The NuGen Continues...Don't Continue?

On a rather sombre note, we have to report that the NuGen Continues guild has been struck with tragedy. Aiv, our resident GM for Continues, has had his account hacked. In the process, his characters (including Aiv) and everyone else's in the guild were removed. We have no idea of the NuGen Continues' fate as a guild, other than it is still showing on the armory with 5 members, all of which are below level 10 so we cannot see the details of these characters. As for its members, they were to login to find themselves guildless as a result. No doubt some of the less core group will have already been snatched up by other raiding guilds, but here's hoping that those who have stayed and soldiered through will still be able to salvage a raiding guild through this.

On the day it happened, I logged into Facebook and the game to find panicked messages from guildies about what had happened. But there was nothing I could do, other than remove Aiv's alts from the NuGen Alliance so a similar something didn't happen there. Logging into Vent found more members than have ever been online there before. People banded together to seek out one of the hackers as they speed/terrain hacked underneath Icecrown on one of Aiv's characters. A number of us opened tickets to report the attack. I don't know if anything happened as a direct result of this.

From Aiv's standpoint, he has found himself in an unfortunate situation. The hackers merged his existing account (one of the standard WoW accounts) with a Battle.net account, giving them the opportunity to change all the registration details on the account. So Aiv can't prove anymore that the account is or ever was his. To compound the issue, he no longer has the CD Key he originally registered with (it was 4 years ago, and that's easily enough time to misplace a DVD case), so he can't prove the account is his by that method, either. Blizzard have also suspended his brother Cuie's account, which they are calling a "precautionary measure" due to suspicious activity.

It's not so much a matter of losing the guild or the bank and all the epix within it. You can replace those quite easily (Nymphó, formerly of the Alliance and now of Carnage Kings, has already lent a hand going around to create The NuNuGen Continues - which he's called The NuGen Continuez...that's right, with a "Z"). It is that possibly as a result of this situation, if Aiv cannot get his account restored, we may lose one of our best players. He has already mentioned through various frustrated chats that he is not happy with the way Blizzard have handled his problem, and who can blame him, really?

Aiv is an integral part to our GM threesome (oo er!), and he's also just a joy to have around. I hope he manages to get everything restored, or at the very least get his account back. I don't care about the guild. You can farm new items. You can't farm new friends. And I'm assuming everyone else will be crossing their fingers, toes, and everything else that crosses, that he manages to get it sorted.

NOTE: If you have been in a similar situation to Aiv, let us know what you did, who you spoke to, the steps you took, and - provided you got your account back, of course - how long you had to wait for things to go back to normal on the NuGen Alliance/Continues Forum