Frozen account recovery. possible?Follow

So, I've been out of the game for about three years now and have been thinking about coming back to play casually a bit with some friends, but have a problem. About three years ago my account got hacked, I called up POL and had the account frozen. After that I decided it was a good time to quit (I was playing about 40hrs a week in a HNMLS and had enough I suppose). However, I have no clue whether or not it'll even be possible to get my character back after all of this time, and was curious if anyone has had any similar experience with account recovery.

I plan on contacting POL support next week to see what they can do, but until then I'd like to know what experiences others have had with trying to do this. Is it a long procedure? Is there much one must do to get everything back? etc etc.

If I cannot get my character back then I'll likely just make a new one, but I'd really miss having 5 75 jobs to start with plus all my old sky/sea/dynamis/king gear (<3 my old dalmy). Even if that gear is junk these days(?) I'd still like to have it back for nostalgia purposes. :)

Make sure you have every scrap of information that has ever been linked to the account: registration codes, credit card numbers, phone numbers, addresses, etc. Since the account was hacked, they'll ask you to list the character names/jobs/levels on the account as well, and you'll be required to fill out a form stating the account in question belongs to you, notarize it, and send it in. They'll also want to know exactly when you were hacked, so they can investigate, and if the account is restorable, it'll count as your one-time-only account rollback, so don't get hacked again or they'll tell you to **** off. (Consider investing in a security token regardless, but especially in this case.)

Assuming the account is recoverable, expect to wait anywhere from 2~6 weeks to get it back, and you can count on losing some of the progress you had made within a few days of when you were hacked.

I suggest doing some research on the current state of the game before deciding to go through with this process; the vast majority of your gear, even if you were geared to the teeth 3 years ago, will be obsolete at this point, the gear you'd be replacing it with is easy to come by for the most part, XP/hour rates have increased twentyfold, and most of the older content you'd have to redo on a new character has been streamlined with the level cap increases / removal of level caps from zones and mission battles. In other words, you could create a new character that surpasses your old one in the time it would take SE to roll back your old account.

In any case, good luck and welcome back!