Well, well, well. What do we have here? It’s a case of missing data.
I could die of not surprise.
So, a couple of weeks ago, I went to Sunwell Plateau on my hunter. And I recorded it, but the sound was unrecoverable, so I recorded a new video, which is here. In both videos, I noted that something was really messed up with my rep, because Kurn couldn’t wear the “of the Shattered Sun” title, despite being exalted with the Shattered Sun Offensive, and also the tabard (which required exalted to buy and wear!) didn’t show up in my tabard options for transmog.
Doing other things at the time (like running Sunwell and narrating for you folks), I was like, whatever, I’ll figure it out later.
Figured some of it out today, when I finally figured out how to open a real ticket and not some bug report that is just going to die quietly on a to-do list somewhere at Blizz HQ.
First, I didn’t own a tabard of the Shattered Sun. Which is plainly horseshit. I ran around wearing that tabard for months! And apparently I don’t own the shields either? Also horseshit, because I used them for months (on Madrana) so like… wtf.
So some of my items are legitimately missing outside of stuff that was yoinked from me during the Great Blizzard Bank Heist. It is possible that I tossed the tabard on Madrana, but I wouldn’t do that on Kurn. Kurn has an exceptional collection of tabards and shirts and I love them! And I wouldn’t just junk them!
Anyway, ran up to the Shattered Sun staging grounds and got me a tabard. Madrana can now wear it and Kurn can transmog into it… but so can my dwarf shammy. Who is emphatically not exalted. So transmog doesn’t required rep? Interesting.
Still, even with the tabard able to be selected, Kurn still can’t select the title, while Madrana can, and the shammy cannot (as intended).
Folks, something happened to my data at some point!
I have a missing tabard and a missing title on Kurn.
Then, on Madrana, I have at least some missing items (like the Shattered Sun shields).
Who knows what else I’m missing on those or my other characters?
Am I pissed? No. I’m a little annoyed. BUT, I said to myself, this is what happens when you trust The System. Not only do they own everything, but they host everything, and that means you will lose data. Just like the Great Blizzard Bank Heist. Why? Because the people running the show can’t be bothered to back up data that’s lost. I honestly don’t care that I had to spend a whole 80 silver on a new tabard. I do still care that I had a couple of thousand of dragonscales I couldn’t farm back in less than a decade of running BWL weekly to skin Chromaggus. 52 weeks in a year, ten years, I could feasibly rebuild my ~2k of dragonscales of various colours. But why bother when they can all just vanish again when a patch goes out?
When I returned to the game, I had three rules for myself:
1) Don’t pay these people a dime of your money.
2) Play and have fun. If you’re not having fun, stop playing.
3) Never forget that your data is not your data. It’s their data.
And on a related note, did you folks hear about the poor person who was (originally) permabanned after 20 years?
Basically, the individual wants to know what actions made Blizzard get out the big ol’ banhammer. He has no idea. He’s appealed several times and got his ban lowered to 6 months, but now is questioning why return to the game when the ban expires? Apparently “other players” reported him for various actions that can get you banned and he has absolutely no clue as to why that might have happened. All he wants to do is understand and then get the issue resolved. Of course, as usual, Blizzard isn’t giving any details.
He’s decided to file consumer complaints. He’s based in Norway, but is originally from the US (I think) and has form letters linked for both countries’ consumer advocate organizations.
In the US, this is typically the Better Business Bureau. However, Blizzard is not accredited with them, so any complaints probably don’t need to be handled. Still, Blizzard does respond to these:
https://www.bbb.org/us/ca/irvine/profile/wholesale-video-games/blizzard-entertainment-inc-1126-13050668/complaints
There are hundreds of pages just like this and that’s just the last three years. They have a 1 star rating pretty consistently throughout everything. It shows that Blizzard’s interests and ours (the players’) are not aligned.
You play this game, it’s by their rules. They don’t have to do anything. They can gaslight you into next week with their vague and obscure references to logs and analyses. They can boot you off their servers never to be seen again with absolutely zero warning.
Or, they can steal your bank.
Or your shields.
Or your tabard.
Or your title.
It’s all the same. Because we play on their servers, our data is theirs to manage (or mismanage) as they please. And that goes for bans that are upheld with no real proof as well as dealing with canned responses from shitty Customer “Support” people. (I’ve worked in support spaces for 12+ years and I would never treat a customer of mine as poorly as Blizzard has treated me, or thousands of others, in the past.)
You want to play legitimately, you gotta play by their rules. No matter what they do to your characters, your inventory, your achievements, your reputation, your account.
Just a reminder to us all.