Guild Wars 2

First off,
Hi!
I’m sorry if I sound a little off in my following post, I’ll do my best to stay neutral, but after reading through it you may agree that I have every right to be really ticked off.
After the story, I’ll list the specific issues again.

The story:
Back in 2008 I’ve got my hands on Guild Wars and played it on and off for a few years. I had to contact support once because I forgot the names of my characters and I got a reply pretty fast and could play again.
Now a few Months ago I finally got my copy of Guild Wars 2 and that is when I ran into trouble. I still knew my mail account I used but wasn’t sure about my password, so after a few tries I tried a reset and waited a whole day for the mail to arrive. After double checking my mail account (including the spam folder) I tried again and when that mail didn’t arrive either, I began looking for help. That was the first time I noticed how the support system wasn’t that helpful really, but eventually I found an article that suggested I try to create a new account with the same e-mail to confirm that I had that right (or something like that) and to my surprise I was able to create a new account. This was definitely not supposed to happen as I still have all the mails confirming my purchases on that account (Guild Wars Factions, Nightfall, Eye of the North, …) and so I submitted a ticket on the 27th of March(!) which should include everything needed to re-instate the account (e-mail, GW key, permission to delete the newly created account if needed). Apart from the automated reply I did not receive anything but did not create a new ticket since a) I already know that submitting more than one ticket never helps and b) I read that it might actually delay processing of your initial ticket as well. I did however reply to that automatic mail (assuming that it will add a new entry on that ticket – since that’s how most ticket systems work) over a week ago with no mail back whatsoever.
My main problem was that I don’t want to associate my GW2 Key with an account that does not have access to my original GW key, because I actually tried just typing in the original GW key and attach it to my account, but it said that the key is already used up (which in itself does not make sense, the account it was tied to is gone, so why is the key not usable again?) and I most certainly don’t want to have to go through all this trouble again to get GW2 back as well.
I stumbled across a thread for tickets that hadn’t been processed for over 7 days and mine was way beyond that, so I finally wanted to ask if someone could have a look at it (just to note, all my mails so far have been in a polite to neutral tone, I’ve never been rude to support staff). However for some reason I wasn’t logged into the forum even though I had just logged into my account. After logging out and trying to use the “log in” link on the forum I got a cryptic error which basically tells me that I don’t have rights to use the guild wars 2 forum (presumably because I don’t own GW2). I then look for GW Forums only to find this article:
https://help.guildwars2.com/entries/104136943-Where-are-the-Guild-Wars-Support-Forums-
that supposedly gives a link to a section for Guild Wars. Only that link loads the main page of the support section.
So apparently the only way to get into the forum, in order to write a post that MAY get me a response on a ticket I submitted 2 months ago to get GW back I would actually have to attach a GW2 key to my account? Just how messed up is that? What if I didn’t actually have GW2?
Seeing that I had no choice (I could not find another way to get in contact with anyone that could actually help me with my problem) I now had a new issue: how do I attach a GW2 key to an existing account? The “Register” page linked to from the forum sign up has a link that says “How do I apply a serial code to an already existing account?” which AGAIN only loads the default support page. But I actually had a look under the big shiny button and read the text that says I should click the link “link account” to upgrade an existing account. Not exactly easy to find for people looking to upgrade their account (since there’s talk about ‘linking’ your GW and GW2 account which is not the same kind of ‘linking’ the link means – not confusing at all).
… because of a character limit i have to split this into two posts …

Now I have to enter my login data again after I just logged in already – though this is somewhat reasonable for people that have more than one account and don’t want to accidentally link the wrong account … i guess? – However instead of getting my account linked I get an error claiming my session has expired (granted it took me 2 minutes to find the GW2 Box with the key) but I just freaking entered my login data, why the hell can’t it just use that to log me ‘back’ in?! At least it remembered the key I just entered so I didn’t have to retype that, or so I thought because it actually only keeps giving me the same error over and over. Even in a different browser that had never been to the guild wars site. I tried to be clever and log out and back into the page (though I was obviously still logged in) but that did not change anything. I could not get it to accept my key. The error was always “400:49:1014:8000:1297 ErrPermission StsGate: permission denied ‘Auth/GetUserInfo’, {not logged in}”.
Great, so … I can’t play GW because the account is gone, I was asked to try to create a new one which actually worked, I submit a ticket to restore my original account that does not get processed for 2 months, my only hope to get a response is to post in a thread but to access the forums I need a GW2 key which I cannot add because I’m not logged in. WTH?!
Finally, I decide to register it to a new account, up to now I was trying to not cause too much trouble to the support guys, but what am I supposed to do?! There is no article in this excuse of a “knowledge base” that would cover my issue.
In the process of creating a new account I run into YET another issue, my password is not accepted even if it is different from my main account and it is longer than 8 characters. Unique apparently means it cannot be used by any of the other … how many million players??? Are you serious?!
Just as a side note, per the Code of Conduct:
“Do not make alternate forum accounts. Users are permitted one account per person.”
Yes this is an alternate account, but I obviously had no choice now, did I?
So, here we are, finally managed to log into the forum to post this and be able to link to when I post the ticket to check up on, in case there are questions (though it will most likely be too long to read).

If you read until here, thank you! I honestly don’t expect many people to read the entire story :-)

So the specific issues I found:
- Several dead links all over the support section and account pages (mainly login/register)
- No Forum access from an account that does not have a key attached
- cryptic / wrong error messages
- Attaching a key to an existing account is not clear (and again wrong/dead link)
- Attaching a key to an existing account doesn’t work
- password has to be unique for each single user? Either clarify or remove the limitation
- on the account with no key, I had a superlong ‘name’ which actually caused on issue on the main page (www.guildwars2.com), I was barely able to click ‘my account’ or ‘logout’ since it was mostly hidden behind the image slider
- another I just found with the forum, on chrome I can adjust the size of the (really tiny) input field, if i make it too wide and release the mouse it will be stuck because the overflow is hidden
- 5001 character limit? If you really have to keep that, at least tell me BEFORE I type in all that
- also just noticed that when I click subscribe, it just reloads the page and sends me to the end of it, though it still says “subscribe”. Did it work? Where do I see my subscribed pages? Why doesn’t it change to “subscribed” or “manage subscriptions”
- the “Learn More” button on the forum main page doesn’t do anything at all

All in all, I’m really really disappointed, but I don’t even care, all I want is to be able to play GW 1 and 2, that is what I wanted the entire time, it seriously can’t be asked too much?

The CS Team for GW1 seems to be limited, and tickets may take upwards of a few months.

I’m sure the Team will assist you, once your ticket makes its way to the front of the queue.

Good luck.

Thanks, I just hope it will be sooner rather than later

I have a similar problem right now and i was wondering how long you waited for a solution? :s

Miahell.7492:

I have a similar problem right now and i was wondering how long you waited for a solution? :s

You might wonder a long time — this thread is 2 years old; it’s not that likely that the OP will respond.

Not only that, but most of those issues (and responses) no longer even apply. If you have an issue with your account, contact the CS Team via the ‘Support’ link. You should receive the automated response almost immediately, and a personal response within a few hours to a few days.

Good luck.