Question about account Rollbacks

[*Shinzon*]

I apologize if this is inappropriate in advance but I don't play the game anymore (Banned) doing this as a favor for a friend because I still read these forums.

Question is this:
Is gil rolled back along with equipment, merits, exp, etc? Friends account was hacked because he de-activated his token which was running low on batteries..? I stopped playing before these things were introduced.

Again I do truly apologize if this is inappropriate.

[jimbobsonofgod]

Question is this:
Is gil rolled back along with equipment, merits, exp, etc? Friends account was hacked because he de-activated his token which was running low on batteries..?

Well, aside from being really fucking "fishy" that your token battery would run out that fast, I mean you'd honestly have to keep the damn thing pressed down 24/7. But if you were "hacked"*COUGH*
Then square would roll back your character.

It rolls back your character to a certain point in time. Lets as an example.

we'll take Monday - Thursday - Saturday.
Lets say you get Get hacked on Thursday , you call square and said that the last time you were on playing was Monday. On Saturday they roll back your character to Monday, anything that happened Monday-Saturday would be null and the character would return back to the status it was Monday (quests, items, money and everything would be just like it was monday).
Hope that clears everything up for you and your shifty friend.

[Baelorn]

Yeah those batteries last for years under heavy use. Up to 7 with normal use I think?

[SassiAsura]

Roll back is pretty much self explanatory I thought. Lets say you get rolled back to a two months ago. But before the roll back you may have gotten a numerous amount of things. Lets say you spent a mil, got gear, had an hnm drop you've been waiting on for months, leveled something.

All of that progress is gone.

[Fiendishone]

Yeah I got screwed on my Rollback . . .lost like 5m in gil I had made as well as the 0-56 cooking skill I did. Rolled back to 0 cooking skill and minus 3 Machine Crossbows, 2 M. Silverpieces, Engetsuto +1, and a few HQ staves I made. Damn rice eating squiggle bastards get a real fucking job and stop ruining other people's games!

[Mojo]

Running low on batteries!

[WANG]

Actually, this is a good thread for me to post my question as well.

Once you do an account rollback, do the items that have gone 'missing' due to comprised account activity also get removed from the person who supposedly stole it from you? For example, if Player A hacks Player B, steals a bunch of gil and equipment and Player B does an account roll back. Does Player A lose the stolen gil/items?

I'm asking because my secondary account (which has nothing on it but a few high gil items) was hacked somehow. (and actually I'm really worried about my main) They stole the items, but left the account quickly. It was done through a trade transaction, so the GM's told me there was no way of tracking who has those items. I requested an Account Rollback but apparently I have to file the paperwork through the support site. Anyway, I'd at least like to have a peace of mind to know that those items will be removed from whoever took it.

[Rellikard]

GM will send your account back to a certain period of time. Whatever you had on your account(gil, items, mission status), will be the same excluding what's in your delivery box which is lost forever. Now they'll ask you when your account was compromised and go based on that. I was hacked after Dynamis on Thursday night, they rolled me back to the Tuesday of that week. So I lost whatever I had done on that Wednesday and Thursday. Luckily they rolled me back to the point of that day where I had just got BST 75 in a merit PT and 14k buffer. Would've QQ'd if they had taken me back further lol.

Either way, if you've ever done an image backup of your computer or hard drive, it has the same concept. They make images of your account and do incremental backups. So there's one main backup and a ton of small backups that are just the daily changes to the original backup.

[Aselin]

Every rollback is like going to a previous backup of your character. That can be a week ago, a month ago, or in the case of one of my friends, 6 months before the account is compromised. At the last point of the backup, you will be restored to the last state that that character was in-- items, skills, key items, Gil, Dynamis flags, etc.

Any item and Gil on the thief who stole off your character, will also still be in their possession if it wasn't sold. As the GM told you already, they cannot track who has those items, but they are getting diligent about RMT and tracking large amounts of Gil being transferred between characters.

Also, each backup is overwritten after hearing from the experiences of my friend and a few others I've known that got rollbacks. SE never makes more than one backup copy from the looks of it. So, if your last backup was a week ago, that is what your account will be restored to. However, if your last backup was a day or a few days after you were hacked, well, too bad, you'll get restored to that state unfortunately. You can't pick and choose which state you want to be restored to. SE is that fucked up.

Also, their backup habits are inconsistent at best. It would imply that each character is backed up at irregular periods for some goddamn reason. Another friend who had 95 Woodworking, and we all know how much that costs to get up there, was told he'd be restored to a backup of his character on their server from two months ago when he had around 60 or 70 Woodworking. An LS member who got hacked was restored to a backup from ONE WEEK before he was hacked. Another player I've known on Bismarck who recently quit fell into the issue of having his last backup right after being hacked, so he got screwed there. Not wanting to start over again, he just quit the game.

SE only allows one rollback per account for each character for the entire lifetime of the account. Supposedly, SE allows unlimited rollbacks with those who are in possession of a Security Token, since those accounts should be near impossible to hack into. (However, the most recent hackings reported a few months ago here on BG Forums says otherwise, unless those hackings were suspiciously made up...)

[barber2006]

If the items aren't taken from the ones they were transferred to this seems like a system ripe for an exploit. What's to stop people from giving 100M to a trial account they created then laundering that gil to an alt then calling a GM for a restore of the original character? Do they do some sort of trace on where a character has logged on? Or do they just take people's word for it that they got hacked?

[Aselin]

If the items aren't taken from the ones they were transferred to this seems like a system ripe for an exploit. What's to stop people from giving 100M to a trial account they created then laundering that gil to an alt then calling a GM for a restore of the original character? Do they do some sort of trace on where a character has logged on? Or do they just take people's word for it that they got hacked?

Yes, that seems possible for exploiting especially since GMs can't track the items.

Let's say you have a 30 million Gil Kraken club, you give it to an alternate character along with your Gil and other Rare items, and you "cry wolf" to a GM that your account was hacked. Your account gets locked, you log off on your alt, and you go through account restoral. They rollback your account to two months prior where you had the Kraken club and the gil and the Rare items. Well, what do you know? You now have double your Gil and two Kraken clubs.

Another example: Let's say you have one person with 5000 O. Bronzepieces and needs another 5000 to complete Stage 5 Aegis. Transfer Dynamis currencies to an alternate temporary character including sellables and Rare-only items, or basically strip your character. Lie to a GM being hacked, get an account restoral and hopefully back when you had 5000 O. Bronzepieces, transfer the Currencies back from alt to your main character, and voila! easy Aegis upgrade. Then, sell the Rare items and other sellables on your alt in "Rolan-mart" and you have more Gil than what you started with.

So, yes, exploitation is very possible when someone fakes their account being hacked. And, it does seem that SE and their GMs take your word for it and have you go through the through account restoral process by verifying your identity and valid possession of the account.

Has this happened before with someone purposely faking their own account being hacked only to obtain more Gil? Very likely. (Remember: You're allowed one rollback per account for each character...)

Would that imply that those who were hacked were indeed not hacked by an RMT player living in deplorable conditions in China who have no idea what C# or C++ programming language is, and only know basic controls of a character? Very likely.

Would it also imply that the hackings were not done by some pissed off ex-lover or jealous friend, but an accomplice in crime? Very likely.

Will SE do anything to stop it or add failsafe measures to prevent this kind of duplication of items and Gil-- item tracking or what not? Not very likely.

I would like to be optimistic that this hasn't happened, but who knows? How many of those Relics posted in the Completed Relic/Mythic Weapons thread are actually done by "crying wolf"? How many of those are mysteriously and suspiciously upgraded in a very short amount of time?

Again, who knows? This may have been going on ever since account restoral was made possible.

[Hanyoko]

I would assume that SE does some basic checks on the account such as IP login trends or something. Saying your hacked but having your yours logs list the same IP block for the last year would be noticed, at least I hope so.

[Kohan]

GM will send your account back to a certain period of time. Whatever you had on your account(gil, items, mission status), will be the same excluding what's in your delivery box which is lost forever.

If you've ever asked a GM about the entire process, they'll explain to you that their Information/Support Center, the developers, etc., determine whatever data save is appropriate, and provide it. The GMs don't do that. It's the same reason they can't go back more than seven days when checking shit out, but the STF can (hence all the Salvage bans). Practically everyone else at SE has more tools available than the GMs themselves do. People don't seem to understand which departments do what, and that the GMs are a mouthpiece in a way, but not the ones in control.

As mentioned, this isn't speculation or any of that bullshit, either. All you have to do is ask a GM and they'll tell you, since this isn't confidential internal information. If you get one that doesn't, ask again next time. Eventually someone who knows their shit will lay it out.

[tace]

i can personally attest i was hacked back in september of 08 lost friend signed sh+1 osode hauby o kotes nobels tunic and P rope but oddly enuff who ever did left my 6 hq staves and 3m gil /shrug anyway back to OP topic i was in process of leveling blue mage got to 67 was so happy loged off thursday @ like 2am est didnt log on all day friday logd on saturday for ls events went to swap jobs to whm and i was like....wheres my clothes O.o then i zoned back in an outa mog house made sure wasnt just lag issue sometimes happens with linkpearls and it was all gone so i called up tech center monday they locked my acct down 2 weeks went by i gota email @ 3am saying my acct was indeed hacked and it was rolled back i loged in and they rolled me back to monday before i was hacked so my blue delvld but i got all my items back so was well worth the extra xp grind. all tho i do have a friend whos been hacked 5x and SE basicly told him sux2bu cause he had security token but never turnd it on.

[Kipling]

That doesn't really work, Aselin. If you had a kraken club and handed it to a mule, and were "hacked" then rolled it back, the kraken that got rolled back has the same ID number as the one that your mule now has. When your rollback GM's ask if there are any big inconsistencies, and that is one. If the GM sees that you tried duping anything you are almost certainly banned, and it's not hard to find out either. Gtrav on garuda was banned for it, specifically, using a kraken club. The only way to really cover your tracks is to sell that club on the AH to yourself, when it's purchased it gets a new ID. This is kind of the same thing that was done in the salvage dupes.

A linkshell on Midgard was duping R. Gold pieces this way for faster relics, and a leader named Ladydeathstrike was banned for it and got another account (Pcsweetheart?) banned as well during the process. It just took the GM's longer to catch on because those R gold's get turned into relics which wouldn't have the same ID number, since relics have special tags and are a completely different item anyway.

[Kailee]

Is it possible to get your account rolled back twice? Or is it like the Item Restoration thing?

[Darte]

I remember sometime ago i read someones post here on bg where they pasted a GM conversation saying that non-security token'd accounts are only authorized for 1 time rollbacks, but those with tokens are allowed as many as needed. Now I hate these baseless rumors as much as the next person and the fact that GMs like to flip flop about "policy", but i didn't get a response when I asked if that was for real. There any merit in that?

[Nevex]

I'm quite sure that one of my LS members reported that her batteries ran out a day after she got her token months ago and I don't see why she would lie about it.

It looks like SE tried to be as cheap as possible when making those tokens.

[Baelorn]

It looks like SE tried to be as cheap as possible when making those tokens.

Sure does. I don't see why they didn't just buy existing, well-tested devices with known product specifications and millions of users from an outside company. Wait a second...

[Metta]

I remember sometime ago i read someones post here on bg where they pasted a GM conversation saying that non-security token'd accounts are only authorized for 1 time rollbacks, but those with tokens are allowed as many as needed. Now I hate these baseless rumors as much as the next person and the fact that GMs like to flip flop about "policy", but i didn't get a response when I asked if that was for real. There any merit in that?

This?

http://i252.photobucket.com/albums/h...okenreroll.jpg

Had this conversation the day i got hacked with a security token.