Guild Wars - Ridiculous security model

I had this issue. Sent an e-mail to support and had a reply one hour later with a character name. I included some info about the character (class, hair colour and armour :p) and that seemed to help.
 
If they ever bother getting back to me I think I will just delete that character and create a new one with an easy to remember name.
 
I was going to say, next time, you'll not forget your character name..

When you do get started though, if you want any help with anything, feel free to give me a shout, I'm often around somewhere working on my vanquishing mostly.

IGN: Ceryn Ashar
 
It's an awesome game. The only problem is too many accounts are getting hacked so to deal with it in the most cost effective manner they decided to crank up their security system and offer no support to those who were legitimately wronged.

Awesome MMORPG for a starter thou, it was my first mmo too and you completely have the option to play it as a single player game.
 
good luck with their support, it's horrible, took 3 weeks to get a reply to my problem with a prophecies collectors edition key not giving the bonus content and then another 2 weeks for them to sort it out even though i gave them everything they would ever have needed to know in the original email i sent them.

i loved the game to bits, but do not like their support.
 
Last edited:
It really does seem to depend, my other half had a problem with her account getting blocked (error 45) due to an attempted hack by her 'ex'. She managed to get it all sorted within 24 hours, so it really can be a bit hit and miss.. Weekends for some reason, are never a good time.
 
IIRC your username is an email address? Whats the fuss; they could just email it to you.

As soon as you start fill up all your character slots with randoms so you can get birthday presents!
 
The main reason that the game asks you for a character name of a toon on your account is that it was suspected the NCSoft had a security problem with their website, and that if a hacker gained access to the NCSoft account they could reset your game password without you knowing about it or even being asked.

So A-Net (the actual makers of Guild Wars) decided to implement an added layer of protection of asking for a name of one of your characters from the account. This isn't new to GW, (it's been in place for over 9 months), and there is a LARGE notice on the character screen telling you, that you need to remember the name of a character.

So we here we have a case of the game writers taking security precautions, because their publisher couldn't give a rats-arse. I for one applaud A-Net for at least doing something about account security.
 
the system is fine, it protects a lot of people from losing there accounts.
you should always create characters you will remember anyway! whats the point of having a character name with 100 different special characters in it?

my first gw char for instance was Trinity :p
 
It's better than NCSofts account management.
For over a year (last I checked it still was not fixed) you would randomly login in to your account and find yourself on someone elses.

With full access to change stuff.

I didn't believe it till I logged in to someones account page with a high level character etc etc, I let him know it happened so he could complain to ncsoft about it. I didn't go poking around because I'm not a ****.
 
Lol, this will teach you to write down login info and character names in future. :D

But i agree its a bit of a stretch tho i cant recall ever having to remember a character name just username in GW.
 
Or just do what I did.

TAKE A SCREENSHOT of your character with it's name showing, on the day of creation. This will doubly serve as a reminder of your toon's birthday (and the associated present).
 
Anon-e-mouse said:
Or just do what I did.

TAKE A SCREENSHOT of your character with it's name showing, on the day of creation. This will doubly serve as a reminder of your toon's birthday (and the associated present).
Click to expand...

It's not the security that's the problem, it's not hard to remember a character name. The problem lies in the way NCSoft deals with it when it goes wrong.
 
In reality the game is owned by ArenaNet.

NCSoft is just the publisher/support provider, the two are not the same company.

A-net introduced the character name captcha, because of NCSoft ****up. That the support isn't the best in the world is not A-net's fault.
 
And in a case of absolutely stupedous timing, I checked my e-mail last night to find several from NCSoft all of which were saying "Someone from (IP address based in Singapore) has reset your password."

They had managed to logon to my main account because you can find out what a couple of my toons are called on my main account, but the character name question prevented them from accessing the other accounts, so all in all I'M FARKING GLAD THAT SECURITY QUESTION IS IN THERE

And a YA-BOO SUCKS to NCSoft for getting my accounts compromised in the farking first place.
 
iamtheoneneo said:
the system is fine, it protects a lot of people from losing there accounts.
you should always create characters you will remember anyway! whats the point of having a character name with 100 different special characters in it?

my first gw char for instance was Trinity :p
Click to expand...

That's (part of) the point I'm making - I couldn't create a character with a name I would remember because of the restrictions in place, for example "Trinity" would be illegal because it doesn't contain a space. Character names have to be two words (for new characters at least), and I didn't want to use my real name (or the name of any real people for that matter).

I didn't put any special characters in, I could correctly remember the first name of my character, I just couldn't remember the surname (that I didn't want to have to enter in the first place). Don't forget that as the game is around 5 years old, most 'normal' character names are already taken, so you have to be quite creative (thus making it harder to remember). As mentioned, I wanted "Hang Time" but that was taken. If you put yourselves in the shoes of a literal complete newbie to a game (and genre for that matter), when you have just installed a game, you are itching to get started, you'll want to get your character up and running and see what the game is all about, not faffing about worrying about what your character is called.

Actually if you think about it, if character names are being used for security, that implies that if security is so paramount, you SHOULD be using special characters (if possible) or at least non-dictionary words for character names.

Also, one thing I perhaps should clarify, is that when I setup my account I entered a character name that I'd intended to use and ticked the remember my username and character name boxes. However, it wouldn't let me create a character with that name, so next time I came back to the login screen, it had of course remembered the 'wrong' character name. It never crossed my mind when I quit the game for the first time that I would need to remember my character name.
 
Last edited:
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom