Earlier this week, Blizzard admitted that a major bug had resulted in serious and permanent data loss for some World of Warcraft players, including the loss of millions of gold worth of guild vault items, and worse, the studio would not be restoring those items. The team made no mention of compensation either, since presumably if it lost those data, it would have no way to tell who should be compensated and how much. The end result was that players were just flat-out screwed with no recourse.
I’m gonna be honest, this absolutely stunned me. Maybe it shouldn’t have, but this is not what I expect from even 2024 Blizzard – the lost data (how??), the studio’s nonchalance about blowing it off, the lack of compensation, all of it. As we joked in work chat, the “Asian temport” MMO studios will roll out entire compensation packages for an extra 10 minutes of downtime!
So for this week’s Massively Overthinking, I want to talk about compensation in MMOs, for all kinds of bugs and issues. Have you ever been affected by a bug or downtime or data loss like this, and what did the MMO studio do to resolve it, compensation-wise? What sorts of game problems do you think deserve player compensation? How much compensation do you expect from MMO studios when their tech goes wonky? And what the actual hell, Blizzard?
Brianna Royce (@nbrianna, blog): I’ve been thinking a lot about this and am having a hard time coming up with something that affected me that was even half as bad as “wiping out millions with catastrophic data loss.” Maybe the most recent fiasco was a few years back when Lord of the Rings Online went through like two straight weeks of unplayability. SSG handed out a nice compensation package, but at least they didn’t lose our stuff.
But I think it’s just that I’ve been very lucky. If you search the word “rollback” on MOP, you’ll see several hundred incidents of nasty rollbacks across the industry just in the last decade. Dungeons and Dragons Online saw one server lose three weeks of playtime. Guild Wars 2 handed out free mounts to EU players affected by a six-hour rollback in 2020. Elder Scrolls Online suffered a nasty bout of rollbacks just this year and put up a whopper of a compensation package to make the reviewbombing stop. So these things do happen; I just haven’t been personally caught up in them.
Of course, I grew up in Ultima Online, where we saw multiple rollbacks a week for the first few months, so I’ve been there. My fam is also still missing marooned characters in LOTRO… RIP.
Either way, I just don’t think studios can possibly be too generous with digital compensation. Blizzard should prioritize this. Unfortunately, it’s clearly decided enough affected people will keep subscribing that it can blow the rest off. Depressing.
Carlo Lacsina (@UltraMudkipEX, YouTube, Twitch): Honestly when it comes to WoW’s situation, compensation wouldn’t have done diddly squat for any of those really old souvenirs gone. This is especially true when it comes to items that long lost friends gave me.
In classic Guild Wars, I have a very valuable chaos axe that goes for a lot of money. I’d be pretty upset if I lost that. But I would be way more upset if I lost a specific helmet that my character cant even wear. A friend gave it to me as a joke, but I never threw it away. I’ve kept it to remember him. If I lost that, I’d be even more pissed!
Also, I’ve always had a level of disconnection with my MMOs. I’m obviously attached to them, but there’s always that piece of me in the back of my mind that knows that these MMOs aren’t forever. So I’m not fully committed and always kind of prepared for the worst to happen.
Chris Neal (@wolfyseyes, blog):Â I honestly don’t recall any situation where there was a big enough hullabaloo to warrant some compensation. I guess I’ve been pretty lucky, generally speaking!
So with that in mind, I’ll mostly be tackling the other portions of the question. For starters, it’s my firm belief that compensation should be handed out when data get wiped out. Whether it’s item deletion, a server rollback, or entire characters lost to the digital mists, it will require a pretty mighty freebie to smooth that over.
Naturally that is dependent on the severity of the loss. If a few hours or a couple of items are gone, then some equivalent currency trade-off would mollify me. But if I lost days or months of progress or (heaven forbid) an entire character? They would have to quite literally pay me to come back, as in give me sub benefits or some other monetarily-equivalent handout.
Justin Olivetti (@Sypster, blog): I don’t think you can ever err too much on the side of consumer care or rightly apologizing for mistakes or issues, even if they weren’t deliberate. An apologetic word, owning up to missteps, and a token of compensation for one’s troubles go a long way to smoothing over hurt feelings and retaining customer loyalty. A ton of businesses in the world know this, and so should MMO studios. And considering that “compensation” can be handled by completely free digital goodies, it’s a no-brainer.
Mia DeSanzo (@neschria): I think that I have only faced rollbacks of short periods of time for server outages, but I have never lost anything significant. If anything, I come out ahead when Black Desert offers compensation for server downtime because I wasn’t online anyway, in all probability. However, if my guild was set back significantly, or if I lost a lot of time (in gold or items equivalent), and there was no compensation whatsoever, I’d quit. That people at that company just told me everything I need to know about how much they care about their customers’ experience of the product.
Sam Kash (@thesamkash): In Magic Awakened, we have downtime compensation with every patch. Lots of times I didn’t even know when the downtime was, so it’s a nice little bonus when I log on in the mornings and see my reward. (Although the major maintenance tends to happen right around 8 p.m. for me, which is wild.)
Still, I can’t remember the last time I was playing a game that needed to compensate or roll back servers due to an issue. I can say that if I lost anything that took me a significant amount of time to gain, I’d need something big to keep me happy – otherwise I’d be out of there for good.
Tyler Edwards (blog):Â It’s strange how wildly the attitude on compensation can vary game to game.
Lost Ark gives compensation for every little thing. I’m pretty sure I’ve seen Amazon give players compensation just for regular scheduled maintenance.
But I’ve almost never seen compensation in any other game, and when it does come, it’s very small. New World gave us some free season pass XP when there was that rollback bug a few months back. WoW has occasionally given a few days of free game time (wow, how generous, he said sarcastically).
Personally I think compensation should be more common. Give us something any time there’s a major bug or extended server downtime. It doesn’t need to be big. It can just be a little currency or something. But it’s a nice gesture that makes me feel valued as a consumer.
Every week, join the Massively OP staff for Massively Overthinking column, a multi-writer roundtable in which we discuss the MMO industry topics du jour – and then invite you to join the fray in the comments. Overthinking it is literally the whole point. Your turn!
