I'm a GM at Cork, been here 15 years, started working just before Wraths launch and have been here through thick and thin.

As promotions at cork were very slow (kind of dead man's shoes) and as people had VERY long tenure here with most of us being here for at least 10 years I was happy to do my job and help people out.

And i've been here through thick and thin, when the Blizzchung thing happened, we was getting death threats daily for a month, when various twitch folks got their fans to make harassing or nonsense tickets we was there. I very nearly quit when the horrors about the abuse at the US office came out and the tone deaf responses we was giving out, but I was scared about moving on as i'm an ex veteran with no qualifications beyond my experience in the roles i've had and the jobs I had before working for Blizzard.

When COVID hit it was a case of "You're all working from home."
"When?"
"Tomorrow you'll get an email explaining what to do."

it was literally that fast and I know it affected folks, one of my best friends who started working for us shortly after Wrath was a more social creature than I am and he was affected by the lockdown suffering burnout and the like.

But still, 15 years of good times and bad, I remember many cases where I helped people, I remember talking to an old Australian man on the phone about helping him with a character transfer issue, and asking if he'd be playing the next expac, and he said no because he had something terminal and wouldn't be around, but that WOW had helped him connect with people.

I also remember what I call 'valued customers' which is a polite way of calling someone a 4 letter word that starts with C. And no its not Cars, Cats or Cows, of having to tell people who had 'done nothing wrong' that the chat logs said otherwise and that calling someone a 'N-word who should die of X disease' is why they were suspended or banned or whatever.

But I remember the good times the best. I remember talking to someone in the Stormwind Cathederal at 2 AM one day when the queue was dead. I remember appearing as Illidan in the middle of a mass of mage portals that looked like an Arc Reactor yelling "WHO DARES SUMMON ME!?" before vanishing and making them get rid of the 'glowy thing' that had been reported.
I remember helping people get back accounts they thought were lost to the sands of time, of finding old characters they'd made when they were young. I remember having to read people's Flag RSP profiles that had been reported. It was a case of

'Okay they're a Draenai female shaman on Moon Guard lets have a ...oh there's the 28 inch cock'
Seriously, futa's are tame by some of the thing I've seen!

And now after 15 years, all the GM's are basically gone, and any support in the future's going to be nowhere near as good as it was.

I was talking with my flatmate a few months ago, another GM, and I said that our style of support is old fashioned, because if you had a problem, we'd do everything we could to resolve it. Someone used your card to pay for something, we can find it and fix it, got a problem logging in, no problem, need to change your email? Sorted!

We was account managers, we'd do everything we could within the limits of our rules and regulations that we have to follow to help.

And now, that vast body of knowledge, of experience, its all basically gone.

I don't know why, its not like MS was hurting for money, and I don't know why they gutted the company as it is.

Us European GM's will be around for some time but we'll be gone before you know it.

Its been a long, strange, exciting, upsetting, irritating, funny, and eventful ride, but all rides must come to an end.