Cases where game masters will not intervene

Not necessarily for you - that does suck, and so does DBG's unwillingness to assist - but if anyone else wants to avoid this sort of thing in the future, it's pretty easy. (Instructions are for Windows 7)

1. In Control Panel > Power Options > Require a password on wakeup (You do have a password, don't you?)
2. Click the Windows Start button, then the --> next to Shut Down. Click Lock.

Crisis averted.

Why should I change? He's the one who sucks!

- Michael Bolton

If your kids deleted your accounts while you afk'd, I suspect Daybreak would easily be able to tell this. They would quickly see that your toon was deleted with no items moved off it, no server move etc or anything else that looked suspicious. This is NOT what they are saying no help to.

I believe that's precisely what they are saying no help to otherwise why not restore naked level 105s? I dislike the entire discussion being on the semantics of the policy from a lack of clear and concise examples.

I can see that some people are going to be purposely obtuse and take anything that Daybreak says and twist it to their own ends.

This is exactly what they're saying no to, and in my opinion, much more likely than the mysterious "hack."

• Deleted characters: There are various mechanics in place to assure that characters are not deleted by accident. Let's be careful out there. Deleted characters will not be restored. Feel free to re-roll a new character.

No, there's not. There's one. It's pi*s poor at best and shares the same mechanic as Return Home, joining a raid, accepting a teleport, destroying no trade items, and dropping trash on the ground.

My fault or not, after 14 years of looking at the substandard UI and game mechanics, that "Yes" box means nothing to me.

Yes, please.

I can't know why there was not character restoration since Daybreak observes privacy in these matters. But, according to you it involved sharing account information [BA: a violation of the ToS and a reason to terminate the entire agreement if Daybreak wanted to] and that being how the account was hacked. It could easily be "the reason why". As in -

A list of examples probably would not capture every reason Daybreak would not simply restore everyone with no questions asked.

The ToS doesn't look ambiguous to me.

And your initial post in this thread was pretty clear

You clearly thought you knew why, although you may not agree with the why.

I've wondered that too. It seems like after I have been logged on for a long time if I log out that old firona vie screen will pop up with a 'logon can not be verified' message. If you hit cancel than exit on the next screen then np. I always use the original EQ cd to start install on new computers and my others up to POP then download the rest so maybe this is why. Sorry off topic I know but I always wondered.

Not as lucky as you'd think.

• Knowledge of an active account name
• Public authentication interface
• No lockouts to limit attempts

Add a skilled and interested party to the above list and you have a recipe for doom.

While multi-factor authentication could have prevented a breach in this case, I'm not aware of a policy that limits character restores to accounts that are MFA-enabled.

Thats the thing they weren't all collected the same way, some on the forums, some on facebook, some in game and some by email.
The only common factor was the email to Thom (Phathom) himself.

I think the highest number of failed login attempts on an account was 47.....I'm surprised SOE/Daybreak lets it get that high.

This^^^^^^

The $100 may be a bit much.

This is one area in particular that doesn't have an easy solution and I mean generally, not just as it relates to EQ.

No lockout in place after x failed attempts:
Affords someone free reign to try to brute force an account.

Lockout in place after x failed attempts:
Someone that does happen to know your username could effectively lock you out for whatever predetermined time is in place by simply making x failed attempts at logging in.

Now if a bad actor is presented with a login screen and doesn't know either your username nor your password then the potential for compromise is decreased by orders of magnitude.
Currently the requirements are:
Username must be 4-15 characters which can include any combination of the following: a-z and 0-9. (not case-sensitive).
Password must be 8-15 characters which can include any combination of the following: a-z, A-Z, 0-9, and !"#$% but also must contain at least one number and cannot be the same as username.

Not sharing your account information and using a *strong and unique* username and password goes a long long way in keeping your account safe but is just one layer in protecting it and this hold true for all accounts, not just EQ.

I am sorry that you are apparently incapable of reading for comprehension. They cannot prove who did it. The only way they could prove it would be if they took a picture when it happened but they cannot do that, and It is no where in the EULA. They also cannot access near what you think they can on your system using the EULA as permission.

Plus, what I was saying is that the location is meaningless as there are several ways to play in different locations with multiple devices. They cannot, to any reasonable degree, prove who deleted the character or authorized any transfers. If they cannot say who did it, then they cannot disprove anyone who claims it was done maliciously. Thus the refusal to renew deleted toons is effectively unenforceable.

I'm not equating crime with crime, I'm equating your response with his.

Still not the perfect solution, but every security audit I've seen has this as a requirement. In practice, simply reporting the presence of a lockout policy will discourage almost all brute force attempts.

47 attempts isn't brute force unlimited trys at work.

And Daybreak isn't about to describe the rather extensive tools they have at their disposal to be able to tell who from who, but we do know they take these things seriously and they conduct a thorough investigation. Thorough enough that I'm not seeing the details someone posted here and asserted as true refuted.

In practice I've not heard many companies provide information about their security methods except to announce they won't share the information you provide with others. They don't (intentionally) give out hints about what's partially working/can't work at all.

If you've been around long enough to remember Conquest you should also remember their "exploiting" didn't work. SoE pitched a hissy because it wasn't ready and then some dummy /killed the last warder and unleashed Sleeper Doug onto Lanys.

New cryptolocker variant targets gamers: http://labs.bromium.com/2015/03/12/achievement-locked-new-crypto-ransomware-pwns-video-gamers/
Everquest is not on list of games targeted.

What would I ever do if my steam directory got locked? Oh right, wipe my hd, reinstall windows and download all those games from steam again. lol

I've had cases where an instance of EQ was lagging by over three minutes, compared to another instance running on the same machine. When you get any sort of lag it is kind of hard to predict exactly where the cursor is when you click the mouse.

How many character deletions are accidental? Probably a relatively small number.

How many of those players who delete a toon accidentally are likely to stop giving money to EQ if DBG's response is 'you are free to reroll another character?' I'd venture to say a pretty large proportion of that group.

Move the delete button or add another fail-safe like typing in the character name like in EQ2. If we have time to mess with merchants in PoK, I think we have time to mess with this.

At the very least, you won't have to listen to as many people whinging about the possibility of accidental deletions.