Very Sad

I get that this is really, really shitty for you. You must have had such a stone in your tummy when you saw what waited on you.

I do recall a guy who lost his gold cape guild, he got it back, actually.

There isn't much you can do, which I personally find really retarded. I wish they would check what IP's had been logging into your account, and go from there. If that person had an own account they could have perma banned him. I think it's kind of poor, the 'help' they give. If there was just a way to restore the items lost. But also GW should have had that 'buy back' thing from merchants.

I've been told that other games do restore what's taken if you're hacked. How they do it, I dont' know, but apparently they have a system in place for it. Two games that I know that do this are WoW and Rift, but both are play to play games, so maybe they can't afford to piss people off to the point where they quit. Bad business move.

I just wish someone would say to me, sorry we can do this because, rather than treating me like I'm nobody and that the issues that happened to me mean nothing.

I can truly sympathize with you. It's a horrible feeling. I don't know what Im going to do yet, but a break is definitely in order.

GW1 is dead. U got your 50/50 HOM as U claim rdy for GW2. Nothing to worry about IMO.

I doubt Nagennif wants to start GW2 after the response he had from support.

A lot of people feel the lack of interest in/respect for long term players shown by both Anet and NCsoft is very offputting.

These things happen in games yes sorry for the loss but its not the be all and end all thing.

Yes some time ago I lost an account yes it was a pain but, it does not take long to return to normality . You said you have costumes so use them I dont know how many chars I have with 1k Max armour that the costume overlaps.

You are not new to the game and that the times anet stated even at log in to ensure you are safe.
You know the quicker ways to gain gold ect, So have a small break and bet you a $ that you will return at some time .

So you have titles ect so you have not lost anything for gw2 even tho its cosmetic. Once you have accepted the fact that you said it was prob your fault you will then return to normality

You should save money, hire a detective, find the hacker, hire a hitman, hack the balls of the hacker and make him swallow it.

The guy you were dealing with wasn't name GM LemonCobra by any chance?

While I understand the knee jerk reaction to being hacked and getting little help is to have a go at ncsoft anet or whoever I am curios.

What exactly should they do in response to an account being hacked and cleaned out.

How about a bit of compassion or sympathy? How about letting people know what to expect from a hacked account when they first contact you. Not everyone does know. How about saying I'm sorry this happened to you. These are things that don't cost money, but might save the company some lost business in the future.

Look it's simple. I used to run a tech-department of a computer store. When people dropped of a computer, if data was involved, I'd tell them, we'll try as hard as we can to retrieve your data, but sometimes that's just not possible. Sometimes your data will be corrupted beyond retrieval. This way, when they pick up their machine in four days time, or a week, they know that there is possibly an issue with my data.

I was told my account was going to be restored. I didn't know what that meant, and no one explained it to me. No one said, we can give you your account back, but your stuff is gone. I waited days to get the account back, during which time I was hoping to get back my account as it was. Perhaps foolishly but hey, I don't work for Anet, and I know for a fact other games have returned stuff that has been stolen by hackers.

So, I would have had four days of coming to terms with the idea that nothing was going to come back to me, and during the four days I could have braced myself for it. When it happened, I'd have been upset, sure, but also prepared.

How much would that extra paragraph have costed NcSoft to write? How much difference would it have made to me?

Again, I'm not 15. I'm not expecting miracles. But customer service could have been a lot better. Even something like...

Sorry but due to the possibility of players abusing the system, we are unable to restore your account, and anything missing from it, will remain missing. We apologize for this inconvenience.

I'm really pretty easy going, if over-emotional. Just be human about it.

Nope, and I'd frankly hate to name him here. I sent an email to Anet Communtiy, which may not do anything, but at least they should know just how their customer service is handled by NCsoft (if they don't already).

Not having a secure enough account is certainly my fault. I accepted that almost immediately. I admitted it when talking to customer service. I dont' blame Anet.

But that doesn't mean the hacker is faultless and doesn't mean that NCsoft customer service treated me as a long time customer should be treated...or any customer for that matter.

Good catch on the Finnegan. Not my name, by the way. He was a minor character in the original Star Trek. Just sort of a nickname I picked up over the years.

Don't let NCSoft's lack of good support etiquette be the thing that makes you decide you don't want to get Guild Wars 2. It's going to be too fun of a game to pass up.

I have been hacked before too. Luckily, I only had a couple sets of Obsidian Armor, Chaos Gloves, a few sets of Vabbi Armor, and my gold/ectos taken; all my other elite armors were on an alternate account.

But for Guild Wars 2, if you do decide to play it, do what I am going to do; which is make an email that you will not use for any other website/game and make a unique password that you only use on that game and nothing else. Write them both down if you have to.

I'm not offput from Guild Wars 2. I'm still very excited about it. I'm not excited about the level of customer service, but NCsoft isn't Anet and I have to learn to separate them in my mind. Someone on this thread pointed that out to me and it's helped a lot.

But I'm going to be a LOT more careful with any game from now on. As I said already...once bitten, twice shy.

Oh yeah, if it makes you feel better, my alternate account got hacked. At the time it had absolutely nothing of value on it. There were four birthday presents on characters, the hacker opened them all. Guess who didn't want the white minis that popped out?

That payback, however small it was, felt so good. ^_^

3 years ago i had my account stolen by one of my friends(the guy who actually introduced me to GW) he took everything off my account. Stripped all my chars bare. The only thing i was left with was my characters. First of all i went to him as he was the only one who had access to my account and at the time it wasn't linked to NCSoft site, so i didn't even think it was hacked. After several phone calls and emails to and from him he admitted it. This is when i got in touch with support and provided them with all my account details and the emails he sent me stating he cleared my account. What did they do?... Nothing, they changed my password for me and allowed me to log in again and said we cannot provide you with the items you lost as it's not possible. This is with them even knowing exactly who took the stuff. The guild we were running at the time got behind me and provided me with enough cash and mats to get started again. At first it was heartbreaking to have to get everything back and looking at my chars made me want to give up. But due to a couple of really good friends who i met in GW, i forced myself to carry on.
We restarted our alliance and everything came good after a month of hard work.
Then at the start of this year the main guy who helped me get back on my feet had his account hacked, he was away at the time and i saw his account do the rapid char swap as though someone was searching for something. I immediately emailed support (i even tried logging onto his account but the pw had been changed), the email i got back from them was due to the fact it was not my account they will not block it and stop a player from playing the game. When my friend got back the account had been stripped of everything and i have now helped him restore alot of what he had lost (even though support could have stopped it half way through).

Support should not be called support as they seem to be very unhelpful most of the time, even when they have all the details. I would say, even if you don't feel like it, play again and ask your guild if they would lend you some items for a few weeks until you are back on your feet. People that have known you for a while would be more than willing to give you things but if you say it's a loan only at least then you can feel a bit less like charity.

@naggenif: For what it's worth, and in the hope it helps you: ask yourself what it is about GW that you really value.

Sounds like you did pretty much everything and went everywhere in the game. Your legacy for GW2 is safe with the HoM. Your memories and the fun you had cannot be taken away. You still got your guildies, your titles, faction points, your unlocked skills/outposts/storyline advancement.

How important are the money, items etc., really?

Yeah sorry your right they should train their staff for a more considerate response.
I was thinking more about what they should do in a material manner.

I would like them to protect some account stuff as I suggested earlier.
Taking away the incentive for hackers and players to make a profit from cleaning out an account seems the way forward.

I think anything dedicated in the hom should have the option to make it an item permanently linked to the character.

Not to be deleted dropped sold or salvaged, same option with the character I have some I delete occasionally and some I would never delete.

Give us that option and I for one would take it, then if I decided later on that I wanted to delete something it would be a package from the online store to do it.
I doubt players or hackers would go around spending cash for the ability to delete a character.

Plenty of items in the game cannot be salvaged or modified so the code muse be in the game already.

But he lost his Kuuna!

It took me weeks and weeks to save up for mine (90k). And you know - I daresay Naggenif will get over it but its like coming home and finding your house turned over, very emotiional.

Scarlet you had a very horrible experience - some friend! I am glad you got back on your feet

why would you care about some pixels in a game thats on its way out the door. You already got your HOM - you're all set for GW2. Play something better until then - or better yet - take a damn break from the computer.

I have a bunch of crap and I'm having trouble figuring out how to get rid of it, cause honestly giving away stuff is more fun than actually playing the game anymore.

NCsoft support staff can be horrible to deal with.

They have the level of apathy you get from a minimum wage.

Tricky question, but you see, I'm one of those collector type people. I played to have a collection of certain things, such as minipets. I'd take them out when I was traveling just because I enjoyed them. I never bought everlasting tonics because of the value. I did it because I liked being a Rift Warden. I liked being a hell hound. So I liked those things. And of course, the celestial compass my wife gave me as a gift, well, it's a gift. The compass itself isn't so much...it's more that my wife gave it to me.

But the big issue for me is all the stuff I stockpiled for Nick. I pretty much started saving stuff as soon as Nick started, knowing I'm not a farmer. If something dropped like a beetle egg or whatever, I'd just save it. I bought four character slots just for storage characters storing all that stuff.

The stuff itself? Worthless. The amount of times I get to get gifts without farming? Priceless. At the end of the day it's all just to get a pet yakington which could happen. It probably won't, but now it defintely won't.

Everyone plays games for different reasons. Some collect things like minis. People like me. Seeing that collection go south really does hinder my return to the game, because that really was important to be.

The survivor title, I never got. It's not important to me, but to some people it was very important.

So yeah, I get what you're saying, but I really was attached to Mad King Thorn and Kunnevang. They didn't end up selling my mini mallyx though. Go figure.

If that would have stopped them from going after the next guys account it would sure have felt good, but to them, they probably didn't care. I would imagine it's like prospecting. They probably, I assume anyway, get enough accounts that it's just like a white drop left on the ground to them.

Frankly, it's lousy that people think it's okay to do that to other people.

Ncsoft can be pains sometimes, i know that because i've had to deal with them before, not for a hacked account though. Any who, i'm sorry that you got hacked, it total sucks, but image if you hadn't put anything in the HOM and then got hacked, so you do have something positive to work with. Also two good friends and another friend got hacked as well, two of them cleaned out like you, but because they have friends like me and others they are sticking around and going to keep playing. The third, he was not happy, but he had done everything he wanted, which was finished drunkard before it happened the old way. But that account didn't get cleaned.

Also NCsoft is known for having shitty security(they did get suit for it already once), it may have not been on your end, but instead on Ncsoft end.

Hopefully in Gw2, Anet will be able to restore accounts.

That is odd, I got hacked about a year ish ago and i lost most/all of my stuff as well, but i still had i unded mallyx in the end of it all as well.

I can try to explain this, if you're really interested. Some people get very vested in pixels in a game. I've worked harder in Guild Wars for stuff than I have in real life for stuff, in a lot of cases. I never see myself as farming for a stereo system or farming for a television. I just go and buy it. The work is done independent of that. But if I had to save for that television, week by week, day by day and could finally buy it, and then someone stole it, I'd be very pissed off. Still I have insurance on the possessions in my house. If I'm broken into, I'll get some kind of compensation.

In this, I worked for certain things, whatever they were, finally bought them and now they're gone. It doesn't matter if it's a pixel or a television...it's an item that bought me pleasure. In fact, with as much TV as I watch, given the choice of a TV or a kunnevang, I'd rather have the kunna. Just what the kind of thing I enjoy.

People spend a tremendous amount of money on virtual property. There's a virtual property developer named Anshe Chung on Second Life who is literally a real life millionaire, who made her name selling virtual property in a virtual world. She'd buy land from linden labs, divide it up, develop it and rent it to other people playing Second Life for real money.

For that matter, my wife makes money as a fashion designer on second life, selling virtual clothes. People pay lindens for it, but they buy those linden dollars with real money. Unlike Guild Wars, buying and selling of linden dollars is part of the game. You buy them from the company, in what's sort of like a commodities exchange. People spend hundreds and hundreds of dollars on these pixels. Millions of people. There must be some reason for it.

It's because a certain type of person identifies with their online persona. They become their characters. They really do feel a bond with that character. Is this some psychological thing that only affects people onlne? I don't think so. I get into books that way too.

So probably a certain personality type deals with lose of digital data differently than people who see things as just a game.

Another way to look at it. I spend more time playing Guild Wars than I do doing almost anything else. It was my main source of entertainment, since I don't watch TV. I do read, but it's not quite as involving as playing a character in a game.

I guess some people go out with friends and have a few beers, but if you're geographically isolated, it's a lot harder to do that. Or if you're a loner (which Im not). Or if you have a physical handicap. Or if you have a social phobia. Or if you have to take care of a small child and have to stay home at nights.

There are a lot of reasons people escape to online worlds to get away. I"m caring for a disabled spouse, and this is my escape.

I hope this answers your question somewhat.

My Mallyx was dedicated, but so was my kunna and my destroyer and my asura and a lot of other minis. I collected them, bought then and dedicated them. Some are gone, some aren't. Aside from the Kunna, I haven't had the heart to do a full inventory yet.

But I noticed the Mallyx in passing and a few whites and purples. I probably have all the minis they couldn't somehow sell.

From your lips to God's ears lol.

I was getting a little bored of the game and just decided to roll a whole new account when I saw it on sale at Target. It has actually been rather enjoyable "starting from scratch" and brought back a lot of memories of having to scrape up money to buy my first set of armor and not having any skills. Now obviously your account still has things like skills unlocked but my advice would be to just embrace the experience and just enjoy playing the game.

How does somebody get their account hacked? I don't understand how hackers get the information required to hack you. Does anyone know ways of doing this?

I feel that a lot of people do things that make them vulnerable, but you live in a fantasy world if you think NCSoft has done everything they could to keep our accounts secure.

Why isn't the old password required when changing your password? Why is the verification code instantly sent to the new e-mail when you want to change the e-mail address? All you get on the old account is a notification saying it has been changed and to contact support if you didn't authorize it! Two very simple things that could have been changed! Instead, they recently added something that you have to opt-in for. How many inactive players do you think will log into their NCMA and activate that?

Were some of you not around when NCSoft admitted that they had had a problem a while back? Anet actually made it a point to hunt down and return the stolen items to their rightful owners. Salvaged/destroyed items were obviously not returned, but they did what they could. I haven't seen it happen since then. The fact NCSoft hasn't admitted that they have had issues since then could be why. Sweeping problems under the rug and placing blame on the customer is less time consuming!

I'm not sure if nagennif and fino's cases are related, but I have a few reasons to believe NCSoft has had some security issues lately.

Reason #1
Reason #2
Reason #3
Reason #4
Reason #5
Reason #6
Reason #7
Reason #8 & 9
Reason #10

There were probably more in that thread, but I linked to the ones that jumped out at me.

As you can probably tell from the 8 & 9 link, it happened to two people I knew. Support didn't bother to offer them an explanation about the missing e-mails or even reveal the IP of the intruder. They restored the accounts and sent them on their way. They won't be getting their stolen items back.

This has been going on since December! I know for a fact that one of the people I knew has been on their account since then because I make him log on occasionally to check for birthday presents. He was probably hacked about a week before Anet rolled out the ToPK nerf.

Seiously? This has been going on for nearly four months and not a word from NCSoft or Anet? There are probably more victims out there that don't have a clue because they are inactive and didn't get an e-mail when the hacker changed their password.

Like I said, these particular incidents may or may not be related to what happened to the OP, but it's a bit stupid to bury your head in the sand and assume it's always the user's fault.

As for those of you saying that it's just pixels and people shouldn't be so attached to them, please let me know how you would feel if a burglar entered your home and stole everything you worked so hard for over the years. It's just some material stuff that you can replace right? I spent quite a bit of time and money on this game and to say that I would be devastated if a hacker got into my account would be an understatement. Judge me all you want.

It's great that the OP already had 50/50 and a GWAMM! It doesn't mean that he should be okay with losing his stuff just because some of you think they are just a bunch of pixels and GW2 is right around the corner. It's violation and nobody should be okay with that. We should be able to log into our accounts at any time and enjoy the things we earned.

I'm not a security expert by any stint of the imagination, but I know something about it. I know I was lax. Do I know that my laxness caused me to be hacked. Nope, I don't. But it seems coincidental to me that shortly after I started posting to boards defending Guild Wars 2, I got hacked. I know that on at least one of those boards I used the same password that I used for Guild Wars. I was lazy. The email addy I registered with is my main addy which, you guessed it, I used for Guild Wars.

So all a person who had those two things needed, was a character name. And low and behold my Guild Wars Guru account was my character name. Truly I should be ashamed.

This doesn't mean I was hacked because of this, but I sure wouldn't dismiss the possibility.

As for security issues, I know in the past Guild Wars and PlayNc had them. Aion is rift with them. I didn't realize this was happening right now, but I don't think I was vigilant enough in my own interest to shift the blame to anyone else. It doesn't make what the hacker did as right, but it sure doesn't automatically make PlayNC wrong.

I simply want to be fair about it. I'm the kind of person who always gives everyone the benefit of the doubt. Probably why I'm so often screwed over, but there you go.

However, if there were a way to recover my stuff, particularly a couple of prized things that would make the game more enjoyable to me, I'd jump at it.

Here's hoping my email to the community manager gets some kind of result.

I was also hacked. I quit for two years and just reinstalled last week and when i tried to log in my password wasn't working. I assumed it was my memory failing me and changed the password and when i logged on everything seemed totally fine. I was scoping all my characters and it was all kosher until i got to my warrior [main] and saw he was wearing elite dragon armor, which was weird because ever since i farmed my obby i hardly wore anything else and sure enough when i looked in his bag my obsidian armor was gone, along with a bag of my 5 best/favorite weapons, one of which was a crystalline sword. Its really demoralizing to try and play through it, but i just figure i'm gonna have fun until guild wars 2 comes out, and what happens happens.

Authenticator Dongle Please!

I would pay extra to have this security for GW, and GW2

This is a mistake:

/endhowtogethacked

Reading those reasons also makes it look like ANET and NCSoft websites have had a security breach. Now that could be a problem.

Everything should be different from your GW account when you sign up for forums, E-mail, password, etc. Character name probably isn't as important but still. But yes, it stinks that you were hacked. Especially by Gold sellers. May they burn in the fires of EUHELLA.

Sorry to hear that OP, ouch. But can someone clarify this for me. I'm sure I read on another post that if a hacker deletes your characters they can't be restored, if this is true if your main with 50/50 is deleted is your HoM wiped out?

I wouldn't be caring about the pixels but I would be very concerned over the hacking itself.

Firstly its a game I enjoy and if I was hacked every time I came to play the game and missed something I would be reminded that someone was effectively in my computer.

Then I would wonder if they were still around stall able to hack into my system so I would reformat reinstall everything change passwords etc.
Not have my banking details online any more stop buying online using a credit card.

Its just the same as if your house was burgled and all they did was come in and move a few things made a coffee and left a note saying nice house.
You hadn't lost much but you would be devastated.

Each time you made a coffee of looked at something they moved you would be reminded of the invasion.
Less traumatic for a game true but you would probably never enjoy the game ever again.

Pixels I could care less about but violation of personal space there is no price I could put on that.

i was hacked last month lost my Monks obbi armor and chaos gloves,few ded pets and all my cash.
Support were rlly good i got my account back in 22 hours.
Im sure it was my NCsoft account that was hacked as my other account that's not linked to a NCsoft account was not touched and my WoW account wasn't hacked either

the sword in the side is that MANY guru users used their ingame names as their user name here---making it the last piece to get thru was just a sloppy fix for a much bigger problem.
I know that if you have your user name here and ign the same you can pm one of the admins to have it changed (and we can also edit closed threads to remove them for you as well).
I certainly hope they will have a much better set up for gw2 ......