I haven’t played World of Warcraft in several years, since a few months after the game was released. (I played for a while in the open beta before that.) At the time, I had a lot going on in my life, my internet connection wasn’t stable enough to play long term, and all my friends who were playing were rapidly outpacing me in leveling, making adventuring with them impossible. So, I quit. I had heard that even if you stop paying for the account, you can still return to your characters if you ever reactivate the account.
Off and on I’ve toyed with the idea of playing again, especially as friends of mine from college dived into the game hardcore, and talked about it often whenever I’d visit. The goal would be to hang out with them online on a regular basis, moreso than playing the game itself.
A few weeks ago, I start receiving emails about “server transfer” for my characters in WoW. A few of the character names I recognize as ones I’ve made (most notably my human bow-user named “Ollie”) and a few I don’t. I was a bit worried that my account had been hacked, and I was paying for someone else to play WoW. But I checked my credit card statements and there were no charges to back it up. Still, hacked is still bad, and I consulted a few of my friends who still play. They recommended reporting it, so I did. About a day later, I receive an auto-response saying that due to the volume of email, it could take up to a week for someone to get back to me.
A week passed. No answer, but still more server transfer requests are sent to me. Finally, I receive an email telling me that my account is being closed because I engaged in “illegal financial transactions” or somesuch- I read it to be my account was being used for gold farming.
Still no response to my complaint that my account had been hacked. Still don’t know if any of my personal information was compromised. Oh, and even though I tried to head it off on day 1, my account was used for something they didn’t want. And yet, here I am, with a closed account.
Thus, I’m done with World of Warcraft. Apparently I’m a fugitive gold farmer anyway, so even if I wanted to resume with my characters, I can’t. (Not a big deal since my highest level character was level 21.) I’m also pretty upset at the level of customer service demonstrated. Thanks for nothing Blizzard. Maybe I’ll pick up your two games that don’t require accounts, but I’m not as certain that I want to support them anymore.
Besides, I have D&D Fourth Edition, and that’s close enough, right? (Just kidding!)
I’m sorry to hear about your account situation. Though I won’t say that you should definitely try and play WoW or any such thing I will say this. My wifes account WAS hacked. Which was very unfortunate due to the fact that she was the guild leader and WoW had recently started it’s guild banking system. Though most of her characters items were sold, guilds items were sold, and gold sent to another character on the server the WoW customer support was (I felt) swift in fixing the situation. We did immediately send an e-mail to customer support when we noticed it happening. (They did, in the course of correspondence, send an e-mail saying something like her account was being used for an exploit and was being suspended. The hacker was using one of her characters to farm a level 60 instance over and over.) However this was quickly rectified. WoW staff restored all of her characters sold gear, MANY of the guild bank items, and I’m not sure about her personal gold. I thought, even though it did take about a week in all, that the response and handling was excellent. Having been the victim of a real life home break in and theft I felt an equal amount of anger and horror when it happened. But I must say I was much more satisfied with WoW staffs support and response than I was with real life police.
Yea, unless you’re some kind of freak who beats single-player games within a day or two of buying it (I can think of two such people…) then I don’t really see the cost-benefit of playing WoW.
It’s a fun game, but when you stop playing you’re not really walking away with much for the money you’ve spent.
Except for the memories, Bart…THE MEMORIES…
They are not always the most swift. Sometimes they are aggravatingly incompetant as well. However, they do usually eventually resolve these issues after given time to “investigate.” They will have record of your report prior to their closing your account – in fact, I almost wonder if they didn’t close the account in auto response to the investigation started by your report?
I do hope your personal information was not compromised. I’m not advocating sticking it out with Blizzard, merely suggesting it may yet be worked out. Keep a close eye on your credit.
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Yep…definitely not worth the money…
Unless, of course, you play the 10-day trial over and over like I’ve done…sure, the whole not-being-able-to-advance-past-level-20 thing is annoying, but you get to experience the gamut of races and classes as well as make some of those “memories” for less than a pack of gum…
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Something else we discussed, since you aren’t a paying customer (and haven’t been pretty much ever) they probably aren’t exactly jumping to please you. 😛
I can still see the point that they dropped the ball on this issue, but the consequences seem negligible if you’re not being charged anything.
If Dave isn’t a paying customer but was, they should be trying to get him back, not alienating him further.
I think the consequences are that some personal information may be in jeopardy here and that is not negligible.
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Yeah, the point isn’t that they should or should not be trying to win me back per se, but whether I’m currently a paying customer or not, I trusted them with a lot of personal information, and I expect that if that information is compromised, I can use their procedures to do something about it.
WoW to me seems a bit boring anyway. Too much like hack-and-slash 2nd edn dungeon grinding, but outdoors. I think it is much more interesting as a type of experiment in virtual behaviour and economies.
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