Character Protection

Ok I've done a search but found nothing along these lines so here goes.

There's currently an interesting thread in riverside discussing someone's account that has been hacked, several points have been brought up regarding how it could have been dealt with better by support. During this time the person who has gained access to the account has been free to loot and then delete the persons characters. This means they are losing not only their armours, weapons and wealth, they are losing character based titles.

Titles are often hard time consuming achievements and it strikes me as horrible that the person who compromised the account isn't just stealing the account holder's loot but also destroying their achievements that aren't account based.

Basically someone else bought this up and I think it deserves its own thread here as a suggestion or a discussion of possibilities:

Is it even possible?
Would something like this work?
Would they have to limit it?

There's been a few character's I've thought I would keep forever but ended up deleting anyway. So maybe a permanent protection would be too much.

One thing they could do is add a pin to a character and make you type this code instead of of the name of the character to confirm the deletion? Since this code wouldn't be used usually and should be unique a key-logger would never get it.

Or they could allow you to make say 2 characters permanent characters?

Either way I would feel much safer if there was more protection on my long standing characters.

If anyone can thing of more methods to protect our characters please post here, I'll compile them all with pros and cons and put them here after we've done discussing it.

Ideas:

Paid Character Retrieval/Back Up:
(Idea by Sleeper Service)
Pros:
Allows a back up of the character and their achievements. If someone deleted the character maliciously it could be returned from a save point intact.
Cost involved would cover any extra server load, it would also put people off from abusing the system.

Possible Draw Backs:
Cost and method of payment. We all know after the discussion of the Bonus Mission Pack not everyone has the ability to purchase products in the online store. Also if the cost was too high not everyone could purchase the upgrade.

Abuse of the system:
Survivor title abuse. Pay per retrieval could put people off.

Time Delayed Character Deletion:
(Idea by TheRaven)
Pros:
Simple system where by you flag a character as protected (confirmation prompt before). They can still be deleted but there is a time delay of up to 2 weeks, This means when you gain access of your account again you can save your character.

Possible Draw Backs:
If you don't report it or get your account back within the 2 week time slot this will offer no protection.

Abuse of the system:
None

character retrieval service provided by anet for a low cost.
character backup provided by anet for a low cost.

Items and cash would be lost obviously. else there would be abuse.


nothing is free.
(EvE does it)

Another good idea, as long as it was a one off cost to back up your character or characters and you could update the benchmark/back-up whenever you like.

mmm yeah, per retrieval. If not you can imagine what would happen with stuff like Survivor titles, just trying to limit abuse.

Didn't think of that
Updated OP.

There definitely needs to be some type of protection for characters, but at the same time I think the simplest solutions are the best ones. Create a flag that you can check on the character selection screen. Checking this flag and typing the character name creates a "lock" on the character. You can still delete a character with the lock in place, but it requires more time and effort. When you delete a locked character, the character remains on your character selection screen (and takes up a character slot) but they are unplayable and appear in a faded "ghost" look. The character remains this way for 1 or 2 weeks before being permanently removed from the system. While the character remains in the ghost state, they can be rezzed by the account owner at any time.


The paid retrieval idea is good, but I wonder how much protection it would really offer. How many folks would actually take advantage of it? I'm sure most of us are egostical enough to think, "well, I'll never be hacked! So, I'm not paying for something like this!" These are the same folks that see the threads posted by players that accidentally deleted their main characters when they meant to delete the pvp only ranger right next to him and think to themselves, "what a retard, I'd never do that!"

Well accidents happen. We're more vulnerable than we think to hackers and it's easy to get careless and mess up something you shouldn't. More folks would be willing to mark a flag on a permanent character than pay for a retrieval system.

Raven, what would keep the hacker from ressing all the ghost chars to steal their stuff and then delete them?

I like the game too, but isn't this a bit much? I heard the other day of a kid who committed suicide when one of his WoW characters was deleted by Blizzard... It's just a game...

I have an idea myself, actually.. How about we have a password that you'd have to type in to access the individual characters? This way, if the hacker doesn't know the password, they can't access the character. And it'd be a little tedious to do this for each individual character, so we'd make it account-wide. You'd enter in your username and password and then you're able to get in! If you don't give away your password via stupidity, you can still access your characters.

(Guess what.. it's already like that, folks. Moral of the story: Don't give away your password, don't fall for stupid scams and your characters with years invested achieving high geek status won't be wasted away, at least if we're not talking about real life..)

Unfortunately in the case of Cats (the thread I linked to), an ex guildie (someone she would have trusted) planted a virus/keylogger on the pc via an email. An inside job basically.

Having to type a password to access each character would make no difference because they would be logged too.

Actually EvE does that as well i forgot, its really quite handy and in that case preserves the whole char items included.

On the downside while your char is fading away you can't "write" over it.
I suggest that dedicated PVP chars not have the option of ghosting out.

Flagging them for protection would be optional so you just wouldn't flag pvp characters.

Hawkeye, I think you missed the entire point of this thread. If a hacker gains control of your account then your stuff is probably gone. Period.
What Lucifer is suggesting is a way to protect your characters from being deleted, not your stuff.

If you read my post then you should understand what is preventing the hacker from deleting the chars. We're assuming that the victim will contact A-net/NCSoft support when they lose control of the account. Let's also assume that they can regain control in about a week. (Hopefully, much much sooner). If it takes at least a week to permanently delete a char then the chars are safe from hackers.

Exactly. Items will go deffo, but at least the character based titles and achievements can be saved.

Yeah, but I really don't want to have to wait a week before my characters are deleted. If I wanted to remake a pvp character, I would like to do it immediately, not wait.

I see your logic now, and I apologize if I was too quick to read some of your points. Though I still don't think it is a good solution. It'd be like implementing a 'delayed delete' feature on your computer so that you couldn't delete anything on your hard drive until a week after you tried so that a virus couldn't delete anything.

If you have a virus deleting things from your computer often, you've got bigger problems to fix than implementing a 'delayed delete' feature on your computer, and the same can be said for this. Tell your friend that she needs to keep the hackers out before she can worry about this...

Hawkeye, you have a valid point. The biggest issue is indeed keeping the viruses off the computer to start with. I've never been a "blame the victim" type and in this particular situation, I don't feel that Cat did anything blatantly stupid. On the other hand, if you are the type to open, download and visit every single website you get e-mailed about, then yes you are asking for trouble. It's like leaving your house unlocked and unguarded every day. Don't be surprised if you come home from work one evening to find the place ransacked.

However, nowadays it is getting increasingly easier to catch a virus or keylogger on your computer. The hackers are getting sneakier and even folks who are normally very careful can find themselves in these situations. This is why we need a level of protection on our characters.

In my first post, I said this should be an optional flag on your characters. (Stress the optional part) Hawkeye, you may not want to set the flag on your characters, but I do. I want that option. I'm willing to wait a week to delete a long time character. I also have pvp only chars on my account as well as mule characters that I don't care much about. I'd never set the flag on those.

I think making characters undeletable would be good. Sure someone may do that and change their mind and need to free up a character slot. But from Anet's standpoint, it could lead to more sales of extra character slots...

Or, when making a character un-deletable, make it a time period like 3 months or 6 months. That way you can wait it out if you really want to delete the character. And if you want to continue to protect it, you can renew the permanent protection any time you want. That way as long as there's still a month of protection left on the character, in the event your account gets hacked, you'll have plenty of time to get the account back.

I've never been hacked before. I don't do much on the internet besides Guild Wars, email, this forum, and a viewing a few company websites. But still, if this character protection was added I know that I'll get a big sense of relief and peace of mind when I protect my main character from deletion.

I agree on the character delete protection idea.

Also, if they add this, this may scare gamers thinking this can happen and that playing Guild Wars makes them more susceptible, which isn't true of course. They could also list "user error deletion" as a reason for this too. Sure it may be hard to accidentally delete a character when you have the type its name out. But you never know, it may have happened. Also, let's say you have characters with similar names and you don't want to end up deleting the wrong one.

Something should definitely be added to protect the characters. Deleting the wrong character by mistake is also a feasible error to make. I have 2 characters with the same name except 1 letter, to make matters once they are next to each other too.

I think this should be added to the list of existing ideas in sardelac for anet to look at in the future.

I'd quite like the subscription based protection someone suggested in the other thread. i.e, you have 3 or 6 months where that character can not be deleted and you can keep extending it.

Useful for those like me that have trouble keeping a wannabe survivor alive.

And tighter security with logins. i.e, 3 incorrect password attempts in a row your account should be locked for 2 or 3 hours or require a password reset. (Also mentioned by another in that thread).

I would like an undeletable option. Maybe only works for one character? ArenaNet would like this since they want us to play only one character anyways.

I'm sure it would be easy for them to add this. I don't know much about programming. But when you're at the character select screen and one of the characters is displayed, there's a delete button. It could be a matter of simply not having the button there at all for a period of time(which can be renewed at any time). If they're afraid of a hacker with programming expertise forcing a deletion without the button, can't they remove the function completely for the character(s) of our choice?

Just wanted to point out that it is, very unlikely, that if you read, and are conscious of what is going on, that you will delete your character. I don't think ANet needs to hold your hand with everything you do.

I know but the real reason for this is in the event an account gets hacked and the hacker intentionally deletes characters. The hacker may think it's a prank when it really causes emotional distress. Or the hacker may know about the emotional distress and wants to intentionally cause it. Anyways, this is really to protect characters from hackers.

Even if thousands of people use this option and only a few of them get hacked, it's still a lot of people who will at least enjoy an added layer of security. If a hacker gets through the layer of account access, they're stopped at the protection from character deletion. They would have to hack Anet itself to go any further.

I just offer "user error" as another official reason for them to publicize so they don't give the impression that their online game is easily hack-able. A public or customer relations and advertising sort of thing.

sorry people but can we please keep to the topic subject.
Lets just assume "X" reason account may be compromised and focus on options.

It just makes people feel safer. Items can be earned again, gold can be refarmed, missions can be won again. But titles are probably the hardest and most time consuming element of GW and its something that could easily be saved in the event of an account being compromised.

Like linksys said, if 1000s of people use this option and only 1 or 2 needed to use its services, Then its succeeded.

Just because you live in an area with no crime you'd still set your house alarm just in case as well as locking your doors, just for that added security and piece of mind.

Great idea, I like to have the best possible protection for my primary character. I've put so much time in it. An option to make it not deletable would be great.

Since the biggest threat seems to come from a keylogger recording your keypresses when entering your password the obvious solution is to have a method to enter passwords without typing.

Its a little more tedious but if on starting the game, a box with the alphabet, numbers and allowed symbols appeared then you could click with your mouse to enter the password.

Will that not defeat a keylogger program since the keyboard wasnt used.

not my idea I saw it online as a proposed method of entering credit card numbers safely.

/signed. I know that I'd like to make my main undeletable. And any protection is good, in my book.

So I'm not completely on board with any one of the ideas posted above; rather, I like a combination. I think you should be able to flag your characters as "protected" (or whatever word Anet wants to use), and for a period of time (two or three months), that character can not be immediately deleted. I like the "ghost" idea of having the character in some way faded out, but not deleted. In this state, the character would still take up a character slot, but would not be playable and would have a counter (at first days, then hours, then minutes) until deletion when you select him/her. This protection would be permanent for an extended period of time (months, as stated before) so a hacker or other person wouldn't be able to remove and immediately delete.

Though most of Guild Wars players won't have their accounts hacked, it would give almost all of us the extra peace of mind that even if for some very odd reason the account becomes compromised, it's not the end of the world. Even if it was never needed (we can only wish), it seems to me that the sense of security brought about by such a feature would be reason enough in itself.

Given the above qualifications, /signed.

I'd take it. I don't use third-party tools or any of the other things that are traditionally vectors for a Trojan, but a layer of additional protection just-in-case would be greatly appreciated, especially since I don't see myself deleting any of my PvE characters.

It would also provide a 'safety net' for that rumoured bug that occasionally crops up where the system deletes the wrong character. Certainly makes me hesitant to make a PvP or any other kind of temporary character.

And again, if Anet adds this feature and states "incase your account is hacked," it may make new gamers think the game is susceptible to hacking which of course is not the case. So they can publicly cite "user error deletion" as the "official reason" for it. But we know the reason is really the worst case scenario.

the head programmers who designed, programmed, and coded the account database have stated several times that rolling back /spoofing /recovering /altering an individual account is impossible without starting from scratch and recoding the entire database which they will not do.

it is a case of all or nothing on a rollback

it is not a case of we wont

it is a case of we cant no matter how much you offer to pay

True about rollback and I'm sure Anet has to use plenty of resources just to keep all the characters and items in the GW world in existence.

How about this as an added bonus to the great suggestions already listed above - if you change anything in your account, say the email address or password (as I imagine a hacker might try to do), an email goes to your old email account and won't actually change anything until you reply. It would be a "must do and you can't access anything on the account until you do" kinda thing.

By itself of course, it won't stop a hacker from looting you, but with some other things sugegsted above, it would make a richer prevention system. It could also activate if you tried to delete your character.
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Storytelling the fire at Gunnar's Hold? You bet!

But what if a hacker accesses the email account too? Then he/she can just reply or do whatever is needed.

If Anet is up for the effort, they could start a database where gamers call in and set up some kind of verbal password or personal information verification system. Not everyone keeps their boxes and key codes. Completely optional of course and not everyone will bother doing it.

Resurrecting this... given the current round of people reporting their accounts hacked, I'd really like to see A-net give us some way of protecting characters from deletion.

I'm in favour of allowing people to make at least character permanently undeletable... but failing that, at least allowing people to select delayed deletion on their characters.