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All of the latest Mists of Pandaria newsCompensation for last week's extended downtime
by Michael Sacco 
Dec 4th 2009 at 11:00AM
Even after having worked at Blizzard, I'm unsure as to how the decision is made to or not to offer compensation for downtime, but I'm glad that it does get offered periodically. It's no fun to have a day off or a light workday and then discover that the realm that houses your main is down, again.
Regardless, if you were on any of the realms listed after the cut, you should see that a 24-hour credit has been added to your subscription on your Account Management page. Take this, your blue badge of courage, and hold it high to the heavens, your karmic reward for not pitching a fit. "We cool, Blizz. We cool."
- Antonidas
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- Vashj
- Winterhoof
- Wyrmrest Accord
Filed under: Realm News, Realm Status, News items
Reader Comments (Page 3 of 3)
Nagi Dec 4th 2009 3:40PM
If the fast food establishment had a one-week-only special beverage that was only offered for one week out of the year and they somehow managed to not have the ingredients for it for half of that week, I would expect them to extend the deal to make up for the downtime.
Personally, I don't care about the downtime in and of itself. I only tend to log on about two or three times a week anyway and likely wouldn't have noticed it. Except this time, the downtime came during the first half of Pilgrim's Bounty, on the only couple days many of us get to experience the holiday due to the Thanksgiving weekend and being with family for the latter half of the week. For downtime, REGULAR downtime, the compensation Blizzard is offering is more than sufficient and wholly and graciously welcome. For downtime during an in-game holiday, especially one as short as Pilgrim's Bounty? I would expect them to extend the holiday by an amount of time roughly equal to how long the battlegroup was down.
wdsrmail Dec 4th 2009 4:34PM
An excellent point.
Though, given the terms of the EULA, we're lucky they compensated any of us.
Perhaps they will alter the requirements for the title. They have done similar things in the past.
Angus Dec 4th 2009 5:17PM
I'd rather they gave me the damn achievements I couldn't get because of bugs and a lack of time. I never got the turkey because of family commitments. Something most of the player base had to deal with except they had 24 hours more than us.
greg.johnson Dec 4th 2009 7:13PM
It's nice to not have that time "stolen" from us, but (QQ) it doesn't give us our attempt at 10 ToGC that would've given us the Insanity achievement. The server when down as we were in there, and when we came back, yup, 49 attempts left. A ticket to a GM was answered that we couldn't get our attempt back due to "technical issues." I suppose that's true, that the only way to reasonably do this would be to reset the instance for the whole realm, which wouldn't be practical. In vent, we had our own little "tribute to insanity." lol
Rekkla Dec 4th 2009 8:37PM
Yeah I don't blame Mordock for feeling upset one bit. I had two consecutive raid nights fall apart thanks to that. I don't get why people downrated him.
Would those who labelled him a whiner be content with any degree of service a multi-billion corporation such as Activision/Blizzard provides?
Lets face it, Blizz f'ed up and did not get that battlegroup up for a very long time, and they did a lackluster job on the forums providing updates. I believe they later admitted that the issue was an unstable power source. That stuff's gotta get fixed faster next time.
The compensation is largely irrelevant. Who cares about 50 cents or even 5 dollars.
I think the Seattle datacenter would have to feel a sense of urgency after this, and I'd expect them to step up their game after this incident. But to brush those 2 nights of downtime off as 'instabilities' and give them a free pass is unfounded to me. They need to do better over there and they know it, and whatever storm of complaints this downtime ultimately amassed was at least partially justified.