GM's, Senior GM's and QA team roll definitions please...

[Fourfingers]

Can I get an official response as to whom I should be talking to about about what types of issues?

"Front Line" GM's:
Does Turbine have a target or goal time for an initial GM response? What are their roles or better yet limitations?
Can they investigate lost/missing items?
Can they re-create items?
Can they resurrect players because of bugs, etc?

Senior GM(s):
Obviously pick up where front line GM's leave off, but what are your limits? Can you investigate how I seem to have completed the WW chain on elite, gotten the harbormasters seal, yet my quest log shows none/0 favor for part 4? Or is that a QA issue.. And speaking of QA...

QA team:
Oh, the elusive QA team. Do they actually exist? or are they a black-sunglasses kind of group? I mean, because I've spoken with several GM's in game about issues and been requested to 'File a bug report with the QA team' yet, when I press for specifics the answers I get are "they will not respond to you. The will only investigate your issue and will fix it, ..." How real is that? So you mean I get to find a problem (and trust me, I really try not to waste your time with petty tickets - these are things I've confirmed as best I can) take the time to file a in-game help ticket, wait for a response (sometime for *hours*) and then get the answer "please file a bug report" and don't expect a response. And they are right, I've *never* gotten a response from a QA person, but on the same note, I've *never* gotten my issue fixed!

[TechNoFear]

No software house I have worked at lets Devs or QAT talk to customers (which IME is a good thing based on some of the Devs I have worked with....).

They have people who are paid to talk to customers, filter out the non issues and pass the info on.

First tier GMs are designed to solve simple issues and filter any other issues to the right dept.

Bug fixing...
QAT has to be able to replicate the issue.
QAT then generates a change request sent to the Dev team.
QAT develops a test plan (inc regression, blackbox, HARM ect)
Dev is assigned the issue and codes a fix.
Dev sends new code to build engineer.
Build engineer sends new build + change request to QAT.
QAT tests passes back to Dev [restart fix] or back to Build for inc in Live code.
Build engineer updates live code base and revision history.
Code released LIVE.