Stolen Character - Where is CS?

A few years back I took a break from WoW to play other games. When I decided to check WoW out again I could not log into my account. So I CALLED CS, yes, they have CS and a real number I could call. Took them about 20 mins of research while I was on the phone to figure out someone had managed to crack the account. Took another 20 mins to give it back to me and all my toons with it. Granted the toons were all stripped and naked, but they restored the account to me and all my toons.

That was the first and only time I've ever had that happen, but I do know it can happen to ANYONE, ANYWHERE.

Blizz had excellent CS when it comes to stuff like this and I have never had any issues with their CS.

DGB just seems to, at this point, to have dropped off the map.

Daybreak should make it so that No Trade gear that is transferred to FV keeps that flag to prevent stripping so that all someone can really do is delete said character. I feel like this would help prevent like this from happening. Also, shame on you Daybreak. It looks like you lost yet another loyal customer. How many more subs will you lose before you wake up? Oh well, I guess we are all $ signs to you.

This is mindblowing to see a customer who had spent money for that many years be told where the door is.

Especially when it could be a new revenue source to recover hacked characters.

I smell a tin-foil hat!

The progression server is doing well I hear though!

I'm wondering if we could get an official response from a Daybreak employee on these forums. There is obviously an overwhelming majority of feedback against this policy. My petition has been escalated to the GM's per my request (Thanks TSR Stephanie!).

I can't say that will change anything, given her message stated that it was strictly against Daybreak policy to restore any deleted characters, regardless of circumstance (victim of hacking, et cetera.) I'm still fighting, though! Fifteen years of Everquest, from being a young teenager to now - it's always been a part of my life and I've always been a paying customer on multiple accounts. I truly hope Daybreak makes the right choice and starts to assist us players when we need it the most.

So, Devs, could we actually get one of you to post here and clarify exactly how you came to that conclusion, or if it will ever change? I think a lot of us would like to know if Customer Support will lift a finger to help us at this point.

Also, thank you all for your support. I normally hate to try to get attention or make a scene, but unfortunately I feel like I have no choice. No phone numbers, no live support, two week petition respond times and I'm out of options. I'm hoping that maybe, just maybe, they'll decide the decision is horribly unpopular and do the right thing. It would be a great sign of faith that Daybreak actually cares about its customers, especially when they're victimized. I just won't feel right with myself until I know for certain that I've done everything in my power to try to rectify this horrible situation.

I may not have known pwne for very long but the fact that he is getting this kind of response from cs is beyond believable. It would be extremely simple to figure out whether or not this was a ligate claim, and I know it is. Cs is supposed to be helpful when your the victim not just say well screw you just reroll. I know for a fact if that happened to me I would pretty much just quite and cancel both my eq accounts and just go back to playing wow were the cs department is actually very helpful. I had an experience like stated before someone hacked into my wow account and moved a bunch of my guys to another server and took all there items and gold I hadn't played it in years but somehow discovered it and put in a petition they moved my guys back and gave back all the items and gold. its not just a matter of getting levels back that could be easy its the augs its the trade skills its all the achievement points and also items that he may have that are no longer available in game. along with may many other factors. The authenticators for eq I tired that once but for some reason it wouldn't work for me, was following all the directions etc. the one I use on wow works perfectly. But I've changed my password a couple of different times making it more difficult each time.

I've only ever had a few things go wrong and got them all fixed but they weren't anything major like what happened to you. there was a instance though were my cleric had died in a zone and had not gotten rezed and was in hover mode or maybe he had just gotten it and clicked yes but what happened at the exact same time is the zone literally crashed. while he was still in hover mode. now this was before you respawened with all your stuff and still had to loot it. so he kind of disappeared for a little bit but then returned naked. I tired to summon the corpse but it didn't exist it was as if it simple poofed or fell through the world I even went to shadow rest to see if it went there and nada. the zone crashing and coming back up literally erased all my stuff. the gm was able to quickly restore all my items and stuff with very little problem just a day or 2 later which was normal response time.

hopeful with enough negative feedback and possible even publicity they might get some sense and rethink that policy. and if they see how many customers they may also lose in the process that might tilt the scales too. well gl too you pwne hope to see you in game soon.

I"m flabbergasted there has been no resolution on this.

Keep talking about it, both here, in game, and anywhere else folks talk about games.

Told this story to a couple of buddies who used to play, their response was "WTF man, why are you still spending time on that game if this is how veteran players are treated?"

I didn't have a response...

Sadly, that's a very good question.

Visiting power leveling websites and plat selling websites can result in having your account compromised through malicious software embedded on the websites, says SOE.

I'm not saying that's what happened here. This has caused people who have never (knowingly) shared their account info with anyone to suddenly have their account hacked. So people should be aware that this is a risk.

Everyone who uses MS Windows and a web browser should have this tool running. It's small, it's free, and it runs silently in the background as long as you don't enable the pro version trial.
https://www.malwarebytes.org/antiexploit/

Daybreak CS management, if you're going to reverse longstanding policy of helping customers by simply restoring deleted characters from backup as you have in the past, then you should find a different job because you have NO BUSINESS remaining in this industry.

The customer service in crappy mobile games, even RUNESCAPE, or AQworlds, makes a billion dollar company like DBG look like noobs...how's it make you feel DBG that a game like runs cape that is way cheap and stupid easy to play has 1000000000000000x CS than you....bet cause you have money you sleep great at night while your customers hate you...GRATS.

Atm we do not really know why SOE/DBG has its current policy, we can only make guesses

On the other hand, the transfer was paid for as the OP noted of a SC transaction/purchase. Obviously it was paid using a different payment methold as the OP has not noted any concern over how it was paid for.

If it was a prepaid card, no real way of tracking of it or it would be very time consuming. If it was an actual debit/credit card, which I doubt it, but if one was used there would likely be a chargeback in the near future which will result in a locked/banned account.

With that said, I could see the above being one of the reasons to not restore the toon, at least at this time. There may be other reasons but we will likely on be told as that would provide information on how to work around things.

If it had been a forced entry, the system does keep track of that but it does not show up for the player with the current launchpad. Try a few unsuccessful log-ins then log in by using the bypass patchme shortcut and it will tell you the number of successful attempts as you log successful.

Pro Tip:

1. Don't ever share you're information ..... ever!
2. See rule 1.

Just because this has come up several times, Pwnz clearly stated earlier in this very thread that he never shared his information with anyone but his fiance, who can be ruled out as a possible culprit for a variety of reasons that have already been discussed.

Whats the saying "better to have a hundred guilty go free then to punish one innocent person". I think daybreak needs to rethink this policy.

Actually, I never use the bypass patchme method and it has told me when I have an unsuccessful log in attempt. (Back when Ragefire was first launching, and I was getting kicked because of the adv loot issues, I mistyped it once or twice and the final time when I got it right, it did tell me the correct # of unsuccessful logins.)

Different note - is it possible at all that some unscrupulous person figured out a way to steal the accounts via Gina at all? I don't use the program but know that it does send a packet to your Gina location. Could someone have figured out a way to modify that so it also releases something else on the machine?

Might explain why there was a rash of folks on 1 server in particular to start with (AB) who had real (not friend sharing) issues, and why it's now jumped to another server?

It was probably just Malware that set up a VPN tunnel back to another location where the other side sniffed the login account info. This has happened to WoW accounts. It wasn't that they were specifically looking for him or for EQ, but just in general, what can be profited from.

Where did he state it? Back when I asked about it I hadn't seen it stated.

I think we would be seeing a lot more accounts hacked if this was the case. A LOT. Good question though.