EMERGENCY Post for Warhammer Online subscribers! Attention isilendil

[Kaliaeth Chillblade]

PUBLIC SERVICE ANNOUNCEMENT:

I don't know if any of you play Warhammer Online besides me, but if you do, check your bank/credit account IMMEDIATELY!

Yesterday (Apr 8th) Mythic/EA charged my personal account hundreds of times for my War Online subscription emptying my account of over $23,000 US. Apparently, I am not the only one. This appears to be have happened to most, if not all, War Online account holders. I have contacted customer support and they would not even talk to me. The only thing I can get is a computer promising me the charges will be reversed and the money returned in 36 hours, including fees.

War Online is now living on borrowed time it appears, as thousands of players appear to be now cancelling their accounts as I post this.

isilendil, I had gotten many screenshots for you for the character portraits like you asked. I sent them all to Blackomur so he could retouch them, then I deleted them. I don't know if he got them to you or not. If he didn't please let me know ASAP so I can redo them and retouch them myself, as I intend to cancel my War Online account as soon as the portraits are done.

[Ryan Industries]

Aw hell, I was considering buying this game, god knows its going to be a moon scape now. Rep for bringing this to the attention of us poor total war gamers xD

[randir14]

Glad I canceled my account a year ago. Mythic needs to die...or make DAoC 2.

[Werebear]

PUBLIC SERVICE ANNOUNCEMENT:

I don't know if any of you play Warhammer Online besides me, but if you do, check your bank/credit account IMMEDIATELY!

Yesterday (Apr 8th) Mythic/EA charged my personal account hundreds of times for my War Online subscription emptying my account of over $23,000 US. Apparently, I am not the only one. This appears to be have happened to most, if not all, War Online account holders. I have contacted customer support and they would not even talk to me. The only thing I can get is a computer promising me the charges will be reversed and the money returned in 36 hours, including fees.

War Online is now living on borrowed time it appears, as thousands of players appear to be now cancelling their accounts as I post this.

isilendil, I had gotten many screenshots for you for the character portraits like you asked. I sent them all to Blackomur so he could retouch them, then I deleted them. I don't know if he got them to you or not. If he didn't please let me know ASAP so I can redo them and retouch them myself, as I intend to cancel my War Online account as soon as the portraits are done.

i didnt get it

[Klierowski]

LOL!.

[Timorfeys]

This is not funny. Hope you get money back.

[Kaliaeth Chillblade]

I reported this incident to my credit union as fraud this afternoon. They jumped on it immediately and had confirmation of the charges with the billing vendor in 10 minutes. I was amazed how willing they were to talk to my credit union after the "fraud" tag was plastered all over the charges.

My credit union assured me that if EA's billing vendor does not have the money back in my account by close of business Monday, they will cover the charges for me and credit my account first thing Tuesday morning. They already refunded me all the overdraft fees, so that's something. Thank you for the concern Timorfeys

Randir, check your account anyway. Some of the people hit had cancelled their War accounts months ago and still got it.

[Valiant Champion]

23,000 dollars?

[Diezcortez]

heh, and i thought that ''accidentally breaking the 1 month suscription and automatically renewing loads of suscribers for 3 months'' was a bold maneuver from their part =).

You will get your money back no worries there, but i can imagine the heart attack you got innitially after watching your bank account.

[Thokran]

I haven't paid for this game in almost a year now, having played the free online trial over the past few months. When I read this, I made sure to see my account was still intact. Thankfully it was, but this is definitely the nail in the coffin for Mythic, as the same thing happened on their other game, Dark Age of Camelot. WHO is a sinking ship more than ever now, which sucks cuz they had pretty good picture sources.

It's good to hear that your getting your money back, Kaelith. I wish you and anyone else whose come across this problem the best of luck.

[The Holy Pilgrim]

Glad your Credit Union's fixing this for you. It sucks that Mythic did that to its players. I was actually thinking of buying this game.

[Outlawstar15a2]

*Kicks feet up on desk*

Well, I guess I finally got my wish, I guess WAR is gonna have to go free-to-play....

[Lachdanan]

Just wow what a gross mistake on their part eh?

I was considering this game too

[Outlawstar15a2]

Just wow what a gross mistake on their part eh?

I was considering this game too

My friend, this was no mistake. They did this on purpose. If Ms. Kaliaeth's account was the only one drained, maybe it was a accident, but she said thousands of accounts suffered the same thievery and at around the same time. No, this was intentional.

[alex5152]

people are desperate in times of crisis. desperate people turn to desperate actions (in this case Mythic)

[ChaosReigns]

Frankly, I doubt that they'd steal the money on purpose. It doesn't make sense as a "business" decision. First of all they're presumably going to have to pay their customers back which is going to put them on, at best, an even footing in that they'll have their $15 from everyone for the month, but no more. At worst, they'll also be obliged (by pressure from the fans or the PR department or whatever) to pay the players' wages for the month in which case they'll actually lose money.

Furthermore they're going to have a large percentage of their player-base canceling their subscriptions now, so they've weakened, if not crippled, their business in the long term. Add to this that Mythic is now going to be considered untrustworthy in the wider MMO community, so it may be that fewer people will play their games in the future as well.

And what if somebody tries to sue them? Someone's going to have to pay for the lawyer fees I would imagine. And so on and so forth.

Really they gain absolutely nothing from this, except perhaps a couple weeks of drastically increased capital which will be lost again at the end of that time span (however long it takes for them to give the money back). As a trade-off (albeit a poor one) they lose many of their subscribers and have a huge knock against them in the community, so have lost potential new players as well.

If this was an intentional act then I would guess that it was on the part of the company they hired for billing (but again, for what purpose?) or was committed by an employee of Mythic, or maybe several (so...what? They can be fired?) rather than by the whole company. Maybe it was a Blizzard saboteur?

[TheVulture98]

Frankly, I doubt that they'd steal the money on purpose. It doesn't make sense as a "business" decision. First of all they're presumably going to have to pay their customers back which is going to put them on, at best, an even footing in that they'll have their $15 from everyone for the month, but no more. At worst, they'll also be obliged (by pressure from the fans or the PR department or whatever) to pay the players' wages for the month in which case they'll actually lose money.

Furthermore they're going to have a large percentage of their player-base canceling their subscriptions now, so they've weakened, if not crippled, their business in the long term. Add to this that Mythic is now going to be considered untrustworthy in the wider MMO community, so it may be that fewer people will play their games in the future as well.

And what if somebody tries to sue them? Someone's going to have to pay for the lawyer fees I would imagine. And so on and so forth.

Really they gain absolutely nothing from this, except perhaps a couple weeks of drastically increased capital which will be lost again at the end of that time span (however long it takes for them to give the money back). As a trade-off (albeit a poor one) they lose many of their subscribers and have a huge knock against them in the community, so have lost potential new players as well.

If this was an intentional act then I would guess that it was on the part of the company they hired for billing (but again, for what purpose?) or was committed by an employee of Mythic, or maybe several (so...what? They can be fired?) rather than by the whole company. Maybe it was a Blizzard saboteur?

He is right, there is absolutely no reason for them to do this. It either has to be a massive mistake (it could be some sort of software glitch, which would explain the thousands of people getting drained) or the work of a third party that is serving their own interests. (whatever that might be)

[HolyDevil]

Im pretty sure a hacker managed all of this..

It would be way too stupid from their part..


They could steal an extra dollar/month andd say their sorry to those who bothered asking, but stealing like this is far too much, im sure a hacker managed to get in their DB and frame them...

And also i was considering buying the game too lol xD

[Grizzally]

I didnt get it?
Just American servers?

[Outlawstar15a2]

It was intentional. There is no glitch, human error, or mistake that I or anyone here can think of that would empty thousands of accounts at roughly the same time of all their money overcharging them grossly in the process.

Considering I've been hearing for a while of Mythic's financial stress my theory is this..... Mythic knew they would probably go under in the future. I think they drained the accounts in order to give them some startup capital, I think they will close Mythic as a company, and will start over under a new name. This works because since Mythic is a corporation it is a separate legal entity. They took the money, they'll probably close shop, and start a new company. The new company, though populated with the Human perpetrators from the previous company, cannot be sued because Mythic and whatever new company they form will be two separate legal entities and you can't punish the new company for the faults of the old one. The only legal option is to sue the people themselves directly and I don't think the people have that option unless this gets turned into a criminal case rather then a civil one and I don't see enough evidence for criminal charges.