Got an account issue...

My wife tried logging in to play some CoH with me this last weekend. She couldn't log in. She got a message indicating her account was suspended.

This was odd to say the least as we had just renewed our accounts at the beginning of October. Now she hadn't logged in at all for a few months because she is in school. All of her characters reflect that little detail in our supergroup panel.

So I tried logging in as her on the account maintenance page. This time, the error message is that her NCSOFT master account is banned.

We tried contacting Support but they are all but worthless. We've danced their little dance and given them every bit of information we could give them from their list only to get told "It doesn't look like you provided everything we asked for".

No, really? You really want me to cough up some code from an email from over 6 years ago?!?! And you want the credit card used to start the account from that same time frame when it's commonplace for consumers to change financials?

We gave them name, address, games under the account, acccount features unlocked, license keys that we could find that we redeemed on both of our accounts, even the information from when we renewed the accounts in October. They are still saying they cannot confirm we are the rightful users/owners on her account. I even gave them the IP addresses we use and that renewed from.

So as it stands, Billing happily took our money but Support is not letting my wife use her CoH/V account. To throw insult on top of injury, this also kills her Guild Wars account (all 3 chapters, TEotN expansion, plus several acccount perks.

Yet throughout this whole ordeal, my account (w/ CoH/V & GW) is fine.

Anyone got any suggestions as to what else we can do to get my wife's account back from NCSOFT? We are still looking to see if we can find more of the account codes we used. Even if we were to find them all, I don't believe Support will unlock her account.

First off, the boards can't help you out too much with this, as it is an NCSoft issue. However, we can direct you to contact on of the community reps (I forget who it is now, though), who should be able to elevate this kind of issue, and can give you some help. Give me a minute or two, and I'll get you the correct person.

Edit -> Send a PM to Avatea. They should be able to help you out. I hope that you can get it resolved.


Edit2-> By the way, it seems as if, from the data you've given us, that you wife's account was hacked at some point. Either from a weak password, or a true hacker, or even if you ever gave any account information to a Real Money Transfer (RMT: those guys advertising to sell you influence for real money), although I doubt that is the case. If this happened, you are going to have to jump through some hoops to get the account unlocked, as there was probably some malicious activity that occurred on that account, and they might be hesitant to unlock it.

Already sent a PM to Avatea.

I know that only two people have her account passwords, her & me. Her comp has already been checked for malware, trojans, etc. All clean. Same goes for mine.

I'm completely baffled as to why they blocked her account. They claimed it was for our safety but we received no notice. None of her account info shows as having been logged in anywhere here or in Guild Wars inappropriately (we always create a guild/group for ourselves and invite each others characters).

We also know that her email address is still linked to the NCSOFT account as when I tried to reset her password, the notices of attempts to do so came to her address as expected.

I'm going to try calling them this afternoon when their support lines open to see if they can tell me anything further. Part of me is raging something fierce on the inside because we're being punished for something we didn't do and now have to dance like some circus animal to beg for her account back.

Also note, she doesn't have to have malware on her computer for the account info to be hacked. If somebody gets a hold of what her account name is, they might be able to guess a password if it's not that hard. Or, if somebody had cracked the NCSoft computers, they could have gotten the info there.

Not saying that is what happened, just saying that her computer might be perfectly fine, and somebody could still have hacked the account.

Sorry to hear about yours, and your wife's account troubles. I've heard of other players having similar difficulties with NC regarding the 'rigamarole' needed to reopen a locked account.

And, with respect to NC, they need to improve their abilities in this area. This past summer, after about a year and a half hiatus, I re-upped my sub to That Other Large MMOG. Somehow (to this day, it's a mystery), my account name and password had been stolen, and the account had been used to spam RMT advertisements. I could not log in.

Within a 24-hour period, I had been granted access back into my account (it is here where I noticed a bunch of toons with the garbled names like 'dfda' and 'kdhadf' -- that's why I presumed the account was used for RMT purposes). Not only this, but a few days later, I got another e-mail, indicating they had audited all the characters on my account, and that none had any loot stolen. Presumably they wold have corrected matters had I been less fortunate in this regard.

My point being, the response to my locked account was quick and painless. And, the follow up to confirm the integrity of my characters was a pleasant surprise. NC really ought to be striving for this level of service.

Edit: keep us updated as to your progress.

With all due respect, if you can't actually prove that it's your wife's account...can you see the other side of the situation?

What if I called NCSoft and asked for your account?

One thing you could try (no clue if it would work, however) is to call your card issuer and ask for the number of the card used unless you've completely changed banks.

Also check your bank statements - mine include a the last four digits of the card used.

Also, EDIT : Nevermind, can't verify because apparently NCSoft's main account site is down.

Well, I know it would probably be burried, but - you still have your paper copies of your statements?

Even if it doesn't list specific transactions to specific cards, when I had this issue I mentioned that, due to a lost card (and then wallet, boy was I on fire that time) it could be a card with the last four numbers of XXXX, YYYY, or ZZZZ - and they unlocked it for me.

Dear OP I see that you mentioned that your wife had an account for another NCSoft game that has been affected as well. In all likelyhood that is where the problems started. NCSoft had a serious security problem over there which you can read about here.


The short version of it was this:

LOGGING INTO YOUR OWN PLAYNC MASTER ACCOUNT CAN RANDOMLY LOG YOU INTO ANOTHER PLAYER'S ACCOUNT. YOU HAVE FULL CONTROL OVER THEIR ACCOUNT FROM THIS POINT. YOU CAN CHANGE THEIR PASSWORDS, AND EVERYTHING ELSE THAT ONE CAN EDIT FROM THE PLAYNC MASTER ACCOUNT CONTROLS.

They've supposedly fixed the problem since then.

I'll PM you with more info about what was happening because new forum rules don't allow us to post about other games on these forums, even if they are NCSoft games.

See, this is the stuff that scares me. Because if I held on to random game paperwork trash for six years, even if it had an account number on it, the doctor would hang me by my toes.

Well, got a really nice NCSoft rep as part of the issue escalatation. He went into greater detail as to what he would need. He also explained why the keys I provided didn't suffice. He did go into detail as to what specific keys he could use to validate ownership. He also indicated alternative means for ID verification.

So now I'm pursuing the banks we were with at the time we started our CoH/V accounts. Already called one and they confirmed they can give me the information I need if I stop in and show ID. I'll hit up the other bank on the way home too.

If that turns up a dud, then I'll go digging for certain game boxes (sure am glad I got collector's editions). I'm fairly certain I know where those are.

All in all, this rep is helping me rather than hindering. I like this rep.

As for that security issue... when did that happen? I don't recall hearing about it and I keep up on updates on that side of the house. That said, I did notice the account questions and such in my master account when I changed my password.

What strikes me as odd is that as of Oct 2010, I was able to log my wife's master account in. I had to. I was the one who renewed both of our accounts. Nothing was amiss at that time. Maybe I can get the rep that is assisting me to explain what they saw once I have the account back under our control.

Status update!!!

I stopped by both banks that I would have had business with around the time frame our accounts were set up. Both were able to dredge up my records from back then and none of our accounts had all the criteria the rep mentioned. I thanked the two bank reps I worked with for their time and went home.

I started digging through some boxes. Let's just say I'm glad I'm a packrat.

I found almost every single CoH/V item we have in the house. Still missing one CoV collector's edition but I am fairly certain I know where it is.

I then started comparing all the license keys I found against the two CoH accounts I have. The keys that didn't match either got set aside.

I update the ticket with the helpful rep from Support with those keys. Also had to correct my original report of the exact day we did the renewals.

A short while later (perhaps 20 minutes or so), I got the notice that my wife's account was unlocked and a notice to go in and reset her passwords. I just reset them to something as strong as the system will allow (which isn't terribly strong IMO, their password limits are too short).

So in short, once I got a helpful rep who was a lot more clear about what specifically he needed, things got done.

My wife already called while on break at school. I let her know the good news. All is happy in the house again

Now to go check her characters and see if anything is wrong there.

Recommendation - Keep a file somewhere with your list of keys And the bank card info.