New Annoucement - A Stern Warning

you know it's funny. the reason they can go after the buyers is because they already have the buyer's money! it's a double win for anet because the banned person either:
1) stops playing, thus decreasing traffic load to the servers or
2) buys another account

They're consolidating all the gold, covertly selling all the items, and building it up for the day that Gaile lovingly bestows FoW upon every player.

I look at this deferently. its ALWAYS been aginst the rules to buy gold for real money. and people often use the excuse that they didnt know or they didnt think they should be punished cause there is not significant warning of this fac. well guess what? there is now? and as such NO excuse for it at all...

So Anet is giving those people the last warning they will get is the way I see it now. if it happens now there is no excuse under the sun that will get them out of it. ban ban ban and ban some more as far as I'm concerned. No more temp ban warnings needed... 1st offense its good bye time for life.

Its like some guy coming into your house pissing in the corner and you telling them they can come back again someday if they do not do it anymore. they come back and do it again. Either your going to shoot his dingy off with a shotgun, or your not going to let the jerk through the door again... Trust me... I would never let the cretin in the door again on the first offense. Nor do I think would you. so Anet is just making that perfectly clear now. so no one can say oh I didn't know that was not OK, I thought everyone pissed in the corner. It just makes things easier for me...

corrected...that is something they do care about after all...which is why they threaten suspension (ie temporary bans) and only the possibility of a permanent ban. Eliminating your customers is not good business policy...so while bots will probably buy new accounts when banned (I'm sure a very small portion actually steal accounts...stolen accounts would be widespread...and it just doesn't seem like they are)...customers are probably less likely to do so...they'll just move onto another game. As much as they want to eliminate the bot problem and the people buying gold online problem...they also have a vested interest in keeping their customers happy...which means they have to weigh heavily the desires of the people to get rid of gold buyers and their desire to get and keep as many customers as they can happy.

So, if my friend decides to quit guildwars and gives me 200k or more, they will look at my account history and mabye ban my account. Hmm, if so i just found a good way to ban people you don't like.

Also, to solve the problem of what they do with the extra items from account deletion, they obviously re-invest in the community like a good citizen. It may be also how they pay their employees.

This is what i thought they should do, the announcment reduced all chap spam be about 90% or somthing. I doubt this will be so succsessful. But not only deos this remove the "ignorance" excuce but will go to deter smaller time buyers.

How sweet would it be if Gaile was to run throughout Kamadan/LA/Int Balth/Kaineng/Droks/Citadel/Altrumm, with Rampage as One, and her pet, with a hammer, and every person she smacks disappears and is banned. I hope that's what it comes to

Smack *ban Crushing blow *ban, Irresistible blow *ban Earth Shake *ban Backbreaker (Gaile can use two elites if she wants) *ban

It'd be the best thing ever in GW

you are kidding.......right? (on both counts)

hmm.. what if say the gold sellers got smart and traded the gold for a white item. For example:

Gold seller: Thank you for your purchase. Pls put a weapon that is of no value to you in the trade box.
Player: *puts white tall shield
Gold seller: *puts 1million gold.
and trade.

My question is is Anet going to ban the player for selling a white Tall shield for 1 million gold?

I would also like to see a permanent ban for gold buyers BUT Anet better be 100% positive about this first. There better be an appeal process (that works) in place for people who get banned mistakenly. How are you going to tell the difference between someone who is helping a friend or buying an item from someone else, etc. Do you set a limit on the amount of gold that can be transferred from player to player?

Big brother may be watching - Big brother better be right.

gimme back my drops !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

QFT

Ban the gold buyers but ban them with concrete proof...nothing less.

the difference with multiple accounts is that the one providing gold is only dealing with one account back and forth. If you trade gold with an account that sells gold all the time to many different accounts you have been legitimately banned imo.

Before you can play Guild Wars you have to click "I Agree" on an EULA, which stipulates your account can be suspended/terminated if you buy GW gold for real money. They are not threatening you here, just reminding people who skimmed or didnt reat the EULA.

What spoiler? The fact that Gwen will sacrifice herself at the end of GW:EN and create the Sylvari in the process?

I thought we all knew that?

well this is another problem related to loot scaleing

Heres the truth
Since loot scaleig botters need 10+ bots to run to get the same ammount of gold in 24 hrs
also more bot = more lag so thats were the lag problems are and this is making me scared to do and power trading or mish running or point to point running cus i dont want to get screwed by a net

I transfer gold between my 2 accounts all the time not large sums
but enough if I need to buy say a weapon or mini pet or whatever reason
on my other account is this effected?
Also what about people in GW doing events like the ascalon ball
who got big donations will they be effected?
would hate to see that happen.

I knew it. Ty for confirming my suspisions.... Ron's a pimp, I knew it....

Gwen can't sacrifice herself, you dummy! She's a hero you can acquire, which means she's with you for good (fortunately/unfortunately, depending on your PoV).

Now, Kilroy Stonekin on the other hand....

I dont see how putting is on the front page changes that theyve been doing this.

Anet has been banning people for buying gold.

Where have you been?

Look, so long as you can take "cool stuff" from account A and transfer it via some means to account B, resales of said "cool stuff" are going to happen.
The only way to fix the problem would be to rebuild the system by which "cool stuff" is allocated to players in a non-transferable fashion. The PvP reward system is a move in the right direction, but is insufficient to solve existing problems.

Bottom line is, gold is going to get sold until the system is retooled such that one can *only* get desired goodies from substantial time investment. Specifically, that investment needs to require skill *and* highly diverse skill sets, so that programming bots becomes overly cost-intensive. This isn't going to happen in GW; too many people (me included) have too much invested in the present system.

Our best hope is that the devs for GW (and the other MMOs out there) will get it right and finally learn the lessons Everquest and Diablo 2 could have taught them 8 or 9 years ago. I have to admit that I'm skeptical, though. I'm sure the marketing team at ANet is smart enough to realize that 5000 banned bots becomes 5000 new game purchases in the online store within a few hours. That's a couple million dollars a year in additional revenue right there, which is not insignificant in this business. I've seen the statistic kicked around out there that WoW had an average annual development budget of 12 million during development, so TBH the ANet gang probably needs that revenue just to keep up with the Joneses.

Looking at it in that light, the bots are here to stay and there's no reason to suspect that management will permit the devs to make the radical changes that would be necessary to eliminate 3rd party gold/item resellers. The company has no financial no interest in terminating the bots' activities (far from it), so its personnel do what they should in this situation: shake their fingers at the bots, make a non-credible, unenforceable threat to players to enact dire consequences should those players buy gold, and leave it at that. Smart people will see through the non-credible threat, and when those smart people don't get banned and tell dumb people, dumb people will realize the threat isn't credible and life goes on as it did before.

So feel free to buy your gold, if you must. Pathetic to do so IMO, but it's a free country and it's your money. And you're free to think of that money as supporting the game and GW2's development, as a significant chunk of that money goes right back into ANet's coffers...

Yeah, precisely.

Heck, why do you even need the item?

What if someone just decided to try and get many people banned?

*random person runs up to you opens trade and puts in 100k*

*you scratch your head and accept for kicks*

*random person accepts and trades you over 100k*

*5 minutes later you are banned for receiving botted gold*

*random person infected 50 accounts with botted gold*

*50 people who accepted a freebie trade are now banned, no questions asked*

That would be pretty cool actually.

What makes me really sad in this thread its, the amount of people that seems to defend the Gold Buyers and Sellers ...

And as proved before, ANeT always makes sure they are banning the right person. Of course, some mistakes can happen but, ANeT its open to discuss it and lift the ban if its the case.

Have fun and Play fair,
impression

Oh, right right. I didn't know that it has been OFFICIALLY CONFIRMED that Gwen is a hero.

Actually most botters don't use purchased accounts. They use the 10 hour trial keys. so when they ban an account its just banning one of the trials...it wouuld end in 10 hours anyways...

Now let's See...

Okay...

Loot scaling was introduced to reduce the number of bots...Okay Fair trade.

Skill Adjusts were made to hamper bot activity again...Hmm not nessecary but okay.

BOTS ARE STILL ALIVE: Result...yea welll...

Cash Resolution. EBAY. result = ban
Um ARENANET's ridding themselves of players?
Well if I'm not allowed to farm for cash....or buy cash online...THEN

HTF AM I SUPPOSE TO GET ANYWHERE IN THE GAME ARENANET!?!?!? HUH HUH?! Sheesh....Yep... Thought so. I havent done anything bad in the game since I first bought it...I've just sat back watched this beautiful title get ripped to shreads over and over. It breaks your heart watching this happen to 3.4million $$ worth of Gaming Engineering....If EOTN starts getting hit with the same results..... They're looking at a total loss.

Whoo, jet another wave of bans no doubt to be followed to even more loot "scaling." Just sell gold in your own store and end this BS. Let the normal players have fun and farm again without all this restriction crap.

You know, just so everyone knows this: Your IP address is fairly easy to change. And to think if you IP ban a person, that they're gone forever; not true. A. They buy a new network card. B. Call their ISP, and ask for an IP change. Probably aboyt $50 bucks for the whole thing.

Indeed, the casual player would say screw it, and play somethign else. But the hardcore botters would just spend the 50 bucks, and keep at it. Slow em down maybe a week.

Just sayin...
---

I, on the other hand, support anet on this. I know a few of you are bitter that anet is stealing your hard earned drops, and whatnot, and skill balencing skills to uselessness. But, still, I farm solo, and make pretty decent gold. Not 100k/day gold, or anything like that. But it's modest, and if you save, you can buy stuff. (Unless you get lucky, with a req8 elemental sword. Then, well, that would be a fantastic day! )

Sorry, i'm just getting sick of everyone whining about loot scaling, and stuff. Because, seriously, get over it. They're not going to change it back to full drops, and crazy good skills. Stop crying over spilt milk. It gets old. :-\

First and foremost, from day 1...not 100 or 365, but DAY ONE, buying gold has been against the EULA.
Those players getting banned for buying gold get what they deserve.
So, instead of banning thousands of bots, only to see new ones take there place, go after the reason they are here.
Ban enough players and people will stop buying gold, which will eventually cripple the gold farmers.


Who says you can't farm cash...it can be done if you actually take the time to find a spot and learn how to farm it.

ANET hasn't given up they just decided to go after the real problem the gold buyers. No buyers no bots.

They dont have actual people in game looking for bots. Thats the thing where they screw up. They have a system that is really flawed. If a person repeats his acts over a set amount of time, then he gets the bot ban. My guild leader got banned for faction farming for over 20 hours. What they need to do is station gm's over at the gold farming hot spots and monitor and ban on a continual basis. Warn people that massive bot bans at altrum, bergen ect will be happening. It doesnt take a rocket scientist to figure out who's a bot. But anet would rather have a computer program ban people for repeating various tasks instead of have a gm or pay an actual person to go and ban bots. Now people can complain about there being a new bot thread ..

Presumably they posted the warning because the most recent update probably added code to detect and log large gold transfers.

Easier said than done. Think about it, you have America, European, Korean, Japanese what other servers, than you got them broken down into districts, not to mention in European districts they are broken down further into languages, that a heck of alot of servers to check and plus the workers they aren't robots they can't be on to check for bots 24/7 you know. Yes what they use now to detect bots isn't really good and all, but i'd says its best they can do without involving people to stay up all night just to check the hot spots over and over again for bots.

I remember Gaile saying that trial accounts cannot trade with other accounts. But then again, someone only needs to drop stuff on the ground and the other to pick it up. Unless trial accounts cannot drop stuff?

I doubt all those swarms of level 20 Mo/W farmers got there on 10 hr trial keys...

Youll get banned for legitimate trades if the person buying bought your stuff with gold thats traceable to a botter.

A random person cant get you banned unless the gold they own is from a botter.

A sign of weakness? I take it you don't know how deterrence works?

Maybe the next warning message will be.

Do NOT buy multiple unid gold items from people
as they could be bots and you are suporting them
and there gold selling practices.
If you do your account may be banned by association.

Where will it end?

Eh? I'm not smart enough to realize that. I thought bots a)hacked legit accounts and stole them without paying a cent or b)used access key generators to generate fake access keys for accounts and therefore don't pay a cent.

They actually pay for their games? And buy new ones when they get banned?
Wow. Where have I have been all my life.