WoW CS and dev planning

[Jhentar_AN|Trib]

Just had an interesting few days in WoWLand and it raised a couple of questions that I thought might be worth discussing. I also wanted to show CS done well I guess, and that never goes astray.

I'll start form the beginning and go from there I guess, usually the best way to go.

On monday I logged into WoW when I got home from work, played a little bit and logged out, all seemed fine in the world.

Tuesday morning I woke up and checked my email before heading to work to find an email from Blizz saying my account had been closed for being a gold exploiter or association with someone banned for intended exploitation.

I send an email back to blizz questioning this and mentioning the ip blocks I go through (could have caused flags as I have an australian ISP and sometimes use Http-Tunnel from work to bypass firewall and thus show with a US IP) and wait.

Today I get an email back from Blizz reinstating my account and then another with a new temp password. On changing this through worldofwarcraft.com I notice the last logged in time was at 4:40am PST monday (so now there is a specific time frame to work from in the logs).

I get home and log into WoW to find a naked character on the char select screen and 6 chars deleted. CHecking the remaining chars shows the naked 63 paladin has had all soulbound gear destroyed but 600g and a bunch of boe gear left, the 70 rogue with items but 1k gold gone, AH mule with gold left but 2 backpacks of wool stacks gone, and 62 hunter with 600g left but backpacks cleaned out. I immeadiatly submit a ticket wityh the message of only "I have been hacked" and get a GM within 5 minutes. They go through things with me to hopefully pass off to the investigation team, and then the comment in the image comes out, which leads to the questions.

If we are now in the third generation (and WoW is second still I guess), shouldn't there be better log tracking capabilities planned by the devs for issues such as this that give a better answer than not giving back items it's too much trouble to try and trace? Why does there not appear to be an option to restore a character from backup once an issue has been found that is too much trouble?

Are games at the stage now where it's just accepted that things like this will happen and there is no need to put in too rigorous logging for anything but RMT or was this merely a turn of phrase?

Again, I think the CS by Blizz has been astounding in this case (and if they'd of kept me banned then I would have just walked away, no probs) but where are MMO's heading if it has gotten to the point where it's considered ok to tell customers that they'll get back things inly if it's not too much trouble?

[Ortega]

Yea this happened to a guildie of mine a while ago. They restored EVERYTHING except his Full Field Marshal PvP set. I honestly couldn't understand it, they gave him the Field Marshal title and everything, but they would not reimburse the armor. It was amazing!!!

P.S.
Not to derail, but if any blizz employees read this FIX THE FUCKING RANDOM ZONING DC BUG THANKS!!! Being top on our battlegroup for the time being and then losing 40 rating to some mediocre 1700 rated team because one of us DCed is FUCKING STUPID (just let us join the arena as long as it hasn't started yet).

[Linbog]

This happened to a co-worker of mine 2 weeks ago on saturday morning, he finally got his gear back yesterday. Not sure if he got it all back or not but he got ALOT of stuff back, especially considering he was his guilds bank.

[Qhue]

This seems to be happening quite alot recently. Certainly much more frequently in the last couple of months. The sooner Blizzard offers a hardware dongle based login security scheme the better in my opinion. Even with never sharing my account info with any human being and with all computer security mechanisms in place I'm still paranoid about account security problems with WoW due in no small part to the frequency of problems that occur and the seeming inconsistencies in the Blizzard CS staff.

The thing is that its Blizzard's own damn fault for creating the root impetus of gold farming with the endless cash sinks and ridiculous alchemy raiding nonsense. If there wasn't a demand for gold in the game we wouldnt have all of this hacking going on and their CS wouldnt be overwhelmed with the account issues.

[redjunkopera]

/raises hand

How did you get "hacked'?

[Braen]

Originally Posted by Qhue

The sooner Blizzard offers a hardware dongle based login security scheme the better in my opinion.

I like this idea and really wonder why more MMOs companies do not try it, besides the added expense of providing the keys.

[dechire]

possible ways to get hacked:

You shared your account- don't lie, admit it, best recommendation if you have to share your account, share it with someone whom you can drive to their house and put your fist in their mouth.

You used a powerleveling service and didn't change your password when you got it back - don't lie, admit it

You tried to dl something that unloaded a virus onto your system, this could be anything from a cheat to a talent calculator- you don't use virus sw - dont lie, admit it

You got phished - yea that sucks

In all cases your account's security is your responsibility to maintain for anything and yes there are nefarious people out there that want to rape you. I know big shocker right?

p.s. One more way is that your account name and your main character's name are the same and you use a simple password. use numbers, letters and upper case letters mixed in.

and yea sorry to hear you lost your stuff

[Jhentar_AN|Trib]

Not bitching that my account got hacked, in fact I thought I made it clear that CS did a great job of re-instating my account quickly and GM response time was fantastic....my point was that we should be at a stage with recovery tools and log tracing now that it shouldn't be a case of not getting items restored because it's too hard to trace (and yes, I work as a dba so I'm not just postulating on something I know nothing about).

In regards to your comments Deshire, most of them are quite off the mark. The only possible ways my account was compromised was from curse gaming, from rpg-outfitter/uniuploader or from using http-tunnel and given I've been playing since EQ launch / UO and this is the first time this has happened, I'd say I know a little something about account security

[Thorbadin]

There was a great quote back then by someone on the eq dev team I think, don't remember which one, that basically said something like that 99% of "hacking" is giving your pwd out to someone you "thrust" and getting fucked over. It's a bit more sophisticated now with wow and the amount of money involved and the current sorry state of computer security but I'm sure that number is very high.

They cannot simply give everything back by default, they already do more then what I would expect honestly. They probably do understand that in "real" cases like this it's a matter of losing a customer or not. Ideally you don't want to lose them.

I'm an admin for a small mmog Star Sonata: Welcome and I confirm that probably more then 99% of the hacking claim I get are someone that gave their password out and got fucked. We do have a few bugs unfortunately so you can lose normal items that way but usually the big thing where the account is stripped is always done by someone you initially gave the pwd to yourself.

[James]

EQ had it, as I remember one time someone ganked all my monk twink's shit (which was far, far worse than if it had happened on a blue server, since my twink's shit was better than every other monk's gear at the time, save for the ones in my guild) and they told me exactly what happened to my items. They told me when I logged on, how many steps I took, what zones I visited, who got my fungi tunic, etc, etc, all with timestamps. It was pretty cool.

[dechire]

Understood. I mean to include stuff of that nature in the dl section. However that's still not something Blizzard is responsible for. I know a little something too. Why they do not restore anything is anyones guess, frankly i think they do the best job in recoveries for any MMO

[Weritech]

Originally Posted by Jhentar_AN|Trib

Not bitching that my account got hacked, in fact I thought I made it clear that CS did a great job of re-instating my account quickly and GM response time was fantastic....my point was that we should be at a stage with recovery tools and log tracing now that it shouldn't be a case of not getting items restored because it's too hard to trace (and yes, I work as a dba so I'm not just postulating on something I know nothing about).

As a DBA you surely recognize that what's theoretically possible is entirely different from what's realistic given all the factors of the job?

Originally Posted by Jhentar_AN|Trib

In regards to your comments Deshire, most of them are quite off the mark. The only possible ways my account was compromised was from curse gaming, from rpg-outfitter/uniuploader or from using http-tunnel and given I've been playing since EQ launch / UO and this is the first time this has happened, I'd say I know a little something about account security

Obviously, you don't know as much as you think you do or you would already have determined what vector "they" got you or whoever you shared your account with from.

[Faltigoth]

Originally Posted by James

EQ had it, as I remember one time someone ganked all my monk twink's shit (which was far, far worse than if it had happened on a blue server, since my twink's shit was better than every other monk's gear at the time, save for the ones in my guild) and they told me exactly what happened to my items. They told me when I logged on, how many steps I took, what zones I visited, who got my fungi tunic, etc, etc, all with timestamps. It was pretty cool.

Its mind boggling that this could happen in one of the pioneers of online gaming, yet in this generation it doesn't seem possible, or the right people don't have access to that information, etc.

Do other games just not implement this sort of tracking, or are the people in charge too lazy to use the shit to fix problems because it is too manpower intensive or something?

It seems to me that this sort of thing should be used every time an item gets lost/disappears/etc. Like in the case of getting hacked, man, it should be just like James said: "alright Faltigoth, at x hour you logged in, disenchanted all of your Karazhan gear and mailed the shards to XXX. We see exactly what happened, here's your shit back. change your password more often and enjoy the world of warcraft!"

Unfortunately, I guess there are too many greedy motherfuckers out there who would attempt to abuse the system for that to be the gold standard, because there is too much money to be made off the MMO (especially Warcraft) secondary market.

Still makes me wonder if they just don't have the tools to do shit like that (I have a hard time believing that, if EQ could do it), or if they are too lazy/lack the manpower/etc. to use them.

[McCheese]

Something similar happened to me. I got all my items/gold back, but for some reason they refused to give me back my 300 level alchemy and recipes that I lost.

I just don't understand why their restoration process is so inconsistent.

[redjunkopera]

It's not that it's not possible. It's that scammers have reached a level of sophistication such that they would able to abuse a system that fully reimbursed "hacked" items. They won't give you your items back because they can't... they won't give them back because there is good chance you gave them away knowing you would have them returned with a phone call.