Character Locked = Undeletable. Then... what would you do? [Pics included]

That can't be done.

EULA states one account->One user.

You can have others borrow it.

Easier said than done.

/Signed.

I have locks on my house and yet I still have home and contents insurance in case something goes wrong.

If this were back in the prophesies days when you could build up a character in a matter of hours then I'd say "meh", however the thousands of hours it now takes to level up all the pve attributes accross multiple characters is simply not practical to repeat.

/signed. Let us insure our time investments against malefactors.

Our accounts are completely safe from hacking. Just like there's no way somebody would be able to duplicate items in Guild Wars. Or how people can't force their way into a secret outpost that gives them easy access to the final boss of a certain elite mission.

Face it, nobody's completely infallible. An extra level of security would be nice. I keep my account as safe I am aware I can, changing up the password as necessary and all sorts of other precautions. However, I am reminded of the story of Cats, I believe, whose account was somehow compromised by a really nasty virus of some sort that she had no idea how to prevent against. With the system she had to go through, it took so many days just to make support know that someone else had gotten into her account. Thankfully, when she finally got it back, her characters were there (albeit with most if not all the items gone), but it certainly could have been worse. In fact, it has been worse for quite a few people.

The number of hours many of us have put into the game can be wiped away in such a simple method. An extra layer of protection would greatly help. The chances of having an account may be low, but every small percent is an opportunity that someone has to get in and do some damage. I, as well as many others, would greatly appreciate having some way to protect our characters, with hundreds of hours put into them, from disappearing with zero chance of recovery.

Shh, don't tell them :P

Asian Gold Farmer: Borrowing accounts for 100k a day, PM ME

Stupid people: Ok! Here's my account name and password!

I can't imagine you would need that, however some friends of mine have accidently deleted their PvE's, so I guess it can be a help to some players.:P

I was just thinking... what if you had a 2nd password you could set per character? Take it up a level - a separate password on storage too.

Maybe instead of simply typing the name to delete a character, you set a password for them and have to re-type it in...

Most games have some kind of a consideration system that let's you cancel the deletion within a time limit.

But doesn't the chara deletion already ask you to type in your email or something? 'Cause I don't remember but I'd consider that enough.

If you want any of your internet passwords to be secure use letters, numbers and symbols combined. [email protected] This should be common knowledge this day and age. Plus you can change your pass periodically. I have to do that to my school passwords every month. Never give your password to either friends or strangers but if you must change your password just for that occasion and change it back.

Yes, and neither the locks, nor the insurance, come free.

The point is, as I've said before, adding this "security device," would be costly in development time and undoubtedly even more costly in individual support time. Although I'm not a member of that particular team, I work with Support every day. And you can be sure that for everyone who locks down a character and happily goes about his business, you have another who asks to unlock in advance of the timer, and a third who forgets his password and asks for help, and a fourth that does the same and then gets angry when we decline, because he cannot prove that the account is indeed his. You'll see someone who uses pathetic account security (public user name; abc123 for a password) become angry with us because we "didn't protect his characters" when in fact he threw away his entire account.

With all due respect, the answer is simple: With proper account security, and with the wisdom that one really needs to have to use the Internet in this day and age, every character -- indeed your whole account -- is just fine. Adding more layers of security and more hoops to jump through just to play the game is both impractical and unnecessary.

Yes, you have to confirm deletion by repeating, letter by letter, the name of the character. It seems to me it would be rather hard to accidentally delete a character, with that security measure in place.

I have a secure password. No 3rd party programs. I don't share my account with anyone. But it would be cool to lock my toons. But I would lock them forever. I just can't bring myself to delete any of them. If I had the option I would perma lock each one to never be deleted. But yes I forsee that for every satisfied person with the feature there would be 10 maybe 20 people that would send 100-200 more support tickets, added to the hundreds they get already, because they changed thier mind. In the end it's a great, terrific idea that I support alas, I'm not part of the Dev team . Dangit why didn't I get a job in computer game design!

/signed

- this would give added safety to long term characters and/or characters with a lot of titles especially
- I personally don't have a lot of confidence in plaync security

A lot of peace and mind knowing that your time spent playing this game doesn't disappear in the blink of an eye due to a second of someone's malicious intent.

Could this feature be added to the online store then. I for one wouldn't mind dropping mb $5 to lock my main so she will be there when GW 2 comes around.

Maybe people could just not download 3rd party programs.
/notsigned cheaters should have there characters deleted
(Since most account thefts happen through illegal programs)

people would then cry about that too..people already cry about mapping

Not really as my email for my account, I no longer have access to. It was my email for my old school, but I transferred after last spring and now no longer have access to that email. Not to mention IF someone did get your account name and password, they would have a decent shot at getting into your email anyways. As they would have your email address (as it is your account name) and most people use the same password for all their internet accounts, though they may through a "1" or "!" to vary it somewhat. The majority of email sites people use don't lock you out after attempting to "guess" people's passwords.

So... the answer is "No, we won't do it"?
If that's the case and it can't be done, no problem,
I've just 1 thing to add anyway : thanks for your time and your patience with us.

That's a cool idea.
I don't think the devs should work for free so I think it is ok if I had to pay a fee for this feature.

1) I took a worm/backdoor virus by surfing the web with internet explorer 6.0 before switching to firefox.
I discovered it because my pc was weird (and the AV noticed the worm 3 weeks after the symptoms)
You can have a trojan on your pc even if you are not using "cheats".
2) In Guild Wars it is impossible to cheat.
3) I remember an italian guild that had several members accounts stolen (maybe someone hacked their forum, and those who were using same account/pass for the forum and the game got char "deleted"). They were not cheaters, they were just unaware. Did they deserve that? (Want the link to read the thread what happened?)

/noneedforsuperficialassumptions

/signed

I could lose all my pixellated items and gold without shedding a tear, but I would be pretty choked if I lost my characters. I would use this option 10 times every 6 months.

/signed

I would pay a few extra dollars to lock the majority of my characters (any over 1 year old anyways). They were a real time investment and so I do want to protect them.

I do all the reasonable things one should do for account security (different emails, periodically change passwords, difficult-to-guess password creation, etc) but account security is still a real worry.

QFT. This is just another unnecessary layer of protection that is taken care of by the primary one.

If someone gets into your account, do you really think they will simply delete your character and then give it back to you?

Or, if they go in, sell everything on that character, clear out your storage & sell your armor, how much help will the lock be? You'd keep skills & titles & such, but there won't be much more.. you'd be looking for another layer of protection untill it became prohibitive. The password is they best thing you've got.

And.. how is this difficult?

I reckon it should be a password lock and you have to enter a password to get onto that character