The same has happened with our guild bank it’s extremely frustrating to see a lot of work vanish overnight.
But I think the main problem i have currently with what’s been happening is that we have very little idea what we can do (if anything) to help the Devs resolve it.
The CS are doing their best and asking us submit bug reports, but it’s not very clear what information they want from us other than the obvious “oh god the entire guild bank just disappeared” or even IF any information we give can have any effect.
Normally with most game bugs it will be a question of retracing our steps and seeing if something can be reproduced, but with something that seems like it’s on blizzards side we don’t have anything to give them. There is no evidence of what happened on our end just blank tabs and blank logs. It feels like a bug report is just us tagging ourselves as affected rather than contributing any meaningful data.
So just in terms of actionable things id like to ask of blizz CS:
1: Let us know what information they want from us (or acknowledge there’s nothing player side that will help)
The more time that passes the less details people are going to remember, if they have some things they suspect but want to confirm I’m sure most people affected would do their best to provide them.
2: Set up a specific ticket choice for this issue within the In-Game Issues/Items & Mail subsection of the world of Warcraft support.
We know this isn’t going to be a quick fix, but having a ticket sitting in our accounts section open would let us know we won’t be forgotten in the churn.
I posted about this in the previous locked thread.
I have been using the addon Guild Bank Snapshot (replace dot with “.” ) www.curseforge(dot)com/wow/addons/guild-bank-snapshots
It allows you to get snapshots of guild bank logs and you can export it to csv.
Blizzard posted that due to insufficient/missing logs no more items could be recovered.
I was hoping that since my guild bank log showed items deposited on empty tabs, I would get my items back since I had logs. I’m missing (147 stacks of items)
But in the last 3 weeks I have not gotten anywhere
Its also abit sad that the Feedback/Bug report CS is pointing to has a 500 char limitation as well as no way to get a confirmation of the reported issue/bug.
I have no real fate in that Blizzard will do something about this, it feels like their view is that “it is what it is, accept and move on”
This is exactly what we have now, by and large. These are not formal replies when we read that Blizzard did everything they could. This is their position. That’s it. End of the film.
Moving here since the last thread was closed (Customer Support forum > Guild Bank items gone). Blue post:
This topic seems to be going around in circles, so we’re going to close this thread.
I think the consensus in that thread is rather clear: people are hurt, annoyed, and believe that Blizzard has not done enough to actually resolve this issue. I doubt there should be much in the way of other opinions, because why would there be?
Now, we have been told that the data is irreparably lost. Let’s assume a scenario where Blizzard is truly incompetent to such an extent that they don’t know how to make backups. It’s simply too complex a task for them. However, what this means is that our data is not safe with Blizzard, and we might lose anything at any time and couldn’t trust them to support us in any meaningful way. A more sinister interpretation is that Blizzard is capable of doing backups but is too greedy to go through them to do their customers justice. It would cost them too much money, so now they play coy and pretend nothing can be done about the issue.
No matter what happens behind the scenes, let us assume that our items are permanently lost. I’d say it matters a lot HOW Blizzard handles the issue from here. Here are some options:
“Sorry, we failed you big time. Now, please pay for more subscription time to farm back everything you lost, and we might or might not fail you again. Mr. Pinchy does not know!” [this is the current state of affairs]
“Sorry, we failed you big time. We cannot restore the lost items, but here’s a meaningful compensation X that is not insulting, unlike our “partial restoration.” We are also taking steps Y to improve our technical skills and implement policies Z to make sure this kind of failure never happens again.” [the reasonable response]
“You have been banned from the game and these forums because you seek justice instead of being a compliant little sheep that we can continue milking for money with impunity. We are aspiring to catch up with Nestlé!” [the corporate hellscape response]
Blizzard, please stop repeating the broken record that the data is lost and assure us to keep paying you money. So far, you’re not doing a very good job here. My game time is running out, and I’m not inclined at all to buy more of it. You know, I even considered buying that new cool bear mount and had plans to do several projects in-game. I had a good drive, but paying you money under these circumstances would be completely irrational. My entire character roster could vanish after some hotfix, and I couldn’t trust you to do anything about it. So, what’s the point of playing?
still not received ANYTHING back - not even a response from Blizz to say they are still trying to find our items - or that they have stopped trying - or any response at all
Time passes, nothing is fixed. Many sympathize with us, which is nice. Some bloggers talk about the problems, well-known resources have joined in. And only those who depend on fixing the situation are silent, as if nothing happened.
Even worse, the thieves are refusing to refund remaining game time and even had the audacity to offer me 90 days extra game time if i come back to the game. I’ll be contacting trading standards after the weekend, as the service i paid for is not the service now being provided.
It seems that things are even worse than we thought.
Have humiliation and ignoring players become the norm? We are used to getting banned for “unacceptable behavior” when we dare to show any emotion in the game - any couple of people who are just in a bad mood can complain, and no one will sort out the situation. We are used to being banned for a couple of messages in the LookingForGroup, when someone doesn’t like it. And no investigation either. Why should I list them, everyone already knows what we have been deprived of lately. Now we have also been robbed, without any consequences for the robbers. It turned out great.
I don’t understand where you have got the term “Now we have been robbed” from as technically you don’t actually own anything in-game.
Anything you have “Collected” still technically belongs to Blizzard, you buy the expansions, you pay your subs to “play the game” not to have sole ownership of items!, its the same as people who cry in raids about loosing items due to the rolling system and they lost “their” item, again technically not theirs…still owned by blizz! this includes purchased items from the market, your paying to own it your paying for the right to use said items!
They said they can’t repair it/sort it…fine…my guild on my main lost a lot but hey know what its only an item in game with no material worth outside of wow!
Tokens are bought for money, which are valued outside the game? And people bought and sold tokens for gold to buy resources and earn even more gold by crafting items. And these resources were taken away from them. So what do you call it?
Again a token enables you the right to either use for game time or sell on the auction house.
all of which are in game items/benefits none of which are “owned” by the person purchasingm you paying for the right to either use or Sell for gold which again all items in game including currency belong to blizzard, If you were perma banned would you cry to blizz that you want all of the money back that you have spent on game time, shop items, tokens etc, no because if you read the T&C’s it states!
YOU ACKNOWLEDGE THAT BLIZZARD IS NOT REQUIRED TO REFUND AMOUNTS YOU PAY TO BLIZZARD FOR USE OF THE PLATFORM, OR FOR DIGITAL PURCHASES MADE THROUGH THE PLATFORM, FOR ANY REASON, EXCEPT AS REQUIRED BY APPLICABLE LAW.
and
Blizzard’s Ownership
With the sole exception of the Licensors’ Games, Blizzard is the owner or licensee of all right, title, and interest in and to the Platform, including the Games that are produced and developed by Blizzard (“Blizzard Games”), Custom Games derived from a Blizzard Game, Accounts, and all of the features and components thereof. The Platform may contain materials licensed by third-parties to Blizzard, and these third-parties may enforce their ownership rights against you in the event that you violate this Agreement. The following components of the Platform (which do not include content or components of the Licensors’ Games), are owned or licensed by Blizzard:
All virtual content appearing within the Platform, including the Blizzard Games, such as:
1. Visual Components: Locations, artwork, structural or landscape designs, animations, and audio-visual effects;
2. Narrations: Themes, concepts, stories, and storylines;
3. Characters: The names, likenesses, inventories, and catch phrases of Game characters;
4.Items: Virtual goods, such as digital cards, currency, potions, weapons, armor, wearable items, skins, sprays, pets, mounts, etc.;
So again those who are screaming we want free game time or compensation are not going to get it.
Take it on the chin like everyone else has to, be grateful for anything back…enjoy paying the new expansion
It’s one thing when the game is closed or you are banned for violation, depriving you of things. Another thing is when a company employee deletes thousands of guild banks by mistake, and company representatives can, but do not want to return everything later. The whole point of the issue is in this and in the fact that they cannot normally explain the reason for the impossibility of returning items. Any person even slightly familiar with programming means about backups and restoring data from them …
“Except as required by applicable law” is important here. Law continually adapts over time, much more quickly than one would expect looking at statutory law. A ‘legal resolution’ is of course unlikely, despite the breaking of promises by Blizzard.
It is easy to laugh at people being upset over losing virtual items and currency, and mock them for comparing a virtual in-game currency to real-world currency. Yes, promises were broken, but are promises truly binding? Not really.
Imagine if ‘real money’ was actually virtual currency, only backed by a promise? That would be shocking. Look at any real banknote. As an example, UK banknotes state “I promise to pay the bearer upon demand the sum of 20 pounds’.
That means the banknote isn’t 20 pounds. It is a virtual representation of a currency, backed by a promise.
When you transfer currency between banks, do they bundle up a load of banknotes and physically ship them to the other bank? No. It turns out that ‘real money’ is actually just virtual currency, based on a promise.
The difference is that real banks (mostly) ensure data is backed up, and not ‘lost’. Or at least that data can be recovered.
WoW will only lose a few % of its subscribers over this - barely noticeable. If they had many other data loss issues, however, a few % here, a few% there, can really add up. Twenty years is a great run for any game.
IGN reached out to Blizzard to ask for more information as to how this happened or if the company plans to take any further actions to restore lost items, but Blizzard declined to comment.
