Restoring Accounts

this made me think

Would ArenaNet be willing to restore accounts?

What are the possibilities that this could happen? Is it doable? Could they restore accounts and still maintain all the achievements since after the hacked?

What are your thoughts?

It would be an easy way to double your ectos, gold, and rare items if done right.

I'm not sure it's a financial possibility for them because of their payment scheme. Basically the lack of monthly money hurts their ability to preform tasks. Aion has a monthly fee and was programmed by a different team, thus the situations are probably different.

It's a nice idea though.

they do server rollbacks on wintersday idk y they dont have anyone scammed go through a rigourous process to make sure their not trying to cheat the system then get a rollback on their items

Anet restores anything stolen so long as they can trace it to still being with the hacker. Problem is 99% of the time the hacker sells the item, or trades it to a friends account making Anet unable to give the item back even though the have the capability to do so.

w/o having any proof i'd still say that Anet could probably restore old characters too, they have to have backup saves, the problem is it would take time and Anet doesn't really have the means to spend lots of time recovering stuff.

Also despite their claims to be inable to make items or change stats I'd say it was entirely possible, they just aren't allowed to do it for obvious reasons.

This is what will happen if restoring happens:

*Trades 1000 ectos to account 2*
*Trades everything else valuable to account 2*
*Ask ANET to restore account.*
*Account 1 receives 1000 ectos and everything else.*
*Account 1 gets an overall of 2000 ectos.*

/notsigned

It would be a abuse.

anet more then likely wouldn't be idiots about this.

i like the idea but i can't see it happening though. i've had it done on WoW before but this isn't WoW.

Alot of games, such as WoW and Aion are able, and do restore items and money. iId say they check pretty deeply to make sure something like this wouldn't occur, and that there are many ways to do so.

Checking IP's or the registered name on the corrosponding Play NC account for example, I mean the possibilities are endless. Anet just doesn't have the resources to do so.

I think that if anet had a system for restoring items, clever people would figure how to abuse the system and fill their coffers.

Though i hope anet can restore characters, even if they return naked. I can't see the harm in that.

The problem with this would be doubling your money and items. I legit had my account on WoW hacked and toon transferred and everything. horrible experience tbh. After contacting Blizz they restored all my items and what not and gave bonus cash for inconvenience lol. Then after getting back on main server i was on all the stuff the hacker took got sent back to me from them not accepting their mail or w/e. Thus i had double my stuff and got to go play rich for a while. Anyways im sure with friends and what not people would find ways to do it for profit on purpose and skew the economy and everything.

/notsigned

they can't they couldn't even restore 1 character on my hacked account so It had the same character code >.< I asked them and told them it wasn't even needed to get it lvl 20, just a lvl 1 character so I could wear the one elite kurzick armor I still had in storage >.<

aehm.

WoW or Aion can restore items without having to do this because whatever player would miss most is untradeable, hence it would be pointless to worry about "account restore dupe". GM can easily hand you out your precious tier armor because he knows you used to have it and that you can not in any way profit from it.

People in gw only really want/need untradeable stuff restored anyway (title progress for example).

1. There wasn't REALLY a rollback
2. How could you cheat the system if EVERYONE is rolled back...

Anet isn't stupid.
They can check your log and IP.
Chances are you'd get bant worse than those on Neopets

So you haven't been hacked "yet"

I know that SOE can restore characters and accounts.

Plus they have on file those of us who were hacked.

I would like it to happen

I don't think it is realistically going to happen.

A fair way would be a server roll-back. This would remove the items from the hackers and return them to the hacked, but this would also undo all kinds of legitimate trades as well as erase drops that innocent players had rightfully received. Also, how would you pick the time to roll back to? Players hacked prior to the roll-back would still be out of luck as well as those who will be hacked in the future. Unless there was an extremely high concentration of hacking in a very narrow period of time, the benefits of a roll-back would almost never outweigh the disruptive costs.

If it is done on an individual basis, how does Anet sort out the legitimately hacked from the players looking to double up? This would require a huge amount of oversight I don't believe Anet is financially prepared to provide.

Think about it from their perspective. If they invest resources to restore my account (yes, I was hacked), would I start playing again? Probably, yes. Does that give them any financial return? Not really. I was a paid customer - not a paying customer. I am intending to buy GW2 on the assumption that security issues will be fixed by then.

The best financial incentive case you could make would be that I would begin to get other people into the game again. I have gotten several people to buy GW. But, in truth, restoring my account would not cause me to recommend the game again. Only definitively addressing the underlying security issues could restore faith - not a rollback absent security fixes. Even then, I would think twice before encouraging a new player. "Once bitten..."

Think about what have they have got to gain versus what have they got to lose by any of these measures.

As much as I might personally benefit, I do not see it happening.

They have restored items before. Don't get your hopes up if you've been hacked though - to my knowledge they've never restored items to hacked players. I've only heard of 1 or 2 cases where items were restored.

It happens, but it's exceedingly rare and done as an exception rather than a rule.

They've never restored lost gold or materials to an account to my knowledge.

Theres such a long trail of things that occur after one item has been traded so it could cause loadsa problems and dupe items within the game.

I would prefer to see some sort of way to prevent accounts from being destroyed in the first place. (Eg. Inability to delete characters. Some sort of safety lock to be applied to certain characters). I dont care about the money or the things ive got over the years. I care about the work I put into my main character. I dont time to redo 4+ years of content again. Idont know how they could implement such a thing though. :\

I would be willing to pay money for such a feature.

I know of one case where they've restored an item to a hacked player. But it was 1 special item out of everything else that he had.