My husband is a WOW fiend and came home last night to discover that his account of several years had been closed by the admins for illegal trading and unspecified acts of improper behaviour and wearing white after labour day and voting for the NDP, all while he was at work. He's (so far) been unable to gain any insight into what went on, either by setting up a temporary account and attempting contact with his guild to see if any of them have disappeared as well or getting an answer from admin. Anyone of you WOW deviants have any ideas on how to fix it or, even more importantly, find out who hacked him and hunt them down?
Thanks
WOW widow
with sad and angry husband
PS I'm hoping for an answer to the "hunt them down" portion in all honesty. It's painful to see a grown man sitting in front of a blank monitor weeping into his sleeve.
First of all, your husband should email
[email protected] in regards to his banned account from the email address he registered to the account. If he thinks his account has been hacked, then he should explain that to them, and ask for assistance in recovering it.
If he's not been hacked, he should review the ToU and the EULA that he agreed to (both easily found on the world of warcraft website) to ensure that he didn't break any of the rules himself. Buying gold from a third party is against the rules. Purchasing an account from a third party is against the rules. Using a power leveling service (having a third party play the account to level it quickly) is against the rules. Using a bot of any sort to play the game for you is against the rules. Sharing your account with anyone other than a minor child that you are the legal guardian of (even if that person is your legal spouse) is against the rules. If he's done any of those things, the ban might well be warranted.
If he has actually been hacked, there is no "tracking down" whoever did it. Hacking WoW accounts is a rather wide spread industry, and takes place from many countries all over the world. Most hacked accounts are compromised by a keylogger or trojan. Generally you get these things by visiting and/or downloading things from websites affiliated with gold selling companies, though the website may not be obviously affiliated. He may have thought he was just looking at a guide for leveling engineering, but in reality, he was on a gold seller's website.
Your husband should immediately scan his system with multiple anti-malware programs. Spy Bot Search and Destroy is a popular one. There are others as well, many mentioned here in the computers forum.
Do not expect Blizzard to respond to any emails in less than 48 hours. While they have improved their response times to account administration questions/issues (NOT billing, mind you, thats a separate department), the holiday season always seems to be a busy time and they're pretty much always bogged down with these sorts of issues anyway. Do not expect further explanation from them other than that originally received. They are purposefully vague in their account termination notices.
If your husband was hacked, then Blizzard will repair any damage that was done to his account. It will take time, but they are pretty good about fixing this sort of issue. A guildy of mine was hacked in Dec., and his account (and our guild bank as well) was restored in full within 2 weeks.
Your husband should be patient, and make sure he's gone through the appropriate channels when communicating with Blizzard.
I don't think it's saved with the account either, but can you change the cc information to a new name that is not bound to the account?
The credit card information you input is not saved to the account. But having one's account compromised usually means that one's home computer was compromised, thus one's credit card and/or banking information may also have been stolen. You can, yes, change the credit card on a WoW account to any credit card. The credit card used does not need to be in the name of the WoW account holder.
