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84 commentsTuesday, March 11, 2008

Blizzard Loses A World Of Warcraft Player

10 million players, and zero ways to resolve a problem

84 Comments

I know the feeling.

I am currently going through almost the exact same issue. I had a full WoW account for a single day, and i didnt even reach a high enough level to use the global chat, yet i was disconnected and banned for supposedly spamming advertisements in the global chat. i have emailed blizzard countless times and gotten no response other than the automated "thanks". im actually on the phone with accounts and billing right now, waiting (half an hour and still counting) for someone to help me. if they dont give me a prompt fix, then they've lost me as a customer too.

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attack wow main frame

2 can play this game" close my account, 8 yrs playing, 1 gold buy, $1589 of my money to pay and play, and some, shmuck, hits a key and im gone"
there mainframe is on a open network, im going to devote all of my resources, and exploit all those collage kids, that need a dime, to feed them self,s, to join my party, to send them a repeated, christmas gift,battle ping, and such, to help them spend my hard earned,$$ i/we gave them,,, trick or treat" silly rabbit, tricks are for kids, and there are 16 million more kids, waiting to wow the wow

Im with you

if u get the name of the Turalyon GM or his email I want it.I got banned for calling a schmuck a bad word and he reported me.Now my account is closed and no one has the balls to respond to me at all.NOT ONCE, not a warning or anything ever in my 6 years and thousands of hours playing.

I just got hacked too - then banned exploiting the economy

I have been hacked recently. Gold farmers I am sure... they are feeling the crunch of a bad economy (RL economy) just like we all are. LOL Stay off my account you fools! Took me a week to get the account back then I made sure I got it into Battlenet right away and I have an authenticator (cost's $6) on the way. I have played WoW for over four years and I do not care about the game that much anymore but it's the principle of the whole thing. I was not going to walk away and let them keep my account. When I got the account back, they had my mining skill from 0-450 (my toon is 450 engineering so mining is good) and ALL of my bags were loaded with their farming of crystallized fire's and ore. Imagine this - all of raiding dps gear was still on the toon and my lower level toons had been cleaned out but still there. I was in NO guilds, so nothing was robbed from guild banks. So, they actually did me a FAVOR, I thought, until I get an email a week after I get my account back saying that my account had been banned for "exploiting the economy" in the game. I had deleted the toon they created, but I know Blizzard can see that. I emailed them back right away and sent documentation of the account being hacked. I am hoping all will turn out OK.

any words of encouragement now would be good ... anyone?

wow

well I found out that my guild was running bot = glider and that sent me into horror so i left pissed off the guild becuase i told them that i jus find it lacking and i just told them off and now they are spaming gms that im trying to sell my account look people i spent hours i have 3 80's rest are 60th lvl is my lowest these dumbasses reporting me for selling my account comon just because i work my ass off only running questhelper this is alot of work they want to ban my account. beware of tanaris server guild name SUASPONTE they are hacks and bot users watch out for minisick sickpuppy emeraldrain and guild leaders they are a lame guild players that thinks there gods gift to wow and because of there arrogance im going to get baned 80 pally 80 shammy 80 warrior bunch of 60s too this is two years that i lost thank you blizzard for taking the time to look at the big picture

Get over it

First things first: this my-wow-account-got-hacked blizzard-stole-my-money blog is only scraping the surface off the tiniest drop of water from an entire ocean. People get hacked all the time. People get banned all the time.

This needs to be established right off the bat: Blizzard is a legitimate and successful company. They've made the best RTS games this world has seen so far, they've made a successful, addictive and entertaining MMORPG (all you people here complaining about losing 7 dollars worth of subscription were evidentely so seduced by the game you are being torn apart because you can't play at your leisure), but most importantly, they've made billions in profit. 11 million users pay 15 dollars per month to play. This yields 165 million dollars a month, and for what? To pay for maybe 10 or 20 thousand employees? To pay for the A/C to prevent the servers from melting?

Put yourself in Blizzard's shoes. What is your purpose? Are you in the business of losing money on software so that your customers can be happy? No. You're in the business of making money of customers who are... well, you don't give a ---- how they feel, do you? People who work 8 hours a day, sleep 4, and play WoW 11 are addicts, yes, we all agree. So what? They're making you money. Nerds who pay for 5 accounts, have an identical character on each, run 5 copies of WoW simultaneously, all wired into the same mouse and keyboard, making all 5 characters use the same abilities, move the same way, etc., what we call a 5-boxer? Annoying? Yes. Against the rules? Not per se. Makes Blizzard 75 dollars a month, versus 15 dollars a month? Yes.

The people here complaining that Blizzard never gets around to answering their questions are part of a small group of individuals who require 100 times more attention than your average player, and who only yield about, oh, the exact, same, amount of money that a single average player does. You can pay a technician 20 dollars to deal with 1 person over the phone in one hour, or 20 dollars to deal with 10 people over e-mails in one hour. It's all about the profits.

Blizzard has determined probably the most profitable amount and quality of customer service. How many players do you think a SINGLE customer service agent can keep in the game? Let's be reasonable. We've already determined that 90% of WoW players are either addicts or gold farmers. If they stop playing, they either find themselves with 10 hours of free time every day, with no friends to spend it on, or find themselves out of their only job / source of income. They're not going to quit. For the other 10% of rational-minded players, very few are actually going to STOP playing the game if they don't get an answer from customer service. Remember, like us, they're being reasonable. But let's actually figure this out. An agent is payed 30 dollars an hour (probably more). 240 dollars a week, 960 dollars a month. That's the amount of money 64 players bring in. About 5 times more people than have complained here today. Probably 8 times more people than have actually written on this blog and ACTUALLY stopped playing.

If a customer service agent spends nice agent-player quality time with each and every one of you, wiping your tears and giving you a lollypop, finally getting through the endless maze of bits and bytes and FINALLY saving your account, each and every one of you, unless he gets payed less-than-minimum wage, he's losing the company money. Are they going to hire more people? No.

Within the actual game, I've heard pretty much the same sort of comments that I've seen here today: "This game sucks. It has horrible graphics, crappy gameplay and drab (wtf?) settings." You're paying 15 dollars a month to play this. If it's good enough for such refined and / or picky tastes, it MUST be good for the rest of us.

If I were in charge of WoW, I'd invest lots of money into a new graphics engine (maybe 11 or 22 million dollars) and raise the price of subscription up from 15$/month to 16 or 17 dollars, and make several hundred millions in profit. What? You thought I'd gone soft and actually done a service for the people? Hah! Read the EULA. You're paying 15$ a month to play WoW. Not to have your opinion heard by the big cheeses. Not to be worshipped. Not to be a god.

I hope by the time you reach this part of my perhaps-a-bit-long response, you either skipped what I've said above but already know, or have read up to here and realised, that Blizzard Entertainment isn't your big brother. They're not holding your hand. They're screwing you over. We can all agree. They're making a FORTUNE over a pretty much self sufficient game. Like I said, paying for the A/C to keep the servers running at a decent speed, paying for the perfect amount of quality and quantity of gameplay and customer service isn't all that much of a cost. They've made billions in profits over this, and it's not a blog that I can't even remember how I came across that's going to change Blizzard Entertainment into Carebear Entertainment. If you don't like the game, don't pay for it and don't play it. There's always one person just letting their subscription run out, like I did, but there's always two who are just starting to pay and play.

And remember, it's just a game. You're not getting anything material out of it. There's no point in this game that you can say is a year's worth of progress. It's the kind of game that if you've played for a year and you're still making levelling progress, you don't play well / often enough to enjoy the game to it's potential. A year's worth of playing shouldn't be a year's worth of experience points and items, but a year's worth of fun. Just start your account over again and you'll be back to the highest level of progress soon enough. Maybe you'll even have fun playing the game while you get there...

Who knew games were for fun?

Ya my account was hacked 10

Ya my account was hacked 10 days ago. And its been 8 days since I sent blizzard an e-mail, and in that time, my 80 was transfered servers, and all my other characters were delete. Their 7 days too late. If they have 10 million players, then they need to figure out how to keep their customer service staffed enough to help the customers sooner than later. I'll be picking up Aion when it comes out. Not like it matters, but they just lost another customer

<.< untill D3 comes out YES.

buy wow gold cheap wow power

Not important

How is this story important news? this kind of nonsense happens all of the time in the conservative areas of the world.

BANNED

i'v had problems with blizzard
i'v been permanently banned from the service just becaues i fallowed a link for free gold i did'nt know you wernt allowed to do that so i ring em up and they tell me nothing but only al have to wait for them to email me wat a fucked up planet AM INOCENT DAM YOU

Just trying to see if anyone

Just trying to see if anyone else has had this problem.
I started school last August and with no time to play, after about 4 years of loyal gaming, I had to deactivate my account. I had checked it right before it went inactive and it was just as I had left it. I go back just last night to check it, thinking I might start playing again, and I find my password and email have been changed. I search my characters on the Armory and out of the 5 I searched, I can only find 3, 2 are stripped bare, and the 3rd is almost bare with a new spec to beast mastery.
How someone can hack an account that isn't even active is something I can't figure out. My only guess is that someone at Blizzard has a little too much access to our private information. After talking to a few friends, they tell me they've heard of similar experiences. I'm waiting for a reply now, though I don't expect one soon.

Update! Got the account

Update! Got the account back, but have to wait on a ticket from a GM to get my stuff back and character transferred back to the right server. Its been "Escalated to a specialist." so far.

I got banned too. Given only

I got banned too. Given only a 3 day ban, but thats as bad as a permanent ban because they simply wont tell me what I did wrong.
I will prolly do it again without knowledge because of that. They only said that I was sharing my account with an unauthorized person, but I never did such a thing. They prolly think I paid a leveling service or something like that because 4 days after I reactivated my account I had leveled from 70 to 75 and I guess that can only mean some chinese power leveler, by their logic...

I am still trying to explain them that I did nothing wrong, but they already rechecked the issue (or so they say) and said again that someone unauthorized accessed my account.
I even checked for any hacks on my computer, never noticed any gold or items missing or character being used in a different way (like being in a different place from where I logged off from). My password is also pretty secure.

My account is 4 years old. Thats what I get for being loyal.

Anyway I can convince them?
I already thought about BBB.com.

“The Penalty Volcano”

I got my account keylogged by being stupid.
I got a temp ban on the forums.
I changed my password, but only a little bit.
1 day after the forum ban was lifted I got my account closed.

So what ever happened to “The Penalty Volcano” ?
You know, get a warning, a temp ban for a short time, then longer until a final closure.

I am devistated or is it shock. I don't know. I do know I don't feel well about the prospect of loosing about a years worth of playing.

I've emailed blizz. I'll let you know how it turns out.

same here

I hit the top of the penalty volcano with one bad word, and this was defending myself after someobody whispered me.I went from banned to an account that no longer exists been 4 days now still no response from anyone about anything.Try loosing 5 years of playing, very upset seems like blizzard just dont freakin care

@@ Update @@ I am back

@@ Update @@
I am back online !
Took a little longer than it should have because I have a US account and live in the UK. 8 hours time difference does slow things down!

Guys stop the BS

There are very rare cases in which a person really gets banned for doing nothing. Stop coming on here QQing about getting banned when we all know you were doing something wrong in the first place. Back in the days, pre BC i had a hunter and went on a roof top camping spree. I received 3 warning emails and continued to rooftop camp. My account was banned and it was because i failed to listen. Lets all be matture here and accept the fact that 9 out of 10 people bitching on this forum did something wrong in the first place. Crying about it on this forum isn't going to bring your account back. So just tell the truth and lets all get a laugh out of it.

Wow

SO my account go banned... haha.. go figure right? Ive been playing for 3 months... no problems.. then BOOM.. its gone. I stood outside at midnight just like millions of other people for the release of WOTLK and it looks like level 80 is never happening for me! I emailed and called and emailed some more... still no response. If I dont get one I do plan on making this a very OPEN thing.. even if its just a 2 min overview on my local news station I will take any Jab I can back at Blizzard. I wasted over 100$ just on the product, and 15 a month for the priveledge to play... y'no what.. most people would either say oh well, or just go buy a new set of disc's and start over. NOT ME.. I am not going to give in, hell with the game but you create something that is so easily addicting to some people and expect that when a MISTAKE does happen that your not going to fix or resolve it? No.. not with me.. and I wont except any b/s excuse that somehow I am a hacker/goldfarmer/or used third party software... feel free to look at my shitty lvl 77 and my crappy 42 gp... and realize that IT WASNT ME. DOesnt take a rocket scientist...

Problem is that Blizzard

Problem is that Blizzard doesn't care. They were hugely popular before WoW, and now WoW nets $150,000,000+ per month. I will personally guarantee that every penny that ever went into developing and maintaining that game from 2004 to the present doesn't equal that number. The graphics are less than mediocre, the gameplay is boring, and the settings are drab. Essentially, Blizzard have already made their paltry investment back, and even if the game died tomorrow they will have already made 10,000x profit, and we all know that won't happen. A solid 3 out of every 4 WoW players is an addict. The kind that hasn't logged out since November 2004, lives in his mother's basement and smells like stale urine because he can't be bothered to walk to the bathroom. Perhaps half of the remainder are Korean gold famers and botters. The remaining eigth of the game population are like most of you and myself: casual gamers with jobs and social lives that just like to sit back and relax after a busy day. Unfortunately, the first group ensures that 3/4 of Blizzard's custom all but guaranteed to continue to pay for their fix. Why should it matter to Blizzard if they unjustly persecute a few hundred accounts every day? Perhaps half of those will just sign up new accounts, and the loss of the few who - like us - feel truly wronged by the faulty system, will ultimately cost Blizzard nothing relative to their profits. Therefore, Blizzard has no reason to care about their players. It's hard to blame them. Setting an e-mail account to automatically send the same form letter to every last attempt at contact is much cheaper than paying five thousand Indians to look into something so relatively trivial. It's poor business, but when your accounting department can honestly say that your subscription money from 2005 is still paying the bills, you aren't exactly under any pressure to practice better business. Also, WoW's EULA and ToS clearly state that Blizzard can terminate your service for any reason at any time period. Meaning that they aren't obligated to bother providing support to banned accounts at all. Nifty, how that works, isn't it?

WOW blizz, your to cool. im BANNED

i woke up, got on, played for 5 hours, got of came back and im banned. i dont have to say much but thanks blizz, your a scam.

Blizzard Service ???

My son and I did the free trial thing, then upgraded to the full version (via) on-line) no prob right. Well my sons account got hacked, They sold off all the stuff of his lvl 22 mage, then deleted it. I checked my account and ALL the info was wrong right down to my name. I went to check my sons acc. and the password was changed. we called Blizzard explaining the situation. they locked down BOTH accounts. No access what so ever. I call blizzard AGAIN and they told me I had to EMAIL the admins. so I did this and got nowhere.

They said there was nothing they could do.

 

Did I mention we had the full accounts for only THREE DAYS!!!!

lol

dude there is no way your telling the truth first off if your account was hacked its not possable to change contact information that is something that will allways be the same there is no possable way to change it blizzard will not change it for you no way it can be done also saying your sons account was hacked too hmmm well if any thing really even happened to your sons account and your account sounds like your son took everything and deleted his stuff to cover his a$$ NO one is interested in stealing and selling stuff of of a 22 mage trust me

 

not trying to be an ass just pointing out random b/s about wow that cant be true and shouldnt be posted on forums for people read if its not true people are looking for truth on these forums and way to help there situations or just to let others know of there problems no reason to make stuff up and post on forums because your board or for any other reason :D

 

now go ahead and delete this for me calling out b/s :D

 

good times

^

exactly what he said, there is no way to change that information, so you should probably have a nice sit down with your kid.

Are you just stupid

Of course accounts can get hacked and do all of the time. Automated programs are making that much easier for gold farmers, alot less farming just to get into an account and take the gold someone else farmed.

There has been a recent spree of hacking into accounts in several guilds that I'm in and has also happened to me and a few friends also. My best guess is that there is someone within Blizzard or a way into their servers that's allowing hackers to get in. An yes, they do change your account information once they get in.

Try sending your complaints to wowaccountadmin@blizzard.com and see if you ever get a human to respond. You are one of the few if you do. The GMs are much better, but still poor relative to the quality of service at a Chuck Cheese's.

Hacked Account?

I have had accounts hacked and that message aappears when the accocunt has been changed recently too.

Why is this important?

I am not sure why this is important to know, user accounts get deleted by accident at online gaming sites all the time.

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