Curse

GWfan#1 · Mar 30, 2011, 05:27 AM // 05:27

Sorry for your loss but...

Quote:

Originally Posted by Tanis.

Sounds like a great time to enjoy the PvP side of Guild Wars.

This is perfect for getting back on your feet I would think, Zkeys sell for a nice chunk of change.

nagennif · Mar 30, 2011, 05:33 AM // 05:33

Well, I've said all I want to on this matter, I guess it's a done deal, no matter what happens. I do hope that somehow Anet gets wind of this, not so much for my case (I'm a lost customer for Guild Wars right now), but so in the future they don't lose customers who do support the company with microtransactions.

In the end, I've joined up with a new game, and I'll play that until Guild Wars 2 comes out.

Thanks to everyone who's commented on this. I hope you never have to experience what being hacked feels like. For those who have, you have my sympathy. For those who have been treated apathetically by customer service, you also have my sympathy.

Have fun in Guild Wars, and I'll be seeing some of you in Guild Wars 2.

nagennif · Mar 30, 2011, 05:38 AM // 05:38

Quote:

Originally Posted by GWfan#1

Sorry for your loss but...

This is perfect for getting back on your feet I would think, Zkeys sell for a nice chunk of change.

Saw this after I made my "final" post, though I'll still respond to people cause I'm polite. lol

I just don't enjoy PVP. I can do it for short bursts of time, but in the end, the rewards don't justify for me the time spent, Particularly since I maxed my Luxon title.

Bellatrixa · Mar 30, 2011, 10:35 AM // 10:35

Quote:

Originally Posted by nagennif

How about a bit of compassion or sympathy? How about letting people know what to expect from a hacked account when they first contact you. Not everyone does know. How about saying I'm sorry this happened to you. These are things that don't cost money, but might save the company some lost business in the future.

Not being funny, but they're trying to be professional by not giving emotional responses. My guild has had an issue with an individual who has been talking crap about us, harassing guild members and so I contacted ANet about it. I got told to advise my guild and alliance members to all put them on ignore. To me, that's not dealing with the issue and I'd rather have seen some direct action taken against the individual (which it was for other matters I was informed by ANet in later emails), but as they told me they couldn't find the chatlogs, there was little they could do. Considering this person got people who didn't know me to whisper me with abuse when I got various legendary titles and was attacking my guild members in local chat whenever they got the opportunity, don't you think I was pissed? But I understood that ANet were limited in what they could do given the circumstances and that to give a more emotionally involved response would be showing some form of player preference. Imo you're expecting too much in the way of hugs and sympathy from the STAFF of a game. Customer support is there to give practical advice, not be a counselling service and in all honesty (coming from someone who has played MMOs for years as well as gaming for years), your reaction IS on the over-emotional side. They are just pixels, whether you paid for them or not. Are you saying you value that Celestial Compass more than anything your wife got you IRL?

Quote:

I was told my account was going to be restored. I didn't know what that meant, and no one explained it to me. No one said, we can give you your account back, but your stuff is gone. I waited days to get the account back, during which time I was hoping to get back my account as it was. Perhaps foolishly but hey, I don't work for Anet, and I know for a fact other games have returned stuff that has been stolen by hackers.

Other games may have been able to restore items due to the way they track trades/drops/player inventories. From what I've seen in my time playing Guild Wars, they don't have the same mechanics as in other games. I accept the fact that if someone hacks my account, I will lose whatever is on it. Some people only get gold stripped, some people have their inventories emptied, some people have their characters deleted. I would have expected your reaction had you logged on and had all your characters deleted. They restored your account in the sense that you got it back with all the purchased content still in place and your characters. If that was because they restored the characters, then props to them for doing that. They could have just given you the account back with nothing on it whatsoever and said "Well, that's just too bad". You wouldn't have to start ENTIRELY from scratch. Can't you at least count that as a blessing?

Quote:

So, I would have had four days of coming to terms with the idea that nothing was going to come back to me, and during the four days I could have braced myself for it. When it happened, I'd have been upset, sure, but also prepared.

You WERE prepared because you had it as a possibility from the moment that you lost access to the account. If you were coming to terms with the idea over those 4 days, how were you not prepared?

Quote:

Again, I'm not 15. I'm not expecting miracles. But customer service could have been a lot better. Even something like...

Sorry but due to the possibility of players abusing the system, we are unable to restore your account, and anything missing from it, will remain missing. We apologize for this inconvenience.

I'm really pretty easy going, if over-emotional. Just be human about it.

Well in actual fact, they DID restore your account in that you have all your campaigns, paid for content and characters at the levels and with the titles that they had when you got hacked.

tl;dr version:

I'm sorry it happened but you admitted yourself in this thread that you were lax with securing your account. They at least gave you the account back and you had your characters, titles and HoM in tact. If you don't want to earn the items back, don't. But you ARE being over-emotional about this. If you hadn't been given the account back at all or your characters had all been deleted, I'd have had a bit more sympathy, but right now this seems like a "BAWWWWW, I got hacked because I wasn't tight enough with my security and now I can't be arsed to re-earn what I lost and I'm going to blame those meanies at ANet for not giving me my items back".

For the system that they have in place, they did what they could. Showing emotion towards players can be construed as bias, therefore they are going to seem cold and clinical. I actually think that giving you links to PvX etc was more than what most customer supports would do. The response is usually "Tough shit, there's nothing we can do. Secure your account better next time". It seems you haven't experienced other customer support services in other MMOs :P I actually think ANet's response to this was good given the situation. They're not going to be treating everyone with kid gloves. Would you rather they had given you a link to a website for coping with losses instead of PvX? Be realistic. They think that people have a degree of objectivity and that most people don't have as much attachment to their characters as you. From what you've said about their responses, they gave the appropriate responses befitting their jobs and the situation.

As I said, be thankful your loss wasn't greater and move on, be that re-earning your stuff or moving on to another game. Also as much as this game may be your escape, it's still only pixels at the end of the day and I think you are a little too attached to them, which is not healthy.

I apologise if you think I'm sounding harsh, but I'm being realistic. I've lost accounts on MMOs before due to the game shutting down, having been hacked myself in another MMO and do you know what I did? I had a small QQ about my loss, tightened up my account security and then got back into getting myself back to where I was. I think there are many other people in GW who have done the same, not to mention those in other MMOs. The only time I would throw blame at customer support is if they didn't do something that I knew they could do. They restored your account to the best of their ability. As stated before, there are many reasons that your items could not be restored, but your account HAS been restored. I don't see how their response indicated anything else or was inappropriate.

On a side note, there's an edit button that means you don't have to post 3-4 times to say everything that you want to say.

nagennif · Mar 30, 2011, 01:02 PM // 13:02

Bellatrixa:

Thanks for responding, I'll be brief and I won't quote you. Your entire post pretty much ignores everything I've said.

The simple fact is I could have been told up front I wouldn't have my stuff back and that would have prepared me. The word restore is a very bad word to use if you're not going to actually do anything but give me control of my account back. They said restore my account, not restore it to me. They didn't explain what that meant and that gave me hope.

A bit of hope is a dangerous thing. I'm a communicator and always have been. I understand that words have meaning and that clarity can avoid later problems. Some people don't. You're apparently one of them.

The responsibility for being hacked, is mine and I never said otherwise. The response of the customer service department, which I DID NOT POST HERE, was lousy. I'm not asking for you to vette that it was lousy. You either believe me, or you don't. And frankly, I don't care which it is.

It could have been handled much better. I'm not saying they should have restored my possessions. I'm saying they should have told me that up front. Before they sent me to look for year old numbers that took time to find. Before the wait for restoration happened, they could have informed me.

They could have expressed sympathy and still been professional. I know this because in my line of work I've had cause to do so myself. When someone loses something, anything, that is important to them, it's okay to say I'm sorry this happened. It's not only okay, it's human.

You don't see this and that's fine, but I maintain, it's the way I've been dealt with by customer service that has me annoyed, as much as anything else.

Had I posted transcripts of the convos, which I have no real intention of doing, you MIGHT have a point. Not having seen that conversation, you have nothing to stand on but a guess.

As for emotion, different people are wired differently. Telling someone they are being too emotional can only be true from your point of view. There's no meter that says too emotional or not emotional enough. I'm not stamping my feet and screaming. I'm not jumping up and down. I didn't insult Anet, or even reveal the name of the customer service representative. I'm expressing an emotion that a percentage of posters understood.

If you don't understand it, it's entirely possible that the problem is on your end. And yes, And if you're one of the people who say, well you did something stupid, you deserve to be hacked, that's a shame. Because hacking is simply a bad thing to do to someone. It's like being mugged. Maybe a person wore jewelry in a dangerous neighorhood and didn't put a necklace under their shirt, or take of a ring. At the end of the day, the person who mugged them is still a criminal and still did something to them that hurts them, whether it's their fault or not.

Fortunately, most people who replied to me in this thread sympathized, which cost them nothing and made me feel better.

Your post only makes me feel sorry for you. It's sad that you're so jaded that you can't see that there's nothing wrong with an emotional response.

Sometimes people post on forums like this, just to have some kind of validation or just to see that they're not alone. I saw that. It was enough.

In the end, less emotional people aren't superior to more emotional people, and those who think otherwise are entitled to that opinion.

Personally, I'd rather be emotional and sympathetic.

Urcscumug · Mar 30, 2011, 01:11 PM // 13:11

Quote:

Originally Posted by TheGizzy

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.

It makes you think that perhaps, you know, there's a reason behind the fact WoW is the top MMO... and it might not be purely hype. They might be doing some things right. Just sayin'.

gremlin · Mar 30, 2011, 02:13 PM // 14:13

Quote:

Originally Posted by nagennif

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.

Not at all I am just bad at explaining myself.

I am saying is there is no evidence that proves a security weakness or a dedicated group of hackers attacking the community.
There might be such a group, but there is no proof and a lot of people here assume any person that got hacked is partly responsible they either had a stupid password gave someone their password downloaded a mod for gw and it had a keylogger etc.

Its not my view but it is a common one, though I do find it strange that someone who could hack their way into computers and just steals game related items.

Anet are therefore safe to proceed as they do for even if hundreds get hacked thousands do not so the lose nothing by adopting their present attitude of "we cannot return any missing account items".

If however those who are hacked find access to all their hom achievements have gone that will be seen as bad programming by anet and there will be a big stink.

Highlander Of Alba · Mar 30, 2011, 03:04 PM // 15:04

I rarley reply twice to these posts but,

Your a communicator therefore you know interpretaion of words can go a long way .

But yet you are still prolonging the posts , it wont cange a thing nomatter what.

You did not know you would not get your stuff back please, earlir you called yourself a veteran player and you did not know that if your account gets hacked you only get the account back.That yes to a new player but not one who says they are veteran,

This has always been the case are you saying nobody in your guild or alliance knew that if your account is compromised items are not returned?

You also stated that you had to search for the validation keys. That has been common practice since gw was implemented to validate your account.

Or are you saying that you would not have searched for the validation keys if you knew that items are not returnable.

Although I sypathise You still have not realised you have lost Nothing pertaining to Hall of Monuments for GW2.You still have the chars in question

therfore all the areas they have unlocked are still unlocked. So all that matters is Armour replacement ,hero runes ect its no big deal for these .

ANY skills you have unlocked are still there so heros only require runes.

I think that the question still remains everyone is entitled to there opinion but, to continue this length when it will change nothing surprises myself.