What or how or could Blizzard help?
 

I've always been curious as to how Blizzard could help a player if that players account was "hacked". I seem to see the chat in game about some player who's account has been emptied. Lately it seems I have been seeing more of this.

So it got me to thinking about what Blizzard could do to help the player get it all back. I mean, geez, to have to start over with naked toons and no money, what a nightmare.

Can as a player is there a way to backup your characters to a different location that keeps all that information? Or is that kept on Blizzards side of the game?

Anyway just wondering if any of you knew.

Bellator

Blizzard knows everything about your character. What items you have, where you got them, whether you sold them or they were DE'ed, etc.

Nope, everything except for the macros and addons are stored server side - the macros are apparently moving to server side in WotLK too :).

You can back up your WTF folder so you have all your settings/macros, and back up your Interface directory so you have all of your addons, but that's pretty much it.

There are a few addons out there that save as many details as they can about your characters (Character Profiler springs to mind), so if you can see something bad happening to your account in the future you might want to try backing up all of the data through an addon like that so you have a list for future purposes :).


- Whitey

Blizzard can retrieve your characters and everything they have on them, in their personal bank and in guild bank. I see it all the time, hacked players extremely upset over lost toons, lost gold and goods etcetera, over in the Customer Service Forums. Sometimes the retrieval process is short, and sometimes it can take a few weeks. Either way, they investigate thoroughly and as long as everything looks ok, the owner of the hacked account gets everything back.

However, weather or not someone has to go through all that headache depends on how much they pay attention to computer security and also not letting anyone else play their account, or give out their login/password.... Blizzard can tell if someone other than you has been on your account.

I am pretty much a security nut I guess after a bad virus situation years ago. I don't visit most sites, have my security settings, firewall and all set higher than my friends.

For a backup WoW is the wtf folder the only one I need to worry about?

Bellator

If you wish to backup your addons, you can save the Interface folder, too.

Also, if you have a backup hard drive, check out Syncback (for nightly, weekly, bi monthly etcetera, automated file backups).

They are currently sold out, but if they ever become available again you might want to look into getting a Blizzard Authenticator token:
http://www.blizzard.com/store/details.xml?id=1100000182