Today Sucks: An Open Letter to Blizzard

Submitted by George Walker on January 23, 2007 – 9:44 pm11 Comments

To Whom It May Concern:

I’ve been playing WoW for quite some time, now. And this is the first time I’ve felt like I should complain to Blizzard about something.

When I woke up early to make sure I could play the game that I pay for each month, this morning’s maintenance was a little disappointing. Then, when I get home from work, I fully expect to be able to log on to the game (that I pay for each and every month) and find that I can’t login. You’ve got to be kidding me. I can understand how urgent maintenance can be, but the fact is that my money goes towards hiring people that should be able to figure this crap out BEFORE peak playing times.

I fully expect to be refunded AT LEAST 1 day’s worth of play time. I can’t in fairness ask for a month, because the past month has been one of the more relatively pain-free months since I’ve been playing.

Also, by way of feedback, drop the stupid bittorrent-based patch download system. Again, I pay you guys so that you can buy the hardware it takes to serve files to 8 million subscribers. Bittorrent works on the principal of staying logged in once you complete a download. This way you are sharing the file you’ve downloaded but with Blizzards crap system, no one is going to stay logged in and let the patch upload to everyone that needs it. Pretty horrible system.

However, I have enjoyed your game tremendously over the past months, and for the most part feel like my investment has been totally repaid in value. But sometimes… sometimes you guys drive me totally bat-crap loco with anger and frustration.

So please, the $.50 I would save by receiving a free day would go far towards easing my pain and anguish.

Mac

Totally agree, i just recently wiped my hard drive and installing the patches were a real pain. Not sure why they urgently had to update the authorization during peak hours
http://www.farbot.com/ Paul

Dear George,

We’re too busy cashing massive checks at the bank to care about your complaints.

Love,
Blizzard’s owner.
James

I was unable to log into WoW for three days and they wouldn’t refund me the money. I discontinued my account after that and never looked back.
http://www.strategyinformer.com Jamie

Jamie from Strategy Informer here, I’ve had exactly the same annoyance. I installed the latest patch and now it says it can’t validate my version!!!! SO I’m going to have to delete WOW and reinstall and then damn use that bit torrent to slowly download patches which is very annoying when your under a crap router.
Sammael

They pay no attention to this kind of complaining at Blizzard because they don’t have to pay attention to it. Most people are going to bitch right until the servers come back up, then dive right back into the shitty instances all over again. A small amount of users quit, but a majority deal with it.

Honestly, I hate to say it but WoW has had it’s share of problems but they have handled them rather well. If you really want to see a cluster F, take a look at SOE’s Star Wars MMO launch or Shadowbane in general. Then you will be thankful.

As for me, I’m going to run away screaming. I quit WoW cold turkey months ago, and have only relapsed once for about a week.
http://www.aeropause.com George

Star Wars Galaxies… now there was a debacle. Heh, thanks for putting things in perspective for me.

But yeah, deep down I know that Blizzard really doesn’t give a rip at this point. Oh well. I gotta try, right?
Jason

I hope you never play EVE Online… hahahaha

Hardware isnt perfect, get over it.
Jeff H

2-years later and it hasn't improved. George Walker has already summed up my thoughts. How on earth does it take 14 hours to bring a server back up, and it's still not up? Nobody in any business I know of actually thinks an hour of downtime is acceptable. I don't know if it's a personnel problem or policy but something needs to be fixed.
Jeff H

2-years later and it hasn't improved. George Walker has already summed up my thoughts. How on earth does it take 14 hours to bring a server back up, and it's still not up? Nobody in any business I know of actually thinks an hour of downtime is acceptable. I don't know if it's a personnel problem or policy but something needs to be fixed.
Jeff H

2-years later and it hasn't improved. George Walker has already summed up my thoughts. How on earth does it take 14 hours to bring a server back up, and it's still not up? Nobody in any business I know of actually thinks an hour of downtime is acceptable. I don't know if it's a personnel problem or policy but something needs to be fixed.
Jeff H

2-years later and it hasn't improved. George Walker has already summed up my thoughts. How on earth does it take 14 hours to bring a server back up, and it's still not up? Nobody in any business I know of actually thinks an hour of downtime is acceptable. I don't know if it's a personnel problem or policy but something needs to be fixed.