Guild Wars 2

The ticket I sent in yesterday evening just got answered (within 24 hours)

I actually just received a reply 30 minutes ago.
Now waiting how long it’s gonna take for them to reply back… back to the waitingline

nightcrawl.9423:

If I would have known paying 10€ less for the key I wouldn’t have messed with it to begin with. Sigh I guess this is my punishment ^^

A different question though. Did anyone get contacted by the support yet? I’m really curious about how long you had to wait for an answer.

I just hope this gets solved quickly and I’m happy that I learned my lesson lol..

Currently suspended because of fraud but really hoping my account gets unbanned. I already bought an official key but still got suspended afterwards I guess it’s just automated.

I submitted my first ticket last Friday, then got a response around midnight (my time) which was about 6 or 7 hours after ticket creation.
Now I’ve been waiting for a reply eversince.
Still not sure if Support is even still looking at my ticket.
I mean, what Support Department would start answering a ticket and then leave it unanswered for 4 days? You’d expect that IF they reply, they’ll keep helping you until your issue is resolved.

Chaba.5410:

Wyvern.2430:

Also, can we please stay on topic now that Gaile is listening and helping.
If it make you feel better, you both were smarter and better then the millions of people that buy at these retail shops.

OK, but your own post really said nothing regarding what Grimah wrote: “In today’s internet market it is very much the consumers responsibility to do a little research and know what he or she is getting into and not just accept things for face value and then blame or expect the original owner to take the loss in these situations.”

It should be looked at that ArenaNet is providing a form of consumer protection by naming authorized sellers when they are not obliged to, yet people are complaining about it? ArenaNet has no control over the business practices of unauthorized sellers so it is entirely incumbent upon the consumer to perform good due diligence.

I purchase directly from ArenaNet myself. I’d rather a larger cut of my transaction money go directly to the creator of something I enjoy rather than a third-party.

I think most of us wouldn’t have complained about it if all that happened was a removal of expansion access, but still being able to play the core game.
It’s just a combination of the fact that our LEGIT core game got suspended with it and the sloppy support we’ve had in the first few days that got us upset.

Now that Gaile updated us that we’d get our accounts unblocked 99.9% of the time, we can be sure things will be taken care of. Also it gives us some nice words from ArenaNet to quote in our tickets.

Wyvern.2430:

Did you already made a support ticket? I think they updated their protocol to handle this and things will get solved faster now.
I just got this message from support:

support:

Hello X,

The Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns Serial Code you added to your Guild Wars 2 game account was initially purchased from https://buy.guildwars2.com/en/. Through normal purchase reviews, our payment processor discovered that the serial code was acquired through a fraudulent purchase. As a result, the serial code was disabled and the account with which it was associated has been blocked.

If you purchased Guild Wars 2 from a third party-that is, an unauthorized seller or reseller, we recommend contacting them to acquire a full refund. We strongly encourage you not to accept a replacement serial code, as we have found such codes generally are fraudulent, as well.

At this time, I have unblocked your Guild Wars 2 game account.

If you wish to repurchase Heart of Thorns, please purchase a new retail copy/serial code from an authorized retailer. A list of authorized retailers can be found here: https://www.guildwars2.com/en/retailers . You may also acquire a digital copy of the game through the Guild Wars 2 official website here: https://buy.guildwars2.com/.

Regards,

GM Aki Saw
Guild Wars 2 Support Team
http://help.guildwars2.com/

Did you get this reply to your existing ticket or did you open up a new one?

It comes of no surprise that out of everyone it’s Gaile that provides the quality communication, as she always has, even back on Guild Wars (1).
It’s good to hear that she agrees that the Support Department should never have replied saying that they might not respond to future questions in our support tickets.

I hope this means that we can expect our tickets are still being taken care of and not ignored, this was my biggest fear.

Wyvern.2430:

Gaile has answered about this here -> https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/support/support/Lemme-get-this-straight/first#post5664527
It will be solved

Finally ArenaNet decided to communicate with us about the issue…after 3 days.
However, it comes as no surprise to me that it’s Gaile Gray doing this. She always was a great link between the ArenaNet developers and the players.

However after reading her say that we have to appeal our suspension to support, I am even more upset about the pointless replies most of us have received from GW2 Support.

Gaile Gray.6029:

Hey, Karasu,

The accounts are blocked and then cleared through the appeal process. Any bogus (fraudulent) code would be revoked, of course. The account then would be reopened and the player would be good to go.

We’re going to take a look at the process and if there’s any way to avoid blocking the account — even though the suspension is temporary and ends when we do the review requested through an appeal — the truth of the matter is that a lot of the fraudulent code applications come from RMT. What this means is that the CS Team really needs to suspend the accounts and review upon appeal, to avoid all of us legitimate players getting spammed with gold ad whispers and other bad RMT activities.

Does that make sense to you?

It’s good to see that we finally have someone giving us some more information than ‘your key was fraudulent’.
I understand if it’s necessary for ArenaNet to work with account suspensions in this case, but what’s bothering me the most of all is how careless, from my point of view, the Support Departmant is handling some of our tickets.

I appealed my suspension and requested my account to be unsuspended and offered to re-buy HoT through Guildwars2.com (which I already did) and the kind of reply I get is “We can not help you with this issue. Any further replies regarding this issue might not receive a response”.

Not only has this lowered my trust and faith in ArenaNet, but also makes me wonder if my support ticket is even being looked at anymore. On top of that it’s very clear that the GM in question did not even read the ticket properly and just threw a copy/paste answer my way.

Most of us aren’t upset that we have to go through support to get our accounts unlocked, but the fact that we have to keep sending in replies until the GM handling the ticket finally decides to read and understand what we’re trying to say and actually tries to help us.

levune.7981:

Quick update; after 2,5 days, I got my core account back! I haven’t repurchased HoT yet, but I will do so soon — for now I’m glad my vanilla access is restored!

Hope you guys will get your accounts back as I did.

Glad to hear your account got recovered, bro!
I hope I’ll get the same solution

Seera.5916:

OMFGNinja.8639:

Seera.5916:

Wyvern.2430:

Seera.5916:

Wyvern.2430:

Seera.5916:

Wyvern.2430:

oooh, so this was the place where someone from Anet told something about better not buy from 3th party.
“Some sites are good, some are bad, but we will not give you all the good ones so just try your luck or buy for more at our store..”
Many people got their account suspended now!
Why did Anet not made an official point on this thing and told exactly where to buy and where not and why did they not communicate this on front page news, but do we need to delve deep into the forum for this?!
And if this was not possible, why do they suspend the accounts off all these VICTIMS without giving any support, information or warning at all?!
This is not how you threat the community Anet!

And what if they missed a site that’s good? What if a site is legit when they review it but then starts stealing keys due to change of management? So they only keep a list of authorized sellers and don’t maintain a list of middlemen between the authorized sellers and players.

And they suspend the accounts because ANet does not know if the player is a victim or a willing participant in the deal. And those who would steal keys would lie and say they weren’t aware the site dealt in stolen keys, so asking about it wouldn’t be a good solution.

They should INFORM the user first that his key is not good and just not activate HOT (or downgrade AND give information). Also, they should NEVER suspend the other part of the account (core game). Communication is important. the lack is what gives everyone problems and also the time it takes to even get response or a solution. They should know about it by now, and they should have a list with affected players, so they can fix this scenario for everyone (downgrade the account instead of suspension).
If someone is playing for years on that account and has bought gems with it, changes are big it is not an fraudulent account!

And how is ANet supposed to know? There’s still a chance the player was aware that it was a fraudulent key. So the player who can’t afford to buy gems gets to have his account suspended while the one who can doesn’t? That’s unfair to the person who can’t afford to buy gems. They’re just as legit as the one who can.

The only fair solution is to treat every account the same. Because there is no litmus test that will determine whether accounts are legit or fraudulent with 100% accuracy.

I have never said to treat accounts with or without gems different.

Anet knows it is good since that player has been legit for all these years. I also don’t think an account that was actively used and was good for 3 years will suddenly be used by hackers or scammers to add a HOT key (that already includes core).
Point is that core key is good, expansion key is not. They should draw the line there.

And how would a player know he has a fraudulent key? I don’t think a key-generator or such exists, and I don’t think that if you buy a key they will tell you it is fraudulent.

Some do. Through the Ultimate Collection for the 4000 gems to convert to gold to give their gold buying clients. Hence why a delay was put in place for the handing out of the gems.

You said that players who have bought gems should not have their account suspended if they buy a fraudulent key. That’s treating those who can and those who can’t differently.

People should research any site they buy from to make sure it’s a legit site that doesn’t sell fraudulent keys. If a person uses a site that has a rep for selling fraudulent keys knowingly or unknowingly, then they shouldn’t be surprised if they find their account suspended for buying a fraudulent key. Because they chose to use a site that they knew sold those keys or didn’t take the time to research if they did.

There’s a mixture of suspend and HoT access removal because it is possible to just buy HoT without having the core game. Those without a separate core GW2 key likely get suspended as they don’t have a legit key. Those with a core GW2 key likely just get their HoT access removed as they have a core game key that’s legit.

I had the Core game for 3 years and upgraded with a supposingly fraudulent key and I have my full account suspended.
Goodbye theory.

Then how are you able to post in the forum? Account suspension usually also includes lack of forum access.

Either way, I’d contact support and go wtf, my core game key is legit, why am I fully suspended?

I am in contact with support, but I try to stay as polite as possible.
Seemingly you can be suspended, unable to access the game, but still login to your account page and post on the forum, for some reason.

My HoT Expansion was revoked, which I understand and have no problem with, but the suspension in my particular case is just full out rediculous and all GW2 Support has done so far is confirm that I added a fraudulent HoT key and told me they will probably not even answer on further questions regarding this suspension.

So I’m sure you can imagine the things that are going through my head right now.

RIP 6 Legendaries?

Seera.5916:

Wyvern.2430:

Seera.5916:

Wyvern.2430:

Seera.5916:

Wyvern.2430:

oooh, so this was the place where someone from Anet told something about better not buy from 3th party.
“Some sites are good, some are bad, but we will not give you all the good ones so just try your luck or buy for more at our store..”
Many people got their account suspended now!
Why did Anet not made an official point on this thing and told exactly where to buy and where not and why did they not communicate this on front page news, but do we need to delve deep into the forum for this?!
And if this was not possible, why do they suspend the accounts off all these VICTIMS without giving any support, information or warning at all?!
This is not how you threat the community Anet!

And what if they missed a site that’s good? What if a site is legit when they review it but then starts stealing keys due to change of management? So they only keep a list of authorized sellers and don’t maintain a list of middlemen between the authorized sellers and players.

And they suspend the accounts because ANet does not know if the player is a victim or a willing participant in the deal. And those who would steal keys would lie and say they weren’t aware the site dealt in stolen keys, so asking about it wouldn’t be a good solution.

They should INFORM the user first that his key is not good and just not activate HOT (or downgrade AND give information). Also, they should NEVER suspend the other part of the account (core game). Communication is important. the lack is what gives everyone problems and also the time it takes to even get response or a solution. They should know about it by now, and they should have a list with affected players, so they can fix this scenario for everyone (downgrade the account instead of suspension).
If someone is playing for years on that account and has bought gems with it, changes are big it is not an fraudulent account!

And how is ANet supposed to know? There’s still a chance the player was aware that it was a fraudulent key. So the player who can’t afford to buy gems gets to have his account suspended while the one who can doesn’t? That’s unfair to the person who can’t afford to buy gems. They’re just as legit as the one who can.

The only fair solution is to treat every account the same. Because there is no litmus test that will determine whether accounts are legit or fraudulent with 100% accuracy.

I have never said to treat accounts with or without gems different.

Anet knows it is good since that player has been legit for all these years. I also don’t think an account that was actively used and was good for 3 years will suddenly be used by hackers or scammers to add a HOT key (that already includes core).
Point is that core key is good, expansion key is not. They should draw the line there.

And how would a player know he has a fraudulent key? I don’t think a key-generator or such exists, and I don’t think that if you buy a key they will tell you it is fraudulent.

Some do. Through the Ultimate Collection for the 4000 gems to convert to gold to give their gold buying clients. Hence why a delay was put in place for the handing out of the gems.

You said that players who have bought gems should not have their account suspended if they buy a fraudulent key. That’s treating those who can and those who can’t differently.

People should research any site they buy from to make sure it’s a legit site that doesn’t sell fraudulent keys. If a person uses a site that has a rep for selling fraudulent keys knowingly or unknowingly, then they shouldn’t be surprised if they find their account suspended for buying a fraudulent key. Because they chose to use a site that they knew sold those keys or didn’t take the time to research if they did.

There’s a mixture of suspend and HoT access removal because it is possible to just buy HoT without having the core game. Those without a separate core GW2 key likely get suspended as they don’t have a legit key. Those with a core GW2 key likely just get their HoT access removed as they have a core game key that’s legit.

I had the Core game for 3 years and upgraded with a supposingly fraudulent key and I have my full account suspended.
Goodbye theory.

Sending a new ticket usually only slows things down.
The Support department is extremely busy from what I’ve heared due to HoT’s launch.
Just give them some time.
What you could do, however, is maybe update your ticket with a new reply.

sgoodman.2916:

I have the same problem man, I made the other thread regarding this issue. So far I feel like a complete idiot because I went and applied a legitimate code to my already suspended account. What I believe has happened is that as the code was revoked the account was automatically suspended because on the website it says that HoT is not active. However, after applying the legit code, it says everything is active yet my account is still suspended. I’m sure either way you will be fine if you still have your proof of purchase, we just need to wait a while before anet gets around to unlocking the accounts. I’m sure it’ll be fine… eventually.

At least I managed to get a full refund from Kinguin.net (in the way of in-store funds, however) without having to give them ANY form of proof :P
That kinda cheered me up today. I’m hoping that Arenanet will restore my access to my account soon after I updated my ticket requesting to get access to my account on just the Core GW2 game (which was legitimately purchased).

This is literally the poorest way of bringing such news to players, to be honest.
Not every player is on the GW2 forums, In fact, this is my first time visiting them too.
This is the kind of things that you put in a BLOG post and have show up in your game launcher.

On top of that, they are not even clear about the issue. As if they don’t even know what 3rd party websites are authorized and which aren’t.

Hitsugaya.8304:

Well, glad to see I’m not the only one who is stuck in this mess :/ though when I contacted support I was told there was nothing to do, and I had to make a new account if I ever wanted to play again…

Did you have paid access to the core game and did you upgrade to Heart of Thorns? Or did you create your account using the Heart of Thorns purchase?

What I’d do if I were you is contact GW2 Support and ask them if it’s possible to request a full refund and have ONLY the expansion removed from your account, so you will retain your progress but simply don’t have HoT access.

I think that should be very well possible.

Wyvern.2430:

I just received a mail from support about my original GW2 account. They need the code, some digits of my credit card and the order number. This account is 3 years old and I only have the key. Even my bank history doesn’t go that far!
….

I’d say explain that to them and in addition give them as much information as you can regarding your account. Check your mailbox for any Gem purchases you’ve made and supply those, give them a list of characternames you can remember, maybe the IP Address on which the account was created…things like that.

I assume they need proof of ownership.

Mertis.7954:

I have the same problem, buy key to HOTs from kinguin and AN suspended my account. I send ticket about it and receive same copy paste answer;/ i’ll be glad if you can inform me about result of ticket or if you find solution. I have bad feelings
about it because they write in last sentence :

“Further replies regarding this issue may not receive a response.”

So i think the case is closed for them and they dont will help us. Sadly 3 years of playing will be probably wiped out because of one mistake…

I’m having that same feeling.
I’m not sure wether or not I can expect additional replies from support.
If this is gonna end up leaving my account permanently suspended I’ll lose 3 years of progress and 6 Legendaries

OP is actually lucky. He can still play the core game.
Many of us who had the same problem got a full account suspension, having our expansion revoked (which makes sense) and removing our access to the core game as well (which is full-out rediculous)

Molotovs.3017:

OMFGNinja.8639:

I personally think that a full account suspension is simply rediculous.
They already revoke the expansion as soon as this happens, I really don’t understand the need for an account suspension.

If they would simply revoke the expansion, dispatch an email saying: Dear player, you applied a fraudulent CD Key for Heart of Thorns. We have removed access to the expansion from your account and suggest you get a full refund from your 3rd party retailer and repurchase the expansion through our official shop on guildwars2.com.

This would simply allow us to repurchase it and be done with it. Having to go through all this hassle with Support pretty much already killed my weekend which I planned free to enjoy the expansion.

I feel you on that. im waiting on day 2 for them to get back to my ticket for account unsuspension. Not sure if there ignoring it or what? or maybe right now is primetime and there just getting an overload on tickets.

I’m on day 3 since the start of my ticket, having received only a copy/paste reply which gave me no useful information at all and answered none of my initial questions.
In addition to that I can’t even be sure if Arenanet Support is simply very busy and has delayed replies or if they are just ignoring my ticket after that one reply.

If anything, it has lowered my trust with Arenanet after getting this kind of ‘support’.

I personally think that a full account suspension is simply rediculous.
They already revoke the expansion as soon as this happens, I really don’t understand the need for an account suspension.

If they would simply revoke the expansion, dispatch an email saying: Dear player, you applied a fraudulent CD Key for Heart of Thorns. We have removed access to the expansion from your account and suggest you get a full refund from your 3rd party retailer and repurchase the expansion through our official shop on guildwars2.com.

This would simply allow us to repurchase it and be done with it. Having to go through all this hassle with Support pretty much already killed my weekend which I planned free to enjoy the expansion.

Inculpatus cedo.9234:

Did you have a paid account before applying the fraudulent key? If not, then, no, I don’t think the Team can offer any assistance.

If so, then update your ticket, and request help with regaining only your paid core account.

Good luck.

Yes I did. I pre-purchased Guild Wars 2 before it launched. In my initial ticket request I already stated that I understand the cause of the suspension and I wanted to have my account unsuspended, so I can just re-purchase HoT and be done with it.

Instead, I get a useless copy/paste response, which is quite disappointing, considering the way I’ve always looked up to Arenanet as one of the most player-caring developers.

I’m having many doubts that Anet is going to to assist much further in actually releasing the account, mainly because the first response I got on my ticket simply said:

Hello,

I’m sorry but we cannot assist with this request as the code in question was purchased from an unauthorized reseller. I can only recommend that you request a full refund from them. If they are not willing to assist you, please get help from your financial institution for reclaiming the funds from this unauthorized reseller.

Further replies regarding this issue may not receive a response.

Might wanna contact Anet support about that then :o

Afaik it can take a while before the gems are distributed (I believe the shop page said it can take about 4 hours or so?)

I’m currently in the progress of talking with ANet support regarding this issue, which has been everything but helpful so far.

Here’s the situation: I purchased the HoT expansion through Kinguin and long story short…it ended up being a fraudulent key and ended up with the expansion revoked and account fully suspended.

Obviously I do want to play the HoT expansion so I repurchased a code from the GW2 website directly this time, but what I’m wondering is if anyone knows if it’s safe / smart to already add that key to my account.
ANet support hasn’t verified if this suspension is permanent or if re-applying a legit HoT Key would get rid of the suspension.

My guardian

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Feel free to leave comments, feedback or thanks!