A story of a hacked account

A story of a hacked account

in Account & Technical Support

Posted by: Morgdane.3582

Morgdane.3582

I want to share this story to warn other players. Apparently, it is Arena Net’s policy that if a hacker gains access to an account, they will not, in any way, restore anything lost to your guild. My first email to them:

“Hey guys at A-net; I think one of our guildmates accounts has been hacked. We’re trying to reach in IRL to confirm, but he’s been out farming, kinda like a bot all day; and he’s withdrawn all the money from the guildbank. He’s also not responding to any message in game.

His character name is: —-———, His main acct name is —-———. Beyond that, I don’t really have more information about his account.

If his account has been hacked, can we get the 25 gp back into the guild bank and help with contacting him to recover whatever else may have been stolen from his account.

I’m betting you can probably check the IP information to confirm where he logged in from today. Attached is a picture of the guild bank history."

Their reply:
“Thank you for contacting the Guild Wars 2 Support Team!

We understand your concern, but we will be unable to discuss your friend’s account with you. We are only able to assist the person who created the account. Please have your friend contact us from his/her own e-mail address so that we can address the issue at hand. We will not be able to discuss your friend’s account with you, nor any support efforts conducted for his/her account."

I understand. A reasonable response for privacy. No harm here; except that when the friend contacted support, they were unable to help with the guild bank. So I replied again, asking for help with the guild bank. Their response:

“Thank you for your update.

We would like you to know that even if we perform a restoration on your friends account, we are not able to restore guild banks.

I apologize for any inconvenience this may caused you."

Polite, cordial. Again, no fault to their politeness…except for the fact that they’re basically saying no. So…this raised questions for me. They back up our characters (apparently monthly according to what my friend said), but not our guild banks?

My reply:

“So…let me get this straight. You guys are the developers of this game. You control nearly every aspect of the software and you cannot add gold to a guild bank, or send it to one of our mailboxes so we can put it in? Quite frankly I don’t buy it.

As well; it rather ticks me off that after the several hundred dollars we have spent on these two accounts that you are unwilling to help out when we have given documentation showing the funds were withdrawn and your own login records will prove that the account that was hacked was logged in from a different ip address.

There should be no question now of if the funds were stolen or not. The only question now is, is arena net going to do what it is fully capable of doing to restore virtual money that costs you nothing, or are you going to alienate a guild of players who have been following your games since guild wars 1. "

and their response:

“Thank you for updating us regarding this issue.

While we understand that you would have preferred to receive a different response to your petition, we must reiterate that we are unable to fulfill your request. "

So…now this leaves me to believe that Arena net doesn’t really care one whit about the player base. Restoring our money costs them nothing. So…they are unwilling to do anything to help the players who pay their paychecks. Truly Arena net…this is a sad day when I can say that Blizzard has better customer service.

A story of a hacked account

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Posted by: Hydroclasm.8572

Hydroclasm.8572

I contacted support once about a guild leader who had been missing for ~6 months, causing problems with the guild leadership, and asked if they were able to change the ranks of some people in the guild (get someone else to leader, change the previous leader to officer). Support told me there was nothing they could do to help, and that my best bet was to try contacting the missing leader.

It seems as thought support isn’t able to do much of anything regarding guilds, or has been told not to do anything involving guilds. I’m really not sure why this is, but it’s extremely disappointing and a large flaw in their support system.

A story of a hacked account

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Posted by: Morgdane.3582

Morgdane.3582

Definitely have to agree Hydroclasm. Right now I’m not upset that my guildmates account was hacked, I’m upset that Arenanet has made the conscious choice to set a policy for their customer service staff to follow -not- to help their player base.

Poor decision making there.

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Posted by: chemiclord.3978

chemiclord.3978

I think you would find ANY game support to be EXTREMELY reluctant to talk to a player concerning another player’s account. It’s just not done, and for very good reason. You aren’t that player. It isn’t your account. The information is NOT yours to request.

Call up Blizzard, and ask them to restore [x] to another player’s guild/account, and you would get the same answer.

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Posted by: JustTrogdor.7892

JustTrogdor.7892

I didn’t read in their responses that they ’don’t want to’ but instead that they are ‘unable to’. Perhaps they do not have the capability at this time to restore guild banks and other guild functions. I know it seems like it is something that they should be able to do but it doesn’t mean they can.

The Burninator

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Posted by: Morgdane.3582

Morgdane.3582

Good points; however we were not asking about help for the other player, that had already been done. We were asking for the return of the funds stolen from the guild bank that we were the guild masters of.

In regards to unable to…as I said in my reply to them…they are the developers of the game. They control nearly every aspect of the game. How hard is it to spawn gold and send it in mail?

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Posted by: Astral Projections.7320

Astral Projections.7320

Maybe because for accounts, they don’t spawn gold. They take ‘snapshots’ of accounts periodically and then restore them to to an earlier snapshot from before a hack. Guild banks are separate from accounts. They can be abandoned or traded between people by switching guild leaders, so there is no true owner of a guild bank. If they can’t be reset to a previous time like an account, and if ANet can or will not spawn money, and they don’t, then there may not be anything they can do for a guild bank.

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Posted by: Morgdane.3582

Morgdane.3582

Which would be by decisions they made to choose not to be able to. If they chose not to place a system for their customer service team to spawn items, that is their choice. If they chose not to back up guild banks, that again, is their choice. Both choices result in the player not being supported by the company.

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Posted by: ShiningSquirrel.3751

ShiningSquirrel.3751

Support takes a completely “hands off” approach to guilds. Guild security is the responsibility of the guild leader. There can be many problems with a guild, “a member took all our stuff and left”, “a member took xx gold without permission”, “a member kicked players from the guild without permission”, etc, etc.
As to a guild banks contents when an account is restored, it’s not the same. When a players account is hacked, the entire account is rolled back to a previous point in time. They do not restore what was taken, they restore the entire state of the account. To do the same for a guild would be a huge problem. Any updates would be gone, points earned, items deposited in the bank after the hack would be deleted, members added to the guild after the hack would be gone, etc. Your upset and it’s understandable, but it happens.

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Posted by: JustTrogdor.7892

JustTrogdor.7892

In regards to unable to…as I said in my reply to them…they are the developers of the game. They control nearly every aspect of the game. How hard is it to spawn gold and send it in mail?

That is hard to say. Customer support staff are most likely not programmers as well. They are given a set of tools to work with that allow them to perform certain limited functions such as account roll backs, reinstating accounts and so forth. If they have not been provided with a tool to replace guild banks then, well, they probably cannot do it. As for mailing the gold, perhaps they cannot verify it was in the guild bank to start with and who should ‘own’ that gold if they were to mail it. While characters are backed up regularly it doesn’t mean they have a similar feature for guild banks.

There are certain situations in most types of customer support where staff members hands are just tied and they can only do so much. It doesn’t mean they don’t want to, or because they are lazy, or just to tick you off. If anything I can see being unhappy that there is no method available to them to do what you requested but that really isn’t a customer support issue but more of a technical limitation issue I would think. Perhaps you should post a suggestion in the suggestion forum regarding a allowing support staff to be able to roll back guild banks as well.

The Burninator

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Posted by: Morgdane.3582

Morgdane.3582

And in the case of a player stealing from the guild, I can honestly agree with you; but what security can a guild leader take, aside from blocking all access to the guild bank, in order to protect their guilds funds from hackers then? We sent documentation on exactly what was missing. Their choice to use a rollback system only is not our responsibility. The security measures A-net placed into effect failed; and when it came time to ask for help…their answer was no.

The argument of them being “unable” to help when they have programmers who make new content for this game monthly falls deaf to me. The dev’s already have the tools to spawn items, they use them every time they send out mass mailings with new items. We sent them proof of exactly what was taken, and that is all that we asked to be returned.

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Posted by: Morgdane.3582

Morgdane.3582

@JustTrogdor; I’m not upset with the support staff. I’m upset that the policy makers who decided not to allow the support staff to help the players. I do customer service for a living, I know well how it feels to have your hands tied. I find it hard to believe though, that they do not possess the ability to contact someone who would be able to do something though.

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Posted by: Stooperdale.3560

Stooperdale.3560

I would never expect them to replace items lost from guild banks. GW2 has a very hands off policy for these matters. They generally let players sort out their own problems.

Other games can have a lot support contact and replace items ‘no questions asked’ even if you are just stupid enough to delete the things by accident. Those services tend to be available for monthly subscribers, something GW2 doesn’t have. Those games also tend to have a lot of idiots filing complaints to the support team all the time because they know they’ll get attention and it doesn’t necessarily make a game.

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Posted by: CameronJames.4897

CameronJames.4897

Could you even imagine the carnage a rogue member of the support staff could do of they could just spawn gold??

I think they responded fairly.

And yes, you should protect the guild bank at all costs. The best way to protect valuable items and gold is to place it into the smaller separate vault and only allow yourself and the trusted guild leaders access. If anyone else needs something they should message you in game.

Guilds are your responsibility and you must take every measure to keep them secure.

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Posted by: ShinjoNaomi.1896

ShinjoNaomi.1896

I recall back on City of Heroes we had similar problems when it came to Super Groups. If someone came in and stole everything out of the SG’s storage bins, we were basically S.o.L.
It kind of makes me wonder about the hard-coding that goes into those aspects of the game that makes it hard to let customer support help…
On the other hand, I can see how it can be abused as well, so… Double-edged sword really.

“If half as many people were half as brave in real life as they were online…
… The human race would never have to worry about be oppressed again.”
I think trolls should have their computers smashed. ’Its all part of the game. U mad bro?’

(edited by ShinjoNaomi.1896)

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Posted by: Inculpatus cedo.9234

Inculpatus cedo.9234

How could they possibly ‘restore’ a Guild bank? The bank is connected to everyone that uses it. They would have to restore everyone’s account that was in the Guild. Some people might not want to have their account ‘rolled back’ and be restored to a previous time. Creating gold or other items out of thin air would probably cause a nightmare for the economy, as anyone and everyone might ask to have items or gold ‘replaced’, even when it wasn’t warranted. The amount of time and resources that would be needed to investigate each and every account tied to a guild, or a request for replacement would probably be counter-productive, in regards to the health of the entire game.

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Posted by: Lord Kuru.3685

Lord Kuru.3685

If they restore your guild bank to what it was before the hack, all the stuff that had been put in the bank after that point would be lost. Now you’d have more players upset. If they just give you your 25 gold back, then they run the risk of people fraudulently claim their account has been hacked.

I don’t think this is an indication that Anet doesn’t care about its customers — it’s a pretty no-win situation for Anet here.

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Posted by: champ.7021

champ.7021

If they restore your guild bank to what it was before the hack, all the stuff that had been put in the bank after that point would be lost. Now you’d have more players upset. If they just give you your 25 gold back, then they run the risk of people fraudulently claim their account has been hacked.

I don’t think this is an indication that Anet doesn’t care about its customers — it’s a pretty no-win situation for Anet here.

Isnt there a record of withdrawls and deposits into the guild bank. Couldnt they just look at that and figure out whether it was actually taken out and just give back what was taken. I mean it cant be that big of a deal.

Also to the OP, this really sucks. Although its not that much gold (from my perspective) the principle remains. For example in my guild people have been depositing their minis and if someone were to take them out they could probably have 100s of gold.

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Posted by: Vayne.8563

Vayne.8563

If they restore your guild bank to what it was before the hack, all the stuff that had been put in the bank after that point would be lost. Now you’d have more players upset. If they just give you your 25 gold back, then they run the risk of people fraudulently claim their account has been hacked.

I don’t think this is an indication that Anet doesn’t care about its customers — it’s a pretty no-win situation for Anet here.

Isnt there a record of withdrawls and deposits into the guild bank. Couldnt they just look at that and figure out whether it was actually taken out and just give back what was taken. I mean it cant be that big of a deal.

Also to the OP, this really sucks. Although its not that much gold (from my perspective) the principle remains. For example in my guild people have been depositing their minis and if someone were to take them out they could probably have 100s of gold.

So if I go and take a bunch of stuff out of my bank and then claim my account was hacked…how can they possibly verify that. Maybe my roommate logged in while I was sleeping and did it. It’s just not that easy.

Experience tells us if you give people a chance to cheat and steal, a percentage of them will. People can log into their own account, maybe from a friend’s house, say they were hacked and then what?

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Posted by: Galen Grey.4709

Galen Grey.4709

I dont know if this will work or not but you might try asking your friend to ask support to restore his account at the point where the hacker withdrew the money from the guild bank but before he sent it off to someone else so that your friend will have the guild money and then he can desposit it himself into the guild bank?

It might not work but seems like it might fit in with what they can/are allowed to do so perhaps its worth a try.

Edit: There is a possibility this might not be technically possible. I dont know how often they backup characters but the theif might have done the withdrawal and the transfer in between backups. still nothing lost by trying.

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Posted by: lordkrall.7241

lordkrall.7241

Another thing to keep in mind is that just because they are developing the game doesn’t mean they can just snap their fingers and suddenly have a new functionality added. It takes time and resources to program stuff, and even if they did decide to add it it would probably end up hurting more than helping.

Krall Bloodsword – Mesmer
Krall Peterson – Warrior
Piken Square

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Posted by: mercury ranique.2170

mercury ranique.2170

Arenanets statement is that they do not involve themselfes in inside guildpolicy’s and let guilds govern themselfes.

There are 2 important reasons for it
1: Guilds have their own rules/culture/background. anet isn’t aware of that nor can they.
2: (many) guilds know a good amount of drama.

I’m afraid there is little that Anet can do. What for your guild might be logical, might not be for another guild. Besides that, Anet doesnt know how the relations are in a guild.

A good guild limits access to the guildbank or atleast the good stuff in the guildbank. For example in my guild off 500 people only 4 people have access to the full bank. I’m an officer, and if I need something for organising an activity I have to ask them to get the resources out. The 4 people have been asked to make sure their security is as tight as possible.

Arise, ye farmers of all nations
Arise, opressed of Tyria!