Also, thank you for compiling records of this. I pray your data backups are more robust than Blizzard’s. 
4 Likes
I’ve been a semi-frequent poster on this topic for weeks, and I’ve been watching every relevant thread, and I commiserate so much with everyone. I’ve been stewing on this “update” for quite a while.
I’ve always been a video game nerd. Blizzard, I’m the kind of customer you should be trying to keep. My husband and I buy 3 of every collector’s edition (2 to use, 1 to keep unopened as a collectors item). We continue to pay our yearly subscriptions, even when life gets hectic and we can’t play. We basically skipped 80% of dragon flight because of real life commitments, but never canceled our subs. We buy everything from the in game shop, the $600 statues, the books, the stuffed animals, etc. I’ve spent an embarrassing amount of time playing playing dozens of different characters, farming mounts/pets/toys/mogs, chasing achievements & camping rares. (We all know how much the shareholders love those play time metrics!) I’ve passed on playing other games that look really fun, because I chose to give my limited leisure time to WoW.
There’ve been some stuff we didn’t like, but we stuck with you because we don’t hold it against you to try new things.
But this is such a giant slap in the face to not only me & players like me, but EVERY. SINGLE. PLAYER.
Everyone needs to know that this is a precedent. I’ve said it before, but it bears repeating: We all understand mistakes happen. But this is not an ‘honest’ mistake. I don’t know if its negligence, incompetence, budget cuts, staff cuts, or whatever, but this is NOT an understandable boo boo. I’ll admit this is not my area of expertise, but I can’t imagine something like this happening without cut corners or sloppy work. I wouldn’t trust anything in the game now, as this shows our data isn’t safe.
I know I don’t “own” anything in the game, and TOS blah blah blah, but we all have the reasonable understanding that when we put stuff in designated storage it will be there until we remove it or the game shuts down.
First, we get gut punched by the fact this data loss happened in the first place, then we get a slap in the face by essentially being ignored, and finally we get kicked in the teeth with this pathetic response (no disrespect to the specific blue poster, I know they’re just the messenger).
So now what? I wasn’t impacted nearly as badly as some other people. My guild bank had mostly crafting mats that are still obtainable, and I “only” lost about 50-60%. But I’m disgusted on behalf of people who lost things like mounts, unobtainable stuff, etc. I will probably continue to log into my main on raid nights with the guild, because that is still fun for us, but I’ve got a REALLY bad taste in my mouth. But no more ‘loyalty.’ My play time is going to plummet, I’m not going to bother with alts, or hunting all the things I used to because the trust is gone. I’m not getting anything extra from the shop or real life merch. I’m going to give other games a try now.
I know that won’t be more than a drop in the bucket, but it makes me feel better at least getting it all out. I encourage my fellow players to do the same.
25 Likes
- My guild haven’t charts of another realm or faction;
- 42 guildies who doesn’t log 1 to 6 years ago;
- The last record of movement in tabs is from 7 months ago, and I continued to have daily activity in the GV;
- This problem did not start with the update that the op cites, it started 7 months ago when the registry stopped taking note of the movements;
- There are 7 months of unregistered movements -income and expenses-
- Nothing arrived in the GM’s email today, there is nothing in the GV, I need the space (which I also paid for, I paid for the last flap) and I don’t dare to use it, I’m not going to deposit 300 feasts of 700 gold there and later “oops feasts are gone, so sorry”
- Not returning absolutely everything creates a very serious credibility problem. They don’t seem to see it, and if they do, they don’t care.
14 Likes
I feel like they really aren’t grasping the precedent this sets. Part of being a collector is that you know the reward is worth it for the insane amounts of time spent because no matter what it will be saved until the game is gone. You can quit for years and come back and see that mount you worked so hard on and remember the quality time you put in. Now, all of that feels fleeting. That sense of accomplishment could evaporate in an instant. It makes me sad because I loved that part of this game.
12 Likes
It’s like a burgler breaking in and robbing your house. Then your insurance gives you a check that only covers stuff you had registered with them and nothing sentimental.
11 Likes
But instead of a check, they give you a pair of batteries, a piece of lint, and 3 stale crackers and say sorry for the inconvenience.
26 Likes
I do not expect a reasonable answer to this question but what will be done for the “lost data” from a customer perspective? This is not acceptable; you would not respond the same way if it was your hard work and time wasted.
Activision Blizzard King was sold to Microsoft for nearly 70 billion dollars, if you fought as hard at quality checking your products there would not be errors of this nature. I also understand that the code behaves differently on live servers but I spent years, YEARS!!! of collecting I cannot just make that time up. Seriously, DO BETTER.
Your apology is just empty platitudes and means nothing. I would like to say this rant makes me feel better but it honestly just pisses me off more and more. There is no one at Blizzard that would accept this behavior from any other industry, why we have to as your customer is beyond me.
11 Likes
I was not badly affected. When I came back for Dragonflight I cleaned out my guild banks of anything of value. The only thing I had was whatever misc profession drops (not stuff from gathering) I had left over after I sold anything of value, and whatever Dragonflight profession materials I added during that expansion. I lost maybe 10 slots of DF stuff, and maybe 20 of older stuff, none of which was super important.
Honestly, the only things I lost that irritated me were 5 stacks of inky black potions. Amazingly those were returned to me via the mail. So I can say that, personally, I am “ok” as far as this situation goes.
But this is still a huge precedent and a red flag that Blizzard does not have proper data management practices, and they can’t be trusted with any data. And the way they’re handling the situation is making me question whether or not I will stay when the time to renew happens again. I may not be staying for Midnight depending on how this is handled.
6 Likes
ADHD and disorganization cause me to save things in multiple places purely on accident, so yeah. I’m pretty sure I’m doing better than they seem to be. 
3 Likes
This did in fact happen to me, except the insurance company processed the claim completely and reimbursed me for everything I reported stolen. A run-of-the-mill insurance company has more integrity than Blizzard.
7 Likes
I have my freaking Interface and WTF folders backed up in 3 separate locations. One on my primary gaming PC. One on my Linux server. And one on my laptop.
Configurations between the two are the same except for primary Config.wtf (which is slightly different on the laptop due to lower spec) - I believe the only difference is the laptop doesn’t have AA on.
I also have a script to copy addon data between the two computers. Which excludes Config.wtf. But I back up each system separately too.
Which means I have more backup and redundancy for my addons than Blizzard does the game itself.
5 Likes
Let’s flip this around. In my hypothetical scenario, a bug on Blizzard’s end caused extra items to appear in guild banks instead of stuff disappearing.
What would happen? I guarantee this would happen. Servers shut down until all “extra” items were removed. Even though it was no fault of the players.
8 Likes
This is just as likely to happen in your personal bank. If you think “your” stuff is safe there, you are deluding yourself.
7 Likes
You very closely described how loyal I use to be, but one too many write-offs of legitimate problems, without concern for the effect on the customer, lead me to invest significantly more of my leisure time elsewhere.
14 Likes
Actually, it’s like they looked at the list of your valuables, and only reimbursed the plants you had in the window. None of the things most dear were returned to anyone. If it had been the items that folks most cared about instead of a few mats, people would be a lot more forgiving.
7 Likes
No, it’s like a burglar robbed your house, and the insurance company sent you a check covering the cost of stuff the burglar didn’t take or want.
3 Likes
Like if they sent you a check covering the cost of a 2 year old pack of Cheetos and a chocolate bar that are still under the couch cushion.
10 Likes
Not to be cruel but what brain are you using?
Backups are the cheapest cost item any company has right now. They can do tape backups at a fraction of the cost that they used to be 20 years ago, one tape can save multiple years worth of data.
The fact is the problem is not the backup its manpower the amount of time it would take to access the data and make a program to pick up what was loss.
However that should have been part of their contingency plans for emergencies and should have been tested.
If an earthquake happens or a flood or something and destroys one of the data centers they use they can bring up their game again in another location without massive data loss.
This is how it works in any stable company that is offering data products. (Banks, stores, so on.)
So why should this data loss be anything special?
Setup some PTR servers with the game before the tww patch, grabs the data, bring it over to the retail version… not simple but plausible and doable with the right team.
However this is not how you save money, its going to cost them money and they don’t want to waste it for guild masters, and items that only one section of the game cares about.
Guild masters and guilds are old news and they are trying their best to get rid of them.
5 Likes
I lost Battle Pets.
I lost Ore and Gems.
I lost Dark Moon Fair items.
I lost holiday and garrison items.
Around 50% or more of my guild bank wiped out.
You know what I got in return for your “mistake”?
3 items returned out of hundreds. 2 pets and one common gem.
There is no compensation for what I lost. Because I can’t get back the time I spent acquiring those items.
There is nothing you can do to compensate me for that time you deleted.
16 Likes
This is precisely the problem. I don’t believe for one second that they don’t have backups, for many reasons, but I will illuminate the obvious :
For one, no company is that stupid, even Blizzard, to not make a backup of some kind before a major content update. Seeing as how this is a company that is not new to games, especially live server games, I find it hard to believe they made this sort of mistake, or even didn’t have multiple copies in case of data corruption.
Second, they have demonstrated they do, in fact, have the data necessary to do a proper restoration, as evidenced by many streamers who have off-handedly mentioned that they had exactly that done for them.
What this all comes down to is willingness, which they apparently do not have, unless you are a popular streamer/influencer that could cause them bad publicity. Now, I don’t know if this comes down to cost, manpower, or just plain apathy for non-popular players, but the key factor in why nobody got a proper restoration is solely because no time or effort was invested in trying.
I firmly believe that this was an issue that Blizzard did not plan for or foresee, solely due to inadequate testing. When it manifested on live servers, they chose to ignore it, likely thinking it wasn’t as broad of an issue as it apparently is. They must have thought that, despite this is a serious bug, it might not be as big, and therefore can be quietly fixed under the radar. My guess is, upon investigation, they realized this issue was FAR bigger than they realized, requiring much more resources to invest to properly fix and restore things, which would explain the month of silence while they tried to figure out how best to approach the problem.
Their response then was to put out this half-hearted “restoration” of junk items to make it look like a “Well … we tried. See?”, as a way to hopefully appease some people who would think that since they got something back (even thought it was typically junk), that they would be content and move on.
This is just my guess as to how it played out. At this point, there is likely little we can find out beyond speculation, but the bottom line comes down to, they can do it, because they have proven they can do it for streamers … they just don’t think you, the average player, are worth it.
14 Likes