My friend finally got into wow. He got tricked by a bot called blizzard who provided a link in game that hacked him. Blizzard are stating this is his fault for not adding additional security layers. Sure he shouldn’t have clicked the link but he’s a new player and at the end of the day this bad operator likely spams hundreds of accounts a day and hasn’t been caught. Blizzard will not restore my friends gear or his badges of justice (200 stack) which is all he asked for.
This used to be a routine button click but now is a lecture from blizzard about him failing to secure his account when we pay $15 a month for a service that apparently doesn’t care if there are bad actors in game.
I suspect your friend posted on the CS forum, in addition to the ticket they made.
Blizzard will help restore access to the player’s account for the registered account holder. That is limited though - if compromises keep happening they may opt to not do so anymore.
Blizzard no longer performs account restorations of gear, gold, or anything else like that when a player is compromised. That has been the policy for a couple years now. They will give the player a starter pack of greens so that they have some gear to get playing again.
I do not know why that policy changed, but that is what it is.
Blizzard does have warning messages on login tips to help folk avoid Phishing scams, any real Blizzard messages are marked with a proper Blizzard logo, and real messages can’t be reported.
The bad guys are not on some singular account that somehow does not get caught. They use hundreds of stolen accounts to phish more accounts. They strip the account of gear/gold for gold selling, then use it to advertise and phish for more victims. These get banned by the thousands - but sadly there are always people out there that will click a link and give out their personal login info.
I am very sorry to hear your friend fell for it, but they do have access to the account again, any charges were dealt with, and they have a starter pack.
Your $15 is for access to the game servers. Account restoration, forums, GM support etc - none of those are part of the sub. Blizz does provide them, but does not have to. Blizzard has always been very very very clear that account security is the responsibility of the account holder and the account holder is responsible for what happens on their account. It is in the EULA, the policy articles, pretty much everywhere. Even the login tips.