Wiped Account, and no help from Turbine

[Soraith]

Last may I canceled my DDO account and left the game for the summer.
The same as I did last year. I got back online 10/30/2007 and
download the updates and logged in to A TOTALLY WIPED ACCOUNT.

I went to Turbine's online chat assistance and spoke to Roy in Tech
Service via (type chat) I explained the problem. Roy promptly transferred me
to Dan in account support. I informed Dan my account was wiped clean
and gave him my account/character info. Dan did some checking and informed me
my characters were never on my account and as a matter of fact my
characters belong to several different accounts. I asked Dan to do some more
checking. Dan came back a bit later and told me again after checking throughly he
told me no characters hade been wiped from my account and the character names I had given
did not ever exisit on my account. I asked Dan If I could speak to someone else. Dan said he
would escalate my ticket and a supervisor would call me.

The next evening Tom from Turbine account support called me. Tom took my account
information including character names and went over the problem with me and told me he would look into it and call me in a day or two. Late the next day Tom called me and verified my characters did indeed belong to me and it should not be a problem restoring the account. Several days later I had not heard anything from Turbine so I called account support and talked to Dan and told me I could not talk to Tom, but I could leave a message. I left a message for Tom to call me. The next day Tom called me and told me everything was ok, they were having tech support look at my account and he would call me back as soon as he heard something.

A few days later Tom called me again. Tom informs me that back in May 2007 I canceled my account. Tom also said on June the 5th and 7th there was a lot of action on my account which looked like my toons were stripped and then deleted, and it was Turbine's
postion I dumped everything off my toons and deleted them. Tom also stated Turbine would do nothing further to help me in anyway, Tom then hung up on me.

To say the least I was stunned. I have been a loyal customer to Turbine since Asheron's Call and have participated their betas ect. I have been with DDO since beta with The Old Timers Guild. I have never ever had a problem like this and I am appalled Turbine would treat any customer this way.

To my mind its simple, either they messed up my account or it was stolen. The Old Timers Guild is aware of this situation and is ready if Turbine needs outside verfication. I am still hopefull Turbine will address my problem and fix it. In the past they have always been an outstanding company.

[Eldun]

If you left the game, dropped your account, and haven't paid monthly dues why does turbine have any obligation whatsoever to restore your account to where it was? It appears to me that Turbine went above and beyond in what is reasonable to find your previous data. I can understand the pain over not having your old data there but it's just that, your "old" data. You gave it up, you walked away from it. Turbine should have saved themselves the aggrevation and said to you "Sorry, we purge info from closed accounts".

[Rekker]

If you left the game, dropped your account, and haven't paid monthly dues why does turbine have any obligation whatsoever to restore your account to where it was? It appears to me that Turbine went above and beyond in what is reasonable to find your previous data. I can understand the pain over not having your old data there but it's just that, your "old" data. You gave it up, you walked away from it. Turbine should have saved themselves the aggrevation and said to you "Sorry, we purge info from closed accounts".

First off, he didn't quit the game. People all over this game have issues that prevent them from playing and they need to take time off away from the game. They do it all the time. We just had a person come back who was away for more than a year and all her data is fine. Do some checking on his name (probably useless since Turbine wiped these forums) but you won't see a negative post by him or anything to the point of "this game sux, screw you guys I'm outta here." He took a break and never gave away all his stuff, Turbines just using that as a blanket statement to cover their asses.

But I do agree, they should just be right upfront and say if you leave the game for 3 months your account will be wiped. But I don't think they have enough people on staff to handle and maintain that so they just let the data sit there. Its the easiest thing to do.

[Vorn]

Some of us in the military also disappear for six or seven months or more and like to suspend our accounts during that time period. It's not been a problem for anyone I personally know who has done this due to their deployment schedule.

[sigtrent]

Turbine didn't wipe his characters, so that's kind of irrelivent. I don't think they or any MMO company has any policy of wiping characters on inactive accounts. They don't guarantee them just in case but they have no reason to wipe them.

It definately looks like Dan didn't have the skills to really investigate, and possibly turbine doesn't have good tools for tracking character history on accounts, or at least ones most of the support staff has access to. But it does sound like they have queries they can use to mine that data.

It's odd that your toons were reportedly stripped while you were not paying for the account. It should be impossible for you, or anyone else to actualy do that if it isn't active. The sad thing is it may well be practicaly impossible to simply roll back all your characters and their stuff, likely much of that was not really archived so if its nuked they may be unable to do anything. Restoring an item or such isn't so bad but a full set of characters and all their gear is likely more than they can do. Especialy if they can't verify if your wern't the one to do it.

I would hope the least they could do is be as nice to you about it as possible, simply hanging up on you is rude (unless you were being beligerent somehow.)

I'd put it down in a well composed letter with all the details and some remedies you would like and send it by snail mail and mail it by e-mail. Someone might think of a way to help you, especialy if it was strippped while inactive, that would mean something very odd was happening. Be sure to try to think of any way anyone could have known your login/password. Unless you can preclude that it will seem like the obvious answer to what happened. Some people do use leveling services and give out their accounts to others who will strip them if they think the player has stopped playing to get some quick cash.

[Strakeln]

It's odd that your toons were reportedly stripped while you were not paying for the account. It should be impossible for you, or anyone else to actualy do that if it isn't active.He said mid-June, right? I point you to a thread detailing what was happening at that time: http://forums.ddo.com/showthread.php?&postid=1173100#post1173100 (Welcome Back Weekend II, all inactive accounts were activated).

OP, did you EVER give your password to a guildie, or anyone at all that you know (who plays DDO)? That is where you should be looking...

[Aspenor]

OP, did you EVER give your password to a guildie, or anyone at all that you know (who plays DDO)? That is where you should be looking...

I agree with Strake, one of your "close friends" stiffed you.

[Impaqt]

First off, he didn't quit the game.

Yes he did.. He said so himself.

Last may I canceled my DDO account and left the game for the summer.

Quit, Cancelled, took a break, whatever youwant to call it. Its al the same.



But I do agree, they should just be right upfront and say if you leave the game for 3 months your account will be wiped. But I don't think they have enough people on staff to handle and maintain that so they just let the data sit there. Its the easiest thing to do.

They dont say that and they should not. I highly doubt Turbine has ever Intentionally WIped and account...... I suspect even people who are Banned still have their characters.. They just cant get to em anymore. What they say is they do NOT guarantee they will exists if/when you come back. If an account is lost, they may not put hours of effort into rebuilding the data if the account is inactive.

It certainlly seems pretty obvious what happened this case though..... Someone Logged into that account durring the Welcome back weekend. Stripped the characters and probobly deleted em. Turbine has done as much as they can and have gone beyond what I would of expected......

[Yeti]

This issue has been looked at multiple times by multiple people. As there is no assistance we can provide in these forums on this issue, I am closing this thread.