I am trying to login to my old WoW account. The authenticator was connected to a phone I no longer have. I have tied answering the account questions to “temporarily” remove the authenticator to login and change the account information, but it is not accepting my answers. I have opened a ticket, but it takes forever (days) for someone to respond, and when they do, they are asking for more information that I provide, but no resolution is ever reached (this has been going on since July of this year). Can anyone please assist me in removing this authenticator so I can retrieve my old account and play the game again? Please and thank you.
Unfortunately, that’s not something that they can help with over the forums. These forums are public and providing the necessary info to remove an authenticator needs to be done via a ticket.
If you’ve provided everything that they’re asking for, then they should be able to help remove the authenticator. It’s intentional that the process is not easy as that is the whole point of having an authenticator on the account to begin with. To keep it secure.
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Understood, but the fact that this has been an on-going issue since July, with no resolution, shows that there is a major kink in their customer service. The peak player number isn’t anywhere near where it was when they had a functional customer service number, and they were able to accept calls. With no live chat, and ticket resolution timers being weeks-months, customer service with this company continues to be a major issue.
Funny thing about that number was people calling in for every little thing. It was just supposed to be for billing and tech support, but people called for GM jokes, account appeals, etc. It took hours of redialing to just get into queue, and even then, you’d wait a couple hours more to even speak to a person. Not quite as functional as it might have seemed.
They did have a callback system instead, but then this little thing called Covid 19 happened, and they switched to work-from-home. This affected both callbacks and live chat; the former was halted until further notice, and the latter was drastically reduced.
Then, starting in September, a large number of issues–from ban waves, to launches, to various bugs–resulted in an unpredictable, massive, and ongoing spike in customer contacts that overwhelmed the GMs. They’ve been slowly getting it back down, but no one is happy with a weeks-long ticket queue.
Now, regarding your issue in particular… it sounds like, if this has been ongoing since July, that there may be some doubt as to account ownership. For a typical authenticator removal, just a legally valid ID such as a(n up-to-date) driver’s license is sufficient; as long as the name on the ID and the account match, it should be a one-and-done issue. If they’re asking for more and more specific things, then there’s something on the account that’s making them doubt it’s yours.
They do take account security very seriously, and don’t allow the use or transfer of accounts between anyone except a parent/legal guardian and their minor child. So if it’s not your name on the account, excepting a legal name change for whatever reason (marriage, divorce, etc.), then they’re going to be especially wary. And if there’s any doubt as to the validity of the information provided, they may ask for extra proof, such as a picture of the ID next to today’s newspaper showing the date.
(And apologies if this sounds like I’m accusing you of anything; that’s not my intention. I’m just trying to explain why you might be having so much trouble recovering the account.)
Unfortunately, as mentioned, the forums are not a means of contact to the Game Master team, nor the developers, so at best, a Support Forum Agent is only going to be able to give you a little more insight as to what the issue may be. They’re not going to be able to remove the Authenticator for you here. Best of luck.
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I will be happy to give them any information they need, but when it takes weeks-months to get a response, it makes it impossible to get anything resolved. As far as the wait time for the phone line, I would gladly wait on hold for 2-3 hours, as opposed to waiting 5 months. I have tried temporarily removing the authenticator, per Blizz’s option, but they only ask me Hearthstone questions. I don’t play HS. I play WoW. The entire system seems a bit busted, and at a minimum, is frustrating. If you have any advice at all on how to expedite this process so I can play, I will be happy to try it.
That is, unfortunately, a result of that spike in contacts I mentioned. In an effort to get that down again, they’ve foregone live chat for the time being. Although, back in July, you should have been able to use it…
…if it weren’t for various issues in that, too, apparently. It seems that, aside from varying hours that filled up quite quickly, some folks (including even some regulars here) weren’t even seeing it as available when it was. In cases like that, though, it was found that either using a VPN or a private/incognito browser helped with that. So when they bring it back up again, hopefully they’ll have resolved those issues as well.
With that said! If you can give a quick summary of your ticket exchange, with private info eliminated of course, we can gladly give you some advice to hopefully make the next ticket more successful.
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Expedite?? No.
However what can be done here is for a Forum Support Agent to check the status of any tickets you currently have in the system. There should never be a wait of months for something like this. That may indicate that your spam filter ate a reply or that there was an error submitting a ticket and it did not go through.
If you can give a character-server name on the impacted account and the ticket number you had last, a Blue might be able to take a look and provide information on the next steps to take so you can get this resolved. Do not share anything with real life personal info on the forums. Just char/server name and ticket numbers.
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Ticket Number: Issue ID #85019160
Realm Name: Thrall
Main Character Name: Speedyfoof (multiple characters on the account, but that was my main)
Just saw your post in the other thread.
Small wonder it’s taken so long! As mentioned in that thread, that’s a “do not reply” email, meaning there is no one monitoring it at all. What you’ll want to do instead is create a temporary BNet under a different email (create a free one if you must), and then file a ticket with the information you provided and the ticket number of your previously answered ticket, and they should be able to get you taken care of, no problem.
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I submitted a new today under this account. Haven’t received any response yet, but from what I am reading, it will probably be a few days, at the minimum. Just aggravating that, even if I do get the account back, I am going to be at least 2-3 weeks behind. That’s the least of my worries at this point, though, I guess.
The expansion is going to last 12-18 months, at least. It’s not something to get worked up over.
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From what we’ve been hearing here, issues like yours are actually significantly shorter than the general in-game queue. Tickets are triaged, and so long as it was filed under the appropriate category (remove authenticator would be the best one in this case), then you should be hearing back within the next day or two.
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I do see where we asked for more information back in July - but I don’t see any followups from you on that account.
Indeed, if you replied to the do not reply email - it would never have been seen.
I’m not seeing any new tickets on this account either, although you did just remove the authenticator from THIS account. I’m thinking you are mistaking the self-help tool for a ticket.
I’d reapply THIS one - and submit a proper ticket with the information they were requesting for the account from July.
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What about working an account with wow installed on external hard drives?
~https://support-en.wd.com/app/products/product-detailweb/p/1539
Example
Running from an external drive is not supported by Blizzard, but it is also not against the rules. It can cause latency issues that are noticeable and I know this from personal experience with an external ssd until I set it up on internal ssd.
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You can put WoW, or any Blizzard game, on any drive you want. It just increases latency if you run it from that external drive. To do that, in the Launcher you can tell it where to find the game and where to put patches/updates.
I actually keep a copy of WoW, Diablo 3, etc on an extra drive so I can easily put it on different computers. Saved me a lot of download time and bandwidth.
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Thank you. I think I will move it to my main SSD then. I have noticed strangely long loading times between portals. Maybe this will fix that.
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