Guild Wars 2

Gaile, I am unsure what the difference is between CS and support, my tickets have gone through the support interface on this site.

Gaile, the five card rule cannot be temporarily lifted. At least that is what support has told me. What I was also told is that they were looking into revising this rule – but I’ve heard nothing since then.

At the end of the day the purchase of GW2 and the creation of the dummy NCSoft account is what has put me over the 5 account limit. And before support managed to clearly communicate the central issue preventing my card being used I had also used it to buy the game for my partner and my sister at launch. So I’m more than a little over the 5 account rule now.

Paysafe is European I believe, so not available on the far side of the globe here.

If ascended gear was available any other way this would not be an issue – however while rings can be obtained from Fractals other accessories are limited to laurels and guild commendations. For anyone wanting to take part in top end Fractals Anet has managed to make us feel like liabilities unless we have the best gear, and that gear in wvw does make a difference.

Draakdorei, until just before xmas I would have believed the same thing. The general type of person that works out in the sticks couldn’t possibly be a gamer type. Seems I was wrong. There is nothing to say they all play GW2, but many of them are gamers. And the resource industry in my country employs 60% of the county’s population (though not everyone employed is a citizen).

Gestankfaust, if you and I were to both sit down and play 30 hours do you believe that you should be rewarded for your 30 hours twice what I am rewarded?

Ellieanna, at 35 with a family and twenty odd bills all automatically paid off this card every month I’m sure you can understand that it’s easier to just not buy gems at all then go through the hassle of trying to cancel automatic payments, re-instate them on another number, and potentially spend a few days on the phone when the institution uses the old number instead. Been through this when I had a card stolen 5 or so years ago.

Getting a second card effects credit rating, there is no such thing as a credit card with a small limit any more the lowest here is $5000. And a debit card or a reloadable credit card has to be linked with my main bank account – which I don’t want. If I start up a brand new bank account to deal with the new card the transfers are 3 business days which puts me back in the same position as the original post, but I also need to pay $25 a month in upkeep for the second account.

I have actually contemplated this idea. It’s not worth the hassle.

TheDaiBish.9735:

Is it safe to TL:DR this as ‘make Laurels purchasable’?

Game isn’t F2P.

Semantics aside, that office worker can also buy Laurels, and they’ll still have double progression (unless you put a hard cap on how many Laurels you could acquire in all ways a month).

Personally, I don’t think being able to buy Laurels is a good idea:

• Being able to buy all Laurels at the beginning of the month means that Ascended gear would be purchasable, which defeats the point of it being introduced in the first place (a time gap between Exotic and Legendary or people to work towards).

It’s sad, but someone is always going to get excluded. And no, I’m not someone who gets a lot of time to play. I’ve gotten 16 Laurels to date.

The game is free to play in that there is no subscription and the on going running costs are supported by a cash shop feature.

How far the cash shop should go to support the buy to win method I don’t want to talk about mostly because everyone has very different ideas on when something becomes buy to win. Anet has said before they see their cash shop as a way for players with money but no time to be able to get something special out of the game. While I don’t entirely agree with some of the content (or lack thereof in parts) – the sentiment is appreciated.

Making a statement that someone is always going to be excluded, is akin to saying women and minorities will always be discriminated against, or there will always be accidents on mine sites, so you need to suck it up. We’d have no social progression if we did that and mine sites in the western world would still be killing at least 10 workers a week.

I don’t believe being able to buy laurels is the answer, not directly, and there is no reason why there couldn’t be a “back log” for all players. Miss a day here be able to do the daily twice the next day. I’ve played an MMO that treated instances like this. The back log was limited to a few days but the effort still had to be put in to complete it.

If you’ve played traditional MMOs before you will know that their gating works by instance/dungeon/raid lockout. In essence it is exactly the same that is happening here, with RNG added. I can gear up faster in Aion on my R&R than in GW2 because I can buy instance reset scrolls from their cash shop, I don’t think this is a good idea for dailies but for instances where RNG is involved it works. Players with money but no time can have a reasonable attempt at getting their gear dropped by the boss and players with time can choose to speed it up but are making a gamble – their money against whether or not a boss drops something. Granted this is for instances and will not work here.

Anet are paid to produce a product that their players want to play, and want to pay (via the cash shop) to play. They are a group of creative individuals who solve problems daily. This is just another problem to solve. But I honestly doubt the people who keep their PCs powered up crossed their minds when someone said “hey let’s add laurels”.

The new daily system and the new guild mission system is gated. I use this term because there is a hard limit to the number of laurels and guild commendations you can receive for any day/week/month.

The reasons for this is obvious – it artificially slows players down from being able to achieve the items of higher costs. This is good for some casual players, an office worker in a 9 to 5 job can probably spare an hour every evening to do their dailies, they can probably manage their monthly without putting in any extra time – so it’s not hard for a working player to earn 40 laurels a month.

Guild commendations similarly have limits though those limits depend heavily on the size of the guild involved. I’m not going to go into the size issue which is covered by more threads, all that one needs to know for this topic is that players can earn X commendations per week (where X is dependent on guild size and a few other factors).

I’m going to hazard a guess and say that Anet has forgotten a portion of the working player population in the design of the new daily laurels and weekly guild commendations. Not everyone can earn 40 laurels a month, or X commendations a week. And those of us who cannot have no way to make up for that loss. The people I’m talking about are people like me, the workers in the resource industry.

We need mines, and oil rigs, and CSG, because these industries produce the metals we build our PCs with, and the electricity we run them off. Those of us who willingly work in this industry don’t work a 9-5 job in a city office, we work in remote locations with little to no internet access, long hours, and typically spending only one week of every month at “home”.

Now some of you might say we are paid well for our time, and in general we are – but we can’t buy laurels, we can’t buy the chance to do the dailies we miss. In short in one month we can make 17 laurels maximum, regardless of how many hours we can put in. In my one week at home I might well be able to put in more hours of play than an office worker can in one month, but I am severely punished by the game for this style of play.

Anet if you want to support players who don’t have the time to grind out high level gear, why are you gating ascended gear in a way that punishes those of us who spend time doing necessary jobs in remote areas where game play every day simply isn’t possible?

A large part of the free to play mentality has always been if you can’t put in the hours you can pay to have cool stuff. But if Joe Blogs (living and working in NYC) and I both put in 30 hours of play a month Joe is rewarded with double the progression towards top level gear. Equal “work”, but very unequal “pay”.

Apologies for the late reply, the ticket number is 120809-002854.
We’ve had flooding here rather severe so I’ve spent most of my time on the mine sites trying to find out how much damage has been done by the deluge over the last two months.

This is the latest response from support:
The 5 account rule, however, is Global. Meaning, we couldn’t make a change on one account without lifting these restrictions on all accounts in the account database. This is why we are unable to make changes to this rule on individual accounts.

I interpret this as – we are not going to change this at all.

I run and eye-finity set-up with 3 screens, native resolution being 5760×1080.

Due to issues with Guild Wars 2 it is unpleasant to run the game at that resolution so I have it set for 1920×1080. Only issue is that since the December the game keeps inexplicably jumping to my native resolution for no apparent reason. Middle of a Shatterer fight, at the crafting table, in WvW (this is the really annoying one) there is no pattern to it at all. Sometimes it will be fine for days, others I won’t be able to play 5 minutes. Sometimes rebooting seems to fix it, other times it won’t change a thing. Sometimes deleting local.dat fixes it, other times it doesn’t.

This issue makes 0 sense, my graphics drivers aren’t crashing, and I’m not getting any error message.

This problem is unique to GW2, no other game I run at 1920×1080 does it. If GW2 were capable of being run at my native resolution it wouldn’t be an issue, but the interface is static, placing chat and quests at the outside edges, the map cannot be zoomed out enough, and character select has me naval gazing.

After a gruelling nearly 30 days (continuous) on a construction site out west in 40 degree heat (Celsius my friends) I get home and head off to the mountains for a nice quite Christmas with my partner. I returned on the 27th and loaded up Guild Wars 2 for some nice Winter’s Day fun. My guild help me through all five Tixx events and then I try my hand at bells and Toypocalypse. (Toypocalypse was great by the way.)

So there is lovely fashion in the store, and the ability to buy the remaining minis (I’ve always been partial to minis) and just one problem – I can’t buy gems.

This has been an ongoing issue since beta. The problem is primarily due to NCSoft’s weird and wonderful fraud detection methods. As a customer of 10 years who has bought and subscribed to many games – and bought games for others, they have determined any further use of my card is “fraud”. (The dummy accounts setup on the purchase of GW2 really didn’t help here given I purchased the game for three other people on the same card – all of which got “registered” to different people, namely friends and family.)

Until now I have be using gift cards to purchase gems. Unfortunately it would seem that even I did not understand the true extent of how hard these things are to get – well to get one that will work in the gem shop. There is only one store that sells these cards and they open limited business hours 9.30am – 4pm. And they have been shut since the 24th. They will not be open again till the 5th so the earliest I can purchase gems is the 6th (as there is a 24hr activation on the cards and attempts to use them prior to activation results in the value of the card being wiped completely).

In short I will not be able to buy a card in time to indulge in any Christmas shopping through the gem store. Gem cards are not sold here. Gamestop will not sell gem cards to players in my country (and I’m not sure if my sister in the US bought one for me whether it would work on my account). Paypal and I have issues of a legal nature, it started with them taking an unauthorised $200 from my account and ended with a class hearing before the Fair Trading Commission. And though my partner has volunteered his card, I am very much afraid that it will end with us both having our accounts banned.

It is honestly getting beyond ridiculous. The one and only pre-paid credit cards that will work with your gem store Anet are sold by a store which is opened very limited hours, doesn’t do any holiday trading, and require 24hrs to activate. Unless you can guarantee that the Christmas stock will be in the gem store until at least the 6th of January I will miss out on the chance to buy altogether.

Please fix the issue with my credit card. I am sick and tired of dancing around whenever there is something in the store I want to buy.

For those of you who are lacking credit card use due to the 5 account rule here is the response I got when I asked for an update – because of the way things work the newest obviously is at the top.

To give those who don’t want to read 26 pages of this thread some background NCSoft will not let credit cards be used in instances where it has been associated with 5 or more master accounts. This would not have been an issue except for the fact that when you buy GW2 (if bought from the website) your purchase gets assigned a “dummy” account. So for players like me who are long time NCSoft customers who chose to keep game accounts on separate master accounts to lessen the chance of all their games being hacked in one hit this new dummy account put my card on a permanent black list. Of course no one knew there was any type of limit – NCSoft certainly did not advertise it.

I have successfully managed to make purchases using disposable debit cards however this method requires 24 business hrs to process – so I buy the card then cannot use it for 1 business day after the purchase – and I pay 30% of the card’s value as an access fee. So to buy $50 of gems requires me to pay $65.

I’d be interested to know how this compares to gem cards – and if they are ever going to sell them here.

10/17/2012 05:34 PM
Hi,

Thanks again for the reply. I had a look at your other ticket (120828-002426). The situation that you were encountering in that ticket is a little different that the restrictions on using a card on 5 different accounts. What was happening in your other ticket was that you were triggering one of our internal rules meant to detect and prevent fraud. This rule was triggered due to your initial declined attempts with that card and the representative waived the rules that were stopping the payment. This is a feature that is a “by account” rule and not a global rule. Also this is likely not a problem you will run into in the future now that you have successfully used that card.

(Note: Support actually told me in the other ticket I was going to need the special waiver every I wanted to purchase gems.)

The 5 account rule, however, is Global. Meaning, we couldn’t make a change on one account without lifting these restrictions on all accounts in the account database. This is why we are unable to make changes to this rule on individual accounts.

I’ve appreciated your patience and level head thus far in regards to what is surely a frustrating situation. Of course, please let me know if you have any other questions.

Thank you,
NCSoft
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10/16/2012 03:55 PM
Hi,

Thanks for the reply. Currently there hasn’t been a new update to this issue and I can not say with any confidence that this issue will be resolved soon as I do not have any ETA as to when this will be addressed. I noticed in a previous reply you had asked about the usability of PrePaid credit cards. I did want to confirm that this option will work. One thing that you might run into trouble with using those type of cards will be using the “save card on file” feature from within the Guild Wars 2 Store. This marks any future charges as a recurring charge, and those type of cards will typically not accept recurring charge. The easy way around this is just to not save the card on file for future use and you should not ever have any problems.

If you have any other questions, please do let us know.

Thank you,
NCSoft
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09/14/2012 02:12 PM
Hi,

We do not have an update regarding a fix for this credit card limitation. The system change request has been escalated to the Developement Team, but this is all we can do at this point. I understand that they are toying with some ideas, but nothing is set in stone. All we can do is wait until we hear that the Developement Team has decided to make changes to the way the billing system works. We can keep this ticket in progress if you would like, and update it if we hear more information.

I have done that. We will let you know of any changes that they make.
Thanks,
NCSoft

Graven.9462:

So I decided to pick up a $50 pre-paid MasterCard, since they said that my issue was that I needed to get a new Credit Card, because the card I have is linked to too many Master Accounts.

No dice, thanks for nothing NC Soft.

Just be really careful here. I bought three Visa gift cards and on the third one they stopped working altogether. I had just about every reason for it not working before they admitted my account was just locked completely and gave me a 24hr reprieve to use the final one.

Archangel.1604:

vinotauro.5892:

With all respect Gaile, you saying the “other” big MMO doesn’t have a restoration feature is just PLAIN WRONG. Very, very, very wrong. I’ve had two friends hacked and I guarantee they both have characters & items gone from the incident.

Yeah, Gaile did a pretty thorough job of putting her foot firmly in her mouth with that statement.

EDIT: Unless she tries to save face by saying she’s speaking of Lineage or some other giant Asian MMO that most American’s don’t really think about.

Or Gaile was referring to a restoration feature rather than the creation of a new character with the same level, features etc. Semantics to be sure but there is still a difference in the way the restoration functions.

So what’s the difference? Well the restoration feature is a one hit thing returning your whole account to a point in time prior to when you got hacked. Meaning you easily get all your gold and gear back and there are no questions of favouritism or whatever-the-opposite-of-favouritism-is.

Most other MMOs function by a recreation feature, not restoration. They recreate your character at the same lvl, with the same gear, gold etc. Think about the work involved if you required multiple characters recreated in this way – and you’d really best know exactly how much gold you had because they might get it wrong.

Technically a restoration feature is superior in every way. It can be fully automated, doesn’t need to wait for a GM with the appropriate rights, and there is never any questions about whether they got it right.

ShadowX, of course they have access to the live server, they have access the same way the rest of us do through the game. By giving the live server no administration rights the live server cannot be hacked by outside parties, and the command line/console cannot be hacked in the client by botters. If they live server data had administration rights people would be able to hack in an delete your character without even bothering with your account credentials. They would be able to spam the database itself and potentially crash that without crashing the game server and who knows what that would do. When a database exists on the internet it can be accessed by anyone if they know the right address. When a database on the internet accepts only connections made from a very specific piece of software a lot of those problems melt away.

And all this negates the possibility that your GM accounts get hacked. Other games using the console to create new characters usually also allow the creation of gold, items, pretty much anything. Can you imagine the chaos if a GM’s account got hacked by gold sellers who created tonnes of gold and siphoned it away to associated accounts before selling it on? What about gems? They could potentially cause huge chaos in the market. And Anet would then be the worst company in the world if they tried to take all the created items out of the economy – did you see the whinning on the karma weapon incident?

At the end of the day Anet has decided administration level access either via their own machines or through the client isn’t worth the problems it could cause and could potentially fracture the community. I clearly remember accusations of favouritism when a prominent pvp player in GW1 was hacked. The simple fact that Anet could not spawn gold, armour, weapons was what kept the whole incident from becoming more than whispers of a conspiracy theory.

Anet have full access to the back ups and copies they take of the live server (which I assume they can probably fiddle with) yet as it stands at the moment they would have to take the live server down to provide a restoration feature. Now one thing Anet has NOT answered which may/may not improve things for those who have been hacked is whether the restoration feature – when ready – will be able to restore a single character back as far as August 25. In theory if they are restoring from the normal backup data then this will all depend on whether they keep the backup database for that long. If they are restoring from a special snapshot of the database, then that will depend on whether they have been taking that snapshot – and I certainly hope they have.

Shadow X, assuming GW2 behaves the same way GW1 did there is no way to hard code it in there. There are no console lines in the client, there is no way to create stuff and just shove it in the game database. The console line is how many MMOs do their restoration. You are not actually getting your character back so much as having a new character that matches the level of the one which was deleted. Anet doesn’t offer this in order to prevent easy client hacks which would severely affect the game.

If the servers crash? Well they back those up! As it stands at the moment the replace everything or they replace nothing. So they could restore the database back to August 31 but many more players would loose progress – can you imagine how angry they would be?

The restore feature they are talking about has existed in GW fro around maybe 6 months. To be honest I’m not sure how it works however I’m guessing that it happens during the normal server backup cycle allowing for a little back and forth between the backup and “live” version. This is a guess. However can you imagine what might happen if this process bugged?

Graven, I’m not sure you understood me – it doesn’t matter whether you paid the sub or not, if the credit card was ever put in the system at all (regardless of whether payment was made) then it counts.

I’ll give you a few examples:

1) I bought Aion for my sister through the online NCSoft store, printed the key they gave me and gave it to her when she came to visit. She then setup the account listing her own credit card information for the sub. I was not logged into a Master Account when making the purchase – I was worried it would apply it against my own account. NCSoft kept the transaction for the purchase of the game (normal) but linked my credit card to the newly made account my sister made (without my knowing anything about it) simply because I purchased the game for her.

2) After Aion went free to play I created an account to play the other faction on. A friend of mine had a spare account key from when the game was paid-to-play which would give me a mini panda pet which could hold a few inventory items. When I applied the key it asked for my credit card. No harm done I thought, I was never going to have to pay a sub for the account so my credit card would never be charged. However it now associates my credit card with that account despite the fact it was never charged and was removed immediately from the system.

3) I bought the Art of Guild Wars 2 from the merchandise store. I’m a big sucker for concept art and I couldn’t resist. I didn’t need to log in to buy it just give my credit card details. And yes that counted too.

Soazak I can’t even hazard a guess without having some idea of what the issue is, so a quick summary:

If you are locked due to the 24hr limit – leave the gem store alone for 48hrs and then try again.

If you are locked due to multiple attempts to purchase failing. Support will hopefully get back to you in 5 days with a 24hr unlock. Yes it’s 24hrs only and after that ends you will need to contact them again for another unlock if you want to buy more.

If you are locked due to too many accounts using the same card – there is no ETA on a solution. If they even bother with it. From the email Support sent me, which you can read in a post a little way up, they have ideas but it’s at the idea stage only. So could be 6 months or more before we see a solution.

CombatWombat.2950:

ive tried regularly the last 6 days using both visa and paypal, does not work..

Once again this might be what is tripping you up. When you hit the limit you need to stop completely for over 24hrs, otherwise the restriction is just refreshed. I’m going to hazard a guess you will be locked out permanently now as I know that multiple tries and failures will lead to account locks.

On the plus side, talk to Support (will take them 5 days or so to get to you) and they should be able to give you a 24hr unlock.

Anyone reading this who thinks they may have hit the 24hr limit do not keep trying. I can guarantee you that your card will be locked permanently from purchasing with NCSoft if you keep doing so. Stop give it 24-48 hrs and try again.

Righty-o folks, apparently according to NCSoft Support it is now more or less in the hands of the Developers. Whether they mean Anet or NCSoft Billing Devs I have absolutely no idea.
__________________________________________
Hi,

We do not have an update regarding a fix for this credit card limitation. The system change request has been escalated to the Developement Team, but this is all we can do at this point. I understand that they are toying with some ideas, but nothing is set in stone. All we can do is wait until we hear that the Developement Team has decided to make changes to the way the billing system works. We can keep this ticket in progress if you would like, and update it if we hear more information.

I have done that. We will let you know of any changes that they make.

Thanks,
NCsoft Account Support Lead

CombatWombat.2950:

well i have never had anything to do with arenanet before, no games or accounts previously bought.. thing is i bought gems 5 times before it got stopped, thats all.. no second or even 5th account should be registered on me or my name..

so the only thing that would trigger this lockout from gems is if there is a limit to how “many” you could buy.. this should really be mentioned somewhere if thats the case..

Wombat, there is a 24hr limit on what you can buy within NCSoft’s system. But it’s only a 24hr lock out. If you have been locked out I would suggest give it 48hrs and then try and buy again.

Otherwise excessive purchasing is another item we can add to things the fraud system permanently blocks your card for.

And the account registration is not for your name – it’s where your card has been used. Merchandise store purchases count too. If you are a brand new NCSoft customer – and keep in mind here NCSoft runs multiple games by many different developers, ArenaNet is only one of them – you should not have any issues.

Keep in mind the type of people getting tripped up by the five account rule are husbands/wives, brother/sister/siblings, parents/children – all who you would actually expect to share credit card details.

I will guess that long time customers like myself are probably the minority, though by how much I’ve no idea.

120809-002854
Not just five day, but over a month old, am I going to see any movement on this at all?

Graven.9462:

Same exact issue here, after weeks of back and forth I get told that between my wife and myself we have hit the 5 NC Soft Master account limit for our credit card. This wouldn’t happen if Guild Wars 2 could be added to an existing master account instead of creating it’s own dummy account. The math still doesn’t make sense though, I had one master account and my wife has one we are sure of and another she may have had but doesn’t remember the credentials for, however we have only used the CC on two accounts max. Adding GW2 dummy master accounts it only makes 4. I asked them to give me a listing of accounts using this CC and they forwarded me to a senior rep, but I have a feeling that will probably be a fruitless request.

I was also told that this CC would not work on their systems anymore, but she can still use it just fine, while I cannot. It’s getting hard to breath with all the BS piling up in here.

Not happy.

Actually according to what Support told me your card should work just fine on accounts to which it is already assigned. You also need to take into consideration purchases in the merchandise store as they count against the limit, and games bought but where the sub has been cancelled within a month because even though you do not pay via card for it – the card had to go into the system to register the game in the first place.

So you have one old account, your wife has two old accounts, your wife’s dummy GW2 account makes number 4 so she is allowed to use the card. You are five so you cannot. When they say the limit is 5 it means account number 5 puts you over – 4 works 5 doesn’t.

You are lucky it still works on your wife’s account. I can no longer buy anything in Aion, GW, or L2.

EDIT: Is it really too much to ask to get an update on this. This has been a known issue since well before launch. 120809-002854 <— August 9 ticket, and yet apparently you are busy fixing everything but this.

Wraith.4103:

It is, that’s why support exist. If you do not have access to your old e-mail you can use a ticket and search for help. You can give your key number, the name and last you used in the registration of the key, a name of a character, your last e-mail, the name of your account (your forum name too) and the new e-mail you wanna trade for.
Do not have a confirmation e-mail when you change your e-mail is one of the worst security ways I ever seen.

Wraith, let me give you a little insight into a game called RIFT and the support of Trion Worlds staff when I attempted to change my email. The Trion Worlds database was compromised maybe 18ish months ago. They told players and asked them to change passwords – problem was email confirmation. Now I thought exactly the way that you thought, I have the game key, I have all the other information, surely I can get my account back.

The email address that I had been using had ceased to exist while I was away on a business trip some weeks prior to the hacking incident. However since all I needed to access my account was the login and password (and I could provide all the other details like address, key etc) it shouldn’t be a problem. I even logged in to the account to ask support the question asking them to change my email so I could receive the please change password and confirm email. Since I could read support emails on the site it didn’t matter that the email address I used for that account no longer existed. Except that it did. There was no way I could convince Trion Worlds Support that I was me. Not my credit card details, history of account details, not game key, not last receipt number for subscription, nothing. The one and only way I could get my account back was to click the confirmation email for password change in the email account which no longer existed. Now keep in mind all this time I could not play the game – shut out for security reasons sub being paid and I couldn’t cancel the sub payment because that required an email confirmation too.

I ended up having to go back to my old email provider and asking them to temporarily setup an account with my old credentials in order to be able to get my password then my email changed. I had hoped it would only be a matter of days. Password was easily confirmed once the email popped back into existence but changing my email was another nearly 3 month saga – at least though I could cancel my sub during that time.

I was exceptionally lucky my old provider did as I asked without charge and kept it open much longer than I had intended and had been agreed between us. I rather doubt that providers like ComCast or AOL would do this.

Amazon was much the same when I tried to change my email. Not connected to old account, cannot change it. Although Amazon did fix it in a matter of hours when I got access to the old address.

Firstly when you say ban all Chinese IPs you are talking about banning more than a few expats as well who want to play on English speaking servers because they themselves are English speakers.

Secondly when you say ban all proxies, you are also talking about banning all SSH tunnel services which are invaluable to the ping deficient players in Australia and New Zealand.

Anet should be offering us the ability to perma-block countries/IPs/regions as we choose. That way we are in charge of what is blocked on our accounts and can be as discriminatory as we choose without affecting others.

Cowkill, to put things in perspective my ticket was opened on the 9th of August – for an issue that was found in beta. It was escalated over a week before release to have some senior fix it. No fix, and no response since it got escalated.

As for the rollback feature I’m actually curious if they have instated the database saves yet – because without that little gem rollback will only work from the day they switch it on and no earlier. Now before anyone says “of course they back up the databases” well of course they back them up in general – but I have no idea that the rollback feature pulls the data from the general backups (which are functionally just copies) or a special back up. I also have no idea whether there is a limit on the number of “general” back ups they keep at any one time.

TwilightStorm.7159:

“I am escalating your ticket to our Payment Review Team to research your issue. Someone will be in contact with you as soon as possible.”

Got this after a lot of questions back and forth. Well.
We all know where this ends. :p

Welcome to the exalted ranks of those of us who have been “escalated” in one form or another. I can guarantee you won’t hear from them again :p

Gaile, would you please throw us a bone here is a couple of days actually equal to 3 weeks, or even months, or actual days.

Welderman, so far as I know NCSoft is trying to move all games to a “log into game with email” system. It’s fairly standard for other MMOs and the original GW did it this way. NCSoft’s classic user name system (as it stands) cannot handle numbers, symbols, nor is it case sensitive so be thankful you aren’t being asked to use it. In any case I’m guessing it wouldn’t work for GW2 simply due to the sheer number of players. (I think it’s only 15 characters long – only so many combinations with those restrictions.)

Finski, most ISPs operate on a dynamic IP basis which means that even if you were connected constantly there is still a chance that you would have a new IP assigned to you every 24 hours. This is actually for your protection, it makes your PC less accessible to focused and specific hacks if those trying to get at your information have to find your IP every time you boot your PC.

Where I live dynamic IPs are standard – and since you sound like you are operating on a 3G internet connection or similar it’s quite possible that outside of keeping your PC on 24-7 or buying a static IP that it just isn’t possible.

Static IP is paying your ISP to assign you an IP address which does not change. It usually costs money and is typically something only servers which provide a service to the internet (ie webpages and databases) do.

While it may seem like a huge pain to constantly keep clicking it personally would leave it on. The lack of confirmation in account changes makes it likely that if your account does get hacked you will loose it and have to go through the lengthy process of proving it’s your account to get them blocked then proving it’s your account to get it back. If you are absolutely positive that your email and account cannot be compromised (ie you use that email for nothing else, it’s not easy to guess based on your other emails, your password is different to every other password you use, and none of these items have ever been remotely associated with a B.net, Trion Worlds, PWI, etc account) then by all means turn it off – so far as I understand you can do that much.

Reading comprehension?

“I don’t disagree that Anet should fix the unsave function but people harping on about how no other business does this are wrong.”

In a previous update unchecking the box SHOULD remove the info – but apparently it doesn’t work. Should it work? Absolutely. Are Anet the evil empire for having a save function in the first place? No.

CV numbers are not required to be saved to purchase – if you have an iTunes or Amazon account you will know that you face exactly the same risk there. If someone knows your login AND your password they can make purchases with your credit card.

I don’t disagree that Anet should fix the unsave function but people harping on about how no other business does this are wrong. Many internet businesses give you the option to save your details, and it is considered your responsibility to make sure the account is secured to the best of your ability. The only time it becomes Anet’s fault is if their own servers are compromised.

Wyst – if the second card has been use at all with NCSoft you still might be blocked. I’ve a permanent block on my credit card now as I’ve been a customer for around 10 years having bought most of their games. Since my current credit card has showing up in their system for multiple purchases I have been considered a “high risk” for fraud.

I really hope this isn’t your case but it is catching a lot of players out.

Astra.4021:

Well, I was unable to buy gems since I first tried 6 days ago. I eventually got a 48hr unlock on my account, so I could buy enough to get me the bank and character slots I needed. It doesn’t solve my problem however, and I am not closing my ticket until I am able to buy from the BLTP unhindered. If NCSoft doesn’t correct the entire problem that’s the last of my money they will see.

Every time I read stuff like this I want to beat my head up against a brick wall. Why haven’t they done this to my credit card? Why are players whose tickets have been around days or at most a week or two getting this service while my month old ticket sits around gathering dust.

Gaile I normally avoid posting in two threads however it would seem my 1+ month old ticket on account payment issues (gem store) has not received the email you described yesterday. Ticket 120809-002854.

Perhaps you are not bothering with these tickets at this time, however several other players in the gem thread received their email.

Impaler.6204:

Ticket # 120902-017895

I also have the issue with “Card Validation Failed” I opened a ticket regarding this issue and it was replied to today saying…

“Hello,

Recently you submitted ticket 120902-017895 to the Guild Wars 2 Support Team. In the time since your submission, we’ve addressed several problems that have likely resolved your initial issue or answered your question. Information regarding these changes can be found in the Guild Wars 2 Game Status Updates.

If you are still experiencing a problem with Guild Wars 2, please use the link below to reopen your ticket. Otherwise we will consider your issue resolved and the ticket closed.

Click here to re-open your support ticket.

Thanks,
The Guild Wars 2 Support Team"

I haven’t been home to test it yet, but they are redirecting me to “Game Status Updates” which has no mention of this issue being resolved. Unless I am completely missing it somehwere…

So how did you get one of these yet my 1+ month old ticket got missed?

guchdog.3940:

120906-003330
Getting no where. NCSoft basically said to wait and try again, but couldn’t tell me why my account is in the High Risk Category. I’m glad they appreciate users that supported them on Aion, City of Heroes, Auto Assault(yes that one), and the original Guild Wars.

I’m guessing that you, like me, are high risk because we have supported them. Guild Wars 2 created you a new Master Account on purchase, now with all those games you must have at least one other Master Account. If you have 4-5 or more that’s an instant block. You need to include all merchandise store purchases in your count too – because oddly enough they keep records of that and apply it against the account limit even if you technically used no account to purchase it at the time. (IE they probably created a dummy account for the purchase.)

As for Lexaus – this issue has been known since beta 3 – it has been an issue since before launch. If it had been an issue at launch and not been fixed fair enough – I don’t think anyone really anticipated the magnitude of account theft and attempted account theft that has gone on. My ticket was supposed to have been elevated to a senior manager over a week before launch, the first response from NCSoft is the 10th of August – and I spent a week of emails back and forth explaining to them why “get a new credit card” was not in anyway considered a solution to the issue. So this problem should have been in the lap of someone senior enough to fix it a week before launch, a week before all the hacks happened, a week before NCSoft account support got run off their feet and yet I’ve heard nothing.

Gaile would you please check 120809-002854. I am not sure if this problem was supposed to have been caught in the emails that went out today in regards to closing old tickets but I still have yet to hear anything.

Takiwaki.5948:

Its obviously not a small issue that cannot be treated ticket to ticket. I really thought it was something that far and in-between until I visited the forums today and saw how widespread it is.

What is insulting is that this issue was reported by myself since Beta, and NOTHING was done.

Yeah my support ticket stretches back to beta 3. Wonderful isn’t it. Bunch of people in this thread have managed to get a 24 hr reprieve and those of us waiting over a month for a solution better than “get a new card” appear to be a t the bottom of the pile. It’s either a lucky dip or reverse prioritisation, and I’m not really sure which.

24hrs should be enough to get my character slots and storage tabs. Although it’s hardly a solution I think most of us will take anything at this point. (And I do really, really need more bank slots at this stage – can’t sell those tonics -account bound- getting to the point of being required to delete them all.)

Chobiko.9182:

About a master email system I think this; “If you were able to educate people to use a master account address with a strong password…” is where I lost hope in humanity. No matter how much you post/use capital letters/scream. It seems that most people doesn’t want to care. They think; “meh, it won’t happen to me, it happens to so many others so they are probably satisfied with that and won’t come for me”. Or they simply fail to still get the information.

The number of – I used this account on WoW/Rift/ToR for years and never had any problem – I’ve been seeing here more than proves it. I think a lot of people don’t understand that if they were paying a sub based game and quit (hence not paying the sub) then they wouldn’t notice even if their account details had been lifted straight from the game servers.

Particularly WoW players – it’s a large game which has lasted years, the market there is huge for gold sellers therefore the chance of players being compromised from WoW forum sites, or Bnet is huge.

At the end of the day the problem for compromised accounts lie solely with the user in most cases. So many people whether they self identify as a gamer or not tend to use the same (often easily accessible web based) mail system with weak passwords or the same password.

As many are now finding out all it takes is a forum account to be lifted and they are in hot water. If you were able to educate people to use a master account address with a strong password, which was registered no where else on the internet it wouldn’t be the headache I think you are imagining it Chobiko.

You have to remember that most “hackers” trying to compromise MMO accounts are gold selling companies who even if they only have access to your account for a couple of hours have already made money off compromising your account. The first place these businesses are going to look for insecure accounts will be fan sites because they can be fairly sure to capture more than a few accounts that way. Then other MMO databases they have hacked before, and so on.

The only time they’d have to start bother trying to compromise the email account actual is in the case of authenticators and other security measures. The reason people have lost accounts so easily at GW2 launch was that no approval was needed in anyway to change email. With the authenticator now in place I’m guessing that many using gmail or hotmail addresses are probably being probe for weak/same passwords.

Gold sellers will take the path of least resistance to get at players accounts and in most cases the first place they will try to get hold of your game account will be by trying to log in as you – not randomly hacking actual email addresses.

Nunna.6413:

whoah they just fix my account problem!

Response Via Email (GM Atheum)
To protect our customers, we have implemented a Payment Risk Management System to detect possible unauthorized transactions or account use. This means that something about your transaction is being perceived as high risk by our system.

Although there is something about your transaction that is being flagged by our system, we have authorized your "xxxxxx " e-mail address to complete transactions for the next 24 hours. Please try your transaction again within the next 24 hours.

i tried purchasing gems and it works. i hope it’s not 24hrs only and stays ok forever.

anyways!
ty for the unban for the moment!
and guys/girls .. i hope your issues got resolved soon too

I don’t suppose I can get my credit card unbanned for 24hrs? My ticket dates back to the 10th of August for goodness sake. Players are managing temporary fixes and I’m really happy for you but given how old my ticket is and I’ve still heard well… nothing other than “get a new credit card” this is getting more than disheartening.

This is why I was so happy after my GW1 account email ceased to exist and I registered a new email without having to change the account name. Was rather disappointed that my account name got changed for GW2 since I could not “activate” it at the old address. Really there is nothing stopping us having a login address, a billing address, and a master address. As it stands a hacker on an authenticated account needs to gain access to the login address and the actual login mail account – yet after that they have access to do anything, no block for purchasing items if people want the one stop convenience of saved CC info, change the account email, change names, details, etc.

Of course to make it work you need people to understand that they can’t just have emails MyName001, MyName002, MyName003, or even GWGame, GWBills, GWMaster with passwords just as simple.

mmogw.5619:

For anyone that hasn’t read my other posts. I REMOVED MY CABLE/DSL ROUTER AND PLUGGED DIRECTLY INTO THE CABLE MODEM AND IT WORKED.

mmogw, while I’m sure that many appreciate that you are trying to help many players either won’t have routers, or if they have them will not have them set up to block anything. Those running proxies/ssh tunnelling should probably launch the game without it and try to purchase without it.

The key here is that you were unable to purchase because your router was hiding information from NCSoft’s purchase server (fake IP, filtering or encoding your card information) which for some reason was unable to be retrieved at NCSoft’s end. Which is why anyone routing their GW2 connection via a proxy or SSH tunnelling service should turn it off before attempting to make purchases.

Your router may have been set up with parental controls, or an additional hardware firewall which has been over zealous in looking over outgoing information. For many of us that is not and will not be the case.

Now just so you know that some of us have tried it (with no real expectation it would work) despite the filtering and traffic prioritisation I’ve set up and the hardware firewall my cisco router has removing it and plugging straight into my cisco ADSL 2 modem make not an ounce of difference to my ability to purchase gems on either my credit card or my debit card.

Sin, my issue has been a known issue since Beta 3, my support ticket is a month old. Other than the infeasible response of “get a new credit card” I’ve yet to see any sign that the archaic anti-fraud methods which are targeting old time NCSoft customers are in anyway being dealt with and -to be frank- given that it is NCSoft’s system which is tripping up our payments I see little which the Anet gem store team can do without upsetting their parent company.

Gem store distribution methods have been fixed.
Those of us who have been locked out of purchasing gems due to NCSoft’s “anti-fraud” methods are still waiting for a solution.

The title of this post is deceptive – gem store distribution methods may have been fixed. Accounts trying to purchase gems but have been locked out by NCSoft has not been fixed.

Sangrivane.4360:

What is even more frustrating is you can see ArenaNet reps responding in the forums today to other issues but they are completely ignoring this issue which is affecting thousands of people!

To be honest I’d be more interested in knowing whether Anet can do anything about it or whether we are completely at the mercy of NCSoft Account & Risk Management who clearly couldn’t give two fluffy white bunnies of the issue that was flagged a month ago.

BloodDoll I understand you don’t have your gems, and it sucks – but please understand there are two topics in this thread. Those not receiving gems or items despite having been billed. This problem is what, a week old?

The other issue in this thread is players being blocked completely from buying – this problem has been an issue since Beta 3, yes since before launch.

BloodDoll – NCSoft have a daily purchase limit which may explain your initial inability to purchase if you play other NCSoft games.

The fun part about all of this is simply that you get declined and they don’t tell you why. I had no idea about the daily limit till a friend hit it, and I had no idea about the credit card used on accounts limit until a month ago, and I had no idea you could only have a couple of cards tied to the one account, and no idea that they created me a Master Account without my approval.

I still have no idea whether my GW2 Master Account can be hacked if someone lifts the general Master Account database off the NCSoft servers, and I have no idea why Support is so slow when I’ve actually had good experiences in the past. Keeping in mind here once again my ticket precedes all hacking and exploits by weeks.

Makol.8726:

Lady Lozza.9670:

Makol.8726:

After 8 pages of replies about this problem I’m pretty surprised that they haven’t made a public response yet, or even acknowledged this issue in one of their Game Status Updates.

The issue as it were, is with NCSoft’s systems, not Anet’s game. How much Anet CAN do about it is in question at this time. Keep in mind here NCSoft elevated my ticket to senior account management staff about a month ago – and I have not heard from them.

Well NCSoft has a phone number to call when it comes to billing and account issues, which this is as far as I can tell. They even have a live chat system, which is only available on Mondays for some reason. Why aren’t we being told to directly contact them or make a ticket on the NCSoft site instead? Wouldn’t that make more sense and take a load of ticket’s off Anet’s shoulders?

Which is all well and good if you live in the US. And if you make a ticket on the NCSoft site it’s the same as making a ticket here. All account related stuff for GW2 is immediately forwarded to the NCSoft Account team so it doesn’t matter where you make the ticket. Chances are live chat or a phone call would yield the same results as an email/ticket.

I’ve been getting the impression this forum is for Anet to know of the issues so they can lean on NCSoft’s support team – I’ll take a wild guess here and say the gem store team (Anet) have been in the dark about all the accounts being flagged as high risk.

In short the only people they may be able to help directly in this thread are the people who were able to purchase gems and didn’t get them. There are two separate issues here – Gem Purchasing (like me) who have been flagged by NCSoft’s system and hence cannot purchase, and those who CAN purchase and/or bought stuff from the gem store and haven’t had gems/items show up.

Makol.8726:

After 8 pages of replies about this problem I’m pretty surprised that they haven’t made a public response yet, or even acknowledged this issue in one of their Game Status Updates.

The issue as it were, is with NCSoft’s systems, not Anet’s game. How much Anet CAN do about it is in question at this time. Keep in mind here NCSoft elevated my ticket to senior account management staff about a month ago – and I have not heard from them.

Scottv, it is a poor answer as I have proven – after NCSoft Support told my gift debit cards would work – I tested it, it worked once in beta, then mysteriously after launch stopped working – Support told me I had too many card numbers listed against the one account. Brilliant isn’t it even their solutions don’t work.

The point though is simply that I have been waiting since before launch for a resolution. My ticket was supposed to have been elevated weeks before hacking and exploits became an issue so why haven’t I heard anything?

We have prioritisation for hacked accounts, are gem store accounts going to get any priority? My ticket dates back to Beta 3, date of response from NCSoft is 10th of August. Yes I been waiting for a resolution better than “get a new card” for a month.