I'm providing these gems of insight to any company that wants to clean up their Customer Service. This is fairly specific to games, MMORPGs in particular.

This is meant as a simple guideline with emphasis on two key issues: Customer Perspectives & Solving Problems.

The mantra of this guide is Keep it Simple or to put it another way: Solve it more, deal with it less. The best customer service is misdirection. It sounds like a paradox, but it's true. To players experiencing problems, they should feel as though it's being worked on, to everyone else your customer service should be invisible. They should feel like problems are fixed mysteriously and magically.

Here are the points:

• Do NOT have Forums. It's drama you don't need. Focus your game on your design. If you want player feedback, ask for it via forms or hire perceptive people to follow the fansites.
• Provide strong community features in-game. This is to replace the server forums. Give them places to congregate and socialize, activities that build server communities. Lists of progression and otherwise. Cooperative content as well as the usual competitive features. Maybe even have in-game Community Managers.
• Do NOT have GMs. Unless you plan on them being actual Game Masters that control monsters and put the smackdown on griefers and exploiters. Otherwise, your GMs will just be magnets for abuse. Problems are better reported and forgotten than dwelling on them while waiting for a GM petition queue.
• Collect player reports. Instead of GM petitions. Sift them automatically if you can.
• Give automated feedback. It's just like gameplay, when you do something it should make a sound, have a visual clue and / or explanation. Player reports should be treated the exact same way, it's reassuring. If they're reporting a known bug, give an ETA on its fix, or point to a list of workarounds.
• Make a black hole. For incomprehensible or pointless player reports. Don't dwell on what cannot be understood. Feedback it as if it was accepted however.
• Do NOT discuss balancing issues. Not unless they're a glaring fix that's obvious. Let the theorycrafting players sort it out for themselves, that's what they like to do anyway. Meanwhile it will give those busybodies less control over your game and the rest of your players (the less vocal majority) will be happier with their characters by not being informed as much about who is overpowered and who isn't.
• Separate bug fixes from patch notes. Make your patch notes about content-only, no matter how small. This will allow players to celebrate the content without distraction. It will also reduce the "introduced more bugs than fixes" perceptions. Lists of fixed bugs should go elsewhere, but don't call them patch notes.
• Make a complete bug and issues list. Detail it thoroughly, categorized and catalogued. The point here isn't full disclosure, it's about flooding the information so it's too long and boring to read. This should result in less drama, although occasionally some nerd will be as thorough as you, but these obsessive geeks cannot be avoided anyway.
• Keep quiet on embarrassing bugs. At least until you fix them. The drama doesn't help the game or the players. Do this very selectively, only on the most extreme cases like say um, gender affects animation attack speed. =P
• Erase all mention of fixed bugs. List them as fixed once, then about a week later, obliterate them. No sense dwelling on the past, it's just another distraction from the game itself.

The idea here is to streamline the process, allow you to fix your issues while ignoring any drama from the players over the bugs. Ignoring and diffusing drama is key! It's not helpful to anyone, least of all the players themselves.

While following this guide, you may be accused of using draconian measures, but the truth is these are modern solutions. You cannot afford to cater to every little perceived need, do not handhold and babysite your players, it's just a waste of resources that could be better spent on your game.

To Players: This is a tongue-in-cheek guide.
To MMORPG developers and publishers: No, it isn't.

Myself and some guildies ventured over to Ogri'la, to try some of the dragon boss summons. We're pretty fly-by-the-seat of our pants kinda peeps, so we made the attempt before realizing the encounters were bugged.

The Encounter:

To summon one of the four Ogri'la dragons (in this case Obsidia), players first collect 35 apexis shards, which drop from nearby mobs. Then you click on the egg (using up the shards) at the dragon's roost, which hatches a whelpling to attract the dragon. The dragon flies down and you kill it. You're expected to repeat this procedure until you get the loot you want. At least, that's how it's supposed to go.

What happened for us instead is that the 35 apexis shards got used up and the egg disappeared instantly. No crying whelp, no dragon.

The GM Reports:

I got very little information from the GM that I paged, other than it was a known issue. What astonished me, was the refusal to reimburse the shards which we had farmed for. In the grand scope of WoW grinding there are worse timewasters, but it still felt like a slap in the face to our team's efforts.

The GM was verbally polite, but cut me off when I was stubborn. Of course I wanted a proper resolution, why not?

I also disliked the suggestion that I take this in-game issue to a public forum, one in particular that is never responded to by any of Blizzard's staff. Just what I need to fix my problem, bury it where only forum trolls will see it. Hell, bringing it to my blog would be more productive. =P

Sakkara got an entirely different response from the GM that she paged, that the encounter is working as intended. This GM implied that players are expected to make sure the approproate dragon is hovering close by when the egg is used. There are all sorts of problems with that, but her GM also demonstrated that they clearly didn't understand how the encounter worked, suggesting "wait and see if this NPC lands then try using the shards", which is of course makes no sense since the shards are consumed prior to the dragon landing.

I've heard other people complain about Blizzard's customer service, but until now I had no troubles worth mentioning myself, occasional abrupt GMs aside. This time I found myself on the frustrating end of a direct refusal to resolve my problem. I still do not understand why the shards I had farmed for could not be returned to me when erased by a known issue.

The quest is either bugged or poorly designed or more likely, a bit of both. Blizzard's customer service failed either way.

Update (June 19, 2007): Patch 2.1.2 resolved the bugs that created this issue, although the shards were still never returned to my character:

"A problem that could result in Obsidia, Rivendark, Insidion, and Furywing not responding to their respective dragon eggs being used has been resolved."