On Yesterday's Announcement

A quick post because I'm stil jetlagged and haven't managed to put more than a few hours gaming in this week:

• Slayers/Choppas: awesome! Awwwesome! I was never really excited about the Dwarf classes, or in fact the other Melee DPS characters, but who wouldn't want to play a Slayer? Smashing and bashing, and an extra-emo backstory (which is why I chose a Shadow Warrior as my main) to boot.
  

• Night of Murder: can't wait for this event, I like the look of collecting another trophy as a live event reward, as well as any excuse to brutally murder anyone in my path.
  

• Oh man oh man oh man, a free expansion! I love you Mythic! They're treating us so well. If there's one thing I enjoy about MMOs, it's seeing the game shift and grow as the months go by. I swear they keep putting new NPCs in Altdorf without telling us...
  

Customer Service

Assholes. Up until last night they weren't part of Warhammer Online, and then I had the misfortune to want to do a few scenarios/try not to die taking part of oRVR in Dragonwake. And then an asshole (with a posse) who shall not be named, because trolls don't deserve fame, decided to spend the best part of two hours trolling the Tier 4 Elf region chat with the usual homophobia/misogyny that seems to come with social gaming. I waited him out, and sure enough he made a rape joke, and I filed an Appeal.

[This is the second time I've filed one, and thus the second time I've spoken to the CSR's of Warhammer Online. The first time was when a random Hero mob showed up in Altdorf and I rolled high enough for one of the top bags of loot... only no one could find the chest spawn. It sucked and there was nothing anyone could do, and the CSR was unable to restore the loot chest for us. Blah.]

But anyway, both times that I've had the opportunity to speak to their customer service reps, I've been pleasantly surprised. They use scripts, but are friendly and considerate and are actually allowed to be a bit silly. The first encounter I had, after detailing the problem in the hope of a future fix, we exchanged the \m/ emoticon and yelled WAAAGH! at each other. Last night one responded within 15 minutes of my filing the Appeal (wish I'd taken their name, it began with a V) while I was in a scenario, so I couldn't discuss what had happened in great detail (team > chat). They understood, and let me know they had enough information to do something about the issue, and let me go on my way pwning the faces of Destro. Similarly Ainilome of Obsessive Focus corrected them about the naming of an NPC critter, and they promptly changed the name.

So if any Customer Service supervisor happens across this post, please keep this kind of thing up. We live increasingly in an age of robots and scripts - actual people responding to our ingame problems and trying to keep the mood elevated will keep people playing.

And I hope the asshole in question gets a banhammer to the face.