Is this thing on?

Waah! I'm so behind on my Reader (combination of moving house and philosophy being a tad taxing) I don't even know what's happening in Azeroth anymore.  I gather lots of people have killed a big cat?  And that we can make pretty gear even prettier now?  By using dragons...? Or did I get that the wrong way round?  I also gather that the current excitement surrounds what female Pandaren will look like.  I'm hoping a bit like me... By which I mean (look away now, legions of readers who think I actually do look sylph-like (and Pilf-like) IRL!) round and wobbly, not white-faced and black-eyed (those were my bygone days of goth-ness.)

Anyway, I've been pottering round in Rift, being utterly anti-social (no change there) for  a few months and I haven't had the Azeroth itch at all.  Seriously, I haven't.  But then the Scroll of Resurrection thing started and Himself stopped playing Star Wars and logged into his troll, not *that* troll (sniffle) but another one, then onto his stabby-stabby, sneaky-sneaky goblin rogue and I thought, "Hmmm...Maybe I have been away long enough."  The long and the short of it is that he's allegedly sent me a Scroll of Resurrection (though it hasn't arrived yet - is this something I should worry about?) and I thought I might meander back and see how I feel.

Part of it is that I need more excuses not to read any more Descartes ever want to do something that doesn't tax my brain in between studying and sorting out the house (did I mention that we now have a house!  That's ours!  Well, the bank owns a bit of it, but we own most of it - huzzah!) and my go-to relaxation has been Azeroth for so long.  For some reason I like Telara, but it doesn't have quite the same, "Annnnnnd relax!" effect on me that Azeroth has.  Also, I miss writing.  Oh, I have my personal blog, which gets a bit of love every now and again, but I really miss my ramblings about WoW and I miss my RP writing a LOT.  I know that I should just be able to be creative and... write, but I need that spark, that zip of inspiration that I got from my character's lives in-game.  So I need a new Pilf, as it were.  A new lass that gets my imagination going.  Now all I need is a concept...

I was also saddened to read Adam's post about the 'golden age of WoW blogging' finishing.  Much as I want to disagree with it, I'm not sure that I can.  I know that a lot of the blogs on my Reader aren't updated anymore, (*ahem* pots and kettles...) and even though I do my damnedest to hunt down 'new' blogs, I don't have the same history or connections with newer (to me) bloggers than I did with the old-school ones.  Maybe I should make more of an effort - maybe I should hurl myself back into the game and the blogosphere with renewed enthusiasm and make fresh links and just... get back to making the effort.   So what's on with you folks?  Or should I just go and read your blogs?  *giggles*  

Tyrael's charger: now you see it, now you don't

I've never had any problems with Blizzard's GMs, or the in-game support that's been provided to me.  I'm unfailingly polite in my (rare) GM tickets, and always, but always have thanked whichever GM that dealt with my issue.  It's one of the things I've always thought Blizzard have had in their favour - their customer service, in my experience, has been excellent. 

Imagine my disappointment now.  I signed up a few weeks ago for the Annual Pass, mainly because I *really* wanted Tyrael's Charger for my paladin (and my other belfs...), but also because I figured that I'll still be playing WoW in a year, so it was win/win.  When 4.3 hit, my mount was duly delivered to all my characters and I really loved it.  It felt like the right mount for my paladin, but it worked well with some of my other characters as well.  Plus I could take screenies like this:

So I was a happy gamer.  A few days ago, I logged into my account, and my mounts had vanished, from all my characters.  Gone, removed, no longer there.  I wrote a polite ticket then had a quick shufti on the forums - sure enough, it wasn't just me that this had happened to.  Three days later, I repeat that:  three days later, I finally got a response to my ticket, saying that I had failed to reply to the email they had sent about my Parental Controls.  Those would be the Parental Controls that I had only set up because of the Real ID fiasco on Sven's advice.  However, a while ago I disabled it because I thought it would be nice to have the option to catch up with  a few people there.

I'd gathered, from the forums, that this was the standard response, so I wrote politely back, saying that a) I don't have Parental Controls active, and b) that I haven't had an email from them about the Annual Pass.  Could they now kindly find a solution, and restore my mounts please?  I've just had a response to this which is the exact same response.  Word for word.  Nice copy and paste job there, folks.  Thanks for that.  I have pointed this out, in another ticket...  And now I wait, with breath that really cannot be described as 'bated'...

To say that I'm unamused is putting it mildly.  I had to activate the damn Parental Controls in the first place because of the RealID privacy issue. They are no longer active.  I haven't had an email from Blizzard (and just for the record, Himself, who does still have active Parental Controls replied to the email and still doesn't have an active Annual Pass, weeks later!) anyway.  They would also like me to provide them with a scanned copy of my identification, such as my passport!  Can I just ask you to take a moment to decide whether, with all the security breaches from games companies in recent months, if you would happily scan a crucial document, such as your passport, then email it to a company who, allegedly, has reasonable cyber-security (at present anyway... But then again, I'd hazard that Sony also thought that... )

I'm incredibly disappointed.  I understand that there can be occasional issues when new things (such as the Annual Pass) go live, but the customer service that I have experienced on this occasion, has been shabby.  I thought Blizzard were better than this.   

Responding in kind

Dear Niae

Thank you for your recent letter, and the charming pictures you enclosed.

I get that you want to ditch mining, I really, do, but sweetie, you're a paladin. Not a druid, not a shaman, not, heaven forbid, a *whispers* Tauren.  A Sin'Dorei paladin. It's not really even appropriate that you're wafting around flower-picking is it?  Be thankful that I didn't follow through with my plan to make you into a blacksmith...

And, whilst we're on the subject of paying your way, who decided that they wanted a ret spec after seeing this?  Because, sweetie, even if you get geared enough to try that stuff, I'm not sure I'm good enough to help you out! So you got your ret spec and the armour didn't you?  And then what did you decide?  That actually you felt quite squishy as ret and that you probably did almost as much damage as holy, but without losing half your health in every fight? I think I got that right...

I know right now, you don't think that you'll want to fly even faster, but trust me sweetie, you will in a bit.  And learning alchemy means a lot of time spent riding round all the places that you're I'm bored with, just to gather a metric f*ck tonne of plants.  I'd understand if you would consent to doing archeology, because then eventually we might have a shot at this but as you insist on grumbling that surveying is nearly as tedious as mining, I'm guessing you're not going to go for that.

You're doing really well, sweetie.  You're getting much more skilled and experienced.  Why, just today you were rewarded for the assistance you provided to the Horde in Dragonblight and I'm very proud of you.  Keep that sort of work up, and I'll seriously consider procuring alchemy training for you.

See you soon!