World of Warcraft has steadily evolved for years, with player characters growing and changing as time presses on. For some accounts, that growth may have taken place over the last decade, though a new bug is currently causing some pretty major setbacks for players. Blizzard is working on a fix, though, so fans shouldn't panic too much if they get hit with the issue.
Right now, players on World of Warcraft's Khadgar server are getting hit with a glitch that reverts account progress by 10 years, putting some characters back in the same state they were in during the Cataclysm expansion while completely removing others. Additionally, some deleted characters are returning to accounts, while others are reporting copies of their characters from Cataclysm being added to their account, original gear and everything.
Blizzard has since acknowledged the issue, reporting that the characters don't seem to be missing permanently, and stating that it's working on a fix. The company said that it "fully understands" the issue at hand and that players should start to see their accounts return to normal shortly. However, the company did warn that it didn't know how long the process would take to complete.
Players have crafted their own theories as to why the issue popped up in the first place, the most common one having to do with Khadgar's ongoing server merge, which is meant to bolster the player base. Some believe that old backups may have overwritten the current versions of the characters, but Blizzard hasn't confirmed or denied that being the case.
Blizzard has created a megathread on its support page to address the problem and offer updates. So far, the issue has been met with a negative reaction by many affected players, particularly because of the lack of a solid ETA for a fix. Blizzard customer service representatives have been active in the thread, quelling customer concerns and offering updates wherever they can.
Currently, Blizzard is gearing up for the launch of Shadowlands, World of Warcraft's next major expansion. Ironically, the expansion will see the return of some of the franchise's oldest heroes, so while the bug may be frustrating, it's surprisingly timely. For now, though, affected players can only wait while Blizzard attempts to sort out the problem. This isn't the strangest bug that World of Warcraft players have had to suffer through, though it's definitely one of the most inconvenient ones to hit the game in a while.
World of Warcraft is avaialable now for PC.
Source: Blizzard