Ladder Manipulation Investigation Results

Who exactly it was is none of our business, although I'm sure it crossed someone's mind that to hold these three guilds up as an example would serve notice to the entire GW community that it doesn't matter WHO it is who cheats their way to the top, they will be dealt with.

The important thing here is that it's been dealt with, and Anet is willing and able to deal with any future ladder abuse. Nothing more to see here, move along.

Now, if they'd only comment on where they are with the err 7 and getting stuck in maps problems....

Server Logs...

I would not consider it cheating. If it's in Guild Wars, it's not illegal.

Now I am wondering if this is not a top guild that has represented the game and has been a big boost for Guild Wars advertisement. Kind of a group who we dont want their image tarnished cause it would be bad for business...

I think this is being blown way out of proportion, to be honest.

Firstly, the reward is small - a silver trim. None of the Guilds being punished really care about it. They're all good enough to gain it back, and will do so, pretty easily.

Secondly, the reasons the Guilds are being punished are so trivial, bearing in mind what's happened in the past, and the current stance ArenaNet has on a lot of aspects that break its ladder.

In the past there was a time when EvIL controlled 4 of the top 5 Guilds due to smurfs, or when ZPZG ran around with their 5 smurf Guilds, or when Negative Zero used the same Build with the same players in order to tank people on their smurf, and the same for iQ with Magic School Bus and whatever the name of their other smurf was.

Not to mention the 12 vs. 8 GvG that went unpunished, and the gate-bugging at Victory or Death that was a known bug. Exploits of these were never acted upon.

Now we get to resigning, and we can go back to season 2 of the GWFC. iGi would've been tanked out of the top 16, and not participated in the tournament, had the rank 251 Guild at the time not resigned out after iGi requested it. Again, nothing was done by ArenaNet. Throughout all this smurfing has remained destructive to the ladder, and since Champion Points were introduced possibly moreso, who knows.

Now these three Guilds have been victimised for the following reasons:

I can confirm that One Hitter Quitters [QQ] will not be recieving prizes due to the request of another Guild to resign out in the closing hour of the Ladder. Though this was not initially reported, and instead several instances wherein Guilds resigned out to this Guild were screenshotted and reported on, there was no proof to show that this Guild had asked those teams to resign out in any way. This comes after emails between Michael Gills and myself, an officer and starting player of said Guild. Though there are other things being investigated at this time, this is the only issue that has anything substantial to back it up (the admittance of all of our Guild). For the record, the Guild we asked to resign was Black Rose Gaming, who hit us for -25 with Ranger Spike on Isle of the Jade about 30 minutes before the ladder lock. In the match we had a Monk error7, though by that point it was already fair to say the match was lost.

What is most trivial and annoying about this issue to me, is not the loss of the reward, but the fact it is not consistent. Throughout my emails to Mike, I mentioned that this was not the only case of resign requests, but that several other top 10 Guilds had made similar requests at some time during the season. However, he asked me for proof, of which I have none, because I would never have thought such a question would ever be deemed ladder manipulation.

The other two Guilds have been found guilty of resigning out of matches premature to the end. One was most definately going to win the match, and the other coordinated a match with the Guild finishing rank 1 and resigned out immediately, feeding them 11 points. What suprises me on this matter, is that initially QQ was to be stripped due to the first Guild mentioned resigning out, as per a request - or so it was thought, though there was no evidence to back this up. However, QQ were going to get in trouble for this, while RenO, who ended rank 1 and got fed these points, were and are not recieving any punishment whatsoever.

Now, another thing on this matter which makes the notion of stripping rewards completely ridiculous is that it's never been done before. During a fun season, with no clear indication of what the rules state because they are, and always have been dubious at best, does not give the Guilds in question a chance.

So the motto of this;

Asking teams to resign out of a match is ladder manipulation, apparently.
Resigning out to a team is ladder manipulation, regardless of the status of the match, apparently.
Doing any of the above results in Guilds getting stripped of any rewards they may have gained.

As for proof ArenaNet have on QQ manipulating the ladder, this is something that was posted in IRC that I find quite funny, and probably quite accurate, considering from where I'm standing, we didn't do anything wrong except for asking a Guild to resign, who did not, and that was the end of the issue.

Another post from Gaile Gray:

It seems to me that peoples sense of honor and fair play is all too often swayed by their personal benefit.
I have seen too many people here post that just because they didn't do anything about this or that before means that they should never do anything about anything

Yes this is just a game but I personally believe that most of the poor behavior I see in GWs is also a reflection of how these people will/do conduct themselves in the real world.

I leave you with the rules of GvG according to Winston Churchill

We shall go on to the end, we shall fight in France, we shall fight on the seas and oceans, we shall fight with growing confidence and growing strength in the air, we shall defend our Guild Lord, whatever the cost may be, we shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender

We shall show mercy, but we shall not ask for it.

how about when Te resigned when they beat you QQ, kk thnx

Will they take fame away from players around rank 12 that was earned when the other team resigned?

As I said, we didn't ask them to. They did it of their own accord.

Either way, two guilds who are in the same alliance/share the same vent and the team thats clearly winning resigns, is ladder manipulation for sure. I'm not accusing you of asking Te to resign either, its their fault if they did it on their own.

by not naming and shaming thats how it looks to me (and prob others)

a cheats a cheat
dont make lame excuses for them

Uhh, I'm not sure, but could it be because some of the top guilds formed PuGvG guilds to farm the Champion title?

only ones i remember was one at night, 2 unnamed guilds went head to head, 1 of the guilds was completely naked and charged straight in, with members of the 2nd guild in that first guild
people in the obs chat were goin crazy about "ladder manipulation" and some other bs
the other was where an unnamed guild offered 100k+ectos for the other guild to resign
the 2 guilds were in obs and talking about it, throwing back insults for a while
still though, it was just a "fun season" so theres no need to punish anyone for it
a warning would have been better

If this information is correct (and I believe it is) then QQ kind of got the short end of the stick. QQ is a nice bunch of gamers who lose their silver trim because they resign a game that they had pretty much already lost? Part of this due to an error7, which, let's face it, is generally The GW server's fault.

Boo to Anet for doing this to QQ, nicest bunch of gamers I've ever had the privelige to play with.

The way this game is played, and the way some players act while playing, I am not surprised by what has happened, but given if the the guild who broke the rules is a favorate of Anets, like the korean guilds, then no punishment will be issued (Slap on the wrist, shame on you). But if the guild that broke the rules (Any Other) is not favored by Anet, then they are thrown to the wolves, and are considered guilty as charged.

Well, I suppose the fairest way to fix this problem is for Anet to actually write out the rules on what is and what is not ladder manipulation. This would fix the problem for future times would it not?

Btw, what did they do? What IS /resign spiking?

I see IMP in halls, before GvG, and his/her status anywhere on or off the rank system has nothing to do with their understanding of the game and knowing what cheating is, and what it entails. ktnx.




Also, inde.. and everyone else. I hate when there are secrets!!!!

My eyes are burning with need to know.

Don't even go there, that's so completely and provably wrong it makes you look like a fool. You should not speak what you cannot prove and you cannot prove this because all that you've written is absolutely untrue.

Do you think that we need to write out, "Do not take a dive? Do not lose a game intentionally to raise the points of another guild? Do not ask other guilds to take a dive to benefit your team?" Surely such things are obvious, are they not? I learned such things back in my hopscotch days.

Short answer to that: YES

These things need to be written out, explained, detailed, etc. If it's not mentioned in the rules, then it's not against said rules. Write it out and close the loopholes. Then everyone knows what's expected of them and what is not accepted. I'm really surprised that this has not been done already. I would expect, from a company used to dealing with multi-national marketing issues, that y'all would have written up some basic GVG/PVP rules.

Many people have the integrity and morals to not need these things spelled out, but obviously not everyone is up to that standard. Even hopscotch has rules.

If you want to make it a disqualifying offense, then yes, write it, in detail, in the rules for the different seasons. If it's not written in as an offense, particularly a disqualifiable offense, then you can't expect people to agree with you when you suddenly disqualify guilds for a non existant rule.

the last time the traders reset they did a rollback to ensure that noone recieved any benifit from it...and buying crap from a reset merchant isnt even against the rules.
i fail to see why you wouldnt expect an equivilant punishment for the pvp equivilant.

lets say it was agasint the rules to push someone in the olympics, but they never enforced it. then one day, they enforced it and reduced the top players' standings.
just because they never enforced it doesnt mean its not against the law.
some people get out of speeding tickets, others dont...but still, speeding is against state laws...so, if you get caught, you expect that you'll pay the consequences. it doesnt matter that anet hasnt been enforcing the rule, whats important is that the rule existed, and because it was stated, anet can enforce it as they so wish. scamming/botting are agasint the rules too, but dont imagine for a seccond they will nail everyone...but if people get caught, they get banned.
break the rules, pay the price. its a very simple notion.

What happens if there's a method for ladder manipulation that no one has thought of yet? If it's not in the list offenses worthy of disqualification when it happens, the perpetrators will get away with it, until the rules are updated next season. The rule needs to be ambiguous for this reason, so that each case can be judged subjectively. If there was a checklist of rules that can result in disqualification, anything not found on that list could be considered legal play, regardless of how unfair the action may be.


That said, there should be an "including, but not limited too" list, detailing the more common instances, but not excluding anything, as there are a lot of people out there who want/need it spelled out for them. If they complain it's not on the list, refer them back to the "not limited too" part.

Bad example. That was a screw up by Arenanet that was rolled back so absolutely everyone was reset to what they were at beforehand. This is 3 Guilds being singled out and disqualified for something that's not actually written in the rules as an offense.

So, the teams that get the points get screwed over. What happens if a team resign spikes on purpose just to make it look like the other team asked them too.
I know thats not the case here but how could they enforce that, it isn't like they can take away points from the guild that didn't resign as they didn't ask them to do it.
I think we need some more clarification on the resign rules, like whether it is okay to get points if the other team resigned on their own decision without them asking you too. And what would happen in the first situation that I mentioned.

What is gonna be done about smurf guilds. Theres nothing like you start to climb up the ladder your at like 150 moving up rank. Then your hit enter match you load in its another guild with about as much rating as you (1200 for example) . You get to the flag stand its a bunch of people from a top 10 guild using a smurf guild to farm champion points to feed a title.

I agree to many others that ArenaNet should do exactly that for the sake of clarity. Overall, more effort from Anet is definately required regarding to the regular seasons. Given the current game, you can't just set up a ladder and say "play nice, boys!" and leave them be. Such act of kindness/slackness leads to what we see today; a few guilds got penalized for something other guilds might also have done sans proof.

The current rules is mostly about legal stuff, elgibility, scheduling, season playoff or championship bracket. The regular day-to-day ladder games are covered by broad and simple rules on guild change, "sportsmanship" and "ladder manipulation". The streetball approach takes wins and losses on the ladder for granted untill someone starts crying foul. A justice system that relies on player-initiated screenshots/vid caps is not fair at all. This can easily become a mutated form of ladder manipulation where only people who care more about being mistreated get their justice.

/just throwing it out there

I completely agree with this post. While losing intentionally to another team might be considered morally wrong to most people, if it (or anything closely related) is not directly stated in the rules, it shouldn't be bannable. I seriously doubt any of the guilds in question would have asked opposing teams to resign had they known that doing so was against the rules.

imo smurfs are ladder manipulation, resigns dont. this maybe sound dumb, but if you think carfully it is.

concede to other team, even when asked, i dont consider ir ladder manipulation, for 1 simple reason: the guild that resigned could choose between two options: to resign or not to resign. I can ask your guild to resign againts my, even paying some in game cash, but if 1 of the 8 players dont want to resign, they simply dont.

Human will ftl

So you, don't know that knowingly losing to a team is ladder abuse? You honestly feel that we should write out every single bloomin' possible infraction? That to say this--Guilds will be disqualified if they engage in ladder abuse, as determined by Sponsor in its sole discretion, or if they are banned from the game for any reason, including without limitation a violation of the Guild Wars User Agreement. If individual players are disqualified, the guild may also be disqualified.--is not sufficient?

Do you realize that when a guild takes a fall, there is a loser other than themselves? The other teams on the ladder--the guild that would have risen on the ladder if the team that was gifted with the win hadn't been given that easy victory--lose. Some are possibly knocked out of the competition or the ranking for prizes.

Understand: Taking a dive is not a "victimless crime." It's not a private arrangement with no consequences outside of the two guilds involved. It impacts on innocent parties, and it must not happen.

I will speak to our tournament coordinator and see if he feels that the rules must spell out every possible permutation of cheating. I think he will tell me that the rules cover it.

So why out of curiousity was nothing done about similar matters in the past? The rules were written up with the only case addressing ladder manipulation being that Guilds would get disqualified if sponsors deemed it was ladder manipulation, however throughout the past 3 - 4 seasons, where smurfing, tanking, resigning, resign requests, throwing of matches, etc. have all gone on, nothing has been done.

My only hope from this is that the rules are made clearer, and the disqualification of prizes earned from this Fun Season set a precedent for anything to follow.

Edit: Under no circumstances would I have thought that asking a team to resign out is any form of ladder manipulation - especially when it is coupled with the fact that you mention it is completely their choice, and accept their decision. In the past teams have done it, but only now is it being punished. I'm 100% sure that various other teams did it this season also, be it to farm Champion Points, or to end in a position that allowed them to achieve a prize for the fun season. So yes, such trivial matters should be posted, in my opinion.

Please everyone calm down. We do not need to resort to veiled insults or name calling.

wow, now i wonder if resigning from a gvg will flag my guild as a possible manipulator.. oh well, i'm glad this was handleded right, good job anet you're finally doing your job

Well, seeing that Anet written their EULA in so much detail to avoid legal prosecution, they surely can make basic rules about GvG. It's no excuse.

I am unaware that we have received incontrovertible proof in the past of such actions. We don't act just on reports, but on a variety of proofs. I do not know that we have proofs for other seasons or other guilds' involvement in such actions.

Again, consider the issue of the impact of this chummy "loss sharing" on other guilds. I think it's a most powerful argument against what I perceive as a "It's none of your business and doesn't hurt anyone" argument.

Thank you for your conformation of the facts, and Anets postition on this, you fell right into the trap. It would have been better to have said nothing and just state the facts for how you came about your decision on the matter, but in doing so you still need to be unbias and fair to all, as well as consistant with how rules are inforced.

From what I have read, that was not the case. In my opinion, everyone should still get their prizes(Guilds involved in incident) and also given a stiff warning, that if it should happen again, this will happen, and to not encourage guilds to simplely resign during GvG, even when an err 7 somehow disrupted the game.

Let me get this straight:

A high ranking guild (guild A) is in battle with a lower or equal guild (guild B). Guild A realises that a loss at this point will boot them out of the championships. Guild B even if they will they will not make it in. Guild A convinces (tading of favors, bribes or just a "hey budd help us out") guild B to bail out.

And we specifically need a rule to know that this is wrong?!

Thank Dwayna my guild has never been large enough to put together a GvG battle.

Greetings,

Actually no, I don't think it is sufficient. In a world that has morales, there would be no trade scams. In a world that has morales, there would be no runner scams. In a world that has morales, there would be no bug exploitation like the trader reset. In a world that has morales, there would be no ladder manipulation.

But, we live in a world where people have no morales. People lie, cheat, and steal their way to the "top" of the dog-pile, no matter what the forum they are competing in. Just to simply be on top of the dog-pile. This has already been proven by the article that one such person posted online (don't have the link), that claims it's all fair, and only "scrubs" complain about it, or impose limits, like morales, on themselves. These people hold up this article as justification for their behavior.

Now, on this hot-bed of competitive cutthroat, you add real world money to award the people who achieve the top of this virtual dog-pile. That's just throwing gasoline on a fire. The above type of people, that have no morales, now have even greater incentive to continue more of the same type of behavior that gets them on top to begin with. You are rewarding their behavior by paying them, in a championship prize purse, to continue their behavior.

So, yes, you (ANet) do need to impose a lot more rules and restrictions on these competitions. Spell out most all of the things that are not allowed, and include the phrase "including, but not limited to" as a preface to such a list. You (ANet) already have such language in your EULA, just create a separate rules list covering the guild rankings and the championship purse. Otherwise, the non-morale people will just claim that their particular type of behavior wasn't against some explicitly stated rule and claim they didn't cheat at all. We've already seen some of these arguments in this thread, and the posters of Guru only represent a small percentage of the total amount of players in Guild Wars.

One final note - In such a lawyer-happy society that exists today, we (some players) would expect to see such language in your rules, given how much real-world money rides on these ladder rankings (aka - the championships).

Just some food-for-thought.

Merry meet, merry met, merry meet again,
Wyldchild777

Seems odd.

So the whole arguement is: "Is this agaisnt the rules and did Anet define it enough to justify banning, etc."

Well hard answer but every right and wrong situation you can ask yourself this.

"Would you want Anet to catch you doing this?"

If the answer is no and it seems it is then ya Anet is justified in banning.



However I'm clueless as to who, what, and why these things happened and I really can't state an opinion.