Curse

Urcscumug · Mar 29, 2011, 09:23 PM // 21:23

Quote:

Originally Posted by Zebideedee

I'm sure I read on another post that if a hacker deletes your characters they can't be restored, if this is true if your main with 50/50 is deleted is your HoM wiped out?

I think the HoM is tied to the account itself, so even if chars are deleted the HoM achievements are probably ok.

gremlin · Mar 29, 2011, 10:06 PM // 22:06

Quote:

Originally Posted by Zebideedee

Sorry to hear that OP, ouch. But can someone clarify this for me. I'm sure I read on another post that if a hacker deletes your characters they can't be restored, if this is true if your main with 50/50 is deleted is your HoM wiped out?

I would certainly hope not and I think we are fairly safe in saying its unlikely.

They may not be able to restore accounts for the comparatively few people who are hacked but if the hom system fell down they would be forced to act.

Arduin · Mar 29, 2011, 10:09 PM // 22:09

The stuff in your HoM is safe, as long as you still have access to your account.

*lemming* · Mar 29, 2011, 10:10 PM // 22:10

Quote:

Originally Posted by gremlin

I would certainly hope not and I think we are fairly safe in saying its unlikely.

They may not be able to restore accounts for the comparatively few people who are hacked but if the hom system fell down they would be forced to act.

Wait, what? Characters are less important than achievements that won't serve any kind of purpose at all for another year?

Ghull Ka · Mar 29, 2011, 10:24 PM // 22:24

I have long held the belief that all tech support or customer support desks should work "/huggles!" into the signature line of anything they send to us.

Hey, you're ewed-scray, but *hugz!!* <3 :-)

TheGizzy · Mar 29, 2011, 10:52 PM // 22:52

Quote:

Originally Posted by Ghull Ka

I have long held the belief that all tech support or customer support desks should work "/huggles!" into the signature line of anything they send to us.

Hey, you're ewed-scray, but *hugz!!* <3 :-)

I don't think support departments need to pass around huggles... but my employees are expected to demonstrate compassion and to acknowledge the fact that many of our players put their hearts and souls into their accounts - and thus treat the players accordingly.

In most of my dealings with NCSoft support, I've walked away thinking to myself, "you wouldn't last 15 minutes under my employ." Note that I said most of my dealings with them... that's by no means the same as all.

A little compassion and acknowledgment of the frustration/sense of loss/anger/mistrust/etc. that a player is feeling and/or conveying goes a long way towards building a persistently positive relationship between the support department and the players, and thus between the company as a whole and the players.

Support is the front line face of any gaming publisher... most players will never meet or communicate with the developers, artists, etc. The face support shows is the one the community judges the company (and often the game as a result) by... NCSoft would do well to remember that, but that seems to have been lost on them unfortunately.

enter_the_zone · Mar 29, 2011, 11:10 PM // 23:10

To be fair, that's no surprise, it's lost on most companies.

pingu666 · Mar 29, 2011, 11:17 PM // 23:17

sucks they couldnt restore the account to a previous state, I thought they could do that

Red_Dragon56 · Mar 29, 2011, 11:20 PM // 23:20

(only reads the OP)

Sucks, but really, you said yourself you weren't secure with your account. You're still 50/50 and have Gwamm. Customer Service couldn't do anything for you because they really aren't allowed to. If they jsut gave all your stuff back that would be like a mod-duping fiasco. People would be claiming thier stuff was hacked by shoving all their crap onto an alt account, if a mod assisted in any wa that wasn't advice, well. Too bad really.

It's your own fault, and it's not like you lost anything that will forever ruin your account. Either start over again, wait for GW2, or move on to another game.

Hephaestus Ram · Mar 30, 2011, 12:20 AM // 00:20

Quote:

Originally Posted by nagennif

Recently my account was hacked, according to customer service, by gold sellers. I admit, this is likely the fault of lax security in my part. I don't blame Arena Net in any way.

I was under the impression that when they restored my account, I'd have something left in it...but it's pretty much gutted. All the stuff I cared about is gone.

Am I over-reacting, cause right now, I just can't bring myself to even load my account and look at it again.

I feel for your situation. But I've got to agree with Anets approach.

Figuring that it probably costs them ... what? say $60. an hour for a tech to deal with any given
customer problem. And they make about ... $10. profit per game sold tops. If they have to
spend even six minutes on one account they already lost all the money they made on that sale.

So they have to pay someone to retrieve logs on your account history and try to figure out all
the things you had on it. Then they have to go through your recent history and determine
wether your account was really hacked or you gave the information to someone so they could
distribute your stuff to friends and you can get it all replaced. This would be very expensive for
them.

On top of that. As soon as word got out that people could get their hacked accounts restored
there would be a vertual epidemic of every con artist, scammer, and 10 year old kid with nothing
better to do with their time reporting their account being hacked in hopes of getting free stuff. It
would cost Anet thousands of man hours to go through them all.

I suppose that if you were willing to reimburse them for the cost of investigating your claim it'd
be easier for them to spend time on it. But even then I'm not sure they could do it because of the
difficulty of determining wether you gave the information away or it was stolen.

Voodoo Rage · Mar 30, 2011, 12:26 AM // 00:26

Quote:

Originally Posted by pingu666

sucks they couldnt restore the account to a previous state, I thought they could do that

I think the answer is pretty obvious. I could just guy my account and give everything to a friend and then get ANET to "roll back" my account.

TheGizzy · Mar 30, 2011, 12:42 AM // 00:42

Quote:

Originally Posted by Hephaestus Ram

Figuring that it probably costs them ... what? say $60. an hour for a tech to deal with any given
customer problem.

$8-10/hour generally. And most gaming companies who actually do full account restoration have mechanisms in place that allow the $8-10/hour support personnel to handle any restorations without requiring developer, dbase manager or programmer intervention.

It doesn't take anywhere near as long as you think it does if the restoration structure is in place.

GW's setup apparently doesn't include such a structure. If there's anything I'm actually critical of ANet for (and I tend to be very supportive of them and admire their policies and practices overall), it's that they did not build such a mechanism into the game to start with... by 2005, the exploitation of accounts was well underway in the industry... NOT having a rollback/recovery option (not to mention much better security) just doesn't make sense.

Unfortunately, it's still one of the most frequently overlooked areas in game design & development. It isn't just ANet, it's actually most companies.

mauirixxx · Mar 30, 2011, 12:53 AM // 00:53

Quote:

Originally Posted by Brian the Gladiator

How does somebody get their account hacked? I don't understand how hackers get the information required to hack you. Does anyone know ways of doing this?

there's various ways. My account was hacked via a virus (I'm assuming it scanned for usernames and passwords being entered anywhere, as GW wasn't the only game I had hacked from the virus).

I was fortunate though. I'm a crappy GW player, and 2 years agao when my account was stolen I didn't have squat. NO elite armor, a few rare mats (no ectos, saphires or rubies though), no mini's, nothing worth stealing my account for.

So they made an assassin, got her up to level 4, and tried selling gold (which got the account frozen).

Like I said, I was fortunate. I HAD 20p total before my account was stolen. After I got it back, I had 50p ... small victory I suppose. I actually e-mailed NCsoft and explained to them that I had stuff from the gold seller and asked them to rollback my account to before it was hacked.

They told me sorry our system is designed to do this (they'd have to rollback the entire world or something), and enjoy the extra $$$.

I'm in the same alliance that the OP is in (hi from Chrissi!), and rest assured everyone who was reading AC yesterday was offering up money & mats (and yes, he flatly refused the money).

I still may not have much in the game, but I'm sitting on a small mountain of platinum that I offered up. My offer still stands btw.

And also, I understand taking a break due to this - even though I was 30p richer, I was still disheartened by the fact that I did lose stuff (even if it wasn't all that valuable - I lost stuff). I took awhile, and I rather wandered aimlessly in GW for a short while.

Joining our alliance turned it around for ME personally. Now I don't play much to do stuff in the game, I play to help others and just chat with a bunch of older farts like myself. That's what got me up and running.

Take a week or a month, but come back. You KNOW all you gotta say in AC is "Does anyone have x item" and a bunch of us will respond - because that's just how our alliance rolls - and you know this as a fact.

Finally .. don't forget the new character names ... just roll one with a name that gives a firm middle finger to gold sellers. You know you want to

/walloftext

inscribed · Mar 30, 2011, 12:54 AM // 00:54

the simple solution to these problems is to exercise better security with your personal information and to use different passwords for different logins. you can be angry at NCsoft or ArenaNet all you want, but ultimately it was your mess up that got your account hacked.

your choices now are to try to rebuild your characters, or just wait for GW2 since you still have your HoM.

Chico · Mar 30, 2011, 01:01 AM // 01:01

Lol at whoever thinks my post was something else.

To the OP:
The summary of my (ex)post is: Sad too. Banned Account. Dealt with support too. Support is Horrible. Still banned. Scale it all you want. Not even Gaile can pull this one off.

gremlin · Mar 30, 2011, 03:12 AM // 03:12

Quote:

Originally Posted by lemming

Wait, what? Characters are less important than achievements that won't serve any kind of purpose at all for another year?

Question as to what is important to anet and ncsoft as to what is more important to the players.

When anyone is hacked they can always take the attitude it was their own fault and few will blame them except those who were hacked.

But if someone had all their characters deleted and this caused their hom achievements for that account to also be lost then there would be loads of trouble and it would hit gw2 sales.

I don't believe they want that to happen.

nagennif · Mar 30, 2011, 05:05 AM // 05:05

Quote:

Originally Posted by Hephaestus Ram

I feel for your situation. But I've got to agree with Anets approach.

Figuring that it probably costs them ... what? say $60. an hour for a tech to deal with any given
customer problem. And they make about ... $10. profit per game sold tops. If they have to
spend even six minutes on one account they already lost all the money they made on that sale.

So they have to pay someone to retrieve logs on your account history and try to figure out all
the things you had on it. Then they have to go through your recent history and determine
wether your account was really hacked or you gave the information to someone so they could
distribute your stuff to friends and you can get it all replaced. This would be very expensive for
them.

On top of that. As soon as word got out that people could get their hacked accounts restored
there would be a vertual epidemic of every con artist, scammer, and 10 year old kid with nothing
better to do with their time reporting their account being hacked in hopes of getting free stuff. It
would cost Anet thousands of man hours to go through them all.

I suppose that if you were willing to reimburse them for the cost of investigating your claim it'd
be easier for them to spend time on it. But even then I'm not sure they could do it because of the
difficulty of determining wether you gave the information away or it was stolen.

Nice points. If you'd read the entire thread, however, you'd understand that my stuff back isn't the main issue here. The main issue is how customer service handled the entire matter, and how and what they communicated to me.

I'm a big boy. I get it. My stuff is gone. But there are ways to tell people their stuff is gone and there are ways to let people linger for a few days hoping to get their stuff back, only to come back to naked characters.

A simple amount of sympathy or understanding on the part of a customer service department would have completely changed this experience for me. It would have saved them money because the back and forth we had wouldn't have existed in the first place.

Don't tell a customer that you're going to restore an account and then just give it back to them. Tell them we're going to get your account back to you, as soon as you prove that you are you, but whatever was taken can't be resorted for these reasons. It could be a form letter, but it wouldn't have left me waiting for days and hoping, only to come back to the mess I did.

Subsequent conversation was even worse. Their response to my query was not only unsympathetic, but showed a complete lack of care for my emotions as a human being.

So, I'm not saying I need to get my stuff back. I'm saying that I could be a person playing the game right now, instead of a person leaving it.

In addition my wife used to play with me and we've spent tons of money on pretty much everything ANET has come up with. The games themselves, historical mission packs, costume packs, character slots, chest panes...if Guild Wars right now isn't staying alive on people buying the game, they're getting micro transactions.

I was almost done with the game, when they offered the mercenary pack and I thought, wow that could be fun. See all my guys, or many of them, on screen at one point. Yep, I'd have bought the mercenary pack, and probably got one for my wife too.

That's two sales they obviously won't be getting, plus new costume sales, plus whatever other incidentals we might spend.

And even though I'll still buy Guild Wars 2, because I am a fan, if you don't think this makes me think before investing money into microtransactions you'd be wrong.

And it wouldn't have even required my stuff to be restored to have kept me happy as a customer. But a bit of sympathy wouldn't have gone amiss.

nagennif · Mar 30, 2011, 05:10 AM // 05:10

Quote:

Originally Posted by inscribed

the simple solution to these problems is to exercise better security with your personal information and to use different passwords for different logins. you can be angry at NCsoft or ArenaNet all you want, but ultimately it was your mess up that got your account hacked.

your choices now are to try to rebuild your characters, or just wait for GW2 since you still have your HoM.

Since I've repeatedly acknowledged my own liability in this, what's your point?

That it's okay for customer service to act like they don't care at all? That it's okay for customer service to spend days restoring my account, only to find it in the state it's in without even a warning?

That it's okay for them to pretty much act like nothing at all has happened?

That it's okay for them to ask me to go find the original codes for every game on my account, before telling me that even when I find them, I'll come back to a mess?

The issue here is less getting my stuff back and more how customer service treated this situation badly enough for me to not want to play anymore.

Thanks for commenting.

nagennif · Mar 30, 2011, 05:20 AM // 05:20

Quote:

Originally Posted by mauirixxx

there's various ways. My account was hacked via a virus (I'm assuming it scanned for usernames and passwords being entered anywhere, as GW wasn't the only game I had hacked from the virus).

I was fortunate though. I'm a crappy GW player, and 2 years agao when my account was stolen I didn't have squat. NO elite armor, a few rare mats (no ectos, saphires or rubies though), no mini's, nothing worth stealing my account for.

So they made an assassin, got her up to level 4, and tried selling gold (which got the account frozen).

Like I said, I was fortunate. I HAD 20p total before my account was stolen. After I got it back, I had 50p ... small victory I suppose. I actually e-mailed NCsoft and explained to them that I had stuff from the gold seller and asked them to rollback my account to before it was hacked.

They told me sorry our system is designed to do this (they'd have to rollback the entire world or something), and enjoy the extra $$$.

I'm in the same alliance that the OP is in (hi from Chrissi!), and rest assured everyone who was reading AC yesterday was offering up money & mats (and yes, he flatly refused the money).

I still may not have much in the game, but I'm sitting on a small mountain of platinum that I offered up. My offer still stands btw.

And also, I understand taking a break due to this - even though I was 30p richer, I was still disheartened by the fact that I did lose stuff (even if it wasn't all that valuable - I lost stuff). I took awhile, and I rather wandered aimlessly in GW for a short while.

Joining our alliance turned it around for ME personally. Now I don't play much to do stuff in the game, I play to help others and just chat with a bunch of older farts like myself. That's what got me up and running.

Take a week or a month, but come back. You KNOW all you gotta say in AC is "Does anyone have x item" and a bunch of us will respond - because that's just how our alliance rolls - and you know this as a fact.

Finally .. don't forget the new character names ... just roll one with a name that gives a firm middle finger to gold sellers. You know you want to

/walloftext

Hey, I did get on a create a couple of brand new characters from my storage characters that are now empty. I did this while putting costumes on naked characters.

And yes, Mara is a great alliance and I have many friends there. I might log on from time to time to chat with them. But the list of stuff that's missing goes way beyond the ability of the guild to replace, and frankly, I don't want anyone in the guild to have to.

As I see it, other games have mechanisms in place to replace what's lost. If nothing else, the dedicated stuff in my HoM should be returned to me somehow, even if it was somehow locked so it could never be traded or salvaged, I wouldn't care. I didn't break the rules. I didn't scam the company. I'm a loyal player. I've been called a fan boy by many.

Customer service took what was a loyal player and made him question his loyalty. This can't possibly be good for Anet on any level.

As of today my decision not to return looks pretty much a given. I just can't look at the places in the inventory where my everlasting tonics were or the characters that used to have very cool and expensive or rare minis. I won't farm to buy stuff I already had, because that's going back wards to me.

I was at a point in the game, where the reason I was playing, aside from talking to guildies, was to build up money to get the even rarer stuff I wanted to collect. I might have gone and bought an EL trapdoor tonic. I would have saved for an unded mini I didn't already had, smite crawler was in my sites next. I was going to doing Nick every week with the stuff I'd already spent years saving, so I wouldn't have to farm, on the off chance that I was going to get a Yakkington (my wife did) a gwen doll or a brown rabbit even.

And a lot of that stuff I got that I didn't need got passed to others in the guild. It was fine.

But I won't go back to farm it, because I hate farming. That's why I bought four character slots to save all this crap.

What is that, $40 bucks of wasted money? Nope, at this point, I can't bring myself to come back.

nagennif · Mar 30, 2011, 05:24 AM // 05:24

Quote:

Originally Posted by gremlin

Question as to what is important to anet and ncsoft as to what is more important to the players.

When anyone is hacked they can always take the attitude it was their own fault and few will blame them except those who were hacked.

But if someone had all their characters deleted and this caused their hom achievements for that account to also be lost then there would be loads of trouble and it would hit gw2 sales.

I don't believe they want that to happen.

Are you saying how players feel shouldn't be important to Anet? How likely they are to make a micro transaction, or invest time and energy in the game world? I find that hard to believe.