From:  Lyrin's player
To:  Various Achaea admin
Date:  14th Jul 2019

Good evening,

My character Lyrin was the subject of a successful theft attempt today.   The character Profit was able to use some hypnosis abilities to forcibly transfer a large number of valuable items from my character to his.

The statements which follow in this email are based on a post-hoc review of my client's buffer between the time the thief character started forcibly transferring items and my disconnection from the achaea.com server, approximately 12 minutes later.

Some information has also been gained in a subsequent discussion with the thief character.  Although I have no reason to accuse the other player of dishonesty in an out-of-character sense, I do not consider them to be a reliable source regarding a complete listing of items which were stolen.

As a result of the theft, approximately 400k gold and a number of items in a chest and the floor of my in-game house, inventory and pack were transferred to the thief's character.   For the remainder of this email, I will refer only to items which my character obtained through purchases from the achaea.com website.   Any items or gold which my character obtained through in-game activities and trading with other player characters are outside the scope of my concerns and queries.

A subset of items stolen, those contained in the chest, was provided to me by the thief and is listed in the attached text file.  Due to the nature of the theft mechanisms used (shroud preventing me from seeing items taken from the chest, the floor or a pack, and pickpocket not showing which specific items have been transferred to another character), I do not have a complete listing of items which have been removed from my character.

Of the items that I do know were forcefully transferred,  I am confident that a vast majority, if not all, were obtained via purchases using real-world currency from various promotions on the Achaea website (globes, wheel spins, caches, pumpkins and the like accessed via "Credits -> Purchase Credits -> Standard/Premium/Artefact Packages" section of www.achaea.com).  The in-game utility of these items comprises a significant proportion of the value of my purchases from the achaea.com website over the past few years.

In a discussion with the thief character after the theft, where I inquired about the cost of having the items returned, I was told that the value of the items numbered in the hundreds if not thousands of credits.  At this point I could not see any means of securing the items' return other than making additional purchases from the achaea.com website with real-world currency.  This led me to abandoning the in-game resolution and determining that this email was necessary.

A transcript of the discussion (edited to remove prompts etc.) is included below.   I believe nothing has been missed in relaying the discussion, but trust you have a means of independently checking the detail if necessary.

I write this email to you not as a query about in-game theft and PK systems.  Aside from moving me around the house using forced movement followed by prism tattoos (which I will separately file an in-game issue about as I believe it contravenes section 3c of HELP THEFT), I do not see anything which has been done that is outside the in-game rules for theft.

I do, however, have concerns about the ability to forcibly transfer items between characters which were obtained through out-of-character purchases.  HELP SCAMS describes a number of scenarios where the transfer of "money, or credits" and items worth substantial amounts of gold is considered a scam, and resolution of the situation with admin assistance is described.

The purpose of my email is to ask for an administrator of Achaea or IRE to help me understand the company's position on aspects related to this particular instance of in-game theft.  This will help me better understand what options are available to me in-game and out-of-game to secure the return of items purchased from the Achaea website.   This will also help me better understand the value of items offered for sale on the achaea.com website in the future, based on whether or not another player will be able to deny my character the use of these items using in-game theft mechanisms.

I have listed my questions below and would be grateful if someone from the admin team could consider these and send a response.

1.  Is there a practical in-game method for me to identify which items that I have purchased via transactions on the achaea.com website have been forcibly transferred to another character?

2.  If not, would you be able to provide me with a list of items purchased with real-world currency that my character had in their possession before and after this instance of theft?

3. Could the administration please clarify whether items on a character that have been obtained through out-of-character transactions by following the "Credits" -> "Purchase Credits" -> "Artefact Packages" part of the website should be subject to administrative support described in HELP SCAMS or mechanically implemented protections against theft described in HELP ARTEFACTS?

4.  If items only obtainable through purchases from the achaea.com website are "fair-game" for forcible transfer to other characters via theft mechanisms, does the administration feel that the risk of losing the use of these items, and the fact that this risk is different to credits and artifacts purchased on the same page is appropriately described to potential customers prior to purchase?

4.  Does the administration feel that there is a limit beyond which the value of items which can be forcibly transferred between characters exceeds mechanisms for in-character resolution of the theft & return of the items?  If so, does this instance of theft exceed that point?

5.  In the circumstances I describe (or preferably, if you're able to independently review the circumstances of this theft), can the administration indicate an appropriate method for me to secure the return of the items that does not require me to pay the ransom that the thief character decides to name?

Thanks and kind regards,

<redacted>


Transcript of post-theft discussion between Profit and Lyrin:

You tell Profit, "Greetings - what would it cost to return the items which you stole from my house and pack?"
Profit tells you, "All I stole from the pack was some gold, wasn't able to get anything else."
Profit tells you, "Give me a moment to look at what was in the house itself."
Profit tells you, "Okay, so this is some pretty valuable stuff and... lots of it. I can't begin to value it in a reasonable amount of time. So, I would like to keep the Black Boar card, the rest I can live without... what would you offer?"
You tell Profit, "A list of the items would be helpful if you don't mind."
Message #5505       Sent by Profit
2019/7/14/7:18 // https://pastebin.com/yPic9N8M -- Sorry, there's no other way to do this. :(.
You tell Profit, "How does 50k gold sound?"
Profit tells you, "I couldn't even consider it at that, I'm afraid."
Profit tells you, "I could easily sell this haul for hundreds, if not thousands, of credits. I would like to return it to you but we would need to come to a mutually beneficial agreement."
You tell Profit, "It is only credits you will take? many of those items only seem to have a credit value."
Profit tells you, "I think it's likely the easiest way to handle the transaction. I can, of course, sell items from it piecemeal, as well. If there are items of sentimental value in there, I can return them at a much more reasonable price."
You tell Profit, "Alrighty, how much in terms of credits do you think?"
Profit tells you, "I couldn't begin to guess... All told, the whole lot (minus the Boar) is probably worth around 800. Obviously, I will sell to you
for substantially less than that but I don't know what you are comfortable with. I could also trade for other cards, as well."





From:  Achaea Admin
To:  Lyrin's player
Date:  17th Jul 2019

Hey there,

I'll try to answer your questions

1. Not at this time. Artefacts and such you can locate fairly easily,
but that isn't applicable in this situation since the items don't
reset.

2. We have records of each globe/wheel token/etc purchased and records
of what they reward when opened/utilised/etc. We don't snapshot player
inventories specifically, but if there's a certain batch of globes or
such you'd like queried, that's definitely something we can help with.
We can also locate items based on an ID.

3. I think this is the big one as it applies to your situation.
Generally there are protections in place for promo sourced items so
long as they remain in the character's inventory (several of these
items can't be pickpocketed, and there are limitors on pickpocket to
ensure a thief can't clean out someone's inventory). Basically, if you
keep stuff in your inventory that was obtained from promotions, you
gain a lot of mechanical protections inherently because its gated
behind the pickpocket system in terms of what a thief can do to you.

4. The system generally protects people against loss of items only
sourceable from the website (this was a relatively recent change in
light of some similar issues cropping up in the past). This is
contingent on people utilising the inventory though.

5. My personal recommendation here would be to see if the character in
question is willing to negotiate. We've never actually had a case
before where someone has had a lot of items of this nature taken in
this way - the closest analogue I can think of is shop theft.

I've tried to answer your questions, but I appreciate you likely will
have more in light of those. I look forward to hearing back from you!
Best regards,
<redacted>