If Blizz accidently deleted your characters with no way to restore?

[RamGuy]

This topic is pointless. Its not remotely likely this could ever happen. Only way for it to happen would be to have World War 3 with something highly unlikely as all the various server farms being nuked all at once deleting all the rolling backups and replications. Its not going to happen, ever.

But lets just roll with it and let say it did happen.... They would simply give all players level boost and max level characters with pretty much everything unlocked and hope you will stay and enjoy Battle for Azeroth.

[Dadwen]

They actually mentioned in the interview the other day that making SV hunter melee was a mistake, and that they were doing a major revamp to make it feel more like a ranged hunter again. You should be able to find the reference on the front page somewhere.

ya see that, but don't think they are bringing it back (guessing from the noise from the Class forums maybe a few hybrid type talents) but I doubt their pride would let them revert it the entire way.

[caervek]

I'd be mad, but after a while I'd be thankful for being set free.

[PraisCthulhu]

I'd ask them for 8 110 boosts to get new characters up to the level I'd had my other characters at.

[Count Zero]

This topic is pointless. Its not remotely likely this could ever happen. Only way for it to happen would be to have World War 3 with something highly unlikely as all the various server farms being nuked all at once deleting all the rolling backups and replications. Its not going to happen, ever.

But lets just roll with it and let say it did happen.... They would simply give all players level boost and max level characters with pretty much everything unlocked and hope you will stay and enjoy Battle for Azeroth.

It wouldn't need to take a disaster that big for backups of backups of backups of backups to all be deleted, but it would take an extremely unlikely series of events.

Unfortunately, right now I think we're closer to World War 3 than some virus or hack wiping out Blizz's backups, and their backup backups, and their backup backup backups.

[Deleted]

Blizzard isn't some guy with a tape drive in a basement somewhere.... lol They have much more sophisticated solutions than that. I could see a roll back happening, but a complete loss? - Not without a comet impact or a nuclear strike. This game is worth Billions - you don't just 'lose' your backups.

i Guess you don't work in IT as a sysadmin. It's generally not forgetting backups that gets you in trouble its testing and planning for their use that is forgotten and lead to them not being usable. Complex environments lead to complex systems that lead to hard to spot faults that give big consequences.

[Bulo]

This scenery is not possible, as IT guy I say they have good replication backups for sure

[Deleted]

People thinking backup are manually done in 2018

Well but if the account progression stay the same (collections, wardrobe, mount and everything) I'll just reroll. If all account progression is lost it will depend of my guildmate

Someone still have to install the agent, set up the schedule, install the mirror/backup server and so on. Someone have to make sure that the backups are actually usable. Seen many companies take backups just to find out that they are incomplete, corrupted or for other reasons unusable.

- - - Updated - - -

This won't happen to a multi billion dollar company, ever. There may be a lost backup or two if someone royally fucks up, but there will be a dozen different safety nets to prevent this from happening. Even losing a week of character's progress might deal a huge blow to WoW. They know this.

On topic: I bet a lot of players, including me, would stop playing. I'd just move on to other games, since i'd never want to level 12 classes again. If something like this really happenend, they'd have to offer 12 110 boosts to have me reconsider my decision.

Well it happened to google just not to so wide reaching that average users noticed. It has happened to microsoft. It has happened to amazon. They are all multi billion companies.

[Maerad]

First thought "OMG! No! My Chars!"
Second one "No I need to do them all again..."

Sure I would be pissed a bit, that I have to redo them, but honestly, I'm so much into the game, I wouldn't really mind. The only things I would really find sad is the titles and stuff I had to farm, like WotLK championship festival with mounts etc.

But IMHO, they would compensate every player in a way or the other. Maybe with a manual char resto if screenshots etc. can be delivered, free heirlooms for all that played the last few months etc.

Also - IMHO that can never happen. Blizzard has RealTime Backups, multiple Servers, local copies for testing purposes... ASIDE from their local and offsite backups.
Killing all that can't be happen with an error or a simple virus. It would need to be a massive attack with half the admins under one hood. Doubt that would work :3

[Mlz]

I'd quit. I have enjoyed doing a lot of the things in this game but that doesn't mean I would enjoy re-doing them.

[Chakah]

i Guess you don't work in IT as a sysadmin.

And you would be wrong. I have worked over 9 years as a system admin at a major university and I have specialized in storage and backups. EMC SANs, NetApp, LTO 3 thru 6, Datadomain, Quantum i6000, MS DPM, SQL and Oracle backups. I've done it all.

It's generally not forgetting backups that gets you in trouble its testing and planning for their use that is forgotten and lead to them not being usable. Complex environments lead to complex systems that lead to hard to spot faults that give big consequences.

Truth. My predecessor setup up a SQL backup on a specific drive path. The app admin upgraded the SQL and never communicated the new path to the backup team.
Years pass of successful and useless backups..... An expensive mistake and that person isn't doing backups anymore. LOL

You are right that complexity is the enemy, but database backup is a pretty well understood area. They are gonna be using RAID, obviously, but also some type of snapshotting, RMAN backups, and even geo-replication. The can probably even afford Oracle RAC. The odds of no recovery are incredibly small.

A sysadmin is only as good as his last backup.

But to answer the OPs post: If they lost everything, I'd figure out if Blizzard was still going to exist after all their customers leave and apply for one of the many open IT positions they would have.

[Linri]

nope, woudlnt quit, wouldbe a little upset, but i wouldnt care too much

i'd just make them over

[Splenda]

I would honestly be too heartbroken to keep playing.

[Swalload]

If Blizz accidentally deleted your characters with no way to restore

Lets say Blizz really did fuck up royal and accidentally deleted all your characters with a apology saying there was absolutely no way to retrieve either them or your achievements what would you do?

Would you rage quit the game? Would you carry on playing starting at the beginning? Would you firebomb blizz HQ in a moment of madness or would you scream IAM FINALLY FREE!

Seeing the bug today made me think how i would react to over 10 years of work and grinding gone in a instant with no way to retrieve it and how i would react.

I basically have a new main every xpacks but I would still be a little pissed a guess. Mostly because I like having all classes and re-lvling EVERYTHING would be stupid annoying. I would just lvl 2 and be stuck with that for a while I guess. Achievements are meaningless so whatever.

[Nekrotix]

I would be entirely pissed, not just because of how much rare, unobtainable shit I got over the years, but let me just do a bit of math real quick.
I've been playing WoW for, let's say, 110 months. If we subtract that number by, let's be generous, 20 months for times when I either cancelled by subscription or couldn't pay for it, then multiplying that by 15, that would mean I already spent around $1350 so far. Let's add that to the Cataclysm expac I purchase, plus the three collectors editions I've purchased after Cata, and that comes to around $1610. Add THAT to the number of pets, mounts and other cosmetic shit I've bought on the Blizzard Store, not including any race, faction, appearance or name changes because I have no easy way of calculating that, but for the sake of argument, let's just say that rounds up to about $150, and add that to our total cost.

I would be utterly, and ENTIRELY pissed at the company I spent just over $2,000 managed to fuck up so badly that they ended up permanently deleting not just one of my characters, not just two, BUT EVERY. SINGLE. ONE. I get that accidents could happen. But this just seems like such a massively unlikely scenario that they'd probably have to go out of their way to fuck up that bad.

If this actually happened, where all my progress on all my characters was lost forever, and there was no way of getting it back, then I would demand Blizzard either gives me $2,030 in return for this cataclysmic failure, or give me as many max level character boosts as I had max level characters, and if they would be so kind, return all the legendary and rare items I had obtained on my characters. I know that mounts, pets, transmog and other stuff will still be retained. But I don't want to go through the leveling process ALL OVER AGAIN just because some Dev spilled coffee on his dick, was feeling pissed about it and decided to take it out on some random person.

I trust Blizzard. I trust that if something this abhorrently terrible happened to anyone, especially multiple people, they would award some compensation for their losses. They're not the type of people to say "Hey. Fuck you. Your characters are gone, there's nothing you can do about it, go cry about it nerd." Well, unless they want to immediately run out of business, of course. I'm sure if anyone heard that Blizzard denied compensation for a player having all their characters permadeleted, especially if it was a mistake, that would be a PR nightmare. Imagine they send a tweet out about it like, "We heard that you're all pissed that your characters were deleted. But lol get over it. It's just a game bro.

[Rioo]

I'd stop playing and probably never touch another Blizzard game again.

[Forgottenone]

This would literally be me. I'd be completely free, although I'd contemplate coming back depending on what they would offer to help people regain what they lost.

[huth]

inb4 someone says this won't happen. It can. All it takes is for some derelict engineer to forget to back up something, or lose backups entirely.

They could still rebuild them to at least semi-recent status from backups on other sites. Losing something on the internet completely is hard.

[valky94]

well it depends on at what time in an expac it happenes, if it would happen right now, i wouldnt mind tbh, all important stuff like mounts, toys, achies transmog are account wide, so i would just demand a char boost for every 110 that got deleted (3)

[shade3891]

Achievements are saved on your battle.net account level not saved per char. They stay if you lose your chars.
Would be a bummer but would restart, maybe on opposite side, never played as a Horde.