I went to log into LOTRO yesterday to see the new changes in the latest patch. I was able to log in to the launcher but my account was listed as BANNED.

Dammit!

After talking to friends, I learned that my characters, all of them, were last seen online on Oct 30th. I last played on September 19th. I know that’s pretty accurate because a) Raptr says that’s the last time I played and b) September 19th is Talk Like A Pirate Day and I’d logged in to see the LOTRO event built around that “holiday.”

Anyway, I put in a ticket last night but after poking through the forums learned that the backlog on those tickets is as much as 2 weeks! I decided to call instead, but by this time it was after phone support hours had shut down.

So today I called up. My hold time was essentially zero and I talked to a very pleasant gentleman by the name of Eric who looked up my account and told me what I’d already assumed…they’d detected what looked like a 3rd party accessing my account (I assume they do this via IP address??) and had locked the account to minimize damage.

He told me it’d take about an hour to re-activate the account, and once I logged in I should check each character and see what, if anything, is missing from them. Then I should open a ticket, one for each character, and they’ll see what they can do about getting me my stuff back.

I’d purchased a big chunk of LOTRO points when the game went free-to-play and had never spent many of them, and was worried about those. Eric told me they’d probably still be there since they aren’t transferrable, nor is the stuff you can buy with them, so hackers don’t generally bother with them. I hope that’s true.

I’ve already resigned myself to logging in to find a bunch of naked characters. If that happens, and if I can’t get my stuff restored, I’ve decided I’ll just RP my way through it. There’s something kind of fun (well, I’ll admit I’m looking for the silver lining here) about having a fresh start and picking myself up by my boot straps, so to speak. Mind you, I didn’t have any really epic gear on any of my characters so this attitude is a lot easier for me than it’d be for people with maxed out characters will really good gear. But I can roleplay being robbed, stripped of all my gear, and left for dead.

I’m kind of kicking myself over this. My password on that account was old and honestly not great. It was just two words strung together; these days my passwords are always pretty complex with numbers and punctuation marks. I just never got around to changing the LOTRO one.

To recap though, and I’m assuming the account will be unlocked by the time I get home (and I already changed the password), I’m not impressed by the turn-around time for submitted tickets (2 weeks, if that’s accurate, is way too long) but I am very impressed by phone support. No hold time, a no-fuss solution to my problem and a cordial customer service person. You really can’t ask for much more than that.

[Update: I got home and logged in with no problems. I checked my highest level character and as far as I can tell he still has everything he had the last time I played him. 2 gold or so in coin, a few shards, all his gear, vault still filled with junk. And my LOTRO points seem to all be there.

Not that I’m complaining but… why bother to hack an account and then not take anything off it? I wonder if they used my account as a kind of ‘middle man’ or something? ]