Sunday, May 2, 2010

NCsoft Woes and Getting Realms Roll'd

Trying to get Guild Wars set up for both of us has been an exercise in patience to the point where the other half was ready to give up on playing. When we originally played, our Guild Wars accounts weren't tied to NCsoft in anyway. But we did have NCsoft accounts from when we both tried CoH and more recently for Aion beta. The game now requires you to log in through NCsoft and tie your Guild Wars account to it. Long story short, it was impossible to get the previous account up and running so I just had to create a new account and start new characters.

My husband upon attempting to log into his Guild Wars account received a popup stating they believed his account had been compromised and he needs to contact them. He then logged into NCsoft and saw a big red "banned" next to the Aion link. Considering at least two games under his account had been hacked, he decided to just start over as well. Then you get to the log in screen which makes you go through more hoops just to get in. The whole process was beyond annoying so we played only briefly.

On a more lighthearted note, after a DAOC marathon weekend taking advantage of bonuses, I spent a little time in Free Realms for stress-free fun. I've had some Station Cash accumulated that SOE gave away as rewards when I was playing EQ2 and decided to buy something in Free Realms. Along with mounts, pets, and clothes, some of what they sell are items that can be dropped on the ground for a few minutes for other players to enjoy. It might be a clickable illusion, balloons, temporary pets, and then there's boomboxes. One box was called a Realms Roll'd Boombox. I honestly had no idea how this was different from the other boomboxes but I bought it out of curiosity.

The box looked like a typical one. The music started playing like a typical one. Then the music scratched and cut off and was replaced with a fancier boombox. And then it began playing "Never Gonna Give You Up". Everyone nearby turned into Rick Astly and did his cute little dance. This was probably one of the funniest things I've ever seen in any game. So kudos to SOE on this one. Unfortunately the young ones weren't getting it and were asking why they were dressed like a boy in ugly clothes. Ah well, I had a good laugh anyway.



2 comments:

Bhagpuss said...

Partly motivated by your blog, I've tried to revive my Guld Wars account, which hasn't been used since two months after GW launched. I tried about a year ago but gave up at the bit where it asked for the name of one of my characters, none of which I could remember.

Last Friday I emailed NCSoft asking if they could sort it out. So far I've had a pleasant reply telling me my issue has been escalated to a higher level, but no substantive action.

I'm not really sure why I'm bothering. It would be easier just to buy a new copy of GW and start again. I only wanted a quick look round out of curiosity aroused by all the GW2 information now flooding out.

Aspendawn said...

I had tried playing again a couple years ago and never did get a response from them after I couldn't log into my old account. So I gave up and uninstalled again.

While most mmo's do everything to entice you back and make it generally easy to get back in the swing of things, they sure don't make it easy. And not sure how well that's working at keeping hackers at bay since my husband's account was broken into.

Ah well. Started a couple new classes that they didn't have previously and will see how it goes. It sure is pretty though.