Guild Wars 2

Our guild is hacked and gild was gone.
My guild WAS Never Die (ND) in Black Gate server.
one of guild leader’s account was hacked and he kicked all members include other guild leaders. (Is this possible? isn’t it system’s flaw? How kick all other guild leaders at once?)
We found out something wrong, and found hacker was online. so we submit support to stop it. but hacker was online for almost 7 hours and he sold all stuff and he kicked himself and guild was gone permanently.
I ask to support to help. but…

therer is no recover and make a new guild.

What? WELCOME TO FORM A NEW GUILD?
Wow wondergul. what support for? they always ctl+c and ctl+v, that’s it!
I never got helpful support. oh… I got one. when I asked I can’t purchase gem in gem store.
Why hacker destroyed our guild? why not just take gold? Is it purposed hack?
We fought in WvW. and nothing.
and I’m tired with talking with useless support.
Dear ArenaNet. Guildwars2 is excellent game. but -frankly- your support is useless.
(I want to use much meaner words)
there are lots of excellent games waiting on this year. Is this the time to enjoy current success?
If don’t understand how gamers feel, It will fail.
Is it hard to help gamers? I don’t think so.
to Almost 500 members to make new guild? Is this your official reply?
Just threw away 1 YEAR’S EFFORT?
Wonderful! If so, I will leave GW2. It looks like better to play FFXIV until Everquest next released.

If you want to keep your guild safely, make only one guild leader and bury the computer into the ground. that’s only one solution. ArenaNet never help you out.

@Pringles.6542

You try to blame Arena.Net, but it seems that fault lays with the individual who had top priority permission in your guild and had his/her account hacked. This person’s security set up on their PC, or their email, or their account password, was in a weakened state that allowed for the breach of account.

Also if, as you said, you’d had multiple guild leaders, then someone should have stepped in and done something immediate as soon as the first or second kick happened. A quick split-second demotion of the individual prior to any more kicks would have stopped the motion of the break, but that’s more something that has to be caught on the minute it’s happening.

And another thing I want to bring up is how you have a permissions set up that other guild leaders are able to kick other guild leaders. How/why is this allowed? You’ve basically allowed your guild to have a leadership where anyone of them can backstab the rest and make off with the bounty. Sounds like a poor set up.

Last of the last things needed to be mentioned is that account recovery is possible, but guild recovery is not. The account recovery system wasn’t even created until about 3 months post-launch, but they have no such system for guilds. The reason behind this is because someone can “claim a hack”, but it could just be internal drama that splits the group; so a more hands-off approach is taken. It’s also the responsibility of the guild, as mentioned above, to structure their leadership properly with the allowable permissions they’d like each to have or not to have. And, it’s also up to the guild to make sure to inquire about the highest guild members having secure, reliable accounts so as to not threaten the guild with a possible hacked account.

Place the blame where the blame belongs: both the account holder and the guild itself.

That can happen with any mmorpg. I remember playing WoW and my account was hacked. They kicked all of the members and stole everything from the guild bank. Same thing happened with Aion.

There isn’t really anything Anet could do afterward that would fix it. The only thing you can do is try to prevent the situation from happening again by getting a virus protection program or some other anti-malware program to protect your computer and your information on your computer. Make sure every leader in your guild also has those programs and runs them daily.

But yeah, Anet never helps me out with any bugs that are their problem in the first place.

welcome to Anet.

In GW1 I got hacked once. The only game I ever got hacked in btw. I had 14 characters at the time and more than 50 elite armour sets, including some obsidian sets. All of it was gone. Anet’s response: block the account and give it back to me with naked toons. I was lucky the hacker didn’t delete my characters or they would’ve been gone too, but I lost everything I built up over years.

Anet never had and still doesn’t have any tools in their tool set for recovery. The fact is they can’t help you because they didn’t invest in any sort of recovery system. That’s the answer I got in GW1 and it looks like that approach is still the same.

Welcome to the Internet, where you invite the crooks into your home.

They actually do have an Account Restoration Tool; but, unfortunately, no restoration tools for Guilds as those affect many accounts at once, usually.

Gehenna.3625:

welcome to Anet.

In GW1 I got hacked once.

That’s wrong noone “hacks” your GW1 account. You gave them your login informations, either via a keylogger or by visiting phising sites. As most of the time the customer made the mistake and it is the companies good will to give the account back to the owner.

Gehenna.3625:

Anet never had and still doesn’t have any tools in their tool set for recovery. The fact is they can’t help you because they didn’t invest in any sort of recovery system. That’s the answer I got in GW1 and it looks like that approach is still the same.

They did (and still do, I think) have a recovery system in place in GW1. It was just implemented pretty late in the game.

Pringles.6542:

How kick all other guild leaders at once?)

Hierarchy.. The highest guild rank has the option to manage lower ranks.. So the true guild leader (the one that started the guild) has by default the highest rank. If he/she creates a guild rank called “guild leader” and adds some people in this, it will still remain a lower rank than his (although not easy notable), so he can manage this rank (and kick all members from it, …)

Inculpatus cedo.9234:

They actually do have an Account Restoration Tool; but, unfortunately, no restoration tools for Guilds as those affect many accounts at once, usually.

but how about just guild merits and influence? except items and gold.
Is it impossible?
and this is ‘guild’ wars so I think they prepare some support for it.

Its more than just getting AV or anti-malware software. If you join fansites, or guild sites, or any number of other game related websites, you should be sure that you are not using the same account info that you use to play games with. There are alot of forums and sites out there that get hacked into on a regular basis. They take your username/password from that site and try to use it to log into games.

It is a little mind blowing that they don’t have some sort of recovery tools. Perhaps they do but not on a guild scale like this. Sad to hear that happened. I would also be devastated if only for all the influence and merits etc.

bob.5680:

Welcome to the Internet, where you invite the crooks into your home.

I don’t know. He said he did regular update and use anti-virus program.
Security looks easy but hard to control. too much mines.

Pringles.6542:

bob.5680:

Welcome to the Internet, where you invite the crooks into your home.

I don’t know. He said he did regular update and use anti-virus program.
Security looks easy but hard to control. too much mines.

Oh, I agree. This is why I limit what I do on a Windows system to as little as possible. Not only has Windows proven to be more vulnerable than most systems out there, it is also the biggest target. Even with regular anti-virus checks you’re still susceptible to zero-day vulnerabilities. It’s a very dangerous place as I see it.

Having worked in a capacity where backup & restore was my daily routine, it is a bit more involved than copy and pasting. Im going to go out on a limb and guess that arenanet utilizes some sort of veritas or equilogic type of backup application and infrastructure for their servers.

But I do not know why they continue to say they cannot(or wont) restore things like this. If I followed all of their security proceedures, and still got hacked… I would stop playing in a heart beat. Theres no way, no way on this green earth that I would continue. As a guild, this would be utterly demoralizing. Arenanet needs to help out these guilds.

2-step verification.

I have never been hacked, yet one person has attempted (failed password). Even if they had succeeded in the first part, they would not have been able to get the code that’s on a 20 second rotation.

Guild Leaders are always able to kick other Guild Leaders. That’s how the system works. They all have equal (undeniable) power over each other. Any of them can demote or kick anyone else.

kokiman.2364:

Gehenna.3625:

welcome to Anet.

In GW1 I got hacked once.

That’s wrong noone “hacks” your GW1 account. You gave them your login informations, either via a keylogger or by visiting phising sites. As most of the time the customer made the mistake and it is the companies good will to give the account back to the owner.

The expected bull answer.

If it was me, then tell me why I never got hacked before, not in any of the other games I played at the same time I got hacked, and never since? Exactly you can’t and you’re just assuming things but you don’t know anything. This story about it being the end user at fault is true in some cases but it’s far from the only possibility. The things where the companies are responsible, they never discuss of course, but also companies get hacked. Is that also not being hacked? Is that the company giving the data away? C’mon…

And to answer the other person, yes they had account recovery and that means you get back what’s left of it, you don’t get any items or lost gold or whatever back. As I said, I got my account back with naked toons, not a single item was restored and this happened about 2 years ago, so quite late into the game.

cesmode.4257:

But I do not know why they continue to say they cannot(or wont) restore things like this.

Well some of the challenges that springs to mind is:

how do you determine how far the roll back should go?

if a player removed something from the guild vault during the rollback period, legitimately or not, how do you track that item and any other item/value that may have been modified in the interim through use or trading? do you go in and undo a bunch of transactions that were linked to it?

@Siphaed: Well, there is a thing called logs. These games produce an enormous amount of data given to the developers. And these requests for restoration are reviewed by humans, carefully. If a request came their way for a guild restoration, protocol for that type of request would be to look at chat logs and see if there wasn’t some sort of internal squabble or some other red flag that would deem a ‘no restoration’ response.

During my tenure with WoW, these cases were scrutinized carefully by blizzard and people were told “No, youre account wont be restored due to xyz”.

It may cost a few bucks and take time, but it is proper support for a game the size of an MMO.

Esplen.3940:

2-step verification.

I have never been hacked, yet one person has attempted (failed password). Even if they had succeeded in the first part, they would not have been able to get the code that’s on a 20 second rotation.

Pretty much this. In order to beat 2 step verification they have to have a keylogger on your machine to long enough to get many data points of your token codes and have a good machine and program to determine your unique algorithm.

Whereas most people that get hacked do some because they use the same password on a website that can be associated with the game and that website is compromised.

GrandmaFunk.3052:

cesmode.4257:

But I do not know why they continue to say they cannot(or wont) restore things like this.

Well some of the challenges that springs to mind is:

how do you determine how far the roll back should go?

if a player removed something from the guild vault during the rollback period, legitimately or not, how do you track that item and any other item/value that may have been modified in the interim through use or trading? do you go in and undo a bunch of transactions that were linked to it?

This is all determined as per a policy arenante sets forth for the people that do the restores.

When I was playing WoW, my account was hacked. The guy sold all my stuff, gear, etc. Lost everything, but the gold he earned remained on the account haha. Blizzard restored everything that was sold and deleted, including placing characters back on the correct servers. And they came pretty close in terms of items lost and restored. I dont know how they did it, but they did.

Also, they allowed me to keep that gold that the hacker made.. so I guess I made out in the end Had to wait 2.5 weeks, but I guess that was the price to pay.

Gehenna.3625:

kokiman.2364:

Gehenna.3625:

welcome to Anet.

In GW1 I got hacked once.

That’s wrong noone “hacks” your GW1 account. You gave them your login informations, either via a keylogger or by visiting phising sites. As most of the time the customer made the mistake and it is the companies good will to give the account back to the owner.

The expected bull answer.

If it was me, then tell me why I never got hacked before, not in any of the other games I played at the same time I got hacked, and never since? Exactly you can’t and you’re just assuming things but you don’t know anything. This story about it being the end user at fault is true in some cases but it’s far from the only possibility. The things where the companies are responsible, they never discuss of course, but also companies get hacked. Is that also not being hacked? Is that the company giving the data away? C’mon…

And to answer the other person, yes they had account recovery and that means you get back what’s left of it, you don’t get any items or lost gold or whatever back. As I said, I got my account back with naked toons, not a single item was restored and this happened about 2 years ago, so quite late into the game.

Actually, a lot of times your information is just held for a long time. I know for WoW they actually had information feeds that would give them enough information so that they would only hack your account after you had quit the game for a period of time (I think it was somewhere between 3-6 months).

What you don’t know is that your information, if you’ve been using it for the past year or longer, has most likely already been compromised. I hate to sound like someone with a tin hat on, but that’s just how it is. If you paid attention to GW2’s tips on passwords, that would give you an edge, along with paying attention to the “Please consider changing your password.” note that appears every few months on the launcher.

If you had to use a password that you’ve never used before when creating your account, that’s because your password was found in logs of attempted account cracks. During the early days of the games life, a lot of hacker-bots attempted to log into accounts using information they had from previous games and time. Arenanet logged these and blacklisted all the passwords on the list.

Siphaed.9235:

@Pringles.6542

You try to blame Arena.Net, but it seems that fault lays with the individual who had top priority permission in your guild and had his/her account hacked. This person’s security set up on their PC, or their email, or their account password, was in a weakened state that allowed for the breach of account.

Also if, as you said, you’d had multiple guild leaders, then someone should have stepped in and done something immediate as soon as the first or second kick happened. A quick split-second demotion of the individual prior to any more kicks would have stopped the motion of the break, but that’s more something that has to be caught on the minute it’s happening.

And another thing I want to bring up is how you have a permissions set up that other guild leaders are able to kick other guild leaders. How/why is this allowed? You’ve basically allowed your guild to have a leadership where anyone of them can backstab the rest and make off with the bounty. Sounds like a poor set up.

Last of the last things needed to be mentioned is that account recovery is possible, but guild recovery is not. The account recovery system wasn’t even created until about 3 months post-launch, but they have no such system for guilds. The reason behind this is because someone can “claim a hack”, but it could just be internal drama that splits the group; so a more hands-off approach is taken. It’s also the responsibility of the guild, as mentioned above, to structure their leadership properly with the allowable permissions they’d like each to have or not to have. And, it’s also up to the guild to make sure to inquire about the highest guild members having secure, reliable accounts so as to not threaten the guild with a possible hacked account.

Place the blame where the blame belongs: both the account holder and the guild itself.

thank you for opinion.
but how can I know wether other guild member’s security status?
Go to his or her house and check his computer?
I even don’t know one guild leader can kick other guild leader.
also as I know only guild leader can start guild mission. so we need back up guild leader for that.
Yes, first problem is his security breach. maybe his mistake or not. I can’t find out.
through this accident, I think there are lots of things to improve guild system.
and also If one user did mistake, is it mean don’t need to help him?
I think It’s natural to help him, if Arenanet can do it.(not only arenanet, all situations) and that’s the reason why support team exist. (not only copy and paste)

I asked question at 8:30 and got answer 9:04. Did they have a time to think how to help us? I think they just follow some kind of protocol like ‘if someone ask recovery, say NO’.

If title of ‘guildwars2’ means real ‘guild’, they need to make more reasonable and more supportive.

cesmode.4257:

Also, they allowed me to keep that gold that the hacker made.. so I guess I made out in the end Had to wait 2.5 weeks, but I guess that was the price to pay.

That just points out how flawed and extremely vulnerable to abuse their restore system is.

ex: player A logs in from a different IP than usual and gives out all his items/gold to a few collaborators. then player A contacts Anet claiming he’s been hacked.. following your idea: they “give back” all his stuff.

except that all his original items are still out there in the economy and his collaborators can slowly funnel that wealth back to him. the game hasn’t been restored, they just duplicated his previous inventory.

player A has effectively doubled his wealth.

Pringles.6542:

Siphaed.9235:

@Pringles.6542

You try to blame Arena.Net, but it seems that fault lays with the individual who had top priority permission in your guild and had his/her account hacked. This person’s security set up on their PC, or their email, or their account password, was in a weakened state that allowed for the breach of account.

Also if, as you said, you’d had multiple guild leaders, then someone should have stepped in and done something immediate as soon as the first or second kick happened. A quick split-second demotion of the individual prior to any more kicks would have stopped the motion of the break, but that’s more something that has to be caught on the minute it’s happening.

And another thing I want to bring up is how you have a permissions set up that other guild leaders are able to kick other guild leaders. How/why is this allowed? You’ve basically allowed your guild to have a leadership where anyone of them can backstab the rest and make off with the bounty. Sounds like a poor set up.

Last of the last things needed to be mentioned is that account recovery is possible, but guild recovery is not. The account recovery system wasn’t even created until about 3 months post-launch, but they have no such system for guilds. The reason behind this is because someone can “claim a hack”, but it could just be internal drama that splits the group; so a more hands-off approach is taken. It’s also the responsibility of the guild, as mentioned above, to structure their leadership properly with the allowable permissions they’d like each to have or not to have. And, it’s also up to the guild to make sure to inquire about the highest guild members having secure, reliable accounts so as to not threaten the guild with a possible hacked account.

Place the blame where the blame belongs: both the account holder and the guild itself.

thank you for opinion.
but how can I know wether other guild member’s security status?
Go to his or her house and check his computer?
I even don’t know one guild leader can kick other guild leader.
also as I know only guild leader can start guild mission. so we need back up guild leader for that.
Yes, first problem is his security breach. maybe his mistake or not. I can’t find out.
through this accident, I think there are lots of things to improve guild system.
and also If one user did mistake, is it mean don’t need to help him?
I think It’s natural to help him, if Arenanet can do it.(not only arenanet, all situations) and that’s the reason why support team exist. (not only copy and paste)

I asked question at 8:30 and got answer 9:04. Did they have a time to think how to help us? I think they just follow some kind of protocol like ‘if someone ask recovery, say NO’.

If title of ‘guildwars2’ means real ‘guild’, they need to make more reasonable and more supportive.

The bottom line is guild security is the responsibility of the guild. Yes, you should always have at least 2 full guild leaders in case 1 loses his account, but never multiple backup guild leaders as that is just asking for trouble. Anet has stated time and time again they will not get involved in internal guild affairs, and this falls under that category.
As to restorations, they do have a system to restore accounts as they have snapshots of the accounts over time. Restoring an individual account is one thing, but restoring a whole guild? That would be not only complex, but also could lead to many other problems. Doing a restore is not as simple as restore a file. A game like this must use some form of database. A database is a very tricky thing to deal with, and a single mistake can render the whole thing useless. I have seen first hand where restoring a single record caused so many issues, the entire database had to be restored and all new information lost. If it’s a relational database, it’s even more of an issue as every record relates to every other record, so any change to 1 could effect all the rest.
This has happened before, with the guild leaders being hacked, banned, and with members taking all the items from the guild bank. The guild is responsible for their own internal security, protecting from rogue members or leaders included.

@ShiningSquirrel.3751

Thank you for your reply.

Yes, I already learned importance of security from this.
But it happened. And Just sit down or find another game?
I try to find any help if possible.
I asked all other resource and found out one guild hacked and they restore all stuff.
So I asked him how did it. Why different result?

One man’s security breach or mistake lead to ruin one year efforts.
He was a commander. he lead WvW with enthusiasm. he spent his own money to
buy seige weapons and foods and upgrades. He encourage other ppl to join WvW.
I like him even he did mistake. and I want to help him and I want restore our guild.
Is this wrong? Just make another new guild? not try to restore original one?

Maybe Anet doesn’t restore our guild. but other guild member read this thread and prevent this horrible thing.

Security breaching can happen to anyone. And there are no way to find out others’ security level.
At least, Anet need to improve guild system to minimize when this thing happen.

kokiman.2364:

Gehenna.3625:

welcome to Anet.

In GW1 I got hacked once.

That’s wrong noone “hacks” your GW1 account. You gave them your login informations, either via a keylogger or by visiting phising sites. As most of the time the customer made the mistake and it is the companies good will to give the account back to the owner.

Umm, wrong. I never visit any websites besides the ones I know are trusted and popular. In fact, I don’t visit any websites I don’t recognize right away. My account was hacked in Guild Wars 1.

Galtrix.7369:

kokiman.2364:

Gehenna.3625:

welcome to Anet.

In GW1 I got hacked once.

That’s wrong noone “hacks” your GW1 account. You gave them your login informations, either via a keylogger or by visiting phising sites. As most of the time the customer made the mistake and it is the companies good will to give the account back to the owner.

Umm, wrong. I never visit any websites besides the ones I know are trusted and popular. In fact, I don’t visit any websites I don’t recognize right away. My account was hacked in Guild Wars 1.

What other games did you play, because I’m not sure about GW1, but I remember in the mid-2000’s, there were a few game companies that lost a lot of user information and tried to keep it under lock and key. A few of these companies were Nexon and Blizzard.

Esplen.3940:

snip

Nice story and it could be true or not. Also Anet could’ve gotten hacked. Point is, we’ll never know for sure and what this thread is actually about is the fact that Anet hasn’t invested in tools like some other games do to help people recover their stuff.

Accounts get hacked. It’s a fact of life basically. I don’t even care whose fault it is at this stage, but bottom line is that game companies know this stuff happens and they then decide what they want to do to help their customers or not.

Online games are not just a product, it’s a service. I think that if people play the same game for years and collect stuff that takes time to get etc. that it’s a good idea to have something in place that you can help your own customers with.

The fact that Anet doesn’t offer it, is purely a cost decision, nothing more. Possibly their business model is at fault there. As much as people hate subs, there are downsides to things being cheaper.

At the time my account was hacked, I only had a few games. WoW, and some other single player games. If I can remember correctly, I think that my Guild Wars account was hacked before the big complaints about WoW losing account information was underway. I could be wrong about that though. That could definitely explain how they got a hold of my account.

Always use the 2 part verification scheme for online games. If the game doesn’t offer one, do not play it.

Gehenna.3625:

Esplen.3940:

snip

Nice story and it could be true or not. Also Anet could’ve gotten hacked. Point is, we’ll never know for sure and what this thread is actually about is the fact that Anet hasn’t invested in tools like some other games do to help people recover their stuff.

Accounts get hacked. It’s a fact of life basically. I don’t even care whose fault it is at this stage, but bottom line is that game companies know this stuff happens and they then decide what they want to do to help their customers or not.

Online games are not just a product, it’s a service. I think that if people play the same game for years and collect stuff that takes time to get etc. that it’s a good idea to have something in place that you can help your own customers with.

The fact that Anet doesn’t offer it, is purely a cost decision, nothing more. Possibly their business model is at fault there. As much as people hate subs, there are downsides to things being cheaper.

As has been said in this thread several times, Anet does offer account restorations for hacked accounts. If your account is hacked, and all your toons and items are deleted, you can get them fully restored. Guilds are different story however.

Accounts rarely get hacked. The only time I have seen actual hacking was on the iPhone app Order & Chaos. Your info was not secured and someone in the vicinity of your character could grab your info.

Most likely the same email address of the user “hacked” is used in this game and everywhere else. They register to websites, those website get compromised, and people have your info. This is why you NEVER give out an email address tied to something you’re not willing to lose.

The majority of the time it is the user’s fault.