Guild Wars - Limited Account Restorations

For a Guild Wars game account hacked after October 1, 2011, we have new tools that will be able to restore a player's account to its pre-hacked status under certain conditions. For more information about this, please go to the Guild Wars Support forums for all the details: https://forum.guildwars.com/forum/fo...age/1#post6528

Wow! Thx for the peace of mind.

Edit:
Offtopic slightly...
Any chance that a change could be made to the log in? Change it so you can only log in with one characters name instead of any of the names on the account? That way hackers would have to know account name and log in character to try to even hack the account. It would make it a lot harder especially if there's no notice up that says it's the wrong character name. They could try for years not knowing which name to use.

sounds wonderful! Many people have asked and I am glad it is finally being offered.

I do wonder about trades the 'hacker' may have made after the 'snapshot' was taken and how that will be handled (say they sold a whole bunch of limited minis or such to others...)...since items can only exist with one 'id' code-----

Wow! What a cool surprise. Nice to see you guys workin on the "hacker" problems. Keep up the good work!

I've not had any problems yet (fingers crossed), but I just wanna say thanks for doing this. I'm aware, with my limited knowledge of arcane computeryness, that restoring an account on a live server isn't exactly just pressing a reset button, so I appreciate this effort. Even when a lot of lost accounts (not all! but a lot!) can be attributed to keyloggers or other faults on the part of the loser of the account.

Ohno I'm gonna get raged at for saying that, aren't I .

I'm just wondering about one of the points mentioned:

"Take action on the account of the hacker and others who may have been involved in the incident. Terminating all such accounts will remove the hackers from our game community and will also remove all stolen items from the game economy."

Does that mean that anyone buying a stolen item, knowingly or not, will get their accounts banned? In that case, people might stop trading in fear the item might not be 'legit'

I'm stunned. Good job a-net.

I'd guess that they'd apply the same rule that applies in real-world law (in the Anglo-American legal systems at least): A third party who paid a fair price for a stolen item, and did not know it was stolen, and was not presented with any "red flags" that should have told him/her it was stolen, gets to keep the item. See the wiki article on "bona fide purchaser for value without notice."

had my account hacked and cleaned out b4 that date , all chars wiped etc. etc .
So no good news for me then or now ...

Regina, thanks for the update. I made quite a sour post about the situation about two months ago. Honestly I did not expect to see progress in GW 1 before the release of GW 2. This is really a big step forward. My congratulations to ANet for taking all the hard work that must have been involved instride. This is a big step forward for player peace of mind.

Thank you so much for doing this. These kind of things r very important to the game and make people very happy. :-)) Maybe I will buy GW2 after all!

I hope this means that our old & beloved characters have more protection against malicious attacks and can now go swimming in Fishermen's Haven without having to think that strangers can erase them from the GW universe at any moment. Not the stuff, the memories..!

I wish something could be done for those hacked before that date, but great news nonetheless

Believe it or not, but this is actually good news even for those who had their accounts hacked before this date. How? Because those hackers would still know 2 of 3 account details; your login and your character names. And once hacked there's probably a high possibility they might attempt to hack you again. Cunning hackers might perhaps even let accounts "recover" for 6-12 months before they attempt it again allowing original owner to build up some profit again. All in all, if you ever got hacked, change your password regulary despite this update

That being said, thanks Anet for this update, it will surely help some people from grief later on. I assume this is in line with what kind of account protection we might expect in Guild Wars 2?

Actually it should have always been like this imo: if you had been logging in from one IP address(or if a dynamic IP you'd still have a range allocated to your ISP) and then suddenly someone tried to log in from the other side of the world it should have thrown alarms and locked the account and sent a warning to your login address. That would have meant near enough zero problems with hacking and saved them a bazillion man hours in customer support.

Glad to hear of this!

My account was hacked four days before Halloween, and was glad to get it back just in time for the events! I feel sorry for the people who have had theirs hacked before this time though, but rest assured for them that next time it happens (if it happens), there is the rollback for them =]

Good work Anet for this update!

still leaves everyone in the dust who got hacked before, ty ANET for NOTHING

I think you will appreciate this if your account gets hacked after this. It's better than A-net not doing anything at all.
Imagine all the resources it would take to go check every hacked account since Guild Wars got released. That would make GW2 release get delayed.

I don't understand all the enthusiasm for this. It should have been this way from the beginning. Security is something that is automatically expected and assumed. Not having it is a big failure, or was a big failure.

As the post under u says, its exactly how it should have been: FROM THE BEGINNING.

This is indeed good news for GW1 and GW2. It does suck for people that had their accounts hacked before October 1st but I like to know Anet cared enough to create this tool. Better late than never and Coast can stfu.

Can't tell if serious, or....

@Chipmunk: The fact is, the game didn't have it in the beginning, and now it does. It probably should have had it from the start, but are we supposed to not show enthusiasm for a much-requested feature? This is a Good Thing, particularly for anyone who plans on getting GW2. It's also a complete surprise, and it makes me feel much safer.