Attention players with Compromised Accounts

[randydoan]

Long time reader, first time poster.

I am one of those lucky ones whose account was not compromised by the recent wave of hackings, but have had close friends lose their accounts. I wish to convey my heartfelt sorrow to those affected by this turn of events. Being the owner of several 75 jobs, a relic weapon, and several completed sets of AFv2, I do not think I would have the courage to continue playing if I lost even a portion of what I've accumulated over the years playing this game.

From GM Caoldoboge
Subject: Regarding Item Restoration

The Item Restore Investigation has been completed.

Unfortunately, we were unable to find sufficient evidence of the item loss, and we cannot restore the lost item. If you wish to provide any additional information about this issue, please contact a GM using the /helpdesk feature. We apologize for the inconvenience.

I am saddened by this type of response from SE. I read this response as: "You were lucky to get your account back at all. As far as your character is concerned, SE's job is done." All those continuous months/years of playing, and paying your bill on time, you are just an ID number on their to-do list.

If this is how I'm going to be treated as a customer, I would hesitate to invest in SE's next MMORPG.

[mactabilis]

Well i want to show my sympathy for everyone who was a victim of these hackings. Totally undeserved and i hope this is not the last step se takes.

I think it's more like 95% will quit for good rather than start over with 0 gil/items and possibly a new server, if that is in fact se's grand solution. None of my friends will be coming back now, nor will they buy another product from this company. The only way se would reconsider their stance and do rollbacks, which i know they can (yeah, i look on altanacubby and see exactly what gear they had), would be if ppl did not reactivate now. It would take them a month to realize, a month to think it over...so it would take time, but there's no way i'd start over after 4 years anyway. SE failed hard and if you all want to take it up the ass from them it's your choice, but urging my friends, who lost a kraken and speed belt along with everything else, to move on and forget this game.

[Ravenskye]

SE has not given me 1 good reason to play this game again.With all their BS they have taken the fun out of even looking forward to play again. 2 accounts = canceled until I "investigate further and give them my final answer, I'll have my Supervisor call them back or maybe E-mail them after they send me a Notarized certified letter and I really hope that they will please be patient while I'm coming up with a policy change for them to prove to me that I'm the renter of the accounts, Oh yeah, and pay me for it."

[Frostfire]

Say 95% of the people getting accounts back, decide to quit FFXI because we don't have our items anymore.

And the RMT continue to hack sites and steal accounts, to where it comes to the point where SE is forced to restore items to keep their customers. As Mactabilis said:

It would take them a month to realize, a month to think it over..\

Then IF they did start to do a "rollback" on the compromised accounts, we (being the people who have been hacked in the past few months) would probably be told something like "I'm sorry, we can only give you an account rollback if it happened in the past week." or some kind of bull shit like that.

I don't see the point in playing this game anymore. We are going to be fucked over by SE time and time again, and they haven't even done anything to prevent the RMT from doing this again. Fuck you SE, and fuck you FFXI.

[ronin sparthos]

This company exists in a vaccum of stupidity, every wrong move has been made not to mention they have basically told the playerbase that they are going to do nothing to fix the situation besides have people pay for their accounts back in dismal/poor condition.

You wait 2 months for good news which turns out to be SE covering ass with the notary form (understandable) but then quickly it spirals down into 'we're giving you the account back as-is even though we KNOW rmt have used it in prohibited activity' and 'yeah, we want you to flip the bill on the hackers mess since we dont wanna pursue them' and if that wasnt appauling enough - 'we cant restore items because the GM team is too incompetent to look back in some logs for items dropped/traded or sold'.

What more can SE do wrong? They already pegged the blame on the customer 110%, ensured the community that they dont give a fuck if you get hacked, dont care if the hackers use bogus cards, dont care if GMs cant rectify the situation after the fact because they can always say 'we're sorry we cant find the items', dont care to create a safer community for future players that may/may not be victims in the future and this is all while the RMT hauled in billions upon billions in gil. SE wins, RMT win, Gilbuyers win, Players taking it up the rear.

At this point does it matter if the RMT are losing money they didnt work for in the first place? does it really matter how many bogus/ex-player accounts get swept up in the inflated numbers they put out each month to keep the 'players' happy in thos STF reports? does it really matter when half the RMT accounts at this point are stolen and the other half 1.99$ trial accounts that dont mean shit when they get banned?

Seriously SE-- your not fooling anyone, surely not me.

[Jeny]

My boyfriend and I had a talk this morning...about what we're going to do once we get our accounts back.

Depending on how things are looking, we may move on to other MMOs. Either WoW or Cabal, or something else. Someplace where customers aren't treated like pieces of shit like Square-Enix has done in the last few months.

I know, it sucks. I used to hate WoW to death, and hey I still do. But I've grown to hate the fuck out of each and every person running Final Fantasy XI even more.

I'm disgusted at the way they've handled this situation... For two and a half months they ran us in nothing but circles only to resolve nothing in the end. Now wer are stranded in a different server with a different name, stripped of all our shit and most likely zero gil.

A policy that never happened and false hopes of having us rolled back, yet they have the nerve to say "Don't worry, you can apply for a FREE server transfer!". - Sorry S-E, nothing's free in this world.

I've tried my best to keep cool and give them the benefit of the doubt, that maybe JUST MAYBE they'd show some mercy and bestow our characters to us unharmed.

I can no longer respect a company that has none for their once loyal customers.

[Raji]

Like I suspect a lot of people have, I've been lurking this forum over the past few months for information on the account hijackings and how SE's response plays out.

Almost every post I've read about a new victim, about how SE's customer service was nothing but rude and abusive, and every day that passed without so much as a "whoopsie" from the Powers That Be, made me just a little bit more disgusted with a game that I once loved, and a company that I had been a loyal customer to for years.

Last week, I canceled my FFXI subscription, with the intention to reactivate it when/if SE started actually helping their players, many of whom, like me, have invested hundreds of dollars in subscription fees, thousands of hours, and uncountable laughs, tears, joys, and swears into the game. The most recent events have convinced me, beyond a shadow of doubt, that SE does not, and never did, have any intention of repaying that loyalty to the people who need it the most. Needless to say, this has left me feeling more than a little hurt, angry, and betrayed.

To be clear, neither I nor any of my friends have been directly affected by the account hackings, but even if I felt like my own account was safe (which I don't; yes, I have Firefox+Adblock+NoScript, a hosts file designed to block out a bunch of ad sites, a long and confusing password, and I religiously do full scans with AVG and AdAware, but some of the victims' posts have left me feeling like I'm basically sticking my finger in the dam and hoping for the best), I simply cannot continue supporting a company that obviously doesn't care in the least for its customers.

To any friends from Leviathan who might be reading this, take care, and I'm sorry I had to go out like this, but enough is enough ><
I've moved on to Everquest 2 for now, those who are so inclined can look up Dorol, Velorim, or any number of others on the Najena server (yes, I'm an altaholic )

To the people at Square-Enix: I hope you're all very happy with yourselves, and I hope that each and every one of you, at some point in your lives, gets to experience that same feeling of betrayal and abandonment and helplessness that nearly all of the people affected by the hackings, and your total indifference to them, have.

Well, I've said my piece, so peace out.

(EDIT: I speel gud ><)

[Ravenskye]

Yep, Moving on playing WoW in Shadowsong , Alliance warlock , Ravenswitch didn't like it much at first,but their CSR and technical support people are so nice. I had to apologize because I was ready to do battle (SE/POL) flash back. I'm actually getting to the point I like it. I don't tip in a restaurant for shitty service so I'm not giving SE any more money for shitty service and to be treated like shit.

[Emmaliz]

So the investigation was completed and I won't get any of my items back...I even talked to a senior GM today and he said the same thing. Their item restore policy only covers those items that have been eaten, tossed, sold to npcs...will call SE tomorrow to see if I can get back to my original server.

[randydoan]

I'm really sorry to hear that, Emmaliz. Truly sorry.

If SE decides to charge you to *go back to your original server... that would be a kick in the teeth. I mean... come on SE, you just got your customer's character back - This is supposed to be a joyous event. Now, you are further alienating your customer by making them beg for what is rightfully theirs? This is not fair.

I don't think I could do what you will be doing, Emmaliz. If I was told I could either have my Bravura, or my Ridill, or my Adaberk back for my WAR and not all 3... I'd just as soon say forget it. That the RMT have won.

*edit-forgot to add the word "go" ; ;

[oxx2]

sorry to hear about that emm

can you give us an update if you are able to get back to your server without cost?

[Cloull]

All your R/E are gone too?

[Caldor]

This is yet another inconsistency. I had take some time off from FF before I came back in November, and when I came back was missing my tavnazian ring. An LS member of mine told me that GM should be able to help me so I placed a call. Now I know it's no big ticket item, but I called a GM and he literally said I was lucky that I had any of my gear at all, thanks for calling, goodbye. I feel bad for the people who got hit the hardest and are going to have to call GMs over and over until they get one of the "good" ones.

I've always been wondering why restoring rare/ex stuff like tavnazian ring/black belt and so on is such a big deal anyway. I mean they don't even have to check the logs. All they really should have to do is to check if the player doesn't have the item and has finished mission/quest he'd have to do to receive it. Restoring them shouldn't be a problem at all since you finished the quest/mission and you can't sell it so all that could have happened to it is that you dropped it. Only item that would be an exception that comes to mind right now would be that Ducal Ring with 10 charges. That shows once again that people working at SE don't have common sense at all.

[PrincessMinnet]

You know what I don't understand....How can SE think even for one moment that we should pay for the months of their incompetence? It's been 7 weeks since Setzor was hacked, and yes I know others have been longer, WHY should WE pay for that time we didn't have access to the account...hey we don't own the account...we weren't renting it for that time...why should we pay for it? Now IF they were going to return the character as it was PRIOR to being hacked, then yes I could see paying the money for "storing" the account. This is the STUPIDEST thing SE could have done. They would have been better off just telling everyone tough luck get over it right from the start. They are showing absolute incompetence. The right hand still doesn't know what the left hand is doing. I understand the rule they HAD in place...but that policy was NOT meant to handle THIS situation. I don't know if its just stupidity or laziness on SE's part that they didn't actually DO anything. Oh I'm sure the financial department was all over the powers that be do give us our accounts back....they are losing money. They really can't afford to lose all these players. WAKE UP SE! Notice you are now losing accounts of people who HAVEN'T been compromised all because of how you are treating those who have. SE, are you prepared for MORE of us to do that in addition to the accounts that were compromised?


Truly, Utterly PISSED OFF
Minnet - Ifrit Server

[ronin sparthos]

The issue is that they got blindsided and lost a ton of money last month when bogus cards did not clear so someone at Square Enix decides to throw out the absolutely crazy idea to make people pay for the account so they could recoup money. Will they fix this? No, because most people think things are fine 'as-is'.

Now some people will and some wont, SE is banking on people buying back their accounts - and then providing absolutely no service because they have alot of uninformed people going around saying they are 'doing the right thing' when anyone who looks past the guise sees that this is a blatent case of 'greed'. Tons of 'good' (Do i know them personally? Nope. But i can imagine the feeling many are going through.) players quit for no damned reason because SE has decided to take the route of sheer ignorance.

SE wants lock, stock, 2 barrels and a fucking massage while they are at it. The customer doesnt deserve anything and the GMs are completely incompetent, perhaps the upper level SE representatives dont know this or they are simply also incompetent.

[Metalmyth]

Hi All

I realize that tensions are really high, but I wanted to point out a few things I have said in the past, possible actions we can take and solutions we can suggest.

In early Jan. when I mentioned the only reason that SE was begining to take action was the CC info the RMT's used was showing up as invalid so they now had accounts that couldn't bill for (current billing period) I also said it would be in SE's best intrest to get the accounts back to their rightful owners ASAP (read:billable credit cards) so they could bill and this was their only reason......

I was flamed from "SE has been fully aware of the problem and has been working on it long before, "The timming of their actions had nothing to do with the billing period" to "I had no idea what I was talking about" etc etc....so now SE not only returns the account in stripped condition but is trying to bill for late fees and server transfers...intresting

The fact is that SE did absolutley nothing to ensure that their systems were secure against further attacks, instead concentrated on how to get the accounts tied back to a billable credit card. I have heard multiple suggestions about how to prevent this but one of the most sensible suggested previously would be to tie a securuty question to any future password changes or credit card changes (going from Visa to Mastercard etc etc) all within SE's power to do...they didn't

In fact go one step further make it so that no one other than the registered owner can have their credit card tied to his account for billing. I can foresee the arguments for this...Mommy/Daddy used their credit card to set up my account and now I have my own credit card or my boyfriend set up the account and now that we have broken up etc etc. The TOS is very clear on this point....you can not sell or transfer your account to anyone....period, so allowing the credit card information to be changed to anyone other than who has registered the account is violation of their own TOS? I understand that there are/will be special circumstances but this should be a special exception process in which you have to call in....possibly get a notarized request form.

My point is that none of these things were done, and they were all within SE's power to do, I can't think of one company that after a problem is discovered that they don't first try and fix the problem before having their customers come back. Instead SE wants the customer to come back so they can bill...then maybe they will address the problem???

I still believe that Ronin's suggestion is the best and most effective...account rollbacks, the Pros far outweigh the cons. As for those that don't believe this can be done simply take a good look at the "Return to Van'Diel" program this is nothing more than an online request form to SE's server backup team to restore data from a specfic time. I won't get into the specfics of server backup (I did before in a previous post) trust me this can be done and very easily, the "Return to Van'Diel" program shows that the process is already in place. As for those that believe this would be abused, then use the current notarized form to request just that..an account rollback not very many people would go thru all the trouble and if they did it would be very easy to see when it was reported intially.

Suggestions:

1.) Don't mean to sound like a broken record, but accept your account back but put it into a cancelled state...this means that SE has gone thru all the time and trouble to give your account back but still can't bill for it...this will send the strongest message

2.) Create an online petition that asks SE for what we want to make this right

3.) Use the email address's that we all now have to voice our concerns, take some time to write out your story but here's the trick copy and paste your story into a unsecured (editable) PDF and rename it, for me as I am Canadian it would be:

"FINAL FANTASY XI NOTARIZED ACCOUNT VERIFICATION DECLARATION - Canada.pdf"

The reason would be that an email can be easily disregarded but whatever team within SE that recieves these emails would most likley save and open the PDF which would ensure that a person who is directly involved in investigating compromised accounts would read it. Sneaky...Yes but what choice have we been given? There is no other avenue for us to voice our concerns? Pol says sorry but you will have to contact a GM...GM's say sorry but that is the policy and there is nothing we can do so call POL. They will eventually redirect you to the Online Survey or Feedback but be warned these are limited in the amount of charcters you can enter...I'm sorry but it will take more than 300 charcters to tell my story.

All of the above are simply suggestions hopefully others that are affected will chime in as well

[ronin sparthos]

I was flamed from "SE has been fully aware of the problem and has been working on it long before, the timming of their actions had nothing to do with the billing period" to "I had no idea what I was talking about" etc etc....so now SE not only returns the account in stripped condition but is trying to bill for late fees and server transfers...intresting

I wont say that i didnt see this coming, just the rational half of my mind was trying to tell the irrational half that they arent 'that stupid' or 'that obvious'. Its pretty blatent that they are only doing something at all because they lost money and that they got hoodwinked by the RMT in the same way the players did. Unfortunately they do not have as much at stake in terms of irreversable damage as the players do, nor do they really have much more at stake to lose if it keeps on happening.

My point is that none of these things were done, and they were all within SE's power to do, I can't think of one company that after a problem is discovered that they don't first try and fix the problem before having their customers come back. Instead SE wants the customer to come back so they can bill...then maybe they will address the problem???

Much like many things in FFXI, it lies with the playerbase. SE isnt going to do anything drastic if a majority of the playerbase doesnt realize its a problem and demand change. SE isnt a really pro-active company in terms of revolutionizing or making big changes unless the need is there and they obviously do not see account thefts as a 'major' issue with the horrible road they have carved out for the playerbase affected by the RMT. 'Actions speak Louder than words' was it?

They still persist in the arguement that they are 'doing us a favor' and they 'didnt need to do anything at all' and whats worse is that many people among the playerbase so blinded and so focused on only themselves that they will simply write off this 'gesture of caring' as another amazing idea SE has presented the playerbase they love so much. Im going to be completely honest in saying that i try to see the other half of the spectrum as unbiased as i can but even when i look at it from that perspective i see major issues with how this is being handled. Even if i blame the consumer for everything, where is the rebuttal to the RMT that they will not be wavered by their actions and will protect the consumer?

I had an issue on Sunday with my phone and getting charged over 300bucks in text messages (they had me on the wrong plan) and i called up Verizon on a sunday, the representative took the situation, processed it, swapped me over to the plan i wanted and removed the excess charges. Verizon is definately not the cream of the crop in terms of customer service but if they can handle situations involving all that money SE could definately be doing a better job with how they are handling things. Never once was i blamed for fucking up and i got an immediate apology (man, it takes SO much to apologize?) which goes an infinitely long way in the way the customer percieves you even if you dont exactly care.

[setzor]

i've been trying to call the 858 support number for the last 30 minutes and it keeps popping up a busy sound with "not available" on my phone... can anybody else get in to their phone system?

[ronin sparthos]

Phone lines are overcrowded setzor~

Someone on Alla had to call a few times to get in touch with SE, their circuits are busy.

[setzor]

Phone lines are overcrowded setzor~

Someone on Alla had to call a few times to get in touch with SE, their circuits are busy.

hopefully it's busy with "what the hell do you mean I can't get any of my shit back, are you fucking kidding me?!"