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Age of Conan and Banned Accounts.
Vanguard008
Member Posts: 22
Good afternoon everyone,
I have been a AoC player, guild and raid leader for over 2 years now. I have been unable to play my account for sometime because of RL, and when I tried to get back into gaming using my AoC account, I could not get into the game and play my characters. After a month of e-mails Funcom finally confirms that someone else is paying and using my account. This being a surpise to me, Funcom and I move onto stage 2 of the process of trying to get my account back.
Stage two, involves me finding my orignal CD key, providing credit card information and sending photo ID. I have kept the game CD key, thus I was able to give them all the information they require. This process is much quicker takes only a couple of days. Even though after confirming that I am the owner, I have created the account, Funcom tells be that I have breached EULA and after never responding for 15 days that my account was taken, that the account in question has now be banned.
Banned account, even after them agreeing that I am the owner of the account. But becuase of this 15 day policy which I have never seen in the EULA, and thus still don't see it in the EULA, the account well be banned, and thus my time building and creating the account and account guilds, is gone, wiped, history.
Is it because the person who as taken the account paid money, and funcom has no way to give it back? Is it because Funcom as no backup system for characters thus they are unable to restore charcters after they have been compromised? Prehaps they think accounts don't get taken (cough, cough, Sony, cough, cough) that in some way I have breached an EULA that exists somewhere?
I was aware that Funcom CSR has a history of treating clients as, lets say, digital items that are out of sight out of mind, that they would take long term clients who has spend there time building an account and creating in game guilds better. But fool me twice shame on me.
If anyone else as has an experience of dealing with banned issues for reasons that I have stated above or any other reasons. Please post in the forums, to let people know what they are getting into once they deal with Funcom.
Atleast Sony admitted their mistakes and have done there best to fix them.
Former Funcom client, love the the AoC game, bad experiences with AoC company.
Comments
I had my account banned, received an email about it, I deleted it because im not ever going back to the game
But I suspect it was hacked by gold spammers, they can keep it. Funcom is to greedy
At least the account is banned, I mean, the person who stole it from you lost it too. You lost an eye but you made him go blind. I hope this makes you feel a little better
OP, it just sounds like a very odd situation. I guarantee it doesn't happen often that someone's account is stolen and then the thief proceeds to pay the stolen account's monthly subscription. That just seems very odd.
I'm sure after reviewing the situation, Funcom CS considered it possible that you sold your account. If you ask me, that seems like the most likely scenario.
Did the person who stole your account use your credit card for paying the monthly fee? Or did they use their own? Or some other method?
A similiar event occurred to an ex guildie of mine. He had stopped playing WoW, and his account was hacked. The character was used for farming because the toon was already max level.
FunCom: AKA FUncom.
I am willing to bet the OP sold his account or gave it away thinking he would never return to AoC. Now he wants his account back and is playing the victim. At this point they should just outright ban the account.
Guilty until proven innocent, huh?
Yeah, it's not like Funcom has a history of screwing people over or anythi-- Oh, wait!
Actually it happens a lot more than you think.
Many hackers use stolen CC info to reactivate inactive hacked accounts. It usually takes a while for the owner of the CC to notice and issue a chargeback through their CC company, in which then the account gets banned due to a chargeback. But by this time, the account has already been picked clean and likely already used for farming or spamming for several days.
Unfortunately if chargebacks happen often enough to a company, CC companies start issuing fines for each additional chargeback, which can get very expensive for a company. If there's any amusingly ironic part to it though, is that a lot of gold selling sites are where a good portion of the stolen CC info is skimmed from.
And this is why gold buying causes a lot more problems than most people realize.
Funcom concluded, that the account was shared or sold, which isn't the case. The mistake that I made is that the game password and account password were the same, which were used by all accounts that I have.
Based on what they assume, without any facts on their part, that they failed to share with me, the account gets banned. Now I know most mmo gamers spend lots of time building their accounts, I just hope that this is not a wide spread system used by other gaming companies. This is the first time I've been treated in such a manner by Funcom, I just assuming that they have taken the easier path, because their is no way I can counter them without legal action. Which is a waste of time, and they know it is. If the other user lost their money, well IMO I dought Funcom gave them their money back.
I am hoping for constructive replies so large companies like Funcom well change their relationship with gamers, just because it's easy, doesn't make it right.
If similar things happen to you please post it so game developers, might see how their clients are being treated by their CSR teams. In my case it's funcom, but is seems this is something that happens, and the easy path is to ban accounts and think no more of it. I would like to contact this company however, their is no phone number for support of this game, so I am just a digital person, thus easy to put out of sight, out of mind.
I still like the Age of Conan game but find the Funcom customer relationship distrubing. After doing some back dated searches about Funcom and their CSR service, this seems to be a on going occurance with them. Don't take my word for it check for yourself.
Have fun in what every game you play, but know that your rights don't exist with this company.
Well i suppose this is better then what wow did to me, i did play wow when it came out (burning crusade or somthing cant remember name), and last week i got a mail from them saying "you are accussed for account sharing", haha havnt played wow for very very very very long time :P
i wouldnt go back, i dont even know what happened after burning crusade, but quitted at that time.
Hello:D
Vanguard008: Are you saying that someone took your place in game and pretended to be you?, you do state that you are a Guild and Raid leader thus decieving all your guild-mates and friends, You could make a good comedy out of that.
As to Funcom's support staff ... laughable ... incompetent.. these are the words i think most people would use who have had dealings with them.
But i still play play AOC and i do enjoy my time ingame.
Goodluck op on getting this matter solved.
In a similar experience with Customer Support and their power hungry nature, this has to stop. I played a game "Runes of Magic" I had spent at the time $1,950.00USD on ingame currency etc etc. We had a guild I would help guildies etc etc. Then along came a day when I felt something was wrong. I used sarcasm in my support ticket. They then decided that I had used an innappropriate word. I looked up the ESRB rating of the game and attempted to ascertain if the word would be one of the excludable words for the rating, and it was not. I therefore escalated. Needless to say, they refused to unban my account and I am no longer permitted to spend more money on their game. I probably would have spent another 2k....
The point? Customer support staff for computer games are psychologically unstable and they need professional support. Seriously. On average they are minimum wage people or just over minimum wage people who could care less about the company and when the opportunities arise where they can be just a little bigger and control someone in some way, they take the chance. I feel sorry for them.
But I feel for your position too. On the other hand, if Funcom can see that you have spent a great deal of money on the game, what basis of proof could they possibly have for your "account sharing".
Are the IP's from the same city?
Is the other user a friend in game?
What relation to you was the person who took your account?
I cannot understand why game companies, in full knowledge that we like the game and wish to spend more money on their game, deny our access to our accounts.
Mind=boggled
I seek to find the Perfect MMO, do you have what I seek?
YA add me to that list, and your definitely not alone
been with funcom/AOC since launch, havent played for a good 6 months, come back only due to someone telling me my account was hacked
sent a message to the customer service, asked a couple questions from the first GM, was prepared to answer them til a Second GM came in and restored my stuff, went ahead and unsubbed after that just to pay off that month (no payment reversal)
did the necessary steps of new pw as the second GM suggested
come back 2 days later, account is banned.
Ya, didnt bother raising hell about it after that, just made it a point to wipe my card info and everything else after that headache.
only a matter of time this ends up being a Article done by a mmo site as to why funcom cant get their stuff together part deux.
Had something like this happen to me in WoW. I had deactivated my account, but somehow in the year or so break I took, it was reactivated with a timecard and then banned shortly after. My guess was some gold seller/farmer or whatever. All I had to do though was call them up and ask about the banned account and they looked into it. After a short period (2 weeks or so) they found it to be in good standing and I was able to reclaim my lost items and a character that had been deleted.
Not sure how they track that kind of activity but I was suprised I got the account back at all. I thought they'd just blame me for selling the account or something and then ignore me forever.
Fixed that for ya
This is too bad that this is happens, if we knew some gaming laywers they could have a field day with gaming companies, but I guess international law would make it a pain. In my case, my time, my guild leading, and the general havoc I use to cause to keep the game interesting for I don't know about 100 people is now gone. I'm sure they well find someone else to take over what I was doing, but am I going to say good things about Funcom CSR? No, but still the game of Age of Conan is one of the better MMO's out there in the current market.
After reading Funcom's stock report, they are losing lots of money every quarter, if The Secret World fails for them the company looks to be going into default. Hopefully somone takes over the Age of Conan IP, Until than enjoy what games you play, but expect nothing from Funcom CSR teams. Don't take my word for it check for yourself.
So be careful of what you waste your time in, in the case of gaming, your rights has a consumer are very limited, seems to be on the whim of the person you are talking to in the CSR team.
Still playing games, but spending less time now after this, because what is the point if you can lose everything in a matter of weeks. Just having fun now and avoiding the grind traps that most MMO gamers find themselfs getting into.
Have fun and good luck, hopefully some dev's well read this post and take an interest in what their CSR teams are doing. After all the dev's make the world, the CSR suppose to keep the people to keep their world going.
Might not be, but sure sounds like it.
Oh, the result of my dealings with Funcom was, account banned, destroyed and at the end of their e-mail, words of GM of Funcom.
"Since you did not contact us within 15 days of the account becoming "compromised" and the account was in good standing until you reported it "stolen" we have decided to simply close the account permanently as a compromised account violates our user agreement.
We never like to do this however since the real owner cannot be verified, it is the most fair option to both disputing parties.
Thank you for your understanding.
You are more than welcome to create a new account and play."
So all you have to do to destroy someone account is have it for 15 days, because Funcom well not take the time to verify the owner, which was done with other GM's. So they took my money, the offending parties money, banned the account at at the end suggested that I create a new account and spend more money again.
This is how Funcom works with compromised accounts, what's in quotes is their words not mine. This 15 policy is not in the EULA, like I said though it's takes too much time to take this any futher and they know it.
Know you rights has a client of a gaming company, you have none, it's all on the whim of the CSR's you are dealing with.
Good Luck and Have Fun.
PS. I was verfied as the owner of the account from other GM's which transfered me to another GM and this kept on going until the above result occured.
AoC found out without a reasonable doubt that you have violated the terms of agreement, by sharing or otherwise participating in real money trade, or failure to safeguard your password from a friend. If you know anyone in your area or near your area of residence who may have gotten access to your password, that would be a violation of the terms. if you live ten miles from the hacker and they use the same IP carrier as you or near your town, then chances are, they automaticly assume that you shared the info with that person or did not appropriatly safeguard your password.
Also, its not alot of evidence they need, maybe even the person they spoke to has proof of bank statments that were mailed to AoC in exchange of not being prosecuted for hacking. I dont know a single person who would buy an account that would not furnish this info if required to either protect themselfs from prosecution or protect a stranger instead.
Unfotuantly since I dont know you personaly and do not have access to the AoC system, and you furnished the information that they allowed you to submit your photo and cc number to them as proof of your account, shows that they do care about it and was offering you a benefit of the doubt at the start of the process and later in the investigation had determianed you violated the terms.
Just because a murderer doesnt know how the cops caught him, doesnt mean there was no evidence.
"You are more than welcome to create a new account and play."
Don't need to say more, spend more money on new account and your time.
Thank You Funcom,
All those who have played or are playing Funcom games, know what what their CSR teams are like. Don't take my word for it check for yourself, google is a wonderful tool. So Is the BBB.
FYI there was a attack on funcom account over a certain period of time, always happy to see people defending the companies, before searching for themselfs other sources of information.