In the space of twelve hours this weekend, I ran into four bugged and impossible quests. if it had been one or even two I may not have minded much. But four seemed like a lot, especially considering they were all group quests and one of them was necessary to complete a larger chain.

On Friday night I ran the crypts of Auchindoun with my guild, the Forgotten Legion. It was a solid run with only one wipe at the very last boss when a shadow-clone got a lucky hit on our healer. I had two quests for the crypts: “Auchindoun . . . ” and “Everything Will Be Alright“. After the boss died, someone in my guild started talking about a giant crystal face floating above me. I thought he was joking. I looked all around and saw nothing. My guild mates targetted the giant face, D’Ore, but when I targetted them I couldn’t see it. I filed a ticket with a GM. This quest was the next step in a massive chain in Nagrand where you free the spirits of the orcs of Garadar, so i really wanted to complete it.

At the entrance to the dungeon there should’ve been the spirit of a grandfather to accept the quest “Everything Will Be Alright”. I couldn’t see him either. I amended the GM ticket and was alternately consoled and mocked by my fellow questers.

I stayed online for a few hours, hoping I could get a GM response. I also emailed the GM group at Blizzard. I went and quested some more and then logged off. One of the absolute worst features of the GM system at Blizzard is that the moment you log off–or in some cases disconnect–your GM ticket goes away. You get an email saying it’s being looked into, which I don’t believe for a second.

On Saturday morning I logged in to quest again. I hit the Blade’s Edge mountains and teamed up with a group to do missions for Rexxar, Hero of the Horde. It seems there were some ogres that needed poisoning and killing and a wyvern to rescue. This lead to the now infamous “Showdown” quest, which is notoriously bugged. When we finally got to that part after dealing with the insane respawn rate of the elite ogres we found that the giant mob we were there to summon was already there, chilling out, watching us kill his minions. He didn’t seem to mind and was very nimble as he evaded every attack I threw his way. I filed a new GM ticket and was disgusted with Blade’s Edge, so I moved on to Netherstorm and the quests of Area 52.

Near Area 52 I happened upon a downed Fel Reaver and a goblin who wanted his heart. i teamed up with a druid and rogue who were in the area and we started the quest, only to find that the heart was spawning deep underground and unreachable. I amended my GM ticket, again. Later, while questing, I noticed that the ticket had disappeared without a GM so much as contacting me. So I posted on the Customer Service forum.

Four bugged group quests. Two GM tickets that were never answered even after waiting over four hours. All of my emails to the GM department were returned with automatic responses telling me first that the quests were working as intended and that I needed to read the quest log closer, then that it was a known issue, then that my information was useful to Blizzard and they would add it to their own and then, this morning, a note saying that I should address my queries to the accounts billing department. Because apparently the billing department now handles bugged quests.

The bugged quests are annoying but the utter lack of customer service is appalling.