My trial character which I have a substantial amount of gold on and that I used to bid on an item on the black market auction house was locked almost a month ago. It got locked the day the Shadowlands prepatch launched. I am aware of the play-time restrictions on trial characters, and I haven’t been logged in on the trial character for more than 5-10 minutes, so it was wrongfully locked.
After making a web ticket about the issue, I was told that it is an issue GM’s can’t fix, and was adviced to make a post here on the forums. The name and realm of the character in question is “Spruut” on “The Maelstorm”. Help is greatly appriciated.
A recent answer on a similar topic reveals that it was intended to be locked, that you used it as an AH alt is unfortunate but it’s not something they will recoup for you:
They tell you to post on the forums so you can make your problem known and to get rid of you not to get it fixed. Trial characters are just that, to try things out not to play with.
There is one thing you can do. buy a boost or use the free one from shadowlands, if you haven’t bought it yet.
That does not change the fact that it was wrongfully locked. And the fact that a trial character isnt “meant for” bidding on the black market auction house does not mean that when it gets locked due to a bug on Blizzards part they can just leave the bug and not worry about it. Trial characters have been used for that purpose for a long time, Blizzard is aware of it and has changed it so they can no longer do it going forward (due to the max level requirement they added to bmah). The fact still remains, there was a bug that happened on their end and I am trying to get it solved.
Are you sure it’s a bug, I see they are trying to solve an issue. They have a very limited life span. They have a fixed time limit on how long they can be used.
Blizzard have explained why they have been locked, and to speak plainly, you shouldn’t be using them for anything except trying the class out.
I am 100% sure it is a bug. I am very careful how much time I spend on trial characters, and I spent 5-10 min max on the character, which is very far from the amount of time it takes to get it locked. Additionally, I know other people who had the same exact thing happened to them. I also contacted Blizzard via web ticket and they themselves have said they are aware of the problem, so there is no doubt in my mind that is is a bug.
Whether you should or shouldn’t be using it to bid on auctions is subjective, I can see arguments both ways. But that really is irrelevant as it’s been a thing for a very long time, and Blizzard has never taken action against it. When Shadowlands prepatch hit, they changed it so you can only access black market auction house with a max level character (i.e. not trial characters), so they don’t want people to do it, which is fair enough. However, it is still a bug, everyone was able to do it before, and a bug caused the character to be locked for me. I won’t be able to do it in the future because of the level requirement, but it is still unjust to look the other way instead of fixing the bug.
My playtime on the character is 5-10 min in total. Logged in two times.
To clarify, I could have used a fresh character and used the bmah as well. I just chose to use a trial character as that is very common practice. Plenty of people do it. But like I said, it doesnt really matter what I used the character for. It was wrongfully locked due to a bug. If I had used it to test spells on a target dummy after spending a long time setting up my UI and keybinds etc, then the character got locked, it wouldnt matter. In both cases it comes down to the fact that a bug made my character get locked, which I am hoping to get resolved.
Class trials aren’t a problem. You can log in right now and make a class trial character, no issues what so ever. No problems with gear, no problems with the level squish. Everything works completely fine.
If they did end up moving the stuff for me, I would be happy with that, but I dont think that is something they ever really does, which is why I’m trying to gain access to the locked character instead. But yeah, that would solve it all for me.
But if you use something for other than its intended purpose, and it breaks or goes wrong, then you’re on your own, and that includes using Class Trials as auction/bank toons.
Its like… Using a chisel as a prybar, then returning it to the store because the edge got damaged.
In that scenario the chisel got damaged because of the mis-use. That logic doesnt follow. My trial character didn’t get locked due to something I did. It got locked due to a bug. Completely unrelated to how it was used.
I just had a look ingame and can see that Class Trials are enabled, I made one and got to Orgrimmar, but it was at 48 not max level. Did you level it to 50 or do the starting quests? Could they have taken up the rest of the time?
I’m not sure why your older one was locked, it could be that they changed the system and older ones are now somehow invalid.
Nope, I made the character, used my Heartstone instantly and went to a black market auction house, then logged off. I didn’t level or anything. The next day when I try to log on, its locked.
Its very frustrating, it happened almost a month ago at this point, and I feel like Im fighting an uphill battle just to be able to log in again.
The issue with class trials “locking” with the Shadowlands pre-patch early is under investigation. Customer Support will not be able to assist with removing items or gold from these characters in the meantime.
Sorry to bump the post, but is there any update to this issue? It has been 2 months since the problem occurred and it has been a torn in my side for a long time. Would greatly appriciate help on this matter.