Question about banning and unbanning accounts over a year old

Ok, so, i have a question.

Granted GW bans a ton of people -- but is there anyway to get back their account, after its been banned?

The reason i'm asking is because a good friend of mine who's also in our guild had his account banned about a year ago. Granted he prolly deserved it lol but he rebought the game and has been good ever since lol He learned his lesson essentially, and i'm just wondering if GW recognizes that kind of thing?

He feels uncomforable with begging anet for his account back, but we, as his friends, know how much it meant to him... it has his FOW armor and items and gold... yada yada and it seems kinda pointless to me to have it just sit for a year unusued.

Would there be a way he could 'appeal' for his account again? Do people send those kinds of requests to support staff... with the other 1000's of requests... and it prolly gets 'filed' in the recycle bin?

His friends, guild, everyone will gladly speak for him lol but are we hoping for a lost cause??? Is his account permanently deleted, dead? Or is there a litlte hope here?

~Warrior Cupcake

dont waste time. wont be restored after 1 year even if it was a mistake from a.net side to ban him.

It depends on the case.
Anet reviews logs / trade transaction.

The "appeals" are usually were they accidentally banned the wrong people and the bugging made them check a 2nd time.

He could try begging, mention how he changed his ways, and see if they do it?

Or it could cause ANet to go, "You're back in GW again? WTF!? *BAN*"

lol wondered about that myself Helios ...

granted its a game and people have gone against the agreement they accepted... people make mistakes...

shouldn't there be a way to regain what people have lost through "good behavior"?

no. that just happens in italy. in gw world a permanent ban for breaking rules is permanent for real

Well only one way to find out, the worst thing they can do is say no. If they ban his other acount he can appeals saying he did nothign wrong...blahblahblah, you can use a number of loopholes to get it unban.

Let me start by stating I support temporary banning.
There should be different time durations of banning for different offenses and a final warning for a permanent ban before it is implemented. I do support permanent banning only if there are repeat offenses and a warning has been communicated.

I don't support permanent banning for a one time offense. That's absolutely obserd and if I were him I would throw the game in the garbage and never buy another anet product again. But, that’s me.

Remember this! You are the customer. You bought their product. GW is a form of entertainment and no matter how much you enjoy it there are other games and forms of entertainment. You will not be bored without GW or anet products. But without the consumer Anet would be out of business.

If he insists on getting his account back then tell him to suck it up and email Anet twice a day. Hell try to call them on top of that. Always remember the squeaky wheel gets the oil! Squeak and squeal often until someone gets tired of you. People tend to give in if pushed far enough. Some are more stubborn then others but in the end everyone gets tired of the hearing the squeaky wheel!

Not playing because you are banned is not 'good behavior'. ANets EULA says nothing about forgiveness.

It doesn't matter if Anet does not state forgiveness. The bottom line is you bought a product and unless you have a lien or owe money on that product no one has the right to take it away from you. That is exactly what anet does with a permanent ban. They take the product away from you. Anet plays with fire when doing this because no matter what the agreement states no one has a right to take somthing away you purchased. Thats called stealing and if the banned people united anet could face a class action law suit and could end up having to pay back the consumer for the money they spent on the product or reinstate thier acount.

In the OP case, the realistic thing to do with any effect would be to email support to 'beg' for your account back.

But the realistic response will also that it will be unlikely since the offense must have matched the deed which was serious enough for a perm Ban of account.

My suggestion would be to try it, but given the time and duration involved, just be prepared for the worse or support may even tell you to come to these forums for our "opinions" >_<

Another method will be to pm Galie....OPS did i just typed that...nevermind ingore me.

Anet is not required to allow people to use their servers to play. The EULA is for the game you bought. They didnt take the game. They took away the servers. They cant steal their own servers.

Their servers= Their Rules. Get used to it.

Even if ANet agreed to return the friend's account, quite doubftul it would have any of the goodies (Fissure armour, gold, etc.) still attached to it. Can't hurt to ask, though.

Now that's a very good point but I think you might agree in spite of your very good point in today's American society of ridiculous lawsuits there are grounds for a class action suit that some law firm will gladly take up. It would be interesting in light of your point who would win the case. I still think there is a chance the consumer could win such a suit.

Get used to it..? I'm not sure what point you are making here I have nothing to get used to as my account is not banned. If that was meant to be an explanation point to your post you should have thought of something more relevant to say.

In addition to what has already been said; I think it's actually against the user agreement to make a new account if you've had one banned in the past. If they had evidence it was the same guy they'd probablly ban that account too.

Well I think it said that somewhere; not going to go and read through it.......

EULA- End-User License Agreement
Taken from:
http://www.webopedia.com/TERM/E/EULA.html

It is not stealing to ban a person with a good reason. The EULA is a legal contract between the user and the company stating the uses of the software, the penalty for not abiding by it (which can also lead to lawsuit). An added note: the EULA also legally protects the software from being distributed between 'x' number of people and from being pirated.

Please research on something as sensitive as the EULA before saying something like this:
That is called slander. It also suggests to players to ignore the legally binding contracts they have made with the company.

EDIT: I thought I'd better bring the legal definition of slander into this:
source:
http://www.nolo.com/definition.cfm/t...F5C32E716A6D52

You state that Anet is 'stealing' from the banned users but then the legal definition of stealing is:
source:
http://legal-dictionary.thefreedictionary.com/stealing

And it states in the EULA that:
source:
http://www.guildwars.com/support/leg...-agreement.php

Which means that they can ban you for the breach of the EULA
Boldly accusing a company of stealing is not adviced....

guh another edit..:
In this case it is clearly seen that the company would win the lawsuit if it were to go to court (for banning). Unless a person's legal rights are being violated I don't see a successful lawsuit because you were banned as a direct result of obviously breaching the legal agreement.

I'll make some points to this absurd post (excuse me, but you cannot be serious!):

We block accounts for most offenses.
There is an escalation, meaning that one block is short, a second block within a period is longer, and the third longer still. This is a form of "warning" without the staffing requirements of literally issuing warnings that will nearly always be argued with, meaning we're losing time trying gently to convince Naughty Person No. 1, instead of blocking Naughty Person No. 2, who is equally deserving. The "warning" comes in the short-term block. If a player is foolish enough to ignore that warning, s/he will be out for longer periods of time. It's been working just fine for 1.5 years.

We ban accounts for acts that do not deserve a warning:

Scam someone, you might end up insta-banned, and by the time we've finished researching the matter, there is nothing in earth you're going to be able to say that will cover up what you've done and get a "Oh, no problem, please feel free to scam someone else." Scammers do not deserve second chances; scammers need to be gone.

Advertise a website selling gold and we're not going to hand-hold you. You're engaged in acts against the Terms of Use, the Rules of Conduct, and the User Agreement. Don't do it. Do it, and the account will be terminated.

Never, never, ever suggest that someone "write Anet twice a day." And we're not going to accept those calls you suggest, either. We are a design studio, not a probation agency. If you ping Support at that level, they'll certainly entitled to block further appeals. What you are suggesting is harassment, pure and simple -- the harassment of ArenaNet and our Support Team at NCsoft! At the end of the phone, at the receiving end of that email, is a very real person with a very real job to do. And that person has better things to do than suffer what you suggest.

Dear heavens, another would-be attorney. Do you not think the law supports our ability to determine whom we allow to use our servers? Can you cite even one such "class action suit," that won, in court? No, you can't, because it hasn't happened, despite all the imagined outcomes of fairytale lawsuits.

Bottom line: You breach, you get banned, you lose.

well said Gaile.... much better than my endless blabber :P

Except that you DID NOT PURCHASE A PRODUCT. You purchased a LICENSE to utilize a program that is owned in its entirety by someone else. If you read the EULA, none of us actually have any property rights with regard to Guild Wars. We may have certain contractual rights, but those will be wholly defined by the contract and background contract law of the state/jurisdiction that you live in. Under the terms of the license, continued use it dependent on abiding by the terms of license/contract. For better or worse, A-Net has set up a specific system and has reserved the right to ban people. So, while no one can take away something that you own outright, that point is wholly irreleveant because the only people who "own" Guild Wars are those people who are the intellectual property controllers of the software - i.e. A-Net and possibly NCSoft or their subsidiaries, affliates, and parent companies and not any of us.

To coin a phrase -- Its their world, we just play in it.

Ok maybe we should stop the flamefest here and answer the poor poster's question as directly as possible:
-A direct breach of the EULA will suspend the person's account for 'x' time and any further approp. penalty
-Before breaching the contract the person should have considered the penalty and now must pay. That contract and account is void.
-An appeal is possible but unlikely. (very unlikely!) Don't bother. Any further attempts to 'appeal' can result in a harassment charge.

No, your friend is not getting his/her old account back.

Grey says. Scam someone, you might end up insta-banned, and by the time we've finished researching the matter, there is nothing in earth you're going to be able to say that will cover up what you've done and get a "Oh, no problem, please feel free to scam someone else." Scammers do not deserve second changes; scammers need to be gone.

I say, enough talk, please do this and stop pretending it's happening.

If you have a seperate issue to discuss then start a new thread. Otherwise I think this thread should be locked.

Accusing Anet of not doing thier jobs is something you should reconsider. You have no idea what happens in the background.
You can't get them all.

the fact that some people took seriously this discussion -no offence to the OP- seriously makes me concerned about the average age of the guru user -no offence again to the average guru use, i'd like to be younger myself-
some of u cannot be serious... honestly have u ever read few lines of an eula? non necessary the guild wars one, any eula in the gaming world is like this. u bought a license to play, that can be taken away from u by the publisher for xxx reasons.
u know what would happen without a severe banning activity? ingame gold sold by chinese companye would cost 4-5 times less then now, noone would be playing the game because the feeling "wasting my time again cheating people" will be a lot more common, and everyone of us would turn on main char and trade char, just playing with guildies and alliance without ever trading.

umm.. if you mean in regards to Spydergst1's posts...
They are seriously inaccurate and legally problematic statements. They need to be addressed seriously so no one takes some of that misguided advice to file a lawsuit against Anet or to think its ok to hack/cheat/scam because you are the consumer.

Closing the thread. We've had a dev response, some good community responses. I don't think any further arguement would go anywhere.