New Character Levelling Process - Tips?

Status update!

Talked to a GM last night who was very helpful and asked me a bunch of questions... some I didn't remember so he simply asked other ones instead, quite awesome, I thought. They locked the Jotaru account and said I would have to contact customer support today (either by phone or webchat, not in-game) for them to further confirm my identity and reset the PW (= I get my account back, yey)

So today I woke up, mosey'd around, got around to my computer about 3pm today... Immediately jumped onto the webchat for POL support... 4 rolls around, 5, 6, I decide to call. At this point I reset my webchat thinking something is broken. Around 8.30 I FINALLY get an answer on the phone- I give them buttloads of information I never thought I'd need to know, but couldn't remember the date of birth I put for my account- You have to be 18 to play FFXI, and I wasn't when i signed up, so i figured I put my mom's birthday, so I gave it to him, month, day, year. Turns out Month + Day were right (at least he told me that -.-) but he shut me down (and made me feel like a bad son :( ) by telling me the year was incorrect so there was nothing he could do to help me, and hung up (pretty abruptly; after answering 10-15 mins of questions and almost 6 hours waiting for someone I get month+day right and not year and he hung up...)

Am calling back now because I realized I gave him the month+day of my dad's birthday (must've been his CC I used, lawl) but my mom's year of birth... le sigh. They close in 15 minutes though so I'm sure nothing will happen.

TL;DR- Don't be a bad kid, don't mix up parents birthdays! :(
 
Well plus side is you get the account back though yeah? One more day vs leveling all over again and getting gear all over again is a positive side.
 
Nah, its good, they've been helpful, and I can't blame them.. Except for the fact that I got every question right cept messed up the year on the DOB.. /grumble.. The biggest thing is I work normally Monday through Friday (Which is when they're open) exactly the hours that they're open... and I can't much sit on my cell phone for six hours at work :p Gonna try calling right as they open see if I can get in on the ride into work.... otherwise I have a week+ minimum of waiting just for a day off that falls on a weekday. Blah. But yeah, its good, plus they restore the character to your last legit login so you get all your items + gil back... seems they've hugely improved this process.
 
This mail is sent to those players who have requested game data recovery for compromised account. If you have no recollection of requesting this support, we apologize for any inconvenience this message may have caused, and ask that you please discard.


Dear Customer,

We would like to give you an update regarding the game data recovery request for a compromised account.

We have completed our investigation based on the information you provided. At the conclusion of the investigation, we were able to find evidence of the PlayOnline ID being accessed by a third party. Due to this, we were able to fulfill your request for game data restoration and have released the log-in restriction for the PlayOnline ID.
Please log onto Final Fantasy XI and confirm the recovered data.
If there are any issues with the recovered data, please do not reply to this email. For further assistance, please contact the Information Center.

Please be aware that as the recovery request has been fulfilled, we will be unable to process any other game data recovery requests for a compromised account in the future from you, regardless of the reason.
To prevent the account from being compromised, please keep the log-in information safe.

IMPORTANT NOTICES
-Items in delivery and auction will NOT be reimbursed.
-A character name change will be necessary if the previous name is already in use. -Please follow the instructions and create a new name.

We appreciate your continued use of PlayOnline services.

PlayOnline Information Center
Telephone: (858) 790 - 7529
Monday through Friday 9:00 a.m. - 6:00 p.m. Pacific Time

If you have any questions or concerns, please contact our Information Center or in-game support. Please do not respond to this email. This email is generated by an automated service.
 
Congrats man!!!

Looking forward to teaming up with you at levels higher than 26 now^^

-benny
 
I still don't understand why they refuse to allow a second character recovery if you get hacked again.

I mean seriously, are they absolutely blind to the fact that people are losing the information through keyloggers from many fansites?
 
I still don't understand why they refuse to allow a second character recovery if you get hacked again.

I mean seriously, are they absolutely blind to the fact that people are losing the information through keyloggers from many fansites?

I think it's more like they are jacking the user account file that stores your information in the PlayOnline folder. It's been repeated time and time again that people were getting jacked and they never typed their password. Which has been pointing to the .BIN files that store that information on your PC.

The account restoration, if not restricted, could be truly abused. I agree with the one-time restoration/roll-back. If I got hacked again, it's my own fault.
 
Well, like the BG article that was recently posted, its not necessarily someone's own fault if they get hacked again. The article talks about someone who got hacked, went through hell to get their account back, had their computer taken to a repair shop, this and that, etc... all cleaned up ready to go, and they got hacked again three days later. Sure, most people might know to reformat their computer altogether, but this lady did not, and its not really any fault of her own - she just didn't know the pros and cons to doing it whichever way. Shrug

That being said I'm being a lot more careful now than I was. I'm using Firefox with NoScript, I have AVG installed,a long with Spybot and Adaware... I also have HiJack This but dont know how to ID the report it gives, so if anyone is good at it, it'd be a good reference to have.

SE impressed me with this, they were quick, courteous, and I got EVERYTHING back, exactly how it was the last time I logged out.. Was quite amazing to see everything back. The only qualm I have is they're still charging me for the two months I couldn't access my account (therefor I couldn't even change payment information on the account)... my only option was to chargeback the fees through the bank, but you have to pay those before you can play again, so I ended up having to pay the $30 for someone else using my account, which is kinda lame. Other than that, no complaints.

Edit: To Garret, yeah its kinda frustrating, also kinda scary (I could get a virus tonight no virusscanner can pick up, have no idea where it came from, lose my account tomorrow, and be screwed) but there is room for abuse if they don't do it that way, I guess. They restore your character completely, so it injects brand new items into the economy.. When I first got Jotaru back I had about 50k gil and some random items (Katanas etc) that I passed off to Disharmony to sell... and they of course were restored when the account was rolled back. I guess they're afraid of people doing that on a massive scale (Hey buddy, hack my account, sell all my stuff, i'll restore, we'll split the gil type of thing I guess)
 
Good to hear it was restored to it's rightful owner. I've never seen something this widespread before and I was still under the pre-exploit mindset that as long as I don't download and run anything I wasn't sure of I'd be okay. I just have to make sure I find a way to keep stuff at their latest versions to ensure that exploits that have been corrected in updates released by those companies actually make it on my machine. The Flash one was an eye opener, especially when I saw the graph showing just the users of this forum and what they were using.
 
Back
Top