Guild Wars 2

No offense bud, but they really haven’t done anything wrong to warrant you filing a complaint. Also, I seriously doubt ArenaNet cares one bit about the BBB.

Ultimately, account security is the responsibility of the user. If you got hacked then you did something along the way which made it possible to get hacked. Please don’t think that I am flaming you cause I am not. Even if all you did was use a previous WOW email address which the hackers already had, then it is still your responsibility for the hack. Arena Net is doing everything they can to try and help people out as fast as possible. It is only in their best interest to help people out.

The same would go for the rest out there as well. Anyone who didn’t make a new email address solely for GW2 shouldn’t be surprised when their accounts get hacked.

What I want to know is why we had to make an e-mail SOLELY for Guild Wars 2. When has any other game EVER required that?? Only a very weak and incompetent system would require the user to go to such lengths for one game. That’s ridiculous reasoning Valkar. It is not the user’s fault if they were not aware that they could no longer depend on security they’ve trusted for years via other games when it came to ArenaNet.

Hey, you are getting a bit too worked up about this.

Take a look through the forums here and look at the amount of people affected. You complaining is not going to get you anywhere.

They handle support tickets, working chronically from old to new.

Your girlfriend, as I posted in the other thread you opened, is singlehandedly responsible for being hacked. There are hundreds of thousands of us who can still use our accounts. If ArenaNet was responsible for this, most of us would have problems.

Go revert your purchase if waiting is not your cup of tea, but threats like this won’t get you anywhere.

Either you wait, or you go revert your purchase. Up to you.

If your girlfriend wants to play this game, then all you can do is wait. Also make sure your own account is secure and that if any cards were connected to the account that they are cancelled.

I would also recommend checking in the account security tab now and then to see if you have irregular logins.

Do people really use the BBB? It has been proven they give better ratings to those that pay more…what a scam

That still doesn’t make it ArenaNet’s fault. You are right that people have been used to attacks for years and therefore they should be used to protecting themselves too. Knowing that AreanNet doesn’t have an authenticator system in place yet should have been one of the first clues to make a separate email address.

Protecting your account is YOUR responsibility. They don’t HAVE to do anything to help people out. They are because it would be horribly bad PR not to. My brother is one of the guys who got hacked, cause he made the ignorant mistake of using his WOW account email as well KNOWING that he had been hacked before.

This game came with an EULA
https://www.guildwars2.com/en/legal/guild-wars-2-user-agreement/

You should read that before submitting anything to some legal third party, since you have already agreed to this EULA.

Since it is your responsibility to make sure the account is setup with a secure password and unique email, it is also your responsibility for any damage should it be hijacked. The team will do what they can to assist you, but cannot be held liable for hijacks which were the user’s fault in following safety guidelines. Any time frame that the team gives for response is preliminary and may change without notice.

Furthermore any card connected to an account should be temporarily or permanently cancelled upon notice of account hijack.

wizgamer.7123:

What I want to know is why we had to make an e-mail SOLELY for Guild Wars 2. When has any other game EVER required that?? Only a very weak and incompetent system would require the user to go to such lengths for one game. That’s ridiculous reasoning Valkar. It is not the user’s fault if they were not aware that they could no longer depend on security they’ve trusted for years via other games when it came to ArenaNet.

You didn’t HAVE to create a new email, it would be better security for any online account to have its own email. obviously this would be overkill. As long as you dont have the same email address and password combination on your guild wars account as you do somewhere else that could be compromised, your account should be fine.

The idea of making a new email is moot when you have to use the one from your GW1 account. So it is just full of it. I (Loyheta.7294) tried making an email for GW2 and GW2 alone but the registration decided to bind the key to my GW1 account and you can’t even change it! (well obviously you can since that account was hacked later on and the guy changed it.)

Branskins.9752:

Do people really use the BBB?

A family members Xbox Live account got hacked and their account was charged quite a bit. For 2 weeks Microsoft did nothing, one letter to the BBB got it all refunded, a whole lot of points, a year free of Xbox live gold, and a letter of apology.

Does it always work out this way? No.

Branskins.9752:

Do people really use the BBB?

Newegg sent me a “refurbished” computer…. it was missing it’s cpu. Contacted them and the started messing around. Registered a complaint, they sent me a replacement as well as a partial refund.

My bank told me it would not hurt my standings with them or interfere with me being a visa card holder in the future if it came to chargebacks. – I think this should be something people talk to their own bank managers about. I also had chargebacks done when SoE lost my information to hackers last year. It infuriated me so much I decided not to stay a customer with them, and my bank fully supported complete chargebacks of 2 games I had purchased within the last 2 months when it happened. – They also reissued a visa to me free of charge. – Just saying, dont be afraid to make chargebacks once you are informed about your own banks methods and aproach to that type of issue.

But that’s an abuse of the chargeback system… Go and read what valid uses are for chargebacks. Ii fail to see how a chargeback is warranted because you got mad they leaked your information. t’s an unfortunate case but really? This is ridiculous how often and for what we are using credit for

Are you serious Branskins? You don’t think it’s serious when a company allow scammers to use your credit card information using a fraudulent system where they don’t even need to check your CVV on your Credit card to make a purchase. In what dimension is that not serious? A chargeback is perfectly justifiable.

Its not just that the information can be available that irks me… Its the fact that I get no answers unless I threaten to file a formal complaint… (As did numerous other forum post mentioning charge backs). I, like everyone else who purchased the game, just want to play! We played hard on the pre-release head start and release weekend only to have it come to abrupt stop due to the incident with her email account. After realizing it happened we immediately submitted the proper forums (with in hours) and advised Arenanet the hacker was playing on the account. 2 days later he was still on leveling her and moving her to new servers (which hopeful after restoration will still be free to change back). We check the status on her ticket and told the ticket format has changed & resubmit all over again? So of course we resubmit and follow the advice of making a new email + set her up with an email authenticator through Google. After all of this and 72 more hours since new ticket we still have yet to have any head way… THAT is whats frustrating. Its not that we want a refund, its that we want help and with all the people threatening to do this getting response with in minutes of posting on the forums its getting rather frustrating. What more can I do than send you everything you need to go in the account profile and change the log in email + forward her a reset password link? Its not like the hacker had to jump through hoops to do it. Hell he just logged in hit change and she received the “Someone -hopefully you!- has requested to change the email address associated with your Guild Wars account.” so it really cant be that hard.

wizgamer.7123:

Are you serious Branskins? You don’t think it’s serious when a company allow scammers to use your credit card information using a fraudulent system where they don’t even need to check your CVV on your Credit card to make a purchase. In what dimension is that not serious? A chargeback is perfectly justifiable.

Whom has this happened to? I want to know. Saying “my friend had money stolen” is not proof because as ANet showed with the bannings, everyone exaggerates or just plain lies about their circumstances.

They are not letting them use your credit card, that would make them an accomplice. If your account was hacked, that is your fault. Now a chargeback on gem store purchases seems to be where this is not abusive, but a chargeback on the game is ridiculous

SoE did not leak any information. Geez. They stored our details in plain text and had it stolen.
Agravating circumstances that made it reasonable (my bank thought so) that I would find the products purchased unusable because they required a running subscription and I did not want my information reattached to any money transactions after they compromised me the first time. SoE did not fight the chargebacks. And “ridiculous” isnt the word I’d use to describe what happened at the time.

With accounts compromised every day atm, I just dont get how NCsoft can keep risking it when people lose control of their accounts with cc details stored and no ccv codes required on purchases. Even when you are wary of whats going on and want to protect yourself and remove the information, the system wont let you. Its just crazy.

What I don’t get is that people don’t disable their credit card when they know the account’s been compromised…

Although, I also agree that they better implement the ability to remove card information, I have not registered my card, never will do. But it’s borderline to not have a remove card info on the account page (remember you can still do this through support and thus they are not doing anything illegal by not having it on the account page).

Branskins.9752:

wizgamer.7123:

Are you serious Branskins? You don’t think it’s serious when a company allow scammers to use your credit card information using a fraudulent system where they don’t even need to check your CVV on your Credit card to make a purchase. In what dimension is that not serious? A chargeback is perfectly justifiable.

Whom has this happened to? I want to know. Saying “my friend had money stolen” is not proof because as ANet showed with the bannings, everyone exaggerates or just plain lies about their circumstances.

They are not letting them use your credit card, that would make them an accomplice. If your account was hacked, that is your fault. Now a chargeback on gem store purchases seems to be where this is not abusive, but a chargeback on the game is ridiculous

Im afraid you’ll have to go reddit digging for first hand experiences of it, I have read a few. – But even if you can’t find them – trolling – this issue still doesnt change the fact that many many people have had their accounts abused by “hackers” (I refer to them as thieves) and that what we are warning about, is possible (and what selfrespecting thief wouldnt do this) if anyone of these unfortunate people, stored their cc information in the gemshop prior to losing access to their account.

Are you saying the thief who takes someone elses account over, would look at the gem shop bonanza and say: Nah not feeling like it today

Chobiko.9182:

What I don’t get is that people don’t disable their credit card when they know the account’s been compromised…

Although, I also agree that they better implement the ability to remove card information, I have not registered my card, never will do. But it’s borderline to not have a remove card info on the account page (remember you can still do this through support and thus they are not doing anything illegal by not having it on the account page).

I think they do disable it the moment they realise they have been hacked. But, how long would you need if you stole an account with a CC stored to buy gems, sell for gold and move on. – Its just a hazzle once the chargeback is the only option left. When a little click option could unstore the information while all this drama about account theft is going on.

Sorry.6741:

Chobiko.9182:

What I don’t get is that people don’t disable their credit card when they know the account’s been compromised…

Although, I also agree that they better implement the ability to remove card information, I have not registered my card, never will do. But it’s borderline to not have a remove card info on the account page (remember you can still do this through support and thus they are not doing anything illegal by not having it on the account page).

I think they do disable it the moment they realise they have been hacked. But, how long would you need if you stole an account with a CC stored to buy gems, sell for gold and move on. – Its just a hazzle once the chargeback is the only option left. When a little click option could unstore the information while all this drama about account theft is going on.

I think if you can manage to click and remove the information from the account in time, you would also be able to disable your card in time.

Eventually, I suggest for anyone who wants to be on the safe side, open a separate bank account for games (online), and open a (free) debit card on that account, whenever you want to buy something transfer the money you need to buy it, then buy. Saves you a lot of worrying.

I think I would be able to remove my cc information before my account was ever stolen I know I would do it right now if I could. – Then I wouldnt have to get my bank involved and a new card issued. See what I mean?

Sorry.6741:

I think I would be able to remove my cc information before my account was ever stolen I know I would do it right now if I could. – Then I wouldnt have to get my bank involved and a new card issued. See what I mean?

I suggest you shoot a mail to support and create a ticket, then send that ticket info to one of the support staff on here in a pm.

Other than that, it is unfortunate you chose to save that information at the launch of a game, one can never prepare for disaster, and nobody could foresee this. However a bit of extra caution doesn’t hurt.

I like to remember my card number instead, or both of them. That way I don’t need to sacrifice security for convenience much of the time.

What if the people who are having trouble with there cards all did charge backs :P

I saw a post under the transaction forums that was delete’d that would really HELP the people who are getting there account hack’d and then the person who hack’d is using there card to buy things from Arenanet, and your not giving refunds or something… The post was about Charge backs…. Now why.. why Arenanet would you remove that post

I use the BBB, my cable company would not give me stable internet, told the BBB and like next few days had some dude from Tampa fixing my whole system. And i had been complaining to the ISP couple of months prior. :P

Valkar.3259:

No offense bud, but they really haven’t done anything wrong to warrant you filing a complaint. Also, I seriously doubt ArenaNet cares one bit about the BBB.

Ultimately, account security is the responsibility of the user. If you got hacked then you did something along the way which made it possible to get hacked. Please don’t think that I am flaming you cause I am not. Even if all you did was use a previous WOW email address which the hackers already had, then it is still your responsibility for the hack. Arena Net is doing everything they can to try and help people out as fast as possible. It is only in their best interest to help people out.

The same would go for the rest out there as well. Anyone who didn’t make a new email address solely for GW2 shouldn’t be surprised when their accounts get hacked.

Obvi did not read the other forums and complaints from people getting charge’d 1000’s of dollars because of a bad system :P

GaileGray.9587:

Charge-backs are bad for you and for us. I strongly encourage you to wait for assistance or, if you really want to permanently close your account and receive a refund, go ahead and put in a request through our support team.

I’ve done charge-backs in the past (like for a mechanic that totally trashed my classic car’s engine — major things like that). It’s a long and painful process and your CC has a limited amount of tolerance for such procedures. The refund process, if you truly want to do this, will be less difficult and you won’t be using up your CC’s good will if you need their help in the future.

But please consider that a charge-back or a refund results in closure of the account. It’s not like you can charge-back now and add a code later. The account is forever closed, and all attributes and history — including the HoM — are lost. As a player, I fully understand the frustration of waiting. But as a player, I want you to know how serious a refund or charge-back can be, since people seem to think it’s a simple thing that doesn’t have long-lasting repercussions.

Lastly, we have an A+ rating with the BBB. It does not get any higher. I’m very proud of our stature with such an excellent organization. I respect the BBB very much, and I think it’s important to use them only for situations that are truly needful of their involvement, not as a means to try to move a support ticket up in the queue. Honestly, that’s a waste of their time and given the faster turnaround on tickets, it’s probably a waste of your time as well.

Do you think a company that unfairly and unjustifiably tags thousands of its customers as fraudsters and then takes no action to rectify the error warrants a BBB complaint?

Actually it is Anet’s responsiblity to maintain security on your account if you have followed established security steps, and they fail; thats on Anet. And they do care about the BBB cause I have filed on them in the past for another one of their games; Aion. This game, GW2 is no different now then any of the other recent MMO’s; so much for being orginal and different. Its Aion, Rift, and WoW all rolled up; with a GW desktop. I wasted my money.

Another reason to quit the game is Gray is back…ugghh!

Now i’m not saying quit, the game is fun but… c’mon fix your system Arenanet :P

DO NOT do chargeback unless you absolutely have a reason to, such as that guy above with his classic car’s engine getting trashed. Banks take it seriously when you do a chargeback. SOE’s firewall was outdated which was easy for “Anonymous” to take it out, and he proceeded to do the same for other SOE’s services around the globe after that, my CC information was compromised and my CC company halted my card and notified me before I knew what was happening.

I’ve only ever done 1 chargeback and that was when I was being charged twice for buying one thing.

Honestly, of all the online games I’ve played in the past 15 years, GW2 has probably the weakest security I’ve seen. At least add a security question on the account for when you want to change email and password, then you wouldn’t have this many compromised accounts to begin with.

And believe me they are trying to. There’s a lot happening and you are not making it better by complaining or overflowing these forums.

I am working in this business, I know a self-entitled wailing consumer when I see one, and unfortunately there are many of you here. I believe consumers are getting more and more self-entitled as they are given rights to this and that and abusing those rights in every direction.

Chargebacks are one of them, it shouldn’t be legal without a proper judicial system looking at each case individually, and sometimes it ends that way, in court. Most cases shouldn’t need to be solved like this as it only breeds anger and mistrust.

All ANet is asking for is time. They are a limited amount of people working on thousands of tickets submitted daily. Don’t tell me that it is humanly possible because it isn’t.
None of us expected this game to go bang before two weeks before launch, and they couldn’t very well post-pone the release just to accommodate for more players. They were furiously working on increasing server capacity, when out of the sky gold-sellers with long lists of compromised accounts decided to hijack the muffin out of ignorant users.

Ask me, why haven’t I been banned? Why can I still play this game?

The answer is simple. I took precautions, still take them. I don’t use swear words in chat not even F or S or G or any of that. It’s not that hard to replace your language if someone asks you to be a bit more considering of other players.

Players say they got charged money. Well I also heard players who said they hadn’t exploited when they got banned. People lie to put themselves in a better light, so take what people say on this forum with a pinch of salt, and don’t trust the person who says it was charged $1000 bucks by a fraudster using his compromised account.

If you want to hurt this company go ahead get your chargeback, or do some friendly frauding as it’s called. Spread unconfirmed rumours. And spam ArenaNet with support tickets and forum messages.
It is certainly not helping you get your game faster, and you are actively helping lower the user experience of everyone else.
You spend $60 on a game, and when you can’t play it for a week it’s a disaster that requires a chargeback and devaluing the company on BBB. Seriously. May I ask why such behaviour?

If you want to experience this great game, get back in and enjoy a good time with the rest of us, please be more constructive when giving feedback in the forums and help other people or bump the correct threads, update the tickets and do what ANet asks you to do and nothing else. Is it painful to wait? Well go pretend you didn’t buy the game and do something else until you get the mail that says your account is fixed. It’s really not that hard. I know many people who behaves and keep patient, and I would do the same if I was compromised.

Please help yourself and others by being a better person online as well.

Thank you.

PS.

DO NOT do chargeback unless you absolutely have a reason to, such as that guy above with his classic car’s engine getting trashed. Banks take it seriously when you do a chargeback. SOE’s firewall was outdated which was easy for “Anonymous” to take it out, and he proceeded to do the same for other SOE’s services around the globe after that, my CC information was compromised and my CC company halted my card and notified me before I knew what was happening.

I’ve only ever done 1 chargeback and that was when I was being charged twice for buying one thing.

Honestly, of all the online games I’ve played in the past 15 years, GW2 has probably the weakest security I’ve seen. At least add a security question on the account for when you want to change email and password, then you wouldn’t have this many compromised accounts to begin with.

Yes, don’t do chargebacks. It is not because it may affect you in the future that is mostly a scare tactic these days. Most likely you would have to do a lot of those chargebacks before your card provider will start to disbelieve you.
On the other hand, don’t do it because it hurts other people. You are putting mistrust in people who doesn’t deserve it, just because you are impatient. That is incredibly stupid behaviour, pardon if offend someone, but you are a despicable person if you do chargebacks just because you don’t feel prioritised.

The accounts would have been compromised none the less, but it might have been easier to retrieve the accounts had such a security feature been implemented.

Please don’t start a flame war.

And sorry for letting off some steam.

But as you, hopefully, can see; there are a lot of people even in this thread who doesn’t really realise what they are demanding of others.

Be a bit more lenient, and no I try to help people on these forums, read my posts. I may have argued with a few, but most of those arguments resolved in a solution (take a look at Sorry and my discussion of the CSC code).

I’ve read the majority of threads that have been posted the past few days and in most all I see is “stop whining , its your fault, oh get better security, stop blaming the company for your own hiccups, its obvious you should go to extraordinary lengths for your guild wars 2 account that you dont have to for other games, oh and my favorite, dont be mad at Anet for their incompetence, blame yourself.”

I am sorry, but yes I believe this is largely due to laziness on the players side. And it’s in a morbid way interesting to see when a company doesn’t have that heavy security measures what really happens when they clash.
It is not about being incompetent, rather I believe they didn’t expect this. I didn’t either. Tell me did you? I sort of understand that people can’tkittenthemselves to maintain a database of complex passwords. But when you see that something will put your account at risk further more when it states in the EULA that it’s your own task to make sure third-party doesn’t have your information, then who is really at fault, you? or ANet? If ANet is then tell me why?
They acknowledged that it wasn’t the best security system and that they were working on it, they tried to inform every player that they should take proper security measures, yet it seems about 10,000 people failed to do that, and the rest of the 990,000 are ok.

I try to tell them that, next time, choose a unique password and make sure you are protected from phishing, malware and the sorts.

Uhm, maybe because this WHOLE THING could have been avoided if they used common sense and made it to where a pass/user change required AUTHENTICATION from the email, something EVERY other mmo has, why are they too good to use it? Maybe they just like pissing off customers and copy/pasting tickets.

Like I said, that was a miss from their side, and I think they probably regret it as much as it infuriated you, as this incident is giving them a lot of work. But still such an implementation shouldn’t give you a free pass for using bad passwords and emails.

marcusbash.8642:

Uhm, maybe because this WHOLE THING could have been avoided if they used common sense and made it to where a pass/user change required AUTHENTICATION from the email, something EVERY other mmo has, why are they too good to use it? Maybe they just like pissing off customers and copy/pasting tickets.

Does everyone need to hold our hands now?

Your account getting hacked is YOUR fault.

You take the necessary steps to create a secure account, why should this rest soley on ANet?

I am just curious, how many of you are using your same account for GW2 as you use for battle.net?

http://www.bbb.org/western-washington/business-reviews/computer-software-publishers-and-developers/ncsoft-corporation-in-seattle-wa-22662307

http://www.bbb.org/western-washington/business-reviews/computer-software-publishers-and-developers/arenanet-in-bellevue-wa-22017235 – A+ but with 14 filed complaints, and it isn’t listed as being BBB accredited. I also called the number listed at BBB and they couldn’t find a registered listing for Arenanet or NC Soft…

I just want my money back at this point is all, not my account.

GaileGray.9587:

…we have an A+ rating with the BBB. It does not get any higher. I’m very proud of our stature with such an excellent organization. I respect the BBB very much, and I think it’s important to use them only for situations that are truly needful of their involvement…

Link to your BBB page please since I couldn’t find it, and neither could the person I spoke to over the phone

and please don’t change the thread to “Resolved” when clearly nothing has been resolved… I know that’s the methodology that’s been taken so far behind the tickets – but lets not do that in the forums, eh?

This is my friends account, my account is gone, someone changed the email, I didn’t even get to choose if I wanted to change it, its was just gone, while I was asleep, now I can’t do anything.

Hucksteel.4086:

http://www.bbb.org/western-washington/business-reviews/computer-software-publishers-and-developers/ncsoft-corporation-in-seattle-wa-22662307

http://www.bbb.org/western-washington/business-reviews/computer-software-publishers-and-developers/arenanet-in-bellevue-wa-22017235 – A+ but with 14 filed complaints, and it isn’t listed as being BBB accredited. I also called the number listed at BBB and they couldn’t find a registered listing for Arenanet or NC Soft…

I just want my money back at this point is all, not my account.

So? And Apple has a B+ and is NOT accredited. What am I suppose to do with this information.

Does this mean I shouldn’t trust Apple or buy their products? Oh wait! They have some of the best customer service without needing to pay the BBB for a pointless accreditation.

You all should read about the 2010 BBB scandal where they awarded more points to paying members. Yup sounds like an organization to trust!

Read what I write please, not just what you want to see. And YOU should read the 2010 scandal – because guess who CAUGHT the BBB….Themselves – because it was an internal investigation (A Message from the President of CBBB November 18, 2010.)

But that wasn’t the point of this “account issues” post. I just want my money back, and to know why this employee is referencing BBB as someone who they are accredited through, when the folks at BBB have no idea what the heck I’m talking about when I have them look up Arenanet or NCSoft.

leurts.2789:

This is my friends account, my account is gone, someone changed the email, I didn’t even get to choose if I wanted to change it, its was just gone, while I was asleep, now I can’t do anything.

Same thing happened to me, and another friend of mine. Know dat feel Leurts. Just want my money back so I can take it over to Borderlands 2 or Torchlight 2 now…

Why does it matter who caught them? That has no bearing on this at all…it shouldn’t be happening at a “respected” organization.

And I did respond to your post: you made it clear that ArenaNet not being accredited means SOMETHING. What that something is isn’t as clear, but apparently people find what the BBB says is important which I have tried to show they don’t matter….particularly with a software company where it’s customers use more modern tools to determine their trustworthiness.

It matters who caught them because it means the organization cares enough to spot check itself, and correct it’s own errors.
But I could care less about the BBB’s standing. What matters to me is that earlier in this post an employee of Arenanet said they have an outstanding accreditation from an organization – when they actually do not.
That’s what is bothering me.