Well, the other day I logged on to Etsi and noticed that she had mail from an alt that I never play. Now when I say never, I mean never. Never as in my last time logging into this alt was prior to the launch of the Burning Crusade. Never as in I can’t even remember his guild, spec, or professions. I think you get the idea that it’s been a while.

I was understandably concerned that I’d been keylogged again.

I quickly hoofed Etsi over to a mailbox, not really having any idea what to expect, and opened it to discover a full page of mail from this alt. Things like a crapload of engineering materials, about 40 repair bots… sound familiar? It’s all the stuff that was removed from Etsi. Apparently the keylogger was in the process of mailing everything of hers to the first character on the character select screen (the unplayed alt) when I interrupted them and reset the password.

It also explains why Blizzard didn’t restore a lot of my stuff – it wasn’t really gone. The only thing that I didn’t get back are my Badges of Justice (obviously, since they’re soulbound), instead I have 9 nice shiny Nether Vortices.

So, lesson to be learned – make sure you check ALL of your characters periodically, especially if you suspect your account has been broken into.

It does raise an interesting question though – I thought mail ingame bounced after 30 days. Why am I getting the stuff back after 60?

Last Wednesday I get home and happen to spy an email in my mailbox titled “World of Warcraft Account NEKKIDCOW* – Account Change Notice”. Hmm, I say to myself, that can’t be good. Opening the email shows that my password had been changed. Double ungood!

Quickly I do the “Halp I forgot my password” option on the WoW website, get my temporary password, and quickly run through my characters. Max, looks okay. Mal, looks okay. Etsi… well, crap. Etsi had nothing on her except her hearthstone and whatever gear couldn’t be vendored. Not cool! I made a quick check of the rest of my characters to make sure everything was okay (in true keylogger fashion they went straight for the 70 – they probably would have gotten more money from Max, but whatever), and opened a ticket, and was talking with a GM not five minutes later.

I think that’s probably the single fastest response time I’ve ever gotten. I was shocked.

Not long after my conversation with the GM, I received a ton of items as part of something they called a preliminary restoration, the intent being that my character would at least be playable while waiting for the rest of the equipment to be restore. All my DPS gear, resto gear, and whatever misc. bank stuff they were able to quickly put back. Pretty nifty, no?

Anywho, I changed my passwords from the laptop, cleaned the stupid virus off of my computer, and went to that evening’s raid.

The following evening I get another email from Blizzard in my inbox. Opening it reveals the text “After a thorough investigation, we have found this account to be eligible for restoration.”.

Woohoo! I’m getting my stuff back!

Continuing down the email, I read this:

Account: NEKKIDCOW*
Character: Etsi
Realm: Feathermoon
Money Restored: 207g 27s 73c
Item(s) Restored:

… wtf? Sure enough I get ~200 gold ingame, and no items.

No 70+ Field Repair Bot 110G‘s. No 130 Badges of Justice. No engineering materials, no ores, no potions/elixirs/water… nothing. A quick chat with a GM only gets me the instruction to reply to the email I originally received (which I had already done), and other than that I’ve gotten no other information from Blizz.

I’m hearing from other people that have had their accounts hijacked that none of their Badges of Justice were able to be restored, so I’m not holding my breath. I guess it’s a small blessing that it was only one character, and that they didn’t make it to the guild bank before I changed the passwords.

*NEKKIDCOW is not my real account name, sillies.