Feedback talk:Gaile Gray/Archive Support Issues/Sep 2 - Oct 2009

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If you have an issue on the old Support Issues Page I will be making updates to that page as I am able to provide new information about each particular subject. The pages are locked and cannot accept additional player input, questions, or comments, but I will be able to answer existing questions or give an update on a particular subject on that page. When the subject has been addressed it will be archived off of that page.

You are also welcome to start a new topic on a continuing subject (please do not move the existing thread) on this page, if you desire. -- Gaile 19:56, 2 September 2009 (UTC)

It would be tremendously helpful to provide a direct link to any previous conversation that you are asking about, if one is present on the locked Support Issues Page or in the Support Issues Archives. Thank you for doing that! :) -- Gaile 21:44, 3 September 2009 (UTC)

Account Thefts

We're seeing an increase in accounts getting stolen by RMTs (Real-Money Traders). With the help of some of the victims, we've traced a number of these incidents to a keylogger that is used in several MMOs to steal account information. Now, people are picking up this keylogger not just through downloading a third-party program -- the normal way people get the malicious program -- but even by simply visiting a website that hosts, say, a Flash ad that also serves up the keylogger.

If your account is stolen, please get in touch with our support team right away. The team will research the situation and, whenever possible, restore the account to you. They will encourage you to update your virus program, run a complete virus scan, and then change your account password. Think about it: if the keylogger is on your computer and you don't get rid of it, even if you reset your password the RMT will simply take over your account again. (We see it happen every day. :( ) Also consider adding a good spyware protection program.

Now, here's a major takeaway after your account has been restored to you: Before you reset your password or get onto your account, update your virus and spyware protection, run a thorough scan with both programs to find and remove any keyloggers on your system, and then reset your password.

Incidentally, if you get any sort of warning when you visit a website, I'd recommend you leave the site and immediately run a complete virus and spyware scan.

Let me know if I can answer any questions about this. -- Gaile 23:37, 3 September 2009 (UTC)

Gaile, I would like to suggest something to combat this problem. I have seen another game that uses an on-screen keyboard to enter the login information. This is also becoming more common with online banking. A keylogger would not be able to trace any keystrokes, since the information is entered with a mouse. Currently I use the default on-screen keyboard that comes with Windows to log into Guild Wars, as I am now in Ukraine and I've noticed that my anti-virus and malware protection programs are working overtime compared to when I was in the U.S., popping up with threats every time I use removable storage devices (like USB drives) that have been in contact with other machines. If the on-screen keyboard was built into the GW login page, it would make it much easier to use, and more people would use it and protect themselves from keyloggers. Please, consider this and let me know what you think. Rose Of Kali 08:30, 21 September 2009 (UTC)

Hi Rose. That's funny. I just hosted the Support Team leads at ArenaNet last week, and we took the suggestion of a "soft" keyboard to several people on the team. We discussed this quite a bit, and I think there was a lot of interest in looking into that possibility for Guild Wars (and Guild Wars 2) along with a few other security measures that are also under discussion. So be assured this is something we'll consider for the future. -- Gaile 01:47, 24 September 2009 (UTC)

Great! :D Rose Of Kali 10:15, 24 September 2009 (UTC)

Update: November 21

I've posted an update on account thefts. Since the conversation in this thread is older, I put the update in chronological order, so at the bottom of the page (for now). Find the update here -- Gaile 04:07, 21 November 2009 (UTC)

What would help tremendously, and is something that might not be difficult to program, is the option for an account to reject login from a different IP address that what would be set on the NCsoft website. That way, even if a hacker had the correct login info, they still would be unable to login. Up to Two or three IP addresses should be allowed to be entered, because sometimes people may play from a different location, I do sometimes. Once these have been set up, these would need to be changed only by supplying proof of account ownership.

Each account would have to enable this, should they desire to use it, but it would provide very good security.

We've been there. No. You don't realize how many people have dynamic IPs that change every time they reconnect to the Internet, and they get forced reconnects every 24 hours. — Poki#3 (talk) 14:33, 4 December 2009 (UTC)

Offensive names

Hi Gaile, this conversation was archived, but not really answered, and I was wondering if you had had a chance to follow-up on it. Thanks. -- FreedomBound 13:13, 3 September 2009 (UTC)

As I said in the archived conversation, the email address was given in error, and that has been relayed to the team lead. We will take steps to ensure that all team members take great care to prevent this sort of thing in the future.

I agree that there have been inconsistencies in our handling of names. These inconsistencies have been relatively uncommon and minor, in my opinion, but that does not dismiss the fact that they have taken place. I discussed this with the Live Team two weeks ago, particularly in light of previous, team-sanctioned actions on suicide-related names. All of us agree it would be good to discuss the topic more broadly. The two Support Team leads will be at ArenaNet in two weeks and the three of us will meet with the Live Team to ensure that we're all on the same page as far as naming issues. (I will invite our Legal Counsel to the meeting, as well, since his insight would be extremely valuable.)

I am confident that we do not want and in fact cannot provide any sort of "List of Acceptable Names" or any sort of concrete good/bad list, beyond the general guidelines that are already provided in the Naming Policy. In the end, specific questions about names -- from "Why was I blocked for that name?" to "Why was that player not blocked after I reported him?" -- should be addressed to the support team. Follow-ups, once the team has responded in full, may be placed on this page and I'll do my best to answer them. -- Gaile 21:41, 3 September 2009 (UTC)

Thank you for the response, Gaile, I did not mean to imply that I needed any update on the first part, I very much realize that the release of the email address was an unintended error, and one that does not happen frequently (if at all). I am glad that there is a discussion about these types of names, and that there is going to be a larger one. (I've also fixed the link in your post, as you don't need the pipe (|) when externally linking, hope you don't mind.) -- FreedomBound 15:13, 4 September 2009 (UTC)

That's great, FB, and I'm glad we're on the same page. Thanks for fixing the link -- I always appreciate help of that kind. :) -- Gaile 23:12, 5 September 2009 (UTC)

3d models

I asked this question about a month ago now on your old page, but never got a reply before it was archived. I wanted to know if using one of various available online programs that can extract the 3-D wireframe models (with or without textures applied) in-game was a bannable offense. My intention was to help with the wiki's rendering project, since once I have the models I can do whatever I want with them, which should save Emily some time doing it (and improve the quality and all that other stuff). The problem is, the only proof you have I won't do anything else with the models is my word, and I'm not sure how legal it is in the first place. The program works similarly to TexMod in that it interfaces with and intercepts DirectX9/10 rather than affecting GW directly, then stoles the captured models in a folder I can access. After that the process becomes boring and very user-unfriendly, but the end result is a model rendered with texture against a simple blue-and-white background, which I then screen capture and upload to the wiki. Will I get banned for doing this? —Jette 21:07, 3 September 2009 (UTC)

Could you please link the archived conversation? Thank you. -- Gaile 21:42, 3 September 2009 (UTC)

User_talk:Gaile_Gray/Archive_Support_Issues/Jul_-_Sep_2009#dun_b.26_meh There you go, sorry. —Jette 21:49, 3 September 2009 (UTC)

I think Danny's response was pretty good, actually. :) As I have said many times: We cannot and will not give license to use Third-Party Programs. If you use one, it is at your own risk. For instance, if the Third-Party Program fries your toaster, please don't ask our Support Team to make it better. ;) But if the program does not give an advantage in the game, it is extremely unlikely that your account would be in any way impacted by its use. And should your account be blocked, you are, as always, welcome to contact Support to work with them to resolve the issue. -- Gaile 22:12, 3 September 2009 (UTC)

Alright, thank you. Just wanted to make sure this wasn't something that would get me automatically and permanently banned, or something, since I know the models are proprietary. Hm. Now I just have to figure out how to get rid of that atrocious blue background. —Jette 22:25, 3 September 2009 (UTC)

You're right, the images are part of ArenaNet's intellectual property, it's true. But the use you mentioned would be covered by the non-profit (non-commercial, personal) permissions of the Terms of Use. You are not posting the images as your own, nor entering them in an art contest, or using them in a movie that has paying ads on it, or anything of that sort. The use you described is for the Official Guild Wars Wiki, and that use should be acceptable according to both our support policies as far as use of a third-party program and our Terms of Use. I can certainly ask our Legal Counsel about this, but I feel quite confident that the use you've mentioned is acceptable. -- Gaile 23:01, 3 September 2009 (UTC)

Well, alright then. —Jette 23:02, 3 September 2009 (UTC)

Really confused...

I've contacted NCsoft once more about my account because a friend told me to do so because thats how he got unbanned (he waited a month then appealed his ban once more). NCsoft wont even talk to me anymore, the only reason they reply is with their auto-response and if I keep talking they pretty much say "fuck you you're not getting unbanned". This angers me for several reasons, one being that my ban... was really not that serious at all and I've now had time to think of it, two that I was banned for reporting a scammer/racist, three because I was banned over something thats not in the ToS... it's actually the OPPOSITE. The ToS says that after a while you're past bans fade away and are not accounted in your ban length. You YOURSELF told me that it does... and that the ToS needs to be changed. Thats like me smoking marijuana in Amsterdam then getting arrested by a cop because smoking marijuana is suddenly illegal.

So, looking at it like a normal person I see this. I typed "I'm a moderator" in a private message to someone and got a permanent ban, he got a two week ban for scamming/racism... thats fair, right? This is why I came to you this one last time to get your opinion before I get my attorneys opinion on the situation about how a wealthy company broke their contract with me (oh boy a nice big lawsuit). You cant just make up rules, and seeing how the past marks on my account were for VERY little things, all of them were innapropriate language including one that could be nulled for the name "Dont Call Me A Pimp", another because my account was hacked, and like four because I simply accidentlyput something in all chat instead of a private message (ex me messingwith a friend Friend: Nox u suck lol, me[all chat] no fuk u lol u suck xD). Alrighty now, just want to get it from a professional and all seeing as to why I was banned... because currently you're own ToS says I'm good to go!

Also, just as an FYI i had a friend with 8 scamming bans and 10 language bans get unbanned... he scammed and made 8 people dislike your game at the time.

You unbanned the person thatharassed me to the point that he spammed my phonenumber telling people to call it and tell me to kill myself

You left many dupers in the game from the dupe incident.... not that im judging but their names are very well knownand nothing was ever done

[Incident: 090901-000124]think about it, i was banned under false pretenses. --NoXiFy

"I typed "I'm a moderator" in a private message to someone and got a permanent ban," Good fucking game - EULA/User Agreement, Section 6, d, ii:

"(d) Member Conduct. You agree not to use the Service to:"

"(ii) impersonate any person or entity, including, but not limited to, an NC Interactive employee, or falsely state or otherwise misrepresent your affiliation with a person or entity;" ¬ Wizårdbõÿ777(talk) 15:04, 4 September 2009 (UTC)

I know about that, first off I said I'm a moderator which could be a number of things... not meaning a game moderator (Which gw doesnt have anyway). And secondly, permaban for that? lol? I cant say anything about moderation but I can go scam everyone in kamadan for their mini's, gold, items and thats ok. --Nox

Really Nox, it's their game and you agreed to the EULA. Regardless of how serious you think your offense was, you admit you did break that agreement. It is completely up to Anet how they react to infringements of that policy and its not really up to you to tell them what they should consider more or less serious. Also I wouldn't bandy about threats of legal action against Anet unless you actually have legal grounds to base your issues upon. Such threats without grounds, if taken far enough, may be seen as personal threats/attacks and may earn you a wee time out from the wiki. (Also people misrepresenting the law is a personal gripe of mine, thus just for your future reference, your major legal gripe seems to be concerning "Ex Post Facto Law" or retroactive laws, which I think in America is prohibited by Art.1 s.9 of the United States Constitution, however for SO MANY MANY REASONS, the consideration of this issue is totally inapplicable in this instance). Nox may I ask you therefore to kindly leave law to the professionals and stick to the subject at hand, which I think is you asking for your ban to be lifted in an extremely hostile manner. -- Salome 18:46, 4 September 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for your input Salome, when it comes to law I would nail breach of contract on them which is a fairly big offense. I am a customer of NCsoft as I purchased their game and they are failing to give me support, they have even deleted my master account so that it no longer gives me ownership of my account (i logged in to NCsoft, went to my accounts... under GW my account is no longer listed). They've scammed me of my account and are not providing me ownership of the game. They also felt compassion to unban someone who told me that they were going to kill me and engage in sexual acts with my dead body. They unbanned him because "it was his first offense", if you say something like "I'm going to kill _________" or "I'm going to bomb __________" on the internet thats VERY serious and has led to prison time (most notably on 4chan where several people have posted bomb threats and been arrested). Them giving him access to the game so he can continue this shows their complete disrespect for the law, they also feel it necessary to avoid me whenever I call in to support or write an e-mail. -- Nox

Doing more research, that "Ex Post Facto Law" really does work here... this is what Gaile told me word for word "One more note: I have drafted a revision to the Conduct Breaches and Outcomes document to explain the "Repeated Violations" situation.". That is because of this line IN their ToS "Account marks expire after a period of time. Therefore, a player can clear his/her account of marks, and remove the risk of lengthy suspension, simply by obeying the Rules of Conduct." Therefore, I should've only had 1 pending mark (the 'gm' impersonation ban)... you changing it after the fact and blaming me for it is violating Ex Post Facto. -- Nox

Nox, shut up. You made an obvious implication that you were a member of ANet or NCSoft staff, and got banned for it. Here's a hint: you have no rights. That's basically what the EULA says. NCSoft can close your account at any time for any reason or no reason at all, and because you clicked "I accept" the first time you logged on, there's nothing you can say about it. There have been cases in some games where people were banned unjustly, but this is not one of them; if you try to to bring this case in front of a judge you will literally be laughed out of the courtroom because your case is crap. What were you thinking when you said that, anyway? "Oh, he'll totally believe me if I say I work at ANet?" While I do think people who scam other players are trash and ought to be more severely punished, the fact is that whether or not anybody else did anything wrong, you did something explicitly forbidden, probably in big capital letters, in the EULA you accepted when you started playing. You can't honestly expect not to get punished for doing something stupid. —Jette 20:48, 4 September 2009 (UTC)

Basically what Jette said. I actually had a paragraph of legal explanation written out as to why you are making no sense Nox, however that would just take this conversation further, which is something which is not needed, thus I suggest you just wait to hear back from Gaile and once again I kindly request that if you do not have expertise in an area (such as law) to cease making uninformed statements about it. If you wish, you can send me a private email and I will gladly explain why you have no legal recourse in private and thus keep wiki drama to a minimum. Regards -- Salome 21:21, 4 September 2009 (UTC)

It's already well known that GW doesn't have in-game admins/GM's like WoW... secondly, moderator is a very loose term and in this situation i wasnt talking about guild wars. I was already informed in a previous ticket that NCsoft isn't alloud to assume anything when banning someone. This was the case when I provided a case in which i had a screenshot of someone saying that they bought a new account because theres was permabanned, and that the person was relieved the account was already rank8 hero when they bought it. When I showed ncsoft they said he could've been joking and they dismissed the case. So, as far as me saying I'm a moderator... I'm a trade moderator for qq, i was doing guild trade moderations and stating that he would be banned from that service as well as his guild.--'ÑöẊĭƑý 21:41, 4 September 2009 (UTC)

(Reset indent) Let's be clear. You're not confused. You're trying to get your account reinstated using common tactics of criticism of documentation, claims of personal bias, disingenuousness, and threats of legal action. You have already received multiple answers about this matter and your request for reinstatement.

History is a fact of life. If a person gets a criminal record, that records sticks with him. If someone misbehaves in the game, we try for the gentlest means of dealing with each individual matter and we do reduce suspension periods over time when there are no further breaches. We do not, however, remove a player's history, and that aggregate history can catch up with someone, just like a single parking ticket -- normally not a jail-able offense -- can, when added to others, result in jail time. The fact that a player's Guild Wars history carries forward -- even while individual suspension times may be reduced -- is well known to the Guild Wars community. It will be clarified when the small amendments I have made to the Conduct Breaches and Outcomes document are approved and then published. But those amendments are not mandatory, and that document does not impact Support policies.

It's important to note that the Conduct Breaches and Outcomes document is an informal document that tries to explain in layman's language what is contained in the more formal Rules of Conduct and Guild Wars User Agreement. But the CB&OD does not in any way restrict the company in how its representatives deal with breaches of the UA or RoC. If you read the binding documents you will see that support actions, including account terminations, are made solely at the discretion of ArenaNet and/or NCsoft. Obviously, neither company wants, intends, nor does terminate an account without cause. But the power to make a decision about why and when an account is terminated is in the hands of the companies, as it should be.

You claim that because you did not say "I am a Guild Wars moderator" it was perfectly acceptable to state you were a moderator. You were in the game, you were threatening another player about a in-game transaction, and you made no other comment to clarify your claim of a "moderator" position. What would he believe, that you were randomly referring to being a moderator of forums for the Betty Crocker Cook-Off? As I have mentioned to you previously, I read the logs. You clearly intended to intimidate with your comments. And the case of employee impersonation, coming after a long laundry-list of offenses, lead inevitably to an account termination.

Is impersonation worse that racist language? Perhaps surprisingly, it can be. For while racist language is an horrible thing that we take very seriously, impersonation must be taken seriously, too, for it can result in calculable loss such as items, gold, even accounts. We deal with racist language very strongly. And for the protection of our community of players, we take impersonation very seriously, too. We take a player's track record into account in determining how to handle an individual breach, and we should.

The bottom line on this is the following: Stop looking at what someone else did, what someone else said, or how someone's else breach was handled. Look, only, at your own breach and your own account. Your total number of breaches, their seriousness, and the falsehoods you have told in attempting to win reinstatement have, through multiple reviews, only solidified the Support Team's decision to leave the account closed. Please be aware that this will not change, no matter how you protest and no matter what you threaten. -- Gaile 02:19, 5 September 2009 (UTC)

While I sympathize for you losing your account, I cannot say it was unjustly banned. I believe, as well as many other people, that you knew quite well that you were indirectly refering to yourself as a Guild Wars admin. You lost your account, it is not the end of the world. Sure, I won't deny you probably invested countless hours and lots of your time into this game. But, as hard as it may be for you, you just honestly need to accept that you were told by Gaile that the Support Team has decided the ban will never be lifted. I'm sorry, that's just the way it is. You cannot compare yourself to others and say "Big Bob got his ban lifted, why can't I?" or "my infraction was not as bad as little Billies recent scam!". All-in-all, the only course I can recommend is that you contact PlayNC and politely apologize (yes, apologize) for everything (this includes and is not limited to legal actions) and ask them for permission to purchase and use a brand new account. -24.98.91.215 19:23, 5 September 2009 (UTC)

Although dialogue is always welcomed, I would like to request that we end this here and no further comments are added by users not directly involved in this issue. Nox has posted his issue, Gaile has responded. Others reiterating either side of the debate only furthers a debate which has already been answered and concluded. thanks. -- Salome 23:04, 5 September 2009 (UTC)

And yet I'm still confused because I wasn't using "I'm a moderator" for personal gain, I was attempting to get the money that I was scammed for back. But whatever, NCsoft see's the scammers/racist/harraser did the good thing and that I, for trying to get my account back did the bad thing. I'm done with this game and don't need any further input, had fun, waste of time.<3 Nox future CEO of Microsoft :D --The preceding unsigned comment was added by User:NoXiFy (talk).

Reporting Harassment

→ moved from Feedback_talk:Gaile_Gray

Just wanted to let you know, a friend of mine's being constantly harassed in pre-Searing Ascalon while trying to recruit for our guild, Heaven Seal. My friend's character that he usually recruits under while there is Scholar in Training (also Master Legault when he's elsewhere in the game) and the one harassing him is a guy named feik breathes. Would you be able to do something to help, or direct me to the right place to go? My friend's on the verge of quitting the game because of this guy, who's been insulting him every day and getting the whole district to join in. I appreciate anything you can do. Thanks! --Nathe 02:10, 5 September 2009 (UTC)

Is your friend aware of the ignore feature?--Pyron Sy 02:57, 5 September 2009 (UTC)

Your friend could also contact Guild Wars Support using links found at the top of this page and file a support ticket about the in-game harassment. Allow the support staff to look into the matter and they stand a good chance at getting some pest control under way. Tip: I recommend going into Options and on the Interface tab drag the size of chat box well up the screen. It is normally quite small by default, but can be expanded substantially. That way it's easy to screen cap a high number of messages in one go and then the results can be added to a support ticket for review. -- WarBlade 03:17, 5 September 2009 (UTC)

Yes, he's aware of the ignore feature, but it's useless because the harassment's being done on local chat as well as whispering and not just by the guy, but by most of the district, which the guy incited. My friend's a 4 year vet of the game and my guildmaster. I don't know if he capped any screens, though, but I'll ask him next time he's on. It's my understanding, though, that few people actually get banned, though I've never had this sort of situation come up before so I don't know firsthand how accurate that is. Fellow guildies mentioned, though, that a support ticket wasn't worth doing because it wouldn't be very effective. --Nathe 03:39, 5 September 2009 (UTC)

If he's a 4 year vet of the game he should know perfectly well how to use the /report feature, and how to take screenshots to send to support. There is nothing Gaile can or will do for an issue that hasn't gone through the proper channels, and asking her to is just not going to get you anywhere. -- Wyn talk 04:21, 5 September 2009 (UTC)

(Reset indent) I am really sorry that your friend is getting harassed. That's just wrong. :( The best way to deal with that is to report those who are directly involved. Now, he can stand in town and click the offenders, hit /report in the chat window, and choose the reason in the popup. Or he can simply contact support and say when and where it happened (with date, time, and timezone) and his character's name, after which the team can pull records to research the report.

One comment: Sometimes, the chat logs show harassment, but they show it in both directions. Sure, someone probably "started it" but we're not in pre-school here, and the assumption is that people can zone or ignore an incident, they aren't obliged to sling insults back. A finding of "mutual harassment" may result in a block of no one or action on all parties involved. There are an awful lot of people who think that the team will only look in one direction. I've seen the chat logs that showed the reporting player was far, far more offensive than the one he reported!

Last comment: Any time you hear "It doesn't pay to write Support" or "They won't do anything about it" consider that there are a lot of people who aren't fans of the team because they've been blocked multiple times (deservedly, but they still get cranky) and there are others who pull things out of the air but really don't know what they're talking about. :) When someone says "Support never does anything about that," please feel free to ask me if that is true. Chances are, Support does do something about it, and often! Just as daily, people are actioned for harassment -- I know, I can see the records! Nathe, if things are as you describe them, I feel confident your friend will receive help from Support, do please ask him to submit a ticket or send an email on the linked page. - Gaile 05:15, 5 September 2009 (UTC)

"Fellow guildies mentioned, though, that a support ticket wasn't worth doing because it wouldn't be very effective." That's a really unfortunate perception I feel. On one hand a player has felt harassed and had a bad playing experience thanks to the lack of etiquette shown by others. On the other, the idea that reporting is pointless strikes me as just extending the problem. I know that there are many cases where Support has to review a case carefully and their decision may not be in line with how obvious the problem seems to us, but I also know that the reports do get investigated. If conduct breaches can be verified Support will act. I say go for it and file the report. There is nothing to lose, and everything to gain, so there is no harm in trying. -- WarBlade 12:10, 5 September 2009 (UTC)

I'll let him know, then, but I don't know if he capped any screens. And thanks, Gaile. We'll see what happens with the ticket. But somebody needs to tell Wyn to lighten up, okay? She does often come across as rude, even though I'm sure she doesn't always mean to. --Nathe 13:49, 5 September 2009 (UTC)

I just say what needs to be said, I don't sugar coat things. -- Wyn talk 20:04, 5 September 2009 (UTC)

That may be true, but sometimes it's appreciated if you try to do so courteously. And it makes you look nicer, too. Nothing wrong with that. --Nathe 20:18, 5 September 2009 (UTC)

Personal commentary about the tone or quality of someone else's comments may be addressed on that user's talk page, not here. Please help keep this page focused on actual support issues. Thank you. -- Gaile 23:09, 5 September 2009 (UTC)

I talked to Master Legault about this for a little bit( I read this page, flipped back to the game in kamadan, seeing if anyone was tryin to sell me something, and saw him in there. Talked to him about this thing for a bit) All I know is he said he didn't trust the /report thing to get anything done, was saying it didn't do anything. Said he put the guy on ignore, but this guy/other people in the district continued to harass him.personn5 23:15, 5 September 2009 (UTC)

Ironically, I just received one of several team emails I get every day of the year, showing various support actions that were taken within the last 24 hours. Included are actions taken as a result of players using the /report system. When /report is used, a lot happens in the background that gives the reviewing team member information that can lead to a detailed investigation. For instance, certain records will be blank, meaning, "Oops, someone clicked the wrong player, we do not need to investigate this." More often, the records show enough info to investigate.

People who say "Support never does anything" are just plain wrong. If the team "does nothing" it's may be:

• No evidence could be found of the offense
• The offense wasn't serious enough for action
• Both parties were involved in a verbal incident and the team, as a gesture of kindness, elected to view it as a one-time incident and not take action
• There was evidence that the system was being used to "grief" another player (like baiting him to swear and then having half a dozen friends leap to report him)

If they seem to "do nothing" maybe they did do something and it simply wasn't noticed; a suspension may have been given and have already expired. Basically, a lot of those who say "Support won't do anything" really mean "Support didn't do what I wanted them to do." (Such as banning an account that only earned a suspension; such as over-reacting against the player the person hoped to grief, such as blocking someone for language that no one else would be blocked for using.)

Players can follow up on /report with the team, or they can simply make a ticket to start with. Harassment is taken seriously and will be investigated. -- Gaile 23:42, 5 September 2009 (UTC)

Jade Quarry Leechers

Not really a support issue - but could you please pass it on to the Live team....

for a long time while ive been in JQ - asside from the usual bots that pop up now n again, there has been these players from the same guild that have leeched in every single game ive been ever in with them (over 300games?). a Ele called Wang Zu & a Mesmer called Werr Blem from the guild [FroG] or something similar to that - as far as i know the mesmer is a pvp char & the ele is PvE. when the game starts they will either just stand there or take 2 steps towards Kommandant Durheim then not move for the rest of the game. there are other chars from the same guild that also leech but I cant remember their names. could you let the live team know so they can be stopped :) thanks Gaile. 92.29.44.64 14:41, 10 September 2009 (UTC)

I forgot to add - if I need to take screenshots of these players leeching every time I enounter them, thats not a problem. 92.29.44.64 14:43, 10 September 2009 (UTC)

Are you (and the rest of your team) using the /report function? If they're in every game, it doesn't appear so, as they should be getting a dishonorable hex and be unable to participate. -- FreedomBound 15:16, 10 September 2009 (UTC)

at least 3 people report them for leeching each time. I never said they were in every game, i just said 'In every game where ive ENCOUNTERED them' I also said there were more then 2 of them & where 1 might be hexed - 1 of the others will not. Ive just come from a game where there was 1 of them. after we reported him. after the game finished & I got into my next game there was another one, there are multiple accounts involved, Ive had a few of them on my friends list for ages to see if they ever change chars - theyve been set as offline for months. Ive never seen them pop up on my list even once, but i still see them in JQ. even though their set to offline. please read before you post. thanks. 92.29.44.64 15:43, 10 September 2009 (UTC)

"for a long time while ive been in JQ - asside from the usual bots that pop up now n again, there has been these players from the same guild that have leeched in every single game ive been ever in with them (over 300games?)." I don't see the word encountered anywhere in there and I had a bit of trouble parsing the statement, so I apologize if I misunderstood you. By the way, this is a support issue, and you should contact support, with as much information as you have available to you. -- FreedomBound 15:53, 10 September 2009 (UTC)

Looks like im gonna have to wait until i have screenshots of them before reporting then. 92.24.130.69 17:54, 10 September 2009 (UTC)

This would be better on Feedback talk:Gaile Gray/Botwatch. -- Wyn talk 17:56, 10 September 2009 (UTC)

Really??? Because ive already reported it on there over a month ago but nothings been done. 92.24.130.69 18:11, 10 September 2009 (UTC)

(Reset indent) There is no point in asking for A/net to do anything about leaching in JQ as any can tell you for years ppl have asked for help on this and all they get told over and over is we are looking into it we understand and still thiey do not a damb thing about it it looks more like thiey don't give a damb about JQ and FA so it comes down to this if you don't like the leaching that goes on there do what a lot of players do stay out as A/Net will not do anything about it

I don't believe that's entirely true. There was acknowledgement of the problem with the advent of the /report system. The real question is whether or not the current state of /report is quite what we want as players and if not, then how might it improve. I do agree that there could be stronger repercussions for repeat offenders though and I'll point out that it is generally better to stick to constructive feedback on the issue rather than boldly claiming that "ArenaNet won't do a thing about it." -- WarBlade 06:16, 11 September 2009 (UTC)

I would say you are right about feed back and I know Gaile dose all she can to help but that dose not change the fact that for years nothing as got done to solve the leaching prob in JQ and FA apart from put a report sistem in that if you use it more times than not you are the one that gets the ban not the leachers and a/net may not like to hear it but we all know its true but if you can tell me how not to get a ban for reporting when there are 5 players in a game leaching apart from not report them I'm happy to hear it(sorry forgot to log in) yours True Arrow San

When a team has leechers - its suprises me hoe many people of the 8 bother to use the report function - at most I get 3 people report a leecher if im lucky. the rest dont bother which shows how much faith players have in the system...everyone knows Anet wont ban you if even if your pvp hexed continuously non stop every day for 6 months. Im sure a lot of players have reported the same people im talking about over & over again but they are still allowed to carry on. Ive seen [FroG] in JQ leeching their ass off loads of times over the last year why are their accounts still active? 92.24.95.173 22:25, 11 September 2009 (UTC)

15 Rules for Protecting Your Account

Gaile,

Very nice article on account security. Still wondering if the authenticator is still on the investigation list for possible future implementation in gw2 and/or gw1.

Here my 15 rules of protection, i also have placed this on our own forum a couple of months ago after some people being hacked.

1. Don't write you're credentials down on a sticky paper and place it on your monitor (never share you´re account with people in you´re household, you never know what they do)
2. Use an email account which isn´t linked to other online movements
3. Use a password with letters (uppercase and lowercase), figures and possible ascii characters. Use a a minimum length of 8 characters.
4. Never play on strange computers at internet cafe's, schools and suchlike.
5. Use a virusscan and firewall software bought from a trusted vendor. Configure it so that always is asked if you want take action on a possible breach or access try to or from your computer(select the right software against these requirements)
6. Alter you´re password every 2 or 3 months when using a softer naming convention for the passwords
7. Don´t Have you´re internet browser remember passwords for websites (plaync masteraccount i.e)
8. Don´t keep a list of passwords stored in a textfile on you´re desktop or hard drive.
9. Don´t use the shortcut feature of GW to allow automatically login on GW
10. Only use third party application which are approved by GW or are from trusted sources(i.e. texmod could also be a keylogger, trojan horse virus or malware when downloaded from the wrong sources)
11. Know who you're friends are, always stay alert when logging in GW when they are presence. Tomorrow they could be you´re worst nightmare
12. Only people making abuse of other people are getting rich...so watch out in game...you never know who is on the other side of the interface
13. Usable cheat codesand key generator´s don´t exist for GW
14. Breach...make screenshots for evidence and call/mail support!
15. Help the community to make GW a save and nice place to be in...use the report feaature in game to report leechers, spammers, botters and other criminals and antisocial people.

My two pennies, maybe some rules are an addition to you're posting about security... Didis 17:59, 12 September 2009 (UTC)

Don't put any game on your pc that comes with Nportec Gameguard on it there are more back doors it to this prog and any one looking at what wiki as to say about it you will find a long list of how many ways it will mess up your pc(True Arrow San)

To read more about this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NProtect_GameGuard (works indeed like a rootkit, and is used by i.e. Aion and lineage. Very user unfriendly with regard to installation of you're game, end users not well informed about it, and after uninstall still having traces residing on you're computer. But then it helps the gaming industry to keep the game clean from hacks cheating etc...with a price though... Too Gaile my question: Is there any information if this is on the shortlist for gw1 or even gw2? Didis 20:24, 12 September 2009 (UTC)

Plz Gaile say there not thinking of adding it to guildwars 1 or 2 I had prorderd Aion and downloaded the beta with it I ended up with having to have the nc/soft loader all tho a pain as it slows loading time for game down but I can live with that but asfor gameguard no way do I want that on my PC only way I was able to get it of was to do a full reinstall IT IS NOTHING MORE THAN A TROGAN and once it was off my PC I canceld my preorder for Aion if the only way to play any game is to have gameguard on my pc they can stuff it (true Arrow San)

This part made me laugh so hard use the report feaature in game to report ...... antisocial people.. Pika Fan 23:52, 12 September 2009 (UTC)

Yep you only use report if you want to endup with DH on your char it dose nothing to stop leachers or detair them in any way(true arrow san) --The preceding unsigned comment was added by 86.161.166.170 (talk).

Aion Wing Emote!

Those who purchased a digital copy of Aion through the NCsoft store will be able to get the Aion Emote in Guild Wars! If you're a digital customer, please get in touch with support and let them know you'd like the emote, and they will send you an access key by September 21st. This offer ends on October 22nd. -- Gaile 17:44, 15 September 2009 (UTC)

In-Game Announcements; Security Page

Login announcements and your Support FAQs/Account Security page

Heya Gaile, i was wondering about something ; do you think it would be useful to add a link to your Support FAQs/Account Security page in the http://www.guildwars.com/support listing ? I was checking the support page suggested on the login screen but i don't think i saw something documented like your small FAQ. An example of suggestion :

Support resources

• Email support - Request help from the game support team via email
• Web support - Use your web browser to request help from the game support team
• Guild Wars Wiki - Read articles about Guild Wars written by other players
• Knowledge base - Search the official technical notes to find answers
• Account Security - Tips to keep your account safe from thefts (example)

Please do not include passwords in your support ticket or email. You should never give your password to anyone.

The link could lead to your Support_FAQs/Account_Security page in GWW. If it was already implemented and if ever i didn't see it, my apologizes ! Have a nice day and thanks for reading :) Davor Belegnaur 09:34, 16 September 2009 (UTC)

Hi Davor. I'm a fan of anything that gets the word out about account security. I will ask our web team if they'd like to include that link. I'm not sure that it would be as broad as the other links on that page, for they all have contact info of one sort or another. But it's definitely worth asking, and thanks for the tip. -- Gaile 23:57, 17 September 2009 (UTC)

Just a brief update: I sent over a note to Emily and she agreed that this would be a useful link, so she amended the Support page on the website and there's a direct callout for the Support FAQs/Account Security FAQ. Thanks for a great suggestion. -- Gaile 01:37, 24 September 2009 (UTC)

Nice ! This wiki has treasures for people seeking guidance and tips, so no problem :) Davor Belegnaur 08:14, 26 September 2009 (UTC)

Game Guard, Aion, and the Wings Promotion

A rose by any other name

A/net are asking us to get Aion Wings but what they are not saying is that with Aion NCsoft will install onto your PC Nprotect Gameguard if any one takes the time to look at just what gameguard dose you will see that it looks like a trogan acts like a trogan it will mess up other legit software on your pc it will messup your AV and more so they may not call it a torgan but no mater what they call it dose not change what it dose and that is to infest your PC like a trogan so yes get your free wings and also your free trogan so no disrespect ment Gaile but plz dont just say get your wings but tell players what elsa they will get with them--86.162.11.206 13:02, 16 September 2009 (UTC)--Kaiaba 13:03, 16 September 2009 (UTC)

It's not a trojan. It's a rootkit. It also causes lots of problems and typicaly doesn't do its job well. But guys? Gaile is the support liason for Guild Wars. Gameguard is an issue relating to Aion. The Aion wings in GW aren't by themselves going to make anyone get Aion, they're just a perk. And I assure you the Aion team knows how much we all dislike gameguard already. ¬ Wizårdbõÿ777(talk) 15:10, 16 September 2009 (UTC)

ok rootkit we can call it that here is what wiki says A rootkit is a software system that consists of a program or combination of several programs designed to hide or obscure the fact that a system has been compromised An attacker may use a rootkit to replace vital system executables, which may then be used to hide processes and files the attacker has installed, along with the presence of the rootkit. Access to the hardware, e.g., the reset switch, is rarely required, as a rootkit is intended to seize control of the operating system. Typically, rootkits act to obscure their presence on the system through subversion or evasion of standard operating system security scan and surveillance mechanisms such as anti-virus or anti-spyware scan. Often, they are Trojans as well, thus fooling users into believing they are safe to run on their systems. Techniques used to accomplish this can include concealing running processes from monitoring programs, or hiding files or system data from the operating system.[1] Rootkits may also install a "back door" in a system by replacing the login mechanism (such as /bin/login) with an executable that accepts a secret login combination, which, in turn, allows an attacker to access the system, regardless of the changes to the actual accounts on the system.as i said a rose by any othere name--Kaiaba 16:30, 16 September 2009 (UTC)

And as I said, Gaile has nothing to do with GameGuard being part of Aion. She can't do anything about it. GameGuard is not, as you seem to believe, a secret conspiracy to hack the computers of everyone who plays Aion and steal their passwords. It's just an ineffective anti-hack program that causes more problems than it prevents. It conflicts with lots of programs, especially anti-virus programs, and has a lot of false positives (photoshop is totally an Aion hack, I heard), causes crashes, errors, opens all its error message pages in internet explorer instead of your default browser, etc, but it's not malicious software. ¬ Wizårdbõÿ777(talk) 19:07, 16 September 2009 (UTC)

Kaiba, while they are materials and tons of stuff to be said about GG (problems caused or the motivations using GG for Aion etc...), it could end in endless chats in here about affairs or issues which aren't GW related. As said by Wizardby777 a bit earlier, the fact is ArenaNet (subsidiary of NCsoft) produces GW while NCsoft produces Aion, which means, it might be a better idea to directly report your feedback to Aion Team cause the interlocutors won't be the same. Gaile would perhaps relay the info, but Aion is not the only gaming using GG if you pay attention at whole listing of games using it. The "Aion Wings emote" is a way to promote Aion from another game of NCsoft directly in GW indeed, but you can't ask people not to buy this or that ! :P GG is already being used in many games, it brought and may continue to bring compatibility problems of course, but history will tell how it will end. Nonetheless, I do share some worries about such application intrusion somehow in my system and OS (mainly about the system stability + antivirus keeping being annoyed by GG or such etc...) but best thing is to send feedback to the appropriate teams for maximum efficiency, it's the only we can do, modest players. Davor Belegnaur 19:46, 16 September 2009 (UTC)

the point off this post in not to have a go at Gaile for like most ppl who post on her page I believe Gaile dose more than most to help players than most others my point is by just saying get Aion wings and not say what elsa you get when you put Aion onto your PC will give alot of plays big prob and also as was ask in a post do A/net have plans to had GG to guildwars and as I said at the start I mean no disrespect too Gaile and to warn players that they will be getting a lot more than wings and as any one in the know will tell you the only way to get all of gameguard off your PC is to do a full reinstall once more I will state I'm not having a go at Gaile just letting players know to be on there guard when it comes to gameguard and no more than that so if you don't like what I say thats ok but when it comes to what I have said no were I have I had a go at Gaile nore would I--Kaiaba 20:14, 16 September 2009 (UTC)

ArenaNet has almost nothing to do with this offer. Your comments would be more appropriate on an Aion forum or something. - Reanimated X 20:21, 16 September 2009 (UTC)

In a way that is true but as a/net are promoting Aion here to guildwars players I feel it's appropriat here and if Gaile feel's that my post is inappopriat here then I will bow to her wishes and not post any more but till then and yes like many many otheres I have made posts on Aion forums as well as here--Kaiaba 21:21, 16 September 2009 (UTC)

This will be my last post on this mater so I will end by listing a fue things 1 this post was not made to have a go at Gaile for I know first hand just how mutch help/time she gives to the GW comunity 2 nor am I asking/telling any one not to buy Aion just leting them know that if they do they will also get Gameguard and it is upto them if they are happy to compromise there computers 3 yes there are alot of games that use GG and also lot that have removed it due to lost suport from players just look on any game site forum and see what the players think 4 I would be happy to put any thing on my PC that would protect my games from hackers BUT NOT if it compomises my computer's and network 5 and last I feel that it is appropriate to post here as A/net have on there official site promoted aion wings and also Gaile as here now I will end by saying is ask your selfs this what is more important your computers sacuraty and stabilaty or a set of wings Happy and Safe gaming to you all--Kaiaba 10:47, 17 September 2009 (UTC)

4get the rose if it walks like a Tiger Roars like a Tiger and Looks like a Tiger its your own dumb folt if you grab it's tail--COBOL 14:08, 17 September 2009 (UTC)

(Reset indent) I understand your question, Kaiaba, and I appreciate that you're not having a go at me. (Actually, you've said some pretty nice things, and I thank you for that. :) ) To sum it up, I believe you're saying that you've noticed the promotion between Guild Wars and Aion and you're interested in it but you have concerns about the "tie" between the two games because Aion introduces Game Guard, which you believe program may introduce problems on your computer.

To be honest, I have not installed Aion on my computer. I love the way the game looks, I've heard great things about how it plays, and I am sure that I will enjoy it. However, I decided to wait until release to play. Since I do not have personal experience with Aion, I cannot comment on how Game Guard interacts with the game or with my computer as a whole. I will talk to the Support Team about this and see if there is any information that I can share with you about your concerns. Please note that because Aion launches in less than one week, it may take me a bit of time to get that info, but anyone who purchases a digital copy by October 22nd will be eligible for the wings, so we have a little leeway on getting the info. -- Gaile 23:53, 17 September 2009 (UTC)

The issue is moot, for now - [1] "- After analyzing our open beta test results Aion will not feature GameGuard at launch." ¬ Wizårdbõÿ777(talk) 02:01, 18 September 2009 (UTC)

Thank you Gaile for your time and if what wizardboy777 says is right that then that is a good thing I have no prob with GW or Aion but v/big ones with GG--Kaiaba 07:53, 18 September 2009 (UTC)

Sorry for just jumping in, but its getting late here so I couldn't bother reading the entire article, I just wanna say that I've had alot of experience with gameguard through a game called RYL and I've never had any trouble with it C4K3 Talk 20:02, 21 September 2009 (UTC)

Good to hear you had no problems, CFK3.

As you now know (thanks, WizardBoy), Aion released without Game Guard in North America and will release on Friday in Europe without Game Guard, as well. I believe that players in Asia are playing Aion with Game Guard in place. -- Gaile 01:41, 24 September 2009 (UTC)

Account Access Issue

support issue

My partner has recently been trying through support to get access to her NCsoft master acocunt so she can actually link her Aion Preorder and hopefully play the game, she has sent photographs of serial code, boxes, address...all the personal details they asked for, only to recieve as a last response (so far) that the email address is not related to the incident. This makes no sense as a) its the email address she uses to log into her Guild Wars account, and b)its the email address under which the support ticket was started, and the conversations back and forth went. She has been a GW player, and by extension, NCsoft customer, for over 2 years now, I have been around for at least 3, and I too have purchased items for her via the Guild Wars store, as well as on my own account....yet support are essentially blanking her at every turn. We are UK players, so do not have the recourse to phone for support (Though I suppose after the money spent on GW and now Aion, perhaps we should waste some more on an international call) We have met and spoke with you in-game on a few occasions (I was on my Necro, Hajime, at the event when Frozenwind maxed his party animal title) and know that you are someone who, unlike these faceless ones my partner has had the misfortune to get ahold of in support, actually gives a monkeys about the player base. Atm, my partner is so angry she could nearly cry, and I do not like seeing her this distressed (she gave up on the xunlai pane after dead ends with support, now she has to face wasting more cash on another NCsoft product) so I wondered if you could look into it, and help resolve the issue. It is possible that her account was set up on her previous (no longer accesible) email account, but the one she currently uses has been linked to GW for many years now. The support ticket number is 090921-002521, and she has attempted a new support contct on 090921-006145 since the initial one ceased to make any logical sense. If you could work your ranger magic as swiftly as possible, as its not fair that she shouldn't be able to link her Aion and GW accounts, especially when one of the deciding factors in an early purchase was the GW emote. Due to this she cannot play Aion at all, as she cannot create a new NCsoft account for aion then link it retroactively in order to get her wings. She has already missed out on one promotion that she was entitled to due to the confused nature of account retrieval at NCsoft, and shouldn't have to miss out on another. You can conatct her through the details provided to support, or via me if necessary via my details, or indeed my wiki page or in game. Though we may be playing Aion (or not playing as the case is) we have no intention at this time of giving up on GW, a game we have put a lot of time, and indeed, money, into over the preceding years. To say however, that we are dissappointed in the 'support' so far recieved is an understatement. Thanks for your future help, and apologies for the rant....you know hwo fervent GW couples are ;) Jaime 19:55, 21 September 2009 (UTC)

Supported by her guild, as at times the support can be a hassle. X Hippocrates X 20:11, 21 September 2009 (UTC)

Free the messa one --CAJOS talk 21:08, 21 September 2009 (UTC)

I'm in the UK also and wanted to add the wings emote to my GW acc I e-mailed support also all I gave them was my aion acc name my gw acc name and in no time I had my wings emote I had no probs what so ever and I must say the wings do look cool just a pity aion is not £45 for an emote wish I had looked on ebay--Kaiaba 07:47, 22 September 2009 (UTC)

having decided time was an issue due to the nature of preview event, we decided to make that international call...withing minutes a nice chap called Steve had sorted my mrs problem straight away, almost entirely by looking at the original, badly dealt with, support tickets. He didn't even need to reset the password, because the moment she was reminded of her username, she remembered it herself and was logged in before the phone call had finished. Steve S was very helpful and friendly, and restored faith in the support team for my other half...until that point I think she may have hoped for dragons to erupt from the earth underneath the place. I only hope that getting our wing emotes goes smoothly, though at least I now know its worth a phone call more than actually submitting any kind of ticket. Now of course tehres server issues with Aion, but this is not the place for whinging about that (or anything, I am not a fan of wiki whingers) and I can go about trying to set up an interdimensional guild. :) Jaime 13:26, 23 September 2009 (UTC)

(Reset indent) It's great to hear that this worked out ok for you, Jaime, and thanks for your kind words about the support rep who helped you! For technical support and account issues, sometimes the best thing really is that phone call. Did you get the wings? How do you like them? :) -- Gaile 01:43, 24 September 2009 (UTC)

I think some of my guildmates like them more xD I'll confess they look better in the video than in game, but that may be my graphics card..they are very 2d. I afree the phone call was the swiftest way of dealing with it, but perhaps you can look into why the UK support wasn't able to deal with it..I worked in customer service's (not anet obviously)for years, and I think someone dropped the ball there this time, as the phone chap was able to look at the same information provided in the ticket and resolve it...it shouldnt take an international phone call adter all. Aion is...interesting. But I think, long term, GW may be the better game once you strip away the bells and whistles.Jaime 02:20, 28 September 2009 (UTC)

I see your point, and I will ask the basic question: Why doesn't our European office offer phone support? In the meantime, I am happy that the US team was able to assist you so promptly, and thanks for letting me know that they did (and for your impression of the wings, too.) -- Gaile 21:01, 29 September 2009 (UTC)

Suspended for Scamming

Pls help Gaile. Thank you.

Ticket Reference #090924-003254. Hello Gaile, i got a problem the support cant or as it seems doesnt want to help me. My account got banned for issue45 and i was sent to an 335 hours suspension (First time that account got suspended at all). Can you please take a look at the tickets because this ban is a mistake by anet but the support doesnt accept this. they dont tell me what i did but just say "After reviewing the incident and associated game logs it appears that you have ..." Usually i get answers from support within a few hours, but for this case they wait about 1/2 - 1 day between each answer which really annoys me because it shows that they just wanna play with time instead of helping me so the 335 hours go by and they could say "problem solved". I ve read several of user question where people had problems with support and contacted you but never thought that this would happen to me because i had good exp with support tickets so far. - until now. NewAtWiki 13:11, 26 September 2009 (UTC)

i am really sad about this. i got banned for no reason for an ridiculous amount of 335 hours and no one cares or helps me. support doesn t answer anymore :( it s like "who cares about one customer, we have million more who dont have all campaigns yet and get us some money by buying the other campaings. once they have them all, we ban em, try to harass them away from gw1 so they buy gw2." sorry to be a bit harsh, but i dont know what to do, trying for last 4 days to find someone to help solve this problem that should nt even exist. still hoping for your help gaile, looks like you are my last chance 'against' support with their "we re not going to answer until that suspension is over" tactics.. Big thanks upfront if you are already looking at my case. NewAtWiki 21:38, 26 September 2009 (UTC)

First, I want to clarify a few things about this matter. Your account was not "banned." You see, if you were banned, you'd never be able to play again -- the account would be terminated. What happened was your account was suspended for scamming, or more delicately, for "defrauding another player of goods or services." (I hate to put a fine point on language, but I did want to make all that clear.)

Secondly, it was not suspended "for no reason" and it was not given an excessive or abnormal period of suspension. You are correct that some minor infractions, for instance, a slip-up in language, will usually garner a brief time-out (unless someone has a lot of account marks in a short period of time, when the suspension will rise because of the sheer volume of marks). But some situations call for a longer block, a Major Block as we call it. And defrauding or scamming is just such a situation. I just checked with the Customer Support team lead and he confirms that the duration of the suspension for defrauding has not changed in all the time they've been handling such issues. So when someone can be proved to have scammed another individual, he will be out of the game for weeks, not days. In some cases, his account may be terminated altogether.

I have reviewed the in-game logs and judging from the entire log, you knowingly withheld payment from someone, and that, unfortunately, is scamming. I know you've mentioned having a disconnect, but the facts and the logs don't seem to back that up. I can see that the Support Team has reviewed the issue in depth and it appears that they cannot give you any additional information. If you feel this is "problem solved" from their viewpoint, it's because they've done an investigation and, even upon review, they feel that the decision made in this case was justified. You were responded to within minutes by the automated system, and quite promptly by team members, even in escalation through a couple of tiers of the system to a senior member of the team, from whom you got your most recent update. I feel that's good service, even while I understand you are not happy with the outcome. I'm sorry that you were suspended, but I cannot see that the suspension was in any way inappropriate. -- Gaile 20:54, 29 September 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for your statement gaile. Sorry for using banned instead of suspended, english is not my native language. Although you ve read through the tickets, i wanna point out again the reason that made me see this case as non-professional by the support team or whoever suspended the account:

If they had reviewed the case as they say they did (i m not saying they did not), they would see that the actual run was not done, not even halfway. (in addition to the d/c shortly after this and the fact that i was willing to pay upfront (after the d/c and err007) but got no response to this from the runner) But for some reasons this fact (run not done) is ignored. Now getting suspended for not giving out money to people who did not do what they were supposed to do for you for that money is the point that makes this weird (this is the banned for no reason i ve mentioned). Let s say i get some friends together, offer a run for w/e let s say 25k+, get some people in and long before the run is done i charge the money. Everyone who does not pay gets reported and will find him/her self suspended for weeks 3 hours later. If everyone pays, we'll leave to our halls, put those guys on ignore and enjoy our just earned 100k+.

But due to the fact that i ve already said similar example in the tickets and that u ve read through them, i guess even my last hope for justice is gone. Sorry to bother you.NewAtWiki 13:14, 30 September 2009 (UTC)

Red Resign day

I was curious about the stance support has on Hero Battle resigning. I guess when HB is the zquest, people take the quest, play, and if u get red u resign. then collect. ive heard from ppl in an alliance that you can get hundreds of zkeys in that day. Are you guys aware of this? If so, whats the stance? --adrin 02:42, 26 September 2009 (UTC)

Hero Battles. The game format that will soon be removed from play, thus resolving some problems associated with Hero Battles. ;) -- WarBlade 04:55, 26 September 2009 (UTC)

Yeah, but thats not my question. --adrin 10:23, 27 September 2009 (UTC)

I understand your question, Adrin, and I've asked for an answer about this situation from the Live Team. I also understand that you consider this a potential Support Issue, and I agree there are support aspects to the matter. I'll be sure to post when I have some information on the official stance. Thanks. -- Gaile 20:59, 29 September 2009 (UTC)

Red Resigns is, officially, cheating, just like any other form of match manipulation. (See the Rules of Conduct for info.) I have been discussing the matter of how it will be addressed with the Live Team, but do not yet have an answer. -- Gaile 01:43, 6 October 2009 (UTC)

Ok, thanks for the info Gaile. I look forward to more on it. --adrin 02:28, 7 October 2009 (UTC)

Why not have a patch added in that would allow does not count for a win if other team resigns within 15 minutes of combat; I mean you cant control peoples behaviour its hard to exactly prove their intentions. maybe they are afraid to fight because other player is too elite for them or they got Disconnected etc. or their kid was at home unplugging and pluggin in their internet conenction etc.; however adding in a condition to HB that would cripple RR day would be best bet. you wouldnt want to lose 500,000 - 1 million players who take part of red resign day, so cripple it.

I am going to add one more thing to this to make it make more sense to either you guys or general gamers:

If *example* 1 million players got banned over this, than sales for guild wars 2 would suffer etc. because RR day puts a burden in AANets hands and also the players hands. On the one point if they did not constantly nerf everything in pve, than people wouldnt need to turn to a zaishen challeng in pvp. it might be seen as match manipulation etc. but really the more you take away from a game the more people look for other ways around it. Even if hero battles are removed, then people will jsut turn any zaishen challenge into the same thing. I understand that you guys want to stop bot farmers etc and give everyone a fair chance at game BUT PLEASE READ THIS:

When people in game see other people with alot of money or elite gear its the person who has bragging rights if you will. Do you say "GEE WHIZ FERRARI, STOP MAKING SUCH EXPENSIVE CARS CAUSE YOU ARE DISCRIMINATING AGAINST THOSE WITH LESS MONEY". i mean some people in game can only make 1k per day on a good day, some can make in excess of a few hundred thousand. this game reflects society and the mroe you meddle with it by restricting "money making that is legit" you hurt the community. it is because of these reasons after guild wars i will never buy or reccoment andother arena net / ncsoft product. Spend more time in looking for the bad bot farmers etc, spend a little less time trying to cripple the people with skills at game. check peoples accounts periodically and say how did that guy get so much money. put a volunteer quad in towns that will instant ban anyone spamming buying or sellign gold etc. --The preceding unsigned comment was added by 24.77.253.253 (talk).

"If *example* 1 million players got banned over this, than sales for guild wars 2 would suffer etc." I think the idea of holding ArenaNet hostage with a statement like this to get them to allow people to cheat for fear you won't buy Guild Wars 2 is pretty stupid. Now that Support has come out and plainly said that the concept of Red Resign is CHEATING, and a violation of the RoC, players should be prepared to pay the consequences if they continue to engage in this behavior. A report to Support can lead to a temporary suspension of your game privileges. Repeated reports, can lead to longer (an potentially permanent) loss of your access privileges. It's as simple as that. Whether you LIKE this or not, is your choice, but don't try blackmailing Anet to get your way, it only makes you look foolish. -- Wyn talk 21:29, 9 October 2009 (UTC)

Well thnk about it logically; it is easier for them to nerf the HB so map leaving and resigns dont count on this day, and then everyone would win. its a very delicate area, but when people do something a huge majority of people dont agree with and ont handle fairly, it can cause several problems. ever heard of a protest in real life?. or a boycott perhaps. thats why this issue has probably been left alone for so long... so do not say im the one holding them hostage or i am being foolish. --The preceding unsigned comment was added by 24.77.253.253 (talk).

Red Resign day is a pve-ism for farming faction. How about just remove the Zaishen Quest completely? Or set the reward to 0 for now. Or because it's a cooperative thing, punish the person who leaves. Add the Dishonorable Combatant System from Alliance Battles, etc and put that in Hero as well. That rate limits how fast people can participate and makes it much more uncomfortable? 71.146.86.174 01:32, 10 October 2009 (UTC)

The simple fact that HB is being removed entirely as a format in the very near future will accomplish all these things without any additional expenditure of developer time/resources. In the meantime, people need to play by the rules, or accept the consequences. I don't see that as being so difficult. -- Wyn talk 01:35, 10 October 2009 (UTC)

Go look at the flood of people in Great Temple of Balthaar turning in quests, and go look at the currently 14 districts of Hero Battles Outposts and answer that. I mentioned it in there a couple times and was met mostly with "stfu" and "we don't care." I don't think there's any visibility into this topic (login announcements or anything) that clearly states for people that this is rule-breaking and punishable. (Addendum: I looked for info on this last week on both wikis and found nothing -- I only found this because someone in HB posted that there was a note added to the zaishen page for the quest while i was playing). Of the things I suggested, removing the reward would be the easy one and unlikely to break anything while requiring minimal developer time/resources. I suppose if you want people abusing the hell out of it even more when they know it ends soon.... -- My $0.02 71.146.86.174 01:40, 10 October 2009 (UTC)

i just see flood of people doing it. 12 districts of ppl? i mean HB's gunna be deleted. just seems like it's alot of work. the 15 mins thing is a good idea. is that being discussed? --adrin 07:35, 10 October 2009 (UTC)

The main reason people RR is to gain 6k Balth Faction for every 2 wins in HB and repeat until they fall asleep that day. Lower the Faction reward and you will remove the profitability for the vast majority of RR farmers who only do this to make zkeys and trade/sell them. The talk of removing the format from the game made things worse, as those who still want to increase their Commander title are now taking advantage to boost their title while they can, and the large numbers of unprepared players who simply RR make easy prey for them to win every time. Rose Of Kali 19:33, 10 October 2009 (UTC)

Gaile, I'm sure you remember the support issue I submitted back in June where I spent a month debating the issue of match manipulation with HB. I submitted screenshots, detailed explanations and videos showing the various kinds of match manipulation going on in the fomat, but was told it wasn't enough proof for Anet to take action. You eventually forwarded the information to the Live team, saying they'll be "very interested in what you have to share". It appears the solution the Live team found was to delete the format altogether. You now say you don't know how the Live Team will address this issue, but I don't believe that. You know what will happen: they'll ignore it the same way they've ignored the complaints about the many issues in Hero Battles over the past years. Anet has clearly worked with double standards when it comes to enforcing rules in GvG and HB. In Hero Battles, match manipulation has always gone unpunished. First the excuse was that they Anet just didn't know about the manipulation and it was essentially our fault for not telling them, but obviously that wasn't true since my efforts to make you guys aware of the problems have been ignored as well. I hear that there were up to 63 American districts in HB on the recent "RR" day. This is the result of years of Anet ignoring a format and letting it rot despite people begging them to look at the problems there. Are we seriously supposed to believe Anet is actually going to do anything about the people resigning, when they're going to delete the format anyway? Of course not. --Draikin 13:30, 11 October 2009 (UTC)

Hi Draikin -- I do remember the discussion we had. Frankly, I didn't consider it a debate because I agreed with your observations and your concerns. :) You did a lot of research into Hero Battles, and you can be sure I relayed all of that input to the Live Team. I cannot say that the decision to close Hero Battles was a direct result of your input or the input of others who felt the format was being abused or that it had ongoing issues. That is a factor, yes, but I read Linsey's comments on the subject and she explains that the decision to remove HB was based upon the fact that HB hasn't drawn as many players as we felt other formats would draw and on the fact that it had ongoing issues. I think it's fair to say that in a situation where we can't do more -- can't just randomly add on a bunch of new gameplay formats -- the Live Team wants to try to do something that is different and, hopefully, will have more broad appeal to the players.

At this time, it seems it would be appropriate for me to refer everyone to Linsey's talk page for the discussion about this issue. While I appreciate the discussion began with and includes Support aspects, I think really this core of this discussion is about the removal of the format rather than the Support-related issues. So, I'll repeat what I said previously: Just as Linsey knows I'm always up for a discussion about a Support issue, and she sends folks to my section for help, I know that Linsey is open to player feedback about the game and about upcoming changes. I want to encourage you to post your thoughts on her talk page so that she knows how you feel about the proposed changes. -- Gaile 22:01, 13 October 2009 (UTC)

While you may have agreed with my observations and concerns, the fact is that Support did not take action no matter how much information I provided ("Your screenshots show people standing in an area. At this time, this is not enough proof that ladder manipulation is occurring"). This was all the more frustrating seeing how we were specifically told to complain to Support about it. You have my thanks for relaying my input to the Live team, but most people would have already given up talking to Support by then. Concerning HB being removed because it didn't have that many players, I'm convinced that's directly linked to the lack of updates. What you're seeing now with RR is something that already happened with /roll in 2006, only a few months after the format had been released. Like I told Linsey, the format never even had a chance. That said, RR is a support issue in my opinion. People want to know what action Anet is going to take regarding the massive match manipulation going on, that's the core of the discussion. The removal of HB is a different matter altogether. People are clearly breaking the rules and as far as I know that's something Support is supposed to deal with. --Draikin 23:01, 13 October 2009 (UTC)

It seems that some ppl may have started to divert the subject, but my original question is on the violation part, thats why it's on your page. As draiken said, the community wants to know what support is going to do about it. --adrin 19:25, 15 October 2009 (UTC)

I think HB is going on the path of Shadow Form. That perma stuff has been going on for ages with anet doing nothing. It would be really strange if anet decided to punish those participating on RR or in some form change this within a week or 2 when they havent adressed the Shadow Form issue for months. If anything the RR should stay - its a farm available to all, like all other farms the price on Zkeys will soon drop far enough that people stop bothering. Instead Perma's should get changed - its a farm that earns a lot more then RR and is only available to those with an assassin. In fact - zkeys only get money from selling to people. Those people get that cash from the perma UWSC and selling ecto. By making zkeys an abbundance and causing gold to become hard-to-get, prices on zkeys will fall from both abundance and then fall further because people cant afford it. This will ruin the entire benefit of RR (and fixes the xunlai inflation along with it). It will also prevent serious financial consequences to anet, because nerfing RR immediatly on people whining and just keeping SF like it has been for months would cause a lot of people leaving the current GW as well as not returning to GW2. Everybody wins and people will actually cheer at anet for finally, for the first time in months, keeping their promise on fixing perma's without knowing that trough it they nerfed zkey prices as well.

There's a major difference between Shadow Form and RR: farming with Shadow Form is not against the rules while RR is. RR is organized match manipulation on a scale that GW hasn't seen before and Anet is just sitting there and letting it happen. --Draikin 00:48, 19 October 2009 (UTC)

There's also a major coincidence (right word?) between SF and RR: without the SF farming there wouldnt be enough money ingame to sell the entire flood of keys on 4k/ea and the price would've crashed down. If SF had been fixed when anet claimed to look into it, farming zkeys on this scale wouldnt be viable for sale and the issue would never have existed in the first place. Remember, you can only sell zkeys to other players that need to get that cash elsewhere and that elsewhere is UW since ecto's can be sold to traders to generate that cash. --The preceding unsigned comment was added by 62.195.103.12 (talk).

I think you are taking this all too far. The fact this has not been dealt with is that they are simply removing HB. To expend any developer time/resources into changing it at this point is just not logical in the business sense. Why should the Live Team put time/energy into making any changes to a format that is being removed. Would you rather have new content for Halloween, not to mention the creation of Sealed Deck, or to change how RR day works and not? The SF problem is a lot more complex that "just take it out of the game". There are monster bars to consider as well as other game issues. There are several changes to SF that have been suggested. If you have something to add to any of them, or one of your own to offer, do so in the proper manner. Otherwise, give it a rest. Gaile has given support's position on RR day. Linsey and the design team have told you their plans. Until they say or do something different, I suggest you play how you wish for as long as you can, and if you don't want to participate in RR Day, then go outside and play in the real world that day. If you wish to spend your time reporting people on RR Day, that is your prerogative, and it might get a few people suspended, but I can think of much more fun things to do with my time. -- Wyn talk 09:35, 19 October 2009 (UTC)

I'd wait two more years for Sealed Deck anytime if they stopped inviting people to cheat and using the banknote printing machine of the battle isles. Justice matters a bit more to some than ... mere temporal fun. Ɲoɕʈɋɽɕɧ 09:39, 19 October 2009 (UTC)

Wyn, it would actually be easier for everyone if Anet actually admitted that they're not going to do anything about it, but they haven't done so. Perhaps you don't see a problem with what they're (not) doing, but I do. Last time the same match manipulation issues in HB found their way in GvG (Rawr vs Zero) and people questioned why Anet punished Rawr but ignored the issue in HB, their excuse was that they "didn't know it happened in HB". Personally I see this whole RR thing as Anet kicking HB while it's down (I told them this would happen the moment they announced they were deleting the format), and seeing how they dealt with HB I have serious doubts about what's going to happen to the Sealed Deck if similar issues arise there. --Draikin 17:01, 19 October 2009 (UTC)

"At this time, it seems it would be appropriate for me to refer everyone to Linsey's talk page for the discussion about this issue. - Gaile" .

Although Linsey's page is currently locked, I think we should respect Gaile's wishes for this discussion to be elsewhere. Maybe Regina's page or something, but it's doing no good here. Karate Jesus 17:15, 19 October 2009 (UTC)

(Reset indent) This certainly is a heated topic, and I do understand the concerns expressed here. I'm aware that some players feel that Support should be taking more action than they have been doing on this issue. Unfortunately, it's a more complicated issue that it might appear, and a sweeping "Why aren't you doing anything?" doesn't have a simple answer. It is not disinterest, laziness, or unwillingness to see the breadth of the issue that has been the cause of the increase in this problem. There have been a variety of reasons for the fact that RR Day has become an issue. You know that my focus is the way in which Support interacts with and impacts upon a matter like this. On that basis, I'd like to express the Support Team's regret to any players who have been disappointed by the situation or who feel that Support has somehow failed to address the matter satisfactorily.

Hero Battles and Team Arena will be removed in this week's build. I think that will address the concern, at least regarding the issue of match manipulation and its related impact on title prestige and on the economy. I believe, then, that the Support-related aspects of this topic have been addressed with that information, and that you can see "the light at the end of the tunnel" regarding the closure of RR Day's abuses. As always, please share your thoughts about design changes or the move to new game mechanics/formats on the appropriate pages. Likewise for any concerns about a game mechanic that you believe may be abused now or in the future. Your thoughts in advance of the finalization of design could be very helpful. Thanks for your understanding. -- Gaile 19:02, 19 October 2009 (UTC)

[2] Misery 19:10, 19 October 2009 (UTC)

Thanks, Gaile. It's nice to hear that, even if it's not from the source we expected. Karate Jesus 19:19, 19 October 2009 (UTC)

Misery, I don't know to whom you're offering the link, but without explanation, I will never follow a link. -- Gaile 23:43, 19 October 2009 (UTC)

"Over the next few days we'll be removing all TF2 items that were earned using external idling applications. We're going to adopt a zero tolerance policy for external applications used to manipulate the persistent item system."

TF2 is removing the items that players earned by using idling programs. Misery is (mostly likely) suggesting that you consider removing the rewards RR day participants received....although, I can't imagine how long and arduous that would be. Karate Jesus 00:24, 20 October 2009 (UTC)

So I did 3 rr days useing 3 accounts, I made 200+ z keys on each account, each event, I was expecting to get banned for this. so your telling me im going to get away with this lol. Sweet THANKS 99.41.232.5 01:42, 20 October 2009 (UTC)

That says more about you than anything else. ~~000.00.00.00~~ 02:22, 20 October 2009 (UTC)

Who says you're not going to get banned? :) -- Gaile 02:28, 20 October 2009 (UTC)

As nice as it would be, to see people who openingly mock the rules, get banned, that's a lot of people to ban. ~~000.00.00.00~~ 02:31, 20 October 2009 (UTC)

But Triple Oh, I think you need to consider something: The police department is not charged with giving a ticket to every person who speeds. They're not prohibited from ticketing anyone until they can ticket everyone. They do what they can, nab the baddies they can nab, and that's all a day's fine work. There is absolutely no "rule" that states, "Unless everyone who breaks a rule is caught and actioned, no one can be actioned." The same is true of Guild Wars.

I'm in a fanciful mood, I guess, for I hear the Gingerbread Man in my head, "Run, run, as fast as you can, you can't catch me, I'm The Gingerbread Man." But you see, you have to wonder what happens if the team does catch someone, and what if that someone is you? (You in the generic since, not you personally. :) ) I wouldn't put stock on no one getting caught for match manipulation via this so-called "RR Day." In fact, I looked at a ticket less than two hours ago and pointed the team lead in its direction. I have to believe that the account the person used to cheat is going to remain terminated, as in forever. And I have to think, so be it. -- Gaile 02:40, 20 October 2009 (UTC)

This is true.

On a semi-related note: I was eating a gingerbread man biscuit at the same of reading that, there was much laughing and a bit of choking >_< ^_^ ~~000.00.00.00~~ 03:17, 20 October 2009 (UTC)

Gaile, I'm not trying to tell you how to do your job or anyone else at Support's job, but the police have little control over the breadth of the society they work for/in and can't control everything. Therefore, they have an excuse when it comes to arresting criminals - namely, they simply can't see everything. However, Anet is devoid of that excuse. The company, in one way or another, has complete control over their community and has access to everything everyone has done. Therefore, taking action against only a few of the perpetrators is not only unfair, it is unjust. Do you think that if the police departments of the world had the kind of control over the world that Anet has over Guild Wars that they wouldn't attempt to stop every single criminal? I'd like to think they would. Because THAT would be justice. Knowingly only punishing a few criminals would be corrupt. Karate Jesus 03:25, 20 October 2009 (UTC)

I personally agree with Gaile. Doing something that you KNOW is a violation of the rules but that "everyone" seems to be doing does NOT make it right. If you get caught and punished, saying "But they did it too" is just an invalid argument. Each support case is dealt with on a case by case basis, and while you are correct, Anet does have all the data, trying to retrieve it in a general sense is not as easy as it may seem. I personally like the fear factor that their approach should instill in players who have invested a lot of time and money into their accounts and have now taken the chance of losing them out of greed. -- Wyn talk 03:37, 20 October 2009 (UTC)

KJ -- it's our responsibility to do what we can to monitor the game and to correct wrongdoing within the game. But no team -- no team is any game -- has the sort of omniscience you seem to think we have. For all the records there are, someone will find a way to work around them to hurt players or to take advantage of the gameplay mechanics to the detriment of the community as a whole. I can give you a sort of hypothetical situation, just as a for-instance: We can track trades. Scammers know that. So say they tell innocent players some cock-and-bull story about how they need to "see" the item and they can only see it properly if the item is dropped on the ground. Then, hey presto! They steal it off the ground! So say we then develop a means to view every item that is dropped on the ground. What happens? Right, they then find yet another way to take advantage of the trusting and the unsuspecting.

Remember how, when the game came out, there wasn't a confirmation of trade? That people could swap a useless item for the good one that their trading partner thought he was getting? Remember when it was difficult to distinguish between gold and platinum in the trade window? Remember when you could leech without a Dishonor mark? Remember when... Well, I think you see my point. Development is an ever-evolving process, but the bad guys are always moving forward, as we are, and it would be wrong to stop action until every single one of them could be caught.

To put it very directly: There is no moral or legal imperative to adopt a stance that says "Unless we can catch every single person who abused the system, we cannot (or will not) action anyone we catch." We will act, when we can, and we will not accept harassment, criticism, or threats of "legal action" on the basis of "You got caught and that other guy did not." If you are guilty, and you get caught, everything else is just so much hot air. -- Gaile 04:52, 20 October 2009 (UTC)

It is a link to Valve's official blog on how they handled a similar situation. I linked it for a few reasons. Firstly it shows that in at least one instance it was theoretically possible to punish everyone, or at least everyone they could catch. Secondly it shows more or less how I suspect many people expect ArenaNet, or any games company, to act in such a situation. It was also an interesting situation where what Valve did was 100% right, but even so there was backlash against people who were not punished for cheating with texmods being introduced to replace the halo hats with giant signs saying "FAGGOT!" and people with the special hat being banned from servers on sight. I'm glad some accounts are going to be actioned, but I suspect for many reasons it will be a miniscule fraction. It sounds like you intend to go in very heavy against the few names you can find rather than broadly. Many of my friends participated in Red Resign, I never have, I have about 50 Hero Battle matches total on my account. In every other PvP format except Competitive Missions I have hundreds, perhaps thousands, it's hard to count. I guess that is one reason the format is being removed.

I suspect a lot of the frustration comes from the fact that this was (as it will never happen again) incredibly easy to catch, if you scan any logs from HB on the day, practically speaking, every game will either have someone resigning or berating th other person for not resigning. I admit I don't know how your logs are structured, but this is the kind of functionality you probably should have. It's a bit akin to issues like the botting from Bergen Springs. You could just walk in there and ban every single monk on the same path. No player wants to spend their time doing this, despite a sense of justice, especially when they get responses akin to what Draikin claims he got. Misery 07:10, 20 October 2009 (UTC)

Gaile, I'm sorry I don't think I made myself clear. I wasn't suggesting that support not take any action until all the RRers are caught. That would be unreasonable. I was suggesting that a heavy handed approach against just a few would seem unfair/unjust. From my opinion, and again it's only my opinion, the most fair thing to do would be to either make an attempt to catch everyone (not necessarily before taking action) or not make an attempt at all. I wasn't assuming that Anet support had to ability to be omniscient and could catch everyone, but not making the attempt to catch everyone comes across like support is trying to make an example of just a few people....which just doesn't seem right.

Like you said, support has no moral or legal imperative to do this and I agree with you that any threats against support would just be hot air. However, I think the player base would really appreciate a more....even handed approach to this situation. I mean, even in the GvG mAT where there was match manipulation, those players were not permanently banned. Again, just a suggestion. Karate Jesus 15:39, 20 October 2009 (UTC)

Here's a simple question Gaile, if Support wouldn't take action after I submitted dozens of screenshots combined with detailed explanations on the multiple variations of match manipulation and videos showing people using bots in HB, then how are we supposed to believe that Support would take action against a few people that participated in RR now, after the damage has been done? I must have talked to 6 different people over the course of one month trying to explain things to Support who just continued to state my "evidence was not concrete" while refusing to explain to me what exactly was missing (probably because there wasn't anything missing). I only bothered debating with Support so long not because I wanted to get those players banned, I wanted Anet to stop ignoring the format. Had anyone actually listened over the past 3 years to our concerns then this whole RR thing would not have happened, the Rawr vs Zero draw would not have happened, and HB might not have been deleted. --Draikin 18:40, 20 October 2009 (UTC)

Except anet has consistently let existing problems snowball this large. Now they have a hard time trying to clear it up - then they had to screw up again and forget that not listening to the correct part of the community always leads to disaster, as seen in the recent henchmen bar competition fiasco and the not-so-recent SF buffs. Pika Fan 19:02, 20 October 2009 (UTC)

Account Hack

→ moved from Feedback_talk:Gaile_Gray

i really have no idea what im doing, hi gaile, my dads account was hacked, we got the account back, through NCsoft support, who automatically bonded it with dads NCsoft Master Account(we didnt want that), now the past 2 months, ive being asking them for dads NCsoft master account password(only way to change his GW password, because he forgot it), and so far have been ran in circles..if you could please help me out and contact me on <email removed>, Aaron/AKA Gloria Vander Belt. --The preceding unsigned comment was added by 121.45.21.128 (talk).

Please contact support and file a ticket. See Gaile's "Contacting support" page for details. Also, please do not post email addresses, or account information on the wiki (for your own protection). -- Wyn talk 19:19, 28 September 2009 (UTC)

Hello, Gloria. I think one of the problems may be that you are attempting to gain access to someone else's account. Now, obviously you're doing that with a good intention, but I think if your father were to make the same request, the matter could be dealt with very promptly. Also, another tip: It is always best to contact Support with the email that is tied to the NCsoft Master Account or the Guild Wars game account. (You can control what email is tied to your NCsoft Master Account, although obviously you cannot change that until you get access.)

I'm also more than happy to take a peek at this situation, if his contacting the team does not work out. Why don't you give me the 12-digit Support Incident/Ticket number(s) so I can look at the discussion that you've been having with the Support Team? (Yes, it is ok to provide that here on the Wiki -- posting a incident or ticket number does not pose a security risk.) -- Gaile 00:12, 30 September 2009 (UTC)

Arena Net is Stupid, Why would they take away what most of the Guild Wars Community uses to make easy Gold? That will make a lot of the guild wars community want to stop playing because making gold is not as easy as some people put it.

Much as I usually just blow by comments that start with "(something) is stupid," I'll do my best to try for courtesy. What does anything in this thread have to do with "easy gold?" This is about an account issue, nothing whatever to do with gold, farming, or cheats for "easy gold." -- Gaile 23:42, 19 October 2009 (UTC)

New Phishing Email

I wanted to let you know there's a new phisher in town. This person is sending an email that purports to come from ArenaNet saying that the recipient has been noted trying to sell a GW account and that he must provide proof of ownership (via this handy email, of course) in order to avoid the account being terminated. And of course the email asks for all sorts of sensitive information, including email address, password, secret questions and answers, even the Guild Wars Access Keys!

This email is bogus. We would never send such an email, as you know. In addition, the sender is not writing through an @ncsoft.com or @arena.net address; he is using an @games.com address. We have no addresses through that site; we send all our official emails through either @arena.net or @ncsoft.com email accounts. If you receive this phishing email, please ignore it. If another player happens to ask you about such an email, kindly point them in the direction of this post. Thanks. -- Gaile 19:42, 29 September 2009 (UTC)

Account Closure: Chinese Player

→ moved from Feedback_talk:Gaile_Gray

Hello:GG I am a Chinese player,Login account problem when tips were locked, but I went to a complaint when they said it was a cash transaction,I do not know why they do not reply to the actual situation, but have not received a reply for two months,Ticket Reference 090729-001420001420 --The preceding unsigned comment was added by User:Wdwea (talk).

I'm sorry, but this is not a valid incident number. They have 12 digits, so I believe the 090729 is accurate, but could you update me on the other part, is it 001420? Thank you. -- Gaile 03:59, 4 October 2009 (UTC)

hello:GG:

I am sorry, the ticket 090729-001420 was the correct number, the number above is wrong. I made a mistake. Thank you. --The preceding unsigned comment was added by User:Wdwea (talk).

Dear GG,

I am one friend of player above who needs really your help. Because he has tried many many times in order to get back his account. I have played with him since last year and I trust that he has never done any acts which against the rules. I have to say American GM is not very kind and reply always the same sentences copied from official F&Q. You have helped him before to unlock his account caused of misunderstanding. That's why he comes here to ask your kind help again.The ticket can't be escalated to you because GM closed directly his ticket after several appeals. I hope you will help and I thank you very very much for your attention and help. -- Ange Wei 18:35, 5 Octobre 2009 (UTC)

I have looked into this ticket. This one account has been blocked for Real-Money Trading or Account Reselling many times. The Support Team has been more than kind -- they have been very forgiving and very accommodating in unblocking the account so often. But the account keeps coming up on the data for RMT, and at this time, since the team has spent a lot of time in suspensions, appeals, reviews, and removals of suspensions, I will not ask them to do any more research. Quite honestly it is clear that this account is being used improperly and it will stay blocked because it has been repeatedly in breach of the User Agreement. -- Gaile 01:24, 6 October 2009 (UTC)

hello GG: i always want to discuss with you when I was doing appeal.now i have realized it. But at the end of this discussion, I need to say I have never done the RMT. I am glad to talk with you.And I am sorry to distrub you for a long moment. You don't need to reply me anymore

Account Closures

Strange Message

My ticket: 090829-000605

Hello

I got the accounts message: [we have detected that your account may have been accessed by an unauthorized individual. for your security,further access to the account has been blocked until the matter can be resolved. to restore access this account,please contact support and one of our representatives will assist you.]

What is the meaning? I am coming to contact nc support that want to know reason.

My two game accounts has been 045 at same time. I ever sent other ticket to support team. They escalated my ticket to guild wars senior team. Guild Wars account support supervisor - John response about the case for my accounts. He need me provide access keys to confirm. I provided it...

He had unblock my accounts. But two accounts blocked again for same message at next day 9/12. What can i say. My two accounts unblock and block at 9/11?

The two accounts link same ncsoft account!! Can you check the information? My ticket: 090829-000605. Thanks.

Here is what I learned when I looked at this situation: The team has tried to help you. They unblocked the accounts once. But it seems that the accounts were again identified as being involved in Real-Money Trading. The team cannot help you again until they have more information that helps prove that you are the original owner of the accounts (and that you are not involved in RMT). They have asked you several times for the birth date associated with the account. This is a simple piece of information that the real owner of the account should be able to provide. Please update the ticket to give them that information and to answer their other questions. They should then be able to look into this matter again. -- Gaile 00:59, 6 October 2009 (UTC)

Hello! My ticket number is [091006-002466] somebody hacked my account 2 months ago. I sent a mail to the support of Ncsoft, and now I got my Password back. but I have the following text, if I try to logging in : [we have detected that your account may have been accessed by an unauthorized individual. for your security,further access to the account has been blocked until the matter can be resolved. to restore access this account,please contact support and one of our representatives will assist you.] I can't log in but I've followed the instructions of the support,i changed my passwort but nothing happened. Please if you can say me how long will it take, they haven't written back for 2 weeks. Can You help me ? Peter Pap

Hello again, Peter. That you for the ticket number. I have looked at the ticket. I want to ask you to please update the ticket and ask the Support Team if they have reached a decision regarding this matter. The team may have missed this question. If you simply ask a new question on the same ticket the team will see it and respond to you.

Please update your ticket and give the team a few days to work on this matter. You may let me know if you do not hear back by next week and I will investigate further. At this time, I believe the team will be able to give you all the information that you require. Thank you for your understanding. -- Gaile 06:39, 15 October 2009 (UTC)

Account ban

Hi Gaile.

My account got banned (code 045), and i was wondering why it have gotten banned. my ticket: 091001-003280. because of the time zone difference its taking a long time to get answer's, aswell as when i do get answer from support it's just a standard one, i would be pleased if u would take a peek on it. thank you. 83.88.176.153 15:37, 6 October 2009 (UTC)

Hello. I just looked at the ticket, and it was escalated by a team member to the team lead today. I would prefer to let him work on this ticket and, if he wants to discuss the matter with me, I know he will do so. (I just don't see that I need to get involved at this point.) If you have not heard by Friday, please let me know and I will inquire about this. Thanks. -- Gaile 23:22, 7 October 2009 (UTC)

I just checked on your ticket and I noticed you have not really received a reply. I will send over an email and ask for some assistance for you. Please forgive the extra time this is taking. -- Gaile 22:13, 13 October 2009 (UTC)

According to one of our Support Team leads, this ticket has been responded to, and you've been given the most appropriate and most current response possible. Please consult the ticket for more information -- the new claim of a lost password will not be addressed due to the previous discoveries, which are outlined in the ticket. -- Gaile 07:39, 15 October 2009 (UTC)

Just to be sure of what they are you are telling me. So NCsoft will not let me purchase any new games from their online stores or unban my main account, because i have had "unauthorized acces of multiple accounts which do not belong to me" <- which were my friends account's ? 83.88.176.153 14.09, 15 October 2009 (UTC)

Accessing the accounts of other players is disallowed. Account sharing is disallowed, but more importantly, unauthorized access to the accounts of other players often involves hacking or account theft. Please address any further questions to the Support Team -- this is not the medium to discuss the incidents in which you were involved. -- Gaile 16:46, 15 October 2009 (UTC)

Allraight, thanks for taking youre time to look at this, and i will go further with this problem with NCsoft supporters after the weekend.83.88.176.153 22:54, 16 October 2009 (UTC)

Account Support

Hello Gaile,I have a small favor to ask.Would you be kind enough to go to one of the account support people and open their browser to my issue Reference #091006-000210.They seem to not be able to find my issues or are simply ignoring it,whatever is is I rather have it solved.I would really appreciate a reply from them.A dedicated Guild Wars player, thank you very much.Durga Dido 04:06, 7 October 2009 (UTC)

Hi there. Believe me, the team wasn't avoiding your issue or ignoring you. As you can see from the detailed response you received earlier today, team members took a while to really investigate this issue. At this time, they are very concerned (and with good reason) that you have malware (such as a Keylogger or a Trojan or even a malicious "mod") on your computer. The team has provided you with some detailed advice on how to clear your system. I hope that you will work through the steps that they suggested, as we all want you back in the game safely with no one else able to gain access to your account.

If you have any questions, or if you can tell us anything about the program that seems to have caused the problems, I hope you'll respond to the ticket. A team member will get back to you as quickly as possible. (You can also post here, if you prefer.) Tak. :) -- Gaile 23:31, 7 October 2009 (UTC)

Hi Gaile, Thank you very much for your answer, and yes i just woke up to see a reply and sollution, i am very happy about this.I may know why my computer may have set of alarms,but would rather reply with that possibility at support so less eyes could see it, i would apreciate it if you would look to and maybe reply,but dont have to of course.I'd like to thank you again,if it was you who finally got my issue seen, or just support finally getting too it,it does not matter,the important thing is that its resolved.86.89.102.98 02:11, 8 October 2009 (UTC)

How's that soft keyboard going, Gaile? ;) Rose Of Kali 09:09, 8 October 2009 (UTC)

No news, Rose, sorry. -- Gaile 21:22, 13 October 2009 (UTC)

Oh, and I'm very happy to have helped you, Durga. :) -- Gaile 22:11, 13 October 2009 (UTC)

Scammer

I hope I can report this guy via this since he switched districts to fast for me to /report.(And I hate support it really is annoying and it takes far to long) :
Like you can see he is offering 100g instead of a 100k while it is clear he knew it and tbh the price of Zaishen keys is known in general.He tried to scam me at approx 19:30 gmt+1 12/10/09' in GToB American District 1.My IGN was I divinity Reigns I.Thx for your patience and time.Lilondra *poke* 17:40, 12 October 2009 (UTC)

This is a very common scam now. There are posts all over Guru about it. Karate Jesus 17:43, 12 October 2009 (UTC)

I'm sorry that happened to you, Lilondra. Or that someone tried to make that happen to you. However, please do not post that sort of thing here. I don't want my page to become "the place to go if you don't want to fill out a support ticket." Are you aware of how easy it is to get in touch with support these days? Click that link and you'll see all sorts of options, including email. You can send screenshots via the ticket or email. Plus, I happen to know you have a Support Account, so what's the bother? :p

If this is a common scam, can you guys tell me why? I mean, who doesn't check the gold amounts before hitting "accept?" Are people just getting in too much of a rush or something? I'd like to look into this, but I don't think we have any sort of game or design or technical issues -- I think this is the result of carelessness on the part of the trader, and there isn't too much (unfortunately!) that we can do to help with that. Ideas? -- Gaile 20:43, 13 October 2009 (UTC)

Im not being mean at all(i haz an evil side Q_Q),But imagin if ur that guy,he must be Laughing his but off at u.But yeh,i feel your pain--Neil2250Evil mantis thing commands you to feed him cookies. 21:02, 13 October 2009 (UTC)

Well I reported someone to who was doing this. But the problem is it can't be solved easily. Most time these people say I want the item and I give you 100k and 1item or 100k and then they put in the trade 100k or 100k and a item or a item. Then they say owh soz thats the wrong input you wanted .... . Then you say yes and these people change the trade and accept fast and hope that you see that they added the item. In which cause most people thing that they have the item + the 100k but then it is 100gold instead, but because these people accept rightaway to are scammed already. Only really sollution could be to change the trade window. For instance make it in the way that if both players have accepted they still got 10seconds to cancel the trade. In this time people will notice the 100gold in time or other scam methods. Death Sligher 22:27, 13 October 2009 (UTC)

Interesting idea -- a slight delay on the transaction? I wonder, though, if people will soon stop paying attention to that, too. :) Still, I will pass along the suggestion, as I think it's worth considering and reducing the numbers of scams is an objective we all share! -- Gaile 22:33, 13 October 2009 (UTC)

I think a system like the one in place when you try to trade customized equippment would be nice. Just a popup detailing the trade you are about to agree on. But i'm fairly sure people would just click it away. As in my opinion the main reason for these sort of scams actually work is the impatience of the sellers. Kurald 22:53, 13 October 2009 (UTC)

A final notification window would definately be nice, something like what Kurald mentioned. That customization window stops you from doing anything else, it draws the detail to your attention until you deal with it, some people may just click it away because they're in a rush but it saying you are accepting a trade for 100g instead of 1,000,000g (100K) (having both values would definately save more people from scams) or something akin to that makes it more visually noticable, enabling people to notice the incoming scam in a clean manner (ie sometimes people just go by the image etc). You give people the double check: once when they click accept in the trade window, and again when they get the final screen and have to click "Yes" or "No" to proceed with the finalized transition. If people still don't notice then, well, definately serves them right for not checking. ~~000.00.00.00~~ 23:09, 13 October 2009 (UTC)

I don't think adding an extra delay will reduce the number of successful substitution scams; they succeed because people get used to honest transactions, not simply because of the item/value similarities. Those who click Accept too quickly now will also (eventually) bypass additional confirmations. The cost of adding more steps to completing a trade will be suffered in otherwise honest transactions, particularly by those who deal mostly within their guild.

Pulling a number out of my rear, I would guess that, 3 months after introduction, this would reduce the number of successful scams by 1/1000 at the expense of slowing the other 999 transactions by extra time and/or mouse-clicks. (However, if the idea has lots of community support, then it's probably worth doing even so; there's a lot to be said for giving people the sense that they have more control in reducing fraud.)

I am sorry, Lilondra, that you had to deal with an unscrupulous trader. I am glad that you seem to have identified the gimmick quickly and are able to report them, should you choose to do so. I urge others to be equally vigilant; that is in GW, as IRL, a critical part of preventing successful scams.   — Tennessee Ernie Ford (TEF) 02:04, 14 October 2009 (UTC)

I have contacted support already.And its a real pain because most of the time you get the impression that they used google translations to transelate english into french and then into dutch to continue to transelate it into german and then transelate it back into english.This is the most logical explenation I've found for the responses I got since almost *all* of them were completely off-topic.It either was a 'yh we've seen it I'll let GM X know' or 'Did you know our game has that function'.Often they even give the idea they only read the manual and never actually played the game.

In short :

• Last time I checked support was really bad about as bad as any compagny.I'm expecting this syndrom is contageous.
• /report shouldn't be district restricted.

Sry for the rant but when you talk about support you hit a soft spot :/ Lilondra *poke* 10:51, 14 October 2009 (UTC)

Also I'm just to used to scammers so last time I got scammed was years ago (literally).I always put my finger on the prinscreen instead to accept.I recently started merching again and every day I catch scammers.This one just flee'd to early.Lilondra *poke* 11:22, 14 October 2009 (UTC)

A 10 second delay to me sounds like a very bad idea, but I love the idea of a popup window that will alert you if the final trade has less money then any of the previous trades offered! Not that I've been scammed, but people did try it on me once or twice when I was selling Z Keys <.< — Poki#3 (talk) 12:04, 14 October 2009 (UTC)

Ill agree report shouldnt be district restricted - but I kinda of lol at these "switch the trade last second" scams and wonder if anyone is stupid enough to fall for it -Talamare- feedback 12:16, 14 October 2009 (UTC)

Honestly, you should be able to report someone for scamming that you just traded with, regardless of their district, online/offline status, anything. That being said... pay attention if you're trading for 100k. -- FreedomBound 12:23, 14 October 2009 (UTC)

Wouldent a 'doublecheck' popup be good? o.o--Neil2250Evil mantis thing commands you to feed him cookies. 14:52, 14 October 2009 (UTC)

Ow besides the trauma I also happen to have lost the paper where I wrote both pass and username xD.But thats not rly whats stopping me I kinda could just make a new account.Lilondra *poke* 18:37, 14 October 2009 (UTC)

What about a red(or another bright color) box around the item/gold that has changed, just like the paint on the screenie. That way you immediately see all that has changed, not just the fact that something has changed. --Ellisia 18:53, 15 October 2009 (UTC)

TBH just add a global report option that works for the *account*.Any character can still be reported till 24 hours after deleting it.If people know reporting is this easy and scamming earns them a permanent ban they aren't going to do it.If you can't expect the appropriate behaviour you should force it.Now normally my opinion is different but when it comes to scammers this is exactly what should be done.Lilondra *poke* 18:57, 15 October 2009 (UTC)

Ok guys... you know as well as I do that Gaile's page is NOT the place for suggestions. If you wish to make a suggestion regarding how to change the /report system, please go to Feedback:Main and submit a suggestion for ArenaNet to consider. Your discussions about the viability of any suggested changes can and should be done there, not on Gaile's page. -- Wyn talk 22:09, 15 October 2009 (UTC)

Gaile asked for suggestions herself Wyn Lilondra *poke* 05:12, 16 October 2009 (UTC)

You're right, I did ask for suggestions. I thought it was ok to make them here, now that we've changed the licensing, etc. But I'm still learning the new wiki system, too, so I guess the best place is the Feedback:Main area and share your thoughts. Thanks. -- Gaile 19:51, 19 October 2009 (UTC)

Complaint: MakeOvers and Renames

Cannot find original post - MakeOvers and Rename Issue

I once described a high level of dissatisfaction over these products, and you suggested that I ask the support team about the idea that I had; “I just want to say I think the option to change the names of the characters is a great addition, especially if people who get banned for offensive names are allowed the chance to rename the offensive name character, but the extreme makeover pack is not satisfying. I changed the gender of my male mesmer Llewelyn Staciakiir and renamed him/her as Lia Staciakiir and did the same to my female elementalist who was originally Lia Staciakiir (i had given one of them some other name temporarily so I could just keep my names). After all of the money I spent on the 2 gender switches and 3 name swaps I am greatly disappointed that not only does the armor they were wearing still have the original name on it, but so does any armor I create or purchase since. I do not see any other way to return or even complain about this issue. I do not like having armor Customized for Lia Staciakiir on my Male Elementalist who is now named Laucian Staciakiir. I would like the opportunity to get my characters back to the way they were before the purchase, and if I may use the money that I would get back to have additional character slots (and if there is any left over after 7 additional slots I would like as many xunlai panes as I have credit for at that point). With my solution, Anet does not need to give back any money, as I would rather have the characters anyway, I just want my old characters back. Is there a way we can arrange this? --Stack 18:23, 21 September 2009 (UTC) “ I did follow your suggestion, however, the support team responded telling me that I have to buy the rename and extreme makeover package again for both characters if I want to get back what I had before I spent any money. So now I have to spend $60 per character ($120 total) in order to have what I had prior to the transaction where I got a female character with armor that is dedicated to the male original character and vice versa? I have been more than fair asking for a simple even exchange, where we have a win/win situation. If you prefer, I can instead take the money I would have spent on Guild Wars 2 and spend it on Guild Wars 1 to be satisfied, then just not buy the collector’s edition as I planned to, then I will be stuck in Guild Wars 1 when all of my friends move to GW2, grow bored because they do not play 1 anymore, and leave your franchise for a competitor, like Diablo 3, WoW, or another. I thought the idea of business was to retain customer loyalty, but I can see that is not a priority to ANet, but rather just finding ways to take your customers money is more important to your company. I am not asking for miracles, I am not asking for refunds, I am not asking for free stuff, I am only asking for an even exchange of products I do not like to get others that I will be easily satisfied with.

I dont agree with you. When you buyed the make-overs and rename stuff you could have known that your armor wasnt renamed etc. There is a FAQ for it. And Now you don't like it and want that anet changes it for free? Well its just as buying a real life product. Can you change a car which you have used already but found out the that he uses 1liter for 10kilometer for a other car who uses 1liter for 30kilometer? Not that I know same goes for this ingame item. You buyed it with real life money and you did already buy it and you just haven't reviewed how and what. Just as the car example. I don't think it is fair if anet gives you new items in exange for a uses item(or tried out item). You just need to buy it again I am afraid. I hope you have learned from you mistake and read next time FAQ etc before buying stuff in a hurry. And at last if anet would/will give you what you want alot of other people come and want the same. So I don't know how Gaile thinks about this. But I think you don't get other items for it. Death Sligher 21:48, 25 October 2009 (UTC)

What you should do is realize that you are comparing 2 products which are dissimilar in many ways, but the biggest mistake in your analogy is that a car that you have used has milage from its use, the products which Anet offer gain/lose no value from use. I will take this opportunity to compare the situation to something more viable: Retail Clothing Stores, you purchase an outfit, take it home, put it on, experience cognitive dissonance, decide you do not like any number of the items, and bring it back for exchange of item(s) of greater interest, or refund (usually within a period of time designated by the company's return policy CLEARLY STATED on the receipt. In this scenario, however, you have the company refusing to just exchange an item for another item in order to satisfy the customer. No value lost, no money refunded, just a simple edit to the customer's account. Further, the details related to the FAQ about the inability to get armor/items customized for the new name, this is not clearly marked on the label, therefor, one must think there is a catch in advance rather than trust Anet that satisfaction will be guaranteed, and seek the answer to a question that should not even be an issue. I feel it is appalling that anyone think this to be good, honest business practices, and wonder what the Better Business Bureau would say in regards to this system. I think the person who suggested that this practice be assimilated to Anet's policy ought to be relieved of their position post haste. I am even more disgusted with the arrogance of the replies defending such behavior. To charge 25% of the original sale price of the game itself for an upgrade, then give that upgrade a defect which is unsatisfactory and cannot be changed, then expect the customer to purchase an overlaying replica of the product just to reverse the effect at 100% loss to the customer is disrespectful and dishonest. If this is how things are to be done, there ought to be a disclaimer right on the page where we purchase the item stating very clearly that there is no possibility for appeasement upon dissatisfaction, and that detail which the former name of the character will be forever designated to the old AND new armor. Denial of the truth in my words is ludicrousness. You are likely to lose many loyal customers over this, and prevent possibility of some new ones who hear of these business practices prior to purchasing your games. I highly suggest that this conversation be shown to higher authority in Anet Corporate Office for review. I am certain that higher officials would see the reasoning behind this argument. I am now convinced that hands are tied at certain levels, but I am faithful that someone wants Anet to stay in business by retaining their client base.

I am sorry that you are dissatisfied with the answer that you received from Support, but I do understand that it would not be possible to provide free character renames and refund the money spent for the original renames, or to provide additional free merchandise in the form of storage panes to compensate for what was an avoidable customer error.

Details about armor customization and names are provided prior to purchase. In fact, it's called out quite boldly so that customers are fully informed about the way that renames work. Renames are for the visible names of your characters -- the names that everyone else in the game sees in town, in matches, in the chat/trade/whisper window, in global announcements (such as title acquisition), etc. I appreciate that you would like the armor name that you alone see in your character screen to match the new name of the character. I agree that it would be very nice to have that happen. However, it is not possible. It is important to note that armor names cannot be seen by anyone but you. The items are correct and functional. The visible names are correct. The only issue is what you see on your private screen.

If you are concerned about this situation to such a level that you wish to purchase name changes and revert your character names, you are welcome to do so. But what you are proposing does not appear to be an "exchange" in the normal sense of the word. It seems that you are requesting that the company provide free renames and then give you other free merchandise. Death Sligher's comments are quite sensible; I hope you will take them on board. And again, I'm sorry that you are dissatisfied, but the answer from the Support Team seems reasonable, given the circumstances. -- Gaile 23:14, 25 October 2009 (UTC)

I am sorry that you are still believing that I am asking for a refund, or that what I am asking for is not an even exchange. Let me put it into simple equation for you: Extreme Makeover Pack x 2 @ $9.99 each + Rename Pack x 3 @ $14.99 each = $64.95 AND Character Slot x 6 @ $9.99 each = $59.94 ][ As you can see, you are still up $5.01 for the exchange that I suggest, which COULD be refunded to the credit card I used or perhaps I will use the credit on my account toward the purchase of the 2 more character slots i would need to complete my collection (giving me 1 character of both genders for all classes + 1 PVP Only slot), and all xunlai upgrades in the future if I got what I want here. YOU DON'T LOSE ANYTHING AND YOU GAIN MORE SALES!!!! Now, please, for all that is reality, tell me, WHY this is such a problem?

What you're asking for is for them to exchange one purchase for another. If you were dealing with physical products, this would be a nonissue for most companies. However, when dealing with nontangible goods, such an exchange results in a severe loss for the company. The name change information released by ANet states that only the visible name of your character will be changed, and that all customized equipment will retain the old name. You chose not to read this statement, or to disregard it, and are now complaining to support about it. At this point, it becomes negligence on the part of the consumer (meaning you). So what you are asking for, whether or not you realize it, is for ANet to undo your mistake at no cost, and give you $60 worth of goods as compensation for your mistake. No company dealing in nontangible goods would do such an exchange. It's like asking someone to paint your house, and after their done realizing you don't like the color, and asking them to repaint it for free. It's simply not going to happen.--Pyron Sy 12:15, 26 October 2009 (UTC)

Again there seems to be an issue with comparing this non tangible exchange to a tangible exchange. In your analogy the painter LOSES money on supplies when they compensate the person who does not like the color they chose first. Here, there is no money lost since there is ZERO cost of performing the service other than someone typing on their computer. Now if you are going to tell me that people think that is such a laborious task, that it is too valuable to do, then there is a strong misconception of value here. Next let us discuss your claim that I CHOSE not to read or to IGNORE the FAQ page. I had no idea it existed prior to support telling me to read the page when I inquired initially about this issue. I purchased these products from the in-game store, where it said nothing about these details NOR directed prospective buyers to the FAQ page before they pay, which either makes this transaction a legal issue on grounds of bait and switch or an unethical situation which is going to lose potential sales in the future when our consumers recognize it as a scam. I have already started releasing information about this conversation to people in the Guild Wars Community, and there will be considerably fewer sales on these products due to my influence. I am sorry it had to come to this, but unfortunately, you are performing a dishonest practice, and your consumers have a right to know, before they fall victim as I have.

I'm looking at the purchase page of the in-game store. It has a series of bullet points with information the consumer should read prior to purchase. One of those points is a link to the FAQ. By you saying you were not aware of its existence, then you are admitting you did not read the section of the purchase page titled "Important - PLEASE READ:" and are hereby responsible for the error in judgment. Furthermore, in the FAQ itself, it states: "Q: I think I changed my mind, can I rename my character again? A: A single character may be renamed once every 30 days. You may purchase a new Name Change, and at least 30 days after the first name change, you will be able to change your character's name again." and "Q: I made a mistake, how do I revert back to my old name? A: You may purchase a new Name Change, and at least 30 days after the first name change, you will be able to revert back to your previous character name if it has not been taken in the interim." In other words, if you make a mistake, don't like the new name, or want your old name back for any reason, you are required to purchase another name change. All this information is available to you prior to purchase.--Pyron Sy 14:31, 26 October 2009 (UTC)

(Reset indent) The issue is that you did not inform yourself before you made a purchase, and now expect employee time to be spent on reverting your purchases, and more employee time spent on giving you free products. This, in addition to the employee time that has been spent by the Support Team in addressing your complaints, and in addition to my time, which I gave before, gave multiple times during my own weekend, and give again now. This matter is not without cost; reversion would not be without cost. And the cost is only part of the consideration.

At some point you must concede you failed to read the information provided, or read it and ignored it, or read it and thought you would be given special consideration if you changed your mind. No one is a "victim." No one has been mis-served. No one has been scammed. No one has met with a "bait and switch." For goodness sake! You say you have begun "releasing this information to the community." I'm quite sure the community will tell you -- as they have here -- that you made an error by not reading and not heeding the information that company provided prior to your purchase.

You have taken this conversation from distortion and impractical request to untruths, threats, name-calling, and even cries that valuable employees be fired because they are upholding a reasonable and publicized policy. As such, I will archive this conversation and we will not respond to future discussions about the matter. -- Gaile 18:10, 26 October 2009 (UTC)

Closure of 6 accounts

Hello, my own account and that of 5 friends have been closed due to using "bots" which I evidently (check the log files) didn't use or 3rd party programs (the only one I used was MGWML which allows multiple accounts running on one machine and similar to GWx2 has been discussed to be allowed). I would like a word on that and a revert of the ban since I didn't do anything I have been accused of. :| Ɲoɕʈɋɽɕɧ 17:12, 2 October 2009 (UTC)

You need to file a support ticket Noctarch, as do your 5 friends. If you still have questions after following through with support, THEN you come here and ask Gaile. -- Wyn talk 18:05, 2 October 2009 (UTC)

Yes, we should ... I guess you can understand that especialy I with my account having loads of hours am a bit angry and thus did something to feel like I had done something. ~.~ Ɲoɕʈɋɽɕɧ 18:12, 2 October 2009 (UTC)

But wouldn't you feel better if you were doing something that would actually DO something? -- Wyn talk 18:14, 2 October 2009 (UTC)

Hi Noctarch -- could you please submit a ticket, and ask your friends to do the same? I don't know of any glitches with the bot reports, but I'd like to get you into the system. You can follow up with me on, say, Tuesday or Wednesday, after Support has had a chance to respond, ok? -- Gaile 19:59, 3 October 2009 (UTC)

Okay, btu I don't see why everyone needs to send a ticket when we already sent a bunch eMail for us all =/ Ɲoɕʈɋɽɕɧ 01:38, 4 October 2009 (UTC)

Ah, the answer to that is this: If one ticket arrives, it is resolved for that one person. But if six tickets arrive, more questions come up between the team members about what is happening and the team is more likely to notice and research an increase in the false blockings. So I think it would be good for each person to send a ticket. :) -- Gaile 03:02, 4 October 2009 (UTC)

This seems like a fun one. Noctargh(whatever), what wound up happening with this? I like to imagine deportation but, I don't think aNet has that kind of power. 24.188.207.20 15:20, 18 October 2009 (UTC)

Support Ticket Re: Contest

Hey You

Ms. Gray, you have a support ticket waiting regarding the henchman skill bar contest! Don't mind me, thought I'd use another form of contacting you. Aevar talk contribs 02:50, 3 October 2009 (UTC)

Is there a support-related issue with the contest? -- Gaile 04:25, 3 October 2009 (UTC)

I had a bit of a question with regards to the contest, though I'm not sure it's even important; I went through the online support on Guild Wars.com and was told they'd forward it to the support liaison, which I believe is you, no? I'm just being impatient, don't mind me! Aevar talk contribs 05:06, 3 October 2009 (UTC)

Just checked my email, thanks for the response. Aevar talk contribs 05:10, 3 October 2009 (UTC)

Happy to help! (Although I am wondering which is yours -- game user names, email addresses, and real names != wiki names. :) ) Anyway, I realized when I looked at a few of the tickets that yes, there were Support-related components to some of them, so I appreciate you getting in touch. Have a great weekend! -- Gaile 05:47, 3 October 2009 (UTC)

Apparently I'm likely to be disqualified and banned here. Thanks anyhow. Aevar talk contribs 07:25, 4 October 2009 (UTC)

The whole matter is under careful consideration and discussion. I know that you should hear back very soon. I'm sorry about the situation and I do sympathize with the matter as it stands. I'm noodling on a solution. :) -- Gaile 22:58, 5 October 2009 (UTC)

Thank yas. Let me know when you guys come up with your decision. Aevar talk contribs 21:13, 6 October 2009 (UTC)

Sorry to bug ya, but how does the current situation stand?Aevar talk contribs 02:38, 10 October 2009 (UTC)

I sent you an email a bit earlier today. We can discuss via that medium. Thanks for your patience. -- Gaile 20:35, 13 October 2009 (UTC)

Account Terminated

Support ticket 091019-000053. Can you take a look? I was in the HB map when I got disconnected and when I tried to log in again I got the message about my account being terminated permanently for using a bot or 3rd party program. That is just not possible, check the logs please. You'll even see I was chatting around when in the outposts and pm'ing people I played with. The ticket was escalated but I've had no response yet. 200.67.45.202 13:54, 19 October 2009 (UTC)

Sorry, but this is not where you come because you want snappier service. This is where you come after you've heard from Support, when you find you have a remaining question, or when you feel there has been an issue with the response that you received. It has been less than 24 hours -- please wait to hear from Support about this matter. -- Gaile 00:25, 20 October 2009 (UTC)

Sorry for being impatient but now I do need your help. I received a response minutes ago that is completely wrong and I find mostly insulting. I was told I was using an illegal third party program and that my account was terminated for that reason. What is an illegal third party program? I can assure you that the only thing I use is the multi launch thing that lets me switch things around from my main account to the multiple mules I have. The multi launch is not, AFAIK, an illegal third party program that guarantees an account termination. I use nothing else (used to use kunts' detailed armours thing but not anymore). Neither of those tools are illegal or reason for a TERMINATION. I think it is implied then that I was botting on RRday. I was NOT. This makes me really really mad. How can you terminate me, a real human behind the keyboard, and not terminate all the real bots that are all day long on Bergen? I was at the keyboard the whole time. Whatever it is they detected it is only ME. Think about it, brand new account, used only for a few hours, chatting in the outposts, messaging people, at times just plain AFK for mini breaks (bio and what I called lunch). This is an insulting mistake. I hope you can check what's going on. Oh and BTW if anyone would have pm'd me when I was suspected, I would have replied immediately. Thanks! 200.67.45.202 16:50, 20 October 2009 (UTC)

Forgot to mention. I have a screenshot that I took just seconds after I saw that ban message on my screen. I can share that screenshot with support. IMO it proves I was playing fair and also maybe even explains whatever it is Anet saw to confuse me as a BOT. 200.67.45.202 19:42, 20 October 2009 (UTC)

Feel free to share that screenshot in your ticket. -- Gaile 20:12, 20 October 2009 (UTC)

Hi, my image has been shared and I have added comments to my last two emails to support. I have a question though. None of my last two emails generated an automated response along the lines of message received or anything. Did my last two emails even get into the system? 200.67.45.202 14:00, 21 October 2009 (UTC)

When you say "emails" are you responding to the existing ticket, or are you sending new emails without connection to the ticket? If you are opening the ticket and responding to that, then I would say your updates are getting to the team. I can check that later, although I have a meeting now so it'll be a while before I can do so. -- Gaile 15:52, 21 October 2009 (UTC)

When I say emails, those are email responses to the support ticket email. With information between the *after* and *before* marks. That's how I've been replying/adding information to my ticket. 200.67.45.202 16:46, 21 October 2009 (UTC)

That's exactly right, then. I checked the ticket and can confirm that your messages did reach the team. Incidentally, despite what you appear to believe, you are not the only incident of a ban or termination during an RRday. There are more than 20 parameters for botting, and unfortunately you fell below the bar on a lot of them. Whether the team decides to remove the block on the account is entirely up to them, but I spoke with them about it, and they do believe -- based on the fact the account met so many of the parameters -- that there was a bot involved in what you were doing that day on that particular account. At this point, I am going to decline further discussion about this matter, for it is important that you continue to discuss this matter with the Support Team itself. -- Gaile 17:43, 21 October 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for helping Gaile. I'm just frustrated because of the lack of communication from support on this issue. It's been over 2 days. I got a response about the escalation and nothing else besides calling me a bot. I don't know the parameters that were checked but I assure you that if any flags were raised it was all me. Bot detection seems to be detecting real people. Perhaps you can suggest to include checking how many non-bot-like things happen during the supposed botting infraction. Again, fighting, chatting in outposts, pming people, answering peoples questions, helping guildies, all that should be in the same logs that mark me as a bot. Non bot-like parameters should also be taken into consideration when declaring someone a bot and with the maximum penalty of termination. Completely unfair. If there are doubts you shouldn't go all the way to a termination. I have shown my desktop and openly admitted what was there to admit. More proof is impossible without access to the same logs they used to point me out as a bot and without a camera of me during my RR session. Also, if any GM would have spied on me before the termination (not sure if you can/could) they would see I fought, chatted, etc. Not everyone was willing to fight. I don't think these automated detection algorithms are any good. Not good at all. Anyway, thanks for your time. I know you are a busy person and support are the ones that should be able to give me some answers and tell me what their resolution it but for whatever reason they have not contacted me once in 2 days. 200.67.45.202 18:05, 21 October 2009 (UTC)

I've seen the logs. Virtually nothing you mention is in the logs. You mentioned you were playing multiple accounts. I have to conclude that the chatting in outposts, pming people, answering peoples' questions and helping guildies took place on a different account. Unless you consider a single line of repeated text to be a conversation? I'm pretty sure the team has no doubts about their decision but, again, you're welcome to discuss this with them. For it would be unwise for me to give chapter and verse on the many other factors that lead to the conclusion that there wasn't a human being behind the account during the period in question. -- Gaile 18:31, 21 October 2009 (UTC)

Gaile, I've explained in my last two emails something that logs can confirm and that no bot would be ever able to do. I don't think support cares anymore to be bothered to look but you should because it is important to incorporate this as the single most important rubric in your human detection algorithms that can differentiate a farmer/grinder from a bot instantly. Do bots get better over time? I didn't know what to do at the start, was slow, forgot some things, then eventually started getting the hang of it and toward the end I was even beating, at times not always since I'm only human, the end battle timer and map out to GTOB directly. Also on the course of the day I went everywhere (japan districts, italian, german, spanish, etc.) until I found Err free districts that provided battles without too many skips in between and stayed there afterwards. Anyone able to make graphics in excel should be able to check and confirm the trends I'm talking about. The "careful analysis" talked about before my ban should include trend analysis, it is a very simple calculation and even help you nail down more bots with greater confidence that you're not making mistakes (you are overconfident right now, blindly overconfident probaly trusting 100% your results and ignoring my claims). On GTOB I noticed Int D3 was almost always empty making it easy for me to click the NPC to go cash the quest without lag. Sometimes I would click then space, sometimes I would just run close and if the NPC got autoselected (no clue why sometimes it wasn't) I would then skip the click and just use spacebar. No bot now or ever will be able to learn all that and become better and better all in one morning. If that's not proof enough for you of me being just me behind the keyboard I don't know what is. The opposite is to still tell me that I'm a bot, accepting that bots evolve and are able to get better and better on the course of a little RR farming session. Only human beings learn, evolve, become better or worse, all other things remaining the same. You can't deny if you look at timestamps that what I tell you is true and that it is clear that I got better and better. Probably even less effective right after the 5hrs mark because I was already tired and ready to quit it. Have a great day and don't tell me you're not curious about finding out if these trends I'm talking about are true or not. Learn from this mistake. Speak to the guys that wrote your bot detection, ask them if bots can do that... get better over time, modify behavior on the fly, find sweet spots for less wait between fights, etc. I think I know that their answer will be and you can check that against my logs. 200.67.45.202 18:15, 22 October 2009 (UTC)

Oh, one more thing... What ever happened to sending an "Are you there" PM before the ban? That is like the simplest option you have to check if someone is behind the wheel, yet Support didn't use it, at the exact time you think someone is actually not there. This single check would have prevented my ban and who knows how many more past mistakes. 200.67.45.202 21:09, 22 October 2009 (UTC)

To be honest what you're describing sounds very much like a bot, even if it wasn't. Bots can get better over time, there's usually someone maintaining them who can in fact tweak them on the fly. Taking a brand new account and farming RR for 5 hours, doing the exact same actions over and over again doesn't exactly sound like the smartest thing to do, especially when it's already against the rules even if you aren't a bot. --Draikin 21:54, 22 October 2009 (UTC)

@draikin: Oh my! Now I'm not only accused & banned (mistakenly of course) of botting. Now you are suggesting I'm a seriously advanced bot writer? What do you think is more plausible of these two choices: A) Me writing super human advanced AI learning bots on the fly during one RR session that go increasingly from having no clue about what to do to becoming good at RR. B) Me getting better and better at RRing as I was getting more and more practice, learning how to shave off a few seconds here and there (like on the map travel and on noticing on the screen the quest updated message). -I would think this king of progress is absolutely impossible to fake on a bot. I hope there are no bots able to do that ever. Just go to bergen and then tell me how they learn and improve minute after minute. 200.67.45.202 22:45, 22 October 2009 (UTC)

What I said is that the progress you said you were making doesn't exclude the possibility that you used a bot. I don't know whether or not you used a bot, but from what I read so far I'm just not surprised that Anet thinks that you were using one. There's also the fact that RR is far from normal gameplay, you shouldn't have been participating in that in the first place. If you had played HB normally then you would not have been seen as a bot. --Draikin 01:19, 23 October 2009 (UTC)

i.e. not breaking the EULA. King Neoterikos 09:02, 23 October 2009 (UTC)

Don't hide behind the EULA, Anet isn't. They are claiming "Bot" and that's wrong. You know what's funny if they cross reference my accounts they can see I'm active on 1 at a time. They also can't deny I got better over time (no bot can do that) and that I spent quite some time looking for which districts had less time between fights (less ERR=13, etc). Support's answer to that is Silence followed by more silence. Gaile's answer, well she's been busy and probably not paying attention to this one anymore. Gaile said, 1 line of text isn't a conversation. I never said I had conversations. I wished people a good day, on and off as my switching between accounts allowed. Some pm'd back some didn't. Gaile said *virtually* nothing I mention is there... It can only mean something *is* actually there, but I don't know why they take *virtually nothing* as plain nothing or *not enough*. Still waiting on support. 200.67.45.202 20:02, 28 October 2009 (UTC)

Dude, look, you got caught. It's over. And from what Gaile said, even she is convinced that you botted. I've been banned for botting before. I emailed support, they double-checked, and it was easy to tell that I wasn't a bot because I didn't "repeat the same line of text over and over". That's what your bots did and you got caught. It sucks, but I'm sorry there's nothing you can do. Oh, and you keep saying that bots don't get better over time; however, that's just not true. Commonly bots will get better over time. Give up, tell the truth, and move on. You botted. The End. Karate Jesus 20:06, 28 October 2009 (UTC)

(Reset indent) As you were told through numerous reviews, you were found to be in breach of the User Agreement and/or the Rules of Conduct on the account in question, and that account was terminated. You ask the team to review your account and the activities on it. And they have conducted that review, as have I. You ask the team to consider a certain paradigm, but there are more than 20 parameters already under review in such an account termination, and that may well be one of them. Regardless, the claims you made about your account activity have narrowed significantly, and yet the activity was even less than what you've said. And yes, I will make it clear: what is in the logs is not enough to establish player activity. In the end, the evidence establishes that you were involved in unacceptable behavior and your account will not be reinstated.

This conversation having devolved into untruths, pedantry, unrealistic demands, and threats, I will archive it now. Please respect the wiki rules that prohibit your starting new threads on the same, already-answered topic. -- Gaile 20:48, 28 October 2009 (UTC)

"Europe" and the Halloween Art contest

Hi, Gaile. I was wondering if Ukraine is eligible for submitting an entry into the Halloween Art contest, as it is the geographical center of Europe and is referred to as being in Eastern Europe. Or did "Europe" in the eligibility requirements only include the European Union, which would exclude Ukraine? I am currently in Ukraine and I am a Citizen of Ukraine, even though my husband is a Citizen of the United States, but I am not a "legal resident" of the U.S. (yet... it's a long immigration story). I have a neat idea for a submission for the contest, but I would rather not waste my time if I am not eligible, as this idea would require a lot of effort to become reality. Also, if I am not eligible, would my husband be allowed to submit my entry for me? We have two separate Guild Wars accounts. Thanks in advance. Rose Of Kali 20:30, 4 October 2009 (UTC)

Umm, no it's not: w:Geographical midpoint of Europe. Btw I do live in Eastern Europe and have never heard anyone referring to Ukraine as the "geographical centre of Europe". - Reanimated X 20:44, 4 October 2009 (UTC)

The very link you used supports Rose of Kali's point, as it lists "...near Rakhiv, in western Ukraine" as a potential center. The center of Europe depends on what you mean by that term. Geologists and geographers spend time arguing about whether it should be based on politics, geology, history, sociology, or even language (and if so, the languages that should be considered, European). (For a quick introduction to that debate, visit the link above.) In any case, it hardly matters what the players think: ANet intended something specific by listing Europe (but not e.g. Asia); we need to hear from them to see what locations do and do not qualify.   — Tennessee Ernie Ford (TEF) 08:04, 5 October 2009 (UTC)

I am checking into this, Rose. My first instinct was "yes" but I don't know that officially, so let me ask. I should have an answer tomorrow, US time. -- Gaile 01:14, 6 October 2009 (UTC)

Sorry for the delay, but we are still researching this. -- Gaile 23:32, 7 October 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for checking on that. I guess geography turned out to be a hard subject after all. I hope you can find out before the weekend. Rose Of Kali 09:11, 8 October 2009 (UTC)

Hi Rose. The question was given a goodly review by several people, and yes, a player from the Ukraine who meets all other qualifications is considered eligible for the art contest. All other rules apply, of course, such as those that say "void where prohibited by law." I don't know regional laws and I like to mention that just in case. :) I'm glad you asked, we also had a support ticket asking the same question. Best of luck! -- Gaile 21:22, 13 October 2009 (UTC)

Thanks, Gaile! I don't know of any local law prohibitions that would apply here, so yay me. Time to go buy some supplies. :) Also, please don't say "the" or I will start calling you "the Gaile." ;) (I'm curious to find out why so many people say "the" Ukraine, it makes no sense to me... It's a proper noun. Nobody says The Europe or The Canada, yet nearly everyone says The Ukraine. O_o) Rose Of Kali 10:09, 14 October 2009 (UTC)

Everyone I ever met who was born in The Ukraine near or before the Russian Revolution has always used that figure of speech. Their American-born children (and grandchildren) have followed in that particular footstep. For what it's worth, The Congo is used to refer to the Republic of the Congo. (Although not, of course, for the Democratic Republic of the Congo.)   — Tennessee Ernie Ford (TEF) 20:09, 14 October 2009 (UTC)

The only reason I can think of for that to happen is a contraction of sorts from The Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic, after dropping SSR part of it. It also may be partly because of the first letter "U," making it sound close to The United States or The United Kingdom, which are a lot more familiar. *shrugs* I've never heard the version you provided, and my personal experience so far does not support it. (Gaile isn't of Ukrainian descent, either, is she? :P) After a little snooping, I found this, which sheds some light. It is not analogous to the Congo. Oh well. ^_^ Rose Of Kali 23:21, 14 October 2009 (UTC)

Rose, thank you for the instruction. It is really interesting! I do not know why I used The Ukraine, it is what I learned, somewhere, and having no information to the contrary, it is what I continued to say. I guess I thought Ukraine was a region -- you now, like The Urals or The Cotswolds or The Berkshires -- that was also a country. So adding the word "The" seemed ok, and it really was what I was taught. However, I want to assure you that I am utterly fascinated by and respectful of individual cultures -- it is one of my favourite facets of my jobs with ArenaNet! -- and I sure did not intend to offend with a misnomer. I have read the link you provided, and it will be "Ukraine" from now on, for me! :) -- Gaile 06:55, 15 October 2009 (UTC)

Oh, no offense at all! :D I just like to edumacate people (and myself while at it). You are not alone in not realizing that Ukraine is a country, just like Germany or France. Most people only know the name bacause of Chornobyl, but usually seem to think it's a part of Russia. That is unfortunate, but hey, at least we're not in w:Lesotho, I don't think I've ever met someone who even heard of what or where it is. :P Rose Of Kali 16:00, 15 October 2009 (UTC)

For clarity: I was well aware that the Ukraine is a country. But I believed the name of that country was "The Ukraine" and that the name was based on geographic or regional details that caused the addition of "The." Sort of like The Hague is a city. And it has a "The." :) -- Gaile 16:40, 15 October 2009 (UTC)

Ahh. Understood. And you're almost right. :) The origins of the word "Ukraine" come from "okraina" which means a borderland, however the word itself has morphed into a unique proper noun with no other meaning than to name the country. Also there is no part of speech in Slavic languages that would translate into an article, like in the case of "Den Haag," and the transition to a proper name for Ukraine happened as far back as fifteenth century. :) Rose Of Kali 10:24, 16 October 2009 (UTC)

The Rose has spoken. elix Omni 14:31, 19 October 2009 (UTC)

You just never know when you're going to have a conversation that leads to some pretty darn interesting new knowledge, eh? It might be outside ArenaNet or Guild Wars, but it's cool, nonetheless. Thanks for the discussion. :) -- Gaile 19:06, 19 October 2009 (UTC)

That's a good question. I should have looked at that a bit earlier and asked as we have a similar issue here, New Caledonia, as we are French Territory under French law and we are all both French citizen and EU citizen. But... we are not geographically in Europe (we're in the South Pacific) nor even potilically part of the EU (weird, hey?). But we're on French soil (so far) and France is in Europe (even more weird, hey?).

So as for every past contest I've mailed my participation with my grand parents' address back in the mother country. Too bad if I am not elligible to get the miniature afterward if I ever win but then it would have been a great honnor to be among the participants anyway

It would be good though if you could check for future contests including next Winterday and... next Halloween of course. Also if it's ever OK for us to participate from here, I'd like to point out that I've seen that the contest rules had a time delay for the winner's mail reply which is way too short for most people NOT in modern rich countries with a fast old-fashionned/harcopy mail system... or lots of flights connections to the outer world.

Thx Jaxom 01:58, 21 October 2009 (UTC)

Hi Jaxom. I think you would do well to direct your question about future contest eligibility to the Community Team. They are the ones who draft the contest rules, and perhaps they can include a query about the area where you live when the next set of rules are developed. Best of luck! -- Gaile 21:54, 27 October 2009 (UTC)

Halloween Art Contest 2009

Hiya, I was kinda curious as to how original work must be, am I allowed to use rendered guild wars images and edit them into my submission? If so am I allowed to use rendered images wiki members uploaded, Emily uploaded, or do I have to use screenshots I rendered myself? Also curious how many submissions you are allowed to submit, got a few ideas so wondering whether I should send them all or pick my favorite C4K3 Talk 19:09, 16 October 2009 (UTC)

In the rules stays 1 submission per person I thought.84.80.151.136 09:46, 18 October 2009 (UTC)

Ohh I'm so stupid, overlooked that one rule. Still got my other question. And to make it a bit more clear what I'm asking is, if I would be allowed to example copy a mad king's guard, scale it down, and make it look like it were standing next to my submission C4K3 Talk 09:59, 18 October 2009 (UTC)

That would be you presenting other people's art as your art. Perhaps looking at previous years submissions/winners will illustrate the solution you seek. 24.188.207.20 15:31, 18 October 2009 (UTC)

Using Guild Wars art is entirely acceptable -- from in the game, from on the wiki. In past years, we've had pretend "screenshots" that were a mixture of GW art and a player's own creativity. We've had art that was modified renders, etc. So yes, it's A-ok to use game art or GW art from the wiki in the creation of your entry. -- Gaile 19:15, 19 October 2009 (UTC)

In-Game Store typo

The "Character Name Change" upgrade in the in-game store is missing some info. The third bullet point says:

*The name you choose must be available and comply with the

I assume there was supposed to be a link to the name policy, and it's also missing the info about PayPal and the NCsoft store. --Macros 05:24, 20 October 2009 (UTC)

Oh my goodness, that's interesting. I am sure it was there, maybe it disappeared when the pages got resettled or something. I'll check with Emily and I'm sure that'll get amended soon. Thanks for pointing out our unfinished sentences. :) -- Gaile 05:30, 20 October 2009 (UTC)

Actually, before I bothered Emily, I thought I'd check it out. What I see is this:

Q (#4 on the list): How do I purchase a Name Change?

A: You may purchase the Name Change from the in-game store or via the NCsoft Store.

Q (#5 on the list): What payment methods are available?

A: You may use a credit card or PayPal (via the NCsoft Store).

Q (#14 on the list): Are there any limits on the name I can choose?

A: The name must be available and must comply with the Guild Wars naming policy.

So I think it's all there, as per my local version of the page, which is the US version. What browser are you using? And what version of the page are you visiting (could I get a link, please)? -- Gaile 05:33, 20 October 2009 (UTC)

I'm using the Guild Wars Client. Here is a screenshot: File:User Macros In Game Store Typo.jpg --Macros 05:40, 20 October 2009 (UTC)

Gaile, I believe he's talking about the In-Game Store, not the website. Macros, you can not use PayPal through the In-Game store, you must buy through the NC Soft store. -- Wyn talk 05:41, 20 October 2009 (UTC)

What I meant was this PayPal thing that every other item in the in-game store has. --Macros 05:50, 20 October 2009 (UTC)

Oh doh, sorry! I was thinking website (obviously). :D

I will pass this along to QA tomorrow, with thanks for your spotting that. -- Gaile 05:54, 20 October 2009 (UTC)

Ah, and I also misunderstood Macros, my apologies. I thought you meant that you thought you could purchase via PayPal from the In-Game store. -- Wyn talk 05:59, 20 October 2009 (UTC)

(Reset indent) Andrew from QA reports that he just logged into both the Live and Development Servers and the issue is not visible. Where you mentioned the sentence ends, there is actually a link to the Guild Wars Naming Policy. He asks if you could please change your resolution to see if that fixes it. That's not to say that a different res should be required, but that info would help us figure out what's going on. Also, screenshots would be useful, too. If you were willing to submit a support ticket on this with screenies, you could ask the team to escalate to me and that would be helpful, as well. Thanks a lot! -- Gaile 22:39, 20 October 2009 (UTC)

I went and had a look at this myself. It's working fine here. Interestingly, Macros's screen shot doesn't so much omit one link as omit everything from that link onwards, which includes the 4th bullet statement and a comment on using PayPal below that. Two absent sentences in other words. -- WarBlade 23:12, 20 October 2009 (UTC)

I sent the support ticket via the website. I sent it to the "Tech Support" department as it is obvious it is not a mere typo. --Macros 07:00, 22 October 2009 (UTC)

Thank you for sending the ticket. It should be routed to the correct people working on the In-Game Store, and I'm sure they'll take a look at the matter as soon as they are able. We have tested, and all seems well from our end, so it will take some investigation to figure out what is happening on your end. Thanks for your patience, as well. -- Gaile 21:59, 27 October 2009 (UTC)

Code 045 - Can´t log in to Guild Wars

→ moved from Feedback talk:Gaile Gray

Dear Gaile,

i have a Problem with my Account. On Friday (October, 09th 2009) I got an Account Hack. On Monday (October, 12th 2009) I was try to Login and got the following Error Message: “We have detected that your account may have been accessed by an unauthorised individual. For your security, further access to the account has been blocked until this matter can be resolved. To restore access to this account, please contact Support and one of our representatives will assist you. (Code=45)"

Immediately I write an e-mail to the Support an get the automatic confirmation of my Mail and soon another e-mail from a Support Member. I have send all my Dates, Screenshots from the error on the Guild Wars Window and Pictures of my Game Activation Cards. From there I doesn’t hear anything for 5 Days from the Support. On Saturday (October,17th 2009) I have wrote a Ticket on the Support Site and ask once again about my Account. I got one more Mail with a repeated request to enter my Dates et cetera. Well, so I send all my Dates, Photos and screenshots again. Since this day I don’t heard anything from the Support and don’t get any help. That is why I beg you to peek what’s up with my Account and when he get re-activated.

Sorry, but my English is not very well, because I´m from Germany. I hope I could explain my problem. My reference number is: 091017-002827. For shortly information I would be very grateful. Sincere regards, Christin R. Spatzihasi

Part of the problem is it sounds like you submitted two tickets. This will always delay the issue. You should just update the original ticket with any further questions or information, rather than opening a duplicate ticket. -- Wyn talk 03:57, 25 October 2009 (UTC)

yes thats right. i sent an e-mail to the support. the first contact was not per ticket. the reference number of this first ticket is: 091013-002890 but since october , 13th 2009, when i send the mail and got the reference number 091013-002890 i hear nothing from the support too. so thats the reason why i´m searching for help from you. Spatzihasi 11:31, 25 October 2009 (UTC)

Wow, I hope you get it back before Halloween finale. Good luck. Rose Of Kali 11:42, 25 October 2009 (UTC)

Thank you very much. I really hope somebody can help me and find out when my account is open again. the support dont notifies at ticket or e-mail when I open a dublicate ticket.Spatzihasi 19:14, 25 October 2009 (UTC)

(Reset indent) Hello, Christin. I located your ticket and am sorry to see you've had a delay in the response. I have asked the EU Support Team Lead to take a look. He's great about getting back to me promptly so I imagine very soon you will have word or I will have info to share with you! -- Gaile 23:20, 25 October 2009 (UTC)

Hello Gaile,

Thank you very much for your effort and the fast answer. I will be waiting for some news from you. Thanks :) Spatzihasi 08:52, 26 October 2009 (UTC)

Hello Gaile,

Thank you very much for your help. A Member of the european support has contact me and opened my account again. Thank you very much. I´m so happy Spatzihasi 18:17, 26 October 2009 (UTC)

My pleasure. I am glad that all is well. :) -- Gaile 18:21, 26 October 2009 (UTC)

I wish all of you a nice evenning and good luck at the event :) Spatzihasi 18:30, 26 October 2009 (UTC)

Reshacker

is a tool I use to prettify my desktop environment by changing icons in executable files. Now, I understand and acknowledge you don't like letting people know how bot/hack/etc. detection routines work, for perfectly understandable reasons. I also know you can never actually approve the use of a third-party program unless it's maintained by ANet or NCSoft or something. I'm also aware that if I was caught, it's possible I would be blocked but could probably contact support, explain the situation and get myself unblocked fairly quickly if I promise not to change the icon again. But is it possible for your botwatch team or whatever to detect minor changes to the executable file? To give you an example, I've uploaded two GW.exe files (one hacked, one not) at Mediafire in a zip file here for you to examine. Don't worry, they won't crash your servers; you shouldn't even need to run them to see the difference. The second one has "Gw" as the icon, in the style of the various Adobe creative suit icons (♥). I'm not asking for you to say this is okay for me to do, I'd just like to know the likelihood of getting caught – if those support team watchers will ban me 15 seconds after logging in, it's not worth the effort. –Jette 03:07, 26 October 2009 (UTC)

Pardon the silly question, but wouldn't it be easier to just change the shortcut's icon? - Tanetris 03:24, 26 October 2009 (UTC)

Two things: first, I lack common sense and think in an original but somewhat perpendicular fashion, which explains why I sometimes do these strange things. Second, I don't think Windows 7's bæd pin bar lets you pin shortcuts, it redirects to the program itself. I guess I could always just hack the icon cache, but that's even more cumbersome since you have to do it every time the cache gets refreshed, which can happen rather frequently, plus you have to be logged in as root to access system files (this assuming I can even fricking find the icon cache, which is probably buried underneath 20 different system folders with a weird file extension like .crp and has to be decompressed with some obscure-ass compression tool that you can only get from Microsoft but have to compile yourself, only to find out that there's a bug that keeps it from working 64-bit copies of Windows anyway, leaving you wonder how on earth it makes the file in the first place. This is why I use FreeBSD when I'm not planning on the vidja or footooshoop. –Jette 03:39, 26 October 2009 (UTC)

I've never touched Windows 7, but a bit of googling suggests that by holding shift and right-clicking the icon, you will be able to go into properties and change the icon. - Tanetris 08:19, 26 October 2009 (UTC)

Hi, Jette. I would consider pursuing Tanetris' suggestions. I am not comfortable crossing into the "what can the team see?" territory, even for a benign question such as this. Thanks for understanding. -- Gaile 18:32, 26 October 2009 (UTC)

Not to accuse ArenaNet of spying on anyone, but if "changing desktop icons with a third party tool" is in the realm of "what can the team see?", that makes me very, very uncomfortable. ··· Danny Pew Pew 19:00, 26 October 2009 (UTC)

Danny, you may have missed the original request. It wasn't just changing the icon, it was hacking the exe so the icon would be different.--Pyron Sy 19:15, 26 October 2009 (UTC)

ups. gotcha. guess i misunderstood because i could never imagine that modifying an icon would require cracking a file. ··· Danny Pew Pew 19:28, 26 October 2009 (UTC)

Yes, Danny. Just so you understand, it was the concept of tampering with or modifying the exe file that gave me the willies. :) -- Gaile 19:31, 26 October 2009 (UTC)

Yeah, that makes a lot more sense. I really need to work on not skimming through Jette's walls of text. ^_~ ··· Danny Pew Pew 19:36, 26 October 2009 (UTC)

Alright, I understand. I'll probably just make an executable that does nothing except launch the real GW.exe, and maybe texmod if I ever get around to upgrading this primordial graphics card... Does GW2 have a set icon yet though? If it doesn't, you should tell them to make it BIG and SHINY. You can't go wrong with big and shiny. The current one isn't bad, it's just so... plain, and normal-looking. Oh well, nowhere near as bad as the ridiculous irfanview icon.
@Danny:I thought you loevd my long posts! ;_; –Jette 21:03, 26 October 2009 (UTC)

I do love them, but I have an unfortunate habit of not reading them entirely, especially at opportune times such as this. I think the problem with the Guild Wars icon is that it was created before Windows Vista came out and started using 1000x1000 icon images. (Read: Vista is terrible and I prefer my small, lackluster icons.) ··· Danny Pew Pew 21:06, 26 October 2009 (UTC)

Well, Vista is pretty terrible, but the leap from XP to 7 is a lot more tolerable. I love how they carbon-copied the "superuser" security/anti-dumbass system from Unix, but managed to make it terrible (not to mention effete, since it can be overridden by any program) in the process. Aero is pretty sexy though. LOL EVERYTHING IS ALL SHINY NO WONDER MS SELLS SO MANY COPIES –Jette 21:42, 26 October 2009 (UTC)

My gw account got banned as code=045

hi Gaile

My ticket ID is: 091027-000709,can you take a look?

My gw account got banned after few mins afk in kamadan as code=045,it said me engaged in the sale of in-game items for cash or other items with real world value, or engaged in gathering items to be sold for cash or other items with real world value. And i'm very sure i didnt do that.I sent a ticket to support team,but they just said like above i mentioned and closed my ticket.

I did some UWSC with friends,but all failed cuz the new updates,then the team disbanded.So i went to kamadan to do some trades,what i remember is i bought a q10 volatic spear,a q9 eternal blade and a stacks of tot.I saw someone was selling a q10 volatic spear,and i offered him 38e,he said ok,then we deal;after that i tried to find a UWSC group,but not enough ppl online in my frinedlist,maybe 10 or 20 mins later,i found someone was selling a q9 eternal blade 100e,i pmed him said i will buy,then we deal;after that or before that i bought a stacks of tot. After that,i found someone selling q10 Volatic Spear 45e,so i wanted to resell the Volatic Spear to make some ectos,i just sell for ectos not for real-world money,i made ad in trade channel,3 or 4 ppls offered me,but didn't trade.Then i went few mins afk,i got err=007 when i back,and got code=045 when i logged in again.

I'm realy comfused why GM terminated my account said above that?

First,im not a RMT,what i did most are UWSC(not farming ecto) and other elite missions,i did a record run for UWSC with my ele(the link of that run:http://www.guildwarsguru.com/forum/showthread.php?t=10212734&page=3 (#58),and the picture is:http://img258.imageshack.us/img258/9171/gw094vi1.jpg),and a lot of ppl knew me cuz of that.And my ele got got 30 maxed titles(GWAMM),i spent 5 stacks of ectos on GWAMM,and my Zaishen rank is r6,Gladiator rank is R2,HA rank is R3;My monk even dont have full 55 or 600 monk armor/weapons,cuz i dont like farm;my sin did uw/fowsc and RA mostly.Do you think a RTM would do that?

Second,i didnt assist any RMT.(1):if one of the sellers that sold me Eternal Blade/Volatic Spear is RMT and if GM knew his/her is a RMT,why GM didnt terminate his/her account before our trade? And why terminated my account after the trade?I dont know who is RMT,i just play game.Well,if not me bought the Eternal Blade/Volatic Spear,GM would terminate that buyer(s) who bought the Eternal Blade/Volatic Spear?If GM dont terminate other buyers that bought the Eternal Blade/Volatic Spear,so it is unfair for me,and if GM would terminate other buyers,the question back to my 1st question:why GM didnt terminate the RMT before the trade happened? (2):if any of the sellers that sold me Eternal Blade or Volatic Spear is not RMT,so why terminated my account and closed my ticket?

I'm really mad while i got the code=045,because it's not 1st time my account got banned as code=045 for the same reason,there is another case that terminated my account afet i bought a white rabbit,the ticket is: 080804-000243.I want my account back soon,Gaile,help me plz!

Thank in advance! Geox

Your submitted your appeal today. You should not ask me to help today -- it is too soon. The matter is still under investigation by the team itself and you should allow them to complete that investigation. It may be a few days before they answer you.

I am not the first person you should ask for help. I may be able to help later. I know you care about your account, and you have gotten several titles, but it has been blocked three times for RMT and that is a concern for all of us. Please continue your dialogue with Support about this matter. Thank you. -- Gaile 02:49, 28 October 2009 (UTC)

Thanks Gaile,but sorry for 1st time use the wiki talk page.They colsed my ticket,so i ask a help here.I can wait if they are still investigating my case. Geox 03:48, 28 October 2009 (UTC)

They are still investigating. I know because I just emailed the team lead to ask them to do so. :) I think I understand what took place, but I want the team to have a chance to review the records and in-game logs. The team lead is, I think, out of the office, and so I ask that you give this a couple of extra days. I'm sorry I cannot get an answer more quickly, but I want him to participate in the review if at all possible. -- Gaile 02:12, 3 November 2009 (UTC)

Still no reply on my ticket,so they still investigating my case? -- Geox

It's early morning there right now (6:15am I think in Seattle), please wait a few hours. Rose Of Kali 14:15, 4 November 2009 (UTC)

It last more than a week.Geox 14:25, 4 November 2009 (UTC)

But Gaile just gave you a reply yesterday. ^^ Thus you should expect to hear something during today's business hours, which are starting soon. Rose Of Kali 14:27, 4 November 2009 (UTC)

Hey Gaile,how about the support team working on my case? -- Geox 18:11, 6 November 2009 (UTC)

It appears that you are in China, but the ticket is being reviewed by the European team. I asked the team lead to look at this, but as I said, he is out of town. He did ask two other team members to review the situation, but it does not appear that they had an opportunity to do so yet. I have sent a new email asking for a review, and I apologize for the delay. -- Gaile 18:33, 6 November 2009 (UTC)

Thank you Gaile,my gw account is unblocked and i can play gw again now.

I bought the gw game in France so i sent the ticket to European support team.Do you mean i can send to American support team?

Btw,how can i get the halloween mask now? Geox 01:18, 10 November 2009 (UTC)

Account Hacked; Things Stolen

My account was hacked and alot of my things were stolen...

I don't know where else to turn...

I'm very distressed and very sad and very angry at the same time... Someone please help...

My account was hacked and many things were stolen.

I don't know how or when it happened but I have some information that I think may help. I logged on today Friday, October 30th at around 8pm Central Time in the US. I was logged in for a couple of minutes and then I was logged off... I would log back in and then it would log me back off. I played log-in tag about 6 times or so. When I tried for the last time it said my account info was wrong. Then I checked my other accounts and I was able to log in to those. I then tried resetting my password and logging back in to my original account. When I logged in I was in for about 5 minutes in the Temple of the Ages and was about to get two people some Black Widow Spider runs with my friend and then I noticed all my stuff was stolen.

• 25 Platinum on my main character that is a Ranger
• 315 or 325 Platinum in the bank
• 2 sets of Elite Ranger armor were stolen with rare runes (Superior Vigor amongst them) and insignias.
• All my materials (250 of each)
• All my rare materials (a few of those but with dozens of Linen and hundreds of Steel and about 25 Jadeite Shards)
• A Mini Black Beast of Aaaargh (Not Dedicated)
• Many Rare Gold and Green Weapons and a ton of Weapons Mods specially bows from a PvP Character that was used as storage
• About 150 Mysterious Summoning Stones
• About 140 Automaton Summoning Stones
• About 40 Merchant Summoning Stones
• 10 or 11 Essences of Celerity

I have worked so hard for the last 4 years to collect and all these things... I have never Speed Cleared and I have never farmed with cheese builds or overpowered skills. I worked normally for 4 years for this. I have never stolen anything off of anybody in the game. I'm so upset.. I'd just like to get my things back. If you can find the person that did all this and just give me my things back I would be so happy. I'm so terribly upset and depressed now... I lost everything and the day before Halloween too... =( I'm so sad. I just want to have the things I deserve back. I just want my stuff...

I checked my computer with my anti-virus and my anti-spyware. I don't have any stuff on my computer. I scanned it and it didn't find anything.

I was playing just fine last night on Thursday. I didn't log on till about 8pm on Friday. My stuff must have been stolen sometime between 3am or 4am on Thursday and 8pm Friday. Any activity on my account between that time is not me and that is when the person stole it. I hope that helps because I would like help getting my things back =(. I am so upset and so sad about this... I don't know if I would return to Guild Wars without my stuff... I love Guild Wars and I would like to be able to play it again with the stuff that I've earned...

After calming down I filed a request at the support site... I hope I get my stuff soon or else Halloween in Guild Wars is ruined for me...

My Reference # is 091031-000150 and 091031-000305 -- MangyForestCat 02:58, 31 October 2009 (UTC)

I remember now that I logged in one time around a week ago and my character was in Temple of the Ages in Russian District 1. It was either for the Halloween update or the update right before that. I remember having to download a Guild Wars update and then logging in and being in Russian District 1 in ToA... I was confused as to why it would log in there but I thought maybe the patch did something weird. I don't really know if that helps but I hope it does. I'm so sad I really want my stuff back =( -- MangyForestCat 04:28, 31 October 2009 (UTC)

Chances are you won't get your stuff back. You should be happy you even have your account. But I'm sure the support team will do all they can. -- Wyn talk 05:59, 31 October 2009 (UTC)

Personally I'd be happy just getting the stuff I can remember. The thing that hurts the most is my money, my Ranger armor, my Summoning Stones, and the Essences of Celerity. I can always get my Materials and Rare Materials back. The weapons and weapon upgrades I guess I don't need much anymore... I just feel violated... I feel so depressed now... -- MangyForestCat 06:36, 31 October 2009 (UTC)

That's so sad ;_;. Maybe ArenaNet should offer a Guild Wars Insurance policy to cover problems like this. Loves to Sync 06:50, 31 October 2009 (UTC)

I tried to log in again a few minutes ago and now I'm getting a Code=045. I guess that means they're working on it now. I also got a response to my Support Question I submitted earlier. I hope this gets resolved soon or I'm going to miss this year's Halloween. I'm so sad... =( -- MangyForestCat 08:20, 31 October 2009 (UTC)

That is sad, but Anet can't give you your stuff back, they just can't do that. They can only get your account back and help you reset the password. Have you used the same login/password as your GW on some forum or other site? Rose Of Kali 08:31, 31 October 2009 (UTC)

Actually Rose, can't isn't quite true. In some instances they can, and do, but in most it's not possible. -- Wyn talk 08:34, 31 October 2009 (UTC)

I was coming back to correct myself... If they find the hacker and he still has the stuff, they may be able to give it back. But if the hacker was an RMT, it's gone. The Russian district thing is not good news. The armor and runes were most likely salvaged and sold already, as well as mats, but you can still hope for the raw gold and maybe summoning stones and the mini. Rose Of Kali 08:37, 31 October 2009 (UTC)

Well, even if I can get back just what you mentioned, Kali, I'd be very happy. The armor and the money were the biggest losses. I can live without the Mini. I really liked my weapons but like I said I had them in a storage character so I guess I didn't really need them. I doubt most of the stuff has been outright sold yet. The easiest things to track would probably be the weapons, the money, the mini, and the Summoning Stones. I'm sure the Essences of Celerity can be easily sold. I know the Armor can be salvaged and sold off pretty quickly but I imagine it would be easy to trace the person who took it. I don't know... If I don't get the stuff back I'll probably just quit Guild Wars... It took me way too long to get all those things and I don't know if I have the will to work for it all again.... -- MangyForestCat 09:03, 31 October 2009 (UTC)

You could start a character you've never played before. GW can be almost like a different game depending on the character you play, especially comparing martial classes and casters. I sympathize with your feelings, but having a developed character in itself is the best asset of Guild Wars, you can earn the other things back faster than you think. I've heard of people recovering after having their characters deleted after being robbed, now that is truly hard. I hope you can get some of your things back, even if it's just your interest in playing again. Rose Of Kali 09:15, 31 October 2009 (UTC)

Well, I'm still waiting and my account is still locked with Code=45... I guess the investigation won't be over till at least sometime next week. I think I'm going to miss Halloween this year. I'm pretty sad about that. Hopefully I'll get some of my stuff back and hopefully they'll be able to track down the person who did it. Well, I guess I'll be taking a break from Guild Wars until I get more information and a response from the support team or Gaile. -- MangyForestCat 19:20, 31 October 2009 (UTC)

Best of luck. You have some Pumpkin Pies and Wintersday coming up, so don't despair. Rose Of Kali 23:01, 31 October 2009 (UTC)

It's a Code 045 a block/ban on the account due to a breach of the rules? Check the Error page for some info. ~~000.00.00.00~~ 18:51, 1 November 2009 (UTC)

A Err 45 can be related to an account closure put in place to protect a player's account. We'll close the account while awaiting contact from the real owner, to try to prevent further damage, like the deletion of characters, etc. Sometimes, we're fortunate enough to be able to lock down the account before anything at all is stolen. (This is something I remember very well from an incident in July -- virtually no one lost a thing.) Anyway, Err 45 does not necessarily mean that the person who receives it did something wrong. -- Gaile 01:08, 3 November 2009 (UTC)

"Chances are you won't get your stuff back. You should be happy you even have your account. But I'm sure the support team will do all they can." I had to LOL at that. If they did all they *could* he'd get his stuff back. 65.207.54.194 17:54, 2 November 2009 (UTC)

(Reset indent) There are many reasons why stolen items seldom can be retrieved and returned. Primary amongst them is that items are often exchanged (sold, traded, merchanted) multiple times. Say someone offers you an item at an attractive price, you accept, and then trade it to a friend. Maybe it goes through a few more trades, as items do even in a short period of time. What if we get a hacked account report and discover that the item that you bought legitimately, and which was traded legitimately to several other people, was a stolen item? From whom do we take it? The last buyer? No, for that would make him a victim of the hacker just as much as the initial victim. Obviously, we'll action the account thief to the best of our ability, and many accounts are terminated every day. But the issue with items is just more complex.

Another scenario: A hacker steals an item, sells it to a merchant, and then uses that gold to buy items from legitimate players. The item is gone -- we cannot spawn items nor get an exchange from the merchant -- but do we then go to people who make what they thought were legitimate sales and take away the gold they were paid for their items?

Sometimes -- very rarely -- we have a clear-cut path that enables us to return items. When we can, we do. Many people who read this page can attest to that, for I've talked to some of them personally and have returned the items they lost. But for most cases, it's simply not possible. Not because we don't care. Not because we don't try. But simply because we cannot do it in a fair and equitable way. -- Gaile 01:05, 3 November 2009 (UTC)

How does this work with the Hall of Monuments? As a hypothetical example. I have a character with 1 set of prestige armour that I use (dedicate, add to the display etc) in the HoM. My account is hacked and the hacker salvages the runes from my armour. The armour is destroyed and lost forever. Wouldn't the fact that the armour is dedicated in HoM be proof of ownership and that it could/should be reinstated? The same could apply to weapons, minipets etc. -- Reality Impaired

I'm very happy to have my account back, but when I asked wether there was any trace of the hacker and items I got this: 'The Guild Wars Support Team does not have the capability to replace characters or items, whether they are lost through the actions of unfriendly players, deletion accidents, or through other means.' I'm sorry to say, that sounds like a standard reply, without looking or trying. Gaia 08:49, 6 November 2009 (UTC)

While the wording is formal, each account is reviewed in the event that items can be returned to players. Unfortunately, item retrieval and return was not possible in this particular incident, as it is not in most instances of stolen accounts. Please don't judge what sort of process was undertaken by the wording that is used in the response. For some situations, we have found that it is best to have an exact response so that, while individual, the comments have been reviewed to provide as much information as possible and to make the response as clear as it can be. -- Gaile 18:40, 6 November 2009 (UTC)

...'Empty Trash Bin'(Bin) or 'BuyBack'(Merch) not ever going to be added?,runescape has a kind of 'buyback',And WoW goes without saying; I dont wanna sound evil,but for god sakes =.= Guildwars needs less skill updates and more Gameplay updates.And im sorry to here about your stolen stuff :/ ... A charity any good? x_x --Neil2250 21:54, 6 November 2009 (UTC)

I am sorry, I don't know how those ideas relate to the topic at hand. Could you kindly add them to a suggestions page? Thanks. -- Gaile 22:01, 6 November 2009 (UTC)