Kaukomieli

I might be an odd case, but for me GW2 was the perfect evolution of what made GW1 fun for me.  I played the first game primarily for the exploration, lore, story, gradual character development - you know, general RPG stuff.  Over the years, I eventually settled into using a specific build on my character (much like the locked weapon-set skills of GW2), and spent my time exploring the maps (like with vistas and points of interest) and gathering funds to buy interesting cosmetic gear (just like in the sequel).

The loss of build flexibility doesn't disappoint me because, for me, flexibility was just a means to the purpose of finding that one perfect build that suits my playstyle.  The lack of npc companions doesn't disappoint me because now there are actual people running around, spontaneously helping you wherever you look.  The differences in PvP don't concern me because I never played PvP to begin with.  The PvE difficulty has, as far as I'm concerned, kept its edge.  I've struggled against enemies, but never hit a brick wall - just as it should be.

For me, this game is exactly the kind of game I want to play.  They dropped the parts of GW1 that I didn't care for, and improved the parts I liked.  Others won't agree, but if the game was perfect for *them*, then it would no longer be perfect for *me*.  Someone somewhere is going to hate it, no matter what ANet does.  I'm just happy I'm the one who enjoys it.

Sup playa's

Here's my characters with cool low level armour

My mesmer Deim Hunir



and sylvari Elementalist Misrael.

Just have a little patien.

aka  "Why your Support ticket has not been answered..."

I'm about to log off for "the night" (my night - I sleep days), and before I do I want to try and help our little community here out a bit.  What ANet's support staff is dealing with this week is what I do for a living - I build support suites for developers.  I build the interfaces customers (you) submit your tickets through... I build the interfaces they (support staff) view & answer your tickets through... I train the staff that will man the support desk... and I stick around for a few weeks after launch to work any bugs out of the suite along with assessing the actual in-practice quality of each support staff member.

When a game of GW2's magnitude launches, there are a disproportionate number of support requests submitted compared to the player population.  Have a starting player base of around 1 million?  You're looking at at least 100,000 individual customers submitting tickets - emphasis on ticketS.  It's inevitable that about 75% of your customers who submit one ticket will follow up with additional "new" tickets if they do not receive a human response within their own personally dictated time-frame.

Anecdote:  last year, we had a guy submit one new ticket every 10 minutes for 14 hours on a Saturday night/Sunday morning.   Every one of those tickets received a templated auto-response based on keywords.  Every one of those responses involved database queries for the keyword matchup.  Every one of those tickets in-bound and out-bound added traffic to the mail server.

Irony:  The solution to his issue was right there in the auto-response.

You may be a reasonable, mentally healthy, intelligent customer.  The guy/gal whose ticket sits before yours and after yours probably is not.  S/he is slamming Support with dozens of tickets, each escalating in abusive content.

Ok, so in the interface the support personnel are looking at, it looks sort of like your Gmail interface.  There are folders - tickets get routed based on choices the customer made from the drop down menu when creating their ticket... then they often get further routed based on keyword content.  Those folders are filling up fast, and the software & hardware is having to really work to keep up with filtering and following up with automated responses which may or may not help solve the issue the customer is having.

Anecdote:  I mentioned the "Irony" above because that is actually very often the case - the solution the customer needs is actually found within the automated response or in links found in the automated response.  A surprising number of people will not even ATTEMPT the suggestions given by an auto-responder... they're convinced that their problem is unique/special and can only be handled by a human being... something they are quick to point out with a hastily (and often insultingly) crafted response they send back to the desk.

Assuming, of course, that they don't just start another new ticket screaming about the lack of human response to their old ticket which they vaguely reference and eventually some human being at the desk will have to squish together into a single chain.

Meanwhile, the mail exchange is groaning under the weight of all the inbound & outbound emails - thousands of tickets...thousands of automated responses...thousands of responses from customers to those automated ones... thousands of activation/confirmation/login information emails... on and on and on.  Delays begin to happen, and then to stack.

You submitted your email 24 hours ago?  Guess what?  It probably just now got past the mail exchange and into the support suite itself... it's been floating about without form or substance the entire time, unreadable by anyone INCLUDING the keyword algorithm.  It hadn't even hit the queue until this very second... and it's sitting there behind every other ticket that slipped in before it.

Now let's talk about the people - on the other end of your ticket, somewhere, is a human being.  Now if the auto-responder solves your issue and you are courteous enough to close the ticket (assuming it wasn't auto-closed, which has become standard practice - it's re-opened when you respond), it's likely no human being will ever see it.  However, despite the fact that the vast majority of tickets can be solved by the auto-responder, most customers won't think it actually is (see above), and so eventually, it's going to be seen by a human being who is simply going to repeat - a little more flavorfully - the exact same information already provided.

They're doing this same thing thousands of times.  And in between that, they're being abused in ways you can't imagine.

Anecdote:  After a ban, I had a young man insist that "I" was banning him because I was racist.  Apparently, I somehow figured out his race through osmosis.  After calling me names I wouldn't even THINK at my worst enemy, he proceeded to graphically describe all the ways in which he was going to disembowel and dismember me "and any children or pets" I might have.

Sad truth:  I wish that were the worst thing that had ever been said to me.

Death threats, threats of lawsuits, insults to intelligence and appearance and education and weight and quality as a human being - about half of the tickets submitted include one or more of these.

Meanwhile, someone who is in customer service because they actually like helping people is having to deal with this.  I've done support suites for multiple eCommerce industries.  I work primarily in gaming because it's also my preferred hobby.  If I combined every nasty, mean word I read in all of the other industries combined, I still would not have counted even 1/4 of the number of those I've read from gamers.  We are a nasty, immature, self-entitled bunch that is unparalleled.

Do I expect any of you to suddenly start feeling warm fuzzies and grateful acceptance towards the ANet support staff?  No.  But I am hopeful that at least some of you will realize that it is not for lack of care about your issue that a solution to your problem has not yet arrived.  Those men and women DO care that you can't log into the game... they're working their tails off to try and do their part to see that happen.

If you're going to feel sad about anything in this whole thing, consider the fact that the number of people who will bother to say "thank you," even when a support person has gone out of their way to help, is about 1 in 1,000.  Which is, in some ways, a good thing - because such thank you emails only serve to tax the system further.

A quick list of things that contribute to lengthy delays:

- the NUMBER ONE THING that delays a response is additional tickets/responses sent by the customer.  Every...single...time you write in, you are bumping your ticket to the back of the queue.  Most ticket systems today will link your tickets based on your email address and/or account information.  So even if you think you're being slick by starting an entirely new ticket?  All you've done is bumped your 24 hour-old ticket to the very end of the current line.

- hardware issues... there isn't a non-Google/Hotmail/Yahoo/Etc. mail server in existence that can handle the sheer volume of traffic generated by the launch of a new game without issue.  And unless you want to pay $100 more for your game to support such hardware, there never will be.

- waiting on developer updates.  This is another big one.  Sad to say, but nearly every developer I've worked with has been faster to post updates to Twitter/FB/etc. than to update their own support department about fixes, solutions or known-issues.  And no, support probably isn't going to write back 10,000 people to say "we're waiting to hear from a developer on this."  They're going to park those 10,000 tickets until that specific issue has been solved by the devs.  There is no other effective way to do this.

- lack of information from customer.  Another popular one.  Auto-response kicks out a list of necessary information support needs from the customer.  Customer either ignores it, or only answers a couple of the listed questions - sometimes out of confusion, sometimes out of ignorance (not everyone knows how to check their driver version, for example), and often just out of laziness/contrariness:  "Why do they need to know my ______?  That has nothing to DO with ______!?!?!?!??!  I'm not telling them THAT!!!!!"  This, despite the fact that said piece of information actually is important, but the customer, who learned how to "fix" their computer by watching YouTube videos and who now considers themselves an expert on all-things-computing can't see the big picture.

Summation:  They really and truly will get to your ticket at the earliest possible moment.

Personal reassurance:  I'm a gamer.  I've been a gamer for over 30 years.  I've been through failed launches rife with issues (hello Diablo 3).  I've been through the feelings of betrayal as a player when it seems like a company doesn't care (hello Diablo 3).  I've been through the crushing disappointment when you can't play a beloved game you've been anticipating forever (hello Diablo 3).  I get it.  100% I get it.

And so do they.  The support staff for devs are usually gamers themselves.  They, too, are frustrated that they can't just fix it all for you right this second.  Everyone at that company wants you to have a perfect, stress-free experience.  They've hoped for it, they've prayed for it, they've probably danced nekkid under the moon to try and ensure it... but ultimately, things break and players are unhappy.  It's inevitable.  They are crushed that you are not having a perfect experience... and they truly are trying to solve your problem soonest.

Exploring the Eye of the North with all those references to the first GW ! It was pretty awesome ^^.

The floating rocks outside Caudecus's Manor finally have a meaning.



I glitched past the gates of the manor (from the Shire of Beetletun in Queensdale) and looked at the reverse side of the floating rocks.  What I found was unexpected but easily explainable.



At this angle, you can see facial features.  When we adjust the angle jusssst right, this is what appears!



When you align your camera properly, the rocks line up to form the face of Caudecus himself!

I'm thinking this will be my main menu music.



Gotta love the violin. Especially 13 of them being played by the same guy all perfectly synced together!

I'm amused that people are arguing against this option and backing up their opinions with no substance and pure snarkiness.    No animations need to be created, they're already in the game.  Just have an option so that when you click it, the ADHD animations are removed from the possible pool.  As for people that brush character creation off, there are many others who enjoy the process of making a character tailored to their imagination.  Sure, perhaps you don't personally care, but many of us do.  Just because you don't notice doesn't mean there aren't people who do.  For instance, I'm red-green colorblind, so you could turn all the leaves in GW 2 red, and I would probably never catch on.  Does that mean other people don't take notice?  To me, making a character that I can call my own is the first step to being immersed in the game.  Anet added sliders and presets for a reason.  If we want to customize to our hearts content, the sliders are there.  If we couldn't care less, there's always the preset.  The OP is merely asking for a more efficient way of using what is already implemented, which I full-heartedly support.