Tag: Broken

Blizzard Messes Up Server Sale, Customers Report Busted Shipments


What could be cooler than owning a server blade from World of Warcraft? Eating a life size elf statue made of rum cake, I suppose. Let’s meet in the middle and agree on receiving that product you paid a fair amount for in a state that is not broken.

If you were lucky enough, you may have gotten on Blizzard’s store back in September to buy a server blade with 100% of the price going toward charity; specifically the Pencils of Promise charity, a global education organization creating schools, programs, and global communities around the common goal of education for all. Those who bought the server blades for the not at all cheap price are starting to receive their product and the results are not great.

Maybe Pencils of Promise should educate Blizzard on how to pack a box. Players are reporting that their servers have been smashed in transit with a common thread being cheap housing and shoddy efforts in ensuring that the server blades don’t bang around in transit.

Several users who were able to get hold of Blizzard support have received a response that the company is figuring out a solution to all of the broken hardware. Unfortunately due to the nature of the item (a collectible piece of retired hardware) it is unlikely that a replacement is in the bag. Unless Blizzard has a heap of server blades sitting around unused, the best they may be able to do is to eat the cost and provide a refund.

I have provided a number of customer notes below. There are a lot more reports of broken blades/cases on the forums.

(Shoutout to Kimset in the Discord for bringing this to my attention)

“I got mine today and it arrived with random pieces of the server floating around inside of the case, giant scuff on the inside of the plastic cover from things rubbing it during shipping, and one of the plastic “pins” or whatever snapped off so the plastic doesn’t actually stay on the server itself and I almost lost the whole thing when taking it out of the box because I didn’t know it was fcked before I even got it. Really bummed after looking forward to receiving this for a long time and missing my chance at one of the original ones.”

“mine arrived broken and scuffed as well. cheapest housing i have ever seen. im starting a return on it now”

“I received mine today on the east coast and it was also damaged. The 2 inside hooks were broken off (seems like a weak point anyway), inside front scratched and one of the acrylic screws was almost broken in half. The cover seems too delicate for the blade imo. The shipping box didn’t seem like it had a rough ride and I agree with the packaging not being sufficient. It may have had a much better chance not assembled with each piece protected separately since my damage seemed to be all on the inside cover. I would like a replacement cover rather than refund and I hope BLizz works that out.”

“I also had mine arrived damaged, the case it self was loose the backing was falling apart just picking it up there was scratches on the case as well and 5 pieces broken and floating inside. I am extremely pissed off that I like others spent over 300 dollars USD for this BS. Who ever works at blizzard that that it was a good idea to just have four very thin foam pieces covering just the corners should be fired. And while some people have responded it’s so easy to just return it I do t want it returned I want a exchange. But I am sure that is almost impossible as these were supposed to be one of a kind collecters editions”

“Mine came broken badly as well. I already submitted a ticket and got blown off by the GM that answered it, so ill try the live chat option but im not optimistic at this point based on reading other peoples struggles as well as my experience with the previous GM. 20 minute queue to talk to someone is kind of ridiculous though…”

“I received mine today. The shipping box is in very good shape and not damaged in the slightest. The server blade cover, with the WoW 15th anniversary logo is intact. But the little plastic tabs on the back side of the cover which hold it on are broken off in pieces and the plastic screws at the other end which hold the cover on are sheared off.”

“welp mine arrived completely broken. the whole housing is cheap and plastic and cracked in shipping. returning”

“Mine arrived. Very underwhelming. Case broken, all plastic screws snapped and mysteriously missing, stand broken. Yay charity. At least the engraving is kinda nice. Just dont look at the underside, some 12 year old glued it on.”

[Column] Final Fantasy XIV’s Patcher Is Still Busted Garbage


busted

For the record, I wanted this article to be an MMOments on how Final Fantasy XIV has been coming along, what changes have been made to the game, and what I did with my extra time allotted thanks to the welcome back campaign currently ongoing. I really did, I love Final Fantasy and XIV is one of my favorites, and yet here we are. Complaining about how the patcher is still utterly broken on a game developed and published by a company as large as Square Enix, and that is utterly pathetic.

Even more depressing are the hoops that Square Enix forces its customers to jump through in order to get the game working, assuming it even does once you jump through said hoops. Among the various Steam, FFXIV, and Reddit threads I’ve seen with players working out how they got their patcher fixed, workarounds include downloading through a mobile hotspot, taking your PS4 to a friend’s house, connecting to a VPN service, taking your computer to someone else’s house, and the list gets even more absurd from there down to just relaunching the client upwards and occasionally more than a couple dozen times while praying that it eventually just works. What ever happened to the days of shutting off your anti-virus?

According to the ever defiant fanatics on the various forums, this is my fault, or my ISP for that matter, and nothing that can be traced back to Square Enix at all, totally. These people have no real technical knowledge or evidence to back their claims up, nor do they seem to agree with each other on the exact explanation, but it’s important to know that it isn’t Square’s fault. Evidently installation is like the one inch curb that, while thousands and thousands of other games, websites, and services have no problem passing over with no issue, Final Fantasy XIV on the other hand can’t handle the step without tripping and breaking its neck.

And I find myself sitting here, scratching my head, looking at every game I own on Steam, Origin, uPlay, etc (at this point probably somewhere over 1,000 titles) and thinking “I don’t have this problem on a single other game, I have never had this problem with a single other game.” None of them make me connect to a VPN, tether my computer to my phone, add domain exceptions to Internet Explorer, take my computer to a friend’s house, and I’d like to point out that this is with the PC version. The PS4 version is having the same problems. It’s a console, you boot the game up and it’s supposed to just work. Why is it that apparently Square Enix is the only company to not have figured out the horrifically complicated enigma code that is building a functioning patcher?

I really want to know, and I want Square Enix themselves to tell me. Let’s go on a limb and say that it is actually a problem that the ISP is causing, and I’m not being sarcastic. Let’s say Verizon is the cause of this issue because I am on FIOS. Why is it that Square Enix seems to be the only company triggering this reaction? What is so unique about this patcher that it can’t clear the hurdles that every other game I have played, be it downloaded directly or through P2P sharing, has managed to work around? Could it be because the service providers hate Square, or is it more likely that through a combination of bullheadedness and incompetence that Square’s patcher doesn’t work where everyone else’s does? On second thought, it’s probably easier to blame the ISP so you don’t have to fix anything.

Ultimately the only entity that loses out here is Square Enix, considering the countless threads I ran through from the past few months of people who had bought the game through Steam only to be unable to play it, then requested refunds, or those who had resubscribed or returned for welcome back campaigns only to immediately quit again because they couldn’t pass stage 1 (installation). These are people who aren’t going to come back, Square, the kind of disgruntled customers who, in later times, will look back on their last experience and not want to deal with that again for the hope that maybe you got your stuff in order in the meantime. These are people who will go to the other MMOs that don’t have that problem, or as I like to call it, all of them.

Other than that I have no opinion on the subject.