Guild Wars 2

Freyar.3254:

Overreact much? I’m not saying it’s an acceptable position to be in, I’m saying do what you intend to, wait until things are satisfactory before spending money. I’m also saying that with the amount of accounts compromised certainly don’t help you for a speedy resolution.

Freyar, what is catching many people up is the fact that they are long term NCSoft or Anet customers. It is precisely because we have received good service in the past that we want to spend our money here, but our accounts have been flagged because we have previously been customers and are entirely due to actions taken on our behalf and unknown to us by either NCSoft or Anet.

In short had we not be long time customers our cards would most likely work fine and we would not be here.

Circa, this problem has been in existence since Beta 3 – and for at least a few of us the problem is with NCSoft not Anet’s billing system, which when I’ve got it to work has worked fine. For many in this thread NCSoft is deliberately blocking our accounts making payments to them for fears of account theft and fraud. Even though I could fully explain the use of my card in their system (I’ve been a paying customer since NCSoft started offering their games to the West, around 10 years of payments a couple of card changes when I changed banks, and a desire not to put all my games in one account – stealing the account list to hack L2 accounts was a regular occurrence in the early days.) So even though I could explain, and account for, and approve every transaction lodged in their system against my card I was told by Support to get a new credit card.

Unless Anet chooses to bypass NCSoft’s payment system completely (and as NCSoft is the parent company I’m not sure that they are allowed to do that) then what we are waiting for is Anet to negotiate that our accounts and cards be unflagged, and we have absolutely no guarantees at this stage that they will be successful.

Kaeziel.5173:

Used mine for 2 years with ncsoft (aion) for regular cash shop item such as surgery ticket and skins…subs…Besides if you bought the game itself on THEIR site with the SAME card,it just plain stupid to refuse the card for gems purchase.

Called bank and they aint blocking the payment,in fact they actualy told me anet never even tried to process it.So its not on our end.

Indeed realy frustrating,its like asking someone to take ur money,ridiculous.

Here is where the catch I mentioned earlier in a post comes into play. If you have bought NCSoft games previously you are more likely to have this problem. When you purchased GW2 NCSoft (or Anet I’m not sure which) created for you a dummy Master Account. You can’t do anything with this Master Account, you can’t log into it, cannot do anything you can normally do with a Master Account.

(I’d really love to know if it sits on the Master Account database and can be hacked but Support wouldn’t tell me that.)

So you will have (at a minimum now – you will have more if you had one or two GW accounts tied to NCSoft) two Master Accounts, I’m guessing this Risk Management some other player was given relates to the limits I was given by Support. IE the more Master Accounts you have associated with a credit card, the higher the risk.

120809-002854
This is the incident involving my credit card and dates back to Beta 3.
I successfully made purchases by gift debit card too before payment methods appeared to be blocked completely.

To be honest I would greatly prefer my credit card working. As I told Support in the original emails after the issue was identified in Beta 3, changing my credit card is unfeasible, it’s my payment card which is associated with many, many more bills and payments than just my NCSoft games. Changing it would be a hassle, and to be frank hardly something I’d do just for a game.

To give you an idea of the hassle I have to go through to get a gift debit card – ones that will work with international stores aren’t available just anywhere so I have to find a place that has them, I have to buy it, there is a minimum of a 24hr wait after purchase to ensure activation – trying to use it before then might end up in the funds being wiped making the card useless, and then I have to enter all the details of the card differently every time I use a new one. The gift cards were a stop gap measure for character slots only. I’d never have used them for the average micro transaction.

The funny part about it is that I am a big buyer of micro transactions. But only when it’s a click to buy and forget. Amazon, iTunes, other one click type stores make a fortune out of people like me. I have the funds, and it’s super easy to buy. NCSoft’s anti-fraud measures are… archaic to say the least. They are based on an era when debit cards couldn’t be used online, even when stuff like Paypal didn’t exist. The original GW ingame store didn’t originally offer Paypal as an option for purchase – I suspect NCSoft’s billing system couldn’t handle it initially. It was a time when selling accounts to other players was hugely attractive because it took so very, very long to level a L2 character to maximum level. And anyone who played L2 back in the first chapters knows how often the account lists at NCSoft were hacked – hence why players like myself would never put all our games in the one basket.

Times though have changed, and they have not kept up with it. The average age of gamers where I live is 30+ (like me), with their own incomes. Credit card companies employ hundreds even thousands of staff focused on anti-fraud measures, and even game companies have better ways to track these things than the flags NCSoft have chosen to use.

I want to be charitable because NCSoft and Anet have given me many hours of relaxation after work. They have fixed issues in the past with little fuss, and amazingly quickly. (I could tell you all about how long Trion Worlds’ Support takes to fix things :p ) We all know that no one expected there to be wide scale account hacking before the game even launched, or that players would be so attracted to an accidental exploit within hours after the game goes live. Yet many of us just want our GW1 characters back and no one is even sure if Anet has removed the reservations yet. It’s a huge pain to wait with no feedback other than “get a new card” or unrealistic expectations which no business would normally think about feeding to their clients.

At the end of the day though Anet and NCSoft know that everyday we wait for a solution brings us one step closer to not spending our money with them now – or even ever again. I’m certain a solution will be presented, whether it’s in time to save our business is something we determine. In short there is only so much whinging we can do before giving up seems a much better option.

EDIT: Ninja’ed by an Anet response – serves me right for long winded posts. Oh and original ticket number is 120809-002854 involving my credit card. Let me know if you want the one for the gift debit card which stopped working.

Gaile is asking for ticket numbers in the following thread:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/support/account/Gem-Store-Questions-Issues-merged/first#post5461

I’ve tried using my boyfriend’s credit card and it won’t take that either – so my account is effectively locked for all purchases. I can’t even buy NCoin for Lineage 2 or Aion right now – though Support seems to think I should be able to as my credit card has been associated with those two games for years.

My light at the end of the tunnel has been the hope that Anet implement the gift functionality of the gem store I saw during beta (this credit card issue was identified in beta before launch, I tested the gift card idea in the last stress test where it worked). My sister would be happy to gift me some character slots, and I can just give her the gift cards I bought.

Sangrivane – I can copy and paste the full chain of emails between myself and support confirming what I have said, although they are long and I might have to sensor my more sarcastic moments (nothing rude but I do get sarcastic when frustrated).

The sad part is I’ve usually had a really good relationship with NCSoft support, but the third ticket I’ve submitted – which was for a sound bug – got me an email sent back saying “your problem has be elevated to a senior customer support representative please do not create multiple tickets on the same issue” yes for a sound bug.

I’d like to take the view that it’s just because they are flooded with hacks and exploits but it can be hard when you have $150 worth of debit gift cards sitting on your desk for character slots so you can have all your GW1 characters back.

I am one of the people who have been unable to buy gems with my credit card – from what support has told me NCSoft restricts the number of Master Accounts you can use your credit card with. If you are like me and created multiple Master Accounts for various games to avoid having all of you games hacked at the one time – then you have probably gone above the limit.

Also – brilliantly – your purchase of GW2 created a new Master Account for you, so if you think you only had one or two well you don’t. That’s what caught me out – I would have been under the specified limit (4 max, 5 apparently puts you over and gets you blocked) if GW2 had not created the additional account.

It is (according to the email support sent me) an anti-fraud measure which they will not remove. I was told by support to get a new credit card.

Now apparently there is a second limit which I also got caught on – so my credit card doesn’t work let’s try gift debit cards, they don’t need to be tied to my bank account and I can buy exactly the amount I need – but you can only have a limited number of payment methods associated with your account. So if you have used multiple credit cards, debit cards, or pay pal accounts you will also be blocked.

Welcome to the small but frustrated group of those who cannot buy gems :p