Guild Wars 2

So i created a new character. i put all my gathering tools on my new character. i decided i didn’t want the race i chose so i deleted the character but forgot i had all 3 of my gathering tools on him. Players in GW2 told me it was a common thing and anet is great with that kind of thing in helping them get their stuff back. i contacted anet and they pretty much said NO.. they said they cannot replace items and i was shi* out of luck. I paid real money to get those gathering tools and i feel they should help me out. Am i in the wrong here or should they give me my tools back?

Sorry, Anet does not undo player mistakes. Please be more careful in the future.

from what i heard they do. this happened to others and they got theirs back. people salvaging gem store armor and getting a full set back. i mean is it gonna cost them money? no

Kolwin.4950:

from what i heard they do. this happened to others and they got theirs back. people salvaging gem store armor and getting a full set back. i mean is it gonna cost them money? no

Did an Anet employee tell you this? Or did you just hear some rumors from people you don’t know?

For example, if I said that Colin mailed me Dusk because I took him out to lunch on the weekend, would you believe that? (note – this is a lie of course)

I did the same exact thing.

Submitted tickets + opened forum thread w/ a dev response.

They won’t help you.

people i know and about 40 people i somewhat know. They should at least put them back in the store so they can take more of my money

that sux bro…and if you were using them a LLLOOOTTTTTT daily, then they were probably only a few more years away from paying for themselves…

i used it alot, i understand that it is my fault but it was an accident. i am incredibly disappointed with anet about this.

Repeat after me:
“I will always, always, always, log in one last time to any character I am thinking of deleting and check their entire inventory and equipped items before ever thinking of actually deleting them.”

Kolwin.4950:

i used it alot, i understand that it is my fault but it was an accident. i am incredibly disappointed with anet about this.

You burnt yourself. Don’t blame Anet for your admitted mistake.

Smooth Penguin.5294:

Sorry, Anet does not undo player mistakes. Please be more careful in the future.

Actually I’ve seen them undo player mistakes before, but very little, not nearly as often I’ve seen them give the non-help that the OP described.

However from what I understand their official stance is that their support staff should not replace items accidentally deleted. In reality the policy is in place for economic security, the risk of people tricking support in to duping items for them, but really, would it be that hard to create a system which can mark an account and those it contacts? If that same item suddenly pops back up in the persons inventory/mail/bank/whatever or that of a cohort, then support would be automatically notified and able to investigate.

Ofcourse they need to help you! If you buy items in the game, you are basicly paying for a service because the items in the game cost 0.0000$ for anet to make. The least thing they can do is provide you with support after you gave them money. I’m not a wow player, but i’ve played it a couple of months, and if i call them, dammn,, such good support, much like, wow! :o <3

Xista.7391:

I did the same exact thing.

Submitted tickets + opened forum thread w/ a dev response.

They won’t help you.

I did the exact same thing.

Unfortunately ‘deleted’ items aren’t refunded. I guess we were supposed to have crystal balls as to when these items were going to become account bound and keep any characters with the tools on them, on the off chance their soulbound status was to ever change (which it eventually was). It’s sad that items you bought that gave you no other option at the time but to delete, won’t be replaced – but we have to move on.

Support is a bit more lenient with new players, and the mistakes they make. But for experienced players? Not so much. There is a warning before deleting characters. I have a slot for a ‘farming’ character. I remake that character 2 or 3 times a week. I always check twice before going to the character select screen to make sure I haven’t left anything of worth on that character before deletion. It’s a good practice. =)

How did you pay for them? If it’s credit card then contact your card supplier. Ask for a refund as you cannot access the items your purchased. That’s what I did, got my money back in 3 days. Credit cards are amazing things.

Kolwin.4950:

people i know and about 40 people i somewhat know. They should at least put them back in the store so they can take more of my money

Can you post evidence of at least half these people getting their items back even if their mistake?

Remember, if you do a chargeback, you will never be able to use that card again for any NCSoft or ArenaNet purchase. Ever. You may, or may not, flag your account as ‘unreliable for purchases’, as well. Food for thought.

Smooth Penguin.5294:

Colin mailed me Dusk because I took him out to lunch on the weekend.

Lucky guy.

BTW, ANet do have a history of replacing deleted items. You should make inquiries with support as to why they won’t make an exception this time:

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/support/account/Collector-s-Ed-DDE-Item-Questions-merged/first

Idk why a-net doesn’t have something in place that wont allow you to delete a character with account bound items on it, or indeed why we do not have an item restore function on our account’s, other games have it, why not gw2?.

Shufflepants.9785:

Repeat after me:
“I will always, always, always, log in one last time to any character I am thinking of deleting and check their entire inventory and equipped items before ever thinking of actually deleting them.”

^ That. Very, very much that. Always log on and double check before deleting a character. Personally, I strip mine of everything before deleting them, since (with the exception of starter armor) pretty much everything can be salvaged or reused on other characters.

Yes, Anet does sometimes step in a fix personal screw ups like this; however, they by no means have to do so. They take it on a case by case basis. The only thing you can do is send in a support ticket to ask (politely) if they would be willing to help you out. Otherwise, you’re pretty much s.o.l OP, until they pop the tools back into the store for sale. Which, they actually did not long ago. The 5th, to be specific.

mesme.5028:

Idk why a-net doesn’t have something in place that wont allow you to delete a character with account bound items on it, or indeed why we do not have an item restore function on our account’s, other games have it, why not gw2?.

It’s a nice to have feature but it’s really not their responsibility.

I understand, i made a mistake and i feel like an idiot. but is it really all that hard for them to check and see if i really had them? is it gonna cost them anything to give me them back? no. I am a loyal paying customer and they need to realize that. Take a quick look at my logs and see that i actually did have them, type in a few codes or whatever and send me them back… happy customer.

Kolwin.4950:

I understand, i made a mistake and i feel like an idiot. but is it really all that hard for them to check and see if i really had them? is it gonna cost them anything to give me them back? no. I am a loyal paying customer and they need to realize that. Take a quick look at my logs and see that i actually did have them, type in a few codes or whatever and send me them back… happy customer.

Developer time = money, so technically it does have a cost associated with it. Since they are paying the dev that will have to go dig through to find the confirmation, and then perform whatever needs to be done in order to restore you account or send you replacement items.

It’s not like flipping a switch. Digging through logs is not as easy as it sounds. Especially since they most likely have to look through the log for the day, time, server, etc that you made this mistake. Such logs are going to contain more than just your data, a couple thousands of lines to look through. While grepping can narrow the search for them, it’s still not going to just pluck the single log line they may need in a ‘whalla’ moment.

LanfearShadowflame.3189:

Developer time = money, so technically it does have a cost associated with it. Since they are paying the dev that will have to go dig through to find the confirmation, and then perform whatever needs to be done in order to restore you account or send you replacement items.

It’s not like flipping a switch. Digging through logs is not as easy as it sounds. Especially since they most likely have to look through the log for the day, time, server, etc that you made this mistake. Such logs are going to contain more than just your data, a couple thousands of lines to look through. While grepping can narrow the search for them, it’s still not going to just pluck the single log line they may need in a ‘whalla’ moment.

taking my money was pretty easy..

Kolwin.4950:

LanfearShadowflame.3189:

Developer time = money, so technically it does have a cost associated with it. Since they are paying the dev that will have to go dig through to find the confirmation, and then perform whatever needs to be done in order to restore you account or send you replacement items.

It’s not like flipping a switch. Digging through logs is not as easy as it sounds. Especially since they most likely have to look through the log for the day, time, server, etc that you made this mistake. Such logs are going to contain more than just your data, a couple thousands of lines to look through. While grepping can narrow the search for them, it’s still not going to just pluck the single log line they may need in a ‘whalla’ moment.

taking my money was pretty easy..

They are business, that should be pretty self explanatory. I mean really.

This really isn’t any different than say… going to an electronics store and buying a tablet. If you don’t buy the additional warantee that covers ‘accidental damage’ and you drop it, which shatters the screen, the company isn’t going to just replace it for you. But, they had no issue taking your money. They’ll offer to repair it (for a fee), but you may have to wait for them to ship it out or order parts in, or you can buy a new one, but if they don’t have it in stock, then you have to wait until it comes in.

Essentially here, the tools you desire to replace are out of stock. You can buy them again when they ‘get more in.’

I don’t know…it’s not really the same, because a tablet is something physical and what the OP is talking about is something digital.

I sort of know what the OP is going through, but on a larger scale. In Guild Wars 1 my account was hacked and I lost EVERYTHING. I mean years of toil just gone. This was before they’d introduced roll back too, so I was well and truly screwed.

I stopped playing for a while…completely. The problem is, I enjoyed no other game as much as that game and eventually, I came back because I was cutting off my nose to spite my face.

OP, I understand your feelings of frustration but without knowing why things are as they are, it’s hard to judge. That is to say, in my case, I could have given my account info to a friend, who then would have stolen everything from the account, converted it all to cash and started a new account with a huge bank roll, then had everything replaced. It’s almost impossible for them to check that sort of thing.

I didn’t think of it at the time and it was only later, after a long conversation with a CS rep that I realized there are sometimes reasons for things I don’t understand.

It doesn’t make it less frustrating however.

LanfearShadowflame.3189:

Kolwin.4950:

LanfearShadowflame.3189:

Developer time = money, so technically it does have a cost associated with it. Since they are paying the dev that will have to go dig through to find the confirmation, and then perform whatever needs to be done in order to restore you account or send you replacement items.

It’s not like flipping a switch. Digging through logs is not as easy as it sounds. Especially since they most likely have to look through the log for the day, time, server, etc that you made this mistake. Such logs are going to contain more than just your data, a couple thousands of lines to look through. While grepping can narrow the search for them, it’s still not going to just pluck the single log line they may need in a ‘whalla’ moment.

taking my money was pretty easy..

They are business, that should be pretty self explanatory. I mean really.

This really isn’t any different than say… going to an electronics store and buying a tablet. If you don’t buy the additional warantee that covers ‘accidental damage’ and you drop it, which shatters the screen, the company isn’t going to just replace it for you. But, they had no issue taking your money. They’ll offer to repair it (for a fee), but you may have to wait for them to ship it out or order parts in, or you can buy a new one, but if they don’t have it in stock, then you have to wait until it comes in.

Essentially here, the tools you desire to replace are out of stock. You can buy them again when they ‘get more in.’

this is completely different. it costs them no money to make more of these items as they are digital, not a physical item like a tablet. there was no “warranty” available.

This might be something to consider. Some people think because they paid cash for an item, it should be easily replaced in the case of user error. Cash that was converted to Gems to pay for said item(s). What about the items paid for with Gems that were converted from in-game gold. What if part of the Gems used were obtained with cash and part with in-game gold. How can we tell which are which? Should those players using Gems obtained with cash get special dispensation? Would that make it seem like the game was more Pay-to-Win as far as Support goes? Should support only help those that can send in receipts for Gems purchased with cash?

I don’t know. Sounds a bit like haves vs. have-nots to me. I would hope it never comes to being special if you pay more.

Kolwin.4950:

i used it alot, i understand that it is my fault but it was an accident. i am incredibly disappointed with anet about this.

Why are you disappointed with ANet about it? It’s not like they went on your account and deleted the character themselves. It was your fault. Mistakes happen.

Now imagine if Anet had made it that when they became account bound you could go to your skin locker ( from AP chests storage ) and make the account bound item for any char as many times as you wanted as you had already bought it, removing the need to go to storage each time etc etc, meaning you could have easily replaced the item you paid cash for……….

There should be a fail safe in place for when people have items on chars that have been bought via hard cash, you get a warning when salvaging a rare/exotic, why does it not pop up telling you that xx is account bound are you sure you want to delete it,

Either way, its a simple fix that should have been done when they changed the items to account bound.

Kolwin.4950:

LanfearShadowflame.3189:

Kolwin.4950:

LanfearShadowflame.3189:

Developer time = money, so technically it does have a cost associated with it. Since they are paying the dev that will have to go dig through to find the confirmation, and then perform whatever needs to be done in order to restore you account or send you replacement items.

It’s not like flipping a switch. Digging through logs is not as easy as it sounds. Especially since they most likely have to look through the log for the day, time, server, etc that you made this mistake. Such logs are going to contain more than just your data, a couple thousands of lines to look through. While grepping can narrow the search for them, it’s still not going to just pluck the single log line they may need in a ‘whalla’ moment.

taking my money was pretty easy..

They are business, that should be pretty self explanatory. I mean really.

This really isn’t any different than say… going to an electronics store and buying a tablet. If you don’t buy the additional warantee that covers ‘accidental damage’ and you drop it, which shatters the screen, the company isn’t going to just replace it for you. But, they had no issue taking your money. They’ll offer to repair it (for a fee), but you may have to wait for them to ship it out or order parts in, or you can buy a new one, but if they don’t have it in stock, then you have to wait until it comes in.

Essentially here, the tools you desire to replace are out of stock. You can buy them again when they ‘get more in.’

this is completely different. it costs them no money to make more of these items as they are digital, not a physical item like a tablet. there was no “warranty” available.

You and Vayne completely missed the point. sigh Whatever, carry on.

mesme.5028:

Idk why a-net doesn’t have something in place that wont allow you to delete a character with account bound items on it, or indeed why we do not have an item restore function on our account’s, other games have it, why not gw2?.

Because they make more money this way.

Thing is it would cost Anet money. They have to pay their staff for the time they spend at work and for you to get your items back someone would have to spend that time checking their logs to find records of both you buying the tools and you deleting the tools. Even if they’re paid minimum wage and it only takes them an hour (which is optimistic) that would be a significant chunk of the cost of the tools gone.

(If they wanted to confirm that the gems were bought with real money as Inculpatus suggests below it would take even longer.)

Depending on how work and/or server permissions is split between different departments they might be able to send the items themselves or they might have to contact another employee who is able to create items on the servers and get them to send it out, taking even more time and therefore money.

Inculpatus cedo.9234:

This might be something to consider. Some people think because they paid cash for an item, it should be easily replaced in the case of user error. Cash that was converted to Gems to pay for said item(s). What about the items paid for with Gems that were converted from in-game gold. What if part of the Gems used were obtained with cash and part with in-game gold. How can we tell which are which? Should those players using Gems obtained with cash get special dispensation? Would that make it seem like the game was more Pay-to-Win as far as Support goes? Should support only help those that can send in receipts for Gems purchased with cash?

I don’t know. Sounds a bit like haves vs. have-nots to me. I would hope it never comes to being special if you pay more.

A lot of people do expect exactly that. Or at least claim to when it would work in their favour. It happened a lot when I used to work in retail. People trying to invent their own returns policies or special offers would start going on about how much they’d spent over the years, how we could check their store card to see (we couldn’t, it was just a points card and considering you got points for trading stuff in even if they’d saved every point they ever earned it wouldn’t prove anything) and how they can completely understand if we don’t want to do it for ‘Joe Public’ walking in off the street but surely our regular customers should be entitled to a something as simple as [insert completely unreasonable request].

I’ve never been entirely convinced they really meant it, or that they’d actually be happy shopping somewhere where your consumer rights and the policies in place to protect you if something went wrong were dependant on how much more you spent, but that’s what they say.

Danikat.8537:

Thing is it would cost Anet money. They have to pay their staff for the time they spend at work and for you to get your items back someone would have to spend that time checking their logs to find records of both you buying the tools and you deleting the tools. Even if they’re paid minimum wage and it only takes them an hour (which is optimistic) that would be a significant chunk of the cost of the tools gone.

(If they wanted to confirm that the gems were bought with real money as Inculpatus suggests below it would take even longer.)

Depending on how work and/or server permissions is split between different departments they might be able to send the items themselves or they might have to contact another employee who is able to create items on the servers and get them to send it out, taking even more time and therefore money.

Inculpatus cedo.9234:

This might be something to consider. Some people think because they paid cash for an item, it should be easily replaced in the case of user error. Cash that was converted to Gems to pay for said item(s). What about the items paid for with Gems that were converted from in-game gold. What if part of the Gems used were obtained with cash and part with in-game gold. How can we tell which are which? Should those players using Gems obtained with cash get special dispensation? Would that make it seem like the game was more Pay-to-Win as far as Support goes? Should support only help those that can send in receipts for Gems purchased with cash?

I don’t know. Sounds a bit like haves vs. have-nots to me. I would hope it never comes to being special if you pay more.

A lot of people do expect exactly that. Or at least claim to when it would work in their favour. It happened a lot when I used to work in retail. People trying to invent their own returns policies or special offers would start going on about how much they’d spent over the years, how we could check their store card to see (we couldn’t, it was just a points card and considering you got points for trading stuff in even if they’d saved every point they ever earned it wouldn’t prove anything) and how they can completely understand if we don’t want to do it for ‘Joe Public’ walking in off the street but surely our regular customers should be entitled to a something as simple as [insert completely unreasonable request].

I’ve never been entirely convinced they really meant it, or that they’d actually be happy shopping somewhere where your consumer rights and the policies in place to protect you if something went wrong were dependant on how much more you spent, but that’s what they say.

To me, that’s the cost of doing business and have good customer service.
“We don’t correct player mistakes” is not a good line.

As a suggestion, anything on a character you delete that isn’t soul bound should be automatically mailed back to you.

TooBz.3065:

“We don’t correct player mistakes” is not a good line.

It might not be a ‘good’ line, but it’s a necessary one to establish.

Otherwise, it’s a slippery slope of ever growing demands

“I didn’t mean to delete this character” to “I soulbound this axe to the wrong character” to “I didn’t mean to put that rare in the mystic forge”

So, basically what many of you are saying is that the game should hold your hand for you, and treat you like mindless idiots. Alrighty then…

That’s why we type name of your toon before deleting so you’ll think twice? Your fault nothing to discuss here.

LanfearShadowflame.3189:

So, basically what many of you are saying is that the game should hold your hand for you, and treat you like mindless idiots. Alrighty then…

Yes. People are fallible, they occasionally make mistakes. Keep a list of the number of times someone whines or makes an error, if they cross a threshold you say no. Until then you try to keep your customers happy.

Any other company I have played with would restore the items no problem. Just saying, the lazy way out isn’t the best way.

Actually I don’t understand Anet’s policy here. I’m not a Blizzard supporter, but at least they help their players in such situations. As far as i know, they even have a support feature in account management which lets a player to restore every recently deleted/sold item.

And they restore deleted characters, even though players have to type DELETE when they are erasing them.

Aaaand they have no problem with searching through the game logs/chats…
hmmm…

Nalier.4921:

Actually I don’t understand Anet’s policy here. I’m not a Blizzard supporter, but at least they help their players in such situations. As far as i know, they even have a support feature in account management which lets a player to restore every recently deleted/sold item.
And they restore deleted characters, even though players have to type DELETE when they are erasing them.
Aaaand they have no problem with searching through the game logs/chats…
hmmm…

That was kind of my point, when SoE and Blizzard start to look like shining beacons of customer support, you really have to think.

TooBz.3065:

LanfearShadowflame.3189:

So, basically what many of you are saying is that the game should hold your hand for you, and treat you like mindless idiots. Alrighty then…

Yes. People are fallible, they occasionally make mistakes. Keep a list of the number of times someone whines or makes an error, if they cross a threshold you say no. Until then you try to keep your customers happy.

Yes people are failable, but they also realize that the failing is their own fault in most cases. It’s called personal responsibility. We need to take responsibility for our actions, and accept when we screw up. Not demand that businesses and large corporations make the decisions for us, and hold our hands like we’re incompetent.

If you bought an ice cream cone from a shop, and you dropped it on the road, whose fault is it?

Smooth Penguin.5294:

If you bought an ice cream cone from a shop, and you dropped it on the road, whose fault is it?

Yours, and almost all shops will give you a new cone. Especially if they see it happen.

TooBz.3065:

Smooth Penguin.5294:

If you bought an ice cream cone from a shop, and you dropped it on the road, whose fault is it?

Yours, and almost all shops will give you a new cone. Especially if they see it happen.

Well kitten, I want to live where you live because where I live, you’re kitten out of luck. Even if they see it happen, shops here don’t replace it for free.

Ice creams are, well, material. Digital items are somehow… immaterial and, well, digital.

Smooth Penguin.5294:

If you bought an ice cream cone from a shop, and you dropped it on the road, whose fault is it?

So now we’re going back to physical vs digital??

LanfearShadowflame.3189:

TooBz.3065:

LanfearShadowflame.3189:

So, basically what many of you are saying is that the game should hold your hand for you, and treat you like mindless idiots. Alrighty then…

Yes. People are fallible, they occasionally make mistakes. Keep a list of the number of times someone whines or makes an error, if they cross a threshold you say no. Until then you try to keep your customers happy.

Yes people are failable, but they also realize that the failing is their own fault in most cases. It’s called personal responsibility. We need to take responsibility for our actions, and accept when we screw up. Not demand that businesses and large corporations make the decisions for us, and hold our hands like we’re incompetent.

Personal responsibility doesn’t come into it. It’s a question of whether or not you want to have an ongoing relationship with your customer. Some businesses don’t care. Gas stations (people have no loyalty) and car dealerships (purchases are too infrequent) come to mind. Other businesses want to maintain a relationship because it’s better for them in the long run. (Audible will let you return any audio book you don’t like. LL Bean offers a 100% satisfaction guarantee.)

Let’s say I accidentally delete my unlimited mining pick and I ask for help, and ANet says “take some personal responsibility.” Fine, they can do that. But am I happy with ANet? Probable not. Will I buy the unlimited axe. Probably not. Will I tell people that ANet wouldn’t help me out? Absolutely.

If, on the other hand, I accidentally delete my unlimited mining pick and I ask for help, and ANet says “sure” and helps me. How do I feel about them now? I’m happy. I LOVE this company. They are looking out for me.