Today’s status update from ArenaNet

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.

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.

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 travelled 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.

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.

Today’s game status updates from ArenaNet. Note that they are predicting a 1 hour outage of the servers while they apply “significant updates” from 5pm-6pm tonight.

02:39, 6 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!

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 tonight, during which time the wiki will be unavailable for approximately one hour.

Today’s game status updates from ArenaNet. Note that they are predicting a 1 hour outage of the servers while they apply “significant updates” from 5pm-6pm tonight.

02:27, 5 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!

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.

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.

From http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Game_status_updates

Note that the above link has been being updated by ArenaNet daily.

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.

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.