I know this is not a “sugesstion” forum, but … i couldnt find one (really)
Maybe someone can move the topic there?
And yes: i already made a feature request ingame.
But … maybe its a “crazy” idea (and would need some work from blizz, especially making it cheat proof …) what do you ppl think?
Would you use such a feature? Or would you think: wayne… ? O.O
i came up with this idea because of the loss of data in the last month (guildbanks whiped, money in warbank vanished, reputation/renown lost, already collected transmogs gone … )
There are some addons which track this or that … but nothing, where i could really track the changes made over time (especially years ago). Oldest guild bank Logs i could find are 7 Month.
So: Suggestion: Player Self-Backup Feature for Account Data (for free, not a payed option)
I would like to propose the implementation of a Player Self-Backup feature for World of Warcraft.
This feature would allow players to regularly save snapshots of their account data (reputation, currencies, tokens, guild bank contents, personal bank, warbank, voidbank, mail, bags, transmogs, etc.) and track changes over time (changelogs).
Benefits for you: Blizzard:
Reduced Support Requests: Players could independently access past data in cases of lost items or changes, reducing the load on customer support.
Increased Trust and Satisfaction: This feature would create transparency and build player confidence in the integrity of the game.
Long-term Player Engagement: By enabling players to track their progress even years later, the emotional connection to their account—and to the game—would strengthen.
This feature would be a valuable service for players while helping your streamline support and improve long-term player satisfaction.
It requires players to be a little bit technically savvy (not much) that they know how to maintain their backups, use a cloud service like google drive, etc.
If the backup is just “proof” you had “item X” in your bank, what proves that you didn’t sell that item in the Auction house after you created the backup? In that case Blizzard customer support still have to rely on their own logs and their own backup, which entirely defeats the purpose of player own backup.
Having more than one source of truth is really problematic.
It’s more work for customer support unlike your claim because they have to check their own logs/backups in addition to player backups.
It doesn’t increase trust unlike your claim. In fact it does the exact opposite. Imagine going to a restaurant and as you enter they tell you “here is a stomach medicine just in case you get poisoned by our food”. Would that increase your trust? It basically says “we are sloppy and there is a help yourself solution in case we mess up”.
I played this game more than 20 years, and this guild bank issue was the only time where this bug occurred at this scale (that I am aware of). So it’s a very rare occurrence that doesn’t warrant such solution.
Time is better invested in making the code more robust so that this bug doesn’t happen again.
They probably have backups of the data lying around, it’s just too complicated to merge a snapshot like that into a live running game without affecting a million more players. Would be the same with your proposed system.
In light of recent issues with missing items and entire guild banks being wiped, I wanted to suggest a system improvement that would give customers better access to and control over their account data. Previously, this might not have seemed necessary, but with the increasing reports of lost items, it’s becoming quite alarming.
Some accounts hold nearly 20 years of data, including items that can no longer be obtained—nostalgic items and memories. (Some players are younger than this accounts! )
It’s easy to imagine how managing such a vast amount of data has become increasingly complex. Data migrations to newer versions of the game’s database, for example, could introduce issues. Ensuring that all this data is properly maintained and transferred can be quite challenging.
Blizzard has acknowledged the guild bank data loss, but unfortunately, their response was something like, “Yes, something happened, but we can’t restore the data.”
This is exactly why a system with a detailed changelog and timestamps would be so valuable. It wouldn’t just give players more control over their data, but it would also help Blizzard identify and resolve issues more quickly. It would be a win-win situation, benefiting both the player base and the company.
Take, for example, the situations mentioned in the links below. How can I be sure the game is showing me the correct data? If the system says my renown is 5, but I’m certain I had reached 10, I would want to verify that. Thankfully, I haven’t experienced this particular issue (at least, I don’t think so), but how would you know for sure that something hasn’t just disappeared?
Or… coming back after 1-2 years.
Altoholics (use addons) … yes … i tried …
The guild banks I suspect might be affected weren’t displaying correctly—none of the tabs were showing up. To make things worse, as soon as you open the bank, Altoholic refreshes its data to reflect the current state, making it unreliable for tracking missing items.
I even went so far as to extract data from an old Veeam backup and tried to load it into Altoholic, but the result was… a mess.
I used Altoholic for a long time.
But it’s really buggy at the moment and hasn’t been updated in a while.
If it’s not being maintained anymore… that’s the issue with addons – sometimes they stop getting developed. And stop working at some point.
And even if I had concrete evidence in an addon like altoholic or TSM or something… that on September 11th a specific pet was in tab X of guild bank Y, Blizzard still wouldn’t accept that as proof of my lost items. Screenshots and similar methods aren’t considered valid proof too. And thats understandable.
This is why I think a system similar to the Armory, but on a larger scale—with a detailed changelog and timestamps—would be incredibly helpful. With such a system, Blizzard wouldn’t have to say they can’t restore lost data. All the logs and records would be there for both the player and Blizzard to access. Maybe it would even be easier to restore lost items.
This is something that needs to be taken care of by Blizzard (or any company speaking of games in general), on the back end without any input by the user/player. Making sure that customers don’t lose their data/progress is a responsibility on the company.
The only way your suggestion would be any different from the company simply having their own backups is if they let the players store these backups locally, which is a big no-no, because it would be very vulnerable to manipulation and therefore completely worthless as proof of anything.
but … customers already lost data and progress … and blizzard already confirmed it (and said they cant restore it)…
And soon, they will be reworking the entire personal bank system (“shortly after the release of TWW” – no more bags…).
I really don’t trust that Blizzard will handle this without breaking something, or that they will be able (or willing) to fix it afterward. I would love to have a backup (proof) of my account.
This is a huge performance load though.
And still you would have to fix the problem that started this idea: Guild banks. With multiple player able to deposit and withdraw from guild banks, and some actions taking place while some of the members are offline, you would have different members having different backups with different hashes.
Also if every action modifies the backup, then a bug can cause an item to be lost from the latest backup defeating the purpose of the backup.
Yes, and it’s a massive blunder on Blizzard’s end. Having a client side backup wouldn’t prevent that for the reason I already mentioned. It wouldn’t be reliable proof because it wouldn’t take long before someone figured out a way to manipulate what’s in their backup and demand to restore items, achievements or progress they never had.
It’s safe to assume that Blizzard already has backups for virtually everything, as it would be stupid not to. Something must have gone very wrong with the guild banks for them to not be able to completely restore everything.
Blizzard have back ups. Your suggesting a system that already exists as it does for any company like Blizzard.
Any user-held data could not, and should not, be trusted.
Blizzard is either being lazy or they don’t back up guild banks.
Your social media’ing this issue, it’s a non-issue for most. Nothing of importance would be held in a guild bank. We know from experice Blizzard hold back uip fo of all character data. They sued to allow you to recover deleted characters from years back!!
Reminds me of the early Korean import MMOs where the combat calculations were done on the client rather than the server. Anti-cheat was supposed to safeguard the veracity of the data. Oh… they never encrypted the data to either.
So you want Blizzard to design a system to backup your data? Another one besides the ones that are already in place and cause mass problems like the guild banks issue? Tell me, why would this second system work if they cant even make the first one work ? What would be the difference? And if you say local backup, you are quite literally insane or have booted a pc for the first time in your life yesterday and still struggling to differentiate between a keyboard and a mouse.