When RealID Gives You Lemons, Have Your Marketing Team Make Some Lemonade

Posted on August 3, 2010 by Scott Jennings| 16 Comments

A reader who cancelled their WoW accounts over RealID forwarded me this email:

You hear that, UNKNOWN? Your voice has been heard! You and your friends FIELD_NOT_FOUND and MAIL_MERGE_FAILED won the day.

This entry was posted in RealID, Whoops, World of Warcraft. Bookmark the permalink.
  • http://twitter.com/independentcrtr Matthew Franklin

    If that’s intentional, it’s extremely clever.

  • Ashendarei

    Funny as hell :D

    and a good point overall for anyone who values their privacy in the least.

  • Jeff

    Still trying to figure out if the UNKNOWN is intentional or not.

  • Jeff

    The real funny thing though is there was an interview with a Blizz guy, I think I saw it linked on Massively, that sort of downplayed the outrage as a reason why they changed it. It was merely one of many reasons they factored in, where as this email plays it out like we are the sole reason.

  • wumpusbait

    After being prodded by a friend, I’ve discovered I’d also received a ‘Come back, we miss you!’ missive from Blizzard to my Battlenet gmail account.

    ..curiously enough, I’d reactivated my account (by gamecard) a week before the mail was sent.
    Things may be a little more screwed up in the Billing department than we thought.

  • =j

    I wonder if little Bobby Tables got one of these emails… http://xkcd.com/327/

  • http://twitter.com/Android8675 Andy

    Yeah, I got the same email in my inbox this morning (Failed Mail Merge as well). I am tempted to respond with something about how I don’t think they should be proud of the fact that they “listened” when it should of been obvious to them in the first place that this was a BAD idea.

    I would of rather they blamed Bobby “mr. facebook” Kotick or something along those lines for this fuck up. I honestly don’t see how ANYONE given the current hot topic of privacy online, could see this as a good thing.

  • Aufero

    Pretty sure the “unknown” in there is intentional.  I got the same email yesterday, and they know damn well what account and user name my email address is attached to.

  • http://beafraid.com hellfire

    Every shit that Blizzard takes is wrapped in solid gold at this point. Even Apple can’t spin catastrophic fuck-ups with this level of success… or hubris.
     
    I’m still not buying SC2, D3 or ever, EVER playing WoW again though.

  • http://blog.weflyspitfires.com We Fly Spitfires

    Hehe, clever Blizzard :) Guess there’s a reason why they have 11 million players :)

  • http://twitter.com/D_0ne D-0ne

    Blizzard doesn’t give one sh!t about their customers feedback except when that feedback is a canceled account.    Based on my friends and relatives reactions to this, “real name friends list in game and on the forums”  situation, I’d guess it was the massive number of canceled accounts that changed their mind.

  • Argon

    The people who write these emails are really drinking deep of the Koolaid if they think “one of our Core Values is…” is compelling to the average customer.

  • Iconic

    Interesting.  I cancelled my account because of RealID and haven’t been bothered to reactivate it (I expect to play Final Fantasy 14, and in the meantime I’m giving EQ 2 a try for a month or two just to see what I missed).  I haven’t gotten any of those “we changed our minds” emails even though you’d think they’d be targeting the people who cancelled because of RealID.

  • Neil

    I’m in the same position as iconic. I canceled my subscription because of RealID, mentioned as such in the comments, and haven’t yet reactivated it. Why would one of these mails not be sent to someone like me?

  • http://your2ndplace.com/ Ciaran Laval

    I’ve just gone back to WoW, they’ve merely started the email with “Greetings”, so maybe someone at Blizzard is having a giggle.

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