Props to NCSoft's Customer Service

I just wanted to take a moment to thank NCSoft's Developers and their Customer Service and Support people.

After a long hiatus, I logged back in to another-12-million-player-game-that-shall-remain-nameless only to find my account had been hacked and all my stuff had been stolen.

The worst part? The Customer Service of that company--let's call them "Snowstorm"--refused to restore more than 25% of my stuff, and less than 3% of my in-game cash.

I've never had this kind of tear-your-hair-out kind of experience with City of Heroes' friendly Customer Service people, so I'm giving them props.

Indeed, they've been most helpful when my account was tampered with and all my in-game quibbles and petitions.


Now if only marketing could catch up since I just got the Signature Story Arc email today

Quote:

Originally Posted by Dispari I don't know why Dink thinks she's not as sexy as Jay was. In 5 posts she's already upstaged his entire career.

I always get the same GM when I report bugs because they're always doozies. I've had so much stuff hand-granted to my characters it's surreal.

JLane, this is the very first time, and they refuse to budge. I had taken a break from that game back in May; supposedly, the theft occurred in June. They claim they don't have records that go back that far, although they managed to accurately restore about 26 items, supposedly without any record at all of what I had, and they appear to have enough of a record to tell me what month my items were stolen.

I only play from my desktop at home, and I'm the only one with my password. I have Kaspersky's PURE on my machine, and have had it solidly for more than four years now. There are no keyloggers or trojans on my computer and haven't been since long before I rebuilt it from scratch over a year ago.

Unless someone broke into my condo and ONLY stole my character's stuff while I was out at work or put a physical keylogger in my tower, the only reasonable explanation is someone brute-forced the password. I suspect that's the way the majority of their hacks actually are (unless they're inside jobs, and given how often they happen, I wouldn't rule it out).

They could take a couple measures to prevent these hacks. The first would be to send an email notification to the player whenever someone logs in from a new computer (or IP address), the way Facebook does. That would mean people like me--who took an extended break from the game (and that's the reason I'm being given they can't give me my stuff back)--would be notified that someone's logged on to the account. The second would be to lock the account out for a period of time after a certain number of botched tries to frustrate the brute-force password scripts. Even better, a bulletin board system software I used in the early 1990s would let people attempt the password thirty times, but only the first three counted. Even if the right one came up in the next twenty-seven, it wouldn't log you in. It's a good foil to the brute-force password scripts.

I dont think I've ever dealt with NCSoft's Customer Service but Im sure they are nice people.