Hacked Account -- any experience?

[Morat20]

No, you can turn autocast on and off in the spellbook. What I do is put the stuff I NEVER turn off in there, like claw or bite or whatever, and just have the ones I might want to turn off or trigger manually on the bar.

Oh good. Time to change the pet bar. I take it things like Heart of a Phoenix auto-cast too?

I had fun. Ran around and mined fel iron and adamantine in Zangermarsh. It was...me and a Death Knight, as best I could tell. Collected some motes. Probably not worth crap, but I was there. I need to rebind the controls. I keep strafing when I want to turn.

My wife logged into her main, said "Oh my god, what's she wearing? That's fucking ugly. Wait, what? That fucker changed her face! How the hell did he change her face!" and then created a Dranaei mage because, quote, "I hearthstoned my Warlock and ended up someplace I'd never been and said fuck this. I'll go back to it when I'm willing to figure out how to get her to Ironforge".

[bhodi]

There is now a barber in every city. Also, he moonlights as a plastic surgeon.

Glad you had fun. Motes aren't overly valuable but you can get some cash for them on the AH since engineers need them to plevel.

[WindupAtheist]

Get her to Ironforge and fix her hair/face. She should be enjoying the free levels the hacker gave her, not rerolling. 

[Nebu]

Collected some motes. Probably not worth crap, but I was there.

They aren't worth what they used to be, but they still sell well to people skilling up alts.  You may be pleasantly surprised.

[Morat20]

Get her to Ironforge and fix her hair/face. She should be enjoying the free levels the hacker gave her, not rerolling. 

Oh, she will -- it's just it took her most of the time after work to patch WoW up, and she didn't feel like messing with it. Plus, we have a friend that's new to the server (he built a DK there, but he's wanting to run up through the levels). So she has a space goat mage, he has a space goat warrior, and I've got a level 23 space goat Shaman sitting around that I'll use when they catch up.

Of course, I have to remember what the hell his talents were and respec him. That's the biggest damn hassle, really, is that I haven't played in so long and have all these talent points and I have to try to remember if there were specific talents I chose for a specific reason. With my mage, it's easy. She was almost pure ice-spec. But I can't remember if I had the Shaman enhancement or what.....

I'll let her know the barbershop can fix that stuff, though.

As for motes -- I'm keeping them and elements in the bank, since I AM an engineer in need of leveling. :) I figure once I get to the top I can sell off things. I probably do need to go through and sell off a bunch of old elements of air and whatnot.

[Nebu]

I think I found fire to be the most useful, but you may need them all until you get over 400. 

Keep in mind that you will get a lot of new recipes when you get to Northrend.  Don't bother with a lot of the high end, exotic stuff until you see what recipes you have available to you in the new expansion. 

[Morat20]

I think I found fire to be the most useful, but you may need them all until you get over 400. 

Keep in mind that you will get a lot of new recipes when you get to Northrend.  Don't bother with a lot of the high end, exotic stuff until you see what recipes you have available to you in the new expansion. 

I'm still at the point where adamintiam frames give me skill ups -- I think I'm like 305 or 310. I want to build the flying machine, and isn't there a motorcycle recipe somewhere?

[bhodi]

I JUST leveled engineering past where you are. Don't build too many adamantium frames. This should help...

http://www.wowhead.com/?spells=11.202#200+7+1

Once you get to 335 you can buy the smoke flare in shattrath city and build those until 350. I built frames until 330, then grenades until 335.  flying machine is 300 skill, I had built it way before I was on adamantite frames.

Motorcycle is thousands and thousands of gold and is an end-game vanity item.

[Nevermore]

There is now a barber in every city. Also, he moonlights as a plastic surgeon.

The barber can change your hair style and color but I thought to change your actual face you had to play cash money for a 're-customization'.

[Nebu]

Motorcycle is thousands and thousands of gold and is an end-game vanity item.

Motorcycle requires 450 engineering and exhalted faction with a particular vendor to buy the recipe. 

The parts are crazy expensive (~12,500g from a vendor, 12 titansteel bars which can be made once every 20 h from titanium and eternals, etc.). 

The price for one on the AH is about 16k gold and that's not a bad deal.   

[Morat20]

Motorcycle is thousands and thousands of gold and is an end-game vanity item.

Motorcycle requires 450 engineering and exhalted faction with a particular vendor to buy the recipe. 

The parts are crazy expensive (~12,500g from a vendor, 12 titansteel bars which can be made once every 20 h from titanium and eternals, etc.). 

The price for one on the AH is about 16k gold and that's not a bad deal.   

Everyone needs a goal in life. And if mine is to have an imaginary motorcycle for my imaginary hunter, who's to say otherwise? :)

I am considering a DK -- what are the restrictions on those? (One per server? Just need a level 60+ somewhere? What?). What's a good race for it? I was thinking Gnomish, actually, since I've never really had much to do with the Horde side and I don't have a Gnome. :) I was also considering ditching my undead warlock for a blood-elf warlock, since it's only level 12 or so and I hear the blood-elf starting zone is nice.

[Ingmar]

The BElf starting zone is pretty cool. You could also make an undead warlock, run it to Undercity and take the portal thingy, and just play a undead warlock through the blood elf zones, too.

I'm not sure if there even are any restrictions on making DKs anymore. Even if you never play it again their starting zone thing is definitely worth playing through once.

[Vash]

I'm not sure if there even are any restrictions on making DKs anymore.

1 DK per server per account is the only one I know of that's still in place.

[Morat20]

I'm not sure if there even are any restrictions on making DKs anymore.

1 DK per server per account is the only one I know of that's still in place.

Well then, it appears my Gnomish Death Knight will ride! Sadly, the name Twinkerbelle is taken on my server.

[Merusk]

Collected some motes. Probably not worth crap, but I was there.

They aren't worth what they used to be, but they still sell well to people skilling up alts.  You may be pleasantly surprised.

Speaking of skilling-up, you don't have to max out your prof to get to Grand Master (the Northrend level) and up your cap to 450.  I believe it's only 350, so you don't spend the hell of grinding up Hardened Adamantite and Felsteel Bits that was BC-era tradeskills.   You'll flip right over to Cobalt and Saronite with the new recipes at 350.

[Ozzu]

I'm bringing this thread back from the dead a bit. I just had this exact thing happen a few days ago. I hadn't bothered checking my email that day and at around 4 PM, I checked it and I had a password reset and 10 day free trial of WotLK email sitting in my inbox. Uh oh.

I immediately go reset the password, change my login email on my Battle.net account, and go check and see if any damage had been done in the 7 hours they had access to the account. In that 7 hours, they maxed my mining on my hunter and had a good two pages full of thorium for sale on the AH. I also had a few hundred gold I didn't have before. At this point, I'm thinking I came out ahead in this.

That's before I got an email later that night saying my account was banned for abusing the economy. Fuck me. I'm currently waiting for Blizzard to respond to my appeal.

[Koyasha]

I'm interested to know what the hell banned for "abusing the economy" means, so if they give you details on that at some point, do let us know.  And good luck getting your account reactivated, preferably with the extra money the account thief so kindly gifted you with.

[Nebu]

Have you seen the number of underground miners these days?  I imagine the thorium has something to do with the economy manipulation. 

Long before I quit playing WoW I gave up mining.  Every time I'd come upon a titanium node in Shalozar, a level 50something would pop out from under the ground while I was attempting to mine the node.  It happened less in icecrown, but I think that's an issue of mobs and aggro. 

There are still many easily exploitable elements in WoW. 

[Delmania]

Ok, I plead idiocy in the case of underground miners, what is it?  My defense is that the only character I mine with is my death knight, and he is at 60 until I feel motivated to level him.

[Hawkbit]

There's ways to get underneath the terrain and mine nodes from there so you don't have to deal with mobs. 

'abusing the economy' to me meant there was likely trade chat spam involved. 

[Ozzu]

They explain it pretty well in their email.

**Notice of Account Closure***

Account Name: ######

Reason for Closure: Terms of Use Violation -- Exploitative Activity: Abuse of the Economy

This account was closed because one or more characters were identified exchanging, or contributing to the exchange of, in-game property (items or gold) for "real-world" currency. This exchange process negatively impacts the World of Warcraft game environment by detracting from the value of the in-game economy.

Even if this behavior is the result of a third party accessing the account instead of the registered user (for example, a friend, family member, or leveling service) then the account can still be held responsible for the penalty because of the impact it had on the game environment.

We've found the above behavior is many times directly related to groups responsible for compromising World of Warcraft accounts; we take these issues very seriously. To better understand our position against exploitative activity and the risks involved, please review this article: http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/info/basics/antigold.html

The exploitative activity that took place on this account violates the World of Warcraft Terms of Use. We ask you take a moment to review these terms at http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/legal/termsofuse.html. Any recurring subscriptions on this account have been suspended to prevent further monetary charges.

For any disputes of this action, please visit the Exploitative Activity FAQ and Contact page here: http://us.blizzard.com/support/article/exploitfaq

Regards,

Blizzard Entertainment
www.worldofwarcraft.com

[Lantyssa]

I immediately go reset the password, change my login email on my Battle.net account, and go check and see if any damage had been done in the 7 hours they had access to the account. In that 7 hours, they maxed my mining on my hunter and had a good two pages full of thorium for sale on the AH. I also had a few hundred gold I didn't have before. At this point, I'm thinking I came out ahead in this.

Hopefully you use a different password for the attached e-mail, but you may want to change it, too, as well as doing a system scan for viruses and trojans.

To those in the switch-over thread, I present Exhibit A, within a week of the forced switch announcement.  Have a nice day.

[WindupAtheist]

I've been playing MMO games, like a lot of people here, for as long as the genre has existed. I have never been hacked. I have to ask, what the hell are you people doing? Especially the ones who get hacked repeatedly. Even if no one in this thread has, we've seen it happen.

[Rasix]

I've been playing MMO games, like a lot of people here, for as long as the genre has existed. I have never been hacked. I have to ask, what the hell are you people doing? Especially the ones who get hacked repeatedly. Even if no one in this thread has, we've seen it happen.

I got hacked in EQ once.  But really, I was young, had poor security on the account, downloaded a lot of crap in college,  and had been involved in a lot of ebaying.   It was bound to happen. 

Still, account was restored fully. Just took a little while.

[proudft]

I just had this exact thing happen a few days ago. I hadn't bothered checking my email that day and at around 4 PM, I checked it and I had a password reset and 10 day free trial of WotLK email sitting in my inbox. Uh oh.

I'm morbidly curious how this even happens.  Was your WoW password unique to WoW and reasonably non-guessable/brute-forceable?  People always mumble about keyloggers and stuff, but based on real-world password behavior, I have to wonder if it's reused terrible passwords that are the culprit. At least I _hope_ that's the culprit.  

[Ozzu]

I'm morbidly curious how this even happens.  Was your WoW password unique to WoW and reasonably non-guessable/brute-forceable?  People always mumble about keyloggers and stuff, but based on real-world password behavior, I have to wonder if it's reused terrible passwords that are the culprit. At least I _hope_ that's the culprit.  

That's not the culprit in my case. I literally use a combination of random letters and numbers. The only thing I can figure is that they figured out my login email, knew my name, and then answered my secret question. My secret question was what high school I attended. At the time I chose it, I didn't think anything of it. Now, I realize that's easily accessible information and if they just happened to know my name and my email, they could easily reset my WoW password.

Or maybe they did brute force it. I don't install anything from anyone I don't know/trust. I use Chrome/Firefox so I'm pretty safe just browsing the web. I did a scan for any malware/viruses/trojans the moment this happened even though I knew I didn't have anything. I didn't.

The secret question is the only thing I can figure out.

[Rasix]

Could be a compromised addon.  What do you normally have installed?

[Ozzu]

Could be a compromised addon.  What do you normally have installed?

I hadn't played in months and didn't even have it installed on this computer anymore. I installed it again just to see if he stripped all my characters. So, needless to say, no addons.

[Ozzu]

Just got an email from Blizzard about my account. The good part:

Recent actions of this account have been deemed inappropriate for World of Warcraft by the Support staff of Blizzard Entertainment.  Due to this infraction, this World of Warcraft account has been reviewed for closure by the Account Administration staff. Our investigation shows this was caused by unauthorized account access.  As a result, the World of Warcraft account will not be closed.

The rest of the email is them outlining the fact that restoring characters that this person may have deleted or items that they might have gotten rid of will take more time. None of that really applies to me that I can tell. So, I now have my account back. Nice.

[proudft]

Stupid secret questions.  I hate them so.  What's the point of a password with those damn things?

[Rasix]

Could be a compromised addon.  What do you normally have installed?

I hadn't played in months and didn't even have it installed on this computer anymore. I installed it again just to see if he stripped all my characters. So, needless to say, no addons.

It was likely compromised while you were still playing and they simply filed it under "rape at a later date".

[Ozzu]

It was likely compromised while you were still playing and they simply filed it under "rape at a later date".

While that's possible, the only addons I used were a couple of CTMod ones, Gatherer, and Auctioneer. If one of those is the culprit, a lot of people are in trouble.

[Numtini]

I've been playing MMO games, like a lot of people here, for as long as the genre has existed. I have never been hacked. I have to ask, what the hell are you people doing? Especially the ones who get hacked repeatedly. Even if no one in this thread has, we've seen it happen.

I was researching specs late at night and was pretty tired and clicked on the wrong link on a message board and got hit with a keylogger. Fortunately AVG nabbed it, but it went to what otherwise looked like a legitimate page and I never would have known.

That's when I decided to get an authenticator.

[Sheepherder]

Ozzu, have you switched your account over to Battle.Net yet?  Did you use a new email address or an old one if so?  Was your account active (your money) when it got hacked?

[Ozzu]

Ozzu, have you switched your account over to Battle.Net yet?  Did you use a new email address or an old one if so?  Was your account active (your money) when it got hacked?

Yes. I switched my account over right when they first started suggesting you do it. It was a while ago. I used an old email address that I've had for a long time and the account was not active when it was hacked.

I changed the email address after this incident to an email I haven't ever really used for anything.