Hacked, Banned, and Characters Gone

#0 - July 24, 2010, 5:20 p.m.

My daughter stopped playing wow for a couple of months while she was busy with school and summer activities. When we all got together to have a wow family night two nights ago she found out that her account had been banned for Economy Abuse. We realize she must have been hacked while she was inactive and now has been banned for the actions of the hackers. We e-mailed Account Administration after resetting her battlenet information and we are waiting on a response from them.

In the meantime, we went onto wow armory to check her characters' gear and it says there are no characters on her account. Is there any way of finding out more about what happened to these characters (transferred or deleted?) and can they be recovered? Also, how long should we expect to wait for a response from Account Admin?

Aredek

#1 - July 24, 2010, 5:32 p.m.

It can take a few days for Account Administration to respond, but they'll do their best to contact her as quickly as possible. That being said, your daughter is welcome to visit the following page to check to see if her characters were transferred:

https://www.worldofwarcraft.com/account/character-transfer-status.html

Any transfers which took place would be displayed on that page. If the characters were transferred, she'll want to review the following support article:

http://us.blizzard.com/support/article.xml?locale=en_US&articleId=30824

If the characters were not transferred but are not found on the account, it's like they were deleted. If the characters were deleted we will do our best to restore them during the restoration process.

For more information, please review the following:

What to do if Your Account Has Been Compromised:
http://us.blizzard.com/support/article/30796

Account and Computer Security:
http://us.blizzard.com/support/article/30794

Aredek

#3 - July 24, 2010, 5:52 p.m.

Q u o t e:
First of all, thank you for the helpful information. I have a few follow up questions...

What is the time limited on character retrieval? It mentions that if it was "too long ago" it might not be retrievable?

The link to check if characters have been transferred is not accessible to us now since her account is still banned.

For us to provide as complete a restoration as possible, we need to hear from the customer within 2-3 months of the compromise. We may still be able to assist if it's been longer than that, but 2-3 months is definitely preferable.