Since August,World of Warcraftguilds have been reporting a troubling bug: their guild banks, where any member of the guild can store resources, items, and even the game’s rarest of loot (like mounts), were wiped out. Whethercompletely emptiedor simplymissing items, users reported that the fruits of their labor were vanishing into thin air. As of September, Blizzard’s response has left many players with their heads in their hands.
Some items will never be recovered
Community Manager Linxysaid in a blogpostover on the Blizzard forums that the core issue was caused by the enabling of cross-realm guilds. As a part ofThe War Within, many limitations on players’ ability to play, trade, and share with each other across both faction and realm were dissolved, making for a more communal experience across the player base.
But that convenience comes at a cost. “Due to how some of the data was lost, we’ve reached a point where the result will be an incomplete restoration for some guilds, and we do not have a way to restore the remaining missing items for them,” says Linxy. Data loss is a backend developer’s worst nightmare, especially when that data could be 19-year-old mounts, collectables, and items not even obtainable in the game anymore.
Theaffected community,needless to say,is in shambles.The bug didn’t affect everyone, mind you, but those it has have lost, at worst, nearly two decades’ worth of stashed items. The best we can hope for is some form of compensation to those affected, but without the data that shows which items were lost, it really isn’t going to be possible to get that history back.
