Simple Question

I'm a veteran player of GW. I've been there since beta. Always enjoyed it and I do very much like the game. I've been away from GW for a while now. I think the last time I logged in was Feb. 2009. I took my hiatus around Oct 2008. On the recent news letter about the aniversay I decided I would get back into playing the game, just to see how it was. I went to log in, password was wrong. Okay. No big deal, I have several passwords. Try another. No dice. Okay. One more time. Still invalid. I figure I just must have forgotten what I made that one. So I go in and reset the password. I log in and voila! Account Blocked. All I can think is.. WTF?!

I go through a lengthy proccess with customer service to discover that apparently my account was hacked by gold farmers. They restored my account and told me to change the password. Which I did. Again.

I excitedly log in to discover... nothing. To my shock and horror, my characters were gone. All of them. Everything. The one that was there, was the SAME NAME as my original character for GW, but a L2 Assassin in the Monastery. My storage was empty, everything is just gone. Needless to say I'm feeling a little defeated at the moment and I don't understand what's happened.

I know there are tons of posts on hacking and all in a debate but none of them seem to really tell me anything and really I don't want a debate. The email is one I use for other things but none of those things are anything that would relate me to GW. It's not like I've ever went "this is my GW Account Email!". I've never given out my password, I have a different password for everything, my passwords are always rated at "Strong" using numbers and letters. I just.. don't understand.

I have sent in a petition once more explaining the situation and am currently waiting to see what can or will be done, if anything. Which is where my question lies. Can anything be done or am I ultimatly.. out of luck?

Now. As disheartening as it is. I was intending to fully start the game over with a new character as I cannot remember much about the SL or portion I was at with my main. But it still stings to lose what I can remember she had in her vault (200+ plat, Several black dyes, various runes, rare pets, loads of resources). Stuff I can always get back through play eventually and all but..

Im sorry to say they will not restore anything to your account. You will have to start over.

Yea you won't be getting anything back. Better scan the hell out of your computer and get whatever virus they used to get your password off before it happens again.

Yep there's nothing you can do. They may roll back your account, but I don't think that's even possible past a few days, and they rarely do it. This is why I use linux, no worms.

short story:

someone hacked your account, did something stupid (mass botting/scamming) got banned with money in their account and yours got blamed.

I would ask if they could find out to whose account all your stuff got traded to and beg to have them checked out because if it happened to you it surely has happened to other people and they could ban the person who stole your stuff. You probably won't get your stuff back but you can take solace in the fact that they won't have it anymore either.

I always add special chars ie: #*&)( in my passwords when allowed. Guild Wars allows it so you can make your pass a lil bit stronger. Oh, and I change mine every 3 months.

Sucks for you . I joined guildwars 40 months ago, and i have used two passwords the entire time. Never been hacked once on any online game ive ever played either, and i use the same password on all of em. Personally and sorry for saying this, whenever I see people saying "darn! my account was hacked! can i have some money pl0x!" i dont believe em, even if they say it in a convincing way because it just doesnt seem to me like people can get hacked that easily. people say like be smart about what you download and stuff, i download just about anything. My firewall is also known as my router and my virus protection is AVG free so either im lucky or im just pro like that

my password was 'applepie' for 3 years. Never got hacked once with it. I changed it though, don't bother trying. :3

I'd say check what you download before starting it up, and uh, hope that it doesn't happen again.

Eh, what I figured. No word from ANet but.. I am not expecting much. I loaded up someone new last night and played for a godly amount of time. I do still enjoy the game it's just a little.. off putting. I think I would have been far more upset say had I been actively playing rather than having been on hiatus from it.

Anyway, thanks for the replies all Even just "nah your screwed", it's nice to have been able to vent it off.