As I recall, customer support blues are (or at least used to be) senior game masters in terms of power. Game masters are the customer service team. Also frontline game masters from what I understand these days have very little power to restore items or access certain data. Supervisor position GMs (and specialist teams) actually do (or again did) have great power (and great responsibility) to actually generate items or grant achievements or personally assist streamers, etc.
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Iām slowly heading in this direction. My various guild banks are full of stuff Iāve collected while leveling alts and leveling alts is my favorite thing to do, so Iāll be able to refill the banks in time. At the end of the day, my personal life isnāt affected.
Absolutely! Blizzard did us dirty and they canāt be allowed to get away with it. It sets a precedent for the future. They need to communicate with us and give us a proper fix/restoration.
What they should have done was a rollback of the banks right when it first happened. Then weād all be happily playing and buying the latest store mount and stuff. Someone dropped the ball, they need to fess up and make things right.
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Actually no, all GMās, senior or not, have been limited by what the developers give them the tools and permission to do. They have NOT be granted any leeway to assist in this scenario. Iām sure they want to (Vrak and Orylia especially) but they canāt.
The people that deserve the blame are the executives that made these decisions. Not the people who are just doing their jobs.
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Not saying they donāt have rules, Iām just saying the very broad statement that no GM has any power or script to restore an item isnāt entirely true, or at least wasnāt true like 5 years ago when a guildmate used to be a GM. Thereās a hierarchy to all things. Just like in an office, cubicle workers get to answer phones, people with their own small offices get to make limited changes to customer accounts with certain restrictions, and only people on the top floor (devs) can make/break all the rules and ignore the consequences.
Still, in this particular issue Iād imagine most GMs canāt do much. Iām not sure if they can even access backed up data (that may or many not exist). And if they donāt have a data list to pull info from, it doesnāt much matter if they have the power to generate items or not.
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For the record, what happened in that time frame was probably due to this separate bug:
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Separately, Iāll remind you all that patch 11.0.5 will be going live this Tuesday (10/22). One of the most anticipated changes besides the anniversary event itself is this line:
- When quests are completed, all appearances from non-cosmetic item rewards will now be granted, regardless of if that particular class can see or choose them or not. This should apply retroactively to all quests previously completed.
As someone who picked the worst class to obtain the original Loremaster achievement on prior to the Cataclysm expansionās release, this is something Iāve been wanting badly for a long time given how many quests and associated rewards were removed.
On the other hand, however, what joy I may have experienced from it has since been tempered by the data loss. Honestly Iām feeling rather anxious instead at this point, so I intend to take a screenshot or few just so I can compare before and after the patch. Others may wish to do the same.
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Iāve been really looking forward to this as well. Have they stated a yes/no on whether or not the appearances for quest rewards now removed will be granted as well?
Iām seriously considering re-subbing for just long enough to get all of my saved items including tier pieces learned. They havenāt said theyāre backing off on the decision to convert personal guilds from bags to tabs and so Iām anxious about being gone if/when thatās implemented and the personal banks going crunch, thus losing all those items before Iāve learned the appearances.
For those of you who have asked or been curious, hereās the mention of their intent for personal bank bag-to-tab conversions:
āThe UI and functionality of the character-level bank will be adjusted in the future, and tabs like the Warband bank will also be adjusted. Bags will no longer be needed in the character bank when this change occurs. This change wonāt alter the number of slots currently available in your bank but will shift them from bags to tabs.ā
https://worldofwarcraft.blizzard.com/en-us/news/24115313/get-the-band-together-for-warbands under Carting Around Your Band Equipment.
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No there isnāt. Only QA reads Bug Reports, and they only do so to transfer reports to their triage system, and I suspect theyāre being told to ignore postings about this since itās been declared āfixedā.
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Actually I think you are synthesizing some meaning even while trying not to.
What I read is:
āWeāve reached a pointā does not in any way imply that there is an impossibility of further restoration. It simply says that this is the end of effort. āDue to how some of the data was lostā could mean āit happened in a way that would require (too) much effort to recover.ā
āWe do not have a way to restore the remaining missing itemsā sounds suspiciously like it is actually impossible because of technical issues, but it jibes equally well with ābecause our efforts have ended, further restoration is impossible.ā
Basically it is a well wordsmithed āsorry we just donāt care and finally had to say it.ā
Is there verifiable evidence that GMs still exist? Because I sure havenāt seen any such evidence this year.
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If they replaced their GMs with chatbots Iām sure people would have figured out how to exploit the system. No theyāre just real people who often copy-paste prewritten scripts to common issues that might be helpful, but often isnāt because the problem persists.
Thatās not to say they canāt help with some things, like very stuck characters that dc everytime you log in, or people dropping swears in chat, or possibly very obvious bots. I think between all the extra problems this expansion and the downsizing of staff, theyāre spread so thin all they can do is copy-paste from a mixed bag of very limited information.
I do miss the days where they would wait for you to log in and chat with you about your problem, actually investigate things live with you, and refer you to other GMs that may have more experience (or perhaps authority) until theyāve made things right.
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What will happen to the items in the bags when this goes live? Will they mail them to us?
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They did communicate, and by all accounts they have fixed the problem. Data that they cannot recover cannot be recovered, and folks are going to have to come to terms with that sooner or later.
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There has not been any firm answer that Iām aware of. It would be quite baffling if the retroactive credit didnāt apply to removed quests; one can still query the database for a true/false response, after all.
Itās up to you whether you fork over more money or not. Since my sub still has about six more months to go, itās rather academic for me at the moment.
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I mean, you know whatās going to happen, right?
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which you know for a fact was possible at that time becauseā¦?
Yeah, the trolls almost seem like obvious PR/damage control plants, to try and discourage people in here with their callousness. Thatās why I put them all on ignore, and encourage others to as well. They arenāt worth engaging with.
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Anyone else find it ironic that this upcoming ā20th anniversary eventā is supposedly all about nostalgia and attracting longtime players into resubbing for a bit (to get the goodies, experience the limited time event, etc)ā¦ when longtime players are the almost always the worst affected by these various post-TWW bugs? 
Itās like, if youāre some more recent player - say, you started playing in 2018 - likely you didnāt lose much if you happened to get hit with one of the recent TWW bugs.
But if youāre an og player that started 2004-2006ish, holyā¦ the sheer amount of /played hours and investment lost to these bugs can be insane 
Just an interesting observation that crossed my mind today, a theme of ānostalgiaā versus a backdrop of progress-robbing bugsā¦
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Iād love some expose (maybe like the latest Schrier book, which I havenāt read but have a bit about some of the topics discussed in it) on later Activision-Blizzard, into the MS years. Iād love to know how what effects (NOT what the company says but what occurred) mass-layoffs have really had on the games, customer service, etc.), what effect the rushing out of content has had, and specific to this case, just HOW the data was lost, if backups were made, then how complete was it? Was it accessible? How quickly did they realize that the data had been lost? Quick enough to have done a rollback right away with minimum inconvenience to players? What did they know about the guild bank log issues before the changes were made to the guild banks? Did that have any bearing on the items lost (or at least, any attempt at restoration?) WAS the data available and could they have restored the items, even if it took a long time? How much money did they save by NOT making things right with us?
What I really WANT (as in, wishful-thinking) is that they canāt say anything because they are still figuring out how to get stuff back to us and donāt want to make any promises. But thatās as likely as Santa Claus showing up with a ton of expensive and meaningful gifts. What I really WANT is for EVERYONE affected to get everything back and a small compensation and a heartfelt apology, with a sincere promise to do everything they can to make sure this doesnāt happen again.
BUT thatās not going to happen, is it? Next to that, I want the inside information of HOW all this happened, who made and how decisions were made to NOT either take precautions and/or how it was decided that we got VERY LITTLE to nothing back, while they used vague and deceptive words. I want to know what happened in meetings. I want to know if QA people learned about this and was dismissed or they simply werenāt even given the chance to test this feature out. I want to know ALL the steps in how this disaster happened and how the they decided to make the awful reply and trollish āpartial restoration.ā I also want to know IF any player(s) were deemed special enough to have their items restored or if thatās just an unfounded rumor (possibly started by a streamer). I want to know if anyone actually CARED about this, if they actually thought that people would be HAPPY with their pathetic āpartial restorationā or if that was just another way to say āwe triedā and āwe didnāt lie,ā while doing the worst job they could and STILL be able to say they DID what they said they would. Basically, if WE canāt have everything back, I wish we could at least have accountability. (Which, yeah, probably not gonna happen either). 
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Just like with politics and corporate scandals, its probably better (easier) just to ignore the issue until a bigger issue comes along to make people forget all about that first issue. Rinse and repeat.
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He has an AMA with other tidbits outside of the book, if youāre interested and havenāt seen those yet. Though iirc heās said that the more recent the subject the less people are willing to speak up and speak up much about, so stuff about MS isnāt really talked about or in detail I think. I agree on the accountability though.
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