Some people are just plain stupid.

Step 1: Find people that pre-ordered the game through GameStop. Never mind how you're going to gain this knowledge, just spend countless hours finding a target that has actually pre-ordered the game from there.

Step 2: Send them an e-mail with a unique pre-order code, that actually works, and can be registered in the official AoC website. You don't even have to follow the link in the e-mail if you're scurred.

Step 3: Steal the code you gave the person back from the original AoC website. I don't know how a scammer intends to do this, either, but hey, people believe it's possible. No, no, they lead themselves to believe that even though the code has been used, the "scammer" can take it back and use it...for...what?

Step 4: Profit?

Okay, okay, so maybe they're trying to get your login info. Yeah, that's a good excuse. The only problem is that every company offers some sort of measure against account theft. Verify some information, and the account is yours again. What did the hacker gain? Oh, he got to play AoC for two days. I think you win there; you have a character they leveled for you!

I can understand your suspicion, but it all sounds stupid. If you got a code in your e-mail inbox, then the first thing I would do would be to bypass any links on the e-mail, and just try going to the real website to enter the code. It'll work, naturally, because it's a GameSpot screw up, and not a scam.

Enjoy.

Can I have your stuff?

lulz

Originally posted by Neptus

 

---

Originally posted by NotArkard
Just an addition from my own experience(my own horror story about their service. Don't think it's good just yet because they're doing something NOW.):

Square-Enix seems to not really give a shit about your problems. The only time SE will act is when the problem becomes large-scale, and therefore threatens their income in a significant way.
You may skip everything between the dotted lines. It's just my rant. The moral of the story follows!

---

 

Don't single SE out like that, if you're going to bash SE for having a couple of bad days then please, go out, and get yourself a customer service rep job.
You will look at things so differently.
Company Policy prevents the Reps on the phone to do a whole jack load of stuff. Just like how I was limited on what I could do when I worked for Comcast.
If we couldn't fix the issue by telling you to reset your modem and wait 30 seconds to a minute for it to fix the issue, I had to assign an appointment for a truck to come in.
Okay and now you're thinking it's not the Rep's fault it's SE.
Good point myself.
Everybody has a Boss, it goes above SE's company policy to the next level which is something so crazy my head would explode if I knew.
With all the times I had to deal with SE they were all dandy delicious cupcake madness. (Madness being a good term)

 

It's not often good to make assumptions like you have. Sometimes, you'll be proven dead wrong.

I was a CSR for a long time for Sprint/Nextel handling reward programs and basic customer service for years. I then found work within the same company as a member of the Supervisor Queue, later, the escalations team, and ultimately as a trainer. After Sprint/Nextel, I moved to another corporation, which handles rebate and reward programs for over 300 clients, even though I'm not on the phones, on occasions where the customer is persistent, I will have to come down and take a call(or when the queue is off the charts). That means, technically, I have handled situations for Verizon, AT&T, Alltel, Blizzard Entertainment, Computer Associates, Electrolux, many appliance companies and a lot of others. Basically, if you've ever done a rebate, chances are I know the policies for such a company. Kinda beats a part time job at Comcast does it not?

I know what good customer service entails, as I provided it on a daily basis, I know about company policies and I happen to know they can be bypassed. If not by a member of the Supervisor Queue, then by someone in the Escalations Team. If not by THEM, then THEIR supervisor. We're not talking about a busted modem here, SE is not setting up an appointment to look into my account or anything like that. We're talking about customer retention, something that cannot be ensured by sending a technician to repair a modem.

We're discussing customer support. This is not ONE experience I had with their service, I called in dozens of times, spoke to TSRs on their web-based chat and e-mailed them. I've had bad days myself, since customer service can be stressing, but having a bad day everyday for over two months(which is how long I was dealing with this issue)? Get over it. It's also incredible how EVERY CSR just HAPPENS to have a bad day when I call in.

What they're doing now is exactly what we used to do. When a large-scale problem arises that goes against company policy, forward it all to an escalations specialist. They forward it to the escalation manager who then speaks with upper management within the company to revise the policy, if only temporarily.

Point being? Company policies can be changed, company policies have been overriden, I've done it, others can. Sometimes reps alone do not hold the power to make a decision, that is why there are members of the Sup Q, team leads, supervisors above them, escalation teams. THOSE people are in charge of doing what representatives cannot do. Obviously, a representative cannot say "Yeah, let me forward that to escalations right away" But when you get responses like "Sorry, company policy. Buy a new copy of the game" from a representative AND a supervisor, then I can say they're jerk offs. Why? Because that's not assisting in any way. I know what they can do, because I have done it, and at no point did I request the impossible.

I'm glad you had good experiences with SE, and I have no grudge against them. Good customer service is all that matters in my books, and if you try, if you send a request to upper management and it gets denied(which it RARELY does, actually, if it reaches that point), then I can understand. I can understand empathy for my situation, and trying to help, but "Sorry, buy a new copy of the game" doesn't help me.

The fact of the matter is that I complain, because I want them to revise or improve their policies because they have a game I really enjoy. In no way do I want to destroy or bring down corporations, or SE itself(like many of the anti-SOE maniacs). However, I also, am not a fanboy. If you don't want to help at all, and if you provide horrible customer service, you can have the best game in the world. I won't pay for it.

Originally posted by curiindi

I have heard past stories of players who sold their accounts to other players only to contact customer service and retrieve their accounts at a later time. They would have all the necessary information except for credit card number - which was replaced with the other player's information. My best guess is that by now SE knows of such methods and requires verification of more account information.

I find it very unfortunate that in your case (which can appear as if you were an account seller trying to take back what you sold) SE kept you from coming back to FFXI. By following their verification steps, I don't feel that SE cared any less about you the first time you called. Because of all the recent hackings, the reasonable claim that you were possibly hacked would definitely call for further attention. However, if the server message really said "The Playonline ID or password is wrong, jackass," then they really DON'T need your money!

My friend had a similar problem with SE customer service, except the last piece of missing information was the last four numbers to his Playonline ID.  Since 2004, he had returned from college and misplaced his FFXI manual, but he had the rest of billing, password, and personal information kept or remembered correctly. SE never "co-operated" with the last piece of information, so we resorted to brute force entry by spamming Playonline log-in starting from 0000 to 9999. With help from a few of us, my friend regained account access after two nights (it ended up being in the late 8000s) only to realize that his character no longer exists! Maybe the moral to this story may be that SE handles character data worse than they handle customer service?

I don't know what the moral is. I didn't sell my account, though. Even though I went to play WoW, I just kept my account inactive. I usually do this(Hell,I still have the password for my RUNESCAPE account). I like to keep my stuff. Even now, that I'm trying to make the switch from WoW back to XI, I'll keep all my WoW stuff in case I ever want to mess around with it again. If I do want to play WoW again, though, I'm so happy it's as easy as logging in and typing in my information again to start a billing cycle. Not having to call federal organizations or looking through bank statements from 2005.

My billing info was changed after I stopped playing, so naturally at that time, I didn't care because I didn't know about it. What's funny is that even with a bank statement I have(with the last 4 of the credit card and my account number) showing charges for my 4 content IDs, which I offered to fax over to them they said that it could've been done through simple forgery.

It seems to me like SE's policies protect hackers and not really the people who own the account. These recent hackings are proof. SE's policies prevent them from using any information other than the current information on the account, and as such, the REAL owner can't reset the password. Only now, because it's become such a large-scale problem are they forwarding issues to upper management.

As far as your friend, I've read on multiple forums I've googled that if you call up customer service and speak to a supervisor, they will usually give you the POL ID after you verify your information. They will tell you that this is something they're going to do as a one-time courtesy and never again, but apparently people have gotten back their entire POL IDs this way. If your friend was just missing the last 4 numbers, I'm sure they would've given him those. Then again, with SE, who knows?

On a side note, you probably know this, but if he started playing again recently he can restore his old character.

http://www.playonline.com/ff11us/campaign/wcb/index.html

Anyway, me personally? I just randomly go through MMORPG.com and look up stuff. I rarely post. I saw this and felt the urge to rant a bit.

Just an addition from my own experience(my own horror story about their service. Don't think it's good just yet because they're doing something NOW.):

Square-Enix seems to not really give a shit about your problems. The only time SE will act is when the problem becomes large-scale, and therefore threatens their income in a significant way.

You may skip everything between the dotted lines. It's just my rant. The moral of the story follows!

------------------------------------------------------------

I recently got the urge to play FFXI again, by recently I mean before all of this happened, around November of last year. So, I install everything. POL, XI, RotZ, CoP, etc. I have my POL ID written in the back of my FFXI handbook, and I usually use a set of passwords(about 10 or so different passwords to make sure everything has something different, but that I remember it).

It didn't take long for the server to reject me saying: "The Playonline ID or password is wrong, jackass."

Well, I figured it wasn't, but what could I do? I look around POL for a password reset, I look around their website, nothing. Awesome. I figured I was going to answer a security question, verify some reg codes and get a new password. WRONG.

I call up SE after failing to find anything on their website or POL itself to reset the password. They ask me for the my reg code, POL ID, all of this stuff I already have. Then, they ask me for the first 4 and last 4 of my credit card. Sweet, I'm supposed to keep expired credit cards around for all time. I kindly tell the representative this was a subscription from 2004 and that I did not have that credit card anymore. SE's response? Call up the FDIC. I think: "What the fuck is the FDIC?" But I find their number and call them anyway.

Didn't take long for me to realize the FDIC didn't have a clue of what I was talking about. Conversation went like this:

FDIC guy: Greeting, blah, blah, blah.

Me: Yeah, hi, some incompetent game company wants you to give me my old credit card number, since they say by law you keep them on your records for 5 years. I need it to reset my password so I can return myself to the wonderful online experience that is FFXI.

FDIC guy: .....Okay. Listen, guy, we don't keep credit card numbers, your bank does.

Me: Sweet.

Next step? Call up HSBC. My bank! I have an old bank statement, so that had my account number. I give it to them and the indian on the other side says:

Indian guy: That account number doesn't exist, my friend.

Me: Right. It's an old account. Give me the credit card number.

Indian guy: My friend, we don't give out credit card numbers for security reasons.

Me: The fuck am I gonna do with an expired credit card number?

I thought I was fucked. I promise this has a point. Just keep reading.

I seem to catch a break when I remember my old paypal account, and sure enough it has the last 4 and expiry date of my old CC. Hurray, I can reset my account, right? NO! You need the first 4, too.

After a few weeks of having forgotten about it, I actually come across a receipt I had which had an imprint of the card(front and back). Now I had the CVV code, the whole credit card number, everything! Very excited, I call up SE to announce that I can now reset my password and begin paying them again.

Well...not really. They say the info is wrong.

So I think "Awesome. The only credit card I had at that time, that I used to pay for the game was never used to pay for the game. Makes sense."

Just when I lost all hope, all these hackings happened. I suddenly get a good idea. I use my friend's POL account to access my POL mail(which I had written down also). Sure enough, hackers don't care to change the password for POL mail, so there it was! An email with a date where my billing info had been changed. Obviously, this wasn't done by me.

---------------------------------------------------------------

Because of all these recent hackings, SE received another call from me today at which point they did ask me all of the information posted above, and strangely enough seem to WANT to co-operate.

The moral of the story? Don't judge a company's customer service when they're undergoing what could potentially be a financial hemorrhage. Judge them for how helpful they are when they DON'T need your money. A good company is defined by the fact that they want to help you even if your $12 doesn't make a difference, not when they're losing thousands.

SOE killed my father, and raped my mother. They also gave me syphilis.

Originally posted by Astralglide

 

Originally posted by sonicbrew

 

Originally posted by gessekai332

 

Originally posted by sonicbrew

Any game that uses malware that is as harmful as StarForce will never see my machine regardless of how good it may be...

 

what?? there is no malware in this game. I have no idea what the hell you are talking about. If you are talking about in game advertising it hasnt been implemented yet and even when it is it will be this dinky little add at the top or bottom of your screen. And that is FAAAR from malware.They are even debating making it optional, and that if you allow them to put their dinky little ad on the corner of your screen you get +10% exp.  

 

The game uses Gameguard which is malware. Maybe you should educate yourself more before you just download everything and anything. Malware is destructive to your PC anyway you look at it. Do a search on Gameguard there is plenty of info. out there...

Uhhhh.... GameGuard isn't technically malware: "Software is considered malware based on the perceived intent of the creator rather than any particular features. It includes computer viruses, worms, trojan horses, spyware, dishonest adware, and other malicious and unwanted software. In law, malware is sometimes known as a computer contaminant, for instance in the legal codes of California, West Virginia, and several other U.S. states.^[1]"

 

Not only that, but Norton 2007 Enterprise doesn't recognize it as such. It apparently used to, but no longer. Gameguard does block keyloggers and bot programs, though.

 

That description is very vague. By what terms is a computer software considered contaminant? A piece of software that hogs up resources when it's not supposed to be in use? Maybe something that hooks itself to the SYSTEM processes and keeps hidden files around even if it is technically uninstalled. I believe unwanted software as being anything as stated above. Since you can wiki "malware" I suggest you wiki "GameGuard" and educate yourself.

Originally posted by brostyn

 

Originally posted by Zorvan

Originally posted by Tenebroso

So SOE STILL is the publisher, they just want to hide that fact. Personally, i dont care, if the game is good, i will play, doesnt matter who is what. As long as it isnt ultima online.......

 

Originally posted by brostyn

If SoE is still handling marketing and retail distribution, then how exactly are they not publishing it anymore? Seems like they are publishing it, but PE is trying to be shady about it.

 

 

Originally posted by observer

This makes absolutey no sense.  The only thing that changed?  GNH stopped SOE from being listed? 

For the few who have trouble making all the funny little letters make sense, let me clarify it for you.

PE is now self-published.

This means that they will be paying more for SOE to make some ads and slap out some cds in pretty boxes (marketing and distribution for those who are uninformed).

It means SOE has no say as to when the game gets released, as they can not put any pressure of the "Look for another publisher unless you release now" crap. They get no credit for the game except for being able to draw pretty pictures for ads and make pretty boxes for cds to go in.

It also means SOE has no legal claim to the game if it fails, unlike they did with VG. SOE is putting none of their money into GnH, therefore they have nothing to collect.

Does that help you understand, now?

Well, except for the fact that being a publisher means EXACTLY; bring a product to retail and marketing said product. SoE is still doing this. So, again, how exactly is PE being self published when SOE is doing the marketing and taking it to retail, which isby definition is publishing.

 

 

If you bring a product to retail and do marketing its called publishing. Look it at up. You obviously are the one who is confused by small words.

 

It's pretty self explanatory. Since you still seem to be having difficulty with words I'll take another crack at explaining it(even though in the seven pages I read this has been explained in at least a dozen different ways already). PE made the decision that SOE will no longer be the publisher of the game, meaning that SOE can no longer set any deadlines, as any publisher normally can(this applies to books, games, anything that involves a publisher). However, PE is not retarded. Knowing that SOE is the excellent publisher they are, they will still be paying them INDEPENDENTLY for their work in advertisements and retail distribution. This by no means makes them the publisher of the game. Think of ANY advertisement you've ever seen on a website, hell, even on this very own website. You see advertisements for a bunch of games. Someone's getting paid for that advertisement space, does that mean that MMORPG.com is the official publisher of every game advertised here?

Originally posted by LouiseK
I hope i get to play!

Does anyone have any insight on how they actually choose who gets to play a beta? Maybe i can edge my bets... :D

Is it completely random, or first come basis or do they hand select so they end up with some with amazing setups, some with really dire ones, some kids, some pensioners, some guys, some gals, etc etc.

Would be great to know :)