Sunday, October 02, 2011

NCSoft Response

It took 25 hours but the NCSoft people replied to my ticket about my lost log-in information. Unfortunately the reply was a form letter. I used to work in a support role for an online game and I certainly sent out my fair share of form letters so I'm not sure it's really ok to complain, but I'm going to do it anyway. In my case I was rarely in a position to actually do anything and sending people to a form to fill out was all I could do. I'd like to think in my case here that 'Sam' could have done something more.

At any rate, if I can't answer my security questions I need to fill out a bunch of other information. I can somewhat see why they'd want me to answer this stuff to prove I'm actually me since they don't want just anybody logging in to my account. On the other hand the account has been inactive for almost 6 years and I'm not asking for the information to be sent to me. I want it sent to the email address registered with the account when it was created. It feels like it would be a good customer experience to just give me my account back. Best case scenario I'm actually me and they make me happy by limiting the hoops I need to jump through. Worst case scenario someone steals an account I haven't used in 6 years. Disaster scenario is someone steals an account I haven't used in 6 years and then I actually show up and want it back too. In that case I'd just find a way to restore what I'd be missing and kick the thief out. It feels like the disaster scenario should be a lot rarer than the best case scenario, especially after they send out a recruiting drive email.

The stuff the form wants me to answer is my name, address, and date of birth as of when I created my account. (I can't imagine by birth day would have changed!) It wants the serial codes for the games added to the account, and the unique account IDs sent when I activated those games. It also wants the last 4 digits of my credit card used to activate the account.

Some of that I can provide. I do still have the initial email so I have that account id. I don't have the last 4 digits of that credit card since that credit card expired like 5 years ago and I didn't keep it. (I also had to have it changed after some fraud concerns.) I don't have a clue what the serial code would be. I've moved several times since then and the City of Villains box is not something that made it through all those moves. Frankly I don't even know where I was living when I activated the game. It wasn't out in New Brunswick since I was playing with my brother online only. It wasn't with Pounder, I don't think, since I don't recall trying to convince him to play with me. So it was probably one of the random places in Waterloo I lived in for 4 months?

So, yeah, I don't have most of the information they want. I might be able to eventually convince them that I'm me despite not having the info they want. (I once had my Yahoo account get hacked and managed to get it back by taking the 'come on, please?' tactic over and over until it worked.) Getting to take a picture of Oroku Saki is really not worth all that hassle though.

Time to uninstall a game I didn't get a chance to try again. Sorry, City of Villains, you lose.

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