Guild Wars 2

Congratulations! This is an exciting step forward for players who suffer incidents like this.

Gaile Gray.6028:

We’re pleased to tell you that we are launching our Account Restoration Tool (ART) today. With that tool, we will be able to restore qualifying accounts that were compromised on or after December 1, 2012.

Read more about the service in our Account Restoration FAQ.

Spanish Account Restoration FAQ
French Account Restoration FAQ
German Account Restoration FAQ

I read the topic and got immediately extremely happy……but then i read the date, i really missed it by just 8 or 9 days? I was hacked one the 22nd of november, so i really get nothing back? All i want is my Legendary back, i dont mind the rest
EDIT: i even have screenshots, achievement, and front page chest from proof if need be…

This is great; but wait, only one restoration per account? :S

Only one restoration per account is an interesting limit, but not unreasonable. All hacked accounts are hacked because of a security breach on the user’s end, and if the user repeatedly fails to learn from his/her mistakes and repeatedly leaves his/her account open, well… At a certain point it’s just wasting GW2 support’s resources. They probably sat down as a team, weighed the options, and decided that a limit of 1 was fair for now. I doubt they’ll be averse to revisiting that if some crazy stuff happens down the road, but it should be sufficient for now.

Will there be exceptions?

What if someone got hacked, changes everything and nothing happens.
Until 3 years later, then he get hacked again, would there be a restoration?

Also, if someone got hacked the first time and changes everything, but get “hacked” a second time (e.g. ‘friend’ watches him while typing the password or even uses the open game as an opportunity)

I can understand that there has to be a limit, but wouldn’t a 1-time-a-year-and-at-maximum-3-times be better?

Lonami.2987:

This is great; but wait, only one restoration per account? :S

This part seems a bit unreasonable , might be something you would should reconsider. Because lightning does hit in the same place twice. Unlikely but possible.

edit. Apart from that issue everthing else sounds great.

1# Congratulations. Today you indeed have made a giant step forward to get GW2 be an even better game

2# Guys, give the guys of Arenanet some slack. They just found out the tools to get the accounts of people back. Though, I would hope they will find a way to get people their stuff back before 1 dec or they will overrule the rule that only 1 account recovery per account in the future. I mean, I get it why they have that rule right now. But they shouldn’t use that rule for the lifespan of this game.

Anyways good job guys. Love to see this inplented already. And not at Wintersday for example ^^

That’s just great. Hacked twice in a week on a few days before december and I won’t be able to get any restorations. Not that I would take them because one it would use up my only 1 and it’s been over 2 weeks and have made most of what i lost back, minus the gold.

Pretty weak system to have to rollback an entire account instead of restoring individual items. IE people that lost a legendary may have progressed since then and want the legendary back but not lose everything else they did. Why didn’t you explore individual item replacements?

Also, does this include gem losses in the restoration? I lost gems when I was hacked and support said because I didn’t buy them with money I was shit out of luck, so I want to know whether that will apply here as well. It was a low amount but due to out ridiculous the gem vs gold ratio is, i would still like to know just in case anet decides to say tough luck again and kitten me off.

Even though its only one, be glad you’re getting that “1”, or that you haven’t been hacked but may in the future to use that “1”… for people like me that were hacked before December first… we’re just SOL it seems. At least you can go back to where you were before and hope it doesn’t happen again, whereas re-earning my legendary just sounds depressing… would have thought with the whole “giving people free karkha chests even though they never went to the event” would make give some hope of them sending me my legendary… Hell, i would even let them count that as my “1” :/

I understand that a system takes time to be set up to allow for account restoration and that those who were unfortunate enough to have their accounts compromised prior to Dec. 1st will be disappointed to hear this news.

I have to believe, however, that there are permanent records kept somewhere on ANet’s end as to whether or not an account has acquired a legendary or not. Surely an item that requires more time than any other in the entire game deserves to be replaced for those who had their account stolen before Dec. 1st.

kys.9215:

I understand that a system takes time to be set up to allow for account restoration and that those who were unfortunate enough to have their accounts compromised prior to Dec. 1st will be disappointed to hear this news.

I have to believe, however, that there are permanent records kept somewhere on ANet’s end as to whether or not an account has acquired a legendary or not. Surely an item that requires more time than any other in the entire game deserves to be replaced for those who had their account stolen before Dec. 1st.

I agree 100%, and have screenshots, the achievement, the chest on the front page – you name it… I’d give any proof necessary to get that bow back…

Showing some love for those who lost legendaries. Side note: those should not be salvageable/deletable lol

There has to be a way to verify that these people produced them. I couldn’t imagine the frustration if someone lost their legendary this way…

Condas.7056:

Showing some love for those who lost legendaries. Side note: those should not be salvageable/deletable lol

There has to be a way to verify that these people produced them. I couldn’t imagine the frustration if someone lost their legendary this way…

Heck ya, i wouldn’t mine having my legendary be irremovable from me ever after making it… i mean, who would?… and yes, there is undeniable proof that you have had a legendary; just so happens in my case with screenshots etc… i can show just which one.

How do I start the process?

When I saw the topic I Was like “YES now I can go and play, and complete my legendary” but after:

“We offer one restoration during the lifetime of a Guild Wars 2 account.”

I lost hope…

I’m seriously thinking of abandoning the game… I really love it, really want to help it grow and support it best I can – but when I read this… this… its just does not make any sense I’m losing my will to play every day more and more after reading this. WTH?

If I get my accound hacked once it’s ok, You can get it back… if I get it hacked after 4 years You just write “we are really sorry about Your loss”. Yes… Yes You are. You are sorry I lost all items in wich aquireing I put precious real time that I could spend on other stuff – and no one will give me this time back.

You can’t even Imagine the frustration of those who lost all that their work so hard and You cannot do ANYTHING about it ? It’s like having a car stolen, and the police “We are really sorry Your car was stolen, but we could recover it only once and that’s the second time” but we will advise You how to protect Your car in the future from being stolen.

Will You give peaple advice how to protect their accounts. You really think there is a “100% hacker-proof” method ? If there were the’re won’t be any hacked accounts.

I’m really glad that You made something like this – good job! But kitten why only once per lifetime ?

This awesome except for one aspect: the one time only per the life of an account part. High profile characters like guild leaders and commanders are targets for hackers and no matter the amount of security they are more than likely to be hacked as new exploits arise.

For instance, say I was hacked tomorrow and got my account back. According to current policy, in 2 years if I get hacked again, then I’m SOL. That’s rather scary. Personally, if I was ever hacked and got my account back, I’d be so stressed about getting hacked again and never getting my stuff back that it would ruin my enjoyment of the game for the rest of the game’s life.

I understand this is a service that you really don’t HAVE to employ and that the one time only is to prevent exploiting of the system but some flexibility is required. Kitten happens and Anet needs to be proactive about it.

Might I recommend a time limit of say once per year and only within 30-90 days of posting a ticket. That way you can help the unfortunate and prevent abuse of the system. The 30-90 day limit would prevent someone from waiting 10 months to post a ticket about a hacked account.

I believe the one in a lifetime rollback was put to prevent some stuff

Let’s say a guy that hacked/stolen/exploited hundreds of gold/another person’s account. He will send that gold to someone, then he will contact support and claim to be hacked. Effectively doubling his income. Anet said that sometimes hackers have enough proof to offer that they are the original account owner.

I’m seeing gold sellers offering 5000 gold, i can’t imagine how bad this would be to the economy if anet made rollbacks to everyone like candy.

Well it didn’t take long for this great announcement to descend into complaining, like every other announcement.

quidgy.1483:

Well it didn’t take long for this great announcement to descend into complaining, like every other announcement.

Of COURSE people are going to complain…it’s a ONE time use policy. This is hilarious. I still cannot de-trust the IP range of the hacker in my account security page, so if they somehow regain control, my account will once again be gone.

I’ve already been hacked once, nothing was done by ANet to remedy the situation(outside of a generic “sorry” email), and now they are saying we get a ONE time reset…wow, how generous.

Slightly annoyed here.

I would have been very glad to have one restore when I was hacked on GW1.

I lost easily the equal of two legendary weapons. I got my account back quickly but not the stuff – made it really sad to play any more after that.

I’m glad they put this feature in.

Although I understand the reason behind it, I suggest you slightly revise this once per account policy. GW2 is no doubt designed to be a long term product, with paid for expansions extending the lifetime of an account for many years. Whilst getting hacked twice in a relatively short period of time is unlikely, if is possible that it may happen more than once over long periods of time, particularly if there is a spike in player activity. Such an occurrence would make the accounts very attractive to hackers, much like they were at launch.
For this reason I seriously urge you to consider changing the policy to a once per term policy, such as once per year or 18 months. If not horror stories could emerge down the line and damage the public view of ArenaNet.

RobinotX.1604:

Though, I would hope they will find a way to get people their stuff back before 1 dec or they will overrule the rule that only 1 account recovery per account in the future. I mean, I get it why they have that rule right now. But they shouldn’t use that rule for the lifespan of this game.

See, the problem here is it’s clear the need for this service was not planned for when the design document was created.

At the very least, there should have been a use case in place to save the status of every account for based on the eventuality that they’d eventually offer the tool to restore such.

But instead, by offering it only from Dec 1 forward, it shows they do not have the back-end paper trail to go off of.

I just can’t believe the most anticipated MMO releasing in 2012 would not come out of the gate with this forethought.

Rising Dusk.2408:

Only one restoration per account is an interesting limit, but not unreasonable. All hacked accounts are hacked because of a security breach on the user’s end, and if the user repeatedly fails to learn from his/her mistakes and repeatedly leaves his/her account open, well… At a certain point it’s just wasting GW2 support’s resources. They probably sat down as a team, weighed the options, and decided that a limit of 1 was fair for now. I doubt they’ll be averse to revisiting that if some crazy stuff happens down the road, but it should be sufficient for now.

Basically what Rising Dusk said. If ANet does an account restoration without the user properly closing the security loopholes on their end, they’re just going to get hacked again down the track, resulting in ANet having to devote a lot of resources just to repeatedly help that one person, meaning other people who got hacked have to wait for longer to get their account back. I work in IT myself, and I’ve seen “problem customers” constantly tying up our Helpdesk resources; believe it, it’s a very frustrating dilemma.

While I do feel uncomfortable with a “once per lifetime” account restoration too, Gaile has stated that they will look at multiple restorations on a case by case basis. If you get hacked, get restored, and then 3 – 4 years go by before you unfortunately manage to get hacked again, you probably will have a good chance of getting an exception made for you. The rule is probably there to prevent people from getting hacked, losing 1000+ gold and items, getting restored, and then next week the hackers hack the account again and get ANOTHER 1000+ gold and items.

Rising Dusk.2408:

Only one restoration per account is an interesting limit, but not unreasonable. All hacked accounts are hacked because of a security breach on the user’s end,

This is laughably untrue and borderline foolish. (ie Sony).

That said, folks need to understand it is obvious that this is a CYA policy to prevent abuse. It’s not within Arenanet’s best interest to kitten off people by not restoring their stuff so if you got hacked again say 6 months later, it only makes sense they would help. (Since they now have ability to do so). To do otherwise is only going to alienate players / customers and hurt the bottom line…

Restorations do not impact guild banks.

Can you use the Account Restoration Tool to restore a specific character or item?

No, the entire account will be restored to its previous state; all progress and acquisitions after that date will be lost.

Seems kind of limited. But hey, way better than nothing. I can’t imagine being one of the folks who has put thousands of hours into the game and lost everything…..I don’t think I’d ever touch an Arenanet game again.

Gaile Gray.6028:

We’re pleased to tell you that we are launching our Account Restoration Tool (ART) today. With that tool, we will be able to restore qualifying accounts that were compromised on or after December 1, 2012.

zarfu.7895:

Restorations do not impact guild banks.

Can you use the Account Restoration Tool to restore a specific character or item?

No, the entire account will be restored to its previous state; all progress and acquisitions after that date will be lost.

Seems kind of limited. But hey, way better than nothing. I can’t imagine being one of the folks who has put thousands of hours into the game and lost everything…..I don’t think I’d ever touch an Arenanet game again.

If i wasn’t in the guild i am, and also being the leader of the guild, i probably would have quit today, to see not only am i not getting a rollback (kinda saw it coming), but i probably cant even get my legendary back… its very discouraging, still want to know if there is some possible way that Anet would compensate at least that for players that want to continue to play their game and only ask for 1 item they had to work towards out of the entire account i had to work towards (thought it would be possible since the karkha chest was recreated for some, and now full restorations put into place with a minimum restore date of 8 days after i was hacked… Anything on this Gaile?

Hey when I summit the ticket i keep getting the same auto mated things i have been getting and i was hacked on Dec 3. Below is what i get

“We understand how frustrating it can be to have your account accessed by someone other than you, and we are sorry you had to experience it. Below we’ve included links to a couple of Account Security web-pages. They both have tips and tricks to help improve your computer and account security.”

Yay account restoration!

That said, for a game I’m planning on playing for multiple years, a 1-strike policy on account rollbacks seems restrictive. I’m sure they’ll revisit that in a bit.

Great to hear! I got hacked about a month after release; luckily the only thing stolen from me was the gold on my level 57 main character at the time (my gear, crafting ingredients and bank items were safe thankfully), but the lack of an account rollback made me quit playing because I wasn’t going to invest time in progressing if there was still risk of losing everything again. But now that we have this account “safety net”, I’m ready to get back on track. Thanks for finally working this out, Anet

Gilosean.3805:

Yay account restoration!

That said, for a game I’m planning on playing for multiple years, a 1-strike policy on account rollbacks seems restrictive. I’m sure they’ll revisit that in a bit.

As others have said, it’s probably to cover themselves. If you get hacked again four years from now, I daresay ArenaNet will restore the account, no problem. But if someone is getting repeatedly hacked because they’re completely inept at account security, and refuses to take any action to protect themselves, ArenaNet can reasonably say ‘Sorry, we can’t help you any further.’

Ummm, so as I have already mentioned that I got my account hacked on this Sunday just gone (10th Dec I believe) ….How do I go about being restored?

I have changed my password since then under the black listing system, and I don’t use this password on any other site.

Aw man… I waited a month and a half only to hear my account cannot be restored (hacked prior to Dec. 1).

Traldera.5120:

Although I understand the reason behind it, I suggest you slightly revise this once per account policy. GW2 is no doubt designed to be a long term product, with paid for expansions extending the lifetime of an account for many years. Whilst getting hacked twice in a relatively short period of time is unlikely, if is possible that it may happen more than once over long periods of time, particularly if there is a spike in player activity. Such an occurrence would make the accounts very attractive to hackers, much like they were at launch.
For this reason I seriously urge you to consider changing the policy to a once per term policy, such as once per year or 18 months. If not horror stories could emerge down the line and damage the public view of ArenaNet.

Given that it’s already been stated that edge cases will be looked at, consider for a moment what would happen if they said they’d sort out accounts every month…

Then realise that stating that is, as soon as it’s broadcast, a cast-iron guarantee.

Then you should appreciate that advertising any fixed length of time is just inviting trouble.

If your account gets compromised once a year, then I’m sure you’ll be sorted out, just no one can actually put that in writing, otherwise the bad guys will take advantage.

This way, we know that if the situation is genuine, it’ll get looked at.

Nice one ANet, it was a while coming, but I appreciate that a non-db delving way to achieve it isn’t often the easiest thing to implement.

Needless to say that this news has made me lose any faith in Anet.
Not only I’ve been hacked, not only I’ve lost everything, not only I’ve been insulted by other players for this, not only I’ve waited 3 weeks like an idiot, not only I’ve seen other RoS players getting their account rolled back while mine not, but now… you even say that you can’t restore my account??
And completely ignore my post yesterday?
Oh come on, you restored Karpuz’s account to a state 2-3 weeks old, I’m sure you still can do that to mine too because you must have snapshots of that period but you don’t want :/
So have I to understand that I’m screwed only cause randomly it has been decided not to use my account for ART beta testing?
And why ‘supporting’ (lol…) till few days ago and now ignore? I guess I know the answer, but I wanna see if this post will be ignored as well.

This is great news! Thank you for releasing this vital customer support feature!

There’s one thing missing in the FAQ though that makes me wonder…

Suppose I’ve been hacked on Dec 1, had my account cleaned out and have since rebuilt some of the items and wealth I had. Should I cash out everything I own before requesting a restoration and send it to a friend or Guild bank so I preserve some of my rewards from the period after I got hacked, or will that flag the receiving account as being involved with gold selling?

I am at a loss. Ever since i was hacked, i gave up and moved on to my alternate character when my account was hacked. Now, when i leveled that character 25 times and earned a reasonable amount of gold, this account restoration comes. Just asking, why can’t ArenaNet just rollback one specific character?

ANET , THANKS for this service !!!

Congratulations on implementing something so crucial. However, only one restoration?

I can totally understand the want to put limits on this, but only one restoration for the lifetime of the account? That’s a bit embarrassing, and I think it needs to be reconsidered. This game might live on for years to come, bringing a lot of dedicated players with it. They get hacked once after years of play, fine, but after a few more years they’re out of luck if they get hacked again, losing years of play? Things like that can really discourage someone from playing the game, and any other game run by the same company.

I hope this gets thought out a bit more.

Why did you set the deadline to december the 1st ??? Are you really unable to do anything for people hacked before this ??

As for me it happened november the 21st … so I miss it for 9 days ? lol

We don’t know the amount of work necessary to do this and we don’t know the amount of work or risks involved in other ways the rescue some accounts.
I would guess that there had to be changes on the system to get such reliable “screenshots” of our accounts and that this might be the reason for the given deadline.

I see this as an emergency solution and I’m glad there is one in case of emergency.

I am not sure that one rescue will be sufficient. But I hope that it will be. So far I never got compromised before and I think that I am sufficiently secure in my dealings. But there is no 100%. Thus I like something like a backup to rescue me. Should I be hit, I will ask for help via support and I will hope for a solution according the case-by-case decisions. One time for account ist stated and it is the rule I have to accept. Nevertheless there is no rule that says that I cannot apply. And I will.

I suggest that everybody who has a problem shall apply. I am sure that Anet will always try to help, if you are innocent.

does this account restoration ONLY applies to account lost due to hacking and whatnot?

a few of my guildmates recently got banned for “botting”. The issue was when the game came out, one of the guys bought a few copies for himself and a few friends so that they can start together at the same time. Apparently your purchase is linked to the cc info used to purchase the game? because that was the reason customer support gave to the guy who bought the copies as to why the accounts are banned after he submitted a ticket. CS also stated that the process was done in a automated process, they do realize it was a mess up but they cannot reverse it.

Now, while I understand why it comes of as botting, but I also thing the sheer fact that the ban is irreversable completely blows my mind. That essentially tells me if I’m wrongfully banned, there can be a possibility that I can never retrieve my account back. I was told that Anet refunded the money back, and while it’s the matter of repurchasing the game, it’s more about all the time spent and efforts they already put in with the original account, and all the achievements they had.

Will account restoration be able to reverse that if they submit another ticket and mention this process?

Great news.

For those complaining about the once in an account’s lifetime remember that 1>0.

I’ll take the one shot restoration over not having account restoration at all.

Congratulations and thanks for the great news!

Does anybody know the answers to my questions?

1) – Will stuff like Skins be restored when an account is restored?
2) – How long will it take to sort out an account restore once the ball is rolling?
3) – If I continue to play while waiting for my account to restore, will I lose all my progress I made within the time it took for my account to be restored?