The Elitist Jerk

Fuck you Activision&dipshits

2009-08-13T10:00:00.003+03:00

Two things.

One, I'm detoxing from the game and have been "clean" for a little over a month. It's refreshing.

Two, Hunter Q&A Analysis part 2 won't happen. I forgot too much about the class, I stopped caring and frankly I've had it with GC's rampant idiocy and arrogant shit-eating tone. I refuse to play a game where I know about my class more than the lead designers.

Now, this is just fucking priceless. I assume that you're not living under a rock and therefore heard the shit news.

That's right, Activision made Blizzard their money slaves and effectively said "Fuck you dipshits" to every single fansite out there. I feel especially for WCRadio since the poor people ran a donation drive and amassed $4000 just to buy equipment to broadcast from Blizzcon with, yet 9 days before the convention some Activision fuckwit calls them and tells them "So these DirecTV niggers paid us extra to do a shit streaming of everything on Blizzcon therefore you can't do it, nyah nyah, money's more important to us than our fans. Fuck you."

Seriously, what the fuck kind of conduct is that? So naturally the forums go to an uproar. I mean, it's a completely reasonable response - to protest against a clearly marketing move made by the penny-pinching jews that run Activision.

Then there's the idiots who actually dare defend the dipshits under the idiotic argument that "Companies exist to make money". No. You fucking idiots. Here's business&company relations 101 from a person with IQ > room temperature and more common sense than people who study marketing.

A business should (in this fucking order):
1. Do whatever the fuck they're meant to do.
2. Do it well.
3. Have good reputation with their customers.
4. Start worrying about profits.

However, we live in a fucked up world where maximizing profits > customer satisfaction. This reminds me of a line I heard in Pure Pwnage once: "You know those people with money? More money than we could possibly spend in our lifetimes? Well, these people need more money - that's why we're here".

So basically Activision managed to lose reputation with a significant portion of their fanbase. Of course, the drooling crowd of idiots will invariably say "If you don't like it, quit". They're idiots. Major idiots. Why? Whether I like it or not, I still can express my disappointment, you fucking morons. Oh and for the record, I didn't like it - I quit. It took the clusterfuck of patch 3.2 to make me quit.

Also, about 3.2:
HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA!

Most worthless shit ever. I watched a raid do CandyCane (read: Crusaders' Coliseum). It took them: 2 tries to kill the Lolrend Beasts, 3 tries to kill Lord Jormungaruxx. First try they wiped on 1% because a woman spammed the vent channel, telling them to kill the add when the boss was on 5%. Total raid time: 1 hour. Of a fucking progression raid!

When 3.1 came out, our raid was canceled because of the server fuckups and mega lag because of all the drooling dipshits going to wipe on Leviathan, so we went to do a 10man "Max hardmode or GTFO" raid. We spent 2 hours on Abitchuary simply because we didn't know about pyrite but I guarantee we could've killed him.

But now, a 25-man raid gets items better than Algalon's by literally facerolling the encounters. What the fucking fuck is this fucking shitfuck? It took me 5 seconds of observation to see how (not one, but) two Jormungar are fought,10 seconds to see how Icehowl and Lord Jormungaruxx works. I'm not even talking about Gormok because he's a faceroll and I could do him in my sleep.

This is your pathetic excuse for a raiding TIER? Keeping it on 4 different lockouts to OCD whatever subscribers you have left after the Great Chinese Fiasco of 2009?

Not to mention IoQD2.0 dailies, just using different models. Or T8 without setting foot in Ulduar.

While I'm on it, anyone care to tell me why the fuck change the "Recommended" tag to "New players"? This change does absolutely fucking nothing and a clueless newfag is a clueless newfag, whether on Magtheridon or on some shitfuck RP server. Now, I know that 98% of players are cybering niggerfaggots who play with 3 dildos up their asses, but I can assume they can read. Right?

...

Right?

Fuck.

There's also one more thing I begun to hate about the game: The players.

Some idiot scrub tells me "YOU DIDN'T EXPERIENCE PATCH 3.2 SO WHY ARE YOU WHINING", my classic reply is "I don't have to eat shit to know it tastes like shit". Or some dipshit who hasn't cleared naxx25 but asks me for an Algalon/Yogg+0 achievement because apparently I didn't see the hardest of hardmodes therefore my point about the ease of the game is invalid. By the way, it took me one Algalon try to realize how he's meant to be fought, with all the "GTF to the black hole" mechanic and stuff. Therefore I realized he should hit very hard to be "hardmode only".

Some idiot scrub doesn't bother reading basic class information, yet knows how to get to the hunter forums and ask for trivial help for the bazillionth time without reading the other 9001 threads on exactly the same subject. Why do I hate this? Simple. I took a course on the Unix kernel once, the TA was your typical Unix guru. He detests Windows and all that jazz. One of his teaching slides explicitly said: "STFU and RTFM".

The idiot scrub will reply "THIS IS A GAME I PLAY IT FOR FUN /DROOL". Well newsflash: WoW being a game does not mean you absolutely cannot take it seriously. Take a look at Ensidia. They world first'd Algalon for a reason - they take the game seriously. Trust me, it is very easy to learn basic class mechanics. Fuck, it took me a few hours reading on EJ and thinking.

So... I fucking hate people.

Third and final part of this post was announced today.

Onyxia is being cuntpasted to a 10/25 raid encounter. Probably with "hard(er)" modes.

HA HA HA HA HA FUCKING LOLWUTLOL WHAT THE FUCK

This is going to be just as awesome as Naxx at 80, right? At least there will be 9001 more "50 DKP minus" jokes, hardmode jokes like "Onyxia with 3 whelps up" and a nerf to her Deep Breath in patch 3.2.3.

I guess 4 years in Dustwallow Marsh were merely a setback.

I'd welcome the change if I didn't know how blizzard cuntpastes past encounters by now. Expecting facerollable bullshit content that drops a free 310% mount for the most idiotic mouthbreating keyboard drooler that probably gets feared into the goddamn whelps.

Therefore, fuck you: Activision (die in a fire cocksuckers), 98% of players and whoever had the idiotic idea of cuntpasting past encounters (because upscaling them to be actually hard is... well... hard).

Q&A Analysis part 1

2009-07-26T01:15:00.003+03:00

Alternate title: Ha ha ha oh wow.

Ever have that feeling when a dipshit is about to make an absolutely retarded fuckup, you know he's going to make that fuckup and you just wait for him to fuck up?

That's the feeling I had before reading the Q&A.

We solved a lot of perennial hunter problems in Wrath of the Lich King, from the shot clipping problems of Steady Shot, to bringing Survival back to life, and making pet choice and training a lot more meaningful and hopefully enjoyable.

Lie more fuckwad.

Clipping: It took you an entire year from Lactose's analytic post to implement an easy system any dipshit would've done in a few days. To fix a problem plaguing the class since patch 0.9.1. Your developing skills are amazing.

SV: I was a EW-bitch for my T6-farming guild. To say SV was dead was a gross misunderstanding of the problem (the problem was BM being superior, not SV being shit). SV was still shit (hello 41-point Readiness) but being a mousewheeling dribbler for the major part of TBC was NOT fun. Still it did more DPS and Brutallus says "My enrage timer brings all the DPS to the yard".

Pets: Oh what the fucking fuck. Okay, you made pets auto-jump to HunterLevel-5. I'm this [---------------] impressed, not to scale. Not mentioning that the other two pet classes have instant DipshitLevel pets with little to no regard of their survival. An unholy DK can get his ghoul back up infinitely faster than it takes me to revive a dead pet (hello 10/4 wasted seconds). But enjoyable? Meaningful? Pet training? What the fuck did you idiots smoke.

HA HA! I AM CLICKING A BUTTON ON THE PET TALENT SHEET! IT IS MEANINGFUL AND ENJOYABLE! TAKE THAT NAYSAYERS!

Oh and doing 4-5 heroics I shouldn't have to do just to get my whatever-shaped fragile skeleton to level 80 so it can get Wild Hunt is retarded.

Pet choice? Hahaha lolfuckingwut. Apparently no one at Blizzard learned enough mathematics to get that we pick the highest DPS pet anyway so there's no fucking point in homogenizing pet modifiers (idiotic idea). Yes, I'll definitely sacrifice a FotFF buff with 50% uptime for a omgcutekitty which my e-crush thinks is omgcute. I mean seriously now, if you don't pick the highest DPS pet, GTFO of the game.

Going forward we have several objectives we still want to accomplish. We want to make sure hunters in PvP are as good in Arenas as they are in Battlegrounds. We think their damage is sufficient, so we want to focus on their survival and crowd control. We want to make sure their PvE utility is as good as their dps (especially making traps live up to their potential for crowd control). We want to resolve what a hunter is supposed to do in melee (Raptor Strike? Disengage?).

Too PvP-centric to care. Except the trap part. YOU FUCKING DIPSHITS ARE TAKING AWAY THE SINGLE ASPECT OF THE CLASS THAT MADE PEOPLE LIKE ME STAND OUT FROM THE CROWD OF MOUTHBREATHING KEYBOARD DROOLERS and that is the ability to CC more than one mob at once. What the fuck now. WotLK instances are the most idiotic fest of facerolling bullshit since release (I think RFC with level 12s is harder than wotlk heroics) but I refuse to have my skill benchmark taken away.

Oh and hunter DPS isn't good. It's mediocre. Now I'm probably the last person to measure mediocrity on, but seeing dipshit rogues literally faceroll most Ulduar bosses when I'm struggling
to keep up my high spot on Recount was very frustrating.

In melee, a hunter is supposed to either knockback the dipshit to range or GTFO out of range. Personal suggestion: Give knockback effects to Chimera, ExS and the new BM signature shot you WILL make eventually. (non-effective on bosses of course) Lower the cooldown on Disengage in pve.

We want to clean up some of the clunkiness that still exists around pet control (both the UI itself and what the pet does on the battlefield). We think hunters have a good niche as the only real ranged damage-dealer that focuses on (mostly) physical damage based on a weapon rather than cast-time based spells. We just want to make sure they live up to that niche.

OMFG HUNTERS ARE IN A NICHE! Fuck I'm feeling better about the class' state already. Oh wait - no one in their sane minds gives a fuck how the damage is dealt - whether it's a fireball or an arrow to the face, the higher DPS matters, YOU IDIOTS.

And you DO agree that the pet move-to-boss'-ass logic is sometimes retarded. And you still didn't fix the autocast bug or make a larger pet bar (hint: make it 10 spaces and keep the special commands like Follow on a separate bar)

And because you dipshits think we're in that niche (ZOMG SCALING BASED ON WEAPON LOL) you want to keep us there. That's like saying "you guys are in a deep pile of shit so we'll just bulldoze some more shit over here to make you feel more comfortable". Newsflash: It's still shit. How about admitting we're just physical casters who got the worst of both worlds? (Didn't stop me from topping damage though, WTS the ability to play with 2 hands on the keyboard)

From a technical standpoint, what happened is that the quiver is considered a bag just like other bags on the character but also, most critically, those in the bank. In order to remove ammo we would have to move the location of all of a character’s bank slots on the database that stores all of the World of Warcraft characters, which would be a risky thing to do in the middle of an expansion, and could result in “missing stuff” issues if something went wrong. It was just one of those last-minute show-stoppers.

Who gives a fuck about quivers when you made them obsolete with the stacking mechanism? You can remove ammo now and no one will notice because (hint hint: No one uses quivers anymore). Quit giving these bullshit excuses and do what we expect you to do.

We still want to make ammo more of a gear choice than a consumable. We’re not sure if this would be as simple as getting the 125 dps arrows to upgrade your 120 dps arrows, or if you would do things like swap between your fire and poison arrows??? but that kind of thing is definitely on the table.

Oh coolio, a sigil/runes/shit system, brainchild of GC the Class Destroyer. Fails to balance ensue. Non-hunters QQ to the point it either gets reverted or nerfed to the ground.

I’m not sure when we can do it right. It’s not going to be for 3.2 unfortunately.

Well there's a shocker.

More later.

Account Status: Canceled

2009-07-05T16:01:00.003+03:00

Yep.

I'm fucking sick of playing, raiding 25-mans and just logging on. I have many reasons to do that. Other than exams, fucking schoolgirls and other intellectual activities such as discussing logic, high philosophy and fine arts at 3am, there's some related issues with the game that ultimately made me feel like saying "fuck this shit, I'm out, you all suck".

Here are my reasons for ending this shit.

The lack of tangible rewards for completing challenges.

Newsflash dipshits: 10 useless points and a mount/title is NOT a reward. A 10% increase in flying speed (HOLY SHIT: I can get to Ulduar 10% FASTER than the rest of my raid, that'll show them!) and a string of text to display above my head is NOT a reward.

A reward is something like Ulduar hardmodes - BiS loot.

However, Blizzard decided to completely clusterfuck the entire hardmode system.
What was the fucking point in learning Mimiron hardmode in Naxx gear when he'd get wave after wave of trivializing nerfs (except that Leviathan fix in p4), the last of which made him SO retardedly easy, 25 US guilds did Heroic Firefighter on nerf day and even the worst players in my guild got Glory of the Ulduar Raider?
What's the point in learning Orbituary on day 1 when it gets buffed to the point it requires gear, rather than SKILL, to defeat; only to get nerfed to a trivializing state that Conquerors of Ulduar can get FL with Orbituary done?
What's the point in doing 2-minute Hodir10, when it gets buffed to 3 minutes (when we did him 2.5 minutes as well) and any braindead scrub with the ability to WASD out of a blue circle on the ground can find that cache was rare?
What's the point in completing ANY challenge in the game, assuming it's not bugged or overtuned to the point of mathematical impossibility, when any braindead scrubmonkey with IQ of a tapeworm will do the same shit in a trivial form and will have the same bragging rights as I do?

This is not fun. I don't want the value of my feats diminished because the marketing department of Activision can't buy a third yacht or Mike Morhaime needing another harem full of preteen sluts.

The complete clusterfuck that is the Hunter class.

Ammo removal? Not in patch 3.1 OR patch 3.2 for that matter.
Trap Launcher? Same.
Hunters not being last in 3v3/5v5 arena representation? Fuck if I care, I don't do that shit anyway. If I wanted to do PvP I'd probably play a more serious game. Still fucked up.
Having to pay gold to autoattack? Since release.
Having to spend more gold than the main tank on raids while having to pay for all other raid apparel as everyone else? Sure.
Having our talent trees SO FUBAR the main DPS spec changes every single fucking patch? Check.
Having completely buried both BM AND SV trees in 2 patches (I'm talking about 3.2, retards) so that MM is the only viable DPS spec, thus completing the circle of disaster? Check.

Oh yeah, ExS. Is it a physical skill or a magic skill? Make up your fucking minds assholes, no one should gem for spell penetration to succeed in arenas.

Let's not forget our pisspoor GCD management. Well played, having so many skills not have a cooldown which divides 1.5. Yeah, I fucking LOVE losing valuable seconds in which I could FUCKING SHOOT AN ARROW when you fucks can't sort your own shit out.

And then there's the idiotic agenda of IGNORING valuable feedback from smart players. Listen, scrubheads, now much time did it take you to implement the auto/steady unlinking mechanism? A year? It was fucking obvious to ANYONE that this is the main problem with hunters in classic and TBC, yet you morons ignored the entire issue. Oh and shouldn't I mention that when it was finally implemented, we had to tick off an important interface preference for PvPers in order for it to work? Awesome QA right there, can I join you guys?

But no, rogues got buffed to the point they faceroll every single fucking Ulduar encounter where I have to move a single yard. 'sup, does Activision CEO's 5-year-old girl play a rogue?

The overall ease of the game

I'm a classic veteran. I've been there and seen it all. Some things were easy. Some things were hard.

But.

I've never seen something easy and facerollable as T7 instances. Our mediocre guild cleared all wotlk content on 2nd reset (as I predicted earlier) in 4 nights. We were farming everything since 4th reset and we're fucking mediocre, this is light years from Ensidia's league.

Why you asswipes needed to cater to the bottom 5% of the population is beyond me.

Shit content incoming that will trivialize the game in ways I thought impossible

What? THE? FUCK? Heroic-facerolling scrubs being able to get full tier 9? EoC from naxx10? Skipping two tiers of raid progression so the keyboard dribblers can get to CC, faceroll it and get ilvl 258 loot?

So this is the "secret" raid of 3.2.

A 2-room no-trash "coliseum" with generic skinned bosses, not one but TWO Jormungar (Holy shit, Icemaw Cavern was just a setback!), twin bosses where you have to switch tanks and DPS (I saw this before, just can't put my finger on it...) and a recycled boss who pulled a reverse Kael'Thas with some ice on his shoulders. Which summons adds similarly to a crypt lord from Wc3. I'm shivering with fear now.

Oh and let's not forget that Confessor bullshit. Wow, she summons memories of bosses you fought before. AMAZING. Heroic hogger, WOW! I bet the droolmonkeys are pissing themselves with joy now.

Fuck you Activision, burn in hell.

Oh and...

FUCK YOU GHOSTCRAWLER.

YOU ARE THE WORST THING THAT HAS EVER HAPPENED TO THE GAME.DEVELOPER FEEDBACK MY ASS WHEN YOU WRITE WALLS OF TEXT AND SAY ABSOLUTELY NOTHING. MORE THAN THAT, WHEN PEOPLE START EXPRESSING THEIR DISAPPOINTMENT IN A WAY THAT DOESN'T START WITH "PLEASE, SIR, I'D LIKE SOME MORE" YOU COME WITH YOUR ARROGANT SHIT-EATING TONE AND TELL THEM THEY'RE NOT HELPING THE DISCUSSION.

I HOLD YOU PERSONALLY RESPONSIBLE TO THE CLUSTERFUCK THAT IS THE DEATH KNIGHT CLASS. GOOD DESIGN RIGHT THERE FUCKWAD, THEY HAD TO GET NERFED 3 PATCHES AND SEVERAL HOTFIXES TO REACH A REMOTELY BALANCED STATE BECAUSE OF THE SYSTEM YOU DESIGNED.

YOU KNOW WHAT, DIE IN A FIRE YOU PIECE OF SHIT COCKSUCKING FAGGOT. YOU'RE NOT WHAT MADE WOW, TIGOLE/FUROR/KALGAN ARE. YOU'RE JUST A MARINE BIOLOGIST WHO SHOULD'VE STAYED IN HIS FUCKING AQUARIUM WATCHING LOBSTERS FUCK.

You all suck, fuck this game.

6 resets

2009-06-03T16:48:00.002+03:00

That's all for you, Ulduar.

Ensidiots killed Algalon. Which is amazing in itself since he ROFLstomped my 10man group before the first big bang (yea, we're bad).

Should've been technically harder instead of the retarded "GTF TO THE BLACK HOLE" mechanic.

"Moving right along." - Mimiron

Ulduar prediction recap

2009-05-22T03:36:00.003+03:00

Before the patch hit, I posted my list of predictions how long Ulduar lasts. It's now reset 5 of Ulduar.

Let's review it:

Point 1: Ensidia & co. kill Yogg-Saron on first reset - check. My guild kills him on second reset - check.
Point 2: Easy hardmodes (like Thorim, Hodir, Freya, FL) go down even on first reset - outplayed. Heroic Orbituary on day 1 was particuarly amusing and Inner Sanctum getting 3/4 hardmodes (but not IC - LOLOLOL) was even more amusing.

Sidenote: I expected they'd make the hardmodes hard instead of retardedly buffing them to the point of mathematical impossibility. FL getting buffed by 100% to 355M HP was stupid. Still doable.

Point 3: Access to Algalon unlocked by Ensidia - check. I expected more guilds succeed at that though. Looks like Blizzard finally did it right - the scrubs won't get Mimiron hardmode EVER and the good guilds will spend a few resets on it. Ensidia unlocked it on May 1st, on reset 3 of Ulduar.

Point 4: Algalon does NOT go down on 25, went down on 10man by Ensidiots. Partially outplayed, I had no idea they'd impose a 1 hour timer on him. Stupid idea is stupid but it's an obvious Ensidia cockblock to stop them from chainpulling until they get it right. 10-man guilds get Champion of Ulduar somewhere. No guild gets Conqueror yet - too busy focusing on hardmodes to get their protodrakes.

Point 5: Partially outplayed. My guild got GotUR last reset and Ensidia got HGotUR this reset. I expected it to last more.

So I was correct enough in my predictions. Only Algalon25 remains for to kill and judging by my informants he goes down next reset at most.

Verdict: Hard modes are hard. Could be harder and I don't mean retarded outgoing raid damage. Yes I've seen them all to judge. Except for Mimiron, that one's tuned perfectly.

Personal preference: Get GC the fuck away from designing the game, everyone knows biologists hate math and people like this shouldn't be allowed anywhere near the underlying mathematics of the game. They'll just fuck it up in one way or another.

Whoever made the Algalon time limit

2009-04-22T18:11:00.002+03:00

Needs to die in a fire.

But first:

HA HA HA HA HA HA GOOD GOING FAIL DESIGNERS HE GOT UNLOCKED ON FIRST RESET ON 10-MAN. Hard modes weren't hard enough. That's why you need to buff them.

At least he raped the guild that tried him pretty hard. With a 100" steel dick.

But still, the 1 hour / reset limit is retarded. Still not a measure of skill, more a measure of wipe recovery (and let's not forget all the failed Immortals/Undying when the server RNG decided to disconnect someone on a critical boss - same shit here) and how fast can you click the teleporter and select "Celestial observatory".

Clearly anti-Ensidia cockblock. Will get removed 1.5 months before the next tier. Stupid.

"GC has a vagina for a mouth (that means you eat dick faggot)" - DnT

Yay for patch

2009-04-14T17:10:00.002+03:00

"Biggest patch in MMO history since patch 3.0" according to Blizzard.

Missing critical features such as the equipment manager to go along with dual specs.
Missing the promised ammo removal change.
Missing trap launcher (which is piss easy to implement since all the fucking code is there already).

Did I mention the 50% nerf to LnL proc rate? That too. And the 10% nerf to ExS base damage thus requiring a constant difference in AP over raidbuffs (read: more gear) to compensate for it?

They forgot one patch note:
# Fixed a bug where Hunters could do damage.

What do I expect at patch day:

Unbearable lag at Ulduar. Hopefully all scrubs wipe on Lame Leviathan for a few hours and call it. Hopefully only top 10 guilds per server are allowed inside.
Flood at target dummies, Argent Tournament (as if we needed city reputation EVEN MORE simplified), trainers, Ulduar instance portal to see Ensidia&co. storm the door.
Morons in trade chat asking "WHERES DUALSPEC LOL" or "IS IT PATCH NOW" and of course the usual "We're selling gold to idiots who can't play the AH" spam.
"LFG ALGALON WHISPER STATS AND ASHIVENT" jokes.
"LFG Ulduar10 even though we haven't been there but we want you to have full ilvl 226 set to carry us to ilvl 213 epics"

At least I get a free respec out of it.

Let's not forget that we get ANOTHER dot thus having to push 5 buttons (OH NOES) to DPS properly. How fun is managing a 24s dot, a 21s (glyphed) dot, LnL procs, pet and everything else on the priority queue?

The next thing is that Arcane/ExS and Aimed/Multi get unlinked. So we won't use Steady-doing-less-than-Auto Shot at all and have clearly the most complex rotation in existence.

Fun fun, isn't it?

Timeline of Ulduar events

2009-04-06T03:23:00.003+03:00

So 3.1 kicks in soon. We get a fuckton of retarded changes and a SEA TURTLE MOUNT OH GOD. Instead of balancing PvP or extending ExS to 3 ticks while doing the same damage it did on beta, they add a fucking sea turtle.

At least the Nooblegarden outfits look hot on a female Blood Elf. (then again, everything does)

Oh and I heard some terribad hunter quit the game. And nothing of value was lost.
(Protip: If you learned to kite at wotlk levels, delete your character. Kiting is learned as soon as you can 1. jump, 2. fire an arcane shot.)

Anyway.

This is how Ulduar raids will go.

Week 1 - Ensidia/Method/LR/others clear it. No "hard" modes, they decide to hold off judgment until they do them.

Week 2 - Easy "hard" modes like Lame Leviathan with 4 towers up and Kologarn "achievements" go down. Guilds like mine kill Yogg-Saron and start working towards Algalon (since he's the endboss).

Week 3 - Ignis dies fast, XT dies fast, all the watchers go down with their respective "hard" modes. Ensidia & co. get access to Algalon.

Week 4 - Conquerors of Ulduar start showing up on servers. Algalon goes down after ~100 attempts. Ulduar is defeated and there's not much to do (again) other than farm gear and wait for 3.2's secret (read: Grim Batol) raid.

Week 5 - Top guilds earn [Heroic] Glory of the Ulduar Raider. Then proceed to disband, ebay their accounts and tell GC & co. they fail at instance design. Hope Tigole does better in the new MMO rises.

My projection for Ulduar to last is 5 resets. Non-easy modes included.

You heard it here first folks.

Dear GC

2009-02-28T21:20:00.002+02:00

You are an idiot.

Let me elaborate.

Consider the latest gem of yours.

Yes, we did nerf the damage of Explosive Shot a little more. After many of the changes to locks, DKs, warriors and the rest, we felt SV hunters were too high.

So that's how you based the BM nerf which made the tree unusable for a month. Because you felt it was doing too much damage and you had to completely destroy it. Right? Well, people with IQ > room temperature base their decisions on logic and statistics. Is it really this hard to create a 25-man raid simulation of raidbuffed players and see how they do under identical conditions?

Or is it the ever-beloved "we can't be arsed with this yet so we won't deliver this to 3.1" excuse which you morons pulled on ammo removal and Trap Launcher. (BTW thanks for the 50% nerf to LnL proc rate, SV hunters everywhere appreciate it)

MM may still be a little too low. BM seems on target at the moment, but we had a few bugs in new pet abilities especially that was making it hard to get accurate numbers.

MM is where it always is. In the shithole because you obviously can't balance DPS around hard-hitting shots (as opposed to pet damage or procs) . How about you make Piercing Shots work, as in do more than sub-100 ticks?
Bullshit. You just added flat 40% to the scaling component of Wild Hunt without ever considering what this will do. Neither did you remember lessons of the past that it was scaling and TBW/readiness what made BM do 6.4k DPS pre-3.0.8.

So not only is adding a scaling component as a pet talent is completely retarded, the lovable cheap-ass bail out of a flat pet +damage% is seriously overdone. Get something new.

I'm not sure what you mean about Survival compexity. Are you talking about the shots themselves or the organization of the tree? I think some players are still thinking they are supposed to trap dance in PvE.

I'm sorry.

Are you completely retarded?

Really now. Isn't it obvious that SV has the most complex rotation period EoD? I'm actually in a state of shock a game developer says this bullshit because it's on an unfathomable level of retardation.

I don't recall BM/MM has to watch a proc on a 2 PPM rule. In fact, MM doesn't even require you to refresh sting; wow, 3 instants one of which refreshes sting. Fucking hard.

Not that watching LnL procs is hard (I don't use any mod for this and I haven't clipped ExS ticks in ages) but saying that you don't understand that just shows you clueless you are in hunter mechanics.

Oh and since sting does more damage than a steady shot, everyone will still use it, no matter how hard you push Black Arrow in. So SV has to watch for a 21s cooldown, a 30s cooldown, a 30s proc and the usual GCD management on/off LnL procs. Of course there's also aspect twisting if mana is a problem(?) and the other oh-so-fun parts of SV.

So to conclude, my dear friend GC.

GTFO of my WoW. You are clueless about hunter mechanics. Go play Hello Kitty Island Adventure.

I mean it.

New PTR build and OH GOD WHAT IS THAT

2009-02-28T04:09:00.006+02:00

Okay, this normalization crap is driving me crazy. First pet chase speeds, then pet attack speeds and now pet family bonuses.

Why not just fucking make every pet a floating untextured cube that runs at exactly the same speed and deals exactly the same damage? It'll be easier, no more drawing idiotically-looking animals.

But apparently some people didn't learn about Zorn's lemma in college and can't get through their thick skulls that there will always be a max DPS solution and everyone who cares about their DPS will do their best to achieve it.

Now to the new PTR build.

Ammunition: All types of gun and bow ammunition now stack to 1000. All quivers and ammo pouches no longer provide haste. 15% ranged haste is now built in to Hunter Autoshot.

I hope for their own good this is an overall 15% haste bonus and not autoshot only. If so, the steady shot cast time HAS to go to 1.5s or everyone will jump ship to BM faster than you can say "we probably overnerfed it".

Oh and why not make it stack to 10000 and have us just bring a single stack to raids anyway? I mean it'd be easier.

Call Stabled Pet: This new ability lets the hunter remotely access the stable. 30 min cooldown.

Still /care. Who the hell forgets their pet when going to a raid anyway?

Cunning, Ferocity and Tenacity pets now all have +5% damage, +5% armor and +5% health bonuses. This should make more pet families feel viable, while additional talents have been added to distinguish a pet’s abilities based on its specializations.

Absolutely retarded change. Idiotic homogenization at yet another degree. This change is so stupid, what the hell do they hope? That I bring a crab named Ghostcrawler to Nef just to get him shadowflamed?

I took care of that.

Disengage: Cooldown increased by 5 sec.

Skill I rarely use at rare opportunities. /care.

Pets now inherit more spell hit from the hunter. Pets with magic attacks should not require a player to stack additional hit compared to pets with physical attacks.

The only caster pet that ever was popular is Wind Serpent and blizzard took care of his usefulness permanently.

Viper Sting re-designed: Stings the target, draining 4% of mana over 8 sec (up to a maximum of 8% of the caster's maximum mana), and energizing the Hunter equal to 300% of the amount drained. Only one Sting per Hunter can be active on any one target.

PvP change for a PvP spell. Do not care.
Survival

Explosive Shot: Base damage lowered by 10%. Attack power scaling reduced by 12.5%.

Thus bringing it to its current (live) status. Why bother when it's obvious any increase to ExS coefficient (which you assholes proudly stealth-nerfed) is clearly OP?
Pets

Bullheaded now adds 20% damage reduction for 12 sec along with its current CC-removal effect.

PvP change for a PvP spell. Do not care.

Cornered: The crit reduction when this ability is active has been increased.

Still useless because who in their sane minds lets their pets die?

Feeding Frenzy increased to 8/16% damage up from 6/12%.

Useless pet family with useless specials. Ferocity is still the top DPS tree and the BM talents just add to the problem.

Furious Howl (wolf special ability) now stacks with Battle Shout and Blessing of Might, however, it only affects the wolf and hunter. Its effect and cooldown have been doubled so that it provides the same benefit but isn’t up 100% of the time.

Wolves are useful now? I wonder if it stacks with CotW.

Gorillas now have a new family ability, Pummel, which works like the warrior ability and has a single rank.

Bye bye gorilla tank. Brb getting a bear.

Grace of the Mantis and Roar of Sacrifice are now also available to Cunning pets.

/care.

New Talent: Shark Attack: This new two-rank talent is available to Ferocity pets. It increases pet damage.

I dream of the day blizzard decides to fix BM by not doing anything idiotic like flat increase to pet damage. Yes, I have better ideas like improved scaling. No, 62.5% scaling of AP isn't normal.

New Talent: Silverback: This new two-rank talent is available to Tenacity pets. It heals the pet when Growl is used.

So maybe my bear can tank sartharion10+3 now?

New Talent: Wild Hunt: This new two-rank talent is available to all 3 pet trees. It increases the stamina and attack power inherited from the hunter.

Not making it live in its current state. Period.

Roar of Recovery cooldown decreased to 3 min, down from 6 min.

/care. No one with IQ > room temperature uses a cunning pet for raid DPS anyway.

Thunderstomp is no longer a gorilla-specific family ability and is now available to all Tenacity pets. It has been reduced to one rank.

Swipe+Thunderstomp+Growl = good pet tank.

Apart from the half-baked incomplete and otherwise retarded ammo change (Hey idiots, protip: If you can't complete something on time don't bother pre-announcing it to the public), there are barely changes I can say "well done" at.

I sometimes wonder why the hell aren't I the "hunter expert" at blizzard. You know, it might be good employing someone who actually knows their class for a change, since it's apparent the "hunter expert"s at blizzard are mouthbreathing autoshot afking huntards.

Oh and a 4.2k-flasked-wellfed-raidbuffed-almostfullbestinslotgeared-SVspecced-DPS wonder gquit today. And nothing of value was lost. At least something brightened this day.

The middle finger and facepalm ASCIIs

2009-02-25T03:57:00.005+02:00

A.k.a That Was Fast.

Isn't it amusing how the PTRs have been up for less than a day and already we get Faggotcrawler telling us we'll be incomplete (again) for patch 3.1?

I'll be using the ASCIIs much more now.

Reason 1:

1) Trap Launcher is a very cool idea and something we would love to do. However, it requires a lot of tech and may end up beyond the scope of what we can do for patch 3.1. We don't want to give hunters a buggy, half-baked ability. If you are going on the PTR to test Ulduar or just mess around with numbers, I wouldn't worry about this ability, at least for now.
-GC

So we're getting a buggy half-baked dot mechanic which once again requires us to pre-trap the boss and/or risk DPS. If Immolation trap isn't intended to dot the boss, why bother having TnT refresh it yet having no way to put it there unless we... trap dance but once? Which is exactly the mechanic you're trying to kill.

Also all the code is there. It goes like this:

/cast Trap Launcher. You get a buff saying next trap flies immediately to the target. (Some people call it PoM, I heard it's the same basic functionality except that pom doesn't make instant tables)
TL's cooldown is applied.
You cast the trap.
The trap's effect is applied to the mob.
The 30s cooldown is triggered.

All this functionality has been in-game for years. I simply don't buy GC's faggot excuse to say "it requires great tech" because it doesn't. For the cosmetic whores, making an animation of shit flying towards someone should take a day. It's what the graphic department has been doing while not making those awesome movies or fapping to blood elves performing lapdances.

Vertict: Facepalm.

Reason 2:

2) Black Arrow is on the trap cooldown timer, and we assume largely for PvE. Black Arrow is your ability to proc things normally caused by traps (like LnL) in PvE situations when using a trap is a pain or the target is immune.

If that's what GC and the potsmokers intend, at least... I don't know... Make the dot last 30 seconds as well? Or make Black Arrow a 15 second CD because managing the cooldowns while doing the usual craptastic SV priority queue you dare call shot rotation is fun. Or not annoying.

Vertict: Middle finger.

Reason 3:

3) Think of Lock and Load triggering from traps (esp. Frost Trap) as a PvP mechanic. Think of Lock and Load triggering from periodic ticks (esp. Black Arrow) as a PvE mechanic. In PvE, you may want to use traps on trash or group pulls however. In PvP, nothing is stopping you from using Black Arrow if it works for you.

What's the point in using traps when all trash is aoe'd down? Unless Ulduar trash consists of that pack before Naj'entus with numerous lava packs and BWL-esque trash packs in the way with lots of HP and outgoing raid damage high enough to necessitate CC, I don't see why should I bother laying a trap when I can do DPS instead. Oh wait, my AoE got nerfed by 30% for no apparent reason.

Verdict: Facepalm

Reason 4:

You won't be trapping raid bosses to get LnL procs, even if they are immune to the effects. You probably won't be trap dancing much at all in PvE. You should really use Black Arrow for that purpose.

If the proc rate ends up being too low, that is certainly something we are willing to adjust.

Trap dancing was an overlooked class submechanic anyway thanks to whoever smoked too much pot and forgot that bosses can trigger explosive/immo/frost traps to force LnL procs.

You need 2 PPM for LnL to be in its current state. Let's count. BA lasts 15 seconds so it's logical to assume it ticks each 3rd second. LnL will have a 10% rate to proc from BA. BA's uptime is 0.5 per minute = 10 ticks. Overall = 1 PPM.

So the other PPM has to come from the trap dot. This means that we have to keep it up and assuming trap launcher is not implemented, we're dicked of one PPM on bosses we can't pre-trap and/or lose good 5-10 seconds of DPS just to lay the immo trap, depending on the encounter. It'll get even better if bosses have a stupid mechanic which neutralizes my ability to DPS them for >15s in a row. Man.. What the fuck have these morons been smoking?

Conclusion: The internal cooldown on LnL has to go or force it to work on a 2 PPM rule. Personal suggestion: Partially remove the idiotic RNG bullshit by having every 2nd LnL proc proc 30seconds after its former proc. That's good 20 GCDs to use on useful stuff and we won't risk stupid shit like steady shot casting in the middle of a LnL proc.

I don't mind it proccing all the time but some inferior facerollers might whine how they can't faceroll their way to #1 on damage (see: bugged HAT rogues).

Verdict: Middle finger facepalm and an urge to place certain Blizzard employees in a fire.

P.S: The hunting party agility bonus stacks multiplicatively with Lightning Reflexes.

And a personal message to GC: You're not fooling anyone. Do not try to insult our intelligence. It seems you know even less about hunter mechanics than my idiot guild hunters do.

3.1 patch notes

2009-02-24T14:42:00.003+02:00

I was going to write on the necessity of entry-level (read: so idiotic even a retarded goldfish can do it) raiding, but apparently the devs decided to push 3.1 on the PTRs.

Blah blah blah ulduar, blah blah blah idiotic player-choice of "hard mode" bullshit, idiotic design philosophy etc.

That's not what I want to comment.

Patch notes, bitch. Bring 'em on.

Frost Trap: If the target who triggers Frost Trap is immune to its effect, the Frost Trap area effect will no longer be triggered.

Hmmm. Still doesn't make any sense. I've no idea where they're headed with this change, it's probably to make frost trap obsolete in arenas where the bubbled paladin steps on it to rid us of another 30s cooldown.

Talents

Improved Aspect of the Hawk now has a new spell effect.

This is new and interesting. No really. Who gives a fuck about animations when you have the haste bonus and the buff barely affects you? It's not like your entire rotation is changed because of 15% haste (you're hastecapped with sanc. ret, the usual amount of haste on gear so /care) you get.

Improved Wing Clip: This talent has been removed.

And nothing of value was lost.

Piercing Shots re-designed: Your critical Aimed, Steady and Chimera Shots cause the target to bleed for 10/20/30% of the damage dealt over 8 sec.

Deep wounds. Expect rolling ignites.

Ranged Weapon Specialization: Points reduced from 5 to 3, 1/3/5%.

Good.

Wild Quiver: Chance increased to 4/8/12%, up from 4/7/10%. Damage increased from 50% of an auto shot, to 80%.

Nightfall proc. Pretty much that's it.

Hunting Party: This talent has been reduced to 3-points, and now increases your total Agility by an additional 1/2/3%.

How to: Make a useless talent mandatory.

Lock and Load re-designed: You now have a 33/66/100% chance when you trap a target with Freezing Trap, Freezing Arrow or Frost Trap and a 2/4/6% chance when you deal periodic damage with your Immolation Trap or Black Arrow to cause your next 2 Arcane Shot or Explosive Shot spells to trigger no cooldown, cost no mana and consume no ammo. This now has a new spell effect and sound.

I see what they did there. Still doesn't and won't ever replace sting unless they come up with such a glyph it'll be better than +10% damage on worthlessshot.

New Talent: Trap Launcher: When activated, your next Trap will be launched instantly at the enemy target. 1 minute cooldown.

Good. Ingenious way to get rid of that nasty trap dancing but it adds 2 more keybindings on a 1minute CD. The second LnL proc

T.N.T. re-designed: Increases the damage done by your Explosive Shot, Explosive Trap and Immolation Trap by 2/4/6%, and gives your Explosive Shot a 33/66/100% chance to refresh the duration of your Immolation Trap effect on the target.

Cool. Permadot HOOOO.

Trap Mastery: This talent has been moved up to tier-2, up from tier-9.

About fucking time. We only wanted it since October.

Wyvern Sting duration increased from 12 sec to 30 sec. PvP duration reduced from 10 sec to 6 sec.

/care about either. It doesn't help me shoot stuff better anyway.

Roar of Sacrifice can be used on the hunter only.

Obvious pee vee pee change is obvious. /care about it though.

Stampede (rhino) only affects 1 target, but adds a 25% bleed damage debuff (that does not stack with Mangle etc.) in addition to its knockback.

Still useless just like the pet and the talent.

Now to the undocumented changes.
Beast Mastery

*New Skill* Call Stabled Pet - A pet of your choice busts out of its stable and joins you no matter where you are, replacing your current pet. Cannot be used in combat. Instant. 30 min cooldown. Requires Level 80.

Remotely useful skill is remotely useful.

Kill Shot no longer has a minimum range. It can now be used in melee range.

Hell it's about time.

Disengage cooldown increased to 30 secs. (Previously was 25 secs)

Oh novos. /care.

*New Talent* Black Arrow (Tier 9) - Fires a Black Arrow at the target, increasing all damage done by you to the target by 6% and dealing [ 10% of RAP + 785 ] Shadow damage over 15 sec. Costs 6% base mana. 5-35 yard range. Instant Cast. 30 sec cooldown.

Piss scaling, good maximum damage. +1 keybinding, as if the 30+ binds I use aren't enough.

Sniper Training (Tier 9) has been changed to increase the critical strike chance of your Kill Shot ability by 5/10/15%, and while standing still for 6 sec., you gain Sniper Training increasing the damage done by your Steady Shot, Aimed Shot, Black Arrow and Explosive Shot by 2/4/6% Lasts 15 sec. (Previously increased damage and critical strike chance based on your range to the target)

Mediocre talent is still mediocre but I guess there aren't better places for the points.

We'll see when the new talent calculators are up.

Entry level

2009-02-23T02:52:00.003+02:00

First, let's get the facts straight.

Fact 1: Content is easy. Period. End of discussion.
Fact 2: Even the "hardest" raid content doesn't come close to TBC's endgame difficulty. By this I mean Sunwell, not Karazhan. However, Karazhan is parsecs away in difficulty from the crap we got.
Fact 3: Blizzard is catering to bads and focuses on "new players" too much. This is evident by the facerollable heroics, easy content (see fact 1) and general cantbearserry when designing encounters. See: VH.
Fact 4: The achievement system is evolving to suit the "hardcore" "no-lifers" while the "real players" with "lives, jobs and families" have the non-achievement content to faceroll.
Fact 5: TBC brought more players in the game than classic did, same for wotlk. They're sales record-breaking games for a reason.

Now, the point I want to raise is: Do we need entry-level content at this stage in the game's evolution?

My answer: NO.

Why?

First, there's plenty of entry level content while leveling. I heard RFC, WC, SM, UBRS, ST, Outland dungeons and wotlk normals are still in the game. That is where basic group dynamics is learned. It is there that new players should 'l2p' as we say, or "adjust themselves to the new situation and adapt accordingly". There's nothing wrong in taking a pause in the leveling rush to do a dungeon and see how grouping works.

Sidenote: Most players who rush to 80 at this point in wotlk are probably alts. It is unreasonable for a new player to skip all the amazing content (and I have to admit, they did a good job with leveling content. Just the wrathgate questline alone justifies 71-80) to get to max level and step into a dungeon without having a clue about how partying works.

A new player who genuinely wishes to play well (I'd like to think most people do) will read the "How to play" guide on the main page and have some idea what grouping (and raiding, to an extent) is about. It takes an extraordinarily retarded person not to realize what's going on in an instance/raid.

Secondly, players need something to look up to. You can't honestly say you'd look at a perfect Horsemen40 kill and don't say "Damn, I wish I was with these guys". Not in the "I want to get carried by them" way, but in the "I want to raid with good players" way. There's no way to pre-differentiate skill unless you know players personally. Back in classic (and TBC to a lesser extent), gear was usually an indicator of skill. When people looked at me having the server's only Asjre'thul they went /drool.

Sidenote: "Usually" =/= "Always". I did see some of the worst idiots wearing full t6 and some of the most brilliant players wearing blues.

When everyone's carrying the same ilvl 213/226 epics, it's not fun. There can't be any fun seeing the 3k DPS wonder having Envoy/Journey's End while you push >5k every fight and still not have it. WoW rule 46.b "The retard always gets the phattest loot" just makes it worse.

If I were blizzard, I'd make sartharion+3 so hard and heavy on raid requirement it'd require 3 months to defeat. Same for malygos. He's the guardian of magic for christ's sake and he's getting pugged weekly on my server.

Now, having players experience the content is one thing. That's why there's no attunement and 10/25-man versions for each raid instance. Tuning the instance so people who do less DPS than a level 70 can clear it is another. It's wrong at its concept.

Prenerf M'uru

2009-02-15T15:49:00.003+02:00

Once you think about it, he's the perfect bossfight from a technical point of view. I want to elaborate why.

Tuning aside (I know he was very tightly tuned, perhaps too much but he was still killable. Therefore he shouldn't have been nerfed 3 times), M'uru has several key points which made him hard.

On a personal note, learning him was fun.

So:

30 second effective threat wipes.
Heavy outgoing raid damage.
Zero tolerance towards mistakes.
Hard enrage timer.
Heavy raid requirements.

Elaborating on each point.

Threat wipes: Meaning (obviously) that your tanks had to be on the balls while picking up the adds. Their TPS had to be insane because TotT wasn't in-game and MD had a 2-minute cooldown. (My guild at the time used MD to route big void shits to the paladin tank)

It also meant the DPS had to chill the fuck down but still do very hard DPS to bring down the adds and have ~5-10 seconds to DPS M'uru until the next wave came. It also meant overaggro = death = wipe = try again = more consumables to spend.

Heavy raid damage: Just Negative Energy alone could fuck you over if your healers were asleep. The 6 healers you brought had to be on the balls spamming every single GCD if you had any hope of surviving the fight.

I remember we wiped once because our holy paladin missed 0.1 seconds on a heal and his tank died just as the heal landed. That's how crucial being very focused on healing was.

Zero tolerance: M'uru had even less tolerance towards mistakes than Archimonde. You COULD kill him with a few deaths, assuming you could survive the aoe shit. On M'uru a single DPS death (not to mention tank or healer) instantly meant a wipe.

I don't even need to mention the requirement of 20 leatherworkers for constant drums in the DPS groups, right? I think this was where his tuning went wrong. It should not have required minmaxing this hard, but other requirements such as a fully flasked/well fed raid just to have a chance to succeed is very important to the success of a kill on him.

I admit I misclicked frost and snake traps once and the idiot vipers broke the sheep on one warrior who proceeded to instagib some clothies and we wiped. I can recall at least 30 wipes on M'uru when we were learning him but damn it was fun. Except for idiotic mistakes such as mine, but it was fun nevertheless.

Hard enrage timer: If your raid wasn't 9001% focused during the alotted 10 minutes you had no chance of a kill. Below is a prime example of what happens during the enrage:

Entropius goes in a berserker rage!
Combat against Entropius ended in 10 minutes 1 second.

Hi2u 12k chaining negative energy strikes that hit every second.

Heavy requirements: You needed a full raid in full t6/partial sunwell sets to have the slightest hope of defeating him. SK reported around 500 wipes on M'uru before they got him down. Is it too much? Perhaps, but they DID down him 4 days after his gate was opened.

You also needed 20 LWs and 5 shaman in the raid. This is too much in my personal opinion but everything else is not.

Conclusion: Wotlk needs more fights like M'uru. Sartharion+3 doesn't come anywhere close to this. I really hope the optional "hard mode" Ulduar boss will be like this. He does not necessarily have to be M'uru2.0 in the exact sense of the fight but these 5 requirements should hold, period.

Am I the only person who still wants the challenge in a hard raid boss rather than facerolling through Noxromulus/Uldulolz for easymode epics thus devaluing the word "epic"?

More on "entry level" in a 4-year old game later.

So it happened for the first time

2009-02-12T23:19:00.004+02:00

Ever since I started wotlk raiding in t6/Bristleblitz Striker. (I'd tell why I don't have Golden Bow but it's a long story)

It's hard for me to say...

I...

Well.

I got outdamaged on patchwerk.

There, I've said it.

11 weeks of elysian peace and me tearing away at recount figures have ended abruptly when a freakin' WARLOCK managed to outdamage me.

I think his 50k HP doomguard had something to do with it.

Either way I was dethroned as the DPS king. From 6k as 50/21/scorpid the idiotic nerf hit me to 5.6k.

Either I'm doing something wrong (which is HIGHLY improbable), or my GCD management was idiotic (also improbable, took me 30 minutes to get used to SV) or his doomguard somehow made him OP.

...

Hey, the only thing I know about warlocks is that if there isn't CoR/CoE on the boss, they're not doing it enough. Besides, their index on Recount is always measured in double digits.

Anyway, he beat me by 50k damage.

It's like one all-crit LnL proc.

Which is uber gay.

So I have three questions:
1) Where's my freakin' Journey's End?
2) Where's my freakin' Surge Needle Ring?
3) Where's my freakin' Drape of the Deadly Foe?

(The mouthbreathing 4k dps wonders have them. I still beat them every patchwerk)

Did I mention there is no justice anymore?

P.S: You wanted numbers, you got them:

I broke 6k on the last reset before 3.0.8 too. No screenshot though.

Why do I have a feeling

2009-02-12T20:20:00.003+02:00

That blizzard WILL fuck up with the partial ammo removal?

My bet is either they "forget" to give us the extra 15% haste.

OR fuck up with the stacking.

OR, in a futile attempt to roll the ammo change live in an obviously incomplete state, just shave 15% off every bow's attack speed.

Or... and this is my favorite, they forget that thori'dal didn't use ammo to begin with and make it the best weapon in the game until they hotfix it.

Speaking of which, why don't I have one? I obviously deserve it, I don't die in void zones, fuck up Undying/Immortal, behave like a mouthbreathing idiot in raids etc.

So why the RNG decides to fuck me over every single fucking week when I do sunwell?

3.0.9

2009-02-09T18:07:00.004+02:00

At first I was:

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............./__.(.....“~-,_..............................,:`........../
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..........{.._$;_......”=,_.......“-,_.......,.-~-,},.~”;/....}
...........((.....*~_.......”=-._......“;,,./`..../”............../
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............(....`=-,,.......`........................(......;_,,-”
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.............`~.*-,.....................................|,./.....,__
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...................................,

And then I was:

"Ha.

Ha ha.

HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA."

That was my initial reaction towards the hunter changes when I read the patch notes.

Idiots.

No, really; fucking idiots.

Didn't we tell them the BM nerf is too much? (BTW, steady shot damage is still too low, bring it up to at least 15% of AP)

Didn't we show PTR figures showing BM will be the new old SV (read: useless)?

We did. They promptly ignored those figures, saying they "tested this internally" and they trust dev figures more than player figures.

Did I say GC is a retard and I've no idea how he got his Ph.D? Seriously. Karma's a bitch, eh GC?

(BTW, SV > BM until they decide to nerf ExS coefficient even more because hunters doing damage is a bug)

3.1 changes

2009-02-06T18:00:00.002+02:00

Wow.

Let's go over whatever GC's pot-smoking vodka-drinking cocaine-snorting heroin-injecting LSD-drinking team came up with.

Consumable ammunition has been removed from the game. Arrows and bullets no longer stack, but are not consumed. Ranged attack speed bonus gained from quivers and ammo bags will be preserved in a different capacity.

Hell it's about time. Not only hunters have been asking for this for what... 3 years? The entire length of TBC (as well as unlinking autos and specials). I only hope they won't fuck it up with quiver haste bonus and ammo types because god knows, given previous experience, that blizzard has a tendency to fuck everything up with the hunter class. That's why other classes feel simple and fluid while hunter feels like conducting a symphony as a paraplegic midget with Tourette's.

A new tier of hunter pet talents have been added. In particular, this allows Beastmaster hunters to improve their damage per second (DPS) with their 51 point talent.

So that makes the talent slightly less than completely useless? Unless they un-nerf BM back to it's pre-3.0.8 state sans TBW/readiness my guess is that it'll still be worthless. CotW/Rabid are still the best DPS boosters.

Hunting Party – this talent has been reduced to 3 ranks and also grants a passive bonus to the hunter.

What kind? More mana regen to compensate for the fucked up change they're concocting? I hope. Personally, I want a bonus that makes me do as much DPS as an arcane mage in a 1.37m patchwerk kill.

Piercing Shots – this talent has been changed. Your Aimed, Steady and Chimera Shots cause the target to bleed for 10/20/30% of damage dealt for 8 sec.

10g says it'll fuck up just like rolling ignites. You heard it here first. Expect a cuntpaste of Deep Wounds and a rename to the effect.

Sniper Training – this talent has been changed. After standing still for 6 sec, you gain a 2/4/6% damage bonus to Steady, Aimed and Explosive Shot.

So they're exchanging one stupid aspect of the talent for another. Does killshot keep it's +15% crit?

We are also looking to add additional trap functionality to Survival.

Trap? Functionality? In raids? Gimme a freakin' break. Unless Ulduar requires multiple frost/snake trapping this is a bullshit change that isn't going anywhere.

BTW, where's the kill shot range bug (hot)fix? Isn't this patched in 1 second?

I mean it. THIS IS HOW EASY IT IS TO IMPLEMENT.

class KillShot inherits RangedAttack{
int minRange = 5;
}

Just like that.

Why aren't I the lead class designer for the hunter and why the fuck is GC still employed?

(BTW, the hotfix to ExS was because rogues couldn't faceroll hunters anymore and required pressing more than 2 buttons.)

The good news and the bad news

2009-02-05T13:01:00.002+02:00

I lied. There are no good news.

So GC decided to stealth-nerf ExS out of the blue.

Literally.

I see it as a 14% nerf to the coefficient (percentage is hard yo).

And now a personal message to GC;
....................../´¯/)
....................,/¯../
.................../..../
............./´¯/'...'/´¯¯`·¸
........../'/.../..../......./¨¯\
........('(...´...´.... ¯~/'...')
.........\.................'...../
..........''...\.......... _.·´
............\..............(
..............\.............\...

And die in a fire made of cancerous aids, you retarded mong. Where's my fix on the kill shot range?

You HOTFIXED wind serpents in pre-TBC because hunters doing damage is a bug.

Fucking idiots, I swear.

So I finally had a shot at a 25-man raid

2009-01-25T00:50:00.003+02:00

Topped the damage meters, OF COURSE. Vault25 with some 1.8k DPS wonders.

I think I do more than that with autoshots.

DPS difference between 2/18/51 huntard #2 on DPS meters: 400.

WTB another GCD filler because steady shots suck balls.

LnL and trap dancing

2009-01-22T09:50:00.002+02:00

Trap dancing = 2 guaranteed procs in a minute = 2 PPM
Sting = 20 ticks/minute * 10% to proc = 2 PPM

So statistically you'll get the same amount of LnL procs for a large enough sample size.

However both sides have caveats.

Trap dancing means you're losing SOME autoshot DPS (which as we all know is higher than steady shot DPS).
Not trap dancing means you lose an element of control over your LnL procs and the probability to fuck up on GCD management grows.

E.G: You cast aimed shot, GCD goes off, LnL procs while ExS is on GCD. Hello wasted GCD on an inferior shot.

Now, where's a goddamn 25-man Patchwerk so I can see how hard I top (or not) the DPS meters?

Survival build

2009-01-21T11:03:00.002+02:00

Is going to rock. Really. ExS and LnL procs are win. (Trap dancing isn't, fuck you EJ. You made LnL get a 30s internal cooldown because of your ingenuity)

That and raptors. I have full grounds to think the people in charge smoked too much PCP again. Which means raptors' bleed attack is going to scale as well as Rake did pre-3.0.8. The 1-minute cooldown is kinda meh, but it's better than any other pet special I can think of.

Wasps are a no-no because there's a faerie fire bot in every raid I do.

No replenishment either for the same reason, we have a judgementbot and a shadow priest I never see on recount top 10.

Expected DPS on patchwerk: 5.9k, give or take a few. Considering I had some terrible cooldown management on patchwerk when I used glyphed double dipping AotB and only broke 6k, it's should be fine.

More figures when I actually get to work it.

That is after the unexpected extended maintenance which lasts until 6PM.

Patch Day

2009-01-21T08:50:00.003+02:00

Yay.

Time to bend over and lube it up because BM is taking a very very hard nerf.

Survival here I come.

Assuming the server gets up fast enough.

Assuming Winterfail doesn't crash it. Again.

Assuming there won't be unplayable lag for 3 days as it was with the last patch.

P.S: Soapbox time.

Guess who didn't see Journey's End drop since the feral tank got his. (since 12/10/08)
Guess who lost the roll to Surge Needle Ring to a 4k DPS wonder (5k is guild standard by now).
Guess who has to switch to Black Ice (and have 30 hit over the cap) all because of the haste itemization. However WHEN I get Journey's End (this reset), I'll be 10 hit under the cap. Don't you love irony?
Guess whose guild lootwhores the cloak from Kel'Thuzad so much that a 11 DPS difference makes the shitton of DKP spent on it almost worthless.

We're on a 2-roll system

2009-01-18T16:59:00.000+02:00

In case you missed Lactose's proof around one year ago.

Chance to crit = Chance to hit * tooltip chance to crit.

Get hitcapped.

(This post was written for people with the mental capacity of a 5-year old, which is incidentally more than your average huntard's)

Preliminaries and GftT

2009-01-18T14:27:00.004+02:00

Since I permanently shifted this tiny corner of the internets to rage on the idiots that play (or design) WoW in general and the hunter class in specific, a few preliminaries are in order.

Just for the readers to see who they're dealing with.

First and foremost, I do NOT deal with basics. If you don't know how to trap, FD or misdirect, GTFO to BRK. He'll be glad to teach you stuff you should've learned in SM cath.

Secondly, you are expected to have complete up-to-date knowledge of the class, having at least a vague idea of what you're going to do the next time Ghostcrawler smokes too much weed and decides to overhaul the hunter class.

Finally, you are expected to fully master the tools used to maximize your DPS.

Now that we've gone through this...

GftT calculations are extremely complex.

Think about it for a second.

Now some more.

Now some more.

Got it?

No? Not too bad. At least you have the slightest idea what GftT depends on. After some thought on the subject, if I had to define the GftT function, it'd be something like:

GftT: (PetFamilySpecial, PetFamilySpecialCooldown, NaturalFocusRegen, SerpentSting, Crit%, ShotRotation, Procs, RNG, Spec) -> Damage

That's right, 9 variables. The SpS part of the function is whether or not you used one GCD for the SpS in the discretization period alotted for the calculation.

I chose to discretize around the pet special CD for my calculations. Raptors will discretize over a minute, cats over 10 seconds. Of course it depends on longevity as well.

Procs might contain, for example, Greatness, TBW and Rapid Fire.

Obviously this has two points:

Figure out the minimal amount of crit% to prevent focus starvation.
Figure out the maximal amount of crit% to prevent focus saturation. (with 2/2 GftT)

As anyone with IQ > room temperature figures out, gimping crit is retarded. So point 2 is reduced to "Maximize the amount of crit% to drop one point in GftT".

I've yet to encounter tangible focus saturation but as my crit goes up (insert survival spec in 3.0.8) I imagine around 35% unbuffed is enough to drop one point in GftT (because 50-focus dumps are extinct). The other elitist jerks will probably have it calculated.

We'll see. As far as I'm concerned, I already have my 3.0.8 spec planned out to maximize DPS.

Change of theme

2009-01-18T14:17:00.002+02:00

Since I quit that piece of shit job, I'll only focus on my other point of interest.

World of warcraft and the hunter class.

Expect advanced theorycrafting soon™.

Zen and the art of guild applications

2008-10-02T01:29:00.002+03:00

I have a confession to make.

Other than the update times are slower than drinking tar.

While swimming in a river made of tar.

This may or may not be related to my lack of literary force of will to actually sit my ass down and write whatever my alcohol-saturated brain can come up with.

So... brace for impact.

I play world of warcraft. A lot of it. I DO MEAN A FUCKING LOT. Whatever you may think about the game or my social life is irrelevant because further down will be placed a clandestine message only those with IQ over room temperature will comprehend.

In the game there are guilds. The WoW definition of a guild is "A bunch of retards who grouped up so they won't have to make pick-up groups wherever they feel like going". In the game there is also fire. In which you shouldn't stand. But that's another story.

So when guilds die (and they inevitably do) due to drama, lootwhoring, higher-up's e-penii or whatever reasons, people with IQ over room temperature apply (as if it's a job application) to another guild.

I wish to take some time to explain the common retard how to do that.

No particular order. I'm sorry if it sounds like common sense (it fucking should), but I've read WAY TOO MANY retarded applications that made me want to physically harm the player, preferably preventing reproduction.

Use fucking proper English! I mentioned numerous times that it isn't a hard language to learn. Going to people you don't know and never will saying "OH HLO KAN I NINJA UR EPIX" is plain fucking retarded. If you can't figure out why, uninstall the game, cancel your account and drown your computer and yourself in the closest septic treatment plant. English is hard, sometimes there are exceptions to the rules, you have to know the exceptions. Etc, etc... I mean it. English or GTFO. [Replace English with any other language spoken by the guild you're applying to]
Format your shit. Unformatted walls of text are almost as retarded. You're writing stuff for people to READ, not just facerolling the keyboard and hitting the "submit" button. Even when a guild has an application template (which I'm strictly against) don't just fill it with one-liners and then /wrist when the officers slap a big fat "DECLINED DUE TO RETARDATION" on your application.
Be detailed. Don't just say "OH I HAVE FULL EPIX, CAN I HAVE FREE RIDE". Every season2-geared mouthbreather who stands in the fire has full epics nowadays. You have Blizzard to thank for that. Armory profile is key now. Remember: YOU are applying to THEM, not vice-versa. Even if (you think) you're the best to travel Azeroth across all realms, it doesn't give you the right to be a condescending bastard. Unless you're in SK or Nihilum or something like that and you can't go higher than the top anyway.
Notwithstanding the former point, don't overkill it. We all know there is fire on a boss and you shouldn't be in it. We all know everyone with an IQ over room temperature brings full consumables and knows the boss like the back of their hand after 2 tries. Good going captain fucking obvious.
A guild application isn't a place to blow steam. Be objective. No one cares if you gquit because your GM gave thori'dal to a rogue. No one cares your former guildmate dual glaive rogue does 1.3k DPS on teron, it's TMI and really is irrelevant to the people you want to play with. If you got kicked, list your fails. It shows you have a sense of self-criticism and the ability to see (and hopefully learn from) your mistakes. If you QQ, I will extract it and make delicious whine from it.
Screenshot in a raid situation. Most guilds require that nowadays so they can see your keybindings and make sure you're not a mouseclicker who plays with one eye on TV and one hand on penis. Preferably if you explain the underlying logic behind your keybinds, unless obvious.
Stick to the freakin' template (or the lack of it). Worst if you use the guild's nemesis' application template. One paladin applied to my guild recently. We don't have a template. What do I see? A copypasted Nihilum application template. How am I going to take him seriously? In fact, I'm going to get him killed a few times, then teabag his corpse.
DO NOT APPLY TO MULTIPLE GUILDS AT ONCE. Unless they're X-Realm AND have a private application policy. They WILL find out, will call you out on the bullshit and you will stay guildless while everyone else is getting fat loot.
DO NOT BUG PEOPLE WITH YOUR APPLICATION STATUS. Trust me, people who run guilds get enough whispering shit during their playtime, you're not helping.
Do not fuck up on your trial period. First impression is the strongest one so don't stand in the fire or you will be on a quest: [73] Looking For Guild!
Know your shit. People don't like carrying terribads. People don't like telling or listening to the strategy you farmed the boss a year with. Seriously, get your shit done.

That should do it. While this post may or may not decrease the amount of terribad applications, I hope people learn from these ravings.

My death

2008-08-07T11:00:00.008+03:00

Rumors of it were greatly exaggerated.

No really, put down the shotgun now. I mean it.

So, it's been almost three months between this post and its predecessor. What could I possibly do to skip entertaining my faithful audience?

Well, I'd rather spill the beans now.

I quit the job.

No need to have a heart attack, it was known from my very first call that I wouldn't make it that long. C'mon, there's a limit to the amount of "I HAVE NO INTERNET HALP ME NAO I DESERVE IT I'M PAYING YOU etc [Incoherent braying of a retarded goldfish]" calls a person can take.

Actually, I quit the job sometime in late May. I haven't been up to date with reality since that time (gee, I wonder why), so I haven't bothered (read: had better things to do) than writing.

The reasons may or may not be an irresistible urge to get my degree get a decent job, complaints about my behavior (apparently, people don't like when I'm banging on tables and swearing at the phone in a fit of rage), my superior being an asshole, HIS superior being a delusional freak, all of the above, etc.

So... since my supply of call is obviously limited, I shall present my faithful audience (you are faithful, RIGHT?) the top 10 calls which scored over 9000 on the "I can't believe a person that stupid exists and can reproduce legally" meter.

As mentioned in the first post of this boring semi-funny blog, these calls are 100% real. I can ask people who still work there (against better judgment) to pull out the recordings from the archives.

Number 10: "My modem is off"
>TSG: [Opening sentence]
>Customer (female, a cookie if you guessed it beforehand): Hello, I'm calling because my modem is off.
>TSG: * In a fit of shocked awe *: ... You mean, it's working normally, except it's not on.
>Customer: Yes, and I don't know what to do.
>TSG: Turning it on is a good start.
>Customer: But how?

Oh Jesus tap-dancing Christ, there's a nice shiny button on every modem. It's called the POWER button and it... you guessed it genius, it powers up the modem.

I heard of this ancient mystic force. This force infuses its user with the knowledge of the intricate device known as a modem. At least with such arcane knowledge as the location of the critically-important buttons that may or may not power up the modem and give you the "Internets" you so desperately need for watching Mr. Hands or whatever.

This force...

is...

THE FREAKING MANUAL. READ IT. I promise, it doesn't bite. No really, it doesn't.

Bullshit like this is inexcusable. But no, this stupid airhead calls us, disturbing my peace with retardation beyond redemption.

Number 9: I HAS NO INTARNETS
This call is slightly different than the generic "I have no Internet" call. See, the first thing the retards at instruction teach the entry-level TSGs is to reset the modem and/or router. Amazingly, it solves 99.9% of "I have no Internet" problems.

... amazingly 99.9% of calls begin with customers getting a 404 error or "connection failed" and immediately calling tech support.

This can't be a coincidence.

Naturally, this call was different.
>TSG: [Opening sentence]
>Customer (male, mid 20s, IQ<50): I DONT HAVE INTERNET FOR [Fraudulent amount of time here because we DO log activity] WHAT THE HELL IS THIS IM PAYING AND YOU'RE A REPRESENTATIVE SO YOU HAVE TO HELP ME etc.
>TSG: Did you try resetting your modem?
>Customer: What on earth is a modem?
>TSG: I see.

20 minutes later I manage to get this neanderthal to reset the modem.

>TSG: Now try surfing.
>Customer: Still no internet.

I'm paraphrasing because incoherent braying is incoherent.

>TSG: Try surfing to [test IP address].
>Customer: Dude, didn't you understand? I HAVE NO INTERNET GODDAMNIT
>TSG: Shut up and do it you moron.

After back-and-forth "I HAVE NO INTERNET" from him and "Just do what I say retard, you'll have your gay porn soon" from me, he got his Internet. And the world rejoiced. Seriously, is trusting us such an issue?

Number 7: Hostnames are serious business
Prelude: We work with the cable company to provide Internet access over coaxial cables. The cable company in its genius has decided to use dialers. In those dialers you have to write the hostname associated with your ISP.

You'd think "host.isp.com" is hard to write.

Think again.

In between people who simply cannot locate the keys, not to mention the '.' symbol there are also people who lie to you. They say the follow you to the letter but then get a "User stupidity" error and of course blame us.

We could write the host down in an IP address form but...

It's against company policy.
The IP is going to change eventually, it has a lease.
We generally assume people aren't that stupid.
We are mostly wrong.

>TSG: [Opening sentence]
>Customer (in a think ethnic minority accent): Hello, I get error 678.

At least he knows the error number. Most people just say "I HAS PROBLEM FIX IT".

>TSG: * series of checks to see that the customer is indeed retarded *
>Customer: Still error 678.
>TSG: Maybe it's because you're too dumb to type the hostname properly?

Then it hit me. This guy doesn't know the keyboard layout. I mean REALLY DOESN'T KNOW. Since English is serious business I work my way around it and eventually get him to type it.

...

>Customer: Still error 678.

At this point I had it with him and:
>TSG: Off to the cable company you go, here's their number. Maybe they can fix your IQ.

Seriously now. I KNOW English is being taught at a reasonable level in this stupid country.

10 minutes later a guy I know very well approaches:
>oTSG: Dude this retard you handled just landed on me.
>TSG: And?
>oTSG: He's obviously too stupid to type a hostname so I had him type the IP.
>TSG: But isn't it against all the stupid crap they taught us?
>oTSG: Yes, but at least he can stop calling us.
>TSG: Good point. Are all of [ethnic minority] so freaking stupid?
>oTSG: Oh yeah. At the "Popular customer team" (see earlier posts) we never assign URL hostnames for this very reason.
>TSG: I see.

Number 6: "I can't believe it's my maximum download speed"
Covered in an earlier post but I'll make it short.

Retard doesn't know basic math.
Retard doesn't know basic communications knowledge.
Retard thinks he's entitled to the world.
Retard calls.
Retard lands on me.
I explain Retard that download_speed = Sum of concurrent download speeds and if it's maximal, it's working as intended.
Retard still doesn't understand, retard wants to disconnect.
I bid retard farewell (read: told him to go fuck himself in an ironic yet subtle way)

Number 5: The Fucktard
I'll just call this guy the Fucktard because that's what he is. I don't know what went through is head and frankly, I don't want to know.

At 1:30am, on a night shift.
>TSG: [Opening line]
>Fucktard: What the hell is this download speed, I demand a senior to speak with me immediately, this company sucks ass, I'm going to sue its guts out.

In the meantime, his information loads. What do I see? A popup saying "Do NOT serve the customer in any way shape or form. Consult senior immediately upon customer call".

>TSG (to senior): Hey, I got this guy here with this popup, his user is...
>STSG: Oh god fucking damnit, not that guy again! (to himself) God, what a fucknut.
>TSG: Is he really really retarded?
>STSG: You'll see. Talk to him.

>TSG (to fucktard): You DO realize we have to test it, right?
>Fucktard: I don't want any freakin' tests, get a senior now!
>TSG: There's only one available and he's not fapping to gay porn either. In fact he's busy managing the rest of us who work nights so retards like you can disturb our peace.

There was another senior guy whose shift has ended. These two bastards put Fucktard on call center-wide speakerphone and started to laugh their asses off.

>Fucktard: Some guy just called me and made my radio not work, it's your fault and I know it, I'm calling the police.
>TSG: Okay.
>Fucktard: OKAY? WE ARE NOT IN AMERICA MR. OKAY AND IF THESE ARE THE STANDARDS SET FOR YOUR TEAM, I WILL BE COMPLAINING DIRECTLY TO THE CEO!
/hangup

>TSG (to seniors): Well, at least the problem solved itself.
>STSGs: Don't count on it.
>TSG: Why, this crap happened a lot?
>STSGs: Quite a lot, expect a flurry of calls from him tomorrow.

The day after tomorrow I check the user and I see no less than 19(!) documented (read: god knows how many undocumented) calls all ending with incoherent braying of an old senile retard and him hanging up.

This scenario repeated itself every month. Eventually we were on the verge of banning him from our services but for some unfathomable reason he's still our (their) customer. At least I heard he faxed the CEO's office demanding the CEO meet him because of his problems.

Needless to say the fax itself had more spelling mistakes than a dyslexic kid with down's syndrome on a sugar rush. Also needless to say his case got escalated to the chief security officer due to continuous harassment.

But, he's still their customer.

Did I mention I hate penny-pinchers who lick the asshole of every customer just so they won't transfer to another ISP?

Number 4: The "I will sue you" bitch
This case hasn't actually happened to me, rather than the guy sitting next to me. I got to (over)hear the call in it's g(l)ory. For simplicity's sake, he's referred to as "TSG" for this call.

>TSG: [Opening sentence]
>Customer: Okay listen up. If anything, ANYTHING happens to my computer as a result of your "support", I will sue the company and you personally.
>TSG: And you're aggressive because...?
>Customer: Because the last over 9000 times I called, every single troubleshoot resulted in my motherboard going on fire.
>TSG: ... yeah.

Now, imagine this woman is allowed to reproduce. Also to drive and vote. Don't you wish to exterminate 90% of the population?

The call went pretty much like this:
>TSG: You have a virus, I can see it by your outgoing traffic rate.
>Customer: It's your fault, if I didn't get your stupid Internet I wouldn't have gotten it.
>TSG: Or you can stop browsing gay porn sites.

And so on. Eventually, the call ended with the TSG telling her to go fuck herself with a rake, but very subtly.

Number 3: "How do I plug it in?"
Some prelude is required here. In our country, there is a sect of hardcore religious people whose religion I will not mention. This sect is fucked up. Just like any other cult, their behavior is apparent - retarded clothing, moronic education and next to zero preparation for real life because their deity will protect them. Your regular cult, except these morons actually have parliamentary control and they actually hold our government by the balls.

So naturally, these morons are hardly getting exposed to 21st century technology due to the fear and anxiety that it might "offend their feelings" or "corrupt their youth" and some bullshit or another. I can rant on this for ages. Typical technophobic bullshit.

What's worse is that our ISP, at the time, wanted to beat the competition so they marketed specifically designed programs for this kind of customer. Some hand-checked whitelist-filtering programs and crap like that. Think Amish who are just as stupid but do use technology.

My point is. These people don't know jack shit about anything.

>TSG: [Opening line].
>Customer: Hello. I just bought this internet thing and I need help connecting it.

Actually he said it in a very smug and condescending tone, as if he's a better person.

>TSG (sighing to myself): Okay, start -> control panel -> network connections...
>Customer: Wait, what do I do with this?
>TSG: With what?
>Customer: The tech guy left me a box. I don't know what's inside it.
>TSG: Try opening it, I promise there isn't any anthrax or smallpox in it.

The above line was sarcastic, they don't know what either is.

So this retard didn't even open the box to begin with, but immediately called us. What does he expect us to do, open the box for him? Come on, this isn't a case of not knowing, it's about common sense.

Quoth the Dickens: There's nothing common about common sense.

It's like teaching quantum physics to an 8-year old hyperactive ADD kid on a sugar rush. Completely useless.

>Customer: There's something inside.
>TSG: Shiver me timbers! Taking it out is probably a good idea.
>Customer: Okay so what do I do now?
>TSG (realizing the gravity of the situation): I think you have to plug it in. It's called a modem.
>Customer: How do I plug it in?

This is where I snapped. It was a USB modem, that means it had two wires. One is a telephone RJ11 wire and another is a standard issue USB cable. GUESS!

Well, before that I asked the model of the modem.
>TSG: Would you kindly tell me what's written on the modem?
>Customer: I don't know.
>TSG: Maybe READ what's written on it?
>Customer: How do I look?

I mean, seriously now.

>TSG: On the backside of the modem there are two sockets. Their shape is different. With the modem come two cables. Note: their shape is also different. One of the cables is a telephone cable. It's the same cable as the cable on the telephone you're calling me with. Now, this is the hard part. You have to PLUG the phone cable into the hole in the wall where the cable phone goes to and you ha...
* click *

Apparently this moron disconnected the phone he was talking on. To this day, whether he could physically connect his modem is a mystery to me.

Number 2: How do I settled debt?
A bit of backstory. I think it's obvious that you DO have to pay for your services. This includes paying your ISP for Internet access. We have an elaborate system of tracking down debtors and having them pay.

In case we cannot track them down we simply suspend their account until such time when all delinquent payments have been generated.

In extremely rare cases we give out temporary users so this moron can download his gay porn until his normal account is available. The passwords to these temporary users change over a fixed time period in order to prevent abuse.

Guess what happened.

Password got changed, retard got disconnected, retard got pissed, retard called.

>TSG: [Opening sentence]
>Customer: I have no internet, what is this bullshit? I'm not paying you for nothing.

See why I hate people? Is it really this hard NOT to be a complete bitch to a total stranger?

Of course, people assume they're getting their connection magically. After tedious 15 minutes of tracking his user information down:

>TSG: It seems your account has been suspended due to a debt. You can settle it with the finance department.
>Customer: Yeah, so? I still deserve internet from you. Give it to me now.
>TSG: After a brief consultation we've decided not to disclose the password to the temporary user assigned to you. You will be able to connect 1 minute after settling your debt.
>Customer: What the hell is this bullshit? I need my goddamn Internet NOW! I'm a {stock trader, gay porn aficionado, gaming nerd, general fucktard, lawyer, accountant,...} and I can't work without it! You're making me lose money!
>TSG: Which is why you should settle your debt. None of the guys here have permissions to access the billing system because it's none of our business. Naturally, you also called at the time the finance department is closed for the night. Call next morning.
>Customer: Give me your supervisor NOW. I'm going to settle this crap once and for all, it's unbelievable... {moronic rant}
>TSG: Of course. *click*

See, the customer can be Intel or Cisco for all I care. The second I detect a hint of aggression from anyone, the call is over until they change their attitude. No one in the world has a right to be a condescending bitch for any reason. If a person wants decent troubleshooting then they better have the decency to be at least somewhat polite to people who slave away because they are too dumb to solve their own shit.

We can't do magic. We can't "fix" "your" "internet", especially if you didn't pay for it.

Number 1: To be continued.

Yes, I used this miserable cliffhanger. Sucks to be you.

Cerebral prostitution

2008-05-01T22:01:00.002+03:00

Think about this phrase for a second.

Just a second.

You might hurt yourself otherwise.

This is what we, as TSGs are doing. This cerebral prostitution begins even before joining the company.

>HR representative: [ISP name here] is the BEST MOTHERFUCKING ISP IN THE WORLD. YOU HEAR ME MOTHERFUCKER? WE GOT [long list of "advantages"] AND [social benefits].
>TSG: Okay, I realize your job is to recruit retards like me to your company, but you can't possibly be serious that I will even consider joining after this sort of approach.
>HRR: I'm sorry. It usually works on the typical morons we're recruiting.
>TSG: Why do I have a "I have a bad feeling about this" feeling?
>HRR: Probably because of the cabal contract we're going to bind you with.

In retrospect, it wasn't such a good idea.

Then, the cerebral prostitution continued during the training course:

>Instructor: * usual customer-is-always-right bullshit *
>TSG: That may be true, but I am not a machine you can vent your frustration at. If someone starts yelling at me I WILL hang up on him. Nor am I here to tell people what is a keyboard and what's their asshole. Some of the calls you told us are still considered urban legends by me. Recording or it never happened.
>Instructor: You're a customer service representative. It's your job now.
>TSG: Get me an iron boot so I can kick you in the face. I'm here to tell retards how to click on "Start", not to listen to their incoherent braying about the minuscule amounts they're paying us. The job description never said "You'll have to listen to morons whining about stuff neither of us can control".
Instructor: Good point, but they pay your salary.
>TSG: That's where you get it wrong lad. They're not paying my salary. The company does. They are just an interference in my way to play computer games, surf the web in more ways than I already do and be generally useless while getting paid.
>Instructor: Sucks to be you, then.
>TSG: Where'd you say they make iron boots?

Then it continued into the internship period. And then, our team is spammed by the team leader and I quote.

>Superior: Guys, don't forget to do proactive service. It's part of your meters and your incentives/promotions depend on it.

That struck my enrage nerve.

>TSG: Look, I know you care about us and want us to top whatever retarded quality meters the powers that be made, but ARE YOU BATSHIT CRAZY? We're not salesmen, we're dealing with retards all day long. I, for one, will not deal with retards and money. That and the whole part where I COULD'VE USED THE STUFF WE SELL FOR FREE AND I STILL DON'T.
>TSG: Want to know why? Because I don't need that bullshit. I, unlike the moron on the other side of the phone, know better than to click infected popups. I know that our purpose is to make more money, but I have my dignity. You can forget about me and anything related to sales.
>TSG: Why's that? Because I feel uncomfortable with myself as a human being, to offer malfunctioning services the retard doesn't need. Yes, I have the sufficient personal dignity not to cheat an unsuspecting idiot for his money.
>TSG: BUT. And this is the big hairy but part. Making our fully-deserved incentives (HELL, YOU were a TSG once, you know what's it like), promotions and raises on such retarded bullshit as SALES makes you even more batshit crazy than I could've ever imagined.

Pretty much.

>Superior: You done?
>TSG: Now I am. Did you bother listening to me?
>Superior: Yes. Sucks to be you. Do it anyway.
>TSG: No. Fucking. Way.
>Superior: Well then, it's your money. Or... used to be your money.
>TSG: ... Die in a fire of cancerous aids.

And he actually did it. He cut my paycheck because I didn't sell enough crap.

Did I mention I hate people?

Miscellany

2008-04-17T23:19:00.006+03:00

I know.

I haven't updated in a while.

Dial 1-800-BITE-ME.

When you got exams, grueling work, over 9000 morons to handle and 20 waiting calls at midnight with 10 staffed TSGs you'll understand.

Maybe.

At least, I don't. I know there's a law that ISPs and 24/7 available services should provide 24/7 support. I'm cool with that.

What I don't understand is the necessity to call at odd hours.

>Customer's Brain: My, it's 5am. What a wonderful morning! What shall I do? D'oh! I'll call tech support!
>Customer: * dial our number *
>Customer: [Moronic problem that stems from their own stupidity]

E.g:
>Customer: I'm trying to connect to the internet and it doesn't let me.

Loosely translated 'cause it sounds even more retarded in the local language.

Informative as ever.

Now, consider the average guy. Totally average.

Now...

Think that statistically, half the world's population is more stupid.

Now, consider that our marketing department actually caters to these people in the first place. These people have one god - the almighty local currency.

>Marketing Expert: Look guys. These people are morons and we're after to make even more money. So by changing our paradigm to cater to these retards we make even more money so our CEO can buy another diamond-encrusted Porsche.
>TSG: I know we, as a company, want to make more money. However, there's moderation in that too. I definitely wouldn't let someone with an IQ as the room temperature have access to the Internet for one reason: People like this make the Internet stupid. So how about catering to people who won't call over stupid reasons like password-protecting their Windows and then asking us to restore it? Or people who can't tell apart from their computer and their asshole?
>Marketing Expert: DUDE IT R MORE MONEYS
>TSG: Am I the only sane person around here?

...

Apparently, yes.

At least they could route the money to make us a more comfortable call center.

Since we're the majority of the company's work force and all that.

That and a stress relief room. I need that one.

They totally did that too.

Well..., they blew it on a public poll whether our retarded marketing-oriented zany-sounding retard-attracting handle is pronounced one way or another.

I mean it.

Then the entire office building was plastered with pamphlets saying that. With the retarded company mascot, a nifty piechart and all that.

As if it fucking matters. Looks like our company is run by morons as well.

>Suits: Wow guys, most customers say it one way rather than another! Now we must ALL behave just like the customers want us to.
>People with an IQ higher than room temperature: And it matters because...? No really, the customers don't give a flying fuck whether we pronounce it as they do, they want their moronic problem solved. That and you could've spent the survey money on... I don't know, making OUR life less painful than it already is? Because without us, you'd be out of business. You could also stop routing all the money to stupid shit like these polls or stupid events no one attends and add permanent improvements to the call center.
>Suits: Not after we blew the money on our salaries and this survey, HAR HAR SO THERE.
>People with an IQ higher than room temperature: You are thoroughly retarded. We couldn't give a lesser shit about new window drapes that replaced the old PERFECTLY FUNCTIONING ones. Nor do we give a shit about equally retarded motivational posters with a mascot that makes me want to kill whoever the retard that designed it. Nor do we really really REALLY give a fuck about crap like that.
>People: Here's an idea. Make the main cafeteria run 24/7, like us. Make the floor cafeterias hold a little more than a 1947 refrigerator and coffee machines that run on molten cheese. Make our posts larger, give us better phones and head phones. Improve our knowledge base. You have the staff and the resources to do it. SO DO IT FAGGOTS.
>Suits: BUT WE R BLEW ALL ZE MONEYS AWAY /mouthbreathe
>People: Die in a fire.

But I'm pretty sure every company has to deal with assholes for Suits who do nothing and take all credit for the work done.

Case in point.

We topped the customer satisfaction meter in the country. What do we get?

A shitty party in a god-forsaken place no one knows to get to.

Loud intolerable music, really poorly-distilled alcoholic drinks and the suits going apeshit like "OH MY FUCKING GOD DID YOU SEE WHAT WE DID FOR YOU?".

No we didn't.

At least the people with IQ higher than room temperature didn't.

The morons (aka 98% of the service department) probably went "AWW HOW NICE OF THEM". Newsflash morons: It isn't. "Nice" things = permanent additions to the call center and I don't mean fucking WINDOW DRAPES to replace the PERFECTLY FUNCTIONING old ones. What's worse is that the new drapes (which probably cost the center's collective salary) are emblazoned with the friggin' company mascot. I hate him.

Speaking of salaries.

You don't pay my salary. The company does. You're an annoyance in my way to idle peacefully and discuss network, play the ping game and generally screw with seniors.

Shit like:
>Customer: I'm paying your salary.
Isn't going to get you anywhere faster. It'll only agitate me further and will give you the treatment you deserve.

>Customer: You're indifferent to my problem.
Isn't helping you either. I don't give two fucks because it isn't a problem. It's your sheer stupidity.

Newsflash: There isn't a crew of evil cyber ninja lawyer robots that sits all night long to hack YOUR computer. You clicked on an infected popup, downloaded a keylogger, got a trojan, whatever.

It's not our problem. So stop calling us when your "Internet doesn't work" when your fucking trojan hogs all your bandwidth.

But apparently it's our problem, judging by the amount of retarded calls we get on this topic.

So I devised a simple test to determine eligibility to get a username/password.

IQ test. As simple as that.

If a person's IQ is less than 100 (i.e an official retard), they can't get an Internet connection. Or a computer in this case. We got licenses to drive, vote (age), operate dangerous equipment. So we should have a license to use a computer.

We should have a license to bear children as well. Slightly more complex criteria and eligibility selection process but a vasectomy/tube tying is the result for the declined. Stupid people don't deserve to reproduce. Raising children is one FUCKING responsible job and if you can't do it well, don't do it at all.

(which is why I won't have any)

Speaking of responsibility. Why can't people accept the fact that sometimes, we can't take any?

Like editing one's registry. Imagine the scenario if we DID do that with retards.

They edit a wrong key/value. (Assuming the could type "regedit" in the first place)
Their computer gets fucked up.
They complain to our delusional manager.
They bring it up in the recording.
Some poor guy gets fired in the best case.

So stop the fucking whine when we tell you we can't take responsibility for your spyware-infested virus-spawning botnet of a computer.

But no.

>TSG: Look, sir, this is YOUR computer. I don't know what's in it. I don't know how many viruses you have on it. So, if I reset the winsock catalog with you and the action fucks the computer up, it's your fault.
>Customer: [incoherent braying of an apeshit crazy fucktard]
>Customer: Will it cause damage?
>TSG: It varies from computer to computer, so there's no definite answer.
>Customer: But will it cause damage?
>TSG: It varies from computer to computer, so there's no definite answer.
>Customer: What?
>TSG: [Local language], motherfucker, DO YOU SPEAK IT?
>Customer: Yes.
>TSG: Then you understand what I'm saying.
>Customer: Yes.
>TSG: It varies from computer to computer, so there's no definite answer.
>Customer: What?

If I could continue to the part where he gets shot in the face, I would.

But I learn from my customers a whole lot.

I didn't know I was telepathic.
I didn't know I could magically see what's on their screen.
I didn't know I could "fix" their "Internet" remotely.
I didn't know I could infer their windows type and modem type just by saying "I have a problem".
I didn't know "ADSL" means modem and "[Cable company name]" means cable modem.
I didn't know I'm the be-all end-all security expert.
I didn't know I could fix unrelated to [ISP] problems, like desynchronizing modems.
I didn't know I was idling the 20 minutes you were waiting. I also didn't know I didn't have a previous customer just as retarded before you.

So, people, the next time you call us, keep those guidelines in mind.
The last line was sarcastic. Don't.

No really. Don't.

Training

2008-03-13T11:44:00.005+02:00

Remember when I was rambling about the instruction course?

Yeah, back when Windows 98 was the pinnacle of operating systems.

Well, I open up the corporate email and read:
"To: All agents. If you're willing to show up on days so-and-so for extra hours, you're more than welcome. We're holding a round of simulations for new trainees and I could use all the people I can get. - Instruction manager"

* GLEE! *

What could be better than being a cruel, sinister bastard to unsuspecting interns?

(being the instructor himself, but that's another story)

They were groveling, begging for mercy. I came up with the harshest calls I could come up with.

Then I actually started the simulations. But before, I needed a cheesy intro speech:

>TSG: Hey guys. I'm TSG. You're going to suffer with me. A lot.
>Trainees: ... Crap.
>TSG: By "A lot" I mean you're going to think these are real calls since I base all my causes on ones. Yep.
>Trainees: ...
>Trainees: This isn't going to involve anal hemorrhage, is it?
>TSG: Only if you insist.

And then the shit hit the fan.

>TSG: I have no Internet.
>TSG: What's a dialer?
>TSG: I can't reach the desktop.
>TSG: You bastards suck ass! I need Internet NOW! So shut up and fix it!
>TSG: I've been trying to surf for HOURS and I keep getting the [insert expletives here] error 691/678/769/789/633! HELP ME! I'm paying for this you know!
>TSG: I just bought Internet from you and I still have no Internet, what is this bullshit?!

I think they were crying when I was done. Maybe their pathetic groveling "Please stop!" meant I overdid it.

I was exhausted. My voice died in agony.

But it was all worth it. Now they know what to expect when they begin their internships.

Speaking of windows 98.

Can you believe people still have that piece of crap? Every month or so, a mouth-breathing retard just HAS to call and say:

>Customer: I have windows 98.
>TSG: Can I have your rock?
>Customer: Eh?
>TSG: The one you've been living under.

Eventually, he didn't have the installation CD for Windows 98. I would explain why it's required, but if your balls dropped out/you bleed you should know.

>Customer: So there's no way I can have Internet now?
>TSG: No.
>Customer: I want to talk with to supervisor.
>TSG: Go ahead if you insist, but he'll tell you the same thing.
>Customer: I still want to talk to your supervisor. [ISP name here] doesn't satisfy its commitments towards customers and I know a thing or two about laws.
>TSG: So do I, but if any of my proposed laws were enforced in time, you wouldn't have been born.

* hold *
>TSG (to STSG): Hey man. I got a retard here who won't understand that win98 absolutely requires the installation CDs and I tried all possible methods.
>STSG: Oh god, not these morons again.
>TSG: ... yep. Tell him that he's still retarded.
* back to customer *

>TSG: Right. Here's STSG, he'll churn your tears into butter.

Off he goes. Stupid bloody accountants who think knowing high-school level math makes them Padishah Emperors of the Known Universe.

However, once in two months or so, you get a customer that is not only polite, provides useful information, but he also delivers the one line I had never heard before:

>Customer: I apologize for my stupidity.
>TSG: Wow, what? No way. Are you an evil cyber ninja from Mars here to restore my faith in mankind?
>Customer: No, but I did do something stupid.

Or...

>Customer: It's alright, I can wait as long as necessary.
>TSG: That does it, you are a cyber ninja.
>TSG: This is all a conspiracy.
>TSG: Smart people don't call Tech Support, they got the brains to solve their own problems.
>TSG: Therefore you're fake. Enjoy your disconnect.

Or...

>Customer: * complete information about his rig, peripherals and all I need to work *
>TSG: Complete information? You gotta be kidding me. There's no way people will ever provide information. They think you're telepathic and by saying "I have a problem" you know that their modem is turned off or something.
>Customer: Heh. Yeah. People are stupid.

And the finishing line:

>Customer: Although we didn't come up with a solution, I do thank you for your patience and time.

I didn't think those pure saints existed.

Which means the next three months will be full of arrogant braindead morons.

Case in point.

>Customer: I have an analog modem.

A part of me died inside a little.

Yes, I became stronger, but...

>TSG: Jesus H. Christ. Do you also have a Spectrum ZX by your side?

God damnit, if it wasn't for the guys at the call center or the shitty-yet-stable paycheck I would've quit this crap long ago.

Speaking of the guys at the call center. I'm talking with the current moron, when I hear a yell across the entire center.

>TSG1 (to TSG2): ping 172.84.100.4

* TSG1 throws a PACKET to TSG2 *

>TSG2: reply from 172.84.100.4 time=1000ms

* TSG2 throws a PACKET to TSG1 *

Enjoyable moments like these make some of the work tolerable. That and the nerd humor around.

Most of the time. Times like these:

>Superior: Guys, in case I didn't make it clear. Proactive service is part of your job and I expect us to top the sell meters.
>TSG: For Christ's sake sir, I can't stand it even more than customers.
>Superior: Sucks to be you. Do it anyway.

Make me want to defenestrate people. Now, to find a place where they make iron boots.

Aggression

2008-03-11T21:30:00.003+02:00

Is a bad thing.

Especially towards us. We have to take enough shit from people, the last thing we want is a bitch on PMS or a brain-dead toaster to cry and whine at us because he's too dumb to figure out how to press the power button.

So don't be surprised if we turn up cynical and/or sarcastic and/or make snide remarks.

You won't get them anyway, if you're on the other side of the phone.

>TSG: * opening sentence *
>Customer: Feel like explaining to me why I have no Internet?
>TSG: Good day to you too.
>TSG: I feel fine, thanks for asking.
>TSG: As for the question at hand...
>TSG: No.
>TSG: Figure it out yourself.
>TSG: I'm 100% certain the problem is your stupidity.

I might've paraphrased that. In actuality, I told them the first 20 reasons that popped into my head.

To my amazement the problem was on our side.

...

His modem wasn't turned on.

In the three times I had a problem I couldn't fix (read: desynchronizing/broken modems), the thought of being aggressive towards a representative had never popped into my head. Why? These people are paid to solve my problems, so the least I could do is be humane to them. I also know they can't do much from their position, it's not like they can magically make my modem synchronize with their DSLAM.

As opposed to the last 30 morons that called them.

But I never said they were smart.

Case in point.

I had to conference call the cable company to transfer a business customer to MPLS. Since he's a business class, the transfer is (usually) done on the spot.

>C(able)TSG: Hello, this is [Cable company name here]. How can I help you?
>TSG: Hello there, how are things out there?
>CTSG: Fine, you?
>TSG: I'd rather not answer that. Anyway, this is TSG from [ISP name here] and I got a business customer here who wants to move to MPLS. Want his unique ID?
>CTSG: Hold on one moment, I'll transfer you to the relevant department.

* 5 minutes of obnoxious on-hold crap later *

>CTSG2: Hello, this is [Cable company name here]. How can I help you?
>TSG: Hello, this is TSG from [ISP name here] and I got a business customer here who wants to move to MPLS. I got transferred here from your tech support.
>CTSG2: Wait, why did that CTSG transfer you over here? We're the moving department.

As in "we coordinate between the time you move apartments and we hook up your cable".

I began to wonder if I've been listened to at all.

You could imagine how much I was swearing while keeping the people muted.

>CTSG2: I'll transfer you to the really correct department this time.

Naturally, they had a 20-minute waiting time. I had to drop the customer with them (after telling him precisely what to say) and handle the next moron in line.

You'd think it could be a call I'd get rid of quickly, but...

>TSG: * opening sentence cut in middle to see it's a guy from another department calling *
>CPG: Yo. I got a customer here whom I convinced to stay with us.

That's short for Customer Preservation. Aka the single worst department ever to work at.

>TSG: You want a medal for that? Why'd you call us?
>CPG: Yeah, well. I'm starting her user all over again and I need you to help her type that in her router.
>TSG: ... don't you people know we can't touch routers unless they're purchased from us?
>CPG: You're the TSG, I don't touch technicalities.
>TSG: Yes, but I'd expect you to have a brain. I guess us TSGs are the only people with brains in the company.
>CPG: I'm bringing her up.

A female customer. Who just got convinced not to leave us.

Great. The last thing I need is a condescending bitch who thinks her measly monthly payment makes her the queen bitch of the Universe.

>TSG: I'm TSG from the Tech Support department.
>Customer: Now listen here. I just got convinced to stay and I still have no Internet.
>TSG: And I care because? It's not my fault CPG is too retarded to have changed your username while enabling it all over again.
>Customer: Well, change it back?
>TSG: No shit sherlock, I already tried. The system won't let me because it's already taken.
>Customer: Hold on, let me put on my careface. It's your problem, fix it.
>TSG: And I'm liable to what the other guy did because...?
>Customer: You two are the same person to me.
>TSG: You DO realize I have the right to deny service the second I'm insulted, right? So stop your bitching and start helping me to help you to help me sustain my mental health. And paycheck.

In the end I had to bring up her router's TSGs to get her to type her username in.

Did I hear a "Thank you TSG and I'm sorry for yelling at you earlier"? No. Sometimes I think what's going on in these people's heads. Just because they waited 15 minutes on the phone they think they can vent their frustration at me?

The treatment you'll get from me is independent of waiting times, the amount of departments you've been transferred through or any other reason.

It's completely uniform.

I hate all of you equally. So stop your whining and be a nice little customer.

Of course, when you call us, there's no way you can be polite or pleasant, right? You just HAVE to be the most obnoxious, annoying and sanity-shattering retard to exist.

>TSG: * opening sentence *
>Customer: I haven't had Internet for a week now! Only now I got Internet connected!

(That means only now the infrastructure company is hooking up her cables. I had to use a rusty vice to get that information out of her.)

>TSG: ... I still don't see how this is related to me as you obviously CAN surf now.
>Customer: Well who's going to reimburse me for not having Internet the last week? I'm paying for it you know.
>TSG: Not me. And the relevant department is closed for the night, so you'll have to get your greedy tentacles to them tomorrow morning.
>Customer: You can't reimburse me right here right now?! I'm disconnecting, your service sucks!
>TSG: Don't let the door hit you on the way out. Even though our department doesn't even have access to this data, you still insist on doing something I don't have permissions to. In fact, you don't even deserve an Internet connection.

I have more stories but duty calls.

By that I mean copious amounts of alcohol.

Make something idiot-proof

2008-03-04T01:56:00.008+02:00

And someone will make a better idiot. Today I want to talk about retards.

They're everywhere. Even in places you'd think would filter them efficiently.

It seems the company has, to my great disappointment, allowed retards in the call centers.

Not our department, thank god. Us TSGs actually have to KNOW a thing or two in order to work as TSGs. And since our customers are dumber than Dodos on crack cocaine, we often have to use our brains for them.

I mean it.

I can count the number of customers who knew what they were talking about on my hands. I can count the number of people I had a pleasant conversation with if you chopped all my fingers and toes.

Yes, yes... about the retards. I'm talking about Customer Service here.

I used to pity them once. After all, we just deal with retards. They deal with retards and their money. Then I had some of the most moronic calls just to realize these morons opened a DSL package (with DSL permissions) to a cable user and vice-versa.

Let's use logic here for a change. Suppose a customer calls who's listed as a DSL user. Unless he asks specifically for an infrastructure change, there's no bloody reason to change his surfing permissions. The same applies to the fancy crap we sell to these idiots. It's painfully obvious there ARE differences between DSL and cable. [At least over here, DSL technology is (duh!) using PPPoE while cable users use a VPN connection. Other than the whole copper wires/coaxial cables thing.]

But no. They fuck up. Then the customer (rightfully) calls one of us TSGs, wondering why they "have no Internet". And I have to dig through the shit some keyboard-dribbling dodo on magic mushrooms did with their user.

>CSG's Brain: So I did an upgrade to this guy. Should I even bother looking up the catalogue numbers for [Customer's infrastructure here]? Why no, I'll just type in the first one available, wait for the update and tell them it's done. I also won't document this act for shit, more work for the Tech Support department is always so much fun.

>Customer: I have no Internet.
>TSG: * Set of usual guiding questions the to get the info the Retarded Sea Cucumber (I meant "Customer", I swear!) should've provided in the first place *
>TSG: Hmmm. Apparently the guys over customer service fucked up with your user, giving you wrong permissions. Hold on a second please. * mute *

>TSG (to call center): Stupid retarded airheads! Why can't they do their job right and give me work I shouldn't be dealing with in the first place?
>People around: What did they do this time? Forget to enable his user? Gave him DSL permissions when he's cable? Collected his debt but didn't unfreeze his account? Listed a business customer as a private one?
>TSG (to people around): E: All of the above. Stupid blondes, should've been bloody waitresses instead of dealing with issues that require you to think.

Yeah. One of their fuck-ups was so royal, Intel left us to join another ISP. Intel. Because of these morons.

Just think for a while here. But not for too long, you might get permanent brain damage. Anyway, I had to conference call customer service again just to fix their problems.

[That call ended with the RSC in question thanking me for my professionalism. In return, I proceeded upstairs and beat up the moron in customer service for their retardation.]

Of course, the retarded sea cucumbers with down's syndrome think each and every one of us can do everything, including coming over their house just to do something they should damn know how to do.

I bet you can imagine this. I must've set up two or three dialers in over 10 years of using my trusty Internets, and... you guessed it, I used logic. Let's see the basic process of setting up a PPPoE dialer. I'll assume only basic knowledge.

My computer doesn't know how to connect to the Internet by itself and it says "Modem" on the box that came with the infrastructure technician guy. Whatever this "Modem" is, it must be facilitating the connection, because I didn't have one before.
* Several logical steps to plug in the modem. Damn, this should be obvious, but... "Plug in the appropriate cables into their respective receptacles.", "How do I do that?", "/facepalm, you don't deserve a connection to the Internet before you learn what a computer is. Go away, you make me sick." *
So... since this modem won't connect by itself, as evident by "This page cannot be displayed" in my IE, I need to let my computer know it can connect. I'm adding a control element to it, therefore it should be in the "Control panel".
This "Control Panel" should hold elements that are integral to the computer's function, therefore it should be easily accessible. "Start" should be a good start, *click* Control Panel, there it is.
"Internet" has "net" in it. So does "Network". I wonder if there's a correlation between the two. Network Connections, there you go.
Hmmm. My computer is only connected to the modem. I should let it know it can connect to the internet now. "Create a new connection".
* Basic steps to get through the install wizard *
I'm connected! I did it!

And there's absolutely zero need to call us. See what you can achieve with just THINKING every now and then? You should try it once. You might like it and won't have to call us.

* a 40-minute call where the RSC can't type in their username *
>RSC: Can't you just send someone over?
>TSG: You DO realize this process shouldn't take more than 5 minutes, right? The only one to blame is your rampant stupidity and if I were you, I'd never reproduce for the greater good of humanity.

As some people might have noticed, I've become increasingly sarcastic recently. I guess those chill pills I began to take don't affect me much nowadays. Many sentences I wouldn't dare to say earlier are being spoken freely.

>Customer: Hello, I have a problem.
>Customer: * dead silence *
>TSG: It's alright, I tracked down it's reasons, solved it and reduced its chances of occurring again.
>Customer: Really?
>TSG: Of course not you dolt, I have no idea what your problem is nor do I care about it.

Then they get pissy and whiny and tell me my service is bad.

>Customer: Your service is crap! I'm calling tomorrow and asking to leave you.
>TSG: Don't let the door hit you on the way out. It's not our fault you're too stupid to type in your password correctly, as evident by the hundreds of failed entries with the reason "Bad Password". Don't take me wrong though, I'd love to cancel your deal on the spot but I just can't access the cancellation panel. Sad, don't you think?

There's also the people who are convinced the problem is on our side.

Trust me, when there is a problem on our side, we're the first to know. At least by the dreaded Plasma Screen Of Death that says Calls Waiting: 9001.

At least we're responsible enough to let you morons know there is one and put up a message on the answering machine - not that you actually listen to it. I'd tell more about those times, but I'm more tired than a stud who worked in a snowfield for 8 hours straight and went back home uphill.

You guys think I'm mentally unstable? 'Cause I keep feeling like implementing my "Stress relief room" idea more and more.

Witty title

2008-02-26T23:22:00.003+02:00

This is a verbose post.

Stolen quote.

Semi funny work story 1.

Call transcript 1.

Comments.

Pondering the future of mankind.

Semi funny work story 2.

Call transcripts 2-4.

Comments.

Finishing sentence.

Go away, I'm tired.

I'm going to be rich and famous

2008-02-24T22:18:00.004+02:00

After I invent a device that lets you stab people in the face across the Internet.

How was my work, you ask?

Fine.

No really, I totally didn't have mouth-breathing lobotomized cockroaches that couldn't see more than one step ahead.

No really, these people aren't stupid.

Or...

>TSG: Go to Start -> Control Panel -> Network Connections.
>Customer: So I click on "Start"?
>TSG: Yes.
>Customer: I don't see it.

- Or -

>TSG: Double-click on Local Area Connection, click the "Support" tab and read me the IP address.
>Customer: With the left or right button?
>TSG (borderline enraged): Left.

- Or-

I happened to dictate a URL that has 'a', 'e' and 'i' in it. The customer couldn't distinguish the letters apart. Since most keyboards here are multilingual, I managed to tell him the URL by telling him to push the keys letter by letter using a different language.

I had to take a chill pill after that call.

I also managed to raise the concerns for my mental health.

I think the part where I put him on mute and began swearing in 5 languages across the entire call center might've had something to do with that.

- Or -

I get a call from a returning customer. I check the documentation from the previous TSG and I see that he was instructed exactly how to handle error 789. You'll never guess what error he had.

That's right.

789.

This I don't get. You get a set of instructions a retarded lobotomized cockroach with Down's syndrome would get, yet you have to call again.

The next person to say "But it's easier to call" gets kicked in the nose. With an iron boot. You have instructions, use them. Hell, our site has the same frigging instructions to set up dialers and stuff we use.

But no, people keep clicking screenshots and think it's our fault. I had that numerous times. They just don't. Read. The. Huge. Ass. Text. I keep wondering what's going on in these people's brains.

>Customer's Brain: Hmmm, this is a huge text. Should I read it? Hell no! I'll call tech support since I'm too stupid to read! * dial our number *

>TSG: What does the text say?
>Customer: It's a bunch of letters.
>TSG: No shit sherlock. Read it to me.
>Customer: It's something about [this] and something about [that].
>TSG: Tell me exactly what it says.

How the hell am I magically supposed to know what's going on in their computers?

I bet you can imagine the calls:

>Customer: Hello, I have a problem.
>TSG: It's alright, I discovered its reasons, fixed it and ensured it'd never happen again.

See how disgusting it is?

Did the customer learn to properly give the needed information? No.
Did the customer learn to cope with disappointment? No.
Did the customer learn to handle adversity? No.
Did the customer learn to leave me the hell alone? No.

Case in point.

>TSG: You'll have to fix this problem with [their infrastructure provider]. Their number is [number].
>Customer: Can't you call them?
>TSG: No, we have over 9000 waiting calls and we have to serve every moron like you in turn.
>Customer: So I talk with them, then I call you guys again?
>TSG: No, I've already blacklisted your phone number and deleted you from our systems. Never call us again. In fact, disassemble your computer and set yourself on fire.
>Customer: Oh okay.

Repeat 50 times a day.

Did I mention I hate people?

Anyway, you know how everything just has to have a fancy retarded little nickname to it?

We have one of those. The company motto, for example.

Another example is this: Apparently, some people are too stupid to turn on their computers without calling tech support. So the team leaders decided to make an ingenious move. Designate a team to specifically handle customers who called the center more than 5 times during the month.

The team's name? Guess. These assholes named the team "Popular customers team".

After recovering from the heart attack, I had an epiphany. Designate a room in the call center with punching bags and dummies modeled after the most retarded customers we ever took care of.

It's name? "Stress relief room".

I think the CEO would be happy to give his room for this. I'm also sure the room would be 100% full 24/7. Regardless of size.

My superiors need to hear this suggestion immediately.

(Bad) Parenting, Morons and Miscellaneous

2008-02-18T22:04:00.004+02:00

Seems to have gone downhill quite a lot recently.

Today's "BUT THINK OF THE CHILDREN" paradigm has put young impressionable children at a very delicate situation. Which is why people spend research funds on filtering algorithms so your teenage son might, God forbid, stumble across a porn site.

That's just stupid. When I was raised, there were none of those things. None of the content was filtered either. You wanted porn - just metacrawler it up (because Google didn't exist back then).

As for today's (and you, [future]) parents: Stop raising your children in an impregnable bubble! Experience is what makes us learn. It distinguishes us apart from animals and makes us who we are.

You're probably wondering: "What the hell is he on about? How is this related to his usual stuff?". The answer is simple.

We (the ISP) market things like that. Combine software that isn't "Next -> Next -> Next" (even though I had people ask me "Do I click on 'Next'?" when installing stuff) with the average customer's IQ and you get one of these gems:

>TSG: * Opening sentence I can't be arsed to repeat *
>Customer: Hello. I ordered some website filtering and wanted to see if it's active yet.
>TSG: Let me check.

I see her service is active.

>TSG: You're fine. "Inappropriate" content should be successfully blocked now. Try accessing one of those "inappropriate" sites.
>Customer: I'm at work and can't to it.

Imagine the tone of a snotty, condescending woman who thinks her crap money makes her the queen of the universe. It's a regularity here.

>TSG: Well, you have to be at a computer and logged on so you can see it. From here it all looks fine.
>Customer: I just want to filter out all porn sites.

30-something billion websites and she wants that? How about telling your kid: "Hey [name]. Going there is fine and natural. You just gotta use moderation. Too much is really bad for you." Let him experiment. That's the whole "experience" thing.

Then I had to explain her how to access her user panel and edit it if it requires any changes. She got upset because apparently, we're supposed to filter all (and I mean ALL) "inappropriate" content at people's whims. The usual "I'm not good with computers" crap pops up. I ponder the future of humanity.

That call ended pretty amicably. By "pretty" I mean I had to hit throw the headphone, hit the mute button and scream "That stupid cow" with a bunch of expletives across half the call center. Frustration and rage do that.

People were concerned. Mostly. Because they got used to one of the TSGs losing it every damn hour.

But it's not the fact that morons exist that bothers me. It's the fact that they statistically outnumber the more intelligent people. If this paradigm continues, we'll find ourselves in a world full of idiots one day. The movie Idiocracy sums up the idea quite well.

But I'm rambling too much, back to the point.

The usual "I have no internet", "I seem connected but Internet won't let me internet" or the ever-lovable "Is there a problem with your Internet now?"/"Is this internet? I have no internet" call.

90% of them caused by customer stupidity. Like trying to disconnect from a bridge mode modem, right-clicking their network connection and disabling it instead. Yet they expect me to dig their shit up.

[The next person to say "It's your job" gets stabbed in the face. My job is to play Bubbles or some puzzle games. Solve your own damn problems. I did, why can't you? Yes, when I had a problem I identified it, traced its source and ensured it'd never happen again. I only called people when the problem wasn't in my control, like desynchronizing modems.]

But no, we're supposed to help people who can't tell a dialer apart from their assholes. The guys over at the marketing and system departments aren't helping at all.

For instance, we had a system upgrade to remove error 691 from our systems. The replacement turned out to be a sticky page that says in the clearest language possible: "Your username or password are wrong."; It also shows a nice screenshot of the dialer with instructions a retarded lobotomized cockroach would get.

You know how many calls we got rid of thanks to that?

Zero.

Instead of "The internet won't let me have internet" calls I get:

>Customer: I have internet but there's no internet in my internet.

This might have been paraphrased. As my other sentences but those were my thoughts.

>TSG: Wow.
>TSG: That's really touching.
>TSG: I wonder who'll play you in the movie.
>Customer: I want you to help me.
>TSG: I don't. With that much information I'm more likely to hang up on you and go something productive like masturbating. How about telling me exactly what you're doing and its results?
>Customer: Well, I open up the internet and it won't let me surf.
>TSG: See? That wasn't so hard. You don't sound like a starfish with down's syndrome now. What's the result?
>Customer: It says something about my username or password being wrong.

Quick check in the logs will either show nothing (Wrong username) or "Failed reason: Bad password" (if you can't figure this one out, GTFO of my Internet).

>TSG: Then it's highly likely your username or password are wrong.

Then I usually run an identity check and give them their extremely simple passwords. But every once in a while, some moron tries to input their username and password in the screenshot of the dialer and complain it's not working.

Then I had an epiphany: Changing the sticky page to huge flashing red text with max volume sound playing "Your username or password are wrong!" indefinitely. That ought to do the trick, right?

...

Right?

* 50 retarded calls later*

Can't wait to be a senior.

Crap

2008-02-12T15:09:00.001+02:00

Just like "love", it has many meanings.

It could mean the update schedule for Tech Support.

It could mean the state of the world.

For me, it means the way we're treated. Apparently, the morons at marketing got the customers used to the following: "If you yell hard enough and long enough, they will give you anything you want".

That could not be farther from the truth. In fact, don't ever yell at TSGs. It will only make us want to "accidentally" disconnect from the work terminal.

Remember, most (all) of us don't give a flying fuck about your measly problems. So keep crying about your "Limited or no connectivity" on your WLAN or how your router is causing you slowness, because we really don't care.

Even if we did, company policy says not to touch it with an 80-foot pole. We even have a nice disclaimer on the site, yet people actually think that:

I can see their desktops when configuring their dialers.
I know their homepage.
I know their bank's username/password.
I can come over their house hundreds of miles from the call center to plug in their modem.
The shift manager will come over to their workplace to fix their Outlook.
I know how, not speaking of allowed to, access their router and configure it.
Our speed tests shouldn't be trusted even when I tested them on the infrastructure level and got maximum speed.
Every problem they encounter is our fault.
The word "Reimbursement".
They deserve anything.
I have influence or control over the waiting times.
I can hop into the DNS server and reroute them to reduce their pings to BDSM porn sites.
Low-sodium salt is real.
Swearing over the phone.
People who call me from their cars/workplaces and think I can solve their problems.

I had calls for each and every one of the points.

Well, I lied about point 11, but that's just as stupid. Let's go point by point and see how stupid it really is.

Retarded. They're not even connected.
Moronic, yet I had a customer ask me the following: "When I used to open up some Internet, something used to go up, but now it doesn't. Why?".

About as informative as a retarded sea cucumber on crystal meth.
I still don't know or care about their problems.
Because I obviously monitor your computer and can track changes to your homepage.
Because I'd rather hijack your homepage than play Bubbles or 3dLogic.

This is related to us because...? The customer was surfing fine (that's where our treatment of problems ends) but he gets a "Bad username/password" error when logging his bank site. Seriously.
I've been yelled at because I asked them to plug in their bloody modems. A female customer got PMS on the spot and began screaming hysterically: "I'm not an electrician! How the hell am I supposed to know which cable goes where? You come over and fix it for me because I'm paying for this shit!"

"I'm paying" doesn't mean you're the queen of the world. Drama queen maybe, but you get exactly what you pay for. We won't go bankrupt over your pathetic money.
Don't ever dare to scream at us. Do I have to say we have the right to deny service to anyone whose behavior is intolerable?
Every modem has 3 ports. Their jacks are different. Figure it out, morons. I've had customers try to plug in a phone cable into an Ethernet port and vice-versa.

I've had it happen on a recent shift. Yes, we had problems with the mail server. Have to send an email NOW? Use gmail, retard. The shift managers are busy enough as it is: Yelling at us, talking with the guys with Customer Service, figuring out recurrent problems, talking over with the system guys if a server crashed, etc... They are indeed too busy for you. That's why we and the STSGs are there.
Can't touch it with an 80-foot pole even if I know it inside out. Company policy, not me. Don't like it? Cry me a river, build me a bridge and get over it. It's YOUR router, not us.
I covered it before, but another moron had to ask me that question. Well, if you don't trust us, off with you. Less retards to deal with. That was AFTER I tested his speed over the coaxial cable level, i.e. as lowest as you can get. I told him he's fine, but he kept insisting that some completely unrelated test said otherwise, therefore the problem is on our side. Even after I proved mathematically that his speed is indeed the maximum he can get for the deal he signed up for.
People, get it through your thick skulls: Even though we're not infallible (as evident by the last few weeks), statistically 90% of the problems are your fault. From poorly-configured dialers, outlook accounts to additional services we provide, very rarely the problem is on our side. When it is, we take steps to ensure it doesn't happen again.
Customer Service is over there. I just don't care.
"I deserve" triggers my moron alarm. You call for help, you don't deserve it. In fact, I'd rather play Bubbles than take your call in the first place.
When waiting times are high, we keep getting bitched at constantly. PLEASE. Don't vent your frustration on us. We know about them better than you, we have them updated in real-time. At least appreciate we took your call instead. When your opening line is "Why, thank you for responding in the first place, I've been waiting for so-and-so" in a condescending tone, I don't feel like helping you. I'd rather transfer you back to the queue so you wait some more. If you have to mention "wait times", say "Thanks for taking my call TSG, you guys must be quite busy down there". I'll be way more amicable with you, really.
You probably shouldn't be watching that in the first place. The only thing I can and will do is reroute you to an alternate DNS server.
That's just stupid. Salt. NaCl. Curiosity got the best of me and I found out that they put in KCl (Potassium Chloride) instead of ~6% of sodium chloride. KCl is used in lethal injections. Do your own math.
Don't. The "hang up" button is really close to me. I don't give a crap about your bad day or how you can't send your baby photos. It doesn't justify swearing at me or wishing the company go bankrupt.
Your presence at the computer is required. Period. Whether it's pinging our DNSs, configuring your email, you have to be there. End of story.

Which pretty much sums up the average customer's IQ. But since I'm the nicest and most altruistic person on Earth, I want to make your time calling us a little better.

So here's a guide, when calling Tech Support (not necessarily me) to make a TSG less hostile to you:

Know your problem ahead. Saying "Hello, I have a problem" isn't making the call go anywhere. You have a problem, no shit sherlock. Isn't it why you called us in the first place? It will also piss me off and make me think you're retarded. You probably are, but at least TRY not to make yourself one on your opening line.
When we need to know your modem, don't tell us the logo written on it. Neither is saying "Your modem" because we don't market modems. Try seeing what's WRITTEN on it and infer its model. It's not that hard, I promise.
Your username. Know it. It's your unique identifier and makes my time a lot easier. Being connected through MPLS or a router is not an excuse not to remember them.
Our system can recognize you using your caller ID. It's preferred you call from your account's registered phone number and/or don't mask your call ID.
If you need your username/password, have means of identification readily available.
Appreciate the fact I took my precious time from playing Bubbles to take your call. Never bitch at me.
If I can't solve your problem, it's probably not my fault in the first place. I have very few things under control, so your threats to send complaint letters when your WLAN isn't connected won't do jack shit. Don't whine about poor service.
Our department only handles browsing, email and additional products. We don't do crap if your ICQ/Messenger isn't working or if your emule download speeds are slow. For obvious reasons.
Don't ever confuse us with our parent company. They handle ADSL infrastructure. We are the ISP. Our phone numbers are different. Have a problem with them? Call them, not us. Your modem can't synchronize? You're trying to connect to their internal network and get error 691? Call them.

I have plenty of calls to update Tech Support with, but not now. I want you to read, memorize and adhere to these simple rules. Hell, they could be deduced using common sense, but nothing is common about common sense.

I hate people.

>TSG: [ISP name here] at your service, TSG speaking.
>Customer: Leave a message to Customer Service to call me tomorrow.
>TSG: Can't do that.
>Customer: Then tell your shift manager to.
>TSG: Neither can he, call them yourself.

This is the time they get enraged and yell at me because some department opened an ADSL package when they have cable infrastructure. As if it's my fault.

Treat TSGs better, people. We're here to solve your problems. The least we want is some appreciation.

Motivation

2008-01-29T22:55:00.000+02:00

I got a lot of it recently.

If there are young impressionable children among Tech Support readers, they should take this to heart.

By that, I mean: "Just get the point and follow it for the rest of your life". You know those "Stay in school", "Don't do drugs" motivationals that people hardly adhere to?

They don't do jack shit. For one reason: They're a bad idea wrapped with a stupid design and shipped in a retarded box.

This is why.

>TSG: [ISP name here] at your service, TSG speaking.
>Customer: Hello TSG. I'm not receiving any email.

I send a test email, check their mailbox and voile, it's there.

>TSG: It's fine, your email program is just poorly configured.
>Customer: What's an email program? You mean like opening email?

Did I mention it's pretty much equivalent to using "Internet" as a noun?

>TSG: You know, Outlook Express, Microsoft Outlook, freakin' Incredimail.
>Customer: I don't know, I just open the email and my email comes to me, but now there's no email there and I KNOW I should get some.
>TSG: * instructions to reach the web interface for the mail servers *
>Retarded Sea Cucumber: You mean open up the internet?

Long story short, she had to re-ask me every single instruction.

>Customer: What do I do?
After I told her explicitly how to reach the site.

>Customer: Where it says "Address"?
When I told her to type the URL.

>Customer: I can't see it.
When I told her where the address bar is.

You get the point. I hope.

20 minutes later, she manages to type a 10-character URL properly and actually gets to the site.

>Customer: It says here "User name, Password".
>TSG: Then you should probably type in your user name and password.
>Customer: So I should type it?
>TSG: Yes.
>Customer: Login failed.
>TSG: Because you didn't type in the password.
>Customer: I had to do that? You didn't tell me that.
>TSG: See "user name AND password".
>Customer: Oh. Well, not everyone's smart like you.
>TSG: If they were, the world would be a much better place.

There's no need for a poorly designed guilt trip. This is due to several reasons.

First, it doesn't work on me. If I had any consciousness or compassion, I might care a little.

Second, I don't give a damn about your education, you, your problem, how much you're paying, etc. I think I made that point clear enough.

Third, saying that is obvious. You're calling us in the first place. Which could mean two things:

You're too dumb to solve your own problems.
The problem actually stems from us and needs to get fixed.

Point 2 happened some time ago. I'll elaborate on it later. However 90% of the cases are customers' own stupidity.

Prime example:

>TSG: [ISP name here] at your service, TSG speaking.
>Customer: Hello. I can't get any email.

That's just like "not having Internet". I can't get any valuable information other than "Customer is a moron". Quick check in the logs, and...

>TSG: It appears you're not connected to the Internet.
>Customer: I have to be connected to get my email?

Before I started working, calls like that would land in the "There's no way this is real" category. How wrong I was...

>TSG: No, your ELECTRONIC mail magically appears in your mailbox.

Long story short, the solution to the "problem" was connecting them. By that I mean 10-minute instructions to reach their dialer, input their user name/password and click "Connect".

And FINALLY, this isn't a case of superior intelligence. I've had people with alleged Ph.D's call me and ask the same retarded questions as that retarded sea cucumber.

No offense to the actual retarded sea cucumbers was intended in the above sentence.

See where I'm going here?

...

Yes. Using your brains, strain the atlas bone, etc... You know the drill.

Back to the first call. After she finally saw her emails and got convinced it wasn't related to us, she said:

>Customer: Wow, you're really smart and you can give good service.
>TSG: This crap is damn obvious, you should know this but God knows why not.

Paraphrased.

>Customer: Well, we dropped out of high school, so we never learned as much.
>TSG: Oh my dear god.

Not that I care but Jesus H. Christ! I thought it was impossible given our shitty system, but doing that is quite an achievement. Of failure.

>Customer: I bet you think I'm a total idiot now, right?
>TSG: Yes. You're the single most retarded customer I've ever faced and if I could, I'd ban you from getting 100 meters to a computer. In fact, I'd ban you from driving, reproducing and voting. You're a dead branch in human evolution and your faulty genes need to be removed from the gene pool for the greater good of humanity. You're detrimental to our evolution and pose an existential threat to us as a species. Now get off the line so I won't have to see my IQ drop in front of me.

Then I went to the archive room and wiped all new recordings. Then I wiped the logs of recording activities. Then I went to the camera feed room with a stun gun, electromagnet and duct tape. Then I flashed everyone in the call center with my trusty neuralyzer.

In retrospect, I think I could've handled the call better.

Now, what did we learn from this?

If there is anything you, the young impressionable readers of Tech Support should learn is the following immutable truth, the guideline of life: STAY IN YOUR CURRENT EDUCATIONAL FACILITY! FINISH YOUR SCHOOL AND MOVE ON TO THE NEXT TIER! USE YOUR BRAINS!

Or you might end up like the person at the other end of the phone line.

"I'm not good with computers"

2008-01-27T23:03:00.000+02:00

This phrase almost pisses me off as much as using "Internet" as a noun.

Being unable to set up dialers, outlook accounts, etc... is fully understandable.

Yes, I can understand you haven't engorged yourself in the inner workings of your computer. That's why we're here for and that's why we get paid.

But...

A situation I find totally unacceptable is saying "I'm not good with computers" and giving up on using your brain.

The ability to think [critically] is what makes us human. Not the classification of Homo Sapiens, not the highest brain-to-body-mass ratio on the planet, not anything like that.

However, I feel I covered that topic well enough, though so I'll get right to the point.

I had the (mis)fortune to sit next to a TSG who got an... unusual call. We call those calls "delusional", however everyone knows that's fancy for "retarded". For continuity's sake I'll write the call as it went from her point of view. I just listened to the chit-chat while reading the report for that call.

>TSG: [ISP name here] at your service, TSG speaking.
>Customer: Hello? I can't get to the Internet.

+1, might not be completely retarded.

>TSG: Okay, try surfing through "My computer" to [static IP address here].

Standard procedure here, nothing out of the ordinary.

>Customer: Huh?

Alarm bells are ringing.

>TSG: Open up "My Computer" and try surfing from there.
>Customer: You mean open the box?
>TSG: No, I mean double-click on the "My Computer" icon.
>Customer: I can't see it.

Danger, Will Robinson!

>TSG: Start -> My Computer.
>Customer: What did you say? I'm not good with computers, so try to explain in terms I'll understand.

I saw alarm bells ringing around the TSG's head. Literally.

>TSG: Is your computer even on?
>Customer: How can I tell?

Sweet Jesus!

>TSG: What color is your monitor?
>Customer: White.
>TSG: What does it say on the monitor?
>Customer: Uh... ASUS.

Remember that these people are allowed to reproduce, vote, drive, work, etc...

>TSG: What color is the inside part of the monitor?
>Customer: Black.
>TSG: Try pressing the power button. I have the feeling it'll be a good start.
>Customer: Which is the power button?

The computer vendor should've sold him a Mac.

>TSG: The big button right next to where it says "Power".
>Customer: It doesn't do anything.
>TSG: Then it's no wonder you "have no Internet". You really need a working computer to surf the Internet.
>Customer: No one told me that. You guys sold me DSL!
>TSG: We usually assume you people aren't that retarded. I guess we got a counter-argument right there.

Do I really need to tell you it's paraphrased? I hope not.

>Customer: Well, this sucks. No one told me I need a computer to have my Internet! I'm disconnecting.
>TSG: Good riddance.

That's how the call went. More or less.

I was idling next to her and listening intently. I can testify this being 100% real. I think we eventually put her on speaker phone for all to hear.

Can you see my misanthropy now?

It just got amplified recently, and I want to tell you why.

Our team leader gathered the team on one evening. After a boring acquaintance round we agreed that we have drug dealers, necrophiliacs and mail order granny dealers in the team.

I kept my misanthropy hidden from everyone. Mainly because they didn't know what the word "misanthrope" stands for.

The team leader then told some of his stories when he was a TSG. A senior TSG to be exact.

STSG's don't deal with customers. (I have immediate future aspirations)

Unless a customer specifically wants a "manager call". That's when a senior calls the customer and explains them why they're still retarded. A prime example I'll remember for a long time is:

Some time, they had to fax a customer instructions how to run a system restore.

Yes, going Start -> All Programs -> Accessories -> System Tools -> System Restore is that hard.

Anyway, something was wrong in her fax machine and 2 of the 4 pages didn't arrive. So they resent the fax and it arrived fine. The call went something like this:

>Customer: I deserve a reimbursement for the 2 pages lost in my fax machine because of you!
>TSG: And that's related to us because...?
>Customer: Well, if you hadn't sent the friggin' fax, I wouldn't lose 2 pages over nothing!

She's griping about 2 pages of paper. If I were in his place, I'd probably put her on hold to bash my forehead against the desk.

>TSG: Okay, wait 5 minutes please. I'll call you back.

* exactly 5 minutes later, no seriously, 300 seconds *

>TSG: Alright [customer name here], I've reimbursed you for two (2) blank pages.
>Customer: Where are they?
>TSG: See your fax machine.

See what he did there?

>TSG: Would you like more? I mean, I got a 500-pack right here and I'm feeling generous.
>Customer: I knew you'd see it my way.

These people are allowed to reproduce.
These people are allowed to vote.
These people are allowed to drive.
These people are allowed to work in potentially dangerous environments.

I'm going to promote eugenics and selective breeding.

Using your brain

2008-01-26T02:11:00.001+02:00

It doesn't hurt. Really. I can testify that it really doesn't hurt!

So at least try it freaking ONCE.

Just like people who want me to help set up a dialer when their network card isn't even installed. Sure, you can (and probably do) call me a pretentious condescending prick, but I'd like to take some time to explain you how, just by thinking clearly, you can deduce fairly complex stuff.

Most of my customers can't.

Hell, most of them don't even know their operating system.

>TSG: So, [Customer name here], tell me your version of windows.

It matters to set up dialers. (You wouldn't believe how many people call for elementary stuff like that)

>Customer: How can I tell?
>TSG: * Instructions *
>Retarded Sea Cucumber: I see a bunch of letters.
>TSG: Reading them would be a good start.
>Retarded Sea Cucumber: My English sucks.
>TSG: No, your brain is dead. It also was dead to begin with. You're retarded.

Paraphrased. Just slightly.

>TSG: Now read it before I hang up on you, cancel your package, blacklist your phone numbers, erase your contact info, sign you up for the maximum number of content IDs, report your credit card as stolen and ban your IP from our site.

Yes, I said just that.

>Customer: Meecrosoft whinedows XP

Verbatim.

I can understand if someone is really bad at the language, but LEARN IT FOR THE LOVE OF GOD! The prevalent language of our beloved Internet is English. See the address bar? English. 2girls1cup? English.

I learned it. Why can't you? I'm not even that smart.

Anyway, back to the topic.

If I had to setup an Internet connection not knowing anything about the inner workings of my computer, I'd probably think like this:

This is the computer. It's made up of several intricately connected parts.
These parts are independent of each other. Evident by my ability to remove any of those. They're still integral to the overall workings of the computer, but I can replace them with other models. This means they must communicate in one way or another.
This way of communication also has to be universal, because there are so many different computers. It also has to be recognized by whatever thing that translates 0s and 1s to what I see on the monitor.
What's this "driver" thing? Using 1, 2 and 3, this "driver" thingamabob has to be the stuff that combines all the stuff together. I'll install it. Even its name implies it "drives" whatever makes my connection to the Internet possible.
"Local Area Connection" appeared in the lower right-hand corner of the screen. "Local", "Area" and "Connection" must all mean that this telephone-like connection is now recognized.

I'm talking about Ethernet cables here.
Now, how hard can this be? Just logical thinking. It could get you far, you should try it once.

* ring *
>TSG: [ISP name here] at your service, TSG speaking.
>Customer: Hello. I'd like you to help me do an initial connection on a freshly-bought computer.

I did too many calls like that to get annoyed.

>TSG: Okay, Start -> Control Panel -> Network Connections
>Customer: Done.

I'm paraphrasing it slightly to get to the point.

>TSG: Is there a "Local Area Connection" or anything like it in the folder?
>Customer: No.
>TSG: And this is a freshly-bought computer.
>Customer: Yes.
>TSG: Install your motherboard's drivers and please call again.
>Customer: So I have to install them?
>TSG: Yes.

This part is really weird. Why people re-ask stupid questions?
From a different call:

>TSG: Okay, click on Start.
>Customer: So I should click on "Start"?
>TSG: Yes, you should.

I know there's the will to be sure, but again, USE YOUR FREAKING BRAINS! They're not there to strain your atlas bone.

Of course, brains and customers are mutually exclusive in 99.99% of the cases.

I had to run netsh with one of the customers lately. Network Shell is a CLI in windows XP used to access network-related commands at the command line level.

>TSG: Okay, type "i i r 1.txt".

This is syntactic sugar for "interface ip reset 1.txt". Guess what it does.

>Customer: Which button is the space?
>TSG: It's right next to the "any" key.

I'm not being sarcastic this time, I said just that.

* 20 seconds later *

>TSG: Now hit enter.
>Customer: Which key is that?

I considered self-defenestration.

Actually, I was too busy bashing my head on the desk.

>Customer: It gave me an error.
>TSG: Then you typed it wrong. Press the up key, and delete the command line until you deleted the error.
>Customer: How do I delete?

You are afflicted by Neverending Rage.
You are afflicted by Urge To Extinct Mankind.

He had to ask me a few hundred more times where are the three most used keys on the keyboard are.

>Customer: Is it the key with the left-pointing arrow?
>TSG: Yes.

Some people shouldn't be allowed anywhere near computers.

So, my advice to you this time is:

USE YOUR GODDAMN BRAINS!

You might not make a complete fool out of yourself.

That little voice inside you

2008-01-23T01:55:00.000+02:00

No, not conscience.

Gut feeling. "Sixth sense", or whatever.

That little voice of reason inside you. It usually tells you that you're about to do something retarded. That speck of doubt which makes you wonder "Am I going to regret doing this?".

I didn't listen to the voice and switched shifts with another TSG today.

Sign up, log in, etc...

Calls waiting: 0
Number of idlers: 60% of center

You gain Glee.

>TSG (to adjacent people): Hey guys, what's going on?
>Other TSG: Oh, we're on a systematic failure now. We can't deal with anything.

You gain Ultra-Glee.

Check personal status on log-on screen...

Your first priority is [non-official language here].

Which means that as long as [official language here] guys are idling, I won't get calls in that language.

You gain Freakin' Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious Glee.

I'd dance if I could (anything but waltz. Yeah, I can waltz but without proper setting it's gay). I literally sat on my thumb the first hour.

Well,... unless you count:

>TSG: [ISP name here] at your service. Currently we have a systematic failure inhibiting every representative's ability to help and affecting all customers. Please try again later. If your error persists, please call in an hour or so.

every few minutes as work.

Then...

>Shift Manager (over PA): Okay guys, they fixed the servers, we're slowly going back to full action now. We're not taking care of [error] and [customer stupidity-induced error] yet though.

Glee fades from you.

You know what part I hate? Where you tell people stuff and they follow it to the letter. They don't think about implications or anything, they just do it to the letter. In every wrong way possible.

I hope you see where this is going.

>Retard: Hmmm, TSG told me to call in an hour.

* 60 minutes later *

>Retard: * dial TSG's number *

Calling us is wrong. It's bad for my sanity and their already low IQ. Especially when the problem is something like:

>Customer: I'm getting error 678 and the DSL lamp on my modem isn't on.

That sentence was slightly paraphrased to get to the point. So far, no one has ever provided me with so much detail that turned out to be actually useful.

That is, I didn't have to ask retarded questions in order to get the information. Or not.

>TSG: Is it connected to the phone line?
>Customer: I don't know.
>TSG: Find out.
>Customer: How do I do that?

Primal Reproduction Instinct fades from you.
You are afflicted by Genocidal Tendencies.

>TSG: * instructions a retarded sea cucumber would understand *
>Retarded Sea Cucumber: I'm not an electrician! There's wires and stuff all over the place! I'll never know which is which.

That call ended with physically connecting the modem to the phone line. I had to write "Solution: Connect modem to phone line" in the report.
Yes, people call us for stupid crap like that.

Anyway, I was peacefully minding my own business, occasionally flipping some moron off, when the systematic failure status got recalled.

Calls waiting: 10

Okay, I've had worse. 2 minutes later,

Calls waiting: 40

Oh god, they're coming in like fat people in a buffet!

Calls waiting: 100

I should've listened to the voice.

>Shift Manager (over PA): Guys, no breaks in the next 20 minutes. We're also dealing with connection issues only.
>TSG (muttering to himself): I hate you all.

Ever had a time where you had to work straight with 4 seconds to loose your focus a bit every 10-20 minutes? That's peak times for us.

Agonizing times. Now, calculate the distribution of retards, probability that a retard will call us over a completely moronic issue that WILL make you want to gouge your eyes out, multiply by 50 and you get pretty much 4 hours of my shift.

You'd think people got smart enough to set up dialers and email accounts in their stupid little programs. You'd be very, very, very wrong.

But then...
>Shift Manager (over PA): Come on guys, just a little push now until idling.

* 5 minutes and 2 stupid calls later *

>Shift Manager (over PA): Well done everyone. You can applaud yourselves 'cause you deserved it.

Glance:

Calls waiting: 0

You gain Impulsive Cheer.
You gain Urge to Dance.

* ring *
Goddamnit.

In retrospect, I could've avoided the entire situation. I could've listened to the voice and never switched with the other TSG in the first place.

So, people, my advice to you is:

LISTEN TO THE DAMN VOICE!

It might just save your life.

Greed, among other human qualities

2008-01-21T12:49:00.000+02:00

Is a bad, bad thing.

I don't know what's going on in people's brains or about the prevalent "I deserve" mentality here.

Take our department for example. The service provided is a toll-free call. That means it's free.

You don't deserve tech support, the company was gracious enough to bestow it upon you. That is, build call centers, recruit proper people, equip us with gear, train us to deal with morons and pay us shitty salary to deal with said morons.

Not to mention planning all of it in the first place. Or setting up toll-free numbers, queue systems, monitoring systems, logs, supervisors. The list is long.

If it were up to me, you'd be solving your own damn problems.

Some of you might not have been reading this in that case.

Which is a good thing.

So, I'm in a state of shock after another retarded call, and...

* ring *
You are afflicted by Abysmal Mood.

>TSG: [ISP name] at your service, TSG speaking.
>Customer: Good [time of day] TSG. I was wondering, I recently switched from [infrastructure]
to [other infrastructure] and I didn't get a gift when I switched.

You are afflicted by Infectious Stupidity.

>TSG: And this is related to tech support because...?

That last sentence was slightly paraphrased.

>Customer: Well, my ninth-degree cousin's daughter's nephew's grandfather got [shitty gift] when HE switched and I was wondering why I didn't do the same.

>TSG [to himself while keeping moron on hold]: Please, make the "cancel" button work. For the love of anything that's holy to you.

You do not have sufficient privileges to access this command.
You are afflicted by Homicidal Tendencies.

>TSG: Then you'll have to figure it out with our [other department here].
>Customer: They had long waiting times so I thought you could help me.

I don't think I've ever transferred someone faster than this. Then I began thinking how people like this are allowed anywhere near a computer.

You know how every department deals with a specific issue? We solve Internet-related problems.

Others deal with retards not paying in time, explaining retards why they paid exactly as the deal said, making sure retards won't cancel their subscriptions, etc...

How on earth can you expect me to do something I don't even have access to?

I'm here to "Fix your internet".

Ironically, only once the problem did really stem from us.

Quick glance,...

Calls waiting: 79
Oldest call waiting: 14:34

You are afflicted by No Breaks For Thirty Minutes.
You gain Enrage.

>Shift Manager (over PA): Okay guys, we're declaring a systematic failure status. One of our servers crashed, so we're not dealing with anything now, regardless of anything.

Your Enrage was dispelled by Shift Manager.
Shift Manager casts Glee on Call Center.
You gain Glee(50).

I think I could hear 150 voices cheering "YES!" at the same second.

So we got back to our posts and went to work. The customers went down like flies.

>TSG: [ISP name] at your service, TSG speaking. We currently have a systematic failure and are unable to deal with any issues. This failure is currently affecting all customers. Please try again later.

Repeat forty times over the course of 10 minutes. I've never experienced a longer lasting Glee yet. That pretty much ended my shift there.

It was actually better than usual. I didn't have to put up with these morons for more than it was necessary to spew out what I needed to say and hit the "Hang up" button.

Anyway, people have been asking me why I think "I have no internet" is retarded.

"Stupid questions demand stupid answers", so in case I haven't been clear about it...

When someone says they "have no internet", it's retarded because:

They're not helping me diagnose the problem at all.
They sound like they don't know even the most basic crap of computing.
They're contributing nothing to the call.
You are afflicted by Facepalm.
I have to interrogate them further just to get SOME information to work with.
They're trying to sound like they have a clue, which they don't in 99.99% of the cases.

I mean it. There are too many factors that inhibit a connection.

Did their modem fail to synchronize? Are they typing in their username/password wrong? Are they even connecting to us? Is their IE (mostly) in offline mode? Is their network card disabled or even installed?

Or,...

Is the caller a mouth-breathing moron that needs to have a restraining order from computers?

...

Mostly it's the latter.

* ring *

>TSG: [ISP name] at your service, TSG speaking.
>Customer: Uh, hello. I have no internet.
>Customer: ...
>Customer: ...
>Customer: ...

He literally didn't say anything after the first sentences.

Damn it, I hate people so much.

Proactive service

2008-01-19T22:28:00.001+02:00

So many hidden meanings behind two simple words.

It could mean selfless benevolence.

It could mean the pinnacle of virtue.

Now think where I work. I'll give you a moment for it to kick in.

Yes.

Now, think about 99.99% of the callers and finally, think about what "proactive service" could stand for at the call center.

Okay, stop thinking. You might cause irreversible brain damage or God forbid, call us.

I'll let you in on the secret. It stands for "sell crap to retards they could live perfectly well without". Apparently, it's part of our job to offer this to people.

A prime example (and one seen very often) is ISP-side virus/spyware filtering through ports 80 and 21.

Just when I thought people got smart enough not to get trojans while surfing. Damn, I was wrong.

Another is an electronic nanny that filters out "undesirable content" by categories. I pity the poor teenagers whose batshit insane moms deprive them of valuable educational material.

By that I mean porn. Lots of porn. The internet is for porn.

So, a "good" call usually ends like this:
(by "good" I mean, a call that doesn't make me bash my head repeatedly into the table. Or, 0.01% of calls)

>Customer: Thanks a lot TSG, you handled my issue really well.
>TSG: Thank you. Say, did you know that as a customer of [ISP name here] you deserve [crap deal here] for [insane overprice here]?
>Customer: Oh, I do? Please, do tell!

And there I begin the sales pitch.

>TSG: With [crap deal here] you get [crap], [feces] and [excrement], all for [insanely overpriced tag]!
>Customer: I'm in. Sign me up.
>TSG: Alright.
>TSG: Done, your new [crap deal here] will be active in [minuscule time period here].

Come on, you honestly think it's that easy?

I'll tell you right now. I absolutely hate doing this.

Not because I care about the customers, no.

In fact, if I could, I'd sign them up for every possible content ID, lock down their record in the system, delete their real IDs from it so Customer Service won't be able to track him down and report his credit card to the bank. He would've been paying for the rest of his credit card validity.

It's because I have to keep them on the line for more time and listening to their snotty mouth-breathing voice that makes me want to self-defenestrate.

I'd rather deal with the next moron in line.

He may even have a problem that doesn't stem from his own stupidity. I hope. For my personal sanity and his own good (and content IDs).

So I finish the report, quick glance:
Calls waiting: 0

You gain Glee.

Alt-tab, open a browser, fire up Bubbles. This is almost a conditional reflex now.

As soon as I'm about to clear two colors in one shot...

* ring *

Your Glee was dispelled by Customer.

>TSG: [ISP name here] at your service, TSG speaking.
>Customer: Yeah, hello? My internet is gone.

You gain Facepalm Position (1).

>TSG: What do you mean by that? Do you get an error?
>Customer: No, I click the internet button, the big 'E' icon and there's no internet in it.

You gain Facepalm Position (2).

It's a good thing we get headphones. That way I have two free hands to bash against my forehead. So far, I'm still ignoring the fact he's using IE.

Speaking of IE, the amount of Firefox users is ridiculously low. Coincidentally, the two Firefox users I spoke with knew what they were doing, explained their problems coherently and followed my instructions but didn't hesitate to use their brain.

I wonder.

Anyway after a quick check in the logs and I find that he's not connected under his registered user name.

>TSG: It appears you're not connected to the Internet.
>Customer: So what do I do?

Faith in Humanity fades from you.

>TSG: Connecting to the Internet would be a good start.
>Customer: I have a router, it should connect automatically.

That's where he struck a touchy subject. Company policy says we don't support routers unless they either pay us extra or the router was purchased from us. So even if I knew it inside out I still couldn't instruct him.

>TSG: Well, did you purchase the router from us?
>Customer: No, I bought it in [completely unrelated to us store name here].

You gain Facepalm position (3).

If he bought it at his infrastructure provider I could've ended the call in 5 seconds. "Call [other company name here], their telephone is [number], thanks for calling".

It seems retards and bad luck aren't mutually exclusive.

>TSG: Then you'll have to either switch to a direct connection or contact the router manufacturer to get assistance.
>Customer: I don't want a direct connection, I want to have my internet in the garden next to my step son's third degree cousin's grandfather's nephew.

You are afflicted by Infectious Stupidity.

"Internet", noun, etc... This makes me seriously thinking of tracking down people and euthanize them for the greater good.

His last sentence was slightly paraphrased. But you get the general idea.

I hope.

For your own good.

Don't make me ban your IP range. Anyway,

>TSG: Then I can't help you out as the problem obviously stems from your router.
>Customer (slightly agitated): I pay [ISP name here], (borderline enraged) so YOU WILL FIX MY INTERNET AND YOU WILL FIX IT NOW.
>TSG: [Customer name here], given that there isn't a systematic failure at the moment, your problem stems from two things: One, your line. Two, your router. None of which are in my control. Since I can't find you in our logs, chances are you'll have to edit your router's internal settings. Since I have no knowledge of them, nor access to such knowledge, nor authorization to access to such knowledge even if I could get to it, my assistance in your case can only be minimal at best.
>Customer: (screaming) WHAT? I PAY FOR THIS! I DESERVE TECH SUPPORT! I HAVE NO INTERNET!
>TSG: I agree, but if you review your contract with us, you'll see that the tech support you're getting from me is only done to direct connections, i.e. no routers, switches or any network equipment in between. This is written black on white, on corporate paper with YOUR signature on it. Since you don't even agree to switch to direct connection to identify the problem, I can't help you much.
>Customer: This is the worst service I've ever seen, I'm disconnecting and want YOU to cancel my subscription right here, right now.

You gain Glee.

Quick hop to the right tab and...
You do not have sufficient privileges to access this command.

Glee fades from you.

Believe me, I tried. Many times.
We just can't cancel a user's package.

>TSG: All cancellation requests are processed in our [other department name here]. If you would like to, I can transfer you there now.
>Customer: (yelling) What? You can't do it? I'm going to sue your corporate asses off! I'm so getting you fired.
>TSG: Before you do that, listen to the following. Since you're obviously not even trying to understand my explanations and I don't like being yelled at for problems that I have no control over, I'll transfer you to the relevant department now. Thanks for calling.

* click *
And off he went.

Maybe he didn't notice that "Thanks for calling" was fancy for "Die in a fire you pompous asshole". I hope he didn't.

I also probably should've mentioned that department has already closed down for the night.

I wonder how long it took him to realize no one's going to take his call.

Actually, I alt tabbed out to my Bubbles game. I cleared the board, started a new game. Once I clear half the colors,...

* ring *
>TSG: [ISP name here] at your service, TSG speaking.
>Customer: Hello? Your internet sucks, it keeps disappearing all the freaking time.

Sigh.

Oh people's brains, where art thou?

2008-01-18T22:49:00.000+02:00

You know those safety labels that look like they came from another planet?

Planet Retardation.

Labels like "Warning: Do not iron clothes on self" on an iron.

Or "Warning: May contain peanuts" on an airline peanut pack.

Yeah. Those labels that make your mind boggle.

At first, like everyone else, I pondered "What kind of idiots would need these warnings in the first place?".

Then I started to work at the call center.

On one of my earlier shifts, after excruciating six hours of endless pain and agony, I finally look at the monitor and I see:

Calls waiting: 0
Oldest call waiting: :00

* GLEE! *

The moment I alt tab out to read some news...

* ring *

Un-glee.

>TSG: [ISP name] at your service, TSG speaking.
>Customer (aggressively): Yeah, hello. Tell me, how can you be [Company motto here] when your internet is so freaking slow?

You are afflicted by Blood Boil.
You are afflicted by Disgust.

Strike one: If you actually have to call us, don't start a call with an aggressive tone. There's a 99.9% probability the representative doesn't know or care about your problem. That'll just make you sound stupid.

I surely don't. In fact, don't ever call me.

Chances are I'll cancel your content IDs, hang up on you, blacklist your phone numbers as telemarketers, report your credit card as stolen, log on your account, download 2girls1cup or some child porn, flag myself as unavailable and go to the bathroom to vomit my intestines out.

Not from 2girls1cup. From the fact you disturbed my peaceful idling with a retarded issue that in 90% of the cases stems from your own retardation. Seriously.

That not to say there aren't any serious issues. But in 2 months' work on a full time job scale I've only encountered one. You'll read about it eventually.

Strike two. Don't ever quote the company motto. We hate it even more than you do.

You know these stupid quirky mottos that try to sound smart but end up sounding moronic in a jingle that makes you want to defenestrate the guy next to you?

We got one of those. Our motto is particularly annoying.

I wished I could flag myself unavailable and go empty my intestines (the regular way this time) but, alas, rules are rules.

>TSG: So how does this come to pass? Tell me what you're doing and how this slowness is expressed.
>Customer: Yeah, I got a [Package size here] internet and I'm downloading at [50% of package maximum speed here].

You are afflicted by Enrage.

Strike three. Never, EVER, use the word "Internet" as a noun. There's "the Internet" for you. Instead of saying "I has no intarwebz halp", say "My connection to the Internet was lost, giving me [Error number here]", or "I'm connected to the Internet but unable to surf the web".

It'll keep my agitation level below 9000 and won't make you sound like a mouth-breathing retard who should've been aborted or euthanized.

>TSG: Okay, so let's head to our speed test site where we can ascertain the cause for this, as this is obviously not valid.
>Customer: No.
>TSG: Why not?
>Customer: I don't trust your speed tests, I want us to do it my way.

You gain Homicidal Tendencies.

Seriously. That's just like going to get your car fixed, and telling the mechanic "I don't trust the way you handle my car, we'll do it my way."

But no, I have to be nice because this call is obviously getting recorded. Eventually, someone might just look it up in the archives and TSG would be no more.

>TSG: Our speed tests are 100% reliable and we use them on a daily basis. If you would just...
>Customer: I said no. Do it my way.
>TSG: So where are you downloading from?
>Customer: microsoft.com

Since this is the first time I had an "uncooperative customer" (Read: Retard), I had to consult a senior TSG. These seniors are there for us to help us whenever we get temporary Down's Syndrome and unable to continue without advice.

After "consulting" (read: doing the same as a customer, just to a senior TSG), I got a plan of action.

>TSG: Okay, here's what we'll do. Open up a download of the same file concurrently.
>Customer: Whoa, it downloads at [75% of package max speed here]! Did you do anything?
>TSG: No, the download speed limitation stems directly from Microsoft and has nothing to do with us.

At this point I was quite agitated. So the senior came over my shoulder and began actively listening.

>Customer: So you didn't do anything? How come my download speed's changed? You definitely did something there. Don't tell me to do your speed test because I don't trust it. I'm not going to do it, period.
>TSG: [Customer name here], if you remain uncooperative, the only thing I can offer to do is log on your account from here, conduct a speed test and tell you the results.
>Customer: The only way you get my authorization is if you postal mail me the results on official corporate paper.
>TSG: I'm afraid you're in for disappointment. (slightly agitated) Not only am I unauthorized to do such things, our speed test are easily conducted by phone. (enraged) Also, I find it personally offensive to be treated as deceptive because I'm here for you and I get paid to solve your problems. (calmer) Now how's your downloads going?

And for a good freaking reason too. I don't think anyone likes hearing "I don't trust you" in their face. Metaphorically speaking of course, but it's close enough.

I should also mention that the senior TSG put him on speaker phone so he could hear the details too. He kept silent with the exception of giving me some tips on what to say every now and then.

>Customer: Oh what the hell, why am I not getting [Package max speed here] on both files?
>TSG: Because this is how ISP works. You get a max download speed and the sum of your concurrent downloads cannot exceed it.
>Customer: [ISP name here] sucks, I'm disconnecting from you.
>TSG: You can ask any representative from any ISP, not just me. You'll get the same answer everywhere and I'll tell you again: The sum of your download speeds will not exceed [Max package speed here]. This is regardless of your package size and of the infrastructure you choose to use, cable or DSL. You'll hear this from any TSG from any ISP in [Country name here].

I couldn't take this crap anymore.

>TSG: Could you wait a minute please?

I was almost passing out of laughter. So I put him on hold.

>STSG (to me): This is so retarded. Let him wait and chill for a minute or so.

After 10 seconds the his number is gone. Which means he hung up.

>TSG (to STSG): Dude, he's going to disconnect from us. Did I do something wrong?
>STSG (to me): No man, good freaking riddance. One less retard to deal with.

* GLEE *

Glance at the monitor:

Calls waiting: 0
Oldest call waiting: :00
Number of idlers: 50% of center

* ULTRA-GLEE *

Not only he delivered content ID cancellation on himself, I got reassurance from superiors that we really hate those kinds of morons.

Now to log his account and download horse porn, 2girls1cup, etc...

I actually felt a little better after that call. Not to say I didn't have to empty my bowels after it, at least they got emptied the usual way.

Now, back to playing Bubbles...
...
* ring *

Un-glee. But that's a whole another story...

So it began...

2008-01-17T02:50:00.000+02:00

There I was, standing before the corporate doors that would soon embrace me into their hold. I said to myself, "Let's do this, TSG. Let's show these mongrels what we're truly capable of."

After an hour of waiting, I do all the prerequisite procedures.

Actually, I was busy reading a newspaper and playing pool with other people who came the same day.

None of them returned to the building ever since.

2 hours later, I get a call. "Your interview was perfect, you're accepted. Training course starts next week. Be there.". After all the formalities, including a binding contract, were done, I started the "training course".

By "training course", I mean stuff most people willing to work there would know for a long time.

I actually felt pretty well about the course in general. After the final exam, turns out I got chosen into the team that's the call center's best.

So, I signed in, grabbed my headphone, got to a free computer and logged on. I turn my head to the statistics monitor, and...

Calls waiting: 57
Longest call waiting: 5:38

I was baffled. Up until then, I had no idea why so many would people call us at once.

Then I got my first call:

>TSG: [ISP name] at your service, TSG speaking.
>Customer: Uh, hello? I have no internet.

Yes. He said those exact words. That set off the retard alarm.

>TSG: So you're getting an error?
>Customer: Yes, I hit the internet button and there's no internet.
>TSG: So if I understand it right, you're trying to connect to [ISP name] and you're getting an error?
>Customer: I have no idea what are you on about, fix my internet.

Retard alarm just got louder.

Slightly paraphrased, of course. I check the logs and I see at least 20 entries with: "Failed reason: Bad Password"

>TSG: It appears that the password you're trying to connect with is wrong.
>Customer: I don't know, my step son-in-law of my sister's third cousin set it up.
>TSG: Then you'll have to input your correct password.
>Customer: I don't know it.

There. With this issue I could actually help without vomiting my intestines out. After an identification I check his password and I see: "1234567".

Retard alarm just skyrocketed making me ponder how people like this are allowed anywhere near a computer, not speaking of reproduction.

>TSG: Your password is "1234567".
>Customer: It's so long and hard! I want to change it.
>TSG: At your leisure.

Retard alarm just exploded.

>Customer: Change it to... something simple like "12345".
>TSG: Done.

At that very moment, my right arm was itching to move to the forehead. I don't think words could describe the feeling of pure disgust I was having.

Given the average IQ of the caller (and I sampled it), I'm hardly surprised this movement is almost on a conditional reflex level.

>TSG: Okay, so input your password into the password field and try connecting.
>Customer: That's to the right of where it says "Password:" right?
>TSG: Yes.

No, it's where it says "Username:". It's a deception made by the dialer.

>Customer: Wow, it says: "[ISP name] is now connected!"
>TSG: Try surfing now.
>Customer: It works!

After that call I flagged myself as "Unavailable" for a long time. Coincidentally, my bathroom break took a long time.

Maybe I should stop puking my intestines out after every retard that calls.