying to pass yourself off as the perfect person, which no one is.

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    10. 3) I'm a CSR rep myself and I'm not a jerk that asks for unreasonable things. There's an art to negotiating and you clearly fail at it.

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    11. just as an aside the way I keep my cool with all service industry people is to imagine I'm interacting with my grandma and treat them just like I would treat her.

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  7. I think your theory is flawed. I doubt most of your issues are caused by CRZ at all in fact, but rather the other changes to MoP itself. CRZ has some bugs I (and many others) have run into, but nothing so extreme as what you're seeing, nor have I heard of many people with your issues. I'm on a much older system running quite a few addons with a fairly slow DSL connection and have not seen most of the issues you have. My framerates out in the world are usually around 30 fps except when I first load a new zone via portal or hearthing etc, it takes about 30~60 seconds of 3FPS before my comp picks back up, which never happened before patch. Usually I get around 10~20 in a group or raid during a fight, and my internet speed is below 1MB/s, but I am not seeing most of those issues. Sounds like a deeper software issue, something on your specific system doesn't like the new coding for MoP and wouldn't like it even if you were on a single server. I'm sure some of these are CRZ, but most of it has to be basic software clashing. something on your machine is no longer talking to the blizzard servers correctly, and having a fast machine or a fast connection isn't the problem. This is a computer issue, not a CRZ issue, or it would be happening to everyone. There ARE bugs that are happening to everyone, like the skill spam and short pausing when crossing zones, some of which were supposedly hotfixed today, but that's not surprising with a brand new feature like this, especially one that is pretty technically complex. It's annoying as hell, but not surprising.

    But more importantly, whining at a GM will do nothing. GMs are customer service, not tech support. Beyond the technical issues with your comp, GMs really can't do what you asked them to do, they simply don't have that power. They do not have any authority with the developers to get things changed, and they certainly don't have the authority or the ability to put you on your own server. Asking a GM to do that is like asking a WalMart door greeter to change store policy or yelling at the bank teller because Wells Fargo raised the checking fee. They may work for the company, and be the first person you talk to within that company, but they have no say whatsoever in how the company operates. At best all they can do is pass along information, they have no more clout to make suggestions than anyone else.

    Blizzard has a forum for technical issues and bug reports, you would get much better answers from there for your specific issues. The forum in general is a much better place to air your grievances, you may not be talking directly to a live perosn, and you may not get a personal response, but the Blizzard people that read the forums are the ones in a position to change the game. GMs are not. They are bottom rung employees, and whining at them to do somehting that probably isn't even technically possible anymore is the wrong way to get anything useful done.

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    1. The GMs can however collect the data about the number of people complaining and what issues they are having and pass them along to the people that address them. That is my intent.

      What you say can very well be true however. There could be some sort of clash between MoP and my computer but being the computer I use is for gaming and there is nothing on it but WoW and rift at this moment, that is it, the issue has to be with windows 7. I have searched everything related to windows 7 and this patch and tried the suggestions the GMs offered as well as everything else I could fine.

      I am down now to the last option, a complete reinstall and I was hoping not to get to that point.

      I understand there is a limit to what the GMs can do and know they can not just put me back on my server, but that does not mean I do not wish to express my displeasure. They just happen to hear that displeasure, as is the nature of their job.

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    2. They collect and pass along data, but it carries no more weight than a tweet to ghostcrawler or a forum post, and possibly less. GMs simply don't have the authority that most players assume they do, and they have absolutely no say in how the game is developed.

      Go to the bug report forum, make a post with your issues, copy and paste your full DxDiag. It could be the wow client, it could be Windows 7, it could be directx or an old driver, it could be a compatability issue with your graphics card, it could be something that has nothing to do with wow like your firewall or antiviris. A full reinstall might solve it, might not, but the blue posters on the bug report forum actually know what they're doing and if they can't help your system, they are the ones that can make changes and do workarounds with the game code when they find out where the issues are.

      Look at the problem Mac users had with this patch, where it was causing the Mac processors to overwork and run really hot. If it's happening on your system, it's probably happening on a few dozen or a few hundred or a few thousand other players systems, but they can't fix it without knowing what your system specs are, and GMs CERTAINLY don't have that technical knowhow. Or the authority. Leave the poor GMs alone, customer support jobs suck enough already when you DO have the power to fix things, dealing with an irate customer over an issue that is out of your hands won't get anything done, but it may get a note on your account that may affect how you get treated in future tickets.

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    3. I was lucky to get a GM that was great with technical knowledge just now. Feel free to read the update I just added.

      He was awesome and said he knew exactly what the problem was the more we talked. I apologized to him for my tickets getting rude and he said he understood. If he were the first GM that responded perhaps my post would have been entirely different.

      I'll post tomorrow explaining the problem for others that might run into it.

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  8. I suspect the reason the GMs aren't removing you from CRZs is that that isn't possible. This would have been universally implemented; the server architecture for managing the zones would be completely different now.

    I'd be willing to bet there's no way they can disable CRZs for any individual player without disabling the entire thing, and they're not going to disable the entire thing unless the problems affect a really substantial proportion of the playerbase.

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    1. I know it is not possible. I know they have no power to move me. They do have the power to collect all the complaints and send them to the people that can change things. That is the reason why everyone that is having issues should report them.

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  9. This half-baked idea of theirs is going to cost them a lot of customers. I cancelled both of my accounts and the 2 accounts I had for my children. I also returned the Mists pre-orders.

    I never pay a service provider for services not rendered. Game companies are no different. If I don't get what I want and what I agreed to pay for, then I don't pay. It's that simple.

    Ghostcrawler's snottiness during the AMA didn't help either. He needs to be kept well away from the public.

    The game is being turned into another stupid facebook application for Sheeple, and it makes me sick to see so many people both defending it and being willing to put up with crappy service in the interim. If these same people got that kind of service from their cell-phone companies they would riot in the streets.

    Keep fighting the good fight Grumpy.

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    1. I am personally glad I got someone to actually help me. That was what I was aiming for at the least. I wanted them to understand my displeasure and assist me with me errors.

      The sad part is it too so long and took to the point of being rude to get anyone to talk to me. That should not be necessary.

      I am surely going to keep pushing for the removal of the forced CRZs however. None of these problems would have ever happened if they did not try to introduce something that wasn't ready for release.

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  10. I'm not surprised you didn't get an immediate response after calling a GM "stupid piece of shit". It's on all the signs everywhere that employees have a right to work without abuse. Still you lost your temper, it happens to everybody. I shouted at a cold caller the other day as it was the 6th cold call of the morning.

    CRZ's are pointless. Low level zones on most servers are pretty empty as it's endgame people want. Even on one of the largest EU servers it would be rare to see people in low level. If they want people places give them a reason. Don't pool all players from all servers to artificially bulk up zones to what they've never been. People on very low population servers either like it how it is or want a merge. Those that want merges want 1) more people to guild with 2) more to raid current content with 3) a more stable/stocked AH. Those are the problems with low pop servers not people in levelling zones. CRZ doesn't address any of those problems as you can't guild cross server, can't raid current content cross server and the economy remains separate.

    CRZ is a creative solution so they can avoid merging servers and the bad publicity that comes from doing so. It's a showmanship thing but it doesn't solve anything. In fact it's making a lot of things worse.

    I agree that they should remove/deactivate it until they've squished more bugs. I also agree that they should make it optional. They should probably also find whoever came up with the idea and check what they've been smoking.

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    1. I knew that I would not get a response after that. I didn't want one after that. I had no use for the service department. I was trying all day and had been pushed to my limits. They might have a sign that say they do not have to take abuse, but I am sure like every other customer service person in the world they have one that says the customer is king. They should have addressed my concerns instead of dismissing them.

      I love to abuse solicitors. I had one call the other day saying, "we are your copier service company, I just need to check the number on your copy machine, can you help me with that" to which I replied, "A lie is a terrible way to start a business relationship." I heard dead silence on the other end and I hung up. I really hate those calls. They are asking to be abused if you ask me.

      There is no need for CRZ outside of world PvP which is still nonexistent. It is not like it used to be where you had to kill an elite mob and you looked around for help. Everything is a solo game now leveling so there was not need to fill the zones.

      I think they should have taken a book from rift and just offer one free server transfer a month.

      They just do not want to admit they are losing so many people and do not see them being able to grow again. Hence the reason to try and cover it up with CRZ.

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  11. Seeing the UPDATE your issue got (sort of) fixed, gratz!
    In my experience, the EU CS enters the 'UPDATE' phase a lot sooner, if I don't get a GM to talk to me straight away it's generally after the first ticket didn't resolve the issue.

    Taitrina is mostly correct about the 'Dead Server Issues'.

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    1. Well,not exactly fixed. But at least it is something we know about now.

      It is not just me either, seems to be effecting more people now. Last night raiding was a nightmare. People lagging and running off the side on spine heroic, or lagging and totally missing the tendon so we could not get it done in one go. It was a nightmare and I don't know why we kept trying when at least 2 people would die to lag each attempt.

      Oddly enough, as everyone else started having more problems I started having less. I only DCed 3 times, which since the beginning of CRZ, that is actually pretty awesome.

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  12. Cross Realm Zones would be ok if you could really interact with everyone from other realms exactly like they was on your home realm. Like invite them to guild, trade with them, etc... Because then you would have a sense of community. But as it is now, I can't stand it and want to quit myself. It feels like all the negatives and none of the positives of a large pop server. Something has to be done, and I'm going to start putting in tickets every day until we can either interact with the cross realm players better or they get rid of it!

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    1. Yeah, not being able to trade, ignore, or basically do anything with them is just one of the failings on the part of blizzard.

      All the negatives and none of the positives like you said.

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  13. Grumpy, I can't agree with you more. And you had every right to loose your temper there. Blizzard CS is plain awful. Copy/paste all over to place, not even bothering to read your ticket (or previous tickets) ...

    Ofc Blizzard CS's can't do anything directly about it, but when an unbelievable crappy system is implemented like this, you have a duty as a player to be as vocal about it as you can be.

    The only way to get their attention. Create a shitstorm and annoy the living crap out of their employees. If enough of their paytime/attention is needed because of the negativity the CRZ is creating, Blizzard might see some wisdom and change some thinking patterns.

    But lets face it, CRZ's are not going away. It creates less problems for Blizzard (structure wise blabla) and add more timesinks into the game (fighting for resources), so Blizzards always wins.

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    1. It is sad that it took forever for even one response to come out and say, we can't do that, even if I knew that before hand. I got annoyed because they would not even do that.

      The best way to piss someone off is to completely ignore their problem and they seem to be masters of completely ignoring the problems of the players. Would it really have been so hard for one of them, any of them, to say, sorry, we can't do anything about that.

      I know it is not going away. It is blizzards way of covering up the fact they are losing customers. It is also the lazy solution to a problem that could be fixed a better way.

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  14. It's more than that, it's the new design philosophy of WoW.

    Everything possible should be a timesink.

    Dumping sh*tloads of people in one zone and making sure the resources (herbs, ore ...) are "shared" is a way of making gold more valuable.

    All in all this would be doable, but the major problem is now that resources (zones) are shared by multiple servers, but the AH is not. Add to that the countless bots that monopolise the market (and often the resource nodes, can you fly around a zone for 24hrs on end??) and you're up for a freakin' disaster.

    Also, they disabled the fishing contests because of the bugs and exploits now ... Are you serious?

    Are you telling me that in the entire design process, the entire development process, no-one stood up and said 'Wait a minute, won't this break events on shard-level?'. Come on ...

    Why wasn't this tested better and why did they rush this out? There's more to come ... remember, I said it first!

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    1. All these issues were brought up on the beta and they ignored them. The issues are only just starting and you only mention the tip of the iceberg.

      Someone like myself, with my main server, there were no bots, at least not that I have ever noticed in years there. Some years back there were a few but they were banned to never return. Now, you can not get an herb or a mine even if you spent hours. Too many people and too many bots. This has seen the prices on my server skyrocket at a time they usually drop like a rock, the end of the expansion.

      They did not think this out fully and they did not prepare for things like more people for less nodes. Not to mention they do nothing about bots which makes it 100 times worse for servers like mine that had no bot problems before.

      I hate what they did to the game with this one change. It really changed the entire face of the game into something I do not like and that is not even considering the problems I have had with it on the technical side since the release.

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