Dear Hacker

Dear XXxxXXx Hacker XXxxXXXx or whatever your name is,

I have played Guild Wars since the day it launched. It is true that I did not play it faithfully. Indeed, months would pass while I was distracted by “other” MMOs – EQ2, Rift, even (I confess it!) WoW – but I would always return to Tyria, to my ranger Aerynne and her beloved pet cat, Cuddles.

Together we would wander the scorched wastelands, the frozen tundra, the lush jungles – struggling to stay alive and complete every bonus mission. We were a team – we were not strong, or all-powerful, or rich; we did not own rare weapons or priceless crafting goods, tomes or exotic inscriptions and runes. But we were happy, just the two of us and the occasional NPC monk, the wind at our back, the sun in our face – free to explore this bold, beautiful world.

Until you came, like a thief in the night, like a snake in the grass, like a wolf in expensive but slightly gaudy armor. You, who hacked my account and consigned my Aerynne to the dustbin of deleted toons. It was with mounting distress that I attempted in vain to access my account this week past – oh, the horror! I shall never forget those evil words, emblazoned across my monitor: Password Retrieval – FAILED; the “secret questions” I did not recognize and could not answer. (Just what was your childhood nickname, anyway? Apparently, it was not a55h0l3 or 5Hi7H3ad.)

Finally, with the help of my original computer disks/codes and the helpful staff at NCSoft, I was able to lay claim to my account once more. Imagine my feelings – the grief – when I logged on to find my Ranger and her various alt friends gone, all gone, replaced by a family of XxXXxxxX alts.

I am now moving through the various stages of grief –denial, anger, bargaining, depression and, finally, acceptance. I have cursed you, wished various evils upon you, shaken my fist at the heavens and hoped you, somewhere, were feeling my wrath. But anger must give way, and the sight of my new Ranger Trevi, now a resident of Elona and about to set sail on adventures of her own, has brought me a measure of peace.

So I forgive you. For that, we can thank Trevi and the calming influence of Elona and my Sunspear sisters. Well, that and the bags and bags of green and gold weapons you left me, the stacks of rare crafting materials, the tomes, potions, figurines, runes. Honestly, who really needs multiple sets of Mallyx and Stygian weapons? Forty stacks of glittering dust? And how many globs of ectoplasm does one really need? And thanks for all the faction – did you know that was account bound?

I wish I could say I felt a pang of guilt as I stripped, then deleted, all your oh-so-uber level 20 toons. I wish I could say it, but I cannot. I really, really, cannot.

Awesomness squared, LAWLZ

HAhahahah!! At first I was like... OH here were go, another qq thread about getting nuked. But.. LOL!!! You turned this one around. What a noob who-ever tried to steal your account. And total win on your part! TOTAL WIN!

That's what I thought it was at first as well but it ended up being an epic win.

RIP, Aerynne. Long live Trevi.

And good for you, Romy, for getting on with it. I'm sure the "consolation" goodies help, though.

Aww, if you need a companion when working through some of the campaigns again on your new characters I'm happy to help. Working on my second account now so there's always a lot of missions to do Just pm me.

Sounds Like your account was hacked then sold off. So theres a player out there who got screwed out of a account. Will probably complain to the sellers and your account will be hacked again and stripped. Just my two cents.

good for you

can you say how much of the stuff you got?

Win thread, win acc takeback, you also have enough stuff to cover your loss..


Pure win. (sidenote: change passwords weekly, both; gw & master, use mixture of numbers and capitalized/not-caps letters, dont use same passwords & email for forums etc..)

Mah 2 cents..

Rofls! loved it OP GG!!

I expect you took great pleasure stripping and/or deleting the various XxXXxxxX alts.

Enjoy the free goodies and faction.

I enjoyed the read, sweet revenge

how many ectos was on this account when U got it back?

would love to see a screenshot of the bags

Ah karma, gotta love it.

Glad to see it somewhat worked out for you

You are a rich man enjoy the hackers gift, and you shouldn't post your character's name on here since it's part of the login process now.

Tbh, I was stuffing things into bank vaults so fast I cannot really say. Ecto goes into the crafting vault, right? If so, I have over 250, because I filled that slot and gave the rest to a friend, along with probably another bank vault's worth of green weapons.

I had to purchase extra vault slots to hold it all, since I was determined to delete the XXxXXxx toons. NCSoft finally stopped selling them to me, saying I had applied too many codes to one account in too short a period of time, so I have one bank vault left to buy and one toon left to strip.

All told, there are probably four bank vaults full of green weapons (half of which are Mallyx or Stygian), a fifth vault of gold weapons, a sixth with runes, tomes, figurines, jewels (?), armor fragments (?) and assorted stuff I did not really recognize. I also have a bank vault full of stacks of glittering dust and iron ingots, and a crafting storage vault full of ecto, bone, more ingots, etc. Once I can add that last vault, I can unload the remaining toon and delete her as well.

Frankly, I do not know what to do with all this stuff.

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Good point! I guess I will be making an alt tonight.

Doesn't sound that way to me at all. Sounds like a real money trader doing what they do -- farming as much crap as possible to make a profit before they get shut down and have to move on to hack someone else.

But if it is as you say and some poor soul bought the account and was innocently using it, I suppose this is an important lesson learned for them to not buy accounts from shady sources.

Someone out there got royally screwed.

nearly as fun like the scrub who got permad and lost q8 15^50crysta from hacking somebody. grats btw; spend it on stuff that can't be stolen imo (such as max zaishen title, even tho it rly doesn't mean much; still better than nothing)

I am guessing plat farmer. Despite all the weapons, runes, crafting stuff, there was surprisingly little cash on any of the toons. Most had 0 gold, a few had a few plat. I would think any legitimate player accumulating that much stuff would have a lot more cash on hand than that.

Haha this is excellent. Got hacked myself recently but they just took my stuff actually kinda got me back into guild wars though so not all bad :P

Hooray! Free stuff!

I know a lot of people who have tons of mats and items and ecto and arms, but zero cash.

Pretty funny though. Just like Zaph said, be sure to check your passwords are changed often and unique & since they got into your account, consider changing all of your secret question/answer combos too, and to something other than what they used to be. Hackers datamine those sorts of things off of facebook and other social networking sites.

Since your account is linked to ncsoft, they have 2 of 3 of what is needed to get back in. =(

GG, best thread ever, written with so much passion haha.

This should be stickied and worshipped.

Hahahaha best thread on guru I have seen in a long while. I'm glad you at least have the means and supplies left behind by your hacker to move on from dear Aerynne and Cuddles, and can now let trevi live a rich lifestyle.

EDIT: Just re-read it because I liked it so much the first time round. Turns out, it was a better read the second time when I knew the ending . Again, best thread on guru for a LONG while! Was a huge laugh.

Thankyou Romy, this thread was a pleasure to read and I got a good laugh from it

And it wasn't the one who hacked the account.

Great post. I almost wish my second account would get hacked this way, just so I could have some ecto! Just kidding. I'm glad this worked out well for you, and I am sure I'll see you around in a full set of fissure armor. Which will make me extremely jealous, as I am totally broke. Good luck with your new took, and if u want a questing/mission buddy, PM me!

I think your post is good enough to show up in WIRED or Massive Online Gamer. You should contact them and get your LOL's published.

Btw, ask Anet to have those IP's investigated so they can report it to the authorities. If they won't do this, you can probably open the investigation yourself by reporting consumer fraud to the cyber crimes unit, then Anet will have to comply by law.

Was getting ready to post "cool story bro" until I read the end. I wish every other thread was as interesting/funny.

At first glance sounds to me like it was the hacker who got screwed. Given the fact Romy takes breaks from Guild Wars for quite some time the hacker probably thought he would not get it taken away from him so he used that account as storage as well as a farming account. However it also sounds as if the account was groomed to be sold off. The account was loaded with green weapons, gold weapons, crafting materials and over a stack of ectos along with multiple decked out level 20 characters. There's no way of telling if it was the hacker or the person who bought the account which is unfortunate because it would be a 100% epic win if it was the hacker. If it was the person who bought it though all I can say to them is tough shit, that is the price you pay when buy game accounts from gold sellers.

Nice, im glad to see people not complaining about support for once too. I know i don't care about HoM that much but...how is your HoM did you have lotsa stuff unlocked still? Your account titles such as allegience will stay, any animals you unlocked in the menargerie and ofcourse you have skills unlocked and hard mode all ready for you! Yeah i cant imagine my accouny back at square one but i spose you get relive the fun

If you are feeling to over burdened with your all that stuff please feel free to let some over flow over to me. I have lots o space in my vaults

So poetic! So sweet...

Put it on heros.

All this wealth sickens me. If only they would take that attitude into the REAL WORLD. That's why I don't try to make money in games... just spend very little and instead you have constant profit while just playing the game in general.

Excellent story and beautifully written. Thank you for sharing and welcome back to the game!

Absolute win!!!!

Justice in the most pure form.

if you need to rid yourself of some of the extra stuff---we have a sell forum right here (oh, I'm plugging my own section ).

good to see someone caught them in the act so to speak!

Totally made my morning.

Good Luck !.......