Stolen Character - Where is CS?

I wish I had some sort of wisdom to offer or words of encouragement. I did everything I could think of when Minishot was deleted and the only thing that came of it was getting my own account suspended. Best of luck to you. I truly feel your pain.

Pwnz, I'm so sorry to hear about the continued lack of support.

Hopefully this is resolved, if not, good luck in life man.


Wow, talk about a horrible way to leave the game. This is enough to make one stop and consider...

It's disgusting that one should have to broadcast their story of woe in public channels to essentially shame DBG into *maybe* providing the tiniest shred of actual customer service.

They can apparently devote tons of time to a new temporary progression sever, where the most fickle of consumers will briefly play for a few months until the server progresses to an expansion they don't care for, but for a long (decade or more) tenured customer, not even bother to lift a finger or show the tiniest bit of sympathy.

I don't know Pwnz but if this happened to many of us I would think we'd give them the finger and never support a DBG product ever again. Way to foster good relationships with the most loyal of customers!

SMH

Sorry you lost your character.

Not sure how phishing would get any info. I would not respond to any email asking for my account name or my password and just having my email isn't going to get anyone anything. Do you ever click on links in emails and put your account name and password in whatever site you got to? Just don't see phishing as the way it happened.

I didn't see you confirm that you have never shared your account name or pw with anyone but your fiance. Did you share this with anyone else because if so that is probably how you lost your character.

If I lost my characters I would be freaked so I sympathize but I don't think phishing was the cause.
Hopefully you don't use the same account name everywhere because that is half your protection right there.

I know people have offered me their account info or pw for various reasons.. I always refuse I don't want that responsibility.

I think it is absolutely ridiculous that they won't help you on this matter. It's not like it is a character that you created yesterday, this is a character that you have invested 10+ years into. The lack of customer support since the switch to Daybreak is heartbreaking and I feel it is something they may lose a lot of customers over. I wish you the best of luck Pwns and I hope this all gets straightened out for you!

Agreed. Fix this. And add an option to prevent toons from being transferred to FV without 15 signed copies. OH, and maybe let us have 2 factor authentication as well. Was a good start with the authenticator, but we can't buy one any more. Google (and others) can easily do it by asking us for our cell number, and sending us a message if we log in on an untrusted machine. They don't even charge us money for that. We pay here and don't get that.

@DayBreakGames

SOE restored my characters after they were deleted by a former friend, so why can't DBG figure out how? Is it your policy NOT to assist customers? There are evil people in the world that do these kinds of things, stealing peoples identities. That's all this is, identity theft, plain and simple. Identity theft is a crime, but what YOU AT DBG are doing in "customer service" is truly criminal and down right disgusting. Even the evil credit card companies do better at helping with identity theft. As a company, your stance here is akin to those people that just stand there gawking at an injured person screaming for help at a car accident. If you ever had an opportunity to actually do something involving customer service, you would see that this is your chance, these situations are exactly what you are supposed to be helping with. You have got to help this player recover his identity. Rise up and service your loyal customer of 15 years, but what you don't do is let the bad guys win! He did everything right, he got an email from you that his password changed, and if it wasn't him, to contact you immediately. He cannot be held accountable that it took your customer service department 10 TEN days to get back to him while his digital life was being obliterated. That's all on you. If you want to to really understand whats going wrong with the world, this is it. You call yourself customer service, but this is a disservice to humanity, like the gawker at an accident. Be the hero DBG, this is your chance. Don't let the bad guys get away with this stuff. Put some effort into helping YOUR CUSTOMER recover from a truly dreadful life experience. Understand that your customers grow an attachment to their toons, just like back in D&D, so much that some commit suicide when their toon get vaporized. This wasn't this guys fault, so stop treating him like a criminal. He's been of his lifestyle and livelihood. I currently have 4 gold accounts with you, so know that I am going to continue to monitor this tread. This is the 4th page of your customers supporting a change in your attitude to help this situation, not make it worse. You have the power to do something good, so now have the heart. Show us all on this thread that your customers mean more to you than just a paycheck. Ya, I'll be watching how your service here plays out. Its going to be a big investment on all our parts when EQN comes out, and before I make that investment, I'll see if DBG is really the company I want trust with my identity, with my digital life. Figure it out DBG. Figure it out, and get it done now.

As Arwyn said, there needs to at least be a paid service to restore deleted characters. We can pay to transfer, change names, change gender, change race, etc. Seriously Daybreak, we know you're shortstaffed and that doing this isn't free, but it's absolutely insane to put your customers at the mercy of hackers with no recourse whatsoever. Even if it costs us money, at least allow an option to get our characters back. Now that this has happened to a high-profile player, you're basically creating a situation where account-stealers are emboldened to continue this behavior, and the more people that this happens to the more people are not going to want to waste their time and money in this game. Think for a second, and resolve this in some way.

I'd suggest fixing Pwnz, and implmenting some sorta flag where transfer to FV is not allowed.
Add asking for a password or something before any SC details including kronos.

A raid geared toons gear is no trade (on most servers), So the above measures would mean stealing a toon/account would drop in value to the point it's almost not worth it.

I just don't even have the words for how sad I am for you Pwnz and how disappointed I am in DBG. However, I can assure you when I DO find the words they will be plentiful and filled with righteous anger.

I'm also very worried about this, and feeling for you mate.

When you sum up the amount of time and money a 10 years old toon represent (simple math 10$x12x10, rightn we're talking about 1200$ minimum not even factoring time invested)...

I play SOE / DBG games EQ, EQ2, VG for years... but I was never shocked as much as when i saw the changes in eula some time ago. Most if not all free to play compagnies do something about hacked accounts, even small budget games do. Wether it's called likewise, EQ is not free to play... a large majority of peoples are gold / all access members... I really don't get it, especially since we continue to pay as much as we did, when CS was avaible...

I hope your case finally get dealt with...

It's a lot like anything I buy, and I assume a lot of people are the same way. I can buy an appliance for 29$ that has no warranty and nobody to contact if I should need help, or I can buy one for 49$ that has a 1 year warranty and an 800 number I can call if I should need help.

I buy the one I can get the CS on and has an actual number you can contact. I just do not buy items that have none or poor CS behind them.

I like the idea of have a pay option for recover your character because invest 15 years of your life and just lost everything only because this company have a crap of s**** of customer service is unforgivable

My petition was finally escalated to a supervisor, whatever they may be. Unfortunately its the end of the line. Daybreak is holding fast to their rule that they do not, under any circumstances, help restore a deleted character.

I've been trying twitter, but it might be time to say farewell. I hope none of you are ever in this same situation. Daybreak is worse than its predecessor - Its a ridiculous policy. They probably don't care about losing a couple customers, though. There are more important money making schemes to focus on. I hit the wall with a new policy that no one has realized is horribly misguided. I'm certain GM's are reading this thread, but none of them have had the courage to step up and post here saying "Yeah, that's how it is." Great work, Daybreak.

If you are not going to do anything at all to prevent these issues and then refuse to fix the issues on the back end that is much much worse than any BS that SoE pulled in the past.

With a policy like this i have to ask what happens if you(DBG) finds out this is an underpaid CS staff member doing this down the road despite your control efforts?

At first I found this preposterous - then I thought about this using my old rule........
Follow the money.
WHO stands to gain from Krono sales on FV to buy the stripped parts?
Now,
WHO is refusing to put safeguards on Char tranfers to FV to begin with?
And further,
WHO stands to gain from the extra sub-time and EXP potions needed to re-roll Pwnz and get him back into shape?

We know Daybreak is hard up for cash - just how hard up for cash ARE they?
At what point does "ignoring a problem" become "tacitly complicit"?
If someone "on the inside" (or former SOE) was doing this - what financial motive is there to stop him?
It seems to me that given the speed of the initial CS report. that it would have been relatively easy to start IP tracking where the Toon came from and where it was parted out to.

Overall - something about this "new policy", coinciding with an uptick in missing characters, doesn't pass my "smell test" very well.
-Rat
(Who likely just earned his was onto someone's "hit list" with that post.

I don't think daybreak is involved in any conspiracy to increase krono sales. If they were they would be restoring deleted characters so they could gear up and get stripped on FV over and over.

No transfers are allowed off FV. So if someone wants to intentionally move or let their toon get moved to FV to make money off selling what was no trade gear they only way to get the toon back and gear up again for a repeat is to get the toon undeleted.. Whether with or without player permission Daybreak has already figured out account name and password sharing is to blame for all or almost all of these indicdents. The easiest way for them to slow it down or stop it is to discourage those who share acct info from doing it. Not restoring deleted toons is how they do it. And they didnt restore deleted stripped FV toons even before the change in policy about deleted toons in general as far as I know. Unless their investigation proved a hack stripped and deleted FV toons didnt get undeleted. So I don't see the change in delete policy having anything to do with any apparent (and not sure there has been an increase) increase in toons getting moved to FV and deleted.

As for as accidental deletion they have addressed that.

The cheapest or least likely to reduce their profits method of preventing FV transfers would be to make them all manual requiring a GM intervention maybe charge more for the transfer and allow us to put a petition on file saying we don't allow FV transfers. They check that before they perform the transfer if a no transfer petition is there they dont do it.

They could also keep any items that go to FV as no trade and completely close of that method of making money by people. Though I have to assume there are raidiers out there gearing up toons an transferring them to sell the gear all the time intentionally in a legal way.

Hate to sound like Battleaxe but keep your account names and passwords unique to EQ and don't share them. Don't open up suspicious emails and never follow email links to sites to input your Everquest acct info. Always use your own links. Its not even safe to google a site then to go it and put in the acct info they can spoof sites. Use your own link or type it in manually and be sure you are going to the right site.

I also never understood why the toons always get deleted when this happens. Daybreak/SOE won't give the items back to the toon so why bother deleting them? I could never figure that out. Ok I can see sometimes the person who got the account info has an ax to grind and does it maliciously but if its happening so often some of these guys have to be in it just for the money and could care less about the toon. Does deleting the toon prevent the transfer of items from being traced?

This has ended any trust I have had with this product and affirms my growing belief that this company will simply bleed what cash they can with the least expense until it is bled dry.

If they have any plans to continue this franchise, this policy must change. I fear it will not, and will plan accordingly by not throwing any more of my money at it.

I am very frustrated by seeing this... who says it won't happen to me?

Daybreak you need to man the hell up here and do 1 of 2 things.

RESPOND and say either A this seems to have been done by the owner and we refuse or B support the people who keep your business running.

Do we as players have to be more vocal about the unacceptable customer service you provide and use social media to get at least a response? We deserve an answer.... PERIOD! Do we need to warn others about these things? I would never transfer my account to FV for anything ever, put in a safeguard.

Those who had any hope things were going to change for the better have lost hope. If you release this campaign with low group content and low raid content like the last 2 expansions my 2 all access accounts will be cancelled anyway. I'm sick and tired of this crap.