Patch 5.3 interview with Ghostcrawler
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All of the latest Mists of Pandaria newsIn-game mail to be reimbursed
by Adam Holisky 
Nov 11th 2008 at 10:17PM
Zarhym announced a short time ago that all mail items lost today will be reimbursed. The reimbursement of the in-game mail will happen in two steps:- All items in the mail system will be sent to characters in one or more mail messages.
- Gold from the AH or sent through the mail will be sent in a separate message.
Do not contact a game master (GM) about this, and do not call customer support. The reimbursement will happen automatically.
Since the forums are down, you can read the full text of Zarhym's announcement after the break.
Are you ready for the challenges that await you in Northrend? WoW Insider has you covered with our 8-day guide to Preparing for Wrath. Also, check out our feature on AddOns new, old and outdated and Essential AddOns for Wrath written especially with the expansion in mind.From Zarhym:
We wanted to inform our players regarding today's extended maintenance. We experienced an error that resulted in players being unable to retrieve in-game mail from the last 15 days. Once the error was discovered, we brought down the realms immediately and began working to address this problem, and have been doing so for the duration of the day. Our decision was to enable players to continue playing World of Warcraft before the opening of Wrath of the Lich King. Work would continue on addressing issues with the in-game mail while the realms were up. This is the plan that is currently in motion.
The process from this point forward will be twofold:
1. All items that were in a mail will be sent to characters in one or more messages depending on the amount of items the character had in the mail system.
2. Gold from auction house sales or sent through mail will be sent in a separate mail.
We are working to resolve this issue, and we will keep our players informed throughout this process. In the meantime, please do not create an in-game ticket or contact phone support for this issue – multiple mails will be sent returning your items and gold automatically. We greatly appreciate your patience during this time.
Filed under: News items
Reader Comments (Page 5 of 13)
Cy Nov 11th 2008 10:55PM
No, they were fixing terrain so mages could finally blink.
But vanish is next on the list I'm sure.
Megoranos Nov 11th 2008 10:31PM
They keep uping the time. >_< I'm going to bed.. 10:31 PM EST right now... I gotta wake up at 6 am next day.... ~_~
AlexW573 Nov 11th 2008 10:31PM
Wow.
As bad as it is, I think Blizzard has handled this well. I hope the fix the bug smoothly :)
Bip Bippadotta Nov 11th 2008 10:32PM
It's pretty sad when WI is more reliable about information than WoW is. Thanks for keeping us all up to date.
craft Nov 11th 2008 10:36PM
I can only imagine what an epic disaster this is. And I too wonder how much "mail" I have lost as a result of this. I did have a good number of items for sale at the AH... oh well.
What a disaster. I hope the maintenance they performed was worth this disaster.
carldudut Nov 11th 2008 10:32PM
How you know what time in WoW server now o_o!
Wally Nov 11th 2008 10:33PM
I'm surprised they are bringing them back up at all. I figured they would keep the servers down at least until 3 hours are the expansion launches tomorrow.
John Nov 11th 2008 10:56PM
It's all well and good that they say this now, but I want to see them actually do this. Here was a day that many people had off from work in the United States and were unable to play a game that they paid for due to a screw up that Blizzard made.
Personally, it's sad that Blizzard wasn't able to properly test and implement these changes, especially with only a couple of days to go before the release of Wrath of the Lich King.
This just shows that Blizzard has utter contempt for it's customer base, or that it is just plain ignorant in matters that pertain to customers. This problem could have been solved months ago if they would have properly executed a game testing scenario that would have taken all patches into account on a server that runs with the same specifications as what the customers use.
Instead, we, the customers that Blizzard has shown nothing but contempt for this entire day, have to sit through false promises and a lack of information from the company.
This kind of situation should never arise, but it did. Part of the fault falls in with Blizzards policy of taking down all servers at one time for maintenance, instead of doing a systematic rolling maintenance that most other companies do. The fact that it is a "persistant online game" does not absolve Blizzard of this, and should have provided them incentive to make sure that things like this doesn't happen. Even if only 10% of the customer base of World of Warcraft were to leave this game because of this, that would take over $15,000,000 USD out of the coffers of Blizzard Entertainment monthly.
quik Nov 11th 2008 10:36PM
Don't worry about us opening up a ticket, that'd be rather difficult atm.
Miss Pickles Nov 11th 2008 11:48PM
Xactly, we pay for this service. I'm sure they are running around like chickens with their heads cutoff trying to correct this, or calling a bunch of strippers...eitherway we still are not playing WoW.
thefitz2k6 Nov 11th 2008 10:34PM
...i swear i had 50k gold in my mailbox......
Nicholas Nov 11th 2008 10:43PM
Yeah... me too!
I had over 9000k
I swear it.
Lunashadow Nov 11th 2008 10:45PM
I'm almost sure I had a full set of Tier 4 gear for each of my eight alts in their mail boxes .... lol
Charlie Nov 11th 2008 10:35PM
At least they're doing this pre-WotLK launch... imagine how pissed everyone would be if this happened on Thursday.
killermonkee Nov 11th 2008 10:35PM
i hope they resend all money from the ah over the last few days... that would rock since i have sold alot of stuff
exastris Nov 11th 2008 11:02PM
this is drama! giving any free stuff away in this thread?
Ezell Nov 11th 2008 10:36PM
great coverage guys
Zero3ree Nov 11th 2008 10:40PM
I wonder if 11 million people told blizzard we had trouble paying them and we would let them know when we would pay how they would react to it. I understand giving us free days is a little extreme considering they need their 165million plus a month for paying the brilliant minds that keep wow up and running but at least they could guive us max rest time to make up for time lost.
Matt Nov 11th 2008 10:36PM
So for the people on a server like Gilneas US that hadn't even started the last big event in SW harbor are we doing to miss out on it completely now? I hope not, that would really be lame to not at least go check it out.
CJ Nov 11th 2008 10:37PM
to all the people sticking up for Blizz and saying how complicated things are in this world and that they're working hard to fix it... I understand that, however, being in the computer profession myself one of the things I was taught in one of my first computer classes was to " under promise and over deliver" and you need to understand that we are paying for a service... and the fact that it is a holiday and that the WothLk is coming out in less then 24 hours only makes us more dissapointed for the simple fact that we are trying to prepare for the expansion... yes, we realize there is a lot to do, but we expect the service to be prepared for it and if not to push the date back or make it right. I had today off and had plans to lvl one of my alts to be ready for the expansion, now I can't... then I've been told "you'll be able to play at this time... wait, no... this time, wait... no, this time... Now, that will delay everything in my WoW world, do you not agree? I understand things happen and MMO games aren't a perfect world but don NOT continue to Over Promise and under deliver! Just a rant, I'm just annoyed this has pushed my game play back soo much... Your thoughts...