I read with interest the comments on the blog posted by Mike earlier this week about “hacked” accounts.
But Mike, I really think it is not the widespread issue that you think it is.
GW2 has one of the better authentication systems I’ve seen in a game, requiring email confirmation for every new login attempt, I think that it is a strong, effective solution.
Sure, a certain number of users will have had both their email AND their GW2 account compromised, but this alone won’t explain the huge numbers of “Help, I was hacked!” support tickets I presume you’re getting from banned players.
I suspect that the majority of these players will have been banned for botting, then when you ban them, without fail they raise support tickets claiming to be hacked, and can provide all of the backup and proof that they are not a Chinese gold farmer that you need, because they aren’t…. They are the Chinese gold farmer’s CUSTOMERS.
The gold farmer does not need to do anything so difficult as hack people’s account details and email accounts to gain access to unlimited numbers of GW2 accounts, all they need to do is offer a POWER LEVELLING service.
This is where you, as a lazy player who does not want to level up to 80, pay the gold sellers to level you up to 80, normally gaining some money and items along the way. Crucially, this “service” requires you to hand over your account details to the farmer, and AUTHORISE THEM to connect to the game as you.
Once you give your details over to the farmer and authorise them, they happily run bots on your account all day long (often times only running the bot during your off-hours, for example allowing you to log in and play during the day, then running the bot overnight).
Your GMs of course catch and ban the bots, as they are easy to detect, but almost immediately you get a complaint from the account owner, crying that he was “hacked”, and he wants his account back.
Let me clue you in.
For every account like this that you restore, and little johnny gets his level 80 Mesmer back, at least half will have been used and abused for farming in this way.
In addition to this, farmers often look for customers to “Rent” accounts from. If I were to buy a few bucks worth of gold, the gold seller might approach me and say hey, if you let me use your account between 02:00 and 06:00 your time, I will pay you 2 Gold per day! Just make sure if your account ever gets banned, say you were hacked and know nothing about it!
So, what on earth can you do to both ban bots which ruin the economy and avoid clogging up your support queue with tickets from lying scumbags who claim to be hacked?
Well, I think the simple answer is NEVER re-instate an account that has been used for botting.
When someone is a confirmed botter, they are banned, then the real account owner goes on to appeal the ban and prove that he was the legit owner, all that should happen is that they are given a brand new, fresh account with no characters on it. You can reserve their old character names to the new account, and any gems they bought can be credited to it, but that’s it. Reset to zero.
Suddenly, getting Chinese gold farmers to level you, or letting them “borrow” your account is the least attractive option EVER. All it gets you is reset to zero.
It’s a little harsh on people that were genuinely hacked, but then you can’t make an omelette without breaking a few eggs…
(edited by Chamone.6890)