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ysobelor, why I am not spending any of my money on Guild Wars ever again.
It's not about the money, really. It's about me being bitter.
GW was my first mmorpg. And it was addictive. At the time, you were limited to six characters per account, and buying extra slots was not an option yet; so because I wanted more than six, I got a second copy of the game, for a second account. (By the time they introduced the char-slot option, my second-account characters were too well established to make it worth recreating them on the first account. Which did not, of course, stop me from buying more char slots, on both accounts...)
This also meant that when expansions came out, I ended up acquiring them for both accounts. It took a while, since I no longer had a job, but I eventually got both my accounts fully upgraded.
Oh, and at some point I found a cheap copy of the game and so got a third account, not affiliated with the bpa or its alliance, for times when I was feeling non-social.
By the time I stopped playing GW, several years ago, I had a Lot Of Shit stored up. Money, I'm fairly sure. Crafting items, including really seriously expensive ones, like leftover shards and ecto. Collector items, including superb charr carvings (of which one needs 250 for dorkitude). A hell of a lot of minipets, including baby black moas. A lot of decent weapons, gold or green. A lot of pretty armor. Dyes. Lots of things I've forgotten I even had.
In retrospect, I wish I had taken the time to go through and give the giveable stuff to kama, because then it would have gone towards bpa people. But I didn't; I kept dithering about whether or not to go back, until well past the point where the effort to donate my stuff (which would have required dling the game client and all updates) was not worth the benefit.
And then, somewhere in the time I was gone, at least two of my accounts got hacked. I don't know when, or how. I don't think I ever would have even found out if I hadn't decided to come back.
But I did. And, after I finally managed to gain control of two of the accounts, I discovered that most of my stuff was gone. There were some minipets, probably the ones that weren't sellable; and a few characters still had some armor; but most everything was gone.
I never did get the third account back.
And their response to "I lost everything, halp" was basically "*shrug* not our problem, can't help you, bye".
I'm not, mind you, upset at the support representatives I dealt with. I've done enough tech support to be in their position: assuming that what they said is completely legit, it reeeally really sucks to be them, and I would help if I could, but we can't guarantee it was legit, and anyway we have to obey policy, and that ties our hands.
But I am upset at the policy. And at the fact that my chars' HoM statues keep reminding me of the armor I've lost, and my memory keeps reminding me of the minipets and other things, and I have no way of getting it back. I can understand that they maybe can't distinguish hack activity from legit activity, and that anyway they don't save inventory information from three years ago or whatever. But there is a part of me that, childishly, wants to throw a tantrum about how they could at least have given me /something/.
... they gave me nothing. And so I am giving them nothing in return.
This hurts me, of course, more than it hurts them. I am just one potential source of income, out of god knows how many accounts. And I want extra storage panes, I want character makeovers, I want GW2 when it comes out, I want --
-- I want, and if things had turned out differently I might consider gettinng, but they are not getting any more of my money. Even if it's trivial in the big picture. I am not kicking them in the face by doing this; I am really just kicking dirt weakly in their general direction.
(I am not, of course, advocating or even suggesting that other people follow my lead. this is a personal fit of pettiness, and I don't really care what other people do with their money. heck, knowing me, I will probably try to wheedle one of my relatives into getting gw2 for me as a birthday-or-whatever present, because otherwise I will be so left out it isn't even funny. I'm just, you know. Throwing a tantrum in my own corner of the internets.)
It's not about the money, really. It's about me being bitter.
GW was my first mmorpg. And it was addictive. At the time, you were limited to six characters per account, and buying extra slots was not an option yet; so because I wanted more than six, I got a second copy of the game, for a second account. (By the time they introduced the char-slot option, my second-account characters were too well established to make it worth recreating them on the first account. Which did not, of course, stop me from buying more char slots, on both accounts...)
This also meant that when expansions came out, I ended up acquiring them for both accounts. It took a while, since I no longer had a job, but I eventually got both my accounts fully upgraded.
Oh, and at some point I found a cheap copy of the game and so got a third account, not affiliated with the bpa or its alliance, for times when I was feeling non-social.
By the time I stopped playing GW, several years ago, I had a Lot Of Shit stored up. Money, I'm fairly sure. Crafting items, including really seriously expensive ones, like leftover shards and ecto. Collector items, including superb charr carvings (of which one needs 250 for dorkitude). A hell of a lot of minipets, including baby black moas. A lot of decent weapons, gold or green. A lot of pretty armor. Dyes. Lots of things I've forgotten I even had.
In retrospect, I wish I had taken the time to go through and give the giveable stuff to kama, because then it would have gone towards bpa people. But I didn't; I kept dithering about whether or not to go back, until well past the point where the effort to donate my stuff (which would have required dling the game client and all updates) was not worth the benefit.
And then, somewhere in the time I was gone, at least two of my accounts got hacked. I don't know when, or how. I don't think I ever would have even found out if I hadn't decided to come back.
But I did. And, after I finally managed to gain control of two of the accounts, I discovered that most of my stuff was gone. There were some minipets, probably the ones that weren't sellable; and a few characters still had some armor; but most everything was gone.
I never did get the third account back.
And their response to "I lost everything, halp" was basically "*shrug* not our problem, can't help you, bye".
I'm not, mind you, upset at the support representatives I dealt with. I've done enough tech support to be in their position: assuming that what they said is completely legit, it reeeally really sucks to be them, and I would help if I could, but we can't guarantee it was legit, and anyway we have to obey policy, and that ties our hands.
But I am upset at the policy. And at the fact that my chars' HoM statues keep reminding me of the armor I've lost, and my memory keeps reminding me of the minipets and other things, and I have no way of getting it back. I can understand that they maybe can't distinguish hack activity from legit activity, and that anyway they don't save inventory information from three years ago or whatever. But there is a part of me that, childishly, wants to throw a tantrum about how they could at least have given me /something/.
... they gave me nothing. And so I am giving them nothing in return.
This hurts me, of course, more than it hurts them. I am just one potential source of income, out of god knows how many accounts. And I want extra storage panes, I want character makeovers, I want GW2 when it comes out, I want --
-- I want, and if things had turned out differently I might consider gettinng, but they are not getting any more of my money. Even if it's trivial in the big picture. I am not kicking them in the face by doing this; I am really just kicking dirt weakly in their general direction.
(I am not, of course, advocating or even suggesting that other people follow my lead. this is a personal fit of pettiness, and I don't really care what other people do with their money. heck, knowing me, I will probably try to wheedle one of my relatives into getting gw2 for me as a birthday-or-whatever present, because otherwise I will be so left out it isn't even funny. I'm just, you know. Throwing a tantrum in my own corner of the internets.)