WoW guilds in disarray as Blizzard unable to restore banks wiped due to bug

Since August, World of Warcraft guilds have been reporting a troubling bug: their guild banks, where any member of the guild can store resources, items, and even the game’s rarest of loot (like mounts), were wiped out. Whether completely emptied or simply missing items, users reported that the fruits of their labor were vanishing into thin air. As of September, Blizzard’s response has left many players with their heads in their hands.

Some items will never be recovered

Community Manager Linxy said in a blogpost over on the Blizzard forums that the core issue was caused by the enabling of cross-realm guilds. As a part of The War Within, many limitations on players’ ability to play, trade, and share with each other across both faction and realm were dissolved, making for a more communal experience across the player base.

But that convenience comes at a cost. “Due to how some of the data was lost, we’ve reached a point where the result will be an incomplete restoration for some guilds, and we do not have a way to restore the remaining missing items for them,” says Linxy. Data loss is a backend developer’s worst nightmare, especially when that data could be 19-year-old mounts, collectables, and items not even obtainable in the game anymore.

The affected community, needless to say, is in shambles. The bug didn’t affect everyone, mind you, but those it has have lost, at worst, nearly two decades’ worth of stashed items. The best we can hope for is some form of compensation to those affected, but without the data that shows which items were lost, it really isn’t going to be possible to get that history back.