Item restoration: rollback vs. restore

So everyone has seen the rash of compromised accounts, heard the horror stories of how long it's taking to get them back, and how long, on top of that, it's taking to get a character rollback to retrieve lost items/gil (3+ weeks). On average, people seem to be paying for over a month's service during which they're unable to play.

I was not hacked, but my FC Master was, and 3 weeks later is still waiting to hear back on the retrieval of her account. If she decides to return to the game at all given the way she's been treated by customer service, she's probably not going to bother with a rollback and just be out 350K gil, because she won't want to pay for another 3+ weeks waiting on a rollback that will only rob of her any progress she might make playing in the interim.

Please don't bother commenting to say "YOU SHOULD HAVE A SECURITY TOKEN lol" because we know this already; that's not what this thread is for -- in fact I'm not even complaining, per se, about the ridiculous 3 week wait on account retrieval.

What I AM saying, is A) why on God's green earth do character rollbacks take 2 weeks to a month? and B) if, all right, SE is legitimately that understaffed, why are they not just doing item restores and mailing people their missing items/gil via the in game delivery box so they can continue to play the game they're paying for during the wait?

This is what Blizzard & many others do, and I have to say it'd be a real tonic for the situation with XIV right now.

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Originally Posted by squidbunny

mailing people their missing items/gil via the in game delivery box so they can continue to play the game they're paying for during the wait?

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Wait, why would missing an item/gil prevent you from playing the game? I don't see the correlation.

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Originally Posted by squidbunny

Please don't bother commenting to say "YOU SHOULD HAVE A SECURITY TOKEN lol"

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You obviously have no idea on how these things work, playing with databases and such. No people will abuse what you are suggesting as far as mailing items, as they will say they were hacked just to get items that they never had. There is a investigation of the account when there is a request for a rollback/restore to make sure its a valid request. Going to close with this
Guess what, I am going to respond by saying "YOU SHOULD HAVE A SECURITY TOKEN", stop going to RMT sites and getting a virus, stop going to shady websites and getting a virus. I laugh when people say they got hacked, and they use the excuse or other people run to their aid and saying something else got hacked as to why they were hacked. To date, I have yet to see any news about all these sites and such that were comprised.

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Originally Posted by Nghthawk

You obviously have no idea on how these things work, playing with databases and such. No people will abuse what you are suggesting as far as mailing items, as they will say they were hacked just to get items that they never had. There is a investigation of the account when there is a request for a rollback/restore to make sure its a valid request. Going to close with this
Guess what, I am going to respond by saying "YOU SHOULD HAVE A SECURITY TOKEN", stop going to RMT sites and getting a virus, stop going to shady websites and getting a virus. I laugh when people say they got hacked, and they use the excuse or other people run to their aid and saying something else got hacked as to why they were hacked. To date, I have yet to see any news about all these sites and such that were comprised.

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A) You obviously have no idea how these things work, and clearly haven't played many MMORPGs. If SE keeps rollback data for characters they can also check back and see what a character previously had and when they lost it against when an account was compromised. There's no capacity for abuse here. I'm not saying everyone should get everything they request; that's absurd. And this IS the way other MMORPGs handle this.

B) Again, this isn't about security. It's about how to fix SE's customer care. But our FC Master/my sister was not "going to RMT sites and getting a virus". However if you want to talk about security, the security token is only so good when the FFXIV launcher (an html wrapper) has non-expiring session IDs that can be mined to completely circumnavigate tokens altogether. The game's "security" is a joke.

I really don't understand your defense of what is objectively poor support relative to industry standards; if you like the game you should want to see SE get their act together so it's successful. Because I guarantee for every person that comes on the boards and vocally complains about customer service or says they're quitting in a big dramatic blowup there's two that quietly say to themselves "This isn't worth it" and cancel their subscription.

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Originally Posted by BlazeChronic

Wait, why would missing an item/gil prevent you from playing the game? I don't see the correlation.

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Because if you request a character rollback you lose any items/levels/progress you attained in the interim. You might have read the whole post vs. just the bolded bits and this would have been clear.

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Originally Posted by squidbunny

Because if you request a character rollback you lose any items/levels/progress you attained in the interim. You might have read the whole post vs. just the bolded bits and this would have been clear.

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Oh, I see.

Unfortunately, I disagree with you... rollbacks SHOULD take around a month, imo, to give the GM's a proper amount of time to investigate the claims. Like it or not, the majority of rollback/restoration requests are people trying to scam. Basically getting a friend to "hack" them, steal all their loot/gil and then cry to SE for a restore.

And if they were 'hacked' by a third party, I suggest your FC leader stop trying to use kefkabot and going to RMT sites, because account security falls 100% on the user. SE gives you the tools to protect your account. If you get hacked, that's your problem.

So, in essence, no, I don't think 2 weeks to a month is a long wait for a restore. I think its absolutely acceptable, given the nature of the request.

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Originally Posted by BlazeChronic

Oh, I see.

Unfortunately, I disagree with you... rollbacks SHOULD take around a month, imo, to give the GM's a proper amount of time to investigate the claims. Like it or not, the majority of rollback/restoration requests are people trying to scam. Basically getting a friend to "hack" them, steal all their loot/gil and then cry to SE for a restore.

And if they were 'hacked' by a third party, I suggest your FC leader stop trying to use kefkabot and going to RMT sites, because account security falls 100% on the user. SE gives you the tools to protect your account. If you get hacked, that's your problem.

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Read my response to Nighthawk.

And, again, reading/inference are useful tools here: you seriously think it should take a month ON TOP OF the month it takes to investigate/reinstate an account? You think that's even a good use of SE's resources, to conduct two investigations instead of handling this as one ticket? And you legitimately believe people should pay for two months' subscription during which they can't play?

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Originally Posted by squidbunny

Read my response to Nighthawk.

And, again, reading/inference are useful tools here: you seriously think it should take a month ON TOP OF the month it takes to investigate/reinstate an account? You think that's even a good use of SE's resources, to conduct two investigations instead of handling this as one ticket? And you legitimately believe people should pay for two months' subscription during which they can't play?

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To answer all of your questions - I don't think there should be an investigation at all. I don't think there should be any type of restoration whatsoever. I think your FC leader should stop trying to use kefkabot and start using an authenticator.

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Originally Posted by BlazeChronic

To answer all of your questions - I don't think there should be an investigation at all. I don't think there should be any type of restoration whatsoever. I think your FC leader should stop trying to use kefkabot and start using an authenticator.

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She was not using kefkabot. I think it's all very well and good to write off other folks' issues when you're not experiencing them yourself. I look forward to the day you actually have to use SE's customer support for something, and am vaguely sad at how sure I am this XIV's bullshit customer care will sink what is an otherwise great game unless it improves ASAP. You are utterly missing the point.

The reason they prefer rollbacks to restorations is because of the potential for fraud. Someone could purposely trade away their items from another computer or from a net cafe (do those still exist?), claim they were hacked and request a restoration, get the items they 'lost' back then have the traded items returned and tadaa, you just rolled Square. A rollback, on the other hand, undoes every action from the time of the rollback to a point of reference as determined by Square. In this way they restore your character to where you had the items without the nasty aftertaste of potential item duplication. I can't think of a single MMO that has ever not handled lost items from hacking with rollbacks.

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Originally Posted by Gilraen

The reason they prefer rollbacks to restorations is because of the potential for fraud. Someone could purposely trade away their items from another computer or from a net cafe (do those still exist?), claim they were hacked and request a restoration, get the items they 'lost' back then have the traded items returned and tadaa, you just rolled Square. A rollback, on the other hand, undoes every action from the time of the rollback to a point of reference as determined by Square. In this way they restore your character to where you had the items without the nasty aftertaste of potential item duplication. I can't think of a single MMO that has ever not handled lost items from hacking with rollbacks.

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World of Warcraft.

I understand your point, but both methods are exploitable per this logic. You could just as easily send all your money to a friend from said net cafe and get rolled back and tadaa, you've duped your money and rolled Square. (A rollback does not undo every action.) They are not fundamentally different. Both require investigation/digging into logs and databases. And that's why I don't know why they don't switch to restoration/mailing on these cases: people could happily resume playing during the month or whatever absurd amount of time the investigation takes SE.