Why do hackers have to ruin all the fun?

Last night I got together with Kobeck, my good friend irl, and some core members of the 25 man raid group, that we have been doing Ulduar with, to run 10 man ulduar. We started in VoA to destroy emalon which gave me the Tier 8 Enhancement Gloves.... too bad my spec is Elemental/Resto, being the only shaman though I got them anyhow. We killed Arch in under a minute and then headed to Ulduar.

We had attempted FL with 2 towers the week before but we had pugs and some bad communication, so this week we just decided to steamroll him. We went straight through XT and Kologarn after that and 2 shotted Auriaya for a 10 man first. We circled back to kill Ignis and Razorscale both of which were 1 shots. We start at 9:30 and it was nearing midnight which is when we usually end, but we decided we would go try and take out Iron council real quick.

After all the pace we had was really good and everyone was in really high spirits. We engage one of the giant thingy mahjigs guarding iron council and something happened.... ok I think it was my totems that were back a bit too far but we aggroed both of the giants and wiped soon after. Came back rebuffed and knocked over the giant (with me keeping an eye on my totems this time). During the fight though Kobeck, who was offtanking that night, got disconnected.

We were on vent waiting for him to get back when he says that his password doesn't seem to be working. As soon as he said that I had flash backs of when my account was hacked and the dread of the invalid password flashing across the screen.

I wheeled around just in time to notice Kobeck's character move ever so slightly. Then he ran left right turned around looking a little confused.... and started hearthing. I was 99% sure at this point that he was being hacked but I asked the fateful words anyway... I asked if he was logged in and he responded with no. "You are being hacked" I told him with a knot in my stomach.

The raid pretty much called it at that point and I quickly switched over to my Lanora my priest and Guild Leader of Shadow of Teldrassil. Kobeck is a really close friend of mine IRL so when left our last guild to start my own he was basically second in command. I quickly opened the guild control tab and demoted him down to the lowest rank that had no guild bank privileges.

Fortunately I managed to demote him before he had gotten to the bank (one of the hunters from raid was tracking his movements through dalaran.) I called him an ass and switched back to my Shaman who I had opened a ticket to a GM the instant I saw him hearthing.

It was really painful watching the hacker switch characters and move from the most valuable to the least from gold to gear to bank to badge items. I was offline when my account was hacked but several guild members at the time were on and I recall them talking about the hacker jumping though all of my characters. We relayed all of the information and movements to Kobeck over vent and you could hear the helplessness in his voice.

The ticket that I and several other raid members had put in said that they were currently experiencing high volume. So we waited. and waited. and waited. Around 1 am the status finally changed to you can expect to be serviced in approx 2 hours....

The other members gradually logged off as they had to work in the morning and what not. I stayed. Kobeck and I stayed on vent talking for the next 2 hours.... which turned into 3 hours... which finally changed the status to "Your ticket will be serviced soon." At this point it was 4 am. I had to be at work in 4 hours but I didn't care. The next hour and half waiting though proved a little too much and since I couldn't get out of work, (I don't think my friends wow account being hacked counts as a family emergency) I headed to bed for 2 hours of restless sleep.

I woke up this morning and Kobeck's DK was still under the control of the hacker. In fact the hacker was farming ore in Sholazar Basin with Kobeck's 450 mining and epic flying mount. I talked to Kobeck while at work through text messages and he did eventually regain control over his account. Hopefully he got rid of whatever he lost his account too.

And that's what worries me.... Kobeck is one of the very few people I know that is more intelligent then I am. He has a higher technical expertise when it comes to computers and he is very careful when it comes to the Internet and security. He thinks he may have picked up a script or something from the WoW official forums... makes me glad I really stay away from there.

Anyway hopefully within the next few days he will have the items and gold he lost fully restored and things can return a little bit back to normal.... but then nothing is really the same after you are hacked. You constantly live in fear regardless of how safe or protective you are.... that somehow everything you worked for can still be taken away.

So how did I spend 5 hours on my shaman while waiting in futility for the GM? (is futility a word? if not it should be) I worked on my fishing leveling from 278 fishing to 330 ish.