Cases where game masters will not intervene

If that is the case he shared his account info anything that happen is his fault.

If you share your info and your character gets deleted, it's your own fault. 15 years worth of mulligans was way more than we were due.

It is clear to me that Roshen has let us know that Customer Service is being fair and equitable in regards to hacking and deleted characters/Items.

If it seems that they are not being fair, then it only "seems" that way. I applaud them for their candor and restraint in this regards.

105 rogue, bla bla bla

So far no one has posted a contrary opinion.

While use of a computer or files within it without authorization or exceeding authorized access is hacking under the Consumer Fraud and Abuse Act and in this case malicious the Terms of Service states that "you may not transfer or make available your Station Account username and/or password to others" and if you do Daybreak can terminate the agreement.

I can't know how Daybreak would know. However it does reserve the right to monitor any communication made in the game (and players agree to that when they accept the Terms of Service). That's what happened with Conquest. They swore up and down they had no intention to cheat and didn't. Posted all kinds of stuff publicly and finally SOE posted chats publicly. Only time I know of that such a thing ever happened.

Really sad. The only good thing to come out of it was Roshen's reassurance that:

wow lol. I'm not sure if you're joking or not.

They can track the geographical location every time you log into the game. They can also detect your hardware ID and your modems mac address you can change your IP most people don't know how to change that and no they're not breaking any laws you give them this info the second you try and connect to the server and you consent to it read the agreement before you hit accept genius.

I've never accidentally deleted a character. How can you accidentally delete a character? There's a pop up that asks if you're SURE you want to delete said character. Are you just randomly clicking things? Did your cat think your mouse was an actual mouse? Are you running some kind of software that you shouldn't be running? I've deleted characters I later wanted to recover, and the temptation was there for me to claim I accidentally deleted it, but I'm not big into lieing.

Accidentally deleted items? Ok. I can see that happening. But there's also a nifty little feature under options that forces a pop up every time you want to delete an item. Did you "accidentally" click Delete and THEN Yes? Is no one accountable anymore?

Accidentally purchasing the wrong raid item with currency you've been saving for a month? I can see someone who's drunk/very tired doing this, but if I spent a MONTH of my time getting currency for ONE item, I would be very careful highlighting the correct item before I clicked "Buy". Is no one accountable anymore?

Your account was "hacked" you say? By "hacked" do you mean you use the same account name and password for EQ that you do for hellokittyfansite1dotcom? People are far to open with the word "hacked". Hacked usually means "I was stupid with my account information/PC and now I no longer have an account."

None of these "customer service" things they had been *giving* you in the past were deserved, and cutting them off is the right move. Though it could have been handled with more tact than "feel free to reroll your character." And I do agree they could develop some game features to mitigate this "loss in CS" as most people are calling it. Many other MMOs offer a "restore last deleted character" feature, you could even implement said feature for items.

News flash: People are human! Humans have an extremely long history of making mistakes.

How can you accidentally delete a character and I stress accidental? It's very easy actually. You are human, you click on a button you THINK said, for example, Return Home then you click YES without reading the fine print in the box that came up because you believe you clicked on the Return Home button. Boom. Character deleted. Now Daybreak is quite able to determine that this is what happened within a matter of minutes since:
1: The character has NOT been stripped.
2: The character has NOT been transferred to another server.
3: Nothing whatsoever has been done to or with the character other than it has been deleted.
4. They are able to verify log in information, location, time, date of the error, etc., etc., etc.

Perhaps some serious consideration should be taken to design a better system with a couple of "fail-safe" enhancements, (RED) usually catches the eye, to doubly alert the customer of the action about to be taken.

If it is now the policy of Daybreak to tell THIS customer "feel free to re-roll a new character", that policy will, undoubtedly, not only cost them a customer, the "word of mouth" repercussions for Daybreak will cost them even more.

Accidentally deleting an item is nearly as easy to have happen, and I again stress accidental. Many items share the same icon for example. A sudden lag spike can play havoc when attempting to pick up and/or move an item. For example, you THINK you're equipping an item, the window appears, you click Yes without reading the fine print and BOOM item deleted. IF the item can be recovered from a vendor using a Reclamation Token in-game, fine. However, if the item no longer appears in the Recover Tab and the customer is willing to purchase a Reclamation Token, it would behoove Daybreak to assist said customer in recovering said item, would it not?

Accidentally purchasing an incorrect item is as easy to have happen as is accidentally deleting an item. Apply the same remedy, that is make the use of a Reclamation Token, or two in this case, a feasible way to repair the accident. One Token to remove the incorrect item, the second to recover the spent currency. If the incorrectly purchased item no longer exists in the character's inventory no recovery is possible.

When it comes to trying to determine if an account has been maliciously tampered with as opposed to someone having shared account information unwisely and/or someone or more than one someone attempting to defraud Daybreak with fallacious claims of having been "hacked" through no fault of their own, the time, effort and cost involved to investigate may be substantial. However, I will point out that in the case of malicious tampering specifically it is Daybreak's best interests as well as the best interests of the players that any investigation is thorough AND carries with it not only restoration of accounts and/or characters but severe penalties including real world civil and/or criminal actions against the perpetrators.

I'm sorry, but failure to read a 1 sentence popup that takes 2 seconds to read is not an excuse. If you value your characters/items, you'll take the extra 2 seconds. People do make mistakes, but not every mistake gets to be swept under the rug like it never happened. And when those mistakes are very easily avoided by taking an extra 2 seconds to ensure you clicked the right button, and then clicked the confirmation pop up to confirm you clicked the right button, I don't see any reason for there not to be a consequence for a bone-headed mistake of that degree.

But sure, I'm all for making those mistakes harder to make. When a char is deleted, it stays on the server. When an item is deleted, there is a log of that item having been done so. It's not super difficult to implement automated features to recover said belongings. But alas, this is EQ.

Personally, I'd rather DBG expend resources on fixing/adding content than holding people's hands. I'm not trying to be condescending, but that's basically what restoring characters and items for free is. We're not children anymore, we don't need a crossing guard.

I would be very interested to know the name of your Home World.

People who are smarter than you, better trained than you, and better paid than you have made worse and simpler mistakes with a much larger impact on their lives and the lives of others than deleting an everquest character. Thousands to millions of people have died because of mistakes in systems that were much better designed than a grey box with two grey buttons.

It would be cool if everyone was an infosec expert that always read the manual and practiced perfect opsec. Maybe that world exists somewhere, but it's not this one. This game is played by people in our world, it and the support attached to it needs to be for those people. When everquest gets dumped into the alternate reality full of machines with access to perfect information who always make flawless decisions, then it can start worrying about supporting those customers.

Yeah. It appears you're not catching what I'm putting out there. Remember reading me saying "people do make mistakes"? Yeah. I'm sure there are people way smarter than me, better trained than me, that have made simpler mistakes than me that have wrought unimaginable consequences. WTH does that have to do with someone not reading a box and getting an item deleted? You are blowing things WAY up. Calm down. Perspective.

I'm saying that spending x amount of man hours to fix mistakes made by people who couldn't be bothered to read 1 sentence before clicking yes is flat out stupid. Either idiot-proof it, or make it a "pay to recover" feature.

Most cases of involuntary character deletions have very little to do with reading the dialogue box. I'd bet the farm and the daughter on it. Considering it is not idiot-proofed, I hate to say it but CS gets what the company deserves for not taking more, reasonable preventative measures. I see the term "industry standard" all over the place in this thread. It's not the industry standard to make it as easy as blurry vision or a toddler's button-mashing 'oopsie' to destroy 15 years and thousands of dollars of work. In fact, it's virtually unheard of.

I do of course agree with you on what measures should be taken, but it's on the far side of unreasonable to assume that the vast majority of major accidents are caused by simple lack of motivation to read.

I don't see how its possible that someone can accidentally hit delete character when they attempt to 'Return Home'

I have a feeling at some point in the future someone is going to come on here to complain about how difficult it is to delete a character.

Firstly,

Thank you Roshen for taking the time to address the issues that have been raised. As I initially thought - Daybreak will not assist in the restoration of a toon if its deleted through the actions of the actual account holder, and that they WILL help if it is an actual hacked account.

I'm probably going to draw the ire of the forums with what I am about to say, but it has to be said. This whole knee jerk reaction that 90% of you are guilty of really didn't achieve anything other than wage fear mongering that a evil corporation is not going to help players who have a hacked account. I don't know Minishot's situation, but evidently according to some - he shared his account information. As I said in a prior thread, there was absolutely nothing in the knowledge base that suggested that if you get hacked, you are SOL. It was only referencing to situations in which the player accidentally deletes his or her account - through their own action. Rather than be practical and logical, everyone immediately jumped the gun and assumed the most negative and worse case scenarios with this policy - and in the end, Roshen finally came out and said - everyone who read the policy in the context Daybreak would not help people with a hacked account is a misconception.

We all got the answer - its as clear as day. So why is this being continued on in debate? Why is everyone arguing over a moot point? Because people feel threatened that one day they may delete a character that they may never get back on accident? Ultimately, this does come to personal responsibility. At some point, people have become so apathetic and lazy - they do not feel like inputting their password each time - so they use the auto-login feature. This leaves a individual exposed to a child that may not know what they are doing, a vindictive relative, spouse, roommate, or significant other, or a guest staying in that home. OR, if its not a password issue - its a shared account issue. So many trusting people on EQ who tell the same bleeding heart story. "We were friends, I knew 'em for 6 years on EQ, I can't believe they'd do this".

If people are going to be naive and take the ultimate risks, then they need to be prepared for what could be the ultimate sacrifice - and that is a lost account. Over 5 years, I have had people offer me their password info in case I needed a extra player for a raid, or buffs - I would always respectfully decline. Why? Because I would never want to be accused of something I know I would never do.

On a final note, everyone should really simmer down about the character deletion policy. How many over the last 15 years can honestly say they deleted their toon accidentally, and I don't mean someone in their household who logged in their account - I mean a person who moved the pointer over the delete option - clicked it, then affirmed it - accidentally. Look at the picture below. How can that accidentally happen?



I know this much - if it has happened; I guarantee the % of actual occurrences couldn't be greater than 5% in 15 years, or if that is too hypothetical - at least a number that is so small - it really shouldn't matter to the masses that this likely will not affect.

There are other subject matters that I think outweigh the importance of accidentally deleted toons; such as leaderless guilds, and the incapability of selling back accidentally purchased items. All in all, we all got the answers we were looking for and its time to move on to something else. This subject matter has outlived its usefulness.

Here's an idea.

1. No longer allow transfers to FV.
2. Remove the Delete Character button from character select and require players to file a petition in order to have a character deleted.

99% of the incentive for account hacking is now gone.

100% of the ability for players to accidentally delete their characters is now gone.

There's a much easier way to ensure that no one accidentally deletes their character. When you click delete, you then have to type out that character's name in a pop up and then click delete again. DBG is trying to reduce CS man hours, not increase them by getting a hundred petitions a day for char deletions.

Although I'm not sure why this is an issue anyone cares about in the first place. If you totaled up all the *actual* accidental character deletions in the history of EQ, I can't imagine you needing to use your toes. The "reduction" in CS support is just 1 more thing people are trying to use as fuel for their fires of "omgz EQ is dieing!"

All of your questions have been answered multiple times, by multiple people, in multiple scenarios, for over a week. Might want to "bother to read them" before popping in here with the indignant sanctity of perfection.

Indignant sanctity of perfection? Someone gets offended rather easily. And my questions were rhetorical. Also, I never claimed perfection. Unless you think of having never "accidentally" deleted a character as perfect. If that is your stance, then sure, me and 99.9% of players are perfect.

True.

Normal computer and account security. It's shocking how many i wuz hacked incidents are I shared my account info incidents in reality.

including child proofing your home (love those plastic doodads that plug into unused outlets) and not leaving your keyboard/mouse active (there are free lockers for use if you must afk) if you leave your computer unattended.

common sense - Coffee is hot. It shouldn't require a 2" x 2" warning label that's provided anyway. Delete means delete. A confirmation box is provided.

Companies can fix a lot. In many cases they even add safeguards or warnings. There are two things they can't fix - people who don't heed safeguards or warnings and ...

While I'd like to see improved protection from accidental character deletion, because IMO that's a special case demanding special handling, I'm not going to rake Daybreak over the coals over it. Nor am I going to point at a special case in an effort to call into question all of Daybreak's CS policies.