World Of Warcraft Account Hack

Logging on at the usual time became nothing but usual when a mysteriously broken password prevents you from logging on WoW. . . Oh no, I've been hacked!

The news that someone hacked and stole your World of Warcraft account arrives by email one fateful morning. Upon opening up the inbox, a new message from Blizzard reads,

"Dear Customer, congratulations on your recent server transfer! If this transfer is an error, please contact Blizzard support at: 1-800..." And the first thought that pops up might be like,

"Uh, what server transfer? I've been asleep the last 8 hours and I never touched my computer, I live alone, and no one knows I play World of Warcraft. So how could. . ." Next comes the frightening realization that China might be in your account, robbing your guild and selling your gold,

Madly clicking your way to the WoW directory on the computer, you double click that "W" you would normally only click on Monday - Thursday, your weekday raid nights. It feels like the loading screen cannot process fast enough. Time to input the password. Pleading thoughts race through the mind, "Please please please please don't be hacked, please please please. . ."

After striking the enter key to submit the username and password, the log-in screen displays the fateful message, "Incorrect username and/or password. Please contact Blizzard support."

Returning to the email inbox, another message appears. It's from the Guild Master, your boss away from work.

How to Keep a Wacraft Account From Keyloggers From Screwing You

"Hey, I don't know what the hell you think you're doing, but that bullsh*t with you spamming guild chat with Chinese characters and typing "SEX LEG"" all over the place really pissed a lot of people off. On top of that, you're the last person to access the guild bank and guess what, it's empty. Very funny, a** hole. How come I don't see your name on the roster? Are you so low as to loot and scoot with all our things? Man, if you really did take our stuff and transfer off the server, I'm going to burn your reputation so bad once I get on the forums. But you do show good attendance to the raids, so I'll give you the benefit of the doubt and see what you have to say before I tear your sorry a** a new one."

The Explanation of WoW Account Hackers and Gold Farmers

Account hacking happens very often in World of Warcraft. Perhaps not as dramatic as the above short story, but the Lastly, if you do manage to log into the game, you can contact a Blizzard GM in-game. The wait time is usually very long (6 to 10 hours, sometimes an entire day, but they expect that you're addicted to WoW and will put up with that, and guess what, we do). Once in contact with a game representative, they will ask the standard "How can I be of service?" questions followed by, "I see, I will need to upgrade your ticket to a specialist qualified to investigate an account restoration. If they determine that your ticket is legitimate, they will contact you within 14 days."

Careful, though. If the account in question is someone else's account that you inherited, do not call them, do not write them, do not message them in game. They will and have banned people from WoW for sharing accounts. Whether or not sharing an account is ethical is not part of this debate. This advice just helps you not get caught if it's something you do. Blizzard enforces tough policies on account sharing.

Finally, to prevent account hacking from your end as best you can, keep your computer clear of viruses, use an authenticator available also from Blizzard (I feel like they're getting some serious plugs here...) and never, ever, under any circumstances do you ever click the sex leg.

Now take a few deep breaths, relax, it's all going to be OK. The gold farmers hacked my accounts a total of 5 times over the 4 years that I played World of Warcraft. Every time it happened, Blizzard restored every character, every item, and every piece of gold. The most troublesome thing about hacking then is just waiting two weeks before it's possible to play your main character again.

When you get your stuff back, they will send an email that lists everything Blizzards account restoration team repaired. In addition to that, the restored items arrive in the game mail box. It's up to you to click through every item and put it back in your bags (which they also mail to you). Depending on how much stuff your character possesses, it can take a few minutes up to a few hours to get everything sorted back in place. The process extends further if the account in question accessed the guild bank during the hostile takeover. Expect to spend a solid day or two putting everything back if that happened.

The Damage Gold Farmers Do To WoW

It only takes a few minutes for a gold farmer to completely wipe out everything in the guild bank, your inventory, your bank, and sell it to vendors and the auction house and a few weeks to restore everything back to its original state. The account hackers annoy the player base considerably and World of Warcraft would be a better place without them. However, they're not going anywhere anytime soon, and for every defense we create against them, they look for ways around it. Blizzard's stance on the matter shows a strong effort to stay away from the whole situation and put all the blame on the player for compromised accounts issues (their desire for zero accountability is apparent in their policies and commentary on the matter on the support page linked earlier). But if the account hackers do victimize you, Blizzard will restore your account and items provided that the account is in your name. If the account does not belong to you or you cannot prove with some form of ID that it belongs to you, you're out of luck and China wins another WoW account.

The gold farmers will then circulate that account by selling it in an online auction, then stealing it again from the person they sold it to, sell it again, and so on until Blizzard bans the account for rapid transfers and ownership changes.