Gutted Guild Bank?

 A little over a month ago my wife started her World of Warcraft account back up.  After her repeated, but low pressure, requests I opened mine back up.  

After a full install, I was greater with the new character selection screen.   It seemed that my most used characters were placed in a warband together, with a second warband for my alts.

I read up on doing the equipment boosts and ultimately chose to partake.  I then logged in to each character.  I knew things would be in a shambles, I had logged out at a busy point in my life and hadn't gotten back in for 10 years per the games estimate.  

When I logged into my main auctioneer he had gold on him and a little bit of gold.  I hurried over to the guild Bank to check on my stock and the bank was empty.   

EMPTY.  Everything was gone.  The transmog stock, the professions materials, and the gold were all gone.   Even the harassment letters I would get in the in game mail were gone.   

I checked the logs, everything was blank.  The guild consisted of just one character.   The account has a authenticator on it.  It didn't seem likely that if the account was compromised they would leave everything in the character and only clear the guild Bank.  Also the guild Bank wasn't drained by a guild member as there wasn't any guild members.   

Finally I found some posts on Reddit referring to a guild Bank clearing bug that took place roughly a year ago.  It's not evident if things were ever restored for them accounts that were impacted.  Even if mine was restored, the items works have expired in the mail while my account was not open. More likely nothing was done due the account status.   

I went as far as starting to write a ticket regarding getting my items and wealth restored.  The ticket process was a bit more convoluted than I remember.  The goal being to direct people away from logging a ticket.  Ultimately I decided to log in on my main and start playing.   

This was a good decision.  For a moment I was frustrated enough with the situation that it was souring what was to be a fun experience running dungeons with my wife.  Quickly I got into the groove of completing quests, leveling up and gaining gear.   I was enjoying my time in WoW again.   

Memory lane

This morning I was looking for a picture of the Styrofoam castle that Citadel released in the Late Eighties (early Nineties?) and found this gem of a resource on old miniatures: The Stuff of Legends
As a teen and a young adult I spent a lot of time and effort participating in the wargaming hobby, playing Warhammer Fantasy Battles, Warhammer 40k, it's predecessor Rouge Trooper, Blood Bowl, and Talisman.  I collected full armies of Orcs, Goblins, Chaos Dwarves and a mixed force of Bretonians, Elves and Dwarves with a few Empire war machines thrown in for good measure.  I competed in painting contests winning top prizes which I spent on more miniatures.  I was so bitten by the bug to collect miniatures I stared a mail order business at the age of 14 selling miniatures.  Of course my main goal was to provide myself with more miniatures.  Eventually I discovered girls, and spent less time and money on miniatures.  I sold off my 40k stuff in newsgroups during the early days of the internet but I held on to my Fantasy armies for the memories, also knowing I would regret parting with them.  Most recently my boys have gotten into the hobby, though it was not through me.  Actually their grandfather played Napoleonic in the 60's and he has been funding their army building.  They each have armies, a lizard man army and a Elf Host along with some smaller forces of undead and Chaos.  It has been great to see them enjoy the same hobby.  Setting up their war gaming table on the   I even got into the act writing a set of rules for Warhammer that are more friendly to a 6 year old's attention span.  Now if I had a generous benefactor funding and painting my miniatures for me, image how many I would have now.

I love that multiple generations of gamers are all enjoying the same hobby, sharing stories and techniques.

Spikes

reblogged from justwarlordthings

Nostalgia

With us approaching a decade of World of Warcraft I find myself engaging in some nostalgia. I found the folder where I backed up the screenshot folder back from the frist years of me playing World of Warcraft. The game was much different than it is today, in some ways more hardcore. Mostly it was simply less accessible for new players as there were not the in-game resouces we have now. Outside of the game had Thotbot and not much else. I remember getting my first blue item from Scholomance, a hunter’s belt. The lead hunter in my guild passed it to me as I did not have any Dungeon Blues as of yet. He is the GuildMaster that took over during my hiatus from Warcraft. The tank for most of our guild dungeon runs back then was one of my real life friend, Pend. He would often play late at night, periodically being pulled away to see to his newborn baby. If the tank when on follow, we all knew to hold still and not pull anything as he was either changing a diaper or administering a bottle. I know it is silly to feel nostalgic about the game as it was back then, in so many ways I get more enjoyment out of the current game with the advent of Raid Finder and Dungeon finder.

My friend Pend, back when you could tank in Arms

Mr Thunder King

At this point I need to apologize to the Raiding community, the other night I let my six year old queue up for LFR.  Yes I am that guy.  

In my defense he actually did not do that bad.  I admonished him to "not stand in the poo" as Scott Johnson says on The Instance Podcast.  Amazingly he did well enough for his DPS numbers to actually show up on the chart, which was not bad since it was one of the first times he played an Enhancement Shaman.  He got all the way up until the Thunder King without dying.  

Eventually he walked out into the other room and said, "your shaman died for no reason."  I pointed out that the raid would likely rez him after the battle, excitedly he ran back to the PC to finish.  

 

For the next week he kept asking to listen to Letomi's Mr Thunder King while in the car: 

WORLD OF WARCRAFT SURPASSES 10 MILLION SUBSCRIBERS

Despite the chaos of the launch of Warlords of Draenor, DDoS attack, queues and issues with realm stability it was very evident that my server was much more populated than it had been even a few short weeks ago. The volume of auctions that are selling has picked up as well.

Blizzard announced that they sold over 3 million boxes within 24 hours of Warlords of Draenor's release. Mike Morhaime, CEO and co-founder of Blizzard Entertainment said:

“We’re thrilled that so many players jumped in to play Warlords of Draenor on day one and are having a great time with the new content, We poured a lot of hard work and passion into this expansion, and we appreciate all the kind words from players and the overwhelming support they continue to show for World of Warcraft.”

Bravo Blizzard on reaching the 10 Million mark.  Here is to another 10 years of World of Warcraft.  

Sharm - All About My Base (World Of Warcraft Parody)

Listen to this while working through your garrison tasks.