Account hacked/"unable to restore"

#1 - Jan. 4, 2014, 6:26 p.m.

I dont know how to go about this but, i Logged into gw2 on Christmas day to find that my account has been accessed and all my gold, laurels, items were gone. they salvaged all my gear, sold all my 18 slot bags.

so i submitted a ticket that my account had been Compromised Account/hacked and they did the usual ( verify that i was me and suspended my account till i was verified) After the investigation i go ingame and see my characters were still stripped, and all i get in the mail was 1 18 slot bag ( i lost 24 in total) and a chest containing a booster and the set of gemstore armor skin

After recieving this mail i submit another ticket requesting my account to get restored, No Answer. Today on january 4th 2014 i get an email that corresponds to my first ticket submitted saying :

Hello Alex,

After reviewing the game logs, I was unable to determine that the account was accessed by an unauthorized individual. As a result, we will be unable to offer any restorations for this incident.

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

Regards,

GM Master Mind

And i Responded with:

My Account was hacked, all of my items were salvaged and sold, my gold was taken, my laurels were spent
The ip that hacked me was 175.21.119.18
And it belongs to someone in china, while i live in Canada,Ontario

how is this not enough proof that my account was not accessed by an unauthorized individual, my email and my gw2 account had the same user name and password. he authorized himself

My two ticket numbers are :
Compromised Account/hacked (request #201137)
Account restoration (request #219174)?

Gaile Gray

#11 - Jan. 6, 2014, 11:54 a.m.

Let’s be clear: If you share an account, if you leave your account active while you’re away, if your Evil Little Brother™ guesses your (insecure) password and jumps onto your account to wreak havoc, we’re not going to be able to tell “Is this a hack, or is this a ‘hack’.” And unfortunately, we get claims of “hacking” every day from people who try to get a restoration essentially to duplicate the allegedly-stolen items.

If we cannot trace the account(s) involved in the compromise, we cannot terminate it or them, thereby removing the items from the economy. If we cannot remove the items from the economy, we’re “duping” items, and that’s not a good thing — it impacts the entire community.

We must follow protocol for the good of all players. If an error is made, the team will correct it. But when they tell you they cannot see a compromise, they are looking at game logs that show access points have not changed from previous access points (prior to the alleged hacking incident), or they are seeing a back-and-forth over months, so clearly they are looking at a shared account. And neither of those can or will be restored.

Agents want to help you, and they want to restore your account if you’ve been a victim of a compromise, so they will look at the data in your favor. If you need a review you can continue the discussion with Support or you can post in the Tickets for Review thread. The better bet is to continue the discussion with Support, because in situations like this I would need to turn back to them for an explanation and it’s simply more efficient to discuss with someone already familiar with the case. I will say that like botting termination reversals, it’s not common for us to be able to reverse a decision about declining an account restoration.

Gaile Gray

#18 - Jan. 6, 2014, 7:17 p.m.

I just want to make sure that folks know the difference between an account restoration and a character restoration, when both involve a roll-back. Guild Wars 2 is programmed in such a way that it is not possible to roll back a single character. It’s all or nothing — full account restore or nothing at all. That’s just a technological limitation that I do not think ever will change.

What other games do is… what other games do. We are naturally conservative about our game economy and cautious about the potential for fraudulent or other kinds of abusive behavior. On the other hand, we try always to temper that with kindness and with the best possible outcome.

I know — really know! — that it’s devastating to think that a friend, family member, SO, or roommate might do something that, in a moment, wipes a few years of gaming. On the other hand, as a gamer I value that the company doesn’t hand out restorations like candy, because I work hard for my items, and I don’t want to get into that awful inflationary situation where the item that once was worth 10G on the TP now would cost me 90G. And I’ve seen that happen in other games.

I’ll try to take a look at your tickets tomorrow, but I’ve found that in most cases, the notes on the account confirm that we simply cannot restore the account, as much as it would be something we (and the player) would like to see happen.

Gaile Gray

#22 - Jan. 7, 2014, 6:55 p.m.

I am so glad that this happened. When you explained all those details, I was very, very curious about what I would find in the ticket to tell me that the account could not be restored. And lo! I see that it was restored yesterday — hooray! I think this happened because you updated your original ticket and asked some very valid questions, and provided a bit more info, too.

Thank you for bearing with us, Alex, and for allowing us to correct the error that initially resulted in a less-than-satisfactory answer. We will work on making sure that we continue with our policy and our practice to restore an account whenever the situation allows it. As yours, happily, did!

Welcome back to Tyria!