URGENT: Unable to Log In

I've been playing GW for a long time now, since March Beta 2005. I have Prophecies, Factions, NF and EotN, and been in a guild since Nov 2005.

Today a guildie of mine says I logged on for a bit, he tried to PM me but I didn't respond. The thing is I never got on since last night. He checks, and I've apparently left the guild.

Initially we think I've been hacked, but then when I get him to check my account, I get this error message


which seems more like an Anet thing. Now I can't get in at all.

I've been trying all day to contact Customer Service, but they've been a bit slow. Error number 070917-00655.

Any help would be most appreciated. I really fear losing that account after all the hours I put into it, and since it's holding half of my guild's party money

Looks like a screwup by NCSoft or Anet; nothing we can do about it. Just hope the customer service can help you.

I hope so too lordpwn, I'm very very anxious and upset right now. I tried again, and now I'm getting this...



I don't think anyone had changed my account email as I've been checking it all day, and I never received this mentioned 'email confirmation'.

Is your account tied to a PlayNC account, or not? If the account is tied to a PlayNC account then the username couldn't be changed so it would have to be an issue at ANet's end. Otherwise things might be more dire.

Apparently my account was indeed hacked. The guy came on about 11am EDT when a fellow officer and a few others were online, and who attempted to PM him but few of them got blocked. He swapped around a few of my toons - probably trying to steal all he can then delete them.

And NCSoft STILL hasn't got back to me. Now I've submitted 3x including UK NCSoft. No reply as of yet

As a bit of an update, a guildy of ours actually talked to whomever was on the account. He actually told him what he was going to do... this is where it gets complicated...

Apparently, he plans to take all the cash off and then run the account as a bot. After he had ran the bot, he planned to report it to Anet so they can delete it completely without making him a suspect.

The guildy who chatted has taken pictures of his chat with him.

An update:

This happened 21:30-22:00 GMT+1 on September 17th (Might be 16th... not sure since time zone is a factor)



I've omitted a guild chat conversation from the original picture since it had nothing to do with it.

I've spoken to someone I know who's had his account hacked. He says 6 of his toons were deleted, 2 were stripped naked, and about 150-200k worth of items taken. Anet DID NOT inform him if the hacker was caught, nor rolled back his toon, nor reimbursed him for his loss. All he got was a template reply "We are sorry to inform you that your items cannot be retrieved." Which I'm guessing is what I'm going to get.

This reflects VERY VERY poorly on Anet public relations, especially as to the speed that they're taking action on my own account and replying me. It took them a total of 13 hours just to make their first post to me, leaving the offender ample time to come on for several times to steal and delete more items, and have kept me going in loops asking me for ridiculous things like sending them the original receipts of all my games to Austin, Texas, even though I had already provided them every single key, proving that I am undoubtedly the owner of those titles, plus I have close to 500 people to backup my statement. I'd like to know who keeps receipts from 2005?

Now they're ping ponging me from America to Europe, and replying me with template answers that I can match word for word. It seems my own guildies are doing a better job at tracking down this guy.

I wanna know what Anet is doing??

It reflects poorly on you, don't let someone get your password, dummy

If I was that stupid I wouldn't be posting in here. Do you know what is the meaning of "HACKED". Nobody knows my password except my own husband. If I'm not the first victim of such crimes, GW obviously has a serious security problem that they're trying to cover up.

I'm in the guild with "cats" and I know that this person was able to hack the account. There are a lot of things that you can do to prevent this type of thing from happening. First off, Have a password that is very secure(like Cats did). Then you contact customer service immediately(like cats did). Now the normal policy(in any customer service as I'm a supervisor for a multi-national car sharing company, who's name i'm not allowed to release due to a privacy agreement I signed with the company) is that you suspend the account until you determine who the real user of the account is. Ask the person who has the email address to send you in a copy of their serials and then that will prove to you who owns the game. Your never suppose to throw away your serial keys...ever. It even states that on them(not when I originally picked up mine way back in 2005, but I still have them)

Now I'm not sure how they run their customer service, but I know that is the standard practice in most customer service places. A-net now gets a big thumbs down on it's customer service due to the lack of response and the ability to take initiative. I've been trying to help her regain her account.

But, I must ask this. What is A-net's turn around time? what if you were hacked? would you want to be responded to immediately? what if you lost all that gold, or ecto's or the platnium that you've been running around trying to get. You lost vabbian armor or all the grinding you did for the monument armor, asuran armor, or the Chaos gloves.

I really hope that Gaile Grey reads this post...due to the lack of customer service, she lost someone who spent countless hours making videos and praising A-net to the highest peek. If you want proof of this, go to youtube and type in "The Clover and the skull" which is an amazing series. As well as fire of the covenant.

What would you do in this situation?

And this post reflects poorly on your reading skills, dummy.

As seen, it's not a simple take password and go, something was obviously done on a much higher scale. No confirmation email and no email address shown in the picture taken... it's obviously no key logger or anything of that sort.

Something NEEDS to be done, not only for the sake of the fellow guildy of mine, but also for the possible security hole that has been found.

Feel sorry for you, But we all know that you will not get your hard earned stuff back. I do hope that you at the very least get the account back, but 2 years of working towards something, all gone within hours. Sorry for your loss, hope it all works out in the end.

Cats, maybe if you post this at the riverside you might get a bigger and better respond maybe even from Grey herself, on the other hand you might get some idiots post in as well. Do keep us posted though and sorry for your lost.

Only problem with this, is that you an get the serials/keys from ing ame on the character select screen from going into options.

Receipts are needed. I guess a good reason to buy from the online store is that the receipts are emailed to you. So you can hardly 'lose them' then ;P

@ Cats

I hope you get your account back in its previous state, being hacked is no fun ;(

The more I see of problems with ANet and security the more I think they wound up over reaching themselves.

Stolen accounts - this one, at least, stolen without access to passwords or confirmation emails

And not only in the game but in their online service too...

The inability to figure a way to work the online store so that people in Australia do not get charged more than is fair (while this is not a security issue, it does indicate that they are struggling to figure out how to do online marketing properly)

Major problems with credit card charges in the online store (so much so that several have reported credit card companies and banks rejecting charges from ANet as possibly fraudulent)

The fact that when you do have a problem with purchases in the online store your only recourse is to go through the long "file a support ticket" process. The online stores I deal with all have a separate process for dealing with credit card charge problems - usually a toll free number that reaches a real person so that issues of that nature are dealt with immediately instead of having to go through layers of automated emails. The fact that ANet does not have this kind of support in place worries me a great deal.

I think ANet came up with a great idea for a game format but grew too fast. They are game programmers - not security and online sales specialists - and I think they need to realize that they are in over their heads in these areas. It is more and more obvious that until they admit it and begin seeking help from people who are security and marketing specialist the whole community is at risk - not only for stolen game accounts but for financial security as well.

I don't think I, for one, want to trust my credit card information to a company that seems to have so many security holes and is as slow to address problems as they obviously have been with this one.

ANet needs to get serious about security both in game and in sales. They need to look for expert help and they need to do it now.

Posted 5am Monday and no replys from a-net? They are going to do nothing even though you have provided proof the acct was stolen? That is terrible, and they should be ashamed if they don't give you back all your stuff...and don't give me that crap that they can't tell what you had because Gaile already said they could tell everything back when the dupe was going on.

I got some bot-like replies, with mostly 13-14hr gaps.

1. They asked me thrice what my access keys are,
2. Asked me twice to send them my receipts which I've already told them I do not keep receipts that are more than 2-years old. One time told me to mail them snail mail to Texas, that all photocopies will not be accepted, now telling me to fax them to Europe - isn't fax like a photocopy?
3. Asked me twice to provide a secure email.

Each time giving me no assurance, nor update as to how the progress is faring. So I have absolutely no idea what's going on.

I'm mainly the events/party creator in the guild and the alliance. I've commonly been the one to hold on to party items/prize weapons to give away during contests, and typically donate gold and green items into the prize list without merchanting them for myself. For that, I've never been very wealthy 'cos of all the stuff I give away on a regular basis, but it makes me happy to see others having a good time than just hoarding money for myself to get some leet armor.

It's been years of hard work, dedication and selection of good members that had made our guild stand out. Currently we hold a spot for Guild of the Week (in Sept). For that we held a large party bash to thank everyone for their support, and also a fun event that worked also as a fundraiser to fund more high profile contests/games in the future. But celebrations were apparently cut short as I believe it's no coincidence that I was hit so close to the time our names came up on guildwars.com - made me a target for the person who holds my account now. I'd hate to think of my toons/stuff gone. But worse than that - with my account goes every penny everyone has donated that I am wholly responsible for while holding onto it. The guildies have been telling me that it's not my fault, and that once I get my account back, everyone's gonna help get me back on my feet - but the very fact that this one person could harm so many people in my beloved guild/alliance in one gesture of selfish greed makes me very mad. If he wanted the cash - it was already there for the taking in the form of competitions/contests. Did he really have to ruin the fun of close to 500 people just for the kick of fooling around with one person? I think I know people, but I guess there're some that I'll just never understand.

If Anet had a shred of compassion they might attempt to reimburse the loss, although now I'm not really putting any hope in it with the way they've been working. If and when my account ever comes back to me, it'll be a steep road to climb to make back every penny that was lost.

If I just had one word to ask the hacker, I'd ask WHY.

btw, my account is accessed again at this hour, Wednesday September 19th, 11:52am EDT, 3:52pm GMT. Anet has not suspended the account, and he is still removing items at his own time and leisure. The hacker has put in his own toon named "Bowyr Valdrago"

I feel really sorry for you I hope you get your account back but I honestly think they won't bother helping you, If you have them your access keys what more do they need!?

I have been (and still am) out of the country. What is the status of this issue?

And yes, we will always "bother to help" people!

Just thought I'd reply in case Cats is not going to update the thread.
I'm a friend of hers and as far as I know she indeed got her account back. All her money, weapons, armours, etc. are gone, but her toons are safe.

I'm still wondering, though, how a thing like this could happen. I know Cats, and she's smart enough to not use 3rd-party programs.

Its people like cats that keep me playing this game (good people) if there is anything I can help out with (donations) pm me on the forum cats i will donate to help you get back up and running and recover some of your loss. I'm not super rich but if i can help in anyway let me know..........

I hope that your account gets restored and that the hacker gets a perma ban.

There are a few items I would like to address here.

1. It looks like that the "hacker" was using some form of packet sniffer/interceptor software, this only can happen if you are running a unsecured wireless or they physically hack into your phone line. This "hacker" had to be monitoring you for quite some time in order to do this, as he would have had to "intercept" the conformation E-mail and intercept or brute force 2 passwords,Your E-mail and your game account.

BTW your ISP will have a record of ip address linked to your isp/e-mail account. It may be possible to get local authorities involved if you can obtain this information, with dates and times. This above mentioned hacking is illegal almost everywhere on earth.


2. Extremely complex and long passwords that use upper and lower case letters as well as symbols. Making a brute force or a dictionary attack worthless.

If it doesn't kill you, it makes you stronger.

This may sound like total bullshit to some, but it's true.

I recently lost a req 9 Elemental Sword to a scammer and I was pissed for a while. As ridiculous as it might sound, it did make me stronger. It inspired me to work on my titles and after a few days I got my Kind of a Big Deal.

However, I still think of what support could have prevented, had they acted sooner than they did.

But nonetheless: "After winter comes spring"

Any word so far on your account Cats?

*rattles a donation tin*
happy to help give you some stuff, gold, weapons, runes etc to get u going again.

I doubt Cats will be back here on the forums after the treatment she got here from the flame-fest-idiots who feel it is their right to shoot someone down just to increase their ego size.

I would suggest that you PM her ingame if you wish to help her recover from this fiasco.

Cats got her account back - Nothing material left on it, but at least her chars were still there.

Actually I'm still here Thanks for the concern everyone. I'm used to the mudslinging in flame-fests, guess I've been in enough forums to know. They don't really faze me - I just didn't know people were still posting in this thread. After Gaile's post, and the deletion of my Riverside post, this thread got pushed way down. I did mention in Riverside that I got my account back, so I thought I'd stop making a fuss.

I got my toons back, stripped naked, with that new toon Bowyr Valdrago (that I've now deleted)


found myself in a strange guild, I suspect to belong to my hackers (lost my nice Nov 2005 entry date into my own guild)



All these have been reported to Anet who've assured me they're doing all they can, although they can't tell me what they'll be doing.

Thank you for the kind offers for donations, but the guild has donated all I've needed to get back on my feet, and in fact a bit too much that I had to reject lots of people. I also found 60k on the hacker's toon that they didn't get the time to sell away, which I've been using to buy armor, so I'm gonna give the guild back their money. I really don't feel good living off someone else's hard earned cash.

We do suspect, as zamial suggested, that the hacker had been watching me a while before the act, and was possibly able to retrieve my IP off a forum that I regularly post at. Again just speculation, but it was possibly a crime of revenge - only because I had told them on an occasion to stop cussing and spamming, and had reported them to their officers when they refused to stop (which eventually got them kicked).

Anyway that aside, my PC is reformatted, and (hopefully) much better protected now. I've been coming back to play GW - and been enjoying fun times with the guildies. If you're ever online and looking for someone to talk to, do come chat me up. I'm a social person and love making new friends.

So all your characters that were on your account are still there with their title tracks? If so, that's awsome news and that's what really happens. Items, armor, and weapons can easily be replaced.

I would suggest not posting on a message board run on someone's website. A forum like GW Guru is fine and approved by Anet employees like Gaile. But if it's some obscure unknown website someone just made for a guild or alliance, I wouldn't even load the website on a browser. I simply wouldn't do it.

Well, I own the server for my guild - it's the alliance that's a bit dodgy atm because every guild leader is an admin there.

Hey good to hear that you got your account back, Cat. Lost of all your belonging was to be expected really, I'm sorry.

Guild and alliance's forum can be double edge sword, if you're the owner of the server it's better that you take the role of an admin by yourself. You can't be to nice y'know.