Ideally such a process would not be necessary Sunadice. Our Game Masters all want to ensure that every player enjoys their experiences in World of Warcraft. Believe me when I say that if you aren’t in it for that reason, you don’t really last long as a Game Master - heck, you need that attitude in Customer Support regardless of your industry. So, let me assure you that nothing you experienced was done in malice or with the objective of lying to or misleading you.
It’s an unfortunate reality though that we do have folks would aren’t always satisfied with the answer they received and will continue to push the subject even though they’ve received the final decision on a topic. A lot of the time, these situations involve bans/suspensions where folks don’t necessarily agree with a moderation decision. You can probably understand how this can end up taking a lot of time from the Game Masters who would be better utilized assisting other players rather than continuing to tell the same individual no dozens of times over. Sometimes we need to remind an individual that their request has been seen, reviewed, but ultimately denied and that further attempts to contact us would not change that decision.
That being said, given the unusual circumstances in your report I wanted to give it some attention. I reviewed the tickets associated with this request and reviewed the character in question.
It looks like your account time expired roughly 45 minutes before your character leveled. I would have expected you to be removed from the game immediately when the time ran out but perhaps if you were on your low level character at the time, it did not remove you.
Speculation:
It’s possible that because your character remained in-game, it failed to pick up the leveling restriction as expected. I’ve never heard of this happening though, so it’s not something I can say for certain.
So, yes deleveling is technically possible. I want to stress that it’s very exceptional and generally we only want to do it when there is a confirmed bug.
Bug Report vs. Confirmed Bug
There is a difference from something being reported as a bug, to a bug actually being opened/tracked/confirmed by the Quality Assurance team. We receive a lot of reports for things that don’t appear to be functioning as expected. It takes a little while for these reports to be investigated by the team and then determined a bug or not. Often, until they are confirmed, the Game Masters will not act. It can be tricky, especially if the Game Masters go around making changes only to have the Quality Assurance team later return and clarify that it wasn’t actually a bug but a misunderstanding.
I hope that clears up some of the confusion I often see around requests like this. "Clearly this is a bug" is something we see a lot, but we still need sign-off on making changes to characters.
We try to chat if time permits or if we need additional information for a situation, but often it’s unnecessary to do so. Often, we have a lot of folks who require our attention and so it is more efficient and overall better to address cases without initiating a chat. I know that folks would love to talk to us every time, and it was one of my favorite things during my time as a Game Master - but we also want to be considering all of the other players who are waiting for us to review their case.
While I disagree with this sentiment, I can understand how your most recent experience could have a negative impact on your perception.
I felt it was necessary to address several of your points, even though by now you have probably received a notification that your character has been deleveled.
Even though we were ultimately able to offer to do this for you, it does not diminish the process you had to go through and your feelings towards it. I hope I’ve been able to pull back the curtain a little bit and shed some light on why some decisions are made, and hopefully you will reconsider contacting us in the future if there is something you need assistance with.