Recently I’ve run into a significant issue with my original character, Trinon-Andorhal, who had 7 prior completions of the raid on Icecrown Citadel ending with killing the Lich King verified through the character statistics. On my 8th completion on 1/5/2022, I “re-earned” the achievement with a date of 1/5/2022, the original achievement from 11/12/2010 was lost. The public statistics for the character dropped from 12 normal completions (8 on 10 player mode, 4 on 25 player mode) to 2.
The original achievement was important to me for a number of reasons. Our guild master and raid leader thought we weren’t good enough to be on his 25 player team and would kick any player that got locked to another raid group. When he belittled enough of us that there were no longer enough players to run 25 player ICC, he started running 10 player groups with the “A” group being the “best” players and the “B” group being the nobodies he didn’t care about. We, the misfits, beat ICC on 10 player normal while his best players were still failing and, being the stellar raid leader he was, kicked us from the guild. Looking back, beating the Lich King on 10 player normal wasn’t really that impressive but that sense of pride and the camaraderie kept the majority of our B group together for years.
Back to the achievement loss, I was doing transmog runs and needed the bracers from Deathbringer Saurfang or Valithria Dreamwalker and realized I could do one more run if I logged into Trinon. I forgot to set the raid mode to heroic and not all bosses popped achievements (for the ones that did I assumed were because I overpowered a mechanic I didn’t overpower before) but, when I saw the final achievement, I immediately contacted support. At first they seemed confused, then the picture grew more dire:
- Achievements are per-character and your character did not earn it before
- We can see the achievements even if you can’t see them and, believe me, it’s still there
- Did you mistake your character for another character on your account?
- Did you delete your character and replace it with exactly the same character?
- We really don’t know which of your characters completed the achievements or when
- There are no names associated with a lot of your achievements and we don’t know why
- Perhaps, to prevent furher damage, you should stop playing your original characters
My heart sunk. Not only was the date of my original achievement permanently and indelibly erased from my account, the honor of being the first character to have killed the Lich King suddenly went to Nauleo, the character profile I am using to write this novel. While the GMs were confused about which character, dates, and whether or not they even existed, I was taking screenshots and I noticed something very peculiar:
Nauleo killed the Lich King twice in 10 player mode on the same date (6/15/2012) but his achievement record shows this was in two runs, 10 player normal on 6/15/2012 and 10 player heroic on 6/27/2012. With raids back then, one could change difficulty mid-raid and this was done commonly to lower the difficulty. For example, if the boss was too difficult to kill on heroic, the group could leave the instance and re-enter on normal. All of the previously defeated bosses were already cleared and it was impossible to kill or loot the same boss twice within the same lockout period. While the raid lockout rules have evolved over time, I wouldn’t have run the same raid twice.
That said, Nauleo’s history was even more straightforward to read. He had only killed the Lich King twice before. Yet both the character summary and achievement history puts the second run on 6/27/2012 so having Bane of the Fallen King couldn’t have been earned on 6/15/2012 unless one of the following:
- Another character completed the achievement. Trinon’s progress was so screwed up I could neither confirm nor deny but Nauleo was credited with having earned the achievement. Neither Spiel, my hunter, nor Bärwolf, my warrior, had credit for ICC and my other characters were too low-level to have participated in 2012.
- There was more corruption to my account affecting more characters than previously known. Nauleo, with his achievement record appearing to be intact, but GMs being able to verify that Nauleo had, in fact, completed the achievement at all was especially concerning.
I had thought my character’s achievement history and quests were properly tracked but I had made note of some issues that affected other characters:
- One character had credit for completing “Brew of the Year” even though he had not yet joined the “Brew of the Month” club yet. I joined the club on that toon but I was ultimately unable to track the actual progress toward quest completion due to the issue.
- One character “forgot” Northrend fishing. That was especially frustrating since that character had grinded rep with the Kalu’ak specifically so he could equip the “Mastercraft Kalu’ak Fishing Pole”. In retrospect, he could have learned Northrend Fishing but been low on skill points when the professions were split but I’d never had a character “forget” how to fish before.
- Names missing on achievements when viewed from other characters. This is possibly the most concerning given recent issues, the effect of which the visible date of achievements changed when Trinon’s achievements were overwritten so characters who had not previously run ICC no longer see 11/12/2010 as the achievement date but 6/15/2012 as that was the date Nauleo was credited, even if that should have been 6/27/2012.
- Though I’ve had to rack my brains a bit on who would have earned which achievements when, Trinon was the first character to hit max level in 2010, both 80 and 85, and was the only character playable until Bärwolf reached 85 in 2011. I didn’t level Nauleo to 85 until much later that year and only really started playing him in 2012 and I switched to Spiel for Mists of Pandaria. While I started many other characters, none of them reached max level until 2018 or later due to a 5-year hiatus in play.
At best the only things I can attribute to the achievement snafu are a combination of:
- Account-wide achievements with the launch of Mists of Pandaria in 2012
- Suspending my account in 2014 and waiting to reactivate my account until 2018
- Any changes made to achievements between Mists and Legion that may have resulted in mapping issues when the character restoration took place in 2018
While the major issue with Trinon’s total reset of his ICC achievement may never be recoverable, I’m further concerned with other issues that I’ve seen with the dates that cannot be explained, that GMs cannot see character names associated with my achievements, that other signs of data corruption appear to be present, and there’s no clarity on what, if anything, is doing to stabilize my account or achievements or what actions on which characters may lead to further corruption.
While the vast majority of my current characters were created with the purpose of being able to try out new classes, get transmogs, try out new playable races, etc. I don’t raid anymore, I’m generally seeking to complete old content, and other than seeking completion for in-game rewards it was only Trinon’s achievement dates that were important to me as that was the first character I reached max level on with the purpose of attempting the end-game raid and there were favorable memories associated with that experience. While I still have those memories, I can no longer show that achievement to others with pride and can no longer even view it myself.
I’m only in contact with one out of the original 10 person team that took down the Lich King in 2010, my spouse. He shares in my frustration that my achievement was effectively taken away from me as he taught me the game, coached me through each of the boss mechanics, and taught me not to stand in the fire (except for the achievement). The achievement added interest and value to me to that character, in part for the memory of beating the boss of an end-game raid and getting kicked from the guild because we beat the other team to it but that I had never cared to do that since and it further demotivates me to do anything like it again as a result.
While the GMs in support have been encouraging me to write a forum post about the issue, with one saying that this is the only way to get the product owners and developers to even look at the issue, I believe it’s a poor solution for proper escalation and support is not incentivised to look further. Perhaps they view these as invalid complaints. Whatever the reason, I’ve written this in the hopes that something can actually be done to prevent further damage to my account, achievements, or even repair obvious damage that was not properly translated or merged when I resumed my account.
I hope that these issues can be corrected though I can’t think of a single other achievement on my account that I cared for with respect to the date as much as that one. The others didn’t have such a personal connection, such pride, such meaning and I’m prepared to face that it might have been permanently and irrevocably lost.