Something about clustering that worries me...

[Gandelf]

If you want to play on both servers on two different realms and you haven't created your characters yet, it's now or never, otherwise you will only be able to play on a single realm. If you have characters on different realms on these servers, you will be able to log onto the other one only after a period of one hour. And please note that if you have characters on two different realms, and you delete one of your characters, it will not be possible to restore him. So please go slowly, think twice, hit accept once, as the saying goes.

Regarding the sentence highlighted in bold type...

Someone please reassure me here... I can understand that if you delete a character, that you have to beware, but what happens to players who have characters deleted accidentally through no fault of their own? No, I don't mean the, "My little brother deleted my character without me knowing!" scenario, but those instances where players have lost characters due to some security breach. I seem to remember some player once discovering that all his characters had been deleted, because someone had hacked into his account. What happens in this case? Would such a player lose his character/s even though it was not his fault?

[Lieva]

The thing is
GoA have stressed that no one has ever been hacked
Even the old GM account 'hacking' incident wasnt an actual hack.

If your worried then dont give your account out to anyone even your best friend/wife/sister etc then there is no chance of anyone ever having the account to delete on.

[Gandelf]

But wasn't there an instance where someone had kept their account username/password in his hotmail inbox and it was hacked or something?

[awarkle]

which is why goa have repeatadly said do not use hotmail as a way of holding your passwords and stuffs.

Everyone with a proper internet connection should have received from there service provider a proper email address.

I stopped using my hotmail account after its spam filter got clogged in a day 2000 spams.

I just use my normal email account which blocks spam automatically.

DO NOT USE HOTMAIL to store sensitive information.

[Requiel]

It's pretty much impossible to guess a DAoC password (at least for the EU where you can't choose your own). It is obviously possible to brute force it if you happen to know the login but frankly it's not going to be worth it to most 'hackers'. Every single 'hacking' incident I've handled has involved poor security choices by the victim or them deliberately compromising their account security by sharing their account.

To answer Gandelfs' original question. Say you play mid/excal and hib/pryd on the same account. If you deleted a mid character and still had mid characters left afterwards we could restore it. If you deleted all your mid characters then we couldn't. If you are 'hacked' and all your characters are deleted by the hacker then all we'll be able to do is advise you how to tighten up your account security. The security of your account is entirely your own responsibility, if it is compromised it can be no-one's fault but your own.

[Gandelf]

Thanks Requiel for your reply. It has reassured me.