Jan 8, 2012

Posted by in Blue Milk & Cereal | 15 Comments

Blue Milk & Cereal: Are You Happy With Customer Service?

No day would be complete without the breakfast of Jedi: Blue Milk & Cereal.  Every morning, the team at Ask A Jedi will get Force-induced thoughts coursing through your head with delicious issues from around the galaxy! Join in the discussion below to make your voice heard!

In an ideal world, there wouldn’t be a need for customer support. Things would all work perfectly, and provide an experience just as the customer imagined! However, in the real world and especially in the world of online games, customer service is an integral component of the overall experience. BioWare was always adamant on the fact that they not only wanted to build a great game, but an even better service.

Most of us will eventually run into some bugs, glitches or problems that range from minor annoyances that are easily ignored all the way to issues that can ruin the game for the player. What is crucially important is not how “bug-free” the game is, but how efficiently the customer service addresses the issues the player is having.

Personally,  I’ve reported about 10-12 issues related to things like Collector’s Edition items being lost, mission rewards not being given and mail attachments disappearing, and I have received a reply at most 2 days after the original submission. Kudos for that, BioWare. However, all of my submissions returned the following reply:

“…Your report has been forwarded to the relevant department, who will investigate further. We regret we will be unable to provide you with further updates on this issue, but recommend checking future patch notes for any up to date information”.

While it is nice to hear back from support fairly quickly, I feel like the the support staff should be able provide a resolution more directly. Perhaps return my items, or provide compensation, which I am basing on my previous experiences with other games. Maybe BioWare will try to address issues on a more “global” scale and return the items/rewards upon the arrival of the next patch.

The question for today is the following – if you contacted BioWare’s customer support or used the ticket system in-game, how satisfied were you? Was your issue addressed and resolved? Let us know what you think and share your experiences below!

How satisfied are you with the customer service for Star Wars: The Old Republic?

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  1. Well, I get that same generic reply pretty quickly, but I’ve been waiting three days for an item restoration now, going on four. It seems like them actually doing anything aside from posting that generic message is slow at best. Here’s to hoping it speeds up as bugs are fixed and less reports are sent.

  2. I do receive both in game and out of game emails from them when I have reported bugs and issues with their /bug function. So I am very happy with them. Very responsive.

  3. I have had horrid customer service from SWTOR. I was on hold for over 1 hour, then over 2 hours the next two attempts, and I never got through. I know they had a record number of subscribers for a new MMO…but that’s awful. The game is awesome, but the customer service is the exact opposite.

  4. Rey Herrera says:

    Automated messages come quickly, but getting a message from an actual person takes an eternity. It took me six days to receive an item restoration.

  5. I use multiple Time Customer service using ticket, but i Never get a correct response. IT took long Time to answer and response are SO evasive that they are not use full.

    I had the problem you probably already met if you are doing instance, a problem were you can’t get into instance with no possibility to reset it.

    Still no response other than standard one you talk about, i found a solution on the net after a long time.

    Well, game is nice, but customer service is very far from what we were excpecting for a great game like that.

  6. I have yet to find myself in need of any help post-launch. Pre-launch however, I was confounded. I pre-ordered my collector’s edition through Best Buy in August and was given a ‘used’ pre-order code. It took them 2 weeks to answer my ticket on the issue in which they requested more information, understandable. After I provided the info asked of me in a reply, I didn’t get any activity until October… when I submitted a second ticket on the issue.

    Needs improving.

  7. I have yet to find myself in need of any help post-launch. Pre-launch however, I was confounded. I pre-ordered my collector’s edition through Best Buy in August and was given a ‘used’ pre-order code. It took BioWare 2 weeks to answer my ticket on the issue in which they requested more information, understandable. After I provided the info asked of me in a reply, I didn’t get any activity until October… when I submitted a second ticket on the issue.

    Needs improving.

  8. To me, it seems like customer service has declined since beta. During beta, I posted ~100 bug reports, and each time I got a personalized response within a day or two, even on issues where a generic “thank-you for your report, we’ll look into it” would have been fine. Since release, they still usually respond within a couple of days (though I’ve gotten a response anywhere from 30 minutes up to a week depending on the bug category). However, I always get the generic response. Often the generic response asks me to submit another ticket with “more information”. Since I already included that information in the original bug report, I assume that means they didn’t bother to read what I wrote the first time – so, why would I bother submitting another ticket?

    On the whole, though, I am satisfied with customer service. Their response time is usually acceptable, and the major bugs which I’ve reported have already been patched. Their customer support only seems bad to me now because in beta, they had by far the best service I’ve ever seen in an mmo, and I’ve been expecting that to continue post-launch.

  9. Have no issues with the ToR service, and even the promptness of EA service was amazing. On the other hand… the quality with actual Bioware service is downright horrible.

  10. For myself, I haven’t had much of an issue regarding customer service. but I felt like i needed to pipe in and say that my friend has had a horrid time. Mainly because he was in on early access… but hasn’t been able to play at all. period. He’s emailed numerous times and has gotten nothing but bland excuses and automated responses. Makes it hard to stand up for Bioware when a buddy says that! >.<

  11. I play an agent, and I did my alderaan quest before my tattooine quest. This caused my holoterm to be bugged, which is stopping me from advancing my class quests.

    I’ve got 3 tickets open regarding various portions of my issue, and have only gotten a single canned response back. I attempted all steps in the canned response, and nothing worked. It’s been almost a week now.

  12. I voted ‘very unsatisfied’. My highest level character has a bug which leaves her stuck on her ship with a conversation bubble over her head. No conversation starts, but I can’t escape from it, can’t use /stuck or quick travel, can’t play. So this is a gamebreaker, not a minor bug. 3 days so far since submitting a ticket, and I haven’t even had a ‘we’re looking into it’ type of response.

  13. I’ve always received the same response from every bug I’ve submitted. To be honest, those responses are NOT acceptable to me. They don’t give me any type of “warm and cozy” that any human has actually looked at what I’ve written. Instead, an automated system could easily be created to respond the way they are responding.

    Surprisingly, every bug I’ve submitted has either made it into a patch, or is slated for 1.1, which is nice. So, it would seem as though someone is actually reading them…just the in game response doesn’t give you a good sense.

  14. During beta (closed) customer service was great. I would get responses, heck I even got to talk with GM’s a lot.

    But I have had a active ticket for nearly 2 weeks to get a item fixed/replaced. Right now I am losing all hope for SW:ToR. I understand this is there 1st MMO. But come on, they should have realized they were going to be bust with that many people preordering so soon.

    I can not even post on the SW:ToR main forums right now. No clue why, I am not banned (hell I hardly post there). But I can not get a GM to respond about that either (I have 5 open tickets right now from 2weeks to 3 days).

    It is disappointing, I wanted to love this game. I am just getting a bit upset with CSR.

  15. I tried to get my Khem Val (Companion) customization replaced (I dropped it on my paper doll thinking it would auto-equip like in WoW, but instead it deleted the item, no I didn’t read the pop-up!)

    I got one CSR to say, you can get item replacements 3 times, and if I would like to use a replacement I had to open another ticket with certain things in the description. This was 2 days later, I thought, “Why bother”.

    I suppose I am spoiled with WoW. If I accidentally delete an item there that I wanted, I can submit a ticket and usually within an hour a CSR will contact me in-game and just replace the item if they can verify that I had it at some point in the past.

    WoW’s CSR is amazing though, I know that. I hope SWTOR is striving to do something similar with their support. I’d even go as far as to suggest opening a dialoge with the Blizzard group. Maybe a friendly exchange of information would help.

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