Apologies in advance for venting my issues on this public forum, but when all else fails, it seems U.Hall is the last resort for people trying to deal with EA on a customer support level (no offence, but it is difficult!).
I've not played UO for a few years now, but I've kept some accounts, and most of my belongings, in case I ever wanted to return - I also reopen my accounts every few months to prevent my houses falling. A practice I know is frowned upon by some, but that's £80 a year for a service I don't use, which seems like a good deal for EA!
Anyway, because of the way I'm managing my accounts, I tend to activate them only in times of urgency - several times now being warned on ICQ or Stratics by friends, that my houses are falling and that I need to save them.
I run 4 accounts, 2 "mains" and 2 property/householding accounts. About a year ago (maybe a year and a half. Ages anyway) I tried reactivating my two main accounts, and found that my passwords didn't work. I still to this day am unsure whether somebody actually changed them, or if I changed them myself and just forgot - considering the amount of attention I was paying to them at the time, neither of these possibilities would surprise me.
Usually the first thing to do would be password recovery, but in this case the accounts are linked to an old hotmail account which I also don't remember the password for (I went through a phase of changing passwords a lot, for security reasons, and using seperate e-mails for each account and so on, which worked well when I was playing 16 hours a day 7 days a week, not so well when that dropped to 16 hours a year
).
So I went to customer support, who, after several days of communication decided that I couldn't prove the accounts were mine, because the last way I activated them was with gametime codes that I didn't keept a record of (basically I spammed my ICQ "buying gametime codes" and paid the guy in gold once the accounts were activated.)
I know I don't exactly have a strong case, but my main accounts have been dormant for something like 2 years now, they have all my "real" characters and many irreplacable items. I can provide proof of about 8 years of billing history on the accounts, everything up to that last 1 month gametime code.
As far as I knew, accounts needed to be transferred using the official service for them to change ownership anyway, and this certainly never happened.
Nobody's trying to use the accounts, and nobody ever will (except me!) because nobody else ever owned them. No names or addresses other than my own will appear on the accounts information pages, the accounts have never been out of my name (except one of them, which between 1998 and 1999 would be in the name of my old schoolfriend, who's details I can also provide).
So if anyone from EA/Mythic reads these forums and would like to at least take a look at the case and see if anything can be done, I'll happily provide account names, and any other information that might be helpful. I can also provide my static IP address at the time that would show I was using the accounts after the gametimes were applied (if such records are kept by EA)
Actually it would mean a lot to me just to get some assurance that my characters and items are not going to be wiped due to account inactivity, just so maybe in another 2 or 3 years I can try and replead my case
Cheers for reading!
Hemisphere
Edit: Another important point worth noting, which I just thought of, is that if it were not for my own disorganized nature, I would have had absolutely no problems recovering my password. The e-mail linked with the accounts is the same e-mail that's been linked to them for about 5 years! I should, by rights, be able to recover my password. If ownership of the accounts had indeed changed, then the e-mail to which the accounts are linked would have been changed also, and EA's records would show this. Actually that's almost logical enough for Customer Support.. might give them another go if I have no joy here!
I've not played UO for a few years now, but I've kept some accounts, and most of my belongings, in case I ever wanted to return - I also reopen my accounts every few months to prevent my houses falling. A practice I know is frowned upon by some, but that's £80 a year for a service I don't use, which seems like a good deal for EA!
Anyway, because of the way I'm managing my accounts, I tend to activate them only in times of urgency - several times now being warned on ICQ or Stratics by friends, that my houses are falling and that I need to save them.
I run 4 accounts, 2 "mains" and 2 property/householding accounts. About a year ago (maybe a year and a half. Ages anyway) I tried reactivating my two main accounts, and found that my passwords didn't work. I still to this day am unsure whether somebody actually changed them, or if I changed them myself and just forgot - considering the amount of attention I was paying to them at the time, neither of these possibilities would surprise me.
Usually the first thing to do would be password recovery, but in this case the accounts are linked to an old hotmail account which I also don't remember the password for (I went through a phase of changing passwords a lot, for security reasons, and using seperate e-mails for each account and so on, which worked well when I was playing 16 hours a day 7 days a week, not so well when that dropped to 16 hours a year
).So I went to customer support, who, after several days of communication decided that I couldn't prove the accounts were mine, because the last way I activated them was with gametime codes that I didn't keept a record of (basically I spammed my ICQ "buying gametime codes" and paid the guy in gold once the accounts were activated.)
I know I don't exactly have a strong case, but my main accounts have been dormant for something like 2 years now, they have all my "real" characters and many irreplacable items. I can provide proof of about 8 years of billing history on the accounts, everything up to that last 1 month gametime code.
As far as I knew, accounts needed to be transferred using the official service for them to change ownership anyway, and this certainly never happened.
Nobody's trying to use the accounts, and nobody ever will (except me!) because nobody else ever owned them. No names or addresses other than my own will appear on the accounts information pages, the accounts have never been out of my name (except one of them, which between 1998 and 1999 would be in the name of my old schoolfriend, who's details I can also provide).
So if anyone from EA/Mythic reads these forums and would like to at least take a look at the case and see if anything can be done, I'll happily provide account names, and any other information that might be helpful. I can also provide my static IP address at the time that would show I was using the accounts after the gametimes were applied (if such records are kept by EA)
Actually it would mean a lot to me just to get some assurance that my characters and items are not going to be wiped due to account inactivity, just so maybe in another 2 or 3 years I can try and replead my case
Cheers for reading!
Hemisphere
Edit: Another important point worth noting, which I just thought of, is that if it were not for my own disorganized nature, I would have had absolutely no problems recovering my password. The e-mail linked with the accounts is the same e-mail that's been linked to them for about 5 years! I should, by rights, be able to recover my password. If ownership of the accounts had indeed changed, then the e-mail to which the accounts are linked would have been changed also, and EA's records would show this. Actually that's almost logical enough for Customer Support.. might give them another go if I have no joy here!