Getting Ready For Realm Connection

With the connection of Aszune and Shadowsong announced as being July 2nd, I decided to check out the web for a list of common issues post connection, so I could be prepared for the worst, should it happen. What I found was reassuringly few problems but the ones I did find were fairly major ones.

PROBLEM: ALL characters vanished during the connection process. Blizzard is did restore the toons and did make this their no1 priority but still there can be delays.
SOLUTION: Open ONE ticket to request ALL your characters be restored and list ALL character names, guild names and specify the server name.

PROBLEM: Players who have deleted characters and created new ones to replace them have seen the deleted character(s) reappear and the new one(s) disappear after the realm connection.
SOLUTION: Deleting the "deleted" character, switching to a different realm and then back to home realm will update the character list to restore the "missing" character. If that fails, log out of battle.net then back in and if you're still missing a character, open ONE ticket to request the missing characters be restored and list ALL character names, guild names and specify the server name.

PROBLEM: Guilds have disappeared.
SOLUTION: If you're not an officer, don't panic let your officers do that! If you're an officer, still don't panic raise ONE ticket explaining the problem and let your other officers know you've done it. No point slowing the Blizzard folk down with duplicate tickets..

PROBLEM: All mail went missing. Blizzard will try to restore the missing mail but they can't guarantee they will restore everything and they won't accept your word for what went missing!
SOLUTION: Make sure to empty out the mailbox for ALL your toons and avoid sending mail unless absolutely necessary.

PROBLEM: Auction Houses have lost all auctions. Blizzard restored the deleted auction items to the players who had posted them but it can take days and that's several days you won't able to sell those items and earn gold.
SOLUTION: Don't post auctions that will end after 2am Wednesday morning. To be 100% safe, don't post any auctions AFTER 2am Monday morning.

PROBLEM: Raid lockouts are lost. That means any old raid saves may be lost. Also if the connection gets postponed to Thursday, we may be at the start again on Thursday.
SOLUTION: We will get 2 lockouts, progress will be hindered BUT we get 2 shots at loot.

PROBLEM: If you have the Valor of the Ancients buff you'll lose the buff during connection. Unfortunately, the system still retains a memory of the VP already earned by character for the week.
SOLUTION: You'll need to cap on a different toon. However, this will only be a problem IF you cap between the weekly reset and for the server shutdown prior to the connection. As our connection is Wednesday morning, don't cap until after the connection. You could also get close to cap so you'll only need a quick HC or a few daily quest hand-ins to cap.

Hopefully, as we're far from the first realms to be connected, whatever was causing some of the issues above has been fixed. But it is still good to be prepared and if something major goes wrong don't panic, it will most likely not only be you and simply raise a ticket and give Blizzard as much info as you possibly can and be patient.