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On March 01 2012 11:23 Tula wrote:
I was curious how long it would take until Blizzard started to lay off some people. For those not in the know it has been a pretty open secret that Blizzard massively over-hired on support personal for WoW in the first 3 years after release.
The demand for support (meaning specifically GMs and Tech Support) has been shrinking for a while, with no signs of that changing again in the other direction any time soon.
Are you sure you are talkiing about the correct Blizzard and correct WoW? Cause the WoW I know is woefully understaffed (and has been for a long time) when it comes to phone customer service reps and GMs. Have you tried calling them up? You will be lucky if you get to talk to someone after 30 mins of waiting in queue. Have you tried submitting a ticket from the in-game UI? The average ticket processing times have went from 2-3 hours during the times of Burning Crusade expansion to almost 24 hours today.
Is this what you call overstaffed?
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After talking with a friend that works in Blizz's IGS. The people that were cut from the GM crew were people that "Should have gotten cut months ago, but management didn't want to let anyone go"
600 people, though. That's a lot of redundancy. Guess they're feeling the sub hit harder than they let on.
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On March 02 2012 05:39 Jago wrote:Show nested quote +On March 01 2012 11:23 Tula wrote:
I was curious how long it would take until Blizzard started to lay off some people. For those not in the know it has been a pretty open secret that Blizzard massively over-hired on support personal for WoW in the first 3 years after release.
The demand for support (meaning specifically GMs and Tech Support) has been shrinking for a while, with no signs of that changing again in the other direction any time soon. Are you sure you are talkiing about the correct Blizzard and correct WoW? Cause the WoW I know is woefully understaffed (and has been for a long time) when it comes to phone customer service reps and GMs. Have you tried calling them up? You will be lucky if you get to talk to someone after 30 mins of waiting in queue. Have you tried submitting a ticket from the in-game UI? The average ticket processing times have went from 2-3 hours during the times of Burning Crusade expansion to almost 24 hours today. Is this what you call overstaffed?
Blizzard does.
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On March 02 2012 05:39 Jago wrote:Show nested quote +On March 01 2012 11:23 Tula wrote:
I was curious how long it would take until Blizzard started to lay off some people. For those not in the know it has been a pretty open secret that Blizzard massively over-hired on support personal for WoW in the first 3 years after release.
The demand for support (meaning specifically GMs and Tech Support) has been shrinking for a while, with no signs of that changing again in the other direction any time soon. Are you sure you are talkiing about the correct Blizzard and correct WoW? Cause the WoW I know is woefully understaffed (and has been for a long time) when it comes to phone customer service reps and GMs. Have you tried calling them up? You will be lucky if you get to talk to someone after 30 mins of waiting in queue. Have you tried submitting a ticket from the in-game UI? The average ticket processing times have went from 2-3 hours during the times of Burning Crusade expansion to almost 24 hours today. Is this what you call overstaffed?
In the last year, I've called Blizzard's customer service a half a dozen times. Each time, I waited less than five minutes to get my call answered.
Since Cata was released, I've put in dozens of tickets in WoW. They were all answered within twelve hours. During Wrath, it was like a 2-3 day wait. More serious tickets put in this expac were answered within a half hour.
You're lying.
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I wouldn't exactly call him lying but he is being absurd with his anecdotes. Also when I used to do cs we were bit overstaffed but customers were still kept waiting a bit because that's just the way it is. They rather have you wait and have work flow smooth than have their reps waste time. Its just the way it is with corporations. Your time means shit. Employees time does.
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happens to every company - not a big deal I think
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Blizzard needs additional pylons.
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So many trolls in this thread.
Seriously, please tell me any game that is anywhere near as good as d3beta or sc2. Because I've been having a lot of fun playing these games, and I don't see anything else out there that comes close to not just as fun of a game as these blizzard games, but have as much replay value. You can't seriously think the other major games out there, like battlefield or COD, is anywhere near as good as sc2, as 'shitty' as it is.
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My cousin was one of the original GMs for World of Warcraft. Apart from highly disliking the game, and only succumbing to corporate pressure to play at home, he said it was a reasonable job. Right now he is working in Sound Design (he did zerg sounds for SC2, if you care) I talked to him on the phone last night about life in general, but he mentioned that most of those cut were newer hires, who probably were dead weight.
The markets acted in agreement. They only moved down 2.3%, which for such a huge layoff really doesn't mean dit.
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I think its Blizzard's revenue model that is hurting them. A revenue model such as the one in League of Legends doesn't hurt the game one bit, and people spend more than the cost of buying a game from Blizzard. They should definitely think about changing that. Not to mention since the barrier to entry for LoL is free, there are so much more users and thus there are more viewers for streams and attendance for tournaments. Maybe SC2 should rethink their revenue model.
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On March 02 2012 12:47 ShootingStars wrote:
I think its Blizzard's revenue model that is hurting them. A revenue model such as the one in League of Legends doesn't hurt the game one bit, and people spend more than the cost of buying a game from Blizzard. They should definitely think about changing that. Not to mention since the barrier to entry for LoL is free, there are so much more users and thus there are more viewers for streams and attendance for tournaments. Maybe SC2 should rethink their revenue model.
These layoffs were because of dead weight for WoW. They are really in no way connected to SC2 apart from just trying to trim fat on a company.
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Most are non-developers, the rest is non-WoW
so that means a little of delevopers of diablo and expansions of sc2 are probably cut .?
Edit: it was a question not affirmation
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They're getting rid of dead weight, wage costs will be much less, more profit for further developments, good on you Blizzard, may Starcraft 3 be released within 12 years of Starcraft 2 lol
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According to cousin it's like 90% GM, and then some random poor employees they were holding on to. He doesn't know anybody from SC2 that got layed off.
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Wow apparently everyone's cousin works at Blizzard!
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It sucks to hear this bad news but I hope they find their new opportunities. Best be great to say they used to work for Blizzard!
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On March 02 2012 08:02 PH wrote:Show nested quote +On March 02 2012 05:39 Jago wrote:On March 01 2012 11:23 Tula wrote:
I was curious how long it would take until Blizzard started to lay off some people. For those not in the know it has been a pretty open secret that Blizzard massively over-hired on support personal for WoW in the first 3 years after release.
The demand for support (meaning specifically GMs and Tech Support) has been shrinking for a while, with no signs of that changing again in the other direction any time soon. Are you sure you are talkiing about the correct Blizzard and correct WoW? Cause the WoW I know is woefully understaffed (and has been for a long time) when it comes to phone customer service reps and GMs. Have you tried calling them up? You will be lucky if you get to talk to someone after 30 mins of waiting in queue. Have you tried submitting a ticket from the in-game UI? The average ticket processing times have went from 2-3 hours during the times of Burning Crusade expansion to almost 24 hours today. Is this what you call overstaffed? In the last year, I've called Blizzard's customer service a half a dozen times. Each time, I waited less than five minutes to get my call answered. Since Cata was released, I've put in dozens of tickets in WoW. They were all answered within twelve hours. During Wrath, it was like a 2-3 day wait. More serious tickets put in this expac were answered within a half hour. You're lying.
Nice. So your if experience don't match mine it means I am lying. You must be really popular with people. Has it even crossed your mind that perhaps the situation in various world regions is different?
On March 02 2012 12:28 Froadac wrote:
My cousin was one of the original GMs for World of Warcraft. Apart from highly disliking the game, and only succumbing to corporate pressure to play at home, he said it was a reasonable job. Right now he is working in Sound Design (he did zerg sounds for SC2, if you care) I talked to him on the phone last night about life in general, but he mentioned that most of those cut were newer hires, who probably were dead weight.
The markets acted in agreement. They only moved down 2.3%, which for such a huge layoff really doesn't mean dit.
You have that completely backwards. When investors see layoffs as a good decision, the reaction to the news is positive, bidding up the share price. Since the news broke, ActivisionBlizzard is down 2 consecutive days in a row, while the overall market is up over the same period.
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Although they did not reference any financial issues, I worry that "Constant evaluation" leading to "difficult decisions" could someday result in a monthly fee for battle.net.
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On March 02 2012 08:02 PH wrote:Show nested quote +On March 02 2012 05:39 Jago wrote:On March 01 2012 11:23 Tula wrote:
I was curious how long it would take until Blizzard started to lay off some people. For those not in the know it has been a pretty open secret that Blizzard massively over-hired on support personal for WoW in the first 3 years after release.
The demand for support (meaning specifically GMs and Tech Support) has been shrinking for a while, with no signs of that changing again in the other direction any time soon. Are you sure you are talkiing about the correct Blizzard and correct WoW? Cause the WoW I know is woefully understaffed (and has been for a long time) when it comes to phone customer service reps and GMs. Have you tried calling them up? You will be lucky if you get to talk to someone after 30 mins of waiting in queue. Have you tried submitting a ticket from the in-game UI? The average ticket processing times have went from 2-3 hours during the times of Burning Crusade expansion to almost 24 hours today. Is this what you call overstaffed? In the last year, I've called Blizzard's customer service a half a dozen times. Each time, I waited less than five minutes to get my call answered. Since Cata was released, I've put in dozens of tickets in WoW. They were all answered within twelve hours. During Wrath, it was like a 2-3 day wait. More serious tickets put in this expac were answered within a half hour. You're lying.
It's also very possible that European and US experiences with customer service differs greatly. Though when i played WoW (on EU server) fairly recently, I didn't have very long waits with tickets (hour max), so who knows.
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There's a lot of nonsense on this thread. If someone can get the numbers on how many GM's Bliz employees along with how many tickets they average per day, we can start talking. Until then, you are basing your assumptions on your own experience of like.. what.. 1-2 times you've called in to get your IRON THONG OF THE TIGER back from when you got hacked.
Stop it.
On Mar 2 2012 13:03 jackienopay wrote:
Although they did not reference any financial issues, I worry that "Constant evaluation" leading to "difficult decisions" could someday result in a monthly fee for battle.net.
Who knows, maybe once they FIX some things about shitty.net we'd be willing to pay.
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EPT
