Guild Wars 2

[Part 1/2]

Greetings:

This is my experience and feedback after buying the Digital Deluxe game ($80) from the official site and being perma-banned 2 days later. The error message / description was completely worthless and gave me absolutely no insight to the cause of the perma-ban. No contact was initiated on ArenaNet’s part, so I didn’t receive any emails or information that would help explain the situation in any way. My support account (same email as game account) was disabled so I was unable to log in and create a ticket with that account. I was also locked out of the official game forums.

Buying the game, installing, and getting in was easy. Not problems there. Played the game for about 2 days, doing standard newb stuff. Exploring the map, running quests. Melting PvE faces. That’s me. I hadn’t even done any PvP yet. Still haven’t actually. I had talked with somewhere between 5-10 people, mostly asking questions and looking for certain areas.

I came home on day 3 after work, to find, after attempting to login, an error message saying my account had been terminated (see the attached image). Totally vague and ambiguous. At this point, based on the game message, you’d think I’d harassed or griefed other players, bought some gold or gems from a 3rd party seller, botted for exp or items, had an offensive char name, or god knows what else. But I did none of these things.

So now what to do? I’m locked out of game account, locked out of my support account, locked out of the official forums, and have no specific information to go on, except a vague termination message. I’m out $80 with hardly anything to go on for a reason. At this point I’m wondering if I got caught up in a money scam of some kind, where you pay for a game that only gives access for 2 days then takes your money and runs.

My only option at this point was to created a secondary support account so that I could submit a ticket, which I did. I submitted a support ticket with the secondary account and this secondary account was also disabled after about an hour. I couldn’t log in to the account anymore to check for status. Now I’m getting kittened off and feeling like this is really a scam or conspiracy of some kind to just take my money and bail.

Next up I find a way to submit a 2nd support ticket without having an account on the support site, but giving the info for my original game account. Now the waiting game.

The next day I decide to also go on some unofficial game forums like MMORPG.COM and GuildWars2Guru.com to plead my case to other players in hopes that someone may contact a GM on my behalf to see what the hell is going on:

MMORPG Thread
GW2G Thread

Towards the end of the day after posting on the unofficial forums, I finally get a response from support. It’s a miracle from the heavens.

So what was the response? Why was my account perma-banned after 2 days of doing standard newb things?

[cont. in Part 2]

[Part 2/2]

… because my billing address is different from my purchase location:

Hello X,

Thank you for providing that information.

In reviewing your account I see that your contact location does not match your billing information. Can you provide a reason for this difference?

Thank you,
Lindsay
NCsoft Payment Review

OK, realistically, I understand there is a lot of CC fraud out there. I think it’s great that ArenaNet is being vigilant in that realm. However, ArenaNet, you guys are going about this purchase protection stuff completely wrong. If someone buys the game, and gets access to play the game straight away, you are giving the impression that the purchase transaction has gone through without problems and was successful. To come back 2 days later and perma-ban the buyer because the shipping and billing locations are different is just stupid. You’re just going to kitten a lot of people off.

Also, looking at the support response from Lindsay above, what gives ArenaNet the right to ask why someone’s purchase / billing info locations are different? It’s really none of your business. There’s a reason why, when you buy something online, you have an option for shipping and billing info. If you don’t want to accept purchases from different locations (billing / physical), do it up-front (reject the purchase), not after-the-fact. Maybe require some kind of pre-confirmation.

My largest gripe about this whole debacle is the lack of information, lack of communication, and inability to contact support staff. That error message displayed for this situation was completely worthless. No email was sent to me about the ban whatsoever. How was I supposed to know what’s going on? I was almost to the point of calling your corporate office because I had no other avenue to take for help.

This is my 2nd worse experience in an MMO so far and my experience ranges back to the Ultima days. Mainly because it looked like you (ArenaNet) were trying to take my money and run. My first worst experience was actually the SWG launch / release.

This issue is currently resolved and nothing in regards to my character was lost. I have access to all accounts and my original game purchase and serial were voided and I had to buy the game again (use a new serial). I’d like to thank those unofficial GW2 forums members who tried to give some insight and help.

I hope ArenaNet improves this process in the future, because the way you are doing it now is just horrible. Communication is key.

(for reference, incident number is 130206-000289)

While I personally have never experienced anything where I required a support ticket, I can say that even just getting feedback from ACTUAL reps from ArenaNet here on the forums is actually pretty easy.

While ArenaNet comes across as having pretty ‘strict’ guidelines, they are just involved and active, unlike ummmmm every other online company. Pretty much encouraging the players to shy away from trolls and agony that plagues pretty much any community out there.

I’m glad that you got your account back and although it took a few hoops… I understand why they do it the way they do. What is great is that even with your support ticket.. that you’re e-mailing an actual human being… not getting the canned automated responses the first 3 times to filter out people. For me, as a customer… this speaks VOLUMES!

Although I don’t always agree with the moderator warnings I seem to get on the forums (lol), I really respect ArenaNet as a company, and how engaged with their customers they actually are.

Hi Gaile.

This situation would have gone completely different if at least ONE of these two things would have happened:

[1.] The error message instead said something like “There was a billing problem when processing your game purchase.” Also, possibly “Please contact support.” or “Billing support has been notified.”

[2.] Some type of initiated contact by support, at minimum an automated email saying there was a billing problem and support has been notified. An auto-generated support ticket with a new incident number would be great, that way ArenaNet is being pro-active. All of this should be simple enough to do.

Gaile Gray.6028:

Here’s a challenge: A player buys the game, gets hacked, and the hacker uses the account in disallowed ways. Account owner comes back and sees “You’ve done something wrong” when he/she did nothing whatsoever wrong. I want us to be able to tell players, “You account was hacked and the hacker did something wrong and that’s why we need you to contact Support.” We’re moving towards that.

Sounds like ArenaNet is trying hard to stop botters and hackers, which is great. I’ve already seen confirmation for logging in via different locations (IP address changes and whatnot). If a persons game account is hacked, I would assume the hacker would be logging in from a different IP address. Why not confirm the players identity (by email, text, or your secure app) every time an IP address changes (at login)? This might be a pain in the kitten for some, but I would prefer that extra security over getting randomly banned.

Gaile Gray.6028:

Lastly: Your game account and your support account are not linked, so having any sort of block on your account — from termination to suspension — does not prevent you from contacting the team via your support account. Submit a ticket using the “Ask a Question” tab on this page: http://support.guildwars2.com/. The credentials for your account can be the same — although for security reasons I recommend against that — but the accounts themselves are separate.

I disagree, at least based on my experience. I could log in to the support site previous to my ban. While my account was “perma-banned”, I could not log in to it. I got the generic “incorrect password or disabled” message. I confirmed my user id and also reset my password. Even after resetting the password, I was still unable to log in. The same thing happened to my secondary (temp) account so that I could send a ticket.

Why else would my support account have been inaccessible if not for the ban? I’ve seen other users in this forum report the same thing (when perma-banned).

That is a huge problem because users are unable to contest the situation if they are falsely accused. It’s like they don’t want support staff to have to deal with those users.

Anyways, it’s good to see support staff posting in the forums. I’m sure things get hairy in here.

Gaile Gray.6028:

You ask “Why else would my support account have been inaccessible if not for the ban? I’ve seen other users in this forum report the same thing (when perma-banned).”

My answer is that perhaps you are using incorrect credentials, or maybe your email account or your support account was also hacked.

I highly doubt it (99.9%). Once the ban was revoked I was able to access my support account.

Gaile Gray.6028:

I hope this goes quickly for you and will you please update when you have a resolution?

The issue is actually already resolved and everything is good now. I can’t change the title or I would label it as resolved.

Thanks Gaile.

Gaile, thank you for your response in this.

Since this thread is not yet locked and I am dealing with a similar issue, I’d like to add a few cents.

1. Billing/Shipping addresses differences are a common thing. I buy things for my kids all the time and have them shipped to them @university. Most online purchase mechanics allow for and support this. I saw no such options to indicate a difference when buying from the official site. That said, since you are doing electronic delivery, it doesn’t matter that much.

2. Credit card companies have various mechanisms for detecting fraud and managing abuse. Please let them do that job. They are better at it. More overt mechanisms, such as VerifyVisa, make you do extra authorization for the transaction. The less intrusive systems monitor and learn you buying patterns. For example, my credit card company knows I travel and purchase gasoline from states up and down the east coast. Thus, I don’t get stuck in some podunk town with no petrol. If the credit card company authorizes the transaction, then we, the purchaser, have passed their muster. We, and you, are protected from fraud in part by the polices of these companies and the CC charge dispute resolution process.

I wholeheartedly agree that it would be better to send a message indicating the true issue – as simple as: A billing hold has been placed upon your account; contact support – instead of a quick ban and the horific process of having the account unsuspended and obtaining new keys because you THOUGHT a CC was misused even when the CC company authorized the purchase.

Thank you for reading.

Rytz,

I think you are confusing your Support account and your Forums account. Your forums account is the same as your game account. If you are banned you are also banned for the forums. But your support account is a different account that you for filing reports as Gaile stated. I have a different account for support. I think a lot of people are getting these two confused. I know this is a number of days after the fact on those post above but thought I should put this out there.