Blizzard do not care about UK players one bit

I am going to keep it as civil as I can, but critical nontheless.

Please first of all can I draw your attention to;

http://forums.wow-europe.com/thread.html?topicId=1829253484&sid=1

and

http://forums.wow-europe.com/thread.html?topicId=1829143195&sid=1

The first thread, specific to ISP Zen Internet is admittedly not massive (not yet anyway). However, one has to factor in that only a small proportion of players on Zen are active WoW forum posters, like myself. So the scale of the problem is bound to be much larger than it appears. The second Blue tagged thread shows players from the UK having problems with latency using ISP's Zen and Virgin Media.

Some history: Last year in the UK there was a long period of in-game latency issues along with disconnect issues from players in the UK that were using ISP Nildram and some other ISP's (some may remember it). Nildram were fantastic for game latency. A lot of FPS games would return latency of 30-50ms, often lower. WoW was good in the early days too. In-game latency of 50-80 for WoW was fantastic considering WoW is not so dependant on very, very low latency.

Then it all stopped. The high latency, the lag and the disconnects started. The Nildram community identified the link between the UK and France and ultimately Telia as being the problem, so active forum posters petitioned these forums, created very long threads and provided data and proof that Telia was doing something very, very wrong. WoW players on Nildram petitioned Nildram directly to help resolve the problem.

Nildram were pro--actively trying to do their bit, which was more than they had to, or needed to. But is was not Nildram's problem, it was Telia's. Telia (or Blizzard Europe) were as stubborn as a mule and failed to resolve the problem they created.

Ultimately, players on Nildram reluctantly switched ISP having enjoyed years of low latency and stable gaming. Bigging Nildram up has nothing to do with loyalty, it literally was a very good gamers ISP. A lot of those users switched to ISP's like Zen, others went elsewhere.

Surprisingly those that were forced to migrate away from Nildram ceased to have problems at their new provider, but of course all the evidence pointed to the link at Telia's end anyway, despite how it looks. Strange that, innit?

Blizzard do not give a crap about UK players latency problems, or any other mass problems for that matter. Why? Simple: Most of the player base for the EU realms come from central Europe and its all about bean counting. Keep the main player base happy and screw the rest [United kingdom]. The main player base does not include Britain.

Wind it forward to current time. The Zen thread has highlighted similar problems to the Nildram issue in 2006. Static latency of 600+ms (for me). Lowest about 400ms, highest 800ms. Constant. If I log on at 4am its ok, about 50-80ms. from about 9am - 3am its ridiculous. The game is unplayable. this has been going for for several days now.

Zen users have banded together, like they did in the Nildram issue (not on the same scale as of yet though) and identified, you guessed, that the problem is at Telia's end, over the Channel. latency is great till it leaves the UK. The trace routes evidence this. There is clearly a problem with routing at Telia's end. Other UK players not on Zen are not having this problem. But that does not mean the problem is down to Zen. Its how the pipes coming from Zen are routed and handled at Telia's end.

So, Zen users create a thread in the Technical Forums. lets not forget the Virgin Media users too. They are also having problems with Telia. All the trace routes indicate Telia as the problem. Why haven't Blizzard responded to this thread?

Because we are from the UK and don't matter all that much? Bean counting at its finest.

What I find utterly contemptible and disgraceful is the fact we have not had one single Blue acknowledgement. Blues are so selective in what they respond to its hilarious. There is no openness and quite frankly Blizzards customer service is outrageous.

What can a Blue acknowledgement achieve? Some may think it wouldn't change things, but it does. They can keep us updated. They can let us know what progress they have made and in turn we can continue to provide data if they request it, bit nobody knows what's going on if they don't post. They can also let us know what their findings are, what they intend to do about it and when they intend to fix it. Because it is their problem, not ours.

But the Zen (and Virgin Media) users are from the UK so they dont matter all that much in the grand scheme of things, eh?

This is going to turn into a repeat of the Nildram issue, I fear. it will result in Zen (and Virgin) users migrating yet again to another ISP because Telia are incapable of providing the correct level of service for UK subscribers on certain ISP's (probably most UK ISP's at one time or another) when its Telia's problem.

Blizzard you rake in millions each month. Despite your outgoing financial commitments you are financially buoyant, very buoyant. You need to spend some of that money to pay engineers to work round the clock, identify the problem and fix it.

The game has been unplayable now for several days and we get the usual amount of information. Zero. But then again we are from the UK, we dont form the main part of the WoW EU player base so screw us!

Way to go Blizz.

Problems do occurr across Europe from time to time, I know this. But problems in central Europe usually get resolved. Historically, problems in the UK don't. And if they do, they're back before you know it.


I am not going to respond to any replies as I really cba to get into inane discussion. I've said my bit and thats good enough for me.

Edit: removed joke about Blizz. This is a serious issue after all.