Hi folks, long time no talk. I have a lot of updates for you which I hope to get to this coming weekend.
In the meantime, please take a look at the latest video on my YouTube channel, which is entitled The Great Blizzard Bank Heist. If you’re not aware, a lot of people have had stuff vanish out of their guild banks since the pre-expansion patch hit. We’re talking decades’ worth of stuff at this point. I’ve lost two full tabs worth of stuff (ALL MY DRAGONSCALES, all kinds of rare and no longer obtainable patterns) and only realized it late last week. CHECK YOUR BANKS, see if anything is missing. If anything is, let’s make some noise about it and try to get Blizzard to do the right thing.
Thank you.
Holy cow, that’s nuts. And it sucks.
I do disagree with the DB manager in the YouTube comments about this being a SOX violation because Sarbanes-Oxley refers to finance within the real world, not finance within a virtual/video game economy. (That’s part of the problem with cryptocurrency, because it doesn’t have any of the protections that “regular” finance does; if you get taken by a fraudster in the same fashion that someone stole your credit card number, there’s no recourse for you to get your money and/or credit rating back.) I can also guarantee that if anybody tries to sue Micro-Blizzard over this they won’t win in court, because there’s likely a couple of lines in the Terms of Service about “best effort” for any issues.
Still, I believe Blizzard’s response is insufficient for the loss at hand. (To put it mildly.) If “too bad so sad” is what their effective response is, that means that people will start to think that “well, if it’s all just pixels, we can leave those pixels behind and do something else”. And THAT is where the real damage to Blizzard will come from.
Unfortunately, WoW is kind of insulated from most problems because enough of the player base will not exercise the one power they do have –the power of the purse– unless a Shadowlands expansion appears. Their response reminded me of what the son of the Cincinnati Reds’ owner said a year ago when he was asked about trading away all of their stars: “What are you going to do? Cheer for another team?” The tone deaf nature of what was lost in WoW will motivate some people, but only when the players’ actions affects their bottom line will Blizz do something about it.
The irony is that Blizz has practice restoring hacked accounts on such a regular basis. My account was hacked back in 2010, and after putting in a ticket I had all of my items restored within 24 hours. Surely Blizz could figure out how to fix this –or have access to the backed up data prior to the systems change– and at least provide more updates than “best effort”. This isn’t a matter of in-game finances, but a reputational issue with Blizz that they would most likely prefer to avoid. Then again, after all that time being run by Bobby Kotick, maybe that’s rubbed off on the rest of the company.
Oh, and I did raise the signal on my blog. Not that I get a lot of readers, mind you, but every little bit helps.
Super appreciate it! Left a couple comments in there. Anything that helps to get things seen or heard is so welcome. Thank you, friend. :)
Well rats that it’s not actually finance-related, then… 😅 I’m pretty sure no lawsuit will get them to do anything. I think the play here is to make them FEEL obliged to do what’s right, rather than stick to their dumb TOS/EULA obligations.
I’m right there with you on the “well, it’s ALL just pixels, so what the heck am I even doing?” Like I would be devastated to lose my Rhok’delar, my Hand of A’dal, my Baron’s mount and more. And they’re telling us right now that none of it matters. So if none of it matters… why should I give you money every month, Blizz? And why should I encourage friends and family to play? I shouldn’t.
Ew, the son of that team’s owner is gross. And you’re right, it’s EXACTLY the same feeling. I’m waiting to see how my attempts to raise the volume of this will go and then will make my decision before they can count my subscription for Q1 of 2025.
And you’re very right, I can tell you about countless times where Blizzard did the right thing! So I wonder if this is Micro$oft rearing its ugly head…
I can agree that Blizz ought to be able to restore the items, because they likely have old data squirreled away as part of a regular backup routine, but….