I decided to level a resto Shaman after getting sick of bashing my head against a wall playing Holy Priest in M+. After leveling all the way to 80 and grinding enough gear and sparks to craft a 720 ilvl staff, I stupidly selected the stamina-only staff instead of the intellect one when making my crafting order.
Now I acknowledge this was ultimately my mistake. However my frustration is with how easily this mistake was made and some factors that led to it:
The icon of them both is exactly the same.
The names are also very similar: Vagabond’s Careful Crutch (Stamina) & Vagabond’s Bounding Baton (Intellect).
The stamina one is at the top of the craft list, despite the intellect one coming before it alphabetically. Why is it ordered this way when only two or so specs use 2H stamina staves while a boatload more use intellect staves?
As soon as I received the item I realized my mistake and thought that if I just made a ticket they could see it was an honest error. Surely any reasonable Customer Service team would have the tools to reverse this and refund the sparks, which would now take me another four weeks to recover?
To no surprise, I got a response along the lines of: “GG, your fault. Enjoy playing for another 4 weeks to get the sparks back.” I didn’t even equip the item…
It seems absurd to me that there’s no method of recycling these items or a system in place as a safety net for honest mistakes like mine. These are arguably the most precious resources from M+ right now alongside gilded crests.
Posting this as part rant/part warning to others: double-check your crafts before making them because Blizzard simply does not care if you mess up and will not help you.
In the past, Blizzard customer support would occasionally assist with this issue, as it was a common problem for players to craft an item with the wrong stats. They were able to help, but it was treated as a one-time courtesy, especially if you weren’t repeatedly making the same mistake.
While the current systems are better, they still don’t prevent these errors from happening. Even with multiple “Are you sure?” checkboxes, players will just click through them to craft quickly, and mistakes will still occur.
You’re right that the similar names and icons don’t help. Other games use visual cues—like a green glow for a Stamina item or a white glow for Intellect—to differentiate between versions of the same item. Implementing something similar would be a huge help.
The response you received was likely automated. Their system scans tickets for keywords like “crafted wrong item” and automatically replies with a policy message, effectively saying, “We can’t help, sorry.”
It would be nice if they leveraged their existing systems, like the two-hour trade window for dungeon loot. Why not implement a similar grace period for crafted items? For example, you could have 30 minutes to an hour to notice the mistake and go to an NPC to refund the materials.
This system should be easy to create. It wouldn’t require much manpower, as their databases already track what materials are used to craft each item. It would drastically reduce support tickets on this issue and player frustration. Sure, some would still miss the window and complain, but it would be a significant quality-of-life improvement.
The internet has trained people to click popups away without reading them. Cookie notice, click away. Mailing list, click away. Special offer, click away. Important info you can’t undo this, click away.
No UI should ever have “are you sure” because in that moment, that exact split second, the fragment of time it takes to click yes, the person is sure.
We’re only not-sure shortly after we did the wrong thing. Humans tend to process information slightly after making decisions, it’s in our nature.
I agree with the OP that some recycle-ability for crafted items would be good. Even if it’s within 30 minutes of receiving in the mail, or you can only do it once per 2 weeks, in order to prevent a craft-use-recycle system for players flipping between specs.
Ngl though, we’ve known this for a long time. Been years since Blizzard support actually did any supporting. Don’t expect help, double check, triple check, and whatever you do don’t craft anything while drunk or tired
Totally! Currently leveling a new Shaman entirely, as it’s quicker and I am then not 4 weeks behind and always two sparks behind everyone else. The things I do for this game…
Nope, sorry, Burning Blade EU since like forever, specificaly since free migration in WotlK where we decided to move from Shadowmoon EU to Burning Blade EU.
I’m normally all for mistakes having consequences but this type I’d generally be pleased if the GM’s could fix it. It’s a terrible UI, a crap system and so on.
And I agree with Uda, a shield and weapon is a lot better. The armor really helps with reducing physical damage. I just checked its more than 10%.
I somewhat like it, just hate the “catch up” system for Knowledge Points (besides gathering and Enchanting the rest are time gated – doing them now would take months to fill out!)…
Just wish they’d get rid of the multiple qualities for reagents, there’s so much inventory bloat because of them!
Ideally I’d like them to be a bit more involved, like a mixture of FF14’s crafting skill system and Wildstar’s Node system would’ve been great.
I don’t agree that you should be able to scrap an item for parts. The UI when crafting could be improved a lot; for example:
You have to hover over the icon to see the stats (tooltip)
The stats could be shown at all times in a larger window with larger scale text
Make it cheaper to create an item with lesser quality (higher material demand for higher quality item)
Let you as a crafter post in the personal crafting tab to more easily connect people for personal crafts (so that you can demand a quality requirement)
Not scrap it down to parts completely but so you get the spark and the crest back. So you loose all the other crafting materials(as penalty lets say) but you can then reuse the spark and crest in case you do make something that either made by accident or dont need(due to changes or something).
