GM ANSWER: To late!

[jwtelesio]

The only point of contact for recovering accounts is only through the web support interface, no where else.

No it's not. I've done it three times. Once for me forgetting my password and account info back in vanilla, Once for reporting and recovering a hacked account in Wrath, and just last Monday for helping my cousin recover his account he hasn't played in years which had been scrapped way back when.

[Noctus78]

Im guessing the GM misunderstood or just made a plain mistake about not being able to restore. Characters over level 10 (stated by some blue about 4-5 years ago) are always being back upped. In that case i think that will be solved fast when they re-review your ticket.
Other possibility is that the player already made so many restore requests that he has run out of credits.


Much more interesting in this story is how he got "hacked"
In case of a physical authenticator it near impossible, only by a man in the middle attack. but that can only happen in the first minute you logged on or if somebody close took the authenticator.
So mobile app authenticator could be the source then?

would love to hear what happened

[Musta Kyy]

I got my shaman restored a month ago, I deleted that shaman halfway through cata. This makes me think that you are trolling, if not, then you really couldnt explain the situation to blizzard. Just send another ticket if you just got a lazy GM. (rare)
Also, any proper keylogger (more than a keylogger if it goes around the authenticator) wont show up on scans.
Your brother cant keep his computer clean, no one just has "bad luck" and gets a keylogger, either he has visited some questionable sites with bad browser/no adblock or fallen for scam email.

[xanzul]

That is indeed true. I really do like the Blizzard support, they are quite faster than others around lately. And don't react on the average wait time on tickets, they jump so much.

And, if people didn't know, a ticket goes faster if the right information is put in, instead of going, "This shit spell "XXXX" doesn't work" - doesn't help a GM much in the end and they have to investigate more into your ticket ^^

Though, still. Compared to other game choices, I think Blizzard is still the fastest. SWTOR (my experience and from friends) had a reaction time from 12 hours to 2 weeks on a ticket, calling their phoneline could give you a long wait time (even worse as half of their support numbers didn't/doesn't work). I called their support line once, 3 hours queue time average, every time I checked to see if it was a good time to call. I just barely had enough cash on the phone to report my problem before my whole phone budget was gone for the month.

Guild Wars 2 support line isn't of the biggest grand either. Made a ticket about a compromised account of mine, and didn't get a reaction until 5 days later. Though, take not, I didn't chose to play that much, was during the free to play week they had earlier this year.

And this is why the new in game ticket system is resulting in faster response times because it is now set up to attach relevant information to the ticket rather than expecting the player to do it himself. It wasn't even a year ago when Blizzard support agents were saying ticket times ranged from 3 to 10 days and now it is under 2. This is why I think it is laughable that people claim Blizzard doesn't care about its customers. By all rights Blizzard could have kept the old system that relied on the player to dig up the information and provide it to GMs and yet they revamped the whole system anyway.

[jwtelesio]

Just wanted to mention that this isn't entirely true. When a friend of mine got her account hacked she got on her husband's account and submitted a petition in game (didn't have the online one then) and they were able to shut down the account and changed the password so she could get back on. Where then they asked her to see what all was missing so when they restored things she could verify everything. After that they suggested she get an authenticator.

My point is, phoning them isn't the only option and they do handle it through petitions.

Hrmm, considering how all the responses from blizzard i got about sending in someone else's issue just tell me that they need to submit it themselves I never would have thought about doing that. I only knew about the phone support line and it's been pretty quick so far. They do have a quick team.

[xanzul]

Wasn't there a case once, where the software authenticator's was the comprised ones? I think I seem to recall it. I have never been hacked with my Hardware authenticator, nor has any of my friends with them.

Plus, having the hardware one seems safer too, incase of phone/app crash as they would need to restore the settings on the unit, losing the app in turn. Then they have to call Blizzard / go through the form of removing the authenticator and getting a new one.

... too much hassle for just wanting a free authenticator, they aren't more than what? 7-10 euro/dollars? Saves you time in the end.

Are you referring to the RSA thing? The authenticaters Blizzard buys from Vasco aren't RSA.

As far as the mobile authenticators go, this is why they advise you to store its serial in a safe place as you don't need to call Blizzard to move it to a new device if you have the serial.

[Catdancing]

Absolutely not. The only way to do account recovery is through the support site. They even include an option for players who no longer are able to log into their battle.net accounts. Please don't tell others to call Blizzard as no one who can be reached by phone can address compromised accounts. This is precisely why they removed the customer support/billing phone number from their web site.

I called the 800 number and they helped me get my account back. So unless the rules changed since this past Easter then I'd say that blizzard does help if you call them over the phone

[xanzul]

The way it is now they can get your account if they can get into the associated email account, there they can change your password and remove your authenticator using the new mobile security feature. gg blizz. some email providers aren't as secure as you would think and not all people have strong passwords on them since they are only e-mail, so can be easily worked out by software.

So it is Blizzard's fault that other companies have bad security? Are you fucking kidding me right now? It doesn't even matter anyway, keyloggers can get all information not just passwords and this includes anything stored in the clipboard so the whole copy paste thing doesn't prevent keyloggers from getting the information.

[Deleted]

Authenticators are not impossible to get around, they are just very hard.

Get around several times in a row? I highly doubt it.

Once, maybe, but the chances of doing it more than once are astronomical.

[ZeroWashu]

I had my warlock restored 18 months after I had deleted it, so you either have a real stupid GM or your friend is lying/playing a joke on you.

This, ex deleted characters on me from servers I neglected, they were able to restore fully. Hell they restored characters on sub accounts I hadn't paid and gave me a day play so I could get back BOAs that were deleted from them

[Deleted]

being able to use just the email address to remove all the security features is, before you needed the product codes and personal information to do it.

[xanzul]

Just wanted to mention that this isn't entirely true. When a friend of mine got her account hacked she got on her husband's account and submitted a petition in game (didn't have the online one then) and they were able to shut down the account and changed the password so she could get back on. Where then they asked her to see what all was missing so when they restored things she could verify everything. After that they suggested she get an authenticator.

My point is, phoning them isn't the only option and they do handle it through petitions.

Generally they investigate all reports of compromised accounts regardless of who reports it. It is just better and more efficient for the person whose account was compromised to report it himself and as such this is why they have an option that allows players to report their accounts as compromised even if they no longer have access to it.

- - - Updated - - -

No it's not. I've done it three times. Once for me forgetting my password and account info back in vanilla, Once for reporting and recovering a hacked account in Wrath, and just last Monday for helping my cousin recover his account he hasn't played in years which had been scrapped way back when.

Customer support will handle things like forgotten passwords (it is why the secret question/answer thing exists) but the main point of contact for handling compromised accounts is through the account recovery option on the support site. Using that will always be faster than calling customer support. They don't always have access to the required tools and information to recover accounts. It isn't even just me saying this, many support agents on the customer support forums have said it as well.

[Deleted]

Mate i will have to say the GM must be trolling you. Blizzard have multipel times restorted charcter for mouths ago i had a a friend who got hacked, he stopped playing for 5 mouths he came back and is charcter was restorted.. Another friend was also hacked, she got her charcter restored after about 5 days

[xanzul]

Hrmm, considering how all the responses from blizzard i got about sending in someone else's issue just tell me that they need to submit it themselves I never would have thought about doing that. I only knew about the phone support line and it's been pretty quick so far. They do have a quick team.

This is one of my few issues with customer support in that they aren't entirely clear sometimes with their responses. A good example of this is when players manually open a ticket to report harassment or cheating and the response they get implies the ticket is being ignored in favor of the right click report system when in actuality what they mean is they will take information from manual tickets but prefer players to use the right click report system instead.

They do take reports of compromised accounts from those who don't own the accounts involved, but response time may not be nearly as fast if the owner of the account reported it himself. They really do need to work on the language used in responses because it can be really unclear sometimes.

[Deleted]

I'm going to quote the OP to reflect what I think:

HOLY MOTHER OF GOD!
Wtf is this bullshit!

[3DTyrant]

I'm NOT saying you, or your brother is a liar here, but if your story is fully true, the GM your brother spoke to is very foolish, aren't GMs able to restore a deleted character up to a year after (if not more) it was deleted?

[xanzul]

I called the 800 number and they helped me get my account back. So unless the rules changed since this past Easter then I'd say that blizzard does help if you call them over the phone

Oh absolutely customer support by phone will do what they can, I'm just saying the reason why Blizzard advises players to use the account recovery option is because customer support doesn't always have the access required to handle all situations involved with compromised accounts. Like I said this very situation is why Blizzard buries the customer support phone number on the support site and has the new ticket system set up to only show the phone number in situations where calling customer support is appropriate.

[jwtelesio]

This is one of my few issues with customer support in that they aren't entirely clear sometimes with their responses. A good example of this is when players manually open a ticket to report harassment or cheating and the response they get implies the ticket is being ignored in favor of the right click report system when in actuality what they mean is they will take information from manual tickets but prefer players to use the right click report system instead.

They do take reports of compromised accounts from those who don't own the accounts involved, but response time may not be nearly as fast if the owner of the account reported it himself. They really do need to work on the language used in responses because it can be really unclear sometimes.

My issue was more of them telling me that the other person needed to report there being an issue not me. in the case of people having bugs and in one case of a guildy having possibly been hacked.

[xanzul]

Mate i will have to say the GM must be trolling you. Blizzard have multipel times restorted charcter for mouths ago i had a a friend who got hacked, he stopped playing for 5 mouths he came back and is charcter was restorted.. Another friend was also hacked, she got her charcter restored after about 5 days

Or more likely it is the OP or his friend that is trolling. Does anyone care to explain to me why Blizzard wouldn't help a customer with a restoration if it was justified?

- - - Updated - - -

I'm NOT saying you, or your brother is a liar here, but if your story is fully true, the GM your brother spoke to is very foolish, aren't GMs able to restore a deleted character up to a year after (if not more) it was deleted?

Character restorations are quite simple for GMs assuming the right conditions are met. Like I and others have said I think we are missing quite a bit of information here.

[DanThePaladin]

I deleted my warlock prior to Mists because I didn't enjoy it.
Earlier this year I brought i back through a GM.

Sure it didn't have any gear, it had the lowest flying skill etc., but it was still there.

I don't think you are telling us everything!