Curse

against · Sep 09, 2008, 03:35 PM // 15:35

There's no such thing as hackers on GW. There are only people that are irresponsible when making passwords or dispensing information elsewhere on the internet. Someone with the ability to hack A.NET security coding would literally be wasting their time on small fish like Guild Wars accounts.

Aum · Sep 09, 2008, 03:35 PM // 15:35

Maybe this has been mentioned... Anet has a backup system... they rolled back the whole game some time in the past because of a merchant problem. It is simply a time/cost vs reward (their bottom line).

Ratson Itamar · Sep 09, 2008, 03:39 PM // 15:39

Quote:

Originally Posted by Test Me

Again, that is no excuse for not helping out users in trouble. You can't build your software assuming all of your users are "criminals" trying to abuse your system!

Dead wrong! The first and most important thing that programmers do is considering that their users are going to exploit bugs and even ones that they don't even expect to be in the program. So don't talk about stuff that you know absolutely nothing about.

The First Silvari · Sep 09, 2008, 04:29 PM // 16:29

Ehhh.. no one is willing to discuss having Anet restore an account for money. People want the option but not willing to pay for it.... If it costs time and money for Anet, and you really want your account restored why not put money where your mouth is.

Aum · Sep 09, 2008, 04:32 PM // 16:32

If it was worth the effort by Anet to have such a service... and they could do it reliably... they would have offered it by now. My guess is there are far too many special cases that they would spend way too much time investigating before restoring...

SkekSister · Sep 09, 2008, 04:34 PM // 16:34

Quote:

Originally Posted by Ratson Itamar

Dead wrong! The first and most important thing that programmers do is considering that their users are going to exploit bugs and even ones that they don't even expect to be in the program. So don't talk about stuff that you know absolutely nothing about.

Worked in dev a long time then mate? I didn't think so, since you clearly know nothing of the practicalities of day to day programming for games ...

Not saying that security isn't a concern and coding in a manner that minimizes potential exploitation isn't important, but in games dev it's waaaay down the list, and in my experience nearly always fixed retrospectivly.

Aum · Sep 09, 2008, 04:39 PM // 16:39

Quote:

Originally Posted by against

There's no such thing as hackers on GW. There are only people that are irresponsible when making passwords or dispensing information elsewhere on the internet. Someone with the ability to hack A.NET security coding would literally be wasting their time on small fish like Guild Wars accounts.

google ... 117 ban guild wars

"apparently" there are hackers.

Quaker · Sep 09, 2008, 04:40 PM // 16:40

A lot of the people posting in this thread are not considering a few things that are important to all this. For example:

Your account gets hacked, someone takes all your fancy weapons, gold, etcos, etc., and deletes your characters. If you get you account back, and ANet gives you all your stuff back, what happens to all the gold, ectos, weapons, etc., that are still out there somewhere. Or do you think ANet should spend lots of time looking through every log trying to find where it all went?

Your account gets "hacked" - someone steals your 105 ectos. Anet gets your account and 105 ectos back. Your account gets "hacked" again. ANet gets it back. Now you have 105 ectos and you buddy has 210.

I mean, seriously folks! Can't you see all the potential hassles and abuses that would result from this?

upier · Sep 09, 2008, 04:45 PM // 16:45

Quote:

Originally Posted by fusa

This could be exploited so easily, just edit the local copy add GWAMM and "accidentally" delete the character then upload your local copy.

Yeah I am aware that this might be an issue.
But if there is a chance that they work around it and prevent becoming an issue - it would be a superb addition to the game.
(Btw - could you even become GWAMM without the account-wide titles that are Luxon/Lucky/PvP titles?)

Inde · Sep 09, 2008, 04:45 PM // 16:45

I'm trying to think of games that restores characters and items. Strictly for informational purposes in this thread.

World of Warcraft has a character/item restore = http://worldofwarcraft.filefront.com/info/restoration
As you can probably guess, people frequently complain about EVEN THAT. From the time it takes, to the process, etc.

Dark Age of Camelot had an item restore, not sure about characters.

I know AC and AC2 there was none.

Everquest you got a character restore once per account. Items, experience, etc. you did not get back.

Lineage2 has one character restore per account. No idea on items.

Final Fantasy XI does a restore of character/items. Takes a bit though i.e. weeks/months

So just a bit of info on other games. I agree that it sucks and I wish there was a system in place. For a lot of the older above games it wasn't until later that they added this feature as an FYI. But I actually don't fault ArenaNet for not having a character/item restore. I think it does come down to the manhours necessary to do such a thing. We've all heard the complaints people have about Support, and I don't think that adding further burden on them to restore characters would result in a satisfactory solution for anyone honestly. The same complaints that are stated in the restore feature in the games above would happen here too. From the length of time, to the process, etc. Probably compounded actually.

Chestnut · Sep 09, 2008, 04:46 PM // 16:46

Yeah, also eve-online has a timer on chars you want to trash, they have a que and it doesnt erase the char all at once, it saves it then you have to re-confirm 12 hours later that you truely want to erase the char.

I do have played GW for over 3 years have alot of hours logged and if I lost all my stuff? I'd be in an outrage, the fact that a.net doesnt help people get their stuff back from hacked accounts is allready pretty sad..

My friend of mine recently had his wow account hacked (I do not play wow, will never play wow) and he lost *everything* he's been playing for a long time had alot of toons with alot of "epic gear" or some such stuff, anyhow, he reported the hacking and within 24 hours of being investaged by an admin he got *EVERYTHING* back. all his gold, all his gear, all his whatnots.. all of it.

now honestly, I dont like the look or the feel of wow, but Frankly with that kinda insurance I'd rather play a game where I have a chance to get atleast SOME of my stuff back, and possibly all of it.

Same with eve-online, if you lose a ship, or your account gets hacked and its investagation goes well (and it almost allways does if its ligit hack or something) they will compleatly restore your account.

its true that I play eve and I make enough money in it to buy time for the game for free but I still get that kind of service even though I play the game for free.

Do NOT tell me that a.net is too "Small" to not offer this kind of service.. the game is huge compaired to eve (in amount of players) and it really should have some kinda admin "Account restore if lost" type of insurance.

Quaker · Sep 09, 2008, 05:00 PM // 17:00

Quote:

Originally Posted by Chestnut

I do have played GW for over 3 years have alot of hours logged and if I lost all my stuff? I'd be in an outrage,

I too have played GW for over 3 years. If I got hacked and lost all my stuff - well, heavy sigh - it was time to move on anyway.

If you simply stopped playing GW and went over to the dark side (WoW), would you still be outraged at all the time you "lost" playing GW?

Vamis Threen · Sep 09, 2008, 05:25 PM // 17:25

Quote:

Originally Posted by Chestnut

Yeah, also eve-online has a timer on chars you want to trash, they have a que and it doesnt erase the char all at once, it saves it then you have to re-confirm 12 hours later that you truely want to erase the char.

....

Do NOT tell me that a.net is too "Small" to not offer this kind of service.. the game is huge compaired to eve (in amount of players) and it really should have some kinda admin "Account restore if lost" type of insurance.

Insurance? Do you mean Anet should indemnify themselves against the players being hacked/commiting fraud? Or we should pay a fee to an insurance company so that if this happens to us they'll pay for a programmer to get our char back? I cannot see either of these working, so I assume you meant something else?

Eve might be smaller in terms of player-base (I don't know) but it also has fees to play, and they're not negligible either.

Resource is the key question here; this feature does not currently exist; like several posts have mentioned, do you want to pay for this additional service?

Vilaptca · Sep 09, 2008, 05:44 PM // 17:44

Quote:

Originally Posted by Tartychops

IANASA* but I believe the records stored in the database are BLOBs (Binary Large Objects) which complicates matters somewhat. I presume they do backups at certain points so they can perform a rollback of the whole thing, but not something at a brick level that would allow the restore of individual toons.

(* I Am Not a Sql Admin)

I'm pretty sure this is about exactly what ANet has said in the past. They can't rollback a single character or a single account, because its all one big blob. They can't "spawn" anything on the live server, it would require a small update. Do you really want to update your game every day because Bob was careless with his account information and got his account stolen and his characters deleted? I know I don't.

Phaern Majes · Sep 09, 2008, 05:46 PM // 17:46

When you delete you have to type the characters name. You type the name of the CHARACTER YOU ARE ABOUT TO DELETE. How does that not tell you oh "Phaern Majes" I don't want to delete him *cancel*. If you are too dumb to realize what you are typing then no, Anet shouldn't have to restore for that.

People who get their accounts hacked, get them hacked from the client side...that being their own computer. It takes 10-20 minutes to run a full anti-spyware/adware scan. There are free scans available such as spybot search and destroy. If you can't take the time to make sure your computer doesn't have a keylogger or virus or whatever, than again not Anet's fault.

They have no reason to restore the accounts of everyone who's been hacked. Especially when a number of them were hacked due to the use of 3rd party programs, buying/selling account keys, or numerous other "risky" behavior.

Fril Estelin · Sep 09, 2008, 06:07 PM // 18:07

Haven't had the time to read all but the OP starts on the wrong basis: all implementation has a cost, it seems easy and cheap for you, but I'm sure that Anet made pretty and accurate calculations to determine that this would not be done. And second-guessing Anet's implementation by invoking SQL is not right.

Feasible? Yes in general. In a F2P game like GW which offers so much for no-monthly fee? Clearly no.

Security is down most of the time to people's insecure practices, or the inadequacy of UIs/commands to people's understanding. Anet has done a very good job at fixing stuff IMHO, and take a cautious approach towards so-called "hackers" (there's not enough money to make in GW to have a proper hacking community...). Protect your password like your credit card PIN and adopt an appropriate model of trust when online, this is where we, as a community, must work towards. I'd like to point to:
http://www.guildwarsguru.com/forum/s...php?t=10298453

rohara · Sep 09, 2008, 06:07 PM // 18:07

idk...as a programmer, i'd expect any client of mine to get pretty pissed and take their business elsewhere if their web site/user account/whatever got hacked or deleted and i could not restore it.

anet's database & program data is surely backed up on a regular basis (probably hourly, i'd guess - most certainly daily, at least). judging from some of Gaile's posts about the duping issue, they keep their logs intact for months, if not forever. a + b = c = character data can be restored. but at what cost? we dunno. it could be as simple as a SELECT * FROM UserTable WHERE UserName = '<Username>'...or not.

either way, i do believe that character restoration should have been implemented right from the start. restrictions would apply, of course, but should definitely be available for legitimately hacked accounts, and not for the *oops i deleted my char and forgot to take my ectos off it!* people. there are already customer support reps who investigate hacked accounts - restoring the account should have been a part of that process.

and ffs, its not always "their" fault for getting hacked. not everyone who plays this game has a BA in computer science, or knows the difference between an email from their grandma and a keylogger, or is downloading farmbots. these people are victims - not criminals - regardless of how they got hacked. if a client of mine gave their password to their cousin and lost all their data, i still have to go in and fix it. i can't be like HAHA YOU LEARNED YOUR LESSON, NOW SUFFER. that is not professional...

Vamis Threen · Sep 09, 2008, 06:19 PM // 18:19

Quote:

Originally Posted by rohara

if a client of mine gave their password to their cousin and lost all their data, i still have to go in and fix it. i can't be like HAHA YOU LEARNED YOUR LESSON, NOW SUFFER. that is not professional...

I disagree with you but the thought of saying that made me laugh out loud in real life.... I think I might try it at work tomorrow

Another Felldspar · Sep 09, 2008, 06:42 PM // 18:42

I've seen someone suggest that A-Net sell a character lock for a small fee that would prevent the character from being deleted at all. Personally I think that's a grand idea. Profit center for A-Net, insurance for the player. Yes, it would remove some options from the player as far as deleting the character at a later date, but that would be understood when they bought the lock. It wouldn't save the stuff, but stuff can be replaced. The name, hours of play, skill unlocks, titles, the true meat of the character would be safe that way. If it was worth it to the player. And if it isn't worth a small fee to the player why should A-Net waste any money on character restoration?

SkekSister · Sep 09, 2008, 06:49 PM // 18:49

Quote:

Originally Posted by rohara

idk...as a programmer, i'd expect any client of mine to get pretty pissed and take their business elsewhere if their web site/user account/whatever got hacked or deleted and i could not restore it.

anet's database & program data is surely backed up on a regular basis (probably hourly, i'd guess - most certainly daily, at least).

Not everyone who plays this game has a BA in computer science, or knows the difference between an email from their grandma and a keylogger, or is downloading farmbots. these people are victims - not criminals - regardless of how they got hacked.

Spot on.

The costs of keeping database backups made on even an hourly basis is trivial when compared development costs, bandwidth usage and the servers themselves.