Azeroth rejected

The anticipated two months worth of revisiting Azeroth ended in four days. What a downer.

The latency on the Europe server was simply horrible, up to the tens of thousands milliseconds range. I have plenty screenshots as proof, the highest I have managed to captured shows 22719ms. It's just unplayable.

Blizzard technical support said it's Internet Service Provider (ISP) problem, trace route information seems to support that. However Blizzard technical support could have been a bit more helpful, they kept ignoring my second and third option: change my purchase to an Asia server (which I have verified has good latency), or failing that, refund.

It's until I re-opened the ticket for the third time and listed the options for the third time that Blizzard finally acknowledged it's unplayable and that I had informed them of my request for refund within a short time of purchase (the second day), that they refunded me.

Not the solution I was hoping for, was hoping if they couldn't do anything on their end on the latency, then they could at least transfer my purchase to the Asia server so that I still get to play, albeit is not on my usual Europe server with my existing characters.

But of course that involves more work, and given their repeated haste to close ticket instead of genuinely trying to help customer resolve issue, it's no surprise they went for the refund.

Don't get me wrong, I understand ISP plays a big part, it's not like I didn't engaged my ISP for support. I went through the ISP self check diagnostics tool, which informed me "Poor Network Quality" (well, duh!) and asked me to schedule technician home visit, which I did as well.

Well, the technicians came today, only their competency was questionable. They only know hardware stuff I supposed, as checking the hardware was all they did, which has no issue. I showed them the trace route in real time, they gave me a blank look. My goodness, ISP technicians who don't understand trace route. They ended up giving me the same support number on their website, so much for the home visit technical support.

So back to square one of technical support from ISP. I chatted with their live agent tonight, who knows what I was talking about, who provided me with the information about their seabed fibre cut issue that severed all their direct paths between Europe and Asia, and that currently all traffic destined to Europe is routed through US. Finally, someone knowledgeable and actually trying to help resolve the issue!

Well, the live agent did the necessary escalation, which I got a call back within one hour on confirmation that my poor network issue is indeed related to the seabed fibre cut. I was told their plan to work on the seabed fibre, the timeline, and that they will escalate my issue further so the relevant people can see if they can help optimise the route so I get better network to Europe for the time being. They will call me again tomorrow to update me on the route optimisation effort.

Now that is good customer service. Too bad the World of Warcraft refund has already happened, so maybe next time, Azeroth.

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