Terrible Customer Support

[Somalion-eitrigg (Somalion)]

characters have been rolled back when a major bug caused the leveling (or in one case where a GM logged onto the character to do something and accidently leveled it). As your character leveled due to getting XP which is normal there is no bug here.
Sorry but as it’s a painstakingly manual process (took weeks in most cases I’ve heard of) it’s just not done for your leveling via getting xp as you should.

[Sunadice-bleeding-hollow]

I fear you didn’t read the post. I WAS A STARTER EDITION! I SHOULDNT BE ABLE TO GET EXPERIENCE PAST 20

This is a major bug that caused the leveling

[Darthwraith-blackhand (Darthwraith)]

While rollbacks are more possible then they were years ago it depends on the circumstances and what the GM are allowed to do u went thru 3 different GMs and were told no 3 different times sometimes its just not possible. They threatened account actions because at that point its considered GM harrasment when the same answer is gona be no.

[Sunadice-bleeding-hollow]

I made a repeat ticket simply asking for a subscription extension of one day since they could not do the rollback. This I KNOW they can do.

[Darthwraith-blackhand (Darthwraith)]

They can but its not a gaurentee usualy its only for retrieving mail and up to the GM its.

[Eilis-kelthuzad]

Why do you need a day of game time to play a character level 20 or below?

That’s not a reason they generally grant a day of game time for.

[Sunadice-bleeding-hollow]

To use the mailbox and retrieve the items off of my 21 (what was intended to be my 20)

[Misbecky-argent-dawn (Misbecky)]

Did you get the 3 day gift time from Blizzard while you were playing your level 20?

[Sunadice-bleeding-hollow]

If I did then I would still have it. No I did not.

[Eilis-kelthuzad]

If they said no when you asked, that is likely the only answer you’ll get.

I’ve only seen them grant a day of time to get gold out of the mail/guild bank so someone can buy a token, or something along those lines.

Not to transfer something off a higher character so you can continue to play without game time.

[Sunadice-bleeding-hollow]

I would hope that Blizzard could make up for their own bugs and mistakes. Simply because I am temporarily not paying for game time, I am no longer valued? Thats a great way to bring in repeat customers.
I previously had full intention of coming back once I could afford the game time. Now I am no longer certain that I want to come back to a game lead by a company that treats their customers like this.

[Somalion-eitrigg (Somalion)]

even if this was a bug, it’s a pretty minor one as it just caused you to gain xp as you should when doing things that grant xp, put time on your account and that character will be accessible again.

[Sunadice-bleeding-hollow]

I didnt realize the loss of access to a character was a minor bug. My bad.

[Kalviery]

I’d like to share my most recent experience with customer support and warn anyone attempting to get help from them that you will likely be lied to, not believed, and banned if you attempt to find a good GM. It appears that much like everything in WoW, the customer support system is a game of RNG. If you roll a good GM you’ll have a good time, but if you roll a bad one (or two or three) you’re going to have an annoying experience.

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.

My subscription recently ran out and I decided that until I could afford to pay for another month, I would enchant gear on a level 20 and play that. Something strange happened after my subscription went down though. I had all of the starter edition restrictions (level cap, no mailbox, no auction house, no whispering/trading/invites, ect.), so I went into a battleground. I noticed that I was gaining experience. I thought nothing of this though, as my experience bar constantly read 0/24k or however much the experience was. After I few battlegrounds I somehow ended up hitting level 21 on my starter edition account.

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.

With this being a bug, I made an appeal and asked for a rollback, which from talking to multiple people I know that this is something that Game Masters are able to do.

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.

not even being willing to chat and only ever responding through a ticket response (They used to ask if you had time to chat if you were online)

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.

A warning to anyone who might be thinking about contacting customer support, don’t waste your time. You will not be treated like a valued customer.

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.

[Sunadice-bleeding-hollow]

I appreciate the reply and the effort you went through for me. I don’t know if telling you this here will help, but in response to

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.

I was kicked out of the game with a message saying that my game time had run out. When I logged back in, I had all of the starter account restrictions that would be expected, aside from the fact that I continued to gain experience. Perhaps you can forward this to your bug fixing crew to help them out.

[Pû-eitrigg]

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.

Yay! Glad this worked out for the OP. Also good to know that deleveling is a simpler procedure than it used to be (by virtue of this delveling only taking about an hour to accomplish), but still only applies in certain circumstances.

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.

And perhaps a good teaching moment for some of the GM’s the OP encountered along the way. It’s good to know that we’ve got Blues like Kalviery that will step in and assist in circumstances like this (not that this should be a routine path toward a resolution, but nice to see someone step up and solve the problem). +1 for Kalv.