Ahoy y’all…
I don’t often come to the forums, even if there has been plenty of oppotunities during the 20 years, I played WoW.
The reason mostly being, that Blizzard never had a reputation for listening to, or even taking their customers serious, and this topic, seems to be no exception.
I do feel like this warrents some feedback, as this is probably the biggest brainbleed Blizzard has had in 20 years IMO.
I took a break from WoW due to IRL since Classic TBC, so imagine my surprice when my Priest hit lv10 and needed a wand, and I attempted to buy one on AH, only to find my accout had been restricted.
I then find out, it’s not just AH, it’s also mailing and trading, which outside of chatting, are 3 of the major aspects of social life in a MMO.
Not only that, but it’s an integral part of being able to play the game, as you rely on other people, as you cannot do all tradeskills on your own, in my case I went mining and engineering, so couldn’t make a wand from enchanting, or bags from tailoring. As well, not even being able to mail your own alts, you are quickly pressed for space, and either have to sell or delete stuff, you’d otherwise hang onto.
It adds a lot of stress and micro management, over playing the game and having fun. Not really a good design for any game.
Okay, so for how long do these restrictions last? 26 days?
26 days without those features, pretty much makes the game unplayable, or at the very least, not worth the subscription.
And it is baffeling to me, that you are not prompted a warning when you sub to the game, allowing you to make the choice.
Cause I asked the GM to refund me the sub, as soon as I found out. Unfortunately, I didn’t find out till lv10ish, after which I immidiately made a ticket asking about the restrictions, as well as google searching.
Expecting this was some type of error, I kept playing, with the expectation, that the restriction would be lifted, when we solved the issue.
Search results showed multiple reasons, one being, battle.net account and ingame account not being from the same region. In my case, my battle.net is EU and my account was US. This was also pointed out to me by the first GM whom answered the ticket.
Now 7 tickets later, with multiple GM’s just posting standard replies, and not actually reading my ticket, I am told it has to do with not having subbed for 30 days.
At this point, I am now lv18ish, and the GM refuses to refund the sub, as I have already played.
I wanna point out, that I feel pretty confident, that this is borderline illegal. You cannot sell a product, then add restrictions that the player is not aware off, and then choose not to refund, WHEN they find out.
It is such shady business practice, and it gets you no good will from any player.
So why is the restriction there? Is there an underlying issue that might explain this issue?
So the absolutely terrible explanaition, is an attempt to deal with botting.
I cannot stress how utterly rediculous this is. It was the same reasoning used for adding hourly and daily caps to dungeons, which also never affected bots.
But did you ever remove those silly restrictions to dungeoning, when you found out it didn’t work…?
Not only is botting and gold selling still thriving in game, but you actively managed to hinder every normal new player, and especially every returning customer.
And not only that. Your lazy approach to countering bots, are payed by the players, instead of by you.
You litterally stick me with the bill, cause no resources can be diverged to deal with the issue.
I am paying a full months sub, while only accessing 50% of the important social features for an entire month.
Im sorry, but it’s such a joke!
I know there is very little respect for your player base, but this is a new low, even for Blizzard.
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I would urge you to add a promt, when adding a new sub, that any account that has been inactive for more than a month, will be facing 30 days restrictions.
In that case, every sane player will have the choice to ask for a refund in time.
Regards,
Aero