http://i.imgur.com/8bIkA.png

Yeah, no more Diablo 3 for me. While I wasn't really enjoying it (top down dungeon loot games aren't for me apparently - didn't care for Torchlight much either and I only played through Titan Quest for the setting) and likely wouldn't have played it any time soon, it's so very very shitty that I just had a game I paid for taken away from me buy the company I bought it from.

And there's nothing I can do :(

That's total bullshit! How can they get away with that shit?

Blizz locked my battle.net account because they had reason to suspect that my account had been compromised. Getting it unlocked was a bit of a hassle, printing and filling out a form and e-mailing them a scan of my driver's license.

As if certain news about this game wasn't off-putting enough...

That'd be pretty fucked up if there was no chance for you to reactivate your account.

As if I needed yet another reason to stay away from Diablo 3... but yeah, I'm glad I didn't buy this game and I will continue to stay away from Blizzard games in the future. They overstepped the line for me with their bullshit online policies and their questionable interpretation of selling a product. Seems more like renting to me...

That's really weird. When I got hacked and my account was being used in WoW to promote some gold-selling site, all I had to do was ring them and they cleared it up within minutes; was really surprised at how painless the process was.

Just keep on at them about it. Maybe call them personally rather than posting on the forums about it?

@Vitor: I agree that's shitty. It's pretty lame that it's obvious they didn't even read your email before copy/pasting a reply.

Just a little heads-up, when i got one of those copy/paste replies I got pretty pissed and basically called the guy out on it and the next reply from him was a sincere and personal (and real) reply. So maybe don't give up just yet.

That's really fucking weird. The one time when my bnet account was 'compromised' was when I still played SC2 and fixing it was a matter of e-mailing Blizzard.

Gives me another good reason to stay the fuck away from D3, at your expense though :/

That's Blizzard for you. :) Don't buy their games. Problem solved.

That is pretty fucked up. Feel bad for you duder.

Protip: Don't open any emails that say they're from Blizzard saying your account has been compromised. It's a great way to get your account compromised.

In general, don't open emails from anywhere saying your account has been compromised. If they need to tell you, they'll tell you on your next login (since that's nearly impossible for some nefarious third party to fake). And that goes double for "Please confirm your password" emails.

@Xeirus said:

@Vitor: I agree that's shitty. It's pretty lame that it's obvious they didn't even read your email before copy/pasting a reply.

Just a little heads-up, when i got one of those copy/paste replies I got pretty pissed and basically called the guy out on it and the next reply from him was a sincere and personal (and real) reply. So maybe don't give up just yet.

I just got a reply from a second moderator which was waaaay more polite and realised that something was wrong. It's going to be a hassle but I should get the game back at least.

@makari said:

Protip: Don't open any emails that say they're from Blizzard saying your account has been compromised. It's a great way to get your account compromised.

@ascagnel said:

In general, don't open emails from anywhere saying your account has been compromised. If they need to tell you, they'll tell you on your next login (since that's nearly impossible for some nefarious third party to fake). And that goes double for "Please confirm your password" emails.

The hell are you guys talking about? The email was legit, I logged onto Bnet and saw that I was banned. Of course I only go through the official Bliz site.

I'm confused. Didn't they ban the account because they thought it was compromised? It has nothing to do with "not playing the game in weeks."

Yeah dude, it sounds like you got phished. A company would never reach out and request for you to change your log-in information. They may tell you that your account has been compromised, and urge you to change it, but never would they provide a link for you to do so, and not with 8 e-mails.

@Vitor: @psylah: Did you guys have authenticators?

Also dude take this shit to Reddit and explain your case. Maybe they'll do something then.

Better yet, did you pay with a credit card? Maybe dispute it with your bank?

@ascagnel said:

@Vitor A common phishing tactic is to lure you in via an email notification that you need to "change" your password (and have a link point to a scam website).

@The_Nubster said:

Yeah dude, it sounds like you got phished. A company would never reach out and request for you to change your log-in information. They may tell you that your account has been compromised, and urge you to change it, but never would they provide a link for you to do so, and not with 8 e-mails.

Wow, you guys have totally misread this. The 8 emails were saying that my account was compromised and that I had to go to the official Bliz site to reset my details. There was no link in it anywhere. I just went to Bnet. The hack happened weeks before this apparently.@Doctorchimp said:

@Vitor: @psylah: Did you guys have authenticators?

Also dude take this shit to Reddit and explain your case. Maybe they'll do something then.

Better yet, did you pay with a credit card? Maybe dispute it with your bank?

Ha, totally beat you to it. Went to Reddit earlier. Already have a second apologetic reply from Bliz though and they're sorting it out so looks like it should all be ok.

Moral of story? When shit goes wrong, post about it on Reddit.

@Vitor: Yeah completely shitty, but hey at least you fixed it.

Dude get an authenticator if you don't have one yet.

EDIT: Also Reddit link...please....

Lesson here is to check your email (or take care of the contents) more often, bro.

So.. your account gets hacked, you don't know about it, your account continues to be used for nefarious purposes, Blizzard locks the account because it's being used for nefarious purposes and you're not doing anything about it, and... they're the bad guys?

Not to say the first Blizzard rep wasn't a bit of a dick about it, but as you've already discovered all you had to do was contact someone else within the company. So regardless of what you first posted there was, in fact, something you could do about it. And something you did about it. And now the problem is solved. And now more people will mistakenly go "Boo Blizzard! They're vile trash for locking someone's account!"

If I were you dude I'd pursue this as hard as possible. Even if you don't plan to play any more Diablo III you shouldn't let them get away with just locking your account.

@Toxeia said:

Lesson here is to check your email (or take care of the contents) more often, bro.

@FateOfNever said:

So.. your account gets hacked, you don't know about it, your account continues to be used for nefarious purposes, Blizzard locks the account because it's being used for nefarious purposes and you're not doing anything about it, and... they're the bad guys?

Not to say the first Blizzard rep wasn't a bit of a dick about it, but as you've already discovered all you had to do was contact someone else within the company. So regardless of what you first posted there was, in fact, something you could do about it. And something you did about it. And now the problem is solved. And now more people will mistakenly go "Boo Blizzard! They're vile trash for locking someone's account!"

Read it again, the problem was Blizzard sent him 11 E-mails in the span of 30 minutes and locked his account and then deleted it.

I don't care who the fuck you are or if you work at a goddamn office that programs E-mails, if you can't step away from your e-mail inbox for an hour to take a shit or Blizzard might delete your game then you have a problem.

It's not his fucking fault Blizzard is super paranoid about chinese gold farmers or terrible hackers, not his problem either. Dude bought the game, he went to work and left his account chilling for a month. It was fine until it got hacked into, and Blizzard didn't just lock it up until he had a chance to respond. They just went on to delete everything.

He got a shitty auto-response and he had to post that shit on Reddit, Boo Blizzard indeed. Shit is terrible.

@ascagnel said:

@Vitor A common phishing tactic is to lure you in via an email notification that you need to "change" your password (and have a link point to a scam website).

@The_Nubster said:

Yeah dude, it sounds like you got phished. A company would never reach out and request for you to change your log-in information. They may tell you that your account has been compromised, and urge you to change it, but never would they provide a link for you to do so, and not with 8 e-mails.

Wow, you guys have totally misread this. The 8 emails were saying that my account was compromised and that I had to go to the official Bliz site to reset my details. There was no link in it anywhere. I just went to Bnet. The hack happened weeks before this apparently.@Doctorchimp said:

@Doctorchimp said:

Read it again, the problem was Blizzard sent him 11 E-mails in the span of 30 minutes and locked his account and then deleted it.

I don't care who the fuck you are or if you work at a goddamn office that programs E-mails, if you can't step away from your e-mail inbox for an hour to take a shit or Blizzard might delete your game then you have a problem.

It's not his fucking fault Blizzard is super paranoid about chinese gold farmers or terrible hackers, not his problem either. Dude bought the game, he went to work and left his account chilling for a month. It was fine until it got hacked into in the spam of 30 minutes.

He got a shitty auto-response and he had to post that shit on Reddit, Boo Blizzard indeed. Shit is terrible.

What? No. He even said that it was "over several hours." And without actually seeing those e-mails, we have no idea how long "several hours" was. We don't know that he didn't receive something before those 8 e-mails in one day that suggest he was compromised before that was was warned before that. We have no way to know that all 8 of those e-mails were actually from Blizzard (because I've had accounts compromised before and they didn't spam me with 8 e-mails to tell me about it. I got one when my account went down due to questionable activity and that was it.)

You keep saying "it was only 30 minutes" But nowhere does 30 minutes show up. Anywhere. He also could have been hacked three weeks ago, a week after he stopped playing, and Blizzard finally had enough to flag the account to need to take it down.

He also didn't NEED to post that shit on Reddit. He already said he got into contact with them prior to that as after posting it on Reddit he got his SECOND apology from Blizzard and after contact them a second time directly he got in contact with a better rep.

Edit: And yeah, Blizzard has every right to take action against accounts that are violating their TOS and are hacking their game. To suggest that they don't have that right and that anyone that purchased the game can do whatever they like in terms of hacking the system is just silly.

@Doctorchimp said:

@Toxeia said:

Lesson here is to check your email (or take care of the contents) more often, bro.

@FateOfNever said:

So.. your account gets hacked, you don't know about it, your account continues to be used for nefarious purposes, Blizzard locks the account because it's being used for nefarious purposes and you're not doing anything about it, and... they're the bad guys?

Not to say the first Blizzard rep wasn't a bit of a dick about it, but as you've already discovered all you had to do was contact someone else within the company. So regardless of what you first posted there was, in fact, something you could do about it. And something you did about it. And now the problem is solved. And now more people will mistakenly go "Boo Blizzard! They're vile trash for locking someone's account!"

Read it again, the problem was Blizzard sent him 11 E-mails in the span of 30 minutes and locked his account and then deleted it.

I don't care who the fuck you are or if you work at a goddamn office that programs E-mails, if you can't step away from your e-mail inbox for an hour to take a shit or Blizzard might delete your game then you have a problem.

It's not his fucking fault Blizzard is super paranoid about chinese gold farmers or terrible hackers, not his problem either. Dude bought the game, he went to work and left his account chilling for a month. It was fine until it got hacked into, and Blizzard didn't just lock it up until he had a chance to respond. They just went on to delete everything.

He got a shitty auto-response and he had to post that shit on Reddit, Boo Blizzard indeed. Shit is terrible.

Thanks for that - sums it up nicely. @The_Laughing_Man said:

@Vitor said:

@ascagnel said:

@Vitor A common phishing tactic is to lure you in via an email notification that you need to "change" your password (and have a link point to a scam website).

@The_Nubster said:

Yeah dude, it sounds like you got phished. A company would never reach out and request for you to change your log-in information. They may tell you that your account has been compromised, and urge you to change it, but never would they provide a link for you to do so, and not with 8 e-mails.

Wow, you guys have totally misread this. The 8 emails were saying that my account was compromised and that I had to go to the official Bliz site to reset my details. There was no link in it anywhere. I just went to Bnet. The hack happened weeks before this apparently.@Doctorchimp said:

Thats a phishing email dude... Reply to the dude and call him on it. Or call their customer support.

Dude, I have an open support ticket with Bliz discussing all this. I'm on the official site. They sent the emails. They've done it before when I used my SC2 account when I was in Japan and Korea. It's the same format and from the same address and I never click email links - I always just go to the main site. Clearly their system just went haywire and sent out 11 emails in the space of 30 minutes for some reason. It's all official. Jesus. I'm not an idiot.

@FateOfNever: http://i.imgur.com/8bIkA.png

Check his second message before the rep talked. He looked at his inbox and it was actually 11 emails in the span of 30 minutes.

@Doctorchimp said:

@FateOfNever: http://i.imgur.com/8bIkA.png

Check his second message before the rep talked. He looked at his inbox and it was actually 11 emails in the span of 30 minutes.

That sounds considerably more to me like there was a hiccup in the system and either they sent him out e-mails over more time than that and something caught them and they simply didn't send when they were supposed to, or it was supposed to send one and the hiccup sent out 11. That doesn't sound like a devious Blizzard tactic or anything.

But you still don't answer my point of - 1) he didn't need to post anything on Reddit because all he had to do was contact them again. And believe me, fucking shitty reps are not something that is special or unique to Blizzard. It's a fact of all companies that have representatives that you have to deal with whenever you have a problem. Get in contact with them again and let the people in charge know who the twit was that didn't want to deal with him or his case so he can be dealt with. and 2) why Blizzard isn't allowed to take action against people hacking their game?

@FateOfNever said:

What? No. He even said that it was "over several hours." And without actually seeing those e-mails, we have no idea how long "several hours" was.

It shouldn't matter how many hours it was. He should not be required to check his emails in order to not have the game that he bought taken away from him. And that's how it looked ... because of the shitty first response of the moderator.

@FateOfNever: Why are you so upset? I mean they can take measures to stop his account from hurting the game, they can lock up his account sure. It just seemed like it was hacked into before, keystrokes, phishing site, he was in a cyber cafe or a library, and then Blizzard decided to take rash action in the span of 30 minutes. It doesn't seem like they gave him a chance to respond.

They deleted his access to the game, do you understand that is upsetting? Why did they delete his access and tell him to buy it again? Why does he have to do all this shit? I understand it's Blizzard and technically it's in their rights to just up and delete it, but yo man....shit's fucked. Understand that.

@Doctorchimp: No, you're right. I guess my problem with this is it seems considerably more like this was the result of one guy kind of being an ass or a hiccup in the system, or both. I feel like I doubt anyone knows, whether it's the OP or Blizzard themselves, if those 11 e-mails was supposed to be a "one of these was actually supposed to reach you two weeks ago" or if those 11 e-mails were just the same thing sent 11 times on accident. I have a tendency to look at a situation and think of "all possibilities" which includes me thinking things like "Maybe communication simply got crossed and his account was never intended to be deleted in the first place but something went wrong and someone got a message to delete it instead of to lock it."

It's a shitty situation. I feel like there probably is some actual reason to delete the accounts - probably to get rid of unneeded characters/accounts on the system that by even just existing bog things down and gunk things up or to prevent hackers from eventually finding a way to circumvent the system and re-activate locked accounts. But no, his account shouldn't have been deleted for D3. It should have been locked, you're right. That part I don't get. If they literally just sent him an e-mail and half an hour later they deleted his account, something's wrong in the system, but I still don't feel it's intentional. And I think that's why irritates me so badly. People see a mistake in the system and instead of reacting with "I wonder what went wrong, but it needs to be fixed." people jump down (in this case) a company's throat going "god, they are the fucking worst trash ever. I hate this company." and make generalizations and snap judgements based on living in a world in imperfect humans and imperfect technology and that always seems shitty to me.

No one seems to care that Blizzard is already working to solve the problem (before it even being made a public matter.) All anyone seems to care about is "something went wrong and now I can condemn this company as the devil for it and nothing can change my mind on the matter." That's not to say that what happened is cool. It shouldn't have happened at all. But that's kind of the world we live in; a lot of things shouldn't happen at all, but it's an imperfect world and mistakes happen. I don't think flukes should be grounds for denouncing something entirely. If it were, then everyone should hate everything and we should just stop existing.

@FateOfNever said:

@Doctorchimp: No, you're right.

Just wanted to step in here and give you a MASSIVE Internet high-five for saying this. I don't know who was right or what you were arguing about but it always warms my heart to see someone back down in an Internet argument. HIGH FIVE, DUDER.

@Cataphract1014 said:

@CptBedlam: If your Xbox Live, Steam, PSN, or any account is compromised, you can be anything that the company in charge of the service will shut it down and ask questions second. This is not something new or shocking.

The account is always temporarily shut down in these cases and you should always have the opportunity to reactivate it. This wasn't the case here. The OP was falsely told that his copy of the game is now worthless and that he should buy it again.

Let me see if I understand this. Blizzard has (probably accidently) sent 11 e-mails in the span of 30 minutes, however, since you haven't played the game for several weeks, you have no way to find out how long Blizzard actually waited. They might have waited just 20 minutes before deleted the account, 24 hours, a full work week?

I do however agree with Blizzard deleting your account and then requesting you to purchase another copy is a d*ck move, plain and simple. Banning would have been enough to stop the hacker in his/her tracks, whilst keeping your account in a recoverable state. The best thing that comes to mind is that you and your friends are playing ball during school recess, the school's principal would come out, rupture the ball for playing too close to the teachers' lounge and then telling you to buy a new one. And then that moderator who gave you that shitty "our decision stands" response. At least they're looking into the subject seriously, and they sent you an apology. Hope things will work out as best as they can be.

Post this on Reddit and the uproar will get it unbanned.

@BrockNRolla said:

I'm confused. Didn't they ban the account because they thought it was compromised? It has nothing to do with "not playing the game in weeks."

I haven't played SC2 for what, a year or 2 now?...and I was able to roll right into D3. Concerning what the OP describes, I was wondering before I activated Diablo 3 iff'n that was going to be the case for my account. It was not. I agree with going after them till you reach a real person or reasonable facsimile thereof. I hate the wall of garbage companies like Blizzard, M.S. etc put up to deal w/ customer problems, but ppl. tend not to be garbage...mostly. I like reading this thread because problems do happen and it is good for the advice you get from ppl. who have dealt w/ them.

Just gotta get your email so right these days.

#twentydoes.

@Doctorchimp said:

@Vitor: @psylah: Did you guys have authenticators?

Also dude take this shit to Reddit and explain your case. Maybe they'll do something then.

Better yet, did you pay with a credit card? Maybe dispute it with your bank?

At the time I had no authenticator, and I wasn't actively playing WoW.

I had received e-mails from Blizzard saying there was suspect activity on my account, but I had ignored it thinking they were more phishing scams.

When I reactivated my account, I still had all of my stuff so I was in the clear. I did start using the authenticator since that though.

@bibamatt said:

@FateOfNever said:

@Doctorchimp: No, you're right.

Just wanted to step in here and give you a MASSIVE Internet high-five for saying this. I don't know who was right or what you were arguing about but it always warms my heart to see someone back down in an Internet argument. HIGH FIVE, DUDER.

I'll indulge in an internet high-five over that, sure. Thanks.

I have it on good authority (particularly from a former employee) that Blizzard doesn't give a fuck about you (the customer) or even their employees one bit at this point.

And I quote...

This place is a fucking joke run by managers only interested in politics rather than doing what is best for the employees and customers. Tired of getting shit on with no reasonable explanation. And we have new shifts starting soon that place me from seeing (my spouse) for 5 hours on a friday night, to never.
I'm not gonna work a shit job on a shit shift, for shitty people for a year just for the hope of it "getting better." This place is getting run into the ground.

@Toxeia said:

Lesson here is to check your email (or take care of the contents) more often, bro.

The emails saying there was a problem and the lock happened within the space of less than 12 hours. I'm not at my computer 24/7, that is not a reasonable thing to expect.

Also, it shouldn't matter that I haven't played the game in weeks. I bought a game I expected to be able to fire up whenever, not a pet I have to check on every few days.

@Pinworm45 said:

Post this on Reddit and the uproar will get it unbanned.

10 upvotes in 12 hours, not likely :(

At least it's getting sorted anyway.

I'm glad this got resolved, and especially in the manner I was going to suggest anyway. I've had several friends in wow get hacked/phished/what-have-you and sometimes you'll get a douchebag GM who says "tough break, we can't restore your items". Send another ticket the next day, and the deed is done within 3 minutes.

It's nowhere close to being the worst customer service I've seen, but this company is becoming shittier and shittier. I still laugh whenever my buddy acts excited about Mists of Pandaria, when he's currently bored to tears with that pile of puke.

Yeah, If I ever get a computer powerful enough to play this game I still won't be getting it simply based on principle. I'm seriously questioning ever playing any Blizzard game period. That is one fucked up business practice.

Stop going to shady porn sites and getting your password stolen so that people can hack your account.

lol pc games