Game status updates/Archive 1

07:28, 10 September 2012 (UTC)

Account Security

Hackers have lists of email addresses and passwords stolen from other games and web sites, and collected through spyware, and are systematically testing Guild Wars 2 looking for matching accounts. To protect yourself, use a strong, unique password for Guild Wars 2 that you've never used anywhere else! If your current password isn't unique to Guild Wars 2, change it today! Do not under any circumstances use the same password for Guild Wars 2 as you do for your email account.

We've observed hack attempts against hundreds of thousands of accounts that don't even exist. To protect those people in case they purchase Guild Wars 2 and create an account, we will now disallow customers from picking passwords that we've previously seen used in a hack attempt.

See this article for more tips on choosing good passwords and keeping your account secure.

Customer Support

Our customer support team is prioritizing hacked accounts and other blocking login issues over other types of support requests. We're currently responding to prioritized support tickets within 48 hours, and will soon be responding within 24 hours.

To reset a password or disable email authentication on your account, follow these instructions. Be sure to read all security guidelines before performing either of these steps.

Game Updates

Check the forum links below for details on recent game updates.

• Update notes for September 9 update
• Update notes for September 8 update

There is no game update scheduled for September 10.

Reporting exploits

If you discover an emergency game-breaking or economy-breaking bug, do not exploit it, but please notify us immediately at this email address: exploits (at) arena (dot) net. You may also use this email address to report suspected security vulnerabilities. Thank you to everyone who has sent reports. However, note that we cannot respond individually to emails to this address.

Worlds & Overflow

We're increasing world capacity as necessary to handle all the new players coming into the game.

During this initial surge of high concurrency, and especially while most characters are low-level and thus playing in the same starting areas, it's common for players to be directed to overflow servers. To play with a friend on a different overflow server, form a party together, then right-click on the friend's portrait in the party list and click "join". We expect the use of overflow servers to naturally subside as players spread out more through the world.

06:14, 9 September 2012 (UTC)

Account Security

Hackers have lists of email addresses and passwords stolen from other games and web sites, and collected through spyware, and are systematically testing Guild Wars 2 looking for matching accounts. To protect yourself, use a strong, unique password for Guild Wars 2 that you've never used anywhere else!

When accounts are hacked and then used for botting or spamming ads for gold sales, we ban the accounts until we can return them to their rightful owner. If you login and see the message, "this account has been permanently banned for a violation of the User Agreement," and if you're not a gold seller, it's likely that your account was hacked. Please contact customer support using the instructions below.

If you see email authentication messages in your inbox asking you to approve a login that you didn't initiate and from someplace you don't recognize, that's a sign that a hacker knows your account name and password, and is only being prevented by the email authentication feature from accessing your account. You should immediately change your password to a new, unique password that you've never used anywhere else.

You can find more tips for keeping your Guild Wars 2 account secure in this article.

Customer Support

Our customer support team is still prioritizing hacked accounts and other blocking login issues over other types of support requests.

Hacked accounts - If you submit a support ticket for a hacked account, ensure it is properly prioritized by following these instructions. Clearly state that it is a hacked account, and provide as much information as possible, including your account email address, your account display name or character names, and your 25-digit Guild Wars 2 serial code.

Email authentication - Email authentication allows you to approve or deny each login attempt from a new location, which can help protect your account even in the event a hacker discovers your password. However, some customers are finding email authentication messages are being filtered by their email provider or are otherwise having difficulty receiving these messages. You can now turn off email authentication by following these instructions. If you turn it off, be especially sure to use a unique password for Guild Wars 2 that you've never used anywhere else.

Password resets - If you've lost your password, you can now reset it by following these instructions.

Last Night's Update

Please visit our forums for more info regarding details on recent updates: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/info/news/Update-Notes-September-8th-2012/first#post32760

Tonight's Update

• Will include fixes for various blocked events and skill challenges

• Fix for PVP achievements: “The Conqueror” and “Champion Brawler”

Reporting exploits

If you discover an emergency game-breaking or economy-breaking bug, do not exploit it, but please notify us immediately at this email address: exploits (at) arena (dot) net. You may also use this email address to report suspected security vulnerabilities. Thank you to everyone who has sent reports. However, note that we cannot respond individually to emails to this address.

Worlds & Overflow

We're increasing world capacity as necessary to handle all the new players coming into the game.

During this initial surge of high concurrency, and especially while most characters are low-level and thus playing in the same starting areas, it's common for players to be directed to overflow servers. To play with a friend on a different overflow server, form a party together, then right-click on the friend's portrait in the party list and click "join". We expect the use of overflow servers to naturally subside as players spread out more through the world.

Next software updates

The next software update will be tonight at midnight Seattle time. We don't expect significant downtime; however players may experience some connectivity issues at this time.

05:36, 8 September 2012 (UTC)

Account Security

Hackers have lists of email addresses and passwords stolen from other games and web sites, and collected through spyware, and are systematically testing Guild Wars 2 looking for matching accounts. To protect yourself, use a strong, unique password for Guild Wars 2 that you've never used anywhere else!

When accounts are hacked and then used for botting or spamming ads for gold sales, we ban the accounts until we can return them to their rightful owner. If you login and see the message, "this account has been permanently banned for a violation of the User Agreement," and if you're not a gold seller, it's likely that your account was hacked. Please contact customer support using the instructions below.

If you see email authentication messages in your inbox asking you to approve a login that you didn't initiate and from someplace you don't recognize, that's a sign that a hacker knows your account name and password, and is only being prevented by the email authentication feature from accessing your account. You should immediately change your password to a new, unique password that you've never used anywhere else.

You can find more tips for keeping your Guild Wars 2 account secure in this article.

Customer Support

Our customer support team is still prioritizing hacked accounts and other blocking login issues over other types of support requests.

Hacked accounts - If you submit a support ticket for a hacked account, ensure it is properly prioritized by following these instructions. Clearly state that it is a hacked account, and provide as much information as possible, including your account email address, your account display name or character names, and your 25-digit Guild Wars 2 serial code.

Email authentication - Email authentication allows you to approve or deny each login attempt from a new location, which can help protect your account even in the event a hacker discovers your password. However, some customers are finding email authentication messages are being filtered by their email provider or are otherwise having difficulty receiving these messages. You can now turn off email authentication by following these instructions. If you turn it off, be especially sure to use a unique password for Guild Wars 2 that you've never used anywhere else.

Password resets - If you've lost your password, you can now reset it by following these instructions.

Last Night's Update

• • Fixed the issue with parties not staying together as they travel into dungeons.
  • Fixed issues with the storyline steps "A Light in the Darkness," "Estate of Decay," "Explosive Intellect," "Rumors of Trouble," "The Lost Chieftain's Return," and "Tribunes in Effigy."
  • Added an option to stop queueing for your home world, for players who want to remain on an overflow server indefinitely without being asked.

Today's Back-End Work

• • Fixed PvP tournament rewards.

Tonight's Update

• • Will add the ability to report in-game mail.
  • Will reset monthly achievements for players who have been stuck at 100%, to help those whose achievements didn't reset correctly on September 1. (Note that daily achievements reset each day at 00:00 GMT and monthly achievements reset on the first of each month at 00:00 GMT.)
  • Will include fixes for various blocked events and skill challenges.

Reporting exploits

If you discover an emergency game-breaking or economy-breaking bug, do not exploit it, but please notify us immediately at this email address: exploits (at) arena (dot) net. You may also use this email address to report suspected security vulnerabilities. Thank you to everyone who has sent reports. However, note that we cannot respond individually to emails to this address.

Worlds & Overflow

We're increasing world capacity as necessary to handle all the new players coming into the game.

During this initial surge of high concurrency, and especially while most characters are low-level and thus playing in the same starting areas, it's common for players to be directed to overflow servers. To play with a friend on a different overflow server, form a party together, then right-click on the friend's portrait in the party list and click "join". We expect the use of overflow servers to naturally subside as players spread out more through the world.

Next software updates

The next software update will be tonight at midnight Seattle time. We don't expect significant downtime; however players may experience some connectivity issues at this time.

04:45, 7 September 2012 (UTC)

Account Security

Hackers have lists of email addresses and passwords stolen from other games and web sites, and collected through spyware, and are systematically testing Guild Wars 2 looking for matching accounts. To protect yourself, use a strong, unique password for Guild Wars 2 that you've never used anywhere else!

When accounts are hacked and then used for botting or spamming ads for gold sales, we ban the accounts until we can return them to their rightful owner. If you login and see the message, "this account has been permanently banned for a violation of the User Agreement," and you're not a gold seller, it's likely that your account was hacked. Please contact customer support using the instructions below.

If you see email authentication messages in your inbox asking you to approve a login that you didn't initiate and from someplace you don't recognize, that's a sign that a hacker knows your account name and password, and is only being prevented by the email authentication feature from accessing your account. You should immediately change your password to a new, unique password that you've never used anywhere else.

Customer Support

Our customer support team is prioritizing hacked accounts and other blocking login issues over other types of support requests.

Hacked accounts - If you submit a support ticket for a hacked account, ensure it is properly prioritized by following these instructions. We're resolving prioritized hacked account tickets within 72 hours. If you have an older hacked account ticket that has not been resolved, it may not be properly prioritized, or the ticket may not contain enough information for us to address it quickly. Please update your existing ticket, clearly state that this is a hacked account ticket, and provide as much information as possible, including your account email address, your account display name or character names, and your 25-digit Guild Wars 2 serial code.

Email authentication - Email authentication allows you to approve or deny each login attempt from a new location. With this feature, hackers can be prevented from logging into your account even if they guess your password. However, some customers are finding email authentication messages filtered by their email provider or are otherwise having difficulty receiving these messages. Tomorrow we will provide a secure method for customers who are having trouble with email authentication to disable it on their accounts. We ask that you use this new self-help system, and only submit a support ticket if that doesn't work for you.

Edit: The self-help system is available now for testing. Follow these instructions if you need to turn off email authentication on your account. Keep in mind that, with email authentication off, your account security relies on you using a unique password for Guild Wars 2 that you've never used anywhere else.

Password resets - Tomorrow we will provide a secure method for customers who have lost their passwords or whose passwords aren't working to reset their passwords. We ask that you use this new self-help system, and only submit a support ticket if that doesn't work for you.

Edit: The self-help system is available now for testing. Follow these instructions to reset your password. Please choose a strong, unique password for Guild Wars 2 that you've never used anywhere else.

Support forums - The official support forums are now online, and we have a new forum for players helping other players.

Last Night's Update

• • We largely resolved the capacity constraints with parties and guild functionality, which were causing symptoms such as party members not appearing on the map, parties not staying together as they traveled between maps, and guild manipulation not working. Note that, while capacity constraints are now addressed, there are still some specific issues we're working on with parties and guilds. In particular, there's an issue with parties not staying together as they travel into dungeons, which we plan to address tonight.
  • We fixed issues with the storyline steps "Fury of the Dead," "Grisly Shipment," and "In The Ruins."
  • We changed the downed mode camera to maintain a more consistent distance taking race into account.

Tonight's Update

• • We'll fix the issue with parties not staying together as they travel into dungeons.
  • We'll fix issues with the storyline steps "A Light in the Darkness," "Estate of Decay," "Explosive Intellect," "Rumors of Trouble," "The Lost Chieftain's Return," and "Tribunes in Effigy."
  • We'll add an option to stop queueing for your home world, for players who want to remain on an overflow server indefinitely without being asked.
  • We'll add an option to report an account for sending spam or otherwise inappropriate in-game mail. Edit: This option will be added in tomorrow night's update, not tonight's update.

Coming Soon

• • Some players' monthly achievements didn't correctly reset on September 1 at 00:00 GMT. To allow those players to collect the next monthly reward, we will reset the monthly achievement of any player who is already at 100% for the month as of tomorrow night's update.
  • We're working on a fix for PvP tournament rewards.

Trading Post

Trading Post item and gold delivery was slow for part of the day today due to a network connectivity issue between data centers. Delayed gold and items are being delivered; check your "pick up" tab.

Gem Purchases

We found some cases where players didn't receive items after purchasing them on the gem store. We have records of all occurrences and are in the process of refunding gems to all affected players. Note that refunded gems will simply be added to your account's gem balance.

Reporting exploits

If you discover an emergency game-breaking or economy-breaking bug, do not exploit it, but please notify us immediately at this email address: exploits (at) arena (dot) net. You may also use this email address to report suspected security vulnerabilities. Thank you to everyone who has sent reports. However, note that we cannot respond individually to emails to this address.

Worlds & Overflow

We're increasing world capacity as necessary to handle all the new players coming into the game.

During this initial surge of high concurrency, and especially while most characters are low-level and thus playing in the same starting areas, it's common for players to be directed to overflow servers. To play with a friend on a different overflow server, form a party together, then right-click on the friend's portrait in the party list and click "join". We expect the use of overflow servers to naturally subside as players spread out more through the world.

Next software updates

The next software update will be tonight at midnight Seattle time. We don't expect significant downtime tonight, but the game may be unavailable for 20-60 minutes during a software update.

Thursday, September 6, 2012

Account Security

Hackers have lists of email addresses and passwords stolen from other games and web sites, and collected through spyware, and are systematically testing Guild Wars 2 looking for matching accounts. To protect yourself, use a strong, unique password for Guild Wars 2 that you've never used anywhere else!

When accounts are hacked and then used for botting or spamming ads for gold sales, we ban the accounts until we can return them to their rightful owner. If you login and see the message, "this account has been permanently banned for a violation of the User Agreement," and you're not a gold seller, it's likely that your account was hacked. Please contact customer support using the instructions below.

If you see email authentication messages in your inbox asking you to approve a login that you didn't initiate and from someplace you don't recognize, that's a sign that a hacker knows your account name and password, and is only being prevented by the email authentication feature from accessing your account. You should immediately change your password to a new, unique password that you've never used anywhere else.

Customer Support

Our customer support team is prioritizing hacked accounts and other blocking login issues over other types of support requests.

Hacked accounts - If you submit a support ticket for a hacked account, ensure it is properly prioritized by following these instructions. We're resolving prioritized hacked account tickets within 72 hours. If you have an older hacked account ticket that has not been resolved, it may not be properly prioritized, or the ticket may not contain enough information for us to address it quickly. Please update your existing ticket, clearly state that this is a hacked account ticket, and provide as much information as possible, including your account email address, your account display name or character names, and your 25-digit Guild Wars 2 serial code.

Email authentication - Email authentication allows you to approve or deny each login attempt from a new location. With this feature, hackers can be prevented from logging into your account even if they guess your password. However, some customers are finding email authentication messages filtered by their email provider or are otherwise having difficulty receiving these messages. Tomorrow we will provide a secure method for customers who are having trouble with email authentication to disable it on their accounts. We ask that you use this new self-help system, and only submit a support ticket if that doesn't work for you.

Edit: The self-help system is available now for testing. Follow these instructions if you need to turn off email authentication on your account. Keep in mind that, with email authentication off, your account security relies on you using a unique password for Guild Wars 2 that you've never used anywhere else.

Password resets - Tomorrow we will provide a secure method for customers who have lost their passwords or whose passwords aren't working to reset their passwords. We ask that you use this new self-help system, and only submit a support ticket if that doesn't work for you.

Edit: The self-help system is available now for testing. Follow these instructions to reset your password. Please choose a strong, unique password for Guild Wars 2 that you've never used anywhere else.

Support forums - The official support forums are now online, and we have a new forum for players helping other players.

Last Night's Update

• • We largely resolved the capacity constraints with parties and guild functionality, which were causing symptoms such as party members not appearing on the map, parties not staying together as they traveled between maps, and guild manipulation not working. Note that, while capacity constraints are now addressed, there are still some specific issues we're working on with parties and guilds. In particular, there's an issue with parties not staying together as they travel into dungeons, which we plan to address tonight.
  • We fixed issues with the storyline steps "Fury of the Dead," "Grisly Shipment," and "In The Ruins."
  • We changed the downed mode camera to maintain a more consistent distance taking race into account.

Tonight's Update

• • We'll fix the issue with parties not staying together as they travel into dungeons.
  • We'll fix issues with the storyline steps "A Light in the Darkness," "Estate of Decay," "Explosive Intellect," "Rumors of Trouble," "The Lost Chieftain's Return," and "Tribunes in Effigy."
  • We'll add an option to stop queueing for your home world, for players who want to remain on an overflow server indefinitely without being asked.
  • We'll add an option to report an account for sending spam or otherwise inappropriate in-game mail. Edit: This option will be added in tomorrow night's update, not tonight's update.

Coming Soon

• • Some players' monthly achievements didn't correctly reset on September 1 at 00:00 GMT. To allow those players to collect the next monthly reward, we will reset the monthly achievement of any player who is already at 100% for the month as of tomorrow night's update.
  • We're working on a fix for PvP tournament rewards.

Trading Post

Trading Post item and gold delivery was slow for part of the day today due to a network connectivity issue between data centers. Delayed gold and items are being delivered; check your "pick up" tab.

Gem Purchases

We found some cases where players didn't receive items after purchasing them on the gem store. We have records of all occurrences and are in the process of refunding gems to all affected players. Note that refunded gems will simply be added to your account's gem balance.

Reporting exploits

If you discover an emergency game-breaking or economy-breaking bug, do not exploit it, but please notify us immediately at this email address: exploits (at) arena (dot) net. You may also use this email address to report suspected security vulnerabilities. Thank you to everyone who has sent reports. However, note that we cannot respond individually to emails to this address.

Worlds & Overflow

We're increasing world capacity as necessary to handle all the new players coming into the game.

During this initial surge of high concurrency, and especially while most characters are low-level and thus playing in the same starting areas, it's common for players to be directed to overflow servers. To play with a friend on a different overflow server, form a party together, then right-click on the friend's portrait in the party list and click "join". We expect the use of overflow servers to naturally subside as players spread out more through the world.

Next software updates

The next software update will be tonight at midnight Seattle time. We don't expect significant downtime tonight, but the game may be unavailable for 20-60 minutes during a software update.

Wednesday, September 5, 2012

Account Security

Hackers have lists of email addresses and passwords stolen from other games and web sites, and collected through spyware, and are systematically testing Guild Wars 2 looking for matching accounts. To protect yourself, use a strong, unique password for Guild Wars 2 that you've never used anywhere else!

Customer Support

Our customer support team is prioritizing hacked accounts and other blocking login issues over other types of support requests.

Hacked accounts - If you submit a support ticket for a hacked account, ensure it is properly prioritized by following these instructions. We're resolving prioritized hacked account tickets within 72 hours. If you have an older hacked account ticket that has not been resolved, it may not be properly prioritized, or the ticket may not contain enough information for us to address it quickly. Please update your existing ticket, clearly state that this is a hacked account ticket, and provide as much information as possible, including your account email address, your account display name or character names, and your 25-digit Guild Wars 2 serial code.

Email authentication - We will soon provide a secure method on our web site for customers who are having trouble with email authentication to disable it for their accounts. We ask that you use this new self-help system, and only submit a support ticket if that doesn't work for you.

Password resets - We will soon provide a secure method on our web site for customers who have lost their passwords or whose passwords aren't working to reset their passwords. We ask that you use this new self-help system, and only submit a support ticket if that doesn't work for you.

Support forums - The official support forums are now online, and we have a new forum for players helping other players.

Trading Post

The Trading Post is now available to all players. Items and gold deliveries that have been delayed should arrive soon. Please check your "pick up" tab.

Parties & Guilds

We're working on capacity constraints causing issues with parties and guild functionality, including symptoms such as party members not appearing on the map, parties not staying together as they travel between maps or into dungeons, and guild manipulation not working. We deployed fixes in last night's update and will deploy additional fixes in tonight's update.

Note that guild upgrades and guild influence are world-specific. If you move your account to a new world, you'll see the upgrades and influence that your guild has on that new world, not the upgrades and influence you previously saw on the old world.

PvP Tournament rewards

We're still working on the issue with missing PvP tournament rewards.

World v. World event rewards

Event rewards for Dolyak caravan escort events in World v. World will be disabled until further notice.

Storyline steps

In tonight's software update we will fix issues with the storyline steps "Fury of the Dead", "Grisly Shipment", and "In The Ruins".

Downed mode camera

In tonight's software update we will improve the downed mode camera to maintain a more consistent distance taking race into account.

Reporting exploits

If you discover an emergency game-breaking or economy-breaking bug, do not exploit it, but please notify us immediately at this email address: exploits (at) arena (dot) net. You may also use this email address to report suspected security vulnerabilities. Thank you to everyone who has sent reports. However, note that we cannot respond individually to emails to this address.

Worlds & Overflow

We're increasing world capacity as necessary to handle all the new players coming into the game.

During this initial surge of high concurrency, and especially while most characters are low-level and thus playing in the same starting areas, it's common for players to be directed to overflow servers. To play with a friend on a different overflow server, form a party together, then right-click on the friend's portrait in the party list and click "join". We expect the use of overflow servers to naturally subside as players spread out more through the world.

Next software updates

We'll perform a significant update tonight at midnight Seattle time, during which the game will be unavailable for approximately one hour.

We'll perform maintenance on the Guild Wars 2 wiki tomorrow night, during which time the wiki will be unavailable for approximately one hour.

Tuesday, September 4, 2012

Account Security

Hackers have lists of email addresses and passwords stolen from other games and web sites, and collected through spyware, and are systematically testing Guild Wars 2 looking for matching accounts. To protect yourself, use a strong, unique password for Guild Wars 2 that you've never used anywhere else!

Customer Support

Our customer support team is prioritizing hacked accounts and other blocking login issues over other types of support requests. If you submit a support ticket for a hacked account, ensure it is properly prioritized by following these instructions.

We have now completed prioritized requests submitted prior to Sunday, September 2. If you have an older ticket for a hacked account or blocking login issue that has not been completed, that means it's not correctly prioritized. Submit a new ticket using the above instructions, and in the title write, "Blocking Login - Ticket submitted <date> - Ticket number xxxxxx-xxxxxx" (fill in the date and ticket number of your existing ticket), and we will prioritize your existing ticket.

EDIT: we have a modified procedure for ensuring that your ticket is correctly prioritized. Please read this thread for instructions.

Email Authentication

Once you validate your account email address, we help protect you from attempted account hacking (even if the hacker guesses your password) by sending you an email every time you attempt to login from a new location, asking you to approve or deny the login attempt. Keep in mind, if you receive an email asking you to approve or deny a login attempt and you didn't make that login attempt, that means a hacker knows your password. Change your password immediately.

Be sure not to flag an email authentication message as spam; if you do, your email provider may prevent future email authentication messages from reaching you.

If email authentication is preventing you from logging in, contact our customer support team following these instructions and we'll disable it for your account.

Trading Post

We've addressed capacity constraints, and the Trading Post is now available for all users!

Gem Purchases

Some customers who purchased gems experienced a delay in delivery of those gems to their account. This issue has now been fixed and all gems have been delivered.

Parties & Guilds

We're working on capacity constraints causing issues with parties and guild functionality, including symptoms such as party members not appearing on the map, parties not staying together as they travel between maps or into dungeons, and guild manipulation not working. We will deploy a software update tonight and another tomorrow night that will improve these issues.

PvP Tournament rewards

We're still working on the issue with missing PvP tournament rewards.

World v. World event rewards

We're temporarily disabling rewards on Dolyak caravan escort events in World v. World while we work on rebalancing them.

Storyline steps

In last night's software update we fixed issues with the storyline steps "The Battle for Fort Trinity" and "Shell Shock".

Item descriptions

In tonight's software update we'll fix issues with item tooltips and chat links. Tooltips will now properly show names of item upgrades. Chat links will now properly show names of transmuted items, weapon/armor suffixes in names, and quantities of stackable items.

Forums

This afternoon we brought the official support forums online for testing. We'll roll out additional forums in the coming days.

Reporting exploits

If you discover an emergency game-breaking or economy-breaking bug, do not exploit it, but please notify us immediately at this email address: exploits (at) arena (dot) net. You may also use this email address to report suspected security vulnerabilities. Thank you to everyone who has sent reports. However, note that we cannot respond individually to emails to this address.

Worlds & Overflow

We're increasing world capacity as necessary to handle all the new players coming into the game.

During this initial surge of high concurrency, and especially while most characters are low-level and thus playing in the same starting areas, it's common for players to be directed to overflow servers. To play with a friend on a different overflow server, form a party together, then right-click on the friend's portrait in the party list and click "join". We expect the use of overflow servers to naturally subside as players spread out more through the world.

Next software updates

We're making non-disruptive changes throughout the day. We'll publish the next software update tonight at midnight Seattle time. We'll perform a significant update tomorrow night at midnight Seattle time, during which the game will be unavailable for approximately 60 minutes.

Monday, September 3, 2012

Account Security

Hackers have lists of email addresses and passwords stolen from other games and web sites, and collected through spyware, and are systematically testing Guild Wars 2 looking for matching accounts.

To protect yourself, use a strong, unique password for Guild Wars 2 that you've never used anywhere else!

Today a Guild Wars related fan site announced that its account database has been breached. That's important but just one of many apparent breaches of other games and web sites that hackers have been collecting email addresses and passwords from. Protect yourself by using a unique password for each game and web site account you care about, and especially be sure to use a unique password for your Guild Wars 2 account.

Customer Support

Our customer support team is prioritizing hacked accounts and other blocking login issues over other types of support requests. If you submit a support ticket for a hacked account, ensure it is properly prioritized by following these instructions.

We have now completed prioritized requests submitted prior to Saturday, September 1. If you have an older ticket that has not been completed, that means it's not correctly prioritized. Submit a new ticket using the above instructions, and in the title write, "Hacked Account - Ticket submitted August xx - Ticket number xxxxxx-xxxxxx" (fill in the date and ticket number of your existing ticket), and we will prioritize your existing ticket.

In the past 24 hours we helped 2,574 players with hacked accounts and 2,867 players with other blocking login issues get back into the game.

Email Authentication

Once you validate your account email address, we help protect you from attempted account hacking (even if the hacker guesses your password) by sending you an email every time you attempt to login from a new location, asking you to approve or deny the login attempt. Keep in mind, if you receive an email asking you to approve or deny a login attempt and you didn't make that login attempt, that means a hacker knows your password. Change your password immediately.

Be sure not to flag an email authentication message as spam; if you do, your email provider may prevent future email authentication messages from reaching you.

If email authentication is preventing you from logging in, contact our customer support team following these instructions and we'll disable it for your account.

Reset Password

We will leave "reset password" disabled until further notice. We don't want to allow hackers who compromise an email account to use that email account to steal the associated Guild Wars 2 game account. If you forget your password, please contact customer support.

Network Connectivity Issues

We experienced network connectivity issues today between our North American and European data centers, which caused intermittent errors with login, character creation and deletion, and guild manipulation. These issues should now be resolved.

Parties & Guilds

We've made progress but still have capacity constraints causing issues with party and guild functionality, including symptoms such as party members not appearing on the map, parties not staying together as they travel between maps or into dungeons, and guild manipulation not working. We're working on a fix and will provide a further update tomorrow.

PvP Tournament Rewards

PvP tournament rewards are currently not functioning properly. We're working on a fix and will provide a further update tomorrow.

Trading Post

We've been expanding the Trading Post's capacity to handle the huge volume of requested trades. After our test yesterday, we've been working to resolve some issues reported by players. We expect to have the Trading Post online for all players this evening (edit: after tonight's software update).

Storyline Steps

In last night's update we fixed blocking issues with the storyline steps "Stealing Secrets" and "A Grisly Shipment". We're preparing to fix issues with "The Battle for Fort Trinity" and "Shell Shock" for tonight's update.

Worlds & Overflow

We're increasing world capacity as necessary to handle all the new players coming into the game.

During this initial surge of high concurrency, and especially while most characters are low-level and thus playing in the same starting areas, it's common for players to be directed to overflow servers. To play with a friend on a different overflow server, form a party together, then right-click on the friend's portrait in the party list and click "join". We expect the use of overflow servers to naturally subside as players spread out more through the world.

Forums

Our most important priority at the moment is to ensure that the game runs stably and flawlessly. So as to not create additional demand on our infrastructure and on our programming team, we made the decision not to open the forums until the initial mass influx of players has calmed down a bit.

Reporting exploits

If you discover an emergency game-breaking or economy-breaking bug, do not exploit it, but please notify us immediately at this email address: exploits (at) arena (dot) net. You may also use this email address to report suspected security vulnerabilities. Thank you to everyone who has sent reports. However, note that we cannot respond individually to emails to this address.

Next software updates

We're making non-disruptive changes throughout the day. We'll publish the next back-end server update tonight at midnight Seattle time. The game may be unavailable for approximately 20-60 minutes while we perform this update.

Sunday, September 2, 2012

Account Security & Hacked Accounts

Hackers have lists of email addresses and passwords stolen from other games and web sites, and collected through spyware, and are systematically testing Guild Wars 2 looking for matching accounts.

To protect yourself, use a strong, unique password for Guild Wars 2 that you've never used anywhere else!

We're prioritizing hacked accounts and other blocking login issues over other types of customer support requests. If you submit a support ticket for a hacked account, ensure it is properly prioritized by following these instructions.

As of this writing we have completed all prioritized support tickets for hacked accounts and other blocking login issues submitted prior to Friday, August 31. If you have an older ticket that has not been completed, that means it's not correctly prioritized. Submit a new ticket using the above instructions, and in the title write, "Hacked Account - Ticket submitted August xx - Ticket number xxxxxx-xxxxxx" (fill in the date and ticket number of your existing ticket), and we will prioritize your existing ticket.

Over the past three days we've received approximately 8,500 new support tickets related to hacked accounts and other blocking login issues, and we've resolved issues to get approximately 9,500 players back into the game (most from tickets submitted prior to Friday, August 31). We're aggressively ramping up our customer support team, with 28 new support representatives starting today and more coming online in the next few days, to provide the fast response times our customers expect.

Scanning Accounts & Email Spam

Yesterday, three malicious users each changed the account names of their own Guild Wars 2 accounts thousands of times, scanning through lists of email addresses stolen from other games and web sites, presumably to determine which email addresses were available (not already used for a Guild Wars 2 account) and which were taken. It obviously shouldn't be possible to change your own account name so frequently. We temporarily disabled account name changes and have now restored but limited them to prevent this.

To the thousands of people who received emails stating, "the email address for your Guild Wars account has been changed," and are not even our customers, we sincerely apologize for the spam. Please be aware that your email address is on a list of account credentials that hackers have apparently stolen from other games and web sites and are systematically scanning.

To Guild Wars 2 customers whose email addresses are being tested by hackers but not stolen, thank you for protecting your account by choosing a new, unique password for Guild Wars 2. Even though your unique password should protect you, we think you deserve to know if hackers have your email address on their list of credentials stolen from other games and web sites, so we'll send you periodic notifications when we see hackers testing your account.

Reset Password

We're leaving "reset password" disabled for now. Please contact customer support if you forgot your password.

We believe hackers also have lists of compromised credentials for email accounts, and we don't want to allow them to login to a compromised email account and then use "reset password" to steal the associated Guild Wars 2 game account.

Email Authentication

Once you validate your account email address, we help protect you from attempted account hacking (even if the hacker guesses your password) by sending you an email every time you attempt to login from a new location, asking you to approve or deny the login attempt.

Because you have to first validate your account email address by clicking on a link in email in order to enable this feature, you should be able to receive email messages from us. If you don't see email authentication messages, check your spam/junk folder. Be sure not to flag an email authentication message as spam; if you do, your email provider may prevent all future email authentication messages from reaching you.

If email authentication is preventing you from logging in, contact our customer support team following these instructions and we'll disable it for your account.

PvP Tournaments, World Transfers, Character Creation/Deletion

We experienced multiple outages of PvP tournaments, world transfers, and character creation/deletion today, and ongoing issues with PvP tournament rewards. We're working to address these problems.

Parties & Guilds

We've made significant improvements today to capacity constraints that have caused issues with parties and guilds. However, players will still notice some intermittent issues with party members not appearing on the map, parties not staying together as they travel between maps or into dungeons, and guild manipulation not working.

Trading Post

We're still working on expanding the Trading Post's capacity to handle the huge volume of requested trades. We had the Trading Post down for maintenance earlier today but currently it's online and available to all players. We're still working on some issues, in particular buy and sell commands sometimes appearing to hang although they actually succeeded. We know the Trading Post is a big part of the game and we're working around-the-clock to restore full functionality to all players.

Storyline Steps

Players have reported blocking issues with certain storyline steps. We're preparing fixes for "Stealing Secrets", "A Grisly Shipment", and "The Battle for Fort Trinity", hopefully for tonight's update, and are investigating issues with other storyline steps.

Worlds & Overflow

We created three new worlds in each data center this week, and are periodically increasing the capacities of existing worlds as necessary to handle all the new players coming into the game.

During this initial surge of high concurrency, and especially while most characters are low-level and thus playing in the same starting areas, it's common for players to be directed to overflow servers. To play with a friend on a different overflow server, form a party together, then right-click on the friend's portrait in the party list and click "join". We expect the use of overflow servers to naturally subside as players spread out more through the world.

Exploits

As promised by lead producer Chris Whiteside, this afternoon (72 hours after the bans) we removed the account bans from those customers who were involved in the karma weapons exploit and who correctly submitted appeals agreeing to delete the items. Anyone who remains banned, follow the instructions in the linked post and we'll get you back in the game quickly.

If you discover an emergency game-breaking or economy-breaking bug, do not exploit it, but please notify us immediately at this email address: exploits (at) arena (dot) net. You may also use this email address to report suspected security vulnerabilities. Thank you to everyone who has sent reports. However, note that we cannot respond individually to emails to this address.

GM Actions

Here's a summary of recent GM actions to police the game. In the past 24 hours we permanently banned 292 accounts for RMT-related botting and spamming, and suspended 23 accounts for using very offensive language or names.

Forums

Our most important priority at the moment is to ensure that the game runs stably and flawlessly. So as to not create additional demand on our infrastructure and on our programming team, we made the decision not to open the forums until the initial mass influx of players has calmed down a bit.

Next software updates

We're making non-disruptive changes throughout the day. We'll publish the next back-end server update tonight at midnight Seattle time. The game may be unavailable for approximately 20-60 minutes while we perform this update.

Saturday, September 1, 2012

Account Security

Read this! If you don't want your account hacked, don't use the same email address and password for Guild Wars 2 that you've used for another game or web site. Hackers have big lists of email addresses and passwords that they've harvested from malware and from security vulnerabilities in other games and web sites, and they're systematically testing Guild Wars 2 looking for matching accounts.

We're doing everything we can to protect you. But to protect you in this case, we have to start with, "the hacker knows this person's account name and password; now how do we keep him from stealing the account?" That's hard to protect against. Don't let it get to that point. Please immediately change your password to a new, strong, unique password that you've never used anywhere else.

Hacked Accounts

Our customer support team is prioritizing tickets from customers with hacked accounts or who are otherwise blocked from logging into the game. If your account was hacked, please follow these instructions for submitting a ticket, to make sure that your ticket is correctly prioritized and to make sure you're submitting all the information we need to restore your access.

For hacked accounts, expect a response within 72 hours. As of this writing we're working on tickets submitted August 30. If you submitted a hacked account ticket on August 29 or earlier, and haven't received a response yet, your ticket may not be correctly prioritized. In that case, please submit a new ticket using the above instructions, and in the title write, "Hacked Account - Ticket submitted August 2x - Ticket number xxxxxx-xxxxxx" (fill in the date and ticket number), and we will prioritize your existing (August 29 or earlier) ticket.

Reset Password

We're leaving the "reset password" feature disabled for now. If you forgot your password, please contact the customer support team.

We're leaving this disabled for now because we believe that a significant number of customers are unaware that hackers have the passwords for their email accounts. If we enable "reset password", a hacker who can get into an email account can use that access to get into the associated Guild Wars 2 game account.

Email Authentication

Email authentication is a feature we use to prevent hackers from gaining access to an account even if they know the account name and password.

We suffered an outage of email authentication mails today, preventing players from authorizing logins from new locations. This is now resolved.

When you receive an email authentication message, or any other email from noreply@guildwars2.com, do not mark the email as spam! If you do, your email provider may prevent you from seeing any future email authentication messages.

Parties, Guilds, etc.

We've made significant fixes to parties and guilds. However, you may still see intermittent outages. These outages cause symptoms such as party members not appearing on the map, party members not staying in the same overflow servers as they travel between maps, party members not joining dungeons together, and guild invites not working.

Trading Post

We're periodically opening the Trading Post for testing. This morning it was open to all players for six hours. As of this writing, the Trading Post is offline so we can apply further bug fixes and performance improvements.

This morning during testing, some users purchased items and didn't immediately receive them, or sold items and didn't immediately receive the gold. We do have record of these transactions and are working on completing them. Check the "pick up" tab on your commerce panel to see if your transaction has completed.

PvP Tournaments

PvP tournaments were temporarily disabled today. We have now restored them.

World v. World

World v. World matches are now updating daily. We're running 24-hour matches to balance servers.

Worlds

We added three new worlds in Europe on Thursday, and three new worlds in America on Friday, and increased the population limits on all worlds.

Overflow

During this initial surge of high concurrency, and especially while most characters are low-level and thus playing in the same starting areas, it's common for players to be directed to overflow servers. If you want to play with a friend, but you're not on the same overflow servers, you can form a party together, then right-click on your friend's portrait in the party list and click "join".

We expect the use of overflow servers to naturally subside as players spread out more through the world.

Botting and exploits

It is our policy to permanently ban accounts engaged in botting and exploits, and we're ramping up to do that.

If you discover an exploit in the game, do not exploit it or publicize it, but instead please notify us immediately at this new email address: exploits (at) arena (dot) net. (This email address is for notifying us of emergency exploits. We cannot respond individually to questions sent to this address.)

Forums

Our most important priority at the moment is to ensure that the game runs stably and flawlessly. So as to not create additional demand on our infrastructure and on our programming team, we made the decision not to open the forums until the initial mass influx of players has calmed down a bit.

Next software updates

We're making non-disruptive changes throughout the day. We'll publish the next back-end server update tonight at midnight Seattle time. The game may be unavailable for approximately 20-60 minutes while we perform this update.

Friday, August 31, 2012

Account Security

Protect your account! We've seen hackers systematically scan email addresses and passwords harvested from other games, web sites, and trojans to see if they match Guild Wars 2 accounts. We've taken steps to protect our players from this, but we need your help too. Make sure that you use a strong, unique password for Guild Wars 2 that you've never used anywhere else. For best security, use a unique email address too, and see our blog post for more tips.

Email authentication

We now have email authentication enabled for all players who have validated their email addresses. This feature sends an email whenever it detects a login attempt to your account from a location you haven't played from before, asking you to allow or deny the login.

We've learned of an incompatibility between email authentication and older versions of Internet Explorer. We're working on a fix, which we expect to deploy tomorrow.

If you're not receiving account verification emails or account authentication emails, please check your junk/spam folders, and add noreply@guildwars2.com to your safe senders list.

Parties, guilds, etc.

We've made significant fixes to parties and guilds. However, you may still see intermittent outages. These outages cause symptoms such as party members not appearing on the map, party members not staying in the same overflow servers as they travel between maps, and guild invites not working.

Trading Post

Yesterday we opened the Trading Post for a random, rotating 50% of users. After gathering data from yesterday's tests, we applied a number of fixes and performance improvements, and are preparing a larger-scale test today.

Tournament Rewards

We believe we've addressed the problem with tournament chests not appearing. Let us know if you still see any issues with this.

World v. World

We're aware the world v. world matches have not been resetting properly. We're preparing an update to fix this. Once the issue is fixed, we'll start running 24-hour matches to balance servers.

Worlds

We added three new worlds in Europe yesterday, three new worlds in America today, and increased the population limits on all worlds.

Overflow

During this initial surge of high concurrency, and especially while most characters are low-level and thus playing in the same starting areas, it's common for players to be directed to overflow servers. If you want to play with a friend, but you're not on the same overflow servers, you can form a party together, then right-click on your friend's portrait in the party list and click "join".

We expect the use of overflow servers to naturally subside as players spread out more through the world.

Botting

We suspended accounts of 750 players running bots. We're ramping up and will soon apply permanent bans for cases of substantial botting.

Exploits

If you discover an exploit in the game, do not exploit it or publicize it, but instead please notify us immediately at this new email address: exploits (at) arena (dot) net.

Forums

Our most important priority at the moment is to ensure that the game runs stably and flawlessly. So as to not create additional demand on our infrastructure and on our programming team, we made the decision not to open the forums until the initial mass influx of players has calmed down a bit.

Wiki

We increased wiki server capacity to address issues users are seeing. We plan to start posting these updates to the wiki, as long as the wiki can handle the traffic.

Next software updates

We're making non-disruptive changes throughout the day. We'll publish the next back-end server update tonight at midnight Seattle time. The game may be unavailable for approximately 20-60 minutes while we perform this update.

Tournament PvP

We've taken Tournament PvP down for maintenance as we're working on fixing a few issues.

Thursday, August 30, 2012

Account security - Hackers are systematically scanning email addresses and passwords harvested from other games, web sites, and trojans to see if they match Guild Wars 2 accounts. We're taking a number of steps to protect our players from this, listed below, but we need your help too. To protect your account, make sure you use a strong, unique password for Guild Wars 2 that you've never used anywhere else. If your password isn't strong and unique, change it right now. For the highest level of protection, also create a unique email address to use solely for Guild Wars 2.

Here are the things we're doing to protect your accounts.

• We have the "password reset" feature temporarily disabled. If you need to reset your password, contact our customer support team.

• We now have email authentication turned on for all players with verified email addresses. With this feature, even if someone guesses your password, when he tries to login from a location that you've never logged in from before, you'll have an opportunity to approve or disapprove of the login through an email check.

• We've noticed that hackers who discover a working email address and password combination don't always immediately exploit the compromised account. We sent email to everyone whose account has been suspiciously logged into asking them to immediately change their email address and password.

• We will also be sending email to all customers whose accounts have been unsuccessfully tested by hackers. We strongly recommend that these customers create a new, unique email address for their account.

• We left in-game mail disabled for another half-day, because it's difficult for hackers to loot accounts when both in-game mail and the trading post are disabled. Keeping mail disabled this morning to prevent account looting gave us time to get email authentication turned on for all players, and gave players time to secure their accounts. But we will be turning in-game mail back on soon, so we ask everyone to quickly secure their accounts.

Email authentication - We started ramping up email authentication after last night's server update, and it's now enabled for 100% of players with verified email addresses. Email authentication provides a high level of security for everyone, and can provide an even higher level of security when combined with two-factor email authentication. Here's how you can set that up. Create a new unique Google or Yahoo email address solely for your Guild Wars 2 account. Verify that email address with Guild Wars 2 to turn on email authentication. Then follow the instructions at Google or Yahoo to enable two-factor authentication for all logins to your email address.

Parties, guilds, etc. - We're working to address problems with parties, guilds, and other social features, which cause symptoms such as party members not appearing on the map, party members not staying in the same overflow servers as they travel between maps, and guild invites and guild chat failing intermittently.

Overflow servers - During this initial surge of high concurrency, and especially while most characters are low-level and thus playing in the same starting areas, it's common for players to be directed to overflow servers. If you want to play with a friend, but you're not on the same overflow servers, you can form a party together, then right-click on your friend's portrait in the party list and click "join". Note that this functionality is sometimes intermittently unavailable due to the issues with parties and guilds noted above.

We expect the use of overflow servers to naturally subside as players spread out more through the world.

Botting - Yesterday we applied 72-hour account suspensions to 500 players who were running bots. We're continuing to detect and ban bots. Soon we will ramp up to our normal policy of applying permanent account bans to anyone who runs a bot.

Exploits - If you discover an exploit in the game, do not exploit it or publicize it, but instead notify us immediately at this new email address: exploits (at) arena (dot) net.

This morning there was a widely-publicized, newly-introduced exploit in which specific cultural weapons were selling for one-thousandth of their normal price. We fixed it with an emergency build this morning. We want to thank the vast majority of players who became aware of the issue, responsibly reported it, and did not exploit it. However, a smaller group of players did significantly exploit it, each purchasing hundreds or thousands of these weapons. We permanently banned 3,000 accounts of players who substantially exploited it, and applied 72-hours bans to another 1,000 accounts of players who mildly exploited it.

In-game mail - In last night's software update we fixed the potential abuse of the in-game mail system that we identified yesterday. We kept in-game mail turned off for another half-day while working to secure accounts against hackers, since in-game mail can be used to loot an account. And we kept in-game mail turned off while responding to this morning's exploit. We're now ready to re-enable it, and will do so this afternoon.

Trading Post - Yesterday we tested Trading Post with a random 15% of players. This test helped us gather valuable data to fix important bottlenecks. This afternoon we will test Trading Post with a random 25% of players, and then work to ramp up from there.

Tournament Rewards - We're working on fixing tournament chest rewards. Because this requires substantial testing, we do not have an estimated release timeframe to provide at this time.

Forums - Our most important priority at the moment is to ensure that the game runs stably and flawlessly. So as to not create additional demand on our infrastructure and on our programming team, we made the decision not to open the forums until the initial mass influx of players has calmed down a bit.

Next software updates - We're making non-disruptive changes throughout the day. We'll publish the next back-end server update tonight at midnight Seattle time. The game may be unavailable for approximately 20-60 minutes while we perform this update.

Wednesday, August 29, 2012

Account security - We're seeing an uptick in reports of account theft and attempted account theft. We believe hackers are using databases of email addresses and passwords stolen from other games and web sites, and pre-existing trojan horses, to search for matching Guild Wars 2 accounts which they attempt to compromise. To prevent this, we have temporarily disabled the "reset password" feature, and we're working to bring email authentication online. To protect yourself, please ensure that you use a unique password for Guild Wars 2 that you don't use for any other game, email account, forum or web account.

Email authentication - Email authentication is a feature that notifies you if someone tries to log into your account from a location you've never logged in from before. Thus, even if someone guesses your game password, he can't log in unless he also guesses your email account password. You can make email authentication even more secure by using an email provider that supports two-factor authentication, such as Google or Yahoo, and taking advantage of that. We're currently preparing email authentication and intend to deploy it in a phased rollout, starting on Thursday, August 30.

Parties, guilds, etc. - Parties, guilds, and other social features are periodically failing. This causes issues such as party members not appearing on the map, and party members not staying in the same overflow servers as they travel between maps. This happens particularly during times of peak usage. We're working to fix related problems and mitigate this issue with each subsequent update.

Worlds - Many worlds are filling up. We're keeping the number of worlds constrained so that worlds stay well populated even after the initial surge of high concurrency. However, we will add worlds as necessary. As of Wednesday, August 30, all German language worlds are full and all French language worlds are at high usage, so we're adding two new German language worlds and one new French language world.

Overflow worlds - During this initial surge of high concurrency, and especially while many characters are low-level and thus playing in the same starting areas, it's common for players to be directed to overflow maps. If you want to play with a friend, but you’re not on the same overflow map, you can form a party together, then right-click on your friend's portrait in the party list and click "join". Note that this functionality is sometimes intermittently unavailable due to the "parties, guilds, etc." issues noted above.

Trading Post - We're working to bring the Trading Post back online. To help test, we've temporarily made it available to a random 15% of players, while we work to resolve remaining capacity constraints that will allow us to open it to everyone.

Edit: We have completed our live testing of the Trading Post for today and the Trading Post is now in maintenance for all players. Thank you everyone that participated; this test has helped us tremendously.

In-game mail - We detected a potential abuse of the in-game mail system and have temporarily disabled in-game mail to prevent any such abuse. We'll reenable it soon, hopefully in tonight's update.

Edit: The fact that in-game mail is disabled means that it's currently impossible for account hackers to loot stolen accounts, so we're going to leave it disabled for just a little while longer, while we work to ramp up email authentication.

Botting - We'll start substantial banning of bots on Wednesday, August 29. Since we're currently seeing widespread casual, unsophisticated botting, we will start with 72-hour bans for first offenses. In the coming days, as we address the casual botting problem, we plan to switch to our normal policy of permanently banning anyone who runs a bot.

Forums - Our most important priority at the moment is to ensure that the game runs stably and flawlessly. So as to not create additional demand on our infrastructure and on our programming team, we made the decision not to open the forums until the initial mass influx of players has calmed down a bit.

Next software updates - The next update of the game server and back-end server software will take place tonight at midnight Seattle time. The game may be unavailable for approximately 20-60 minutes while we perform the update. We expect this update to have fixes for email authentication and in-game mail. Our continued work on the Trading Post is not tied to game updates, so we will continue to test Trading Post updates throughout the day.