Guild Wars 2

kerona.3465:

Man, we’re not even in first place and ppl complaining about our zergs. I was there in EK DBBL pretty much all night (until we all slept). Watching Too Huge solo that treb inside of outer with an unguarded cannon on outer south gate while tanking like 30 people was honestly one of the best things I’ve ever seen. At the time when you broke through north again with your NNKish zerg, we had 26 people inside (I counted!).

Anyways, mostly EB is where our massive zergs hide. On BLs we tend to be smaller guild based groups and the occasional karmaWPTS-train.

High Five! But yea, you make a great point, most of the BLs are actually staffed with commanders and guilds who WvW to win, not to just farm badges and WXP.

Though, that being said… http://youtu.be/58_q59y8-Fc

deracs.1762:

The zerg has changed since the patch. It used to be about fighting for the points to win the week. This meant a little more strategy. 3 sizable zergs from the same realm in a BL taking objectives fighting etc was the norm. Since the patch the norm is one giant zerg per borderland essentially swapping tower, keeps and camps. Part of the reason is the world xp, part of the reason is there is no real competition in T3. Dragonbrand will win no matter what, so not strategy is needed, and all that is decided is if the third place team will go to T4 or not. So we have less strategy and more world XP trains, and that means much larger zergs. I am hoping over time this will settle down.

Really depends which commander you’re following, at least on Mag. The guys that have been doing WvW for a while now know which Commanders are offense based and which are defense based. And trust me, we didn’t move up from T4 by merely tower swapping. And we get more WXP than we know what to do with farming the zergs; DBs are worth 60 WXP a pop for the most part.

Edit: As of this posting Mag is holding 13 of 24 supply camps, 11 of 24 towers, and 8 of 12 keeps. So there is strategy here.

deracs.1762:

I can give easy example. Sunday night 9:30 EST zerg of maguma of 60+ took Hills in YB BL. This is what we see quite regular from all realms since the WvW patch. Doesnt mean there are not smaller zergs and fights, but there is now always a 60+ zerg by all realms that did not exist before the patch. We can all claim we fought off 4 times our number of enemies, because we all do, every single night

So if all servers have their zergs and we’ve all manage to wipe a zerg with far inferior numbers (and have a lot of fun doing it), then why do people keep complaining about X Server’s zerg?

And the zerg was always there, you just never saw it before the patch due to culling.

Doomdesire.9365:

I would like to know how a greatsword fits in that box.

Time and Relative Dimension in Space

DtC.4806:

His intention is to make us have no supply when defending, there’s hundreds of ss’s saying he’s specifically sabotaging for us to lose and that he tells ehmry where our commanders are and stuff (and on his alt account he’s told me where their commander is as well) nobody should be thinking of excuses on why this is acceptable.
And I am a veteran commander I was one of the early commanders on Borlis pass

Oh I’m not commenting on the guy in the OP specifically. If everything being said about him is true, then yea he’s just a griefer. What I’m saying is in response to people’s suggestions that monitoring seige placement by character and allowing open reporting will fix this.

Watch this video:
http://youtu.be/tCAQS_w0Wgw
Start at 1:25 and 5:38 for some classic anti-zerg tactics. Use the zerg’s mob mentality against them; you’d be surprised how easy it is to scatter a PUG zerg once the lead group gets spiked.

The issue is really complicated. Sometimes, when taking towers or supply camps that your server has no intention or realistic ability to hold long term, like northern towers/camps on enemy borderlands, building random seige is a great way to drain their supply, so they cannot use it to back up defense at a keep or the garrision. While veteran WvW players may understand when this tactic is appropriate, some newer players may not understand why we do it, or which camps/towers to do it at.

“Take whatever you can carry! Burn the rest on Flame Rams!”

Serebus.7314:

I was there and that was my treb and he used a cannon :P good fights though i was getting burnt out from my 12 hr commanding sprint and it was 4 hours past my guilds raid :C

Yep, that’s the one. And the crazy part was you guys were swarming the courtyard and the only cannon that he could use was mounted on the outter wall, not the inner wall. He got the last shot off just as he was swarmed, and thereafter stabbed repeatedly.

Pyroatheist.9031:

Not quite accurate. There were about 15-20 pugs, and 10-15 BP there, but by the time we had broken inner, we were flush out of supply for a few reasons. BP went to resupply, the pugs sat and milled around and eventually the mag push decimated them.

So 45ish? Most of our guys were PUGs too, only about 5/6 were on TS with the Commander. Either way, we were not exactly brimming with supply on the defensive end. Still the counter push was effective enough that by the time you guys regrouped launched the next serious push against East Keep, we had enough time to run a manual supply train and completely patch up the inner wall. All in all though, it was an epic night, thanks for playing with us.

As a regular night time player on Mag, I find all this talk of the dreaded Maguuma zerg quite mystifying.

I could have sworn last night 20 Mag players were holed up in EK in the DB BL fighting off a zerg of at least 50-60. If I recall correctly, the zerg punched a hole through the outter wall, and then another throught the inner wall, at which point they were stopped dead in their tracks. A counter push by a dozen Might stacked Mags broke up the attack and scattered the rest.

Or late night on Friday reset. I recall 5 Mags taking and holding NE Supply Camp and holding out against repeated attempts to retake it. First, a group of 5 was promptly spiked. Then 10, then 15, and 20, though they managed to take down our single ballista, which we promptly rebuilt. Finally, it took 2 groups of 15 and 10 attacking from different directions to finally drive us out and reclaim the camp.

Mag isn’t scary because of our numbers, we’re scary because we have crazy Commanders who will single handledly attack a guarded enemy treb, … and succeed. For everyone who was with us at the EK last night: “Long live the Huge one.”

But due to me quitting WoW before WotLK, they never bothered notifying me. I didn’t find out the old account info was compromised until I tried to sign up for D3 beta. I’m sure had the hackers gotten access to a more up to date list of player credentials, we wouldn’t be talking about just 11,000 reported hacked accounts. But either way, it just goes to show the extent how long some people use the same password for everything. My dad’s one of those people who’s been using the same password for all his email accounts since he first got AOL Dialup Service in the 90s. So glad he doesn’t play GW2.

I say we should start at relief fund for victims of hackers. Have people donate 5 silver a pop via mail to the victim so he can get some yellow/green gear off of the TP and get back into the game. Even at high levels right now, you’d be surprised how far 2 gold can go.

Alec Owlyear.6782:

Aren’t passwords supposed to be encrypted within the database? Specifically against hackers and unscrupulous employees the same? You usually will see some sort of disclaimer of “If you lose your password we cannot retrieve it”. I would imagine that this is the industry standard, but if not, it could be cause for investigation…

Except Anet’s database was NOT the one hacked. The hackers got into Blizzard’s databases more than a year back if I recall correctly. And there was also a GW2 fansite which got hacked due to weak, amateurish security. Using the lists of emails and passwords from those databases, the hackers basically tried them all in an attempt to log in to GW2 and hijack the accounts of players. They were banking on people being complacent and reusing the same email/PW for everything, because who wants to remember 10 different passwords?

For people who did have a different password for GW2 than for battle.net or the fansite, they’d send, using the login launcher, a request to reset the password. Then they would try their list of compromised passwords with your email accounts to get in and confirm the requests to change the passwords (or in some cases the registered email address).

For those of us who had a compromised battle.net account but used unique passwords for GW2 and email, like me, we woke up the first week to emails from ANet asking us to confirm password resets, clear evidence of a failed hacking attempt.

“Hacking,” in real life, is not always dude sitting at a multi screen setup with lines of assembly language streaming across monitors as his fingers fly over keyboard as he engages in mortal combat with firewalls. Mostly it’s a con-game, based on human psychology; in this case, we tend to be too lazy use multiple passwords, we think we are more secure than we actually are, we are under the assumption that ANet can perform sorcery and instantly restore hacked accounts, and sites offering free exotics if we sign up must be legit because we like what we hear.

Not trying to place blame on the victims, but seeing the numbers of posts on here relying solely, demanding even, that ANet “fix these hacks now!” demonstrates exactly the kind of psychological profile and lack of understanding of how net security works that these hackers look for in their victims. When the problem is behavioral rather than coding related, there’s very little, anyone other than you yourself, who can prevent hacks.

TL;DR: First, ANet didn’t get hacked, it was other databases also used by GW2 players. Also, ANet security isn’t the weak link if hackers are relying on the complacency of players when it comes to actively protecting themselves.

@DrakeWurrum
I think they really didn’t expect so many people to all reuse compromised credentials. I’ve got this conspiracy theory, pure unfounded speculation, that Blizzard actually gave a list of all former WoW players, myself included, along with their emails and old passwords to Chinese (at least from the IPs) hacking rings so that they could attempt to wreck havoc with the GW2 launch.

Basically, what ended up happening was you have 50 people (I’m guessing) in CS suddenly getting pounded with over 11,000 people with hack accounts all clamoring for special attention. You could hire more people to work CS, but you end up with a sudden surplus of people with inadequate training and even basic knowledge of the game. And what happens when the initial rush of hacking is resolved? No one actually enjoys handing out pink slips.

Also agree with Gahro’s concerns. I think that may be the biggest issue with implementing rollbacks. How do you help the victim without punishing the person who unwittingly bought stolen property off of the TP? And how do you achieve that without screwing over the rest of the players and the in game economy? And what do you do about the guy that decides he’s going to sell his * of Rage on the TP and then report his account hacked so he can get it back sell it again later?

Not directing this at the OP, but remember, just like in real life, not everyone who claims to be a victim may actually be one. So you can’t just create a rollback tool with no system of verifying claims and accounting for impact. There’s plenty of government programs to help the needy, and there’s no shortage of not so needy people taking advantage of said programs.

I do believe the lack of face to face trading was a conscious design choice. As inconvenient as it is for some people not to be able to conduct these trades and deal with the lack of enforcement, the idea is to push the in-game economy to the TP and spare the rest of us incessant WTS spams.

A few years back in GW1, if you went into Lion’s Arch it was impossible to follow a conversation with everyone and their mom spamming WTS/WTT/WTB. And once people figured out that they weren’t being heard because people would disable the Trade channel, they started spamming in General chat, you know, just in case you really did want to buy from them after all.

So yea, I hope they NEVER bring back a direct player to player trading/selling mechanism.

Um silly question… were you representing at the time of drinking?

I wonder why they haven’t just implemented the old system of forcing you to type in the name of one of your characters when you log in?

Has your friend tried to re-register his CD-Key at https://register.guildwars2.com/ ?
Same thing happened to my friend on the day I hot him his copy of the game. Turned out a hiccup in his connection caused the registration to be invalid. Kept telling us his email was not associated with a GW2 account. So when we tried to use the CD-Key again and the second time it took.

infring.8942:

I agree with you 100%, Its quite annoying when i see ppl on forums telling the victims its entirely their own fault with no mention of the criminal.

Agreed. But it’s also annoying when victims try to place the blame the developer for something that’s technically not their fault. ANet can do a lot, but unfortunately, it has no control over security at fansites or rival MMO studios. ANet does not send out phishing emails and does not distribute keyloggers. If someone steals your car, you don’t blame the police for it.

While I don’t think anyone here goes out of their way to invite hackers to hijack their accounts or thinks to themselves “how can I be more negligent with net security today?” we’re all guilty somewhat when it comes down to being lazy about things.

How many of us used different emails for battle.net and Guild Wars, even after we heard about Blizz getting hacked? How many of us used different passwords for everything we sign up with, especially our email accounts? And if you took one or both of these precautions, did you still get hacked?

Heck, I’m guilty of using the same email. 2nd day of launch I get hit with a hacking attempt complements of my old compromised WoW account. Luckily, I’ve long since stopped using that password for anything. So they were not able to get into my GW2 account. They then tried to reset my password which required email confirmation. Once again I was lucky that I’ve have a different password on that as well.

I do hope everything works out for the OP, and instead of taking sides on who the criminal is, we should all focus on how we can protect ourselves and keep from becoming victims. Well… that or petition GW2 to put skeletons into the game so that it becomes outlawed in China due to censorship.

TL;DR: Let’s all remember to not used compromised Email/PW from other games. And have a UNIQUE PW for your email. Don’t let hackers make you a victim.

Hacking tends not to be so much a server side issue as it is a client side issue. That is to say the hacking going on right now is not for lack of security at ANet. They didn’t lose a list of passwords and logins due to internal security. I’d say at least 99% of all hacked accounts are direct results of lack of diligence on the part of the end user. Either not using a unique password from a previously hacked account or falling prey to fishing attempts.

First week of launch I got the warning email regarding someone trying to reset my password. Most likely someone was trying to log in using my old WoW credentials. I know for a fact that my old WoW account was hacked (luckily long after I had quit playing) because I was unable to log in with it to sign up for the D3 beta.

You can’t blame a lock company for making faulty locks if you leave your key laying around, or worse Blizzard leaves your key laying around.

yea, i’m still stuck but nice to have an eta on the fix. the good news is we don’t need to do the personal story to progress in the game and levels

Same thing happened to me. Second time too and it bugged at the exact same spot. At the last step to escort the second team to the exit. Everyone stops following me and one member teleported back to the spot where you first find Krewe Leader Dobbs. See attached screenshot.

I’m a level 62 ranger. One of two things I did during the mission comes to mind in what may have caused it to bug out. 1) After rescuing Dobbs I did not clear out the respawned mobs in the central dig site as I was able to get into the cave opening without aggroing everything. 2) I cleared out the southern escape route before I rescued the second team from the vet abomination. I don’t know if either of those actions borked the quest.

Well good to know I’m not the only one with this issue. I sent a ticket into support and was told this:
“The following article from the Knowledge Base should answer your question. The Knowledge Base contains the answers to many frequently asked questions and is a good resource for fast answers. The Knowledge Base can be accessed at http://us.ncsoft.com/us/support/.”
The link led me to a page that said: “This answer is no longer available.”
Searching for any entries for “Email Authentication” yields no results.

Update: My ticket has been referred up to a Senior Account Login Team Member. Hopefully they’ll be able to give me a solution I can share with you guys.

Just tried it. Still borked. The researchers did not follow me to the exit.

I’m sure Anet will reimburse us for lost in game time.

yep. same thing is happening to me. so it’s fairly universal i think.