Password Recovery Difficulty Level: GAIA ONLINE

This story serves as a reminder to ALWAYS back up your passwords, especially now in the cryptocurrency age- You can't just simply ask someone at customer support to help if you ever forget your keys. You can lose valuable things like money, forum access, or more importantly... Your main gaming account with a bunch of rare items.

This is where I found myself today, when I couldn't recover my 2006 Gaia Online account. For anyone who doesn't know, Gaia Online is an MMO world made back in 2003, full of forums, sick avatars, mini games, and virtual places you can hang out and make friends in.

main account r0x0rz_ur_s0x0rz (left), mule/smurf r0fflz_ur_w4fflz (right)

Where the Mayhem Began

Last night, my boyfriend spoke with me, on how I seem to be stressing out more on a regular basis and how I should pick up an activity to have more fun, and be carefree for when I need shello time. My instinctual reaction was to return to gaming once again, but I didn't give it much thought until early today when I found myself backing up all of my passwords. I mean all as in, every login credential, wallet, private key, and seed that I had.

With several coin markets on the rise, I've found myself downloading more wallets that I would need to back up, and today I had chosen to start working on a redundancy of 3. One password file fully written, one on a USB, and one saved as a text document on my computer. I don't keep records as organized as I'd like, so it was time for an overhaul.

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Game Account Value

You hear it all the time, someone has some god tier items in their inventory, and they can be sold for a nifty price. Just like watching crypto rise, I wondered what my account looked like today. It was worth 9 trillion gold (in game currency) a few years ago, or better translated, a few hundred USD. I thought heck why not, I don't use it anymore... But no matter what password I typed for my main, it wouldn't work.

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Normally with game accounts, you can send a password recovery to the registered email. If the email is not attached to an account it will say it. So imagine my face when I could not for the life of me remember my super old Yahoo account when I read the words "an email has been sent to... "

I registered my Yahoo in a time that a backup email, and phone attachments were not necessary. To make matters worse, I lied on all of the recovery questions- because there were only default ones that I couldn't choose, so when I didn't have the answers (being 13) I had to make them up. Why would it matter, it's not like I would ever forget. I did the only thing I could do, and logged in my mule account (r0fflz_ur_w4fflz) - Recovering a password from one of my newer email addresses. I tried hard to get back into my Yahoo account, until I was met with a 12 hour ban preventing me from even trying to get in.

Now with 1 out of 2 accounts unlocked, I hastily typed my info in the unironically detailed form made specifically for people who don't know their account password NOR email password for Gaia. I should have left it alone there, but then I just had to compare online how long it would take to get something like this fixed. The answer is almost never.

I found myself reading stories even scarier than creepy pasta, where people were emotionally destroyed at not being able to get their accounts back, and others waiting months to never get a response for the same support ticket type I just filled out. My stomach sank, at that point I decided that if I ever get my account back, that I wouldn't sell it, but instead play it- Hard repping my PC gaming heritage.

I did find their Discord, and asked nicely if I could get even some sort of estimate. All I was told is the queue for these requests and investigations are extremely long, and the appropriate course of action is to wait for a reply... For a reply that may never come.

The day was almost ruined, and trying to see the silver lining- I told the mods, that maybe if I play my other account again long enough, I will eventually remember the other account's password for r0x0rz_ur_s0x0rz. Feeling completely defeated, I logged into my weak account with no cool items... And was blown back, when I looked at my friends list.

I looked at the last time I logged into the account, and thought; "But how could this be?" Why would my recent passwords not work, if I logged in less than a year ago? After sitting for a long minute I realized, that the last time I logged in must have not been through the normal prompt on the site... But by choosing the lost password link in my old email instead.

But then why wouldn't remember my old email address
if I had typed in the password for it not that long ago?

That's just it. My email? I didn't type the password.
It was saved the whole time.

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Since this post was saved to my computer, I figured to post it instead of wasting a blog. I have some interesting stories coming up, so please stay tuned for those. Just remember to always back up all of your things, and you won't need an act of god to get 'em back!

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