I would say that in a nutshell, Blizzard failed in one of the MOST critical areas of any game: ensuring data integrity.
They failed to ensure that their adjustment/technical process was ‘clean’.
They failed to properly test, in-house and on live, any part of the cross-realm guild technicals.
They failed to ensure that their systems for data backups and redundancy were adequate.
They failed to communicate with the playerbase regarding their error.
They failed to produce adequate results with their ‘restoration’ attempt.
This isn’t just an embarrassment. This is an oughtright -humiliation- for the entire company. Kotick left in late December '23. Not even twelve months ago - that’s recently enough that there’s more than enough Kotick-isms left in the Blizzard machinery to ensure that people are being ‘paid off’ - not with money, of course, that would be illegal - but with preferential treatment of some sort. Fast tracking of tickets, gratis game time, whatever.
If this got out into the wider media, the company’s public image would be devastated. I would not be surprised for one moment to hear that the execs authorized X amount of ‘goodwill’ to keep it silent. It’s an indelible black mark on the company’s reputation, it’s processes, and it’s value. If they lose big time because of this, I can’t say I’d be sad.
Microsoft paid $69 billion for Blizzard Activision via cash for stock. I wonder if they’re regretting that decision now.
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They’re not journalism, no matter what they claim. They’re purely hype and advertising coating a rather old and tired independent DB.
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philsp@microsoft.com
I recommend emailing Phil Spencer calmly describing how Blizzard has destroyed 20 years of data and dropped a note a month later on a friday night that they will not recover it.
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You’re also smarter than their IT decision makers - you understand that proper data management and backup processes are separate from hardware. 
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Heck my addons and WTF are backed up in 3 separate locations…
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I’m sure that everyone’s noticed, to at least some degree, that Blizzard is aaaallll over balancing, re-balancing, and continuing to balance raids and PvP. How long has it been taking them to get around to the stuff that is -not- a stepping stone for raiders/PvPers? Why are things that raiders only ever do for a week out of an entire expansion or that the vast majority of mainly-PvP players never touch still broken or bugged?
Yeah. Great way to cater to the minority and spit on the larger amount of people who funnel sub money into their pocketbooks.
(JFC I am failing at speaking my native English. Edited for clarity/personal error.)
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I’d start taking screen shots of all your guild banks and personal bank stuff now and store it off your system like on a usb stick …at least then you’ve got a file you can send in with in game ticket now…
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Won’t help, they don’t take screenshots as evidence.
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I echo the same feelings Toriyama…its horrible what has happened now …this is History making lose of stuff to the whole player base …and Blizzard says that’s it …that is all you get back …few hundred gold worth of stuff …its complete BS…
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Its better then nothing now …
I apologize right off the bat - I’m not arguing - I just don’t see how screenshots are worth anything except to remind anyone of how they’ve been given the screwdriver.
What use were you thinking of for keeping that kind of info after these… revelations?
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I thought about it and I think I understand where you’re coming from with saving the screenshots. It’s not necessarily about keeping receipts or records to facilitate an exact restoration should more things go missing at this point - especially if the company does not accept player-submitted records as proof of inventory.
For me, personally, over the past 4-5 weeks I kept thinking “if I could only just SEE what I’d had in the vaults” because I wanted to get a better understanding of the loss. It was about clawing back just a little bit of control and information in a situation where the company had stripped all of that away from the impacted players. It’s the same behavior as folks experiencing a traumatic or catastrophic event IRL that immediately begin trying to clean up or direct others or do SOMETHING to begin regaining a little bit of control over the situation. It’s a coping mechanism - some might find it silly, but I truly wish I had screenshots or logs or some way to definitively understand what got disappeared. It would be one little “known” in this whole horrible situation that’s created so much instability and “unknowns”.
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Weirdly enough from what I remember my logs were pretty much blank before they fixed anything. Most still are besides 1 or 2 that hav a few entries from only up to 6 months ago (not sure how long they last normally) and money wise just the one entry when I took all my gold out after I discovered everything was deleted. I only really played DF near the beginning and then came back a bit before prepatch to do some housekeeping and catch up alts etc but I guess blizz took the housekeeping idea to the extreme T-T
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Okay. That I completely understand. It’s absolutely not silly in the slightest, and I appreciate your insight. 
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They accept files upload with a game ticket…I just had to go though that myself cause I lost my phone and couldn’t install the game on my new system without a Auth that was on my game…I was sent a email with a list of questions I had to answer and send that back to them in a form of a txt file…while sure screen shots are not text files it gives the player an idea what they had and you come make a list off the screen shot…if anything it might give some folks some peace of mind …
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4 Guilds. One completely, utterly gutted. Others with few items missing.
Nothing at all returned. Not even an ingame message telling me or apologizing for whatever specifically targeted my banks. No compensation. Nothing.
Absolutely unacceptable. If this isn’t more properly resolved by the time my game time is up, I’m done. And yes, I will be pasting this in every thread I’ve followed about this matter, to help keep them active until your company understands that this is far, far from over.
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Ok thank you for your hard work, our guild is missing quite a bit but I have no clue what they may be so any returns would be appreciated.
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This is discouraging to say the least. I had a feeling that I would not recieve back any of the items actually worth any value. So I waited and waited and what I recieved back from the restoration process was a joke. From a near full vault I got back a page and a half of 32 slot bags an enchant and a stack of food in the mail. This isnt even a dent on what my vault lost. But I honestly did not care about any of those items. It was the battle pets that I had in a tab locked to officers only that were prizes for my members when we do scavenger hunts in game. These pets were max level & harder to obtain or expensive to buy. Along with a few mounts. I just knew I would not recieve the better items. And no compensation to those of us who did not get fully restored. This is definitely unacceptable. Been playing this game since classic and this is on the top of my list of things that make you question why you play.
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I’m also afraid of what will be deleted, next. 
Never seen a bug like this in other games not get addressed. O,o
I feel so sad!!! I’m afraid to use the bank, at this point. There is no point in ‘saving’ stuff from friends or cute items, anymore.
Seriously takes the fun out of it. How do you go forward from this, Blizz? I guess they don’t care if we leave the game, or not. We’re just some numbers, but they have their streamers, so it’s all good?
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Why didn’t anyone say anything about it until now?
Why aren’t gb’s being restored? There should be logs of what was in there. I got a hunch my logs are actually on another server (Zul’jin) because I transferred and it shows what was in that first bank tab from 5 months ago, due to the ‘placeholder’ character, Rainside.
It seems like the devs do not care about this. It really hurts. I’ve been playing since Vanilla.
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