#0 - Aug. 21, 2010, 1:58 p.m.
This is going to be a fairly long post filled with many, I hope, good points, so prepare yourselves.
First, the story (the true story, regardless of what Blizzard can verify or logic out on their own). I played WoW from release date until early Decemeber (or late November) of 2007. Shortly after I quit, someone managed to gain control of my account (and actually managed to change my password and corresponding email address, which is a bit unnerving). They transferred my four high level characters from my account to a new account on a new server. I had a level 70 hunter, 70 mage, 61 warrior and 49 rogue. I only recently realized that my characters no longer existed on the account and decided to check out my account. I couldn't get on, realized it had been stolen, but managed to get Blizzard to give me back my account (using the whole original cd key, account name, password, email, security question, answer, etc.), however they have since refused to give me back my characters since they can't "verify" that I wasn't the one who transferred them away. I've since put in a third email to Account Administration to use this logic on them, but I have little to no faith that it will work because of one simple point, money.
Now, let's first examine a few logical failures that make my story pretty much a certainty, whether they can verify it with data or not.
1) Why would I take my four highest level characters, two of which I rarely ever played, and spend 100 dollars transferring them to a new account just to let my original account expire with multiple lower level characters, some of which I played more often than my rogue/warrior? Wouldn't the purpose of transferring accounts be to be able to dual box with your high level characters? Or, possibly, if you were breaking the ToS, it could be to separate two people's characters who were sharing accounts so that they could play together. But I see absolutely no reason behind someone spending 100 dollars to move his characters and then never using the old account again, do you?
2) Small point, but why would I spend 50 dollars transferring two low level characters I almost never used, especially if I'd be able to transfer them over if I ever really wanted to. You (Blizz) can actually see my brief history with realm transfers and why I would be reluctant to do so. I, at one point, was recruited by a guild on a different server and left with my main (new realm, not new account). I shortly decided I wanted to stay and transferred my most played alt, my mage. However, the guild disbanded not much later and I, unfortunately, had to shell out more money to transfer both back. What logic would I then have to transfer all four characters, two I rarely used, to a new realm blindly?
3) How, if Blizzard decided that I had adequate proof that my account had been stolen back in early December and was kind enough to give me back access to it, can they then not be able to verify that the characters were transferred by the thief? Even ignoring the fact that it would be the worst/best timing in history if I paid 100 dollars to transfer my characters right before my account was hacked (either worst if you assume he stole both accounts or best if you assume he only stole my old account), wouldn't you have logs of when my password/corresponding email was changed? Couldn't you see that everything was changed and then my characters were transferred?
Finally, here's the biggest, impossible to escape logic for Blizzard. The other points could all be refuted, mostly by saying that I'm an idiot and I don't really care about money (certainly not true, thank you 100k in student loans). This is based around the fact (or so I've been told) that you can only transfer characters to accounts that you also own.
4) If you are confident enough that I owned this account that you gave it back to me and if you can only transfer characters to accounts that you own, must you not also be confident that I own the account they were transferred to? Even if the first few points don't justify giving me back my characters on this account on my original server, which they should, you must agree that you should give me control of the other account, correct? Think about it. I am the owner of this account, I transferred characters to another account, so only two things can follow.
- a) I must own that other account. I can't log on to the other account, so you must either agree that I must have forgotten my password (not the case, it's one of only two options) so you should return the account to me and reset the email to my current email (as you did with my original account)
b) The account doesn't belong to me, which means I was hacked. This should then result in you returning the four characters, even as they were (at level 70/70/61/49, since I can only assume they've been changed since then), to my original account and realm.
There is no third option that results in me not having access to any of my characters. Not logically anyway. There is a money-motivated reason for Blizz not to, however. If they give me back the account or give me back the characters, which would require effort (money/time) on their part, they won't end up receiving any more money. The owner of the other account will, presumably, be banned and/or stop paying his fees (since he'll have no stolen characters), and I, presumably, will begin paying that same fee. They'll be making the same amount of money, with the possibility that I'll quit again, as I already have. They may even think that I'll reactivate my account eventually even without my characters, so they will receive fees from both of us (which is absolutely not the case, I wouldn't dream of reactivating without my original characters). So basically, it seems that they'll allow a thief and hacker to win just because they don't want to put in any effort whatsoever to make no additional money (or possibly lose some in the long run).
EDIT: Changed the formatting a bit to make it slightly less "wall of text"ish.
