So, I used to play GW

I stopped a few years ago, but then wanted to play it recently. I had to get ahold of the people at ncsoft to get my info to sign in. Great. Three hours later I'm able to log in. Problem: turns out I was hacked and all of my toons but one was gone. Deleted. Forever. I tried to get the people at ncsoft and arena net to get something done about this, perhaps some form of help or replacement of mats... all I get is sorry. They won't do anything. Turns out they only implemented a character restoration program late 2011. Too bad I was hacked July 2011, just before the program was set in place. I had my account for 6 years... Check my toon out on the HoM site on gw2 Mateca Phenoin. You'll see I had done a fair bit.

This is horrible. They won't do anything. This is the correspondence between the gms and I.

Response Via Email (GM) 06/20/2012 04:45 PM
Hello Lohendi,

Please understand, its not an unwillingness to restore your items. As previously indicated, we would have offered a restoration to you as soon as you regained access to your account if it were possible to do so. However, your account was hacked too long ago for us to restore or recreate any of your lost items or characters. It is impossible to recreate any of your items using the records available to us. The Hall of Monuments is not connected to our restoration tool and we cannot create items on the Live servers. Again, I'm sorry to hear so many items were taken, but we can offer no further assistance regarding account restorations. Please let us know if you have any questions.

Regards,
GM
The Guild Wars Support Team
Customer By Email 06/19/2012 05:12 PM
I can access the hom from the gw2 website. You can see hat some of they
took there if tha can help to recover anything
On Jun 19, 2012 4:51 PM,"
wrote:

> This picture shows that it was stolen and used in korea last. I know u
> cant restore my characters, but can u at least replace some mats or
> anything? I would like to play again. It seems unfair to punish a paying
> loyal customer for some other person's issue.
> On Jun 19, 2012 1:58 PM, "Guild Wars Support" <[email protected]>
> wrote:
>
>> **
>>
>>
>>>>
>
Customer By Email 06/19/2012 04:57 PM
This picture shows that it was stolen and used in korea last. I know u cant
restore my characters, but can u at least replace some mats or anything? I
would like to play again. It seems unfair to punish a paying loyal customer
for some other person's issue.
On Jun 19, 2012 1:58 PM, "Guild Wars Support" <[email protected]>
wrote:

> **
>
>
>>

==================== image File Attachment ====================
2012-06-19 16.49.10.jpg, 97842 bytes, added to incident
Response Via Email (GM ) 06/19/2012 01:58 PM
Hello Lohendi,

I'm sorry that you have to deal with such a disheartening situation. I very much understand how you feel. When this kind of thing happens, it's not just the items or gold being lost; it's the years of time, energy and effort put into the account up to that point. I truly wish it were possible to restore or even compensate for this issue. However, there are simply no tools or means to achieve what you have asked for. If there were, I would have immediately done it upon your initial request or sent this ticket to the person that could. However, no one at ArenaNet, NCsoft Support, or Guild Wars Support has the capability to fulfill your request.

Please let us know if you need assistance with anything else.

Regards,
GM
The Guild Wars Support Team
Customer By Email 06/19/2012 12:44 PM
Omg.... is there anything you can do.... i cant believe all of my achievements are gone. Everything. I spent so much time and actual money to make her. How could it take you so many years to implement a restoration system for toons? Nevr once did i give my password out. And ive had norton 360 on my laptop the entire time ive had it which is from before they were accessed. You can see i was a loyal customer for years. Can you do nothing?
On Jun 19, 2012 10:23 AM, "Guild Wars Support"
[email protected] wrote:
Response Via Email (GM ) 06/19/2012 10:23 AM
Hello Lohendi,

Thanks for your patience during our investigation. After taking a look at the game logs, I found that your account was accessed July 2011, which is before our newly-announced restoration tool became available. Please understand that the restoration tool works by creating a "snapshot" of a player's account when the server data is regularly backed up. As these "snapshots" were not being created before October 1st, 2011, we do not have a valid restore point for your account and will be unable to restore any items or characters missing before that date.

Here are some tips to help you protect your account and keep your computer secure.

1. Never give your passwords to anyone, including family, friends, or guildmates.

Even if the person is normally trustworthy, you cannot guarantee that they will be following the same strong security precautions that you will follow. Also, there have been occasions when friends have deleted items or characters (often by accident) without the owner's knowledge or permission. If you believe someone may have learned your password, change it right away.

2. Do not re-use the same username and password on other accounts.

For example, if someone learns the e-mail address and password that you use for a certain message board, it will be easy for them to log into your game account if you use the same e-mail address and password. Use different passwords to improve your account security.

3. Do not install third-party software (i.e. software not created by NCsoft or ArenaNet).

Programs that claim to be item modifiers, cheat programs, or even harmless looking programs such as attribute, skill, or dye calculators might actually contain a harmful virus or keylogger that could allow someone to steal your account information. If you think you have accidentally installed a keylogger on your computer, you should:

a. Obtain anti-virus software, make sure it is updated with the latest files, and scan your system for viruses and key-loggers.
b. Change all the passwords for accounts that you may have accessed after installing the third party software, such as your Guild Wars game account, NCsoft master account, e-mail address account, fansite forum accounts, etc.
c. Never download any untrustworthy programs in the future! Even if you are confident that you can trust the third-party, please use extreme caution. Virus and keylogger creators rely on your trusting nature to help them steal your accounts from you.

4. Please review our Security FAQ at the following URL, which includes additional information for keeping your Guild Wars account secure:

http://help.ncsoft.com/cgi-bin/ncsof...hp?p_faqid=993

If you require assistance with anything else, please let us know.

Regards,
GM
Guild Wars Support Team
http://www.guildwars.com - http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki
http://www.guildwars2.com - http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki
Customer By Email 06/19/2012 12:12 AM
Thank you very much. This is horrible I can't believe someone would hack this game... I played for like four years. Was going to get GW2 so I could transfer my info and play there. been waiting years for that game's release. I hope you can bring my characters back. Spent too much money and time to lose them like this.

On Mon, Jun 18, 2012 at 11:54 PM, Guild Wars Support [email protected] wrote:
Response Via Email (GM) 06/18/2012 11:54 PM
Hello Lohendi,

I am escalating your ticket to our Guild Wars senior staff members to assist you further. Once they have reviewed your question, one of them will contact you as soon as possible.

Regards,
GM
The Guild Wars Support Team
Customer By Email 06/18/2012 10:42 PM
Thank you for getting back to me as soon as you did. My account has been hacked. I had all of my character slots filled. Only one remains. please can you help recover my characters....


I can't believe they expect me to stand down and let this go. I won't. This was my property and they were supposed to protect it. >
Anyone else have something like this happen?

No, it's not your property. What do you expect to happen? They give you a nice stack of ecto to make up for your account getting hacked? Good luck.

I have been hacked before, lost 3 sets of fow and countless weapons that would be worth 50e+ these days. You can't do much about it. Either carry on with your life and play, or cry, rage and quit (in that order).

i bought it. how is it not my property?

What you are basically paying for is the use of the game and its servers. The disks are your property, the box, yep, your property too, your account on the other hand, not your property. It's a bit like a ticket for a sports game, you get the ticket, but you don't keep the seat you sat in, or own the players you see play. (Pretty crap example, but it kind of fits.)

Either way, you will just have to get on with it. Plenty of people have been banned/hacked, and at the end of the day, it's highly unlikely you have been hacked for any other reason than your own lack of computer security and your own awareness towards computer security.

Posting it here won't help you, we can't do anything, and there have been so many similar threads I imagine most people have given up caring.

Dude, they simply can't restore your account and the GM told you exactly why. You were hacked BEFORE the restoration system was put in place therefore you have no saved "snapshots" of those characters to be restored. Stop harassing ANet, they have better things to do, sorry to be harsh but there is nothing that can be done.

You got hacked. Your fault. Anet can't protect against laziness/stupidity.

Seriously, you may as well have had nothing on there. I work on PCs for a living, and I can honestly say the most infected machines I have worked on have all had either norton's or macafees.

Sorry for your loss, and I do mean that sincerly, but IMHO, the support rep was simply being honest with you. I know people who had thier accounts hacked and lost toons and mats before the restoration services was in place and not a one of them was able to get anything back.

Norton and Macafee products are fail.

Go to www.lunarsoft.net and get the anti maleware tool kit

Notable programs are: Maleware bytes, Spybot S&D, Super Antispyware, Spyware Blaster, CCleaner, Hijackthis and for a good anti virus get Microsoft Security Essentials. All are free btw.

If your looking for sympathy you wont find it here because everyone will tell you it was either your fault, which there is no way to find out and is usually a cop out, or go lol u got pwnt/move on.

The fact is Anet should have had the ability to restore accounts long ago but didn't give a shit because they had higher priorities and I am guessing your account got hacked a long time ago. There is no way to tell what happened but my guess is you had a bad password or it happened during NCsofts security fail moment. Best and only thing to do is move on. Hate Anet if you want to and never buy their products again but there truly is nothing you can do except start over.

Kaspersky IS. Never had a virus infection, ever.

I had the same problem without even knowing it. I stopped playing awhile back and I logged in after years of being gone and found that my account had been cleaned out. My characters were all deleted except for one. Oddly enough, they took the chest armor off of my Warrior, but left everything there (that was equipped). They also took all the stuff out of my bank.

I don't know if it happened before or after, but I did have some birthday presents though! Ah well. It's not that big of a deal, but I understand what you're saying. It would be nice to have the things you earned... but I am just going to start a new character and play with my cousin anyway, so no big deal.

I feel sorry for you, but dont rage at ANet. Its obvious they WANT to help you, but simply dont have the means to do so, if they did, you can bet on it that they would. Its not there fault, your fault, its the fault of the dirty scumbag who had the heart to do that, so shove it in his face and stand higher and play this brilliant game and show that you havent been defeated by such a horrible act.

I'm afraid there's nothing much you can do, Anet have already stated their position and tbh I think they've done about as much as they possibly can given the circumstances and tools at their disposal.

It may not have been your fault you were hacked, but the simple fact is that you were and this is now the sad position you are in.

I checked your Hom and you have 20/50 which isn't a bad start tbh. You still have lots of time to get the other 10 points which will max out your rewards for GW2' or even the extra 30 if you want to go the whole hog.

My honest advice is decide what you want to do next. If GW2 is important to you, the get the HoM as complete as you can. The hackers didn't steal those points away. If GW2 isn't important then either play casually now, try to enjoy the game or simply don't play and try to leave the hurt behind.

I really do feel for your position, but sometimes recognising 'it is how it is' is the best way to move on.

First of all sorry you got hacked (I really mean that, despite what im saying after this). Your statement that it was your property is correct. But you are responsable for the protection. There is no proof whatsoever that the guildwars servers are hacked directly. Why would the hacker only go for your account? Why do I have friends in my friendslist who are a lot richer in game and have a xunlai account that would be jackpot to every hacker. (this person has been playing daily since the start of the game and isn't bothered with any money sink like elite armor, HoM, consumables, etc, he/she only likes playing with friends and helping them. So he/she has traded all his valuables's to a lot of ambraces).

So somehow a hacker has found your personal login details. There can be many ways that happened but you can't hold anet responsable for that.

Being hacked is very sad and a very serious problem. Thats why Anet is taking a lot of time to invest in account safety. But if they would restore your items and of all people who have been hacked they would reward the hackers as well. The reason is that if the punishement of being hacked isn't so severe people would take account security not as serious as they would now. For example, if I'm correct it was this or another likely fan based site, that was hacked a few years ago. Many people got hacked in game then due to the fact they log in here with the same account info as in the game. That was the time they introduced the character name question if I remember correctly. Cause of that event people keep warning eachother to NOT use your GW login info for anything else. If they had restored peoples items I can predict that 90% of those people who where hacked would make the same mistake again. resulting in making it way easy again for hackers and therefor too rewarding .

So my advise is to take your losses and to pick one of the following paths.
1: ragequit and never play any mmo ever again. (and believe me, I have lost friends this way, I totally understand them, but I miss them everyday). All mmo's have this problem.
2: Start over in this game or another game but also take account security serious and try to find out how the hacker got your details and prevent the same error.

If you pick number two do the following (as far as you didn't do so yet):
a: format your drives and reinstall windows. don't install any program from your drive, but only use original cd's or redownload the software.
b: make sure you always use a unique password for a game. If you have trouble remembering it write it down on paper, do not store it anywhere on your computer.
c: make sure you use good av-sfotware and firewalls that are up to date.
(someone said that norton isn't good, although I'm a big norton hater I won't classify it as not good, it just comes with a crapload of useless bells and glitters that is draining your computers resources. But beside al the bad things it also gets the job done, but so do others, and they cost less on both software price as on hardware).

Again I feel very sorry for your losses, but don't blame anyone else but yourself for it and either learn to live with the risk and do everything you can to prevent it or leave mmo's alon if you can't. Whining here won't bring your items back.

There is allot of consequences form simple actions in this game and also different ways of backing up characters (explained somewhere online). If you were hacked recently you may have a limited restoration of some sort but as this is not the case..bad times. Im guessing your accoutn wasnt used much too which would have affected the backups

Nope. They can only guarantee the security of their servers. Your account, on the other hand, is your responsibility, first and foremost. They started doing the account rollback feature last year to help with these issues, but if they weren't storing the data, there's f***-all they can do to restore your account.

Yes, this has happened to many, many people. It sucks, it really does, but you're not going to get anything by making a post here except a limited amount of sympathy.

Read GW EULA - http://guildwars.com/support/legal/user-agreement.php

Yeah, the primary way being by hacking your NCSoft master account which was horrendously easy for ages because of a known issue that NCSoft ignored for ages.... so, in a way, you can hold NCSoft responsible. NCSoft, not Anet.

Still, there was nothing at all you could do to secure your account if you had a NC Soft master account, you may as well have been chained to a bench with your pants around your ankles and a "Screw my arse, please" sign in 100ft high neon letters on your back. And that's a clear failing on the part of both Anet and NCSoft.

The primary way, believe it or not, is in the user's side.

Malware, phishing, bad passwords, shared account details....


Of course there was the problem with NCSoft, bot there's not as many people that has NCSoft master accounts and got hacked as people that had user-side security issues and did.

I've played Guild Wars for almost 7 years and NEVER had any issues with security and never changed my e-Mail. I think I did change the password to something very complex at some point but it would be a nightmare for a hacker to try and get in mine. Also I always keep my avast! and malware programs running while playing.