Guild Wars 2

I have opened a support ticket on this, and received a canned response, I am posting this here in the hopes that the powers that be will read this and understand the issue, and fix it.

I bought the CE, I was in all the BWE, and I created three characters during the head start.

One character, the first one, has the correct character creation date, (the first day of head start) and has received her birthday present. (twice)

The other two I made during head start are showing that they were created 16 days later. This is not true and the creation of them is memorable, this is why I know they were NOT created 16 days after the head start.

One has my real name. When I was trying to create her, minutes after the launch, my name was taken, (Nalora) and the person who had it, upon finding out it was my real name, that I have had it for more than 56 years, and that it is also my account name, was kind enough to delete her character and after 24 hours when the name was released, I made Nalora.

The second one I made during head start was made the first day. I had used the name Meeps for my asuran during Beta, and was worried that it would be taken quickly after launch, and indeed within minutes of head start opening, it was taken. So I took Meepers. This character, as well is showing it was created 16 days AFTER head start.

My account has always had issues since the beginning, when I was locked out of my account.

During Beta I tried to change the email associated with my account and now there are not one….but THREE email accounts associated with my account. I get emails to all three when Arenanet sends out a mailing. I tried for 3 months to get support to fix this, but finally gave up out of frustration.

I DO want my character creation dates on the other two to be checked, and fixed.

One of my legacy name’s character creation dates is also in error, and shows up as 16 days after launch, when I know that it was actually LONGER, since I created her when we were given the three day warning that our legacy names were about to be released for use by others.

Addendum:

I found support emails I had saved where I am speaking about the creation of the two characters whose creation dates have now been arbitrarily set for Sept 15, 2012 when they were created 8/25/2012

The date of the support emails are 8/25/2012 and 8/31/2012.

I am talking with support about the lock out fiasco that happened at launch, and detailing events of the lock out which included the names of characters I had created.

Gaile Gray.6028:

We cannot change creation dates on characters. We do not change creation dates on characters. As far as I know there are no issues with character creation dates, only with player memories about when the character was actually created. For instance they might say, “I created Fred on Day 1. But I decided I liked Frederica better.” What they forget is that they deleted Fred and made Frederica two weeks afterwards, meaning that Frederica’s creation date is not, and cannot be, the same as that originally held by Fred.

I cannot speak for your individual situation, Nalora, and I do sympathize with your confusion. However, we really don’t fiddle with dates — we don’t even have the tools to do it (upon request or otherwise). You are welcome to contact Support by filing a ticket through the “Ask a Question” tab on that linked page but I am unsure that they will be able to assist you in this case, when the record keeping is, to my understanding, without issues or errors.

A guildie of mine was banned for a first time naming offense and quickly reinstated as he was given no warning/changed name. When he logged back in he received a Hero’s Chest or something like that.

While trying to figure out why he was rewarded for bad behavior he discovered with /age that his character was now only 4 hours old.

Don’t know if /age is based on creation date but this date seems to have been fiddled with somehow. Unless he deleted his character and leveled to 80 in record time.

How is this possible?

I have not deleted a character. I am not confused about when these characters were created.

I know exactly when I created them and your data is wrong.

The fact that you do not see that there is an issue with data that seems to have been changed or is in error says much about why there could still be other bugs that are issues after a full year of reporting bugs.

I have contacted support (as you can see from the first sentence of the original post) but I want to know why the dates are in ERROR.

I can post the emails from 8/25/12 and 8/31/12 where I speak about these two characters, a full TWO WEEKS before what you currently have as their creation date.

The ticket on the original support request from last year is: [Incident: 120821-005191]
Please read the reply I sent on 8/25/12.

The support person was Mitch.

The current support request is: [Incident: 130828-000939]

It’s frightening what visibility (or lack there of) ANet claims to have into the characters they support. How is it that Karma, which can change second to second, can be magically backfilled, yet creation date, a single field that is static, with few to no system repercussions, can’t be touched? This is as bad as the personal story screw up – I had to reroll a level 40 character to get him back to where I wanted him (talk about screwing up my creation date!)

If character information is stored in a database system then there should be an amazing reason that creation date for a character can’t be updated. Support should be able to look through your character’s history (specifically when Karma was earned) and tell if the character was played prior to the created date they have in their system (assuming you played the character within that 16 day period and completed any events).

I have figured out the common denominator on the characters with dates which are wrong.

Each one was changed using a hairstyle kit. Now according to wiki these kits were not available til November, so no clue why each of these characters has Sept. 15 as creation date.

Knowing why they changed is half the battle. At least I know why and what caused it.

Nalora: I wonder if you might have better results if you post about this in the bugs forum. Josh Davis has been reviewing a lot of reports there and, when possible, replying to many.

What Gaile is saying is that this doesn’t sound like a support issue, because the Support Team couldn’t have changed the character creation dates, since they don’t have any tools to do so. But that doesn’t address whether (or not) there’s an obscure bug that sometimes affects this. Until now, most people don’t go around checking their character creation dates — and even if they did, they might not have noticed an issue, because /age reported the number of months.

If you get a response in the bug forum, you can add it to your existing ticket. If you don’t, other players might be able to offer their own data, too.

tl;dr This might be the result of a bug (and therefore a QA department issue) rather than an account problem (where it would be handled by the support team).

Good luck.

I’ve got the same problem. I created 4 characters during the headstart weekend and now they’re all showing very different ages. Between 370 and 347 days old.

I did delete and re-make 2 of them and I couldn’t say with absolute confidence what exact day they were created on but I know for a fact they were all created within that 3 day period because I went out of my way to make sure of it. Getting those 4 created exactly as I wanted was my main focus for the weekend (and working out what I wanted them to look like, what professions I wanted etc. so that I could do that was my main focus in the betas). I also made sure to keep them afterwards.

I’m not concerned about the gifts (especially since the 2 I did get were reissued so I’ve got the 4 I’d expected) but I am concerned that if there’s a bug in the system somewhere it could be affecting a lot of people who aren’t aware of it to report it and that it might cause other problems later on.

Nalora.7964:

I have figured out the common denominator on the characters with dates which are wrong.

Each one was changed using a hairstyle kit. Now according to wiki these kits were not available til November, so no clue why each of these characters has Sept. 15 as creation date.

Knowing why they changed is half the battle. At least I know why and what caused it.

I’ve seen this mentioned within some bug report threads over the past 5-6 months. They were stating that the only thing they could attribute their character creation date change to was the use of a Total Makeover or Hairstyle Kit. I’ll see about digging through 6 months of bug threads to find those comments :\

I have closed my ticket with support after realizing they do not read anything I write.
I am confident I know what caused the issue even if support does not.
This is the same reason my account has never been fixed with regards to it having 3 email addresses. They just wear you down til you give up.

Its reminds me of talking to that girl on MAD TV.

Hot dog?

This is actually quite interesting. I am experiencing something similar with my characters. I have 8 that I created during the head start – at least I am very certain of this. Checking today their birthdays vary about 40 days or so. I have not used any kind of hair or makeover kit so that cannot explain the differences in birthdays.

The one thing that does vary between my characters are the date that I put them through the tutorial area so my theory is that the birthday somehow relates to that event.

Regards Athina

Athina.9054:

This is actually quite interesting. I am experiencing something similar with my characters. I have 8 that I created during the head start – at least I am very certain of this. Checking today their birthdays vary about 40 days or so. I have not used any kind of hair or makeover kit so that cannot explain the differences in birthdays.

The one thing that does vary between my characters are the date that I put them through the tutorial area so my theory is that the birthday somehow relates to that event.

Regards Athina

I considered this as well to explain the discrepancy. All three were created, then left in the tutorial til I played them through.

Also, the one that has the birthday correct, was stuck in the first night loop in the tutiorial, when you could play the tutorial, but could not exit it.

I would really like it if the day you created your character would appear somewhere. I created one of my charcaters several months after release but I can’t remember when, I think this would be useful and it would help me (and many others). This will help me ‘organize’ my account.

Redgar.8079:

I would really like it if the day you created your character would appear somewhere. I created one of my charcaters several months after release but I can’t remember when, I think this would be useful and it would help me (and many others). This will help me ‘organize’ my account.

You can do /age in game and it will tell you how many days old that character is.