I really hate when a game steals items from players. Y’know, when shit just poofs into thin air, never to be seen again. I’m guessing it’s a matter of corrupt databases or loads or client/server sync issues, whatever the hell the problem is, it’s inexcusable.

Isn’t that the minimum of service my monthly fee goes toward: keeping track of shit I have, shit I’ve done and shit I’m supposed to do?

I understand that catastrophes will occur, but I think that’s where customer service is supposed to kick in. Customer service isn’t shrugging the shoulders and saying, “bummer”; customer service is putting things right.

Few examples of nerfarious system thievery in Warcraft lately … sadly, I cannot cite ALL the examples I’ve seen recently, because the forum search function is yet another one of those NOI things in WoW and because the Blizzard handmaidens spend more time commenting on fashion and how this game r0x0rz than flagging important issues.

Disappearing equipped items – Log out for the night, log back in the next day and an equipped item has poofed into thin air. (No, not sold to a vendor accidentally.) I normally would view such reports with a great deal of skepticism, but I’ve had this happen to me and to another dude in my guild. Fortunately, I was level 20 at the time, so hey, no big deal in the grand scheme of things. I, too, was shit out of luck when I petitioned.

I’m glad I didn’t use up one of my “limited number” of property recoveries for a level 20 piece of crap weapon. (Don’t be naive. Whether an item is lost due to the game’s fault or your own, it’s marked the same … a freebie restore.)

The COD bug has gotten alot of play on the forums lately. Player sends an item COD to another, the recipient opens the email but doesn’t accept the COD. Email is auto-deleted after 3 days including the attached item (as opposed to, oh I don’t know, RETURNING THE ITEM TO THE SENDER?). I haven’t been hit with this one, mostly because I never trust game mail systems to deal with important equipment or large sums of money, but the bug was confirmed by ACTUAL BLIZZARD EMPLOYEES and is well documented.

Another problem with the game mail system that I have witnessed. Guild dude sent 10 gold or so to his alt through the mail. Coincidentally, the server starts grinding to a halt, recovers and he assumed all was well again. His alt gets a notice of new email about an hour later, goes to check his mail and there are no messages. Checks the next day, still no email from the main. He notifies a GM that he has an email stuck in his box, could he please have his 10 gold? Can the GM log in his account and free the email or something? (heh, he had a lot of hope.) GM says no, too bad, etc. etc.

This guild dude is a stubborn sort. He emails Blizzard directly, even CALLS them on the phone. WTF, it’s just 10 gold, we could have easily replaced it and told him so. Hell, HE could have easily replaced it, but it was the principle of thing, he said. Anyways, about a week later, a GM logged onto his alt and freed the errant email, restoring the 10 gold.

Which was kind of a funny story, too, because a couple of us were online when the GM logged onto his account and we were saying, “hey man, thought you had work today”, “wanna do this quest?” blah blah. The character logs off without a word. Odd. He, himself, logs in about an hour later, unaware, and we confronted him about his lack of response earlier. He finally figured out that it was the GM, after he quizzed his wife and kids about who had been messing with The WoW Account.

Jesus, shouldn’t the GMs identify themselves when they’re using a player’s account? Y’know, before some innocent kid gets grounded for using Dad’s WoW account?

Of course, the Auction Houses are still bugged to shit. Player clicks on buyout for a gem, instead of the displayed 50 silver buyout, the AH wants to take 10 gold. Just because.

Not been caught by that specific bug, but one thing the AH does, just because, is assign a random extra commission to some sales. I put a blue weapon on the AH with a 100 gold buyout. After the traditional tells that I was full of shit for thinking I could get 100 gold for that weapon (ya, whatever), a level one alliance asks if I’d be willing to pull the auction and relist it in Gadgetzan for 120 gold buyout.

Consider it done, my fine Horde friend … I pull the auction, fly over to Gadget, relist it at 120 gold buyout, minimum time remaining (the lowest possible deposit required), and it sells immediately to a troll warrior hanging out at the goblin AH. He bows to me and goes on his way, I race over to my mailbox to collect my blood money.

98 gold. I received 98 gold on a 120 gold auction. What a crock of shit. Eighteen percent “commission” or whatever the AH calls that bullshit it steals from auctions at random. When I sold that mighty fine purple weapon a few weeks prior, the AH only stole 4 percent of the sales proceeds, so what the fuck was this 18 percent?

I don’t know what kind of mathemathics they used in the coding over there but they should patent it and call it Whatever Math, the New, New Math.