How long does support usually take?!

Ok... i'll start from the beginning...


So i tried to log on to my account...it said my password was wrong, so i went and changed it through my NCsoft master account.

When i logged on, my full black Vabbian ele set was GONE! and so was my 35 plat...

I'm looking to see if anything else was taken, so far it seems that was it...

But usually...how long would it take for support to respond to me?

Would they even believe me?

I can't believe this has happend to me...

You should get an auto response almost immediately. Keep at it, you might get another response in a couple days. Unfortunately, anet doesn't typically replace anything, unless it was something that happens to a bunch of people through some security breach they can discover/replicate of their official site/forums etc. Unfortunately, it doesn't really matter if they believe you or not, they can't recreate your stuff without doing a server rollback (NEVER gonna happen) and they can't just create it out of thin air. So there really isn't much you can do about it, unless it happens to a bunch of other people and turns out to be their fault somehow.

So...its all gone forever and the hacker won?

Bull.
Shit.


Im left with nothing, and from what you say, i'll never get it back.

So the hacker wins, gets off scot free and im left with nothing and get no help.

Great.

wouldnt tech have a record of your accounts trade activity? you should email them everyday every night 2-3 times..... atleast that is what i would do atm if i were you.

Do you have any idea who the hacker even is?
If not... well then, if they can't get back at the hacker, then they would be duplicating items to get your stuff back. That would allow people to run scams off a.net. Ie, trade all my stuff to my friend, claim I got hacked, and then suddenly get double the gold back again. There is a reason they don't give gold.

Also, it is usually your fault if you get hacked. Don't use your GW e-mail/password on independant websites. Don't visit "hack sites" or gold selling sites, as they often have spyware to steal your passwords.

Finally, nothing can be done about A.net's policy by complaining here. We are an independent, fan run website. We can't do anything for you.

I hope so.

I truely hope so.

In response to^

I'm taking screens of my predicament, i have my Vabbian showing my HoM, but taking screens to show that it is lost, in hopes that they will do something...anything at least.

And no, i don't have any idea who the hacker was, and no, i don't use my guild wars password/info for anything but guild wars.

Ok.. so you are telling us you were hacked...
I don't think hackers would go through so much work to get 35k, and why would they take your armor, so they can salvage it and get maybe a ruby or sapphire from it? And if you were hacked there is something you are not telling us.

I'm telling you everything.

It is odd that those were all that were taken.

Maybe They thought I had more than I actually had? Maybe they just suck? I'll never know the reason.

From my understanding, if support tracks down whoever got into your account, and they still have your items on their account, you may get some of your stuff back. However, if it's already been sold off or traded to other accounts, there's no way for them to recover it.

Realistically, consider your stuff gone. Reporting the theft to support won't do anything for you directly, but it will at least shut down the account the thief used.

^I see...

Anyway, I was just double checking was else was taken...

And you know what I found? My Ritualist in Kamadan (i logged off in KC) and cloth and linen in his inventory.

I'm pretty sure I know what they did.

EDIT: I was just D/Ced and tried to log on to find that it looks like Anet D/Ced me to look into the matter further. Got "We detect that you account may have been accessed by an unauthorized individual..." message...so I guess they got my message.

Heres hoping that it gets resolved.

While your waiting for support to allow you access back onto your account you may want to download Norton antivirus trial and run it , its almost certain that you weren't hacked but that you actually got yourself keylogged.For the ammount of effort it would take to 'hack' an individual random account for 35k and the materials from 1 set of armor it would simply not be worth while.

Yeah, your probably right about the keylogger.

Thing is, i already have norton.

I can assure you nothing will happen to the 'thief' and your items won't be recovered. Instead of trying to "get this guy back" or whatever you're trying to do, cause either way you won't stop this person from merrily continuing what he's doing to other stupid people, you can smarten up and learn how to protect your account, your information, and your computer's security. That's how you'll really solve your problem cause what's done is done.

It's never the thief's fault, it's the careless unsecured person's fault. You can't stop everyone from stealing all you can do is protect your shit to make sure it doesn't happen to you.

Ofc it is the thief's fault for breaking rules in GW and breaking law by getting access to other people's computers. But it doesnt make much difference since we can do more or less nothing against it. With some luck Anet can find more of his accounts and ban them but its likely just other stolen accounts
A guildie of mine got keyloggered 14 days ago and so far hasnt got her account back. She had a BDS and obsi armor and some 25 maxed titles, but it was carelessness. She had got a new computer and started using it without installing any security on it.

Long.

As for the whole hacking shit, I guess that they could do I.P. tracks so you know who it is.

That really stinks. I do hope you get whatever happened figured out.

As for it not being the thiefs fault? WTH? They're a thief - aka breaking rules and stealing other people's things, so yes they are in the wrong.

As for how a person got access to your account, that's another matter. But really put your comp through a scan often - get some new software if you need to [Norton, McAffee (sp? I don't much like it though), AVG, Avira, Malwarebytes, etc...whatever works.] run it often. Also be careful of the sites you visit, when you dl things scan them before opening, and all that stuff. Just the basic protection stuffs most people do can do wonders.

Most likely you have a keylogger. A guildie recently lost his account this way. He's a good kid that never visits the gold seller or cheat sites and he's pretty good about not downloading malicious stuff.

However his mistake was that he just started college this year as a Freshman. He got to school a few weeks ago and immediately set up his laptop on the Dorm's wireless network and started playing GW. It only took a few hours for someone in his dorm to download a keylogger to his unsecured laptop and wipe his account clean.

He's been working with Arenanet and he now has his account back, deleted the keyloggers and he's on a new secured connection. He won't be getting any of his stuff back though. It's long gone and A-net has a pretty strict policy about not returning stolen goods to "hacked" accounts. Most of the time it's hacked because of carelessness.

At this point you need to find out how your account was breached so that you can better protect yourself in the future.
1. Did you visit any shady sites? (gold sellers, bots, cheats)

2. Do you play in unsecured places? Have you ever logged in from friend's house? From the local cybercafe? At school?

3. Does anyone else know your password? A trusted friend? A favorite guildie? Your kid brother? It doesn't matter if you think they are trustworthy or not. Maybe they fooled you or maybe they logged into your account for an honest reason and THEY have a keylogger.

4. Have you given out your username/email ingame for some reason. Scammers routinely trick folks into revealing their usernames then run a brute force password checker on the account.

5. How good is your password? Is it "Long3n40#ne23" or is it "guild". The longer and more confusing, the better.

No, I never visted any suspicious sites, I avoid those for good reason.

And I only play at home; can't play anywhere else.

Only I knew my password.

And my account info is unique to my guild wars...


BUT none of this matters, they got back to me and told me my stuff is forever gonw and so is my money. I don't know why a person would do this for some extra gold in their pocket, but it sucks.


Very much so.

Now I have to farm all over again for vabbian starting with 39 gold.

The problem today with these game companies is they don't give a shit about their customers after they receive their money. You can dump a thousand bucks into GW with accounts and add-ons but when you need help "its your fault you got hacked" is all you will see from support..which makes sense, since a large percentage of hacks come from a security flaw within the servers themselves.

If any game company gave a shit about their customers and gave them the incentive to buy their sequel or any other product they make, it would be more then simple to LOG THE IP that hacked the account and sick the FBI on them, its common sense. When someone breaks into your house or mugs you on the street your gonna call the cops and chances are they might be found and thrown in the slammer for a few months. This is a game account you payed for and most people payed over a few hundred bucks to fully furnish most account, hacking them is a theft, plain and simple. I don't see a valid reason why MMO companies don't pursue hackers.

I'm waiting for the very moment I get hacked when I can fully understand that it's ANET's problem because personally, I use my computer to go on gmail, guru and guildwars and im using custom ironwall security at my pc and router if I get "hacked" I'm not even going to both contacting support. I have been playing for almost 4 years and beat the hell out of the game, had my expierence with the game enough to not be pissed anymore if it goes away.

Agreed. That's fairly probable.

I'd either say a) you wrote your password down and someone saw it or they watched you type it in (HIGH TECH HACKING). b) you have a weak password and someone that is your "friend".. or not even has to be your friend, guessed it and voila logged into your account. This takes just a little knowlege of the target to work. c) you were infact keylogged and other things aside from GW could have been compromised from seeing your keystrokes.

How you could possibly get keylogged, AstralElf, I'm not sure. But from reading what you've posted, and you've said that you have Norton. I'm guessing that it possibly is out of date or simply that you have no anti-spyware protection. It can be something simple as watching a Guildwars video on a site etc etc (doesn't matter what). "Download this version of flash player" or "you need to download new codecs" .. there are alot of different ways a keylogger can be embedded/joined/disguised in something.

The thing about AV (antivirus) and even some anti-spyware is that it's always a step behind the new threats i.g. less known virus and spyware/malware that has been altered or changed in a way that it doesn't get caught until your next definitions update for your AV or anti-spyware. And then, its not a "known threat" in your definitions list and can still go undetected. Though there are heuristics that can pick up some of these things that are recognized because they are doing 'bad things'. Anyways,

Browse safely. All it takes if you were keylogged is a couple days-few hours or until your next update-- by then it's served its purpose even if detected 'cause they probably were just after your account info. Btw you must have done one of the things mentioned in this thread to get your account compromised .. I don't think this just happens to people from nowhere..though it does happen. I do feel sorry though.. my friend also got his account compromised (we think from phishing).

Best regards.

True, I remember my first hotmail account, thought I was being very clever having 'Password' as my password. FAIL