World of Warcraft

Some time ago, I stopped playing World of Warcraft out of anger toward the community. It appears that the community has only gotten worse, and Blizzard seems to encourage it.

About 5 years ago, several friends and I formed a guild in WoW. For a long time, this guild was nothing more than a tight-knit group of friends, and most of us were friends in the real world as well. We eventually took on some other members over the years, many of which ended up spilling over into real life friendships as well.

Then, during the Wrath of the Lich King expansion, we encountered the “Additional instances cannot be launched” problem. I’m sure many of you that have played for any extended period of time will remember this problem.

This became such a problem for many players, including our guild, which was at the time one of the leading guilds in raid progression on our server. (Ulduar was very new at the time, and we were nearing completion after a very short time).

As a result of this glitch, which really was Blizzard being too cheap to upgrade or add servers to their cluster to handle the increased loads from all the new players, our guild fell apart, because many of our members felt that transferring to other servers may fix this problem for them. How can you be a raiding guild if you can’t raid, or farm gear? This effectively killed the guild, leaving behind only the most dedicated of us, those of us that were friends in the real world.

But none the less, we stayed, and kept playing. Even when it was no fun for us.

I decided toward the end of last year to stop playing entirely, due to a combination of real life relationship problems due to an addiction to the game, and players who were just flat out ignorant and rude, the last straw being a player who attacked me verbally for no reason, saw fit to wipe our entire group multiple times, just to be a dick, and then when I retaliated verbally (I was sick of it at that point, and couldn’t kick him from our group, thanks to Blizzards system), this player reported ME, and I received a warning from a GM. I had had enough. I just stopped. My friends in the guild followed suit. I was, and had always been, the GM of our guild. I thought nothing of taking breaks, I had done it before, just to come back in a month or two and pick up where I left off, often bringing friends with me.

But this time, after quitting the game for a while, Blizzard implemented a new system. This system allows for members of guilds whose GMs are inactive to petition Game Masters to pass guild leadership over to them. This system was implemented after I had quit playing, and even uninstalled the game, and I was not even aware it existed, since I stopped following the game news entirely.

Recently, I received a Scroll of Resurrection from someone I used to play with, offering a free boost to level 80 for a character of my choosing, free epic flight skill and mount, as well as 7 free days of play time. Having nothing better to do, and wanting to see what was new (I had quit before the Deathwing raid was available), I jumped on the opportunity. Upon logging back into the game, I discovered I was guild-less. Looking further into it, I found that our guild had been hijacked. There is now one player in the guild, a level 1 character named “Bankingalt”.

How could this happen!?!? I didn’t even remember leaving anyone in the guild that wasn’t a close friend, but I obviously was mistaken. I thought, surely this can’t be hard for Blizzard to reverse, or for them to at least give me back my GM status, seeing as how they let a random person steal it, surely they can give it back. I didn’t even ask for them to restore anything that was surely stolen by this person. I just wanted my guild back. My guild that we worked hard for 5 years to build, with 5 guild bank tabs, and nice perks.

Blizzard disagrees with me, and refuses to assist me in any way, and keeps closing my support ticket on this issue. They have flat out refused to do anything. How is this not malicious? For someone to steal the guild, and kick everybody, and steal everything? Somehow this is okay by their terms of service.

Here is a screen capture of my correspondence with Blizzard GMs to date.

As you can clearly see, despite my best efforts, I just keep getting canned responses.

Clearly they would rather let one person trump a group of people. May I remind you, Blizzard, that the people you’re screwing over have been paying customers for over 5 years? You’ve made over $1000 per person in this guild. And now you want to screw us?

We are not taking this lightly. We are pissed.

I will do everything possible to be as much of a nightmare for Blizzard as I can possibly be, beginning with this blog.

You heard it here first, people. Blizzard does not give a FUCK about you, at all, no matter how much money they’ve made off of you.

We were very excited for Diablo III, but I can tell you now we will be boycotting it until our guild is returned to us. In addition, none of us will ever play World of Warcraft again, unless our guild is returned to us. Expect more tickets from my guild mates. We are not please.

I have sent this link in response to the Blizzard GM ticket. I hope you read it and find it logical to just give us what we want. You stand to lose a lot if not. This link will now be submitted on Facebook, Twitter, Reddit, and Stumbleupon.

Better get started on damage control.

UPDATE – 4-10-2012

Blizzard still doesn’t care, at all, and continues sending me canned responses.

Come on, Blizzard. Did you even read this? Do you even know the kind of negative publicity you’re generating with this?

Just give the damned guild back, or provide me a comparable option.

UPDATE: 4/13/12

So Blizzard has really dealt a low blow, closing my ticket so I can not make any more posts. All I was able to do now is take a “customer satisfaction survey”. I definitely made my point clear.

Fuck WoW, fuck Blizzard, and everything they do. You assholes clearly don’t give a fuck about your customers. I wish I had never played that game.

If I find a legal way to screw you in a civil court over this, I will absolutely do it. I can’t get 5 years of my life back, or the money I invested into this game.

I was really looking forward to Diablo III. Now I’m not comfortable giving this company one dime of my money.

Their only suggestion for me? Take my fight to the forums and see if I can win developer support for my issue. Yeah, I would love to. Except you assholes won’t let me do the very thing you just told me to do.

Screw you, assholes. I’m not paying you more money so you can tell me to fuck off.

UPDATE: 4/21/12

Well, it’s final. Blizzard has officially told me to fuck off.

Just goes to show you, they really don’t give a fuck.

Greetings,

Thank you for contacting the World of Warcraft Game Master Department.

I see we have talked to you about this issue. As mentioned before, when a guild leader remains absent for an extended period of time, it can be difficult for the remaining members to proceed normally with guild activities. With the growth and prosperity of the guild in mind, patch 4.3 introduced a new feature in which active members of a guild are able to request promotion when their guild leader has become inactive. As your character has gone more than 30 days without logging into World of Warcraft, it is considered inactive.

When this happens, the game will automatically notify members of the highest rank who have been online within the past week. If none have been online, then the next highest rank will be notified, and so on. In this way, guild leadership will be transferred to the highest-ranked active member of the guild.

The goal of this is simply to allow guilds lacking a present leader to resolve the situation without needing to contact our In-Game Support department. We hope you understand that this change was made in response to player concerns, and is intended to assure the prosperity of the guild.

More information on this change is available at http://us.battle.net/support/en/article/guild-dethrone-faq.

Thank you for contacting us. We hope you continue to enjoy your experiences in World of Warcraft.

Sincerely,

Game Master Deparment
Blizzard Entertainment
www.blizzard.com

Okay, so explain to me how one person kicking everyone else from the guild adds to the prosperity of the guild?

This is obviously a case of abuse of the feature, surely the devs saw this coming, am I right?

Hey there,

I am Game Master Havfstoch and I hope this message finds you doing well. I have received your ticket regarding your Guild leadership issue. First off I would just like to apologize for the experience that you encountered for this issue, being an Guild Leader myself, I know how frustrating this can be.

When a guild leader remains absent for an extended period of time, it can be difficult for the remaining members to proceed normally with guild activities. With the growth and prosperity of the guild in mind, patch 4.3 introduced a new feature in which active members of a guild are able to request promotion when their guild leader has become inactive. As your character has gone more than 30 days without logging into World of Warcraft, it is considered inactive.

When this happens, the game will automatically notify members of the highest rank who have been online within the past week. If none have been online, then the next highest rank will be notified, and so on. In this way, guild leadership will be transferred to the highest-ranked active member of the guild.

The goal of this is simply to allow guilds lacking a present leader to resolve the situation without needing to contact our In-Game Support department. We hope you understand that this change was made in response to player concerns, and is intended to assure the prosperity of the guild.

More information on this change is available at http://us.battle.net/support/en/article/guild-dethrone-faq.

Should you require further assistance on this issue then please feel free to reply back to this message.

Thank you again for contacting us. I hope that you continue to enjoy your experiences in World of Warcraft.

Regards,
Game Master Havfstoch
Customer Services
Blizzard Entertainment
www.blizzard.com/support

Did I seriously just get another impersonal, canned response without my issue being addressed?

How about another alternative, like allowing me to create a new guild with the same level/perks/bank that I had before?

It’s not ideal, but it’s enough to make me go away and stop opening tickets.

Greetings Justin,

Thank you for your continued correspondence pertaining to the Guild Master dethronement mechanic. We value your feedback and encourage you to voice you opinion on how the feature can be improved upon.

That being said, our staff does not currently provide the service you have requested.

If you would like to see this feature implimented, we are interested in your feedback. Currently, the best way to go about providing this is by visiting our forums at www.worldofwarcraft.com/forums <http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/forums>. Once you have arrived at that page, select the appropriate forum to begin.

Have a great day and thanks so much for dwelling with us in the wonderful World of Warcraft!

Regards,

Game Master Skarzkogil
Customer Services
Blizzard Entertainment
www.blizzard.com/support

I guess you didn’t read the part where I said I CAN’T POST IN THE DAMN FORUMS because it won’t allow me to!

This is asinine for customer service! Please actually READ what I have to say in full before responding!

I am getting absolutely ZERO help from ANYBODY, and it’s been WEEKS.

Greetings

This issue has been addressed, and we will not be able to create a new guild for you, or give you the old guild. The system was designed to allow a guild to continue to progress and thrive in the absence of a guild leader. this issue is considered closed at this time, and while I can understand your frustration, further petitions regarding this topic is likely to be considered as Game Master harassment, which could lead to account penalties.

The proper avenue to change the system is through the new suggestion system. As you go to make a ticket you should see the option for suggestion. This will direct your suggestion straight to the Developers who will be happy to receive any constructive ideas.

May the rest of your day go well

Game Master Scogunn

And not a single fuck was given by Blizzard.

I’m going to tweet this article over to Blizzard CS and see if they tell me to go away too.

In the meanwhile, if this article has you upset at all, I suggest you vote with your wallet. Stop giving Blizzard any money. Stop paying for WoW. Don’t buy Diablo III.

Because when things go wrong (and they will, inevitably) they will not give a shit about helping you, no matter how much you’ve paid them.

Yes, Blizzard, I am going to cost you as much as I possibly can. Wouldn’t it have been easier to just provide me with some customer service?