Just wanted to say that we have hit the 15 hour mark in terms of reading this thread. If someone started reading from the first post and went alllllll the way down, it would take (on average) 15 HOURS to fully read.
That’s a lot of replies, a lot of comments, a lot of stories.
Lovely that Blizzard just keeps ignoring it, isn’t it? 
Which is, sadly, 100% useless and misleading to the person coming back. Them being told to do that is giving a false sense that something might actually be done about their issue if they post, when all of us know they aren’t going to get any satisfaction whatsoever. Makes me sad that the game I loved has become so shady and full of deceit from people I once had faith in to run a good game.
This is just their dumping ground for people coming back or JUST realizing that their bank has been emptied. Or at least that’s my guess. Also, probably to keep us from starting new threads. They must know by now that some of us are NOT going to let this go. I still mention it in comments on other sites. Having us all contained HERE (or to be able to MOVE us back here if we do start other threads) is probably another reason. This is like the giant junk drawer that they hope most people won’t see.
The one fortunate thing is, there are still some of us here to welcome them here and explain what’s actually going on. Also, just keeping this thing alive. Maybe nothing will come of it, but never let them forget that many of us have not forgotten (or forgiven).
The thread about granular guild permissions (which Ion directly said wasn’t intended and would we give feedback on how to best fix it) has been going for some six years, long enough for the forum system to automatically lock and open a new thread. No blue posts. If it’s anything guild-related, Blizzard doesn’t want it.
I’m angry. I’m going to create an angry post in General about the hundreds of thousands of items Blizzard deleted from my guild bank, of course billions from us all, but they dont even care.
Yeah, that one pissed me off. The CHANGE they made to the Guild Interface TOOK AWAY some of the agency from Guild Leaders.
They also removed one of the better Forums, which used to be called Guild Relations Forum and then I THINK later changed to Guild and Raid Leadership (or something to that effect). It was something that Blizzard didn’t even get involved in, but allowed guild and raid leaders and officers to discuss topics that they might be able to help each other with. For the most part, it was very civil.
I get that people keep saying “why do we need a guild?” and yet, I see fairly often in Newcomer chat, people asking about how to find and join guilds, or even just looking for one. And even if they don’t NEED to be in a guild to do activities, a lot of people LIKE being in one.
Those who run activity-oriented guilds (such as raids or well-organized M+ runs) do a lot of heavy lifting for the game. If they are good, they can enhance the game for a LOT of people. Guild Leaders, Raid Leaders and active officers in such guilds create and administer activities that are the center of many people’s gameplay, offer feedback to players, recruit people needed for the activities, create and enforce rules, deal with loot issues, try to keep too much drama from ruining the guild, etc.
Even social/casual/mixed guilds like mine have a purpose. I’ve got people who do almost nothing BUT medium to high M+ keys, some who avoid group activities as much as they can (though they might come along in a guild run), some who love to collect things, some who might leave for a year or two and come back and might need a refresher, etc. But they all find a home with us. OUR guild bank is where they can find goodies from enchanting scrolls, buff foods, starter profession gear, and other stuff, so it’s kind of important that THINGS DON’T DISAPPEAR FROM IT. The other day, I logged onto my main to do some old missions and ended up doing two work orders for guildies in a short time.
What I’m saying is, guild leaders, raid leaders and officers are contributing to the gameplay of many people and yet get little to no support from Blizzard. Same with the Mentors/Guides in Newcomer chat, who try to smooth out intro gameplay for new and returning players and really, get very little support. (For example, a forum or special database for THEM, keeping them updated on important changes, ESPECIALLY to anything leveling or starting max-level related) would be great, but we instead, have to comb the internet to find answers or educate each other. And they’ve lowered the bar so much that a some of guides are either giving completely bad information or bullying newbies (like making fun of them for ASKING QUESTIONS that they SHOULD be asking in that chat).
As MS/Blizzard lays off more and more people, those in the community, whether in the forums or in game, who try to help players or provide structure, fun or information SHOULD be appreciated and supported, but they can’t even do that.
All we wanted was our damn stuff back, to have our bank logs fixed, be assured that an awful bug like those won’t happen again, that they’d improve our interface (OK, the chat archive is nice).
Of course, if they cared, they might give us ACTUAL HIGH-QUALITY and usable recruitment tool that’s flexible enough to fit different guild sand their needs (the one in game is SO MUCH GARBAGE). But not since Cata have they done much to help improve guilds. Shoot, they don’t even add fun new achievement for guilds that don’t include doing new raids or whatever, together.
Sorry, sorry, went off-topic. But NOT giving back things lost to THEIR bug, NOT fixing the guild bank log, making the interface less effective, etc. is just being really disrespectful to guilds all around. I guess the only ones they care about are the ones that give them major publicity, like the RWF guilds. Otherwise, I guess we’re just all trash to them.
Nicely put. I feel exactly the same way. I play on EU servers so primarily frequented the EU forums, until I started getting directed to the US forums to post bug reports (as there are no bug report forums on the EU side).
But we had a lovely community in the Blizzard Guild Leader forums … and then they just removed them. And every single change that Blizzard have made since then - in-game and out - relating to guilds, has been to make leading and running a guild harder. It’s like they’re trying to edge guilds out for some reason but, for the life of me, I cannot figure out WHY.
I’ve had loads of members over the years who simply would no longer have continued playing WoW if it hadn’t been for guilds. Guilds can retain people’s interest in the game when they would normally have gotten bored and unsubbed. Guilds provide support for players both in game and out. Look at that Ibelin movie recently - that was (in part) showing what a guild can be. This suggests that Blizzard should be supporting guilds, not making it harder for us.
Removing granular permissions, having a calendar that isn’t fit for purpose (and bugged), having a guild interface and guild finder interface bugged, having guild reputations bugged, having guild chat and guild achievements bug out and wiping our guild vaults are all demonstrations of how much Blizzard DO NOT CARE. Which again, makes no sense to me, because guilds literally keep customers paying them, and they MUST know that.
Perhaps again it’s one of those things where, because most of us just “work around” the rubbish systems, Blizzard has decided there is no point in fixing or improving anything, because it would cost them the time and money to do so.
Or perhaps it’s like their own Customer Service … they remove resources, make it difficult to access/use, make the system feel a bit pointless and eventually people will stop using it because what’s the point - and then Blizzard will close it down completely with the justification that no-one was using it anyway.
This thread is the equivalent of screaming into a pillow, Blizz can still hear you, as long as you’re not making noise in other forums, its fine.
By the way, have you seen our obnoxiously priced new dopey dino mount? We also have dumb mounts available when you sign up for a year…
New Year resolution, stop giving money to crummy companies.
Unfortunately, that is the problem. Fear of missing out, time invested will keep people coming back and companies bank on that and that is now the new norm. Companies will minimize their work force and expect more work from the same people to rake in more profits for one agenda; make the board and shareholders happy who then give stupid bonus to the higher ups.
The cross-pollination has certainly ramped up since the Dragonflight expansion, to the point that I have to wonder if the developers and management understand the concept of “brand dilution”. So much has felt less like expanding the WarCraft universe and more like akin to a Fortnite clearinghouse.
Yeah, sure feels like it, doesn’t it? Kind of reminds me of EVE Online. I played WoW and EVE side by side for years and loved both. Ever since Pearl Abyss bought out CCP, it all went downhill. They raised the sub to $20/month - which would be fine by itself, since it’s less than correcting for inflation - but then they went all in on the cash shop. So it started feeling like I’m paying $20 or really $40 per month (because who has just one account in EVE) just to be whale hunted and constantly hit up for cash. Forget it. After years and years, I finally “won” EVE.
The reason I bring this up is that while WoW isn’t that bad yet, it seem to be heading down the same path. Even leaving the guild bank “issue” aside, I’ve never seen the game in worse shape than it is now when it comes to bugs, but the cash shop offerings are sure thriving. Not a good look.
Happy new year, I can’t believe this issue is still ongoing with no resolution. Gives me a great opportunity to catch up on my enormous backlog of games I’ve been meaning to play. 4.5k responses and Blizzard hasn’t done anything about it, clearly shows their level of integrity and care towards the players. At least it’s saving me money.
Someone on EU have just reported they went to check on their bank, and their items had returned:
Although so far they’re the only one.
It was just mats too apparently, no equipment or pets or anything like that. Also it was just flat restored, not mailed or anything. Quite strange indeed.
I SO want to to believe this but . . .
Could it be that it’s a different bank than the one that they thought of? I know - unlikely, but if someone has a lot of banks, it could happen. (For example, I have multiple banks and though they are different enough that I wouldn’t mix them up, I could see it happening).
I fear hoping, expecting . . . anything beyond a wish, really. I wasn’t going to FORGET this or let it die, but I was at a point where I accepted as a reality (though I don’t accept that it was the right thing for Blizzard to do, or accept that this should be the norm or anything like that - only that it happened, that it sucks, that THEY suck and nothing will be done about it).
But if true, happy for the person and hope it’s not the only time it will happen.
Quite possibly - so far as far as I can tell they’re the only one who has reported this, so unless they just happened to notice it happening being the first of many, it could just be someone mis-remembering or a fluke.
Not sure I’d get my hopes up to be honest.
Given the EU has different laws surrounding data, etc they might be able to actually get their data back or maybe required to least try whereas in the US - yea not so much.
What if it was just a nefarious attempt by a Blizz alt to get people to resub one more time in hopes.
Probably not but here is the one of the residual outcomes from this disaster that Blizzard could have prevented, could have recovered from and communicated to their customers but they decided against all of that:
Once you lose trust in someone or a company, then thoughts such as these naturally start to happen because of that loss of trust and then it just further snowballs from there.
Companies know it does a lot of harm to create distrust and disloyalty but quite a few do it for short term gains.
Yeah, no. They (Blizzard) care even less about us than you guys (we just were lucky one GM cared for once).
Laws? Nah, its not big enough of a problem that the EU will take note of. No one wants to acknowledge this data loss for some fricking reason.
(Btw: Hi, murican friends. Shopkeeper here from the EU)
Can’t be arsed to check on my guild bank. Upgraded my PC, WoW is not installed and won’t ever until I hear they took this issue seriously and started restoring banks.