Guild Wars 2

My Girlfriend and I are kinda getting skittish about “What if our accounts got hacked?” we were asking each other what happens if were not on for 2 or 3 days and someone hacked our accounts and deleted our characters? would Anet be able to get our characters back? and what if someone made a character with our names during the hacked time frame? we want to know we’d be able to get our characters back, we have 1 lvl 80 each and some so close you can almost smell it, me personally, if I get my character but lose all my items, I’d be fine with that since most of the gear I have is replacable, I just like to know if there is a good chance of getting my character back.

did you add google authentication and email notification? that’s a good first step.

We didn’t use Gmail but I beleave the email notifacation is on.

They did mention that they would be able to provide 1 account rollback. However, I would take the utmost precaution.

Replace your email notification. The authenticator on your cell phone is much more secure. It’s an app that gives you a series of numbers that you need to log into that computer for the first time. This number changes every 30 seconds so even if someone has your account name and password, hacking a 6 digit number in under 30 seconds would be pretty hard to do.

Additionally, arena net required me to change my password recently and referenced this comic to illustrate password strength- http://xkcd.com/936/
If you follow the advice, your password will become much more secure.

Wolfgang Michael.8217:

They did mention that they would be able to provide 1 account rollback. However, I would take the utmost precaution.

well would that also restore names of deleted characters? because if your character gets deleted the names are only reserved for 24 hours after deletion thats what we’er wondering, I could lose my gear and money and that wouldn’t bother me, but my character is what I’d be more worried about, I worked my darier off on them and my build is catered to my play style, so I’d hate to get my account back and have my bank full of items and have to use new characters due to not being able to get them back.

perhaps this might answer some of your questions: https://en.support.guildwars2.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/9274/kw/restoration

Astrum.3652:

Replace your email notification. The authenticator on your cell phone is much more secure. It’s an app that gives you a series of numbers that you need to log into that computer for the first time. This number changes every 30 seconds so even if someone has your account name and password, hacking a 6 digit number in under 30 seconds would be pretty hard to do.

Additionally, arena net required me to change my password recently and referenced this comic to illustrate password strength- http://xkcd.com/936/
If you follow the advice, your password will become much more secure.

I read the comic strip, my Girlfriend and I already follow those rules of unique passwords.

Inculpatus cedo.9234:

perhaps this might answer some of your questions: https://en.support.guildwars2.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/9274/kw/restoration

This must answer almost all questions.

‘Your character, items, and wealth will be exactly as they were in the saved stage/snapshot. However, you will lose progress and items that you acquired between the time of the snapshot and the time of the compromise. For example, if you were hacked on February 10th and the most recent saved state is February 5th, the account will lose anything acquired between February 5th—the restore point—and February 10th.’

^ To be more specific.

don’t go on dodgy sites that may involve key loggers, that’s another great step.

@Drix My Girlfriend and I know not to goto dodgy sites, I’ve had a WoW 10 day trial account hacked due to a mistake I haven’t made since, and been getting emails from those kittens every since, I asked about what if while your account is compromised and someone made a character with your name after it was deleted here is what a GM replied, " If a name of one of the characters is currently in use by another account, we will not be able to return that character’s name to it and the next time you attempt to log that character into the game you will be asked to rename the character from its temporary place holder name. "
I think its a load of bull, my Girlfriend and I spent tones of time on our characters, and knowing this is driving us not to play unless that policy is changed, its like someone stolen a custom designed ring and gave it to someone else and the police saying “I’m sorry but someone else has the ring so you gotta replace the one you had” it wouldn’t be the same, people know YOU by your name, if your a norn warrior named Roger Dodger and 3 days later your a asuran elementalist with the same name and they don’t know you, you’ll know something is wrong, my Girlfriend and I think this is total ****.

So the one who named the same character after you should be punished instead when he is in no way involved at all.

Say, you created a new character but 1 month later you are told you had to change the name because the name originally belonged to someone else who got hacked. You think its fair?

In the first place just create an original name that is not likely to be taken.

Ok so you think it’d be ok for someone to pay a hacker to hack your account and delete your character so they can have it 24 hours later because they thought your name is cool, ok, there are games that people has had their accounts hacked and sold, so the person who bought the account should be allowed to keep the account since they didn’t hack it.

If I remember correctly, in Guild Wars 1, if your account got hacked and someone else took your name and then your account was restored, the person who took the name has to change the name. I believe ANet will do the same in Guild Wars 2.

@Stars sorry, but I posted a reply by a GM in my support ticket, if you get hacked and someone else takes your name you are SOL about your name, so my Girlfriend and I won’t be playing GW2 till its changed. Also @FateOmega the only way you can garentee you’ll have a name no one would want would look like this “Ajnmljhnk Mojuuhk” I think you get the idea.

Also, Dragon, your last argument is what we call a strawman. Here is why, and I paraphrase

FateOmega: A player took your name after your account got hacked. It isn’t fair for them to change their name

Dragon: [You think it’s ok for someone to pay a hacker to hack my account and take my name] implies that [the player who took your name must have hired a hacker to hack your account], which, is totally false. There are several occasion when the person who took a hacked account’s characters’ name has no direct relation to the hacker. Even if there is the burden of proof lies on you, people are “innocent” before proven guilty.

Such strawman argument does not help the discussion.

I find your attempt to troll really funny.

FateOmega: Create an original name that is not LIKELY to be taken (desired by others).

Dragon: The only names that are not desired by others are gibberish. [If the name is not gibberish, there exists at least one other person playing Guild Wars 2 who would desire that name.]

Though not true, but hard to prove otherwise. You seem to imply (and you may correct my implication), that that someone (who desires your names) would go out of his way to hire a hacker to hack your account then take your names. Which is extremely unlikely but hard to prove false otherwise, but you can’t prove true either.

I find this kind of argument not helpful to the discussion and bring negativity to the thread. So please, before posting, make sure that your information is correct and useful.

My account just got hacked and it was definitely used to botting. I was able to change the account password and battle for log-in priority and finally got in when they changed characters or something.

When I would go to load into a zone, I would see it changing frequently during the loading process on my side, he must have had an ssd or ram drive, it was fast enough that it would go through 2 or 3 zone changes before it would finally tell me it couldn’t load it. I finally won the battle when he went from LA to another zone, finally loaded into a completely different zone.
He deleted my exotic weapons and trinkets, and wasted 400k+karma on some rare Invader weapons and trinkets, deleted my 20 slot inventory bags and went with the event bags (halloween, wintersday). I noticed on the character select screen that a couple of my characters were naked but not all of them. Thankfully he didn’t destroy my main – he was using a necro MM for farming, gaining about 120 levels since I logged off like 9 hours prior.

The messed up thing is that he used Anet’s own support system to get my password changed and used a serial code for a game that isn’t even registered on my account anywhere.

My system is clean as a whistle, I don’t give information out to anyone, I don’t have a compromised account from any of the sites that have been hacked, and I don’t fall for phishing emails.

Anyway when I got in game finally just outside of Lion’s Arch (probably took all the stuff in my bank) in Blood Tide Coast I notice a LOT of teleport bots just loading in and then jumping away and thinking “I was one of them! NOOO!!!”.

Lesson Learned: nothing is secure from Korean botters (unauthorized attempt that still went through…).

@Lil: Did you contact support to get your account restored?

@Lil Puppy sorry to hear about your account being messed with, I hope Anet is able to beef up the security soon.

Yeah but seeing as my support account was compromised somehow, I don’t even know if that’s a good idea anymore.

Just put my story up there as a reference as to what it’s like to get hacked and see it being used as you’re trying to log in.

If your support account is compromised, you SHOULD report this to ArenaNet. Because if ArenaNet doesn’t know this, the hacker is free to use your support account to steal your account again, for example by claiming that YOU are the account stealer.

If you’re so paranoid about this it makes me wonder what you’re doing to get so paranoid. Normal players that don’t use questionable programs or go to fishy websites and change their passwords regularly/use authentications provided by Anet usually don’t need to worry about this kind of thing. The fact you might possibly, in some godawful remote alternate reality lose the very exact name you chose due to some tiny possibility of getting hacked while using legitimate means of playing, shouldn’t deter you from playing a game, that’s just silly. I love my character names, yes, but I’m no so uncreative that I can’t think of a new one. I would much rather have to rename than restart. But hey, it’s your decision. I just can’t understand your level of paranoia if you have no reason to be paranoid over it. This was @ Dragon, and I’m sorry your account got hacked Lil Pup but there was a security leak somewhere you missed, whether it be you used the same password as your email, or your email was not properly secured. They can’t just magically hack you out of thin air, they find the weakness and exploit it. Glad you got your stuff back though.