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 We’re trying to reach in IRL to confirm, but he’s been out farming, kinda like a bot all day; and he’s withdrawn all the money from the guildbank.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.