Guild Wars 2

So i got my account hacked. 1 forum post by a friend and 7 days later i get an email saying i got my account back. what it also said was that no items/characters can be restored.

i log on and i had 5 characters, each around level 10 and one level 30, GONE. just GONE. and Anet is telling me they cant bring them back? they have no backups of characters you make? What kind of company doesn’t have backups/restore capabilities.

thanks for reading and hopefully someone who has some influence sees this and changes things. also, sorry for ranting, but i needed to get this off my chest

they gave me a whole different account dude, it could be worse, atleast you got yours back.

So ummm what happens if heaven forbid you have server errors?

Put aside the hacking issue.

You’re talking 100,000 or more accounts instantly wiped?

What about hard coding people’s stuff back? Forget rolling it back, if people say they had a level 80 thief with such and such stuff why can’t you just put it back on their account? Let’s not forget that the security feature to change all the information on an account is non existent and that it’s been a known issue since day 1.

Let them make up a character the way they want, when they’re done go to the server terminal plug in level 80 instead of level 1. Give them 5g or something and send them on their merry way.

There has to be some compromise in this situation. Way back when EQ started having this issue they at least gave your character back and gave you a starter kit of sorts.

All the people that are victims are just being given “I’m sorry, this is something we hope to do in the future.”

I don’t even see how that helps you? You want us to recommend this game to our friends and family? How many of those people that you are not helping are going to do that for you?

“Ya sure the game was fun, until I got blamed for my account being stolen. Then when I got it back days later it was empty, and I was told sorry hope to help you in the future.”

Shadow X, assuming GW2 behaves the same way GW1 did there is no way to hard code it in there. There are no console lines in the client, there is no way to create stuff and just shove it in the game database. The console line is how many MMOs do their restoration. You are not actually getting your character back so much as having a new character that matches the level of the one which was deleted. Anet doesn’t offer this in order to prevent easy client hacks which would severely affect the game.

If the servers crash? Well they back those up! As it stands at the moment the replace everything or they replace nothing. So they could restore the database back to August 31 but many more players would loose progress – can you imagine how angry they would be?

The restore feature they are talking about has existed in GW fro around maybe 6 months. To be honest I’m not sure how it works however I’m guessing that it happens during the normal server backup cycle allowing for a little back and forth between the backup and “live” version. This is a guess. However can you imagine what might happen if this process bugged?

GaileGray.9587:

Lt Royal Shrimp.8326:

So i got my account hacked. 1 forum post by a friend and 7 days later i get an email saying i got my account back. what it also said was that no items/characters can be restored.

i log on and i had 5 characters, each around level 10 and one level 30, GONE. just GONE. and Anet is telling me they cant bring them back? they have no backups of characters you make? What kind of company doesn’t have backups/restore capabilities.

thanks for reading and hopefully someone who has some influence sees this and changes things. also, sorry for ranting, but i needed to get this off my chest

Interesting question. And you seem to assume that every company can do character roll-backs or full-account restorations? Nope, not every company can do that. In fact, what I believe is the largest MMO in the world (to date, anyway grin) does not have a restoration feature.

We are working on account restorations and will have them in the future. At that time you can elect to request that service.

If you are talking about “that-other-MMO” yes they do have character restoration, i had an alt that I deleted a year ago, recently i asked if they could be restored and they did.

Hrrm I find it pretty hard to believe that they don’t have access to the data servers storing our character information, it’s not just randomly put somewhere. There’s a specific spot for it and in that specific spot is a series of servers that connect to another series and somewhere in that is a monitor with a keyboard and mouse attached. While I am surely simplifying things I can’t be too far off in my guess that it could be changed with a bit of work. Nothing is impossible.

I’ve also had deleted characters restored in WoW, several times.

I’ve also had all items restored.

So I’m not sure Gaile’s intent with that falsehood.

Oh no you didn’t .

You know how long that game is alive. It has way more hours of work into it.
Beside’s problems like this is only going to make it better in time.

I’ve had characters restored and items restored in both WoW and EQ1 . Saying other games can’t do it is wrong. Saying they can’t or won’t is bad PR.

Lt Royal Shrimp.8326:

So i got my account hacked…

How did you get your account hacked? The only way i can think is if you went to buy gold from some site, in that case i support that they don’t restore anything. If it was through another method that you were hacked then as Gaile said, they don’t have a restore feature atm but in the future maybe.

With all respect Gaile, you saying the “other” big MMO doesn’t have a restoration feature is just PLAIN WRONG. Very, very, very wrong. I’ve had two friends hacked and I guarantee they both have characters & items gone from the incident.

vinotauro.5892:

With all respect Gaile, you saying the “other” big MMO doesn’t have a restoration feature is just PLAIN WRONG. Very, very, very wrong. I’ve had two friends hacked and I guarantee they both have characters & items gone from the incident.

Yeah, Gaile did a pretty thorough job of putting her foot firmly in her mouth with that statement.

EDIT: Unless she tries to save face by saying she’s speaking of Lineage or some other giant Asian MMO that most American’s don’t really think about.

ShadowX, of course they have access to the live server, they have access the same way the rest of us do through the game. By giving the live server no administration rights the live server cannot be hacked by outside parties, and the command line/console cannot be hacked in the client by botters. If they live server data had administration rights people would be able to hack in an delete your character without even bothering with your account credentials. They would be able to spam the database itself and potentially crash that without crashing the game server and who knows what that would do. When a database exists on the internet it can be accessed by anyone if they know the right address. When a database on the internet accepts only connections made from a very specific piece of software a lot of those problems melt away.

And all this negates the possibility that your GM accounts get hacked. Other games using the console to create new characters usually also allow the creation of gold, items, pretty much anything. Can you imagine the chaos if a GM’s account got hacked by gold sellers who created tonnes of gold and siphoned it away to associated accounts before selling it on? What about gems? They could potentially cause huge chaos in the market. And Anet would then be the worst company in the world if they tried to take all the created items out of the economy – did you see the whinning on the karma weapon incident?

At the end of the day Anet has decided administration level access either via their own machines or through the client isn’t worth the problems it could cause and could potentially fracture the community. I clearly remember accusations of favouritism when a prominent pvp player in GW1 was hacked. The simple fact that Anet could not spawn gold, armour, weapons was what kept the whole incident from becoming more than whispers of a conspiracy theory.

Anet have full access to the back ups and copies they take of the live server (which I assume they can probably fiddle with) yet as it stands at the moment they would have to take the live server down to provide a restoration feature. Now one thing Anet has NOT answered which may/may not improve things for those who have been hacked is whether the restoration feature – when ready – will be able to restore a single character back as far as August 25. In theory if they are restoring from the normal backup data then this will all depend on whether they keep the backup database for that long. If they are restoring from a special snapshot of the database, then that will depend on whether they have been taking that snapshot – and I certainly hope they have.

LOL…That’s a lot of typing for something you completely made up.

Archangel.1604:

vinotauro.5892:

With all respect Gaile, you saying the “other” big MMO doesn’t have a restoration feature is just PLAIN WRONG. Very, very, very wrong. I’ve had two friends hacked and I guarantee they both have characters & items gone from the incident.

Yeah, Gaile did a pretty thorough job of putting her foot firmly in her mouth with that statement.

EDIT: Unless she tries to save face by saying she’s speaking of Lineage or some other giant Asian MMO that most American’s don’t really think about.

Or Gaile was referring to a restoration feature rather than the creation of a new character with the same level, features etc. Semantics to be sure but there is still a difference in the way the restoration functions.

So what’s the difference? Well the restoration feature is a one hit thing returning your whole account to a point in time prior to when you got hacked. Meaning you easily get all your gold and gear back and there are no questions of favouritism or whatever-the-opposite-of-favouritism-is.

Most other MMOs function by a recreation feature, not restoration. They recreate your character at the same lvl, with the same gear, gold etc. Think about the work involved if you required multiple characters recreated in this way – and you’d really best know exactly how much gold you had because they might get it wrong.

Technically a restoration feature is superior in every way. It can be fully automated, doesn’t need to wait for a GM with the appropriate rights, and there is never any questions about whether they got it right.

GaileGray.9587:

Interesting question. And you seem to assume that every company can do character roll-backs or full-account restorations? Nope, not every company can do that. In fact, what I believe is the largest MMO in the world (to date, anyway grin) does not have a restoration feature.

We are working on account restorations and will have them in the future. At that time you can elect to request that service.

Factual assumptions and customer expectations aside – I LOVE this attitude, this is exactly how I want to hear customers being treated when they have an issue! [/sarcasm] If someone’s already complaining about the way they were serviced in the game, you’re going to come back with an attitude and patronize your clients? Not to mention other people have already shot-down your comparison claim? I love your game, but I’m becoming more and more disappointed in your customer service by the minute, ANet. :\

GaileGray.9587:

Interesting question. And you seem to assume that every company can do character roll-backs or full-account restorations? Nope, not every company can do that. In fact, what I believe is the largest MMO in the world (to date, anyway grin) does not have a restoration feature.

Actually, it would seem your company is one of the FEW that dont have it…that “other” MMO does…so does Funcom MMOs, and Turbine MMOs…even EA does and if they do and you dont…I would change that quick because EA shouldnt be better than anyone at anything when it comes to MMOs.

wow i didnt expect so many replies, i read them all and in most cases i agree with the people. sorry Anet, but you customer support is lacking, and i dont believe you dont have backups, and you have a very, VERY awesome game, dont get me wrong.