Mass-Banning

I know some people who got away with it though, and still have the duped armbraces on their account..I hope Anet can find these people and can their asses.

What "mass banning" are you describing? The numbers being mentioned in this thread are in the single digits. There has been no mass ban. Period.

Here is what we've done:

• We've found the people who duplicated items. Their numbers were really quite small. We banned them.
• We found the people to whom the duplicated items were given in large quantities. Their numbers were somewhat larger, but again, relatively few. We banned them.
• We are examining records to see how far this extends. We may be banning more in the coming days, but we will most likely choose to not ban more than we will choose to ban. The decision is ours and will be based on a lot of factors, principal being whether it's reasonable to assume that the player knew he/she was getting ill-gotten goods.

We are quite sure that those players getting stacks and stacks of the most valuable item in the game realized that this largesse was not the result of the kind and generous spirit of a guild mate or friend. We're quite sure that those getting offers of 5 gazillion armbraces for item sales knew that something was wrong, and yet they made the sale anyway. It's obvious that certain players knew about the exploit, or suspected there was one. It's pretty easy to establish who such players were.

Did you think we'd never notice? Of course we noticed! Our recordkeeping is exceptionally detailed. You can't move a piece of gold from one bag to another without us knowing it. And as a result, those at the center of abusing this exploit were banned. That is as it should be.

The issue of someone selling a single ambrace to another innocent person, later on, is more complicated. The item was duped, but the buyer may not have been -- probably was not -- aware that he/she was buying a duped item. So, it's a matter of degree, intention, and knowledge. Do we ban the seller, with multiple stacks of 250 armbraces in inventory (or who handed off stacks to friends and guildies)? Yes! Do we ban the player who makes the one-off purchase -- an armbrace here, a couple of duped ectos there? It's not likely that we will.

Duplicating items is disallowed by the User Agreement under which each player is permitted to play Guild Wars. Getting stacks and stacks of free items -- or receiving ridiculous numbers of items for a sale -- must have pinged peoples' radars that "Hey, this can't be legit!" Just as receiving stolen property is a crime in the real world, this sort of act is disallowed in our game, and results in a ban.

Those who made an innocent purchase have very little to worry about. The accounts of those who were banned were examined with care and consideration, using extensive research to assure that the appropriate action was taken. It is highly unlikely that these players can successfully appeal their banning.

And if you're aware of someone who was involved, I invite you to report that player, for the good of the game.

yeah right, dupers looking for simphaty, gfto

Hey Gaile... hopefully you come back and take a look in this thread.

Is there any word on whats happening to Armbraces or the duped Armbraces? Left alone? Deleted? Etc...

Nice to know that these things can be so easily traced. Things should return to pretty much normal soon.
Thanks for the info Gaile.

And that my friends, should about cover it.

I will say this is the wackiest thing I have seen happen in this game in 2 years of playing, and frankly, I think they are handling it just fine.

Thank you Gaile

There is an old saying "If its too good to be true it probably is." Although I'm a bit sad that some people will "get away with it". Have you considered exchanging the "Armbraces of Truth" with "Shackles of Humility"?

I saw this guy with 4.9 bajillion armbraces... it's not as bad as the guy with 6.24 quantillion armbraces, but they definitely can't plead ignorance.

Could some Mod grab the Gaile quote and put it at the start of a stickied thread? That really answers a lot of questions I had. Seems fair and puts the silly "everyone who disconnected the that past week is gonna get banned" rumors to rest.

Have I, personally, considered that? Yes.

I don't know that any item changes will be made; I rather suspect not. The content programming team feels that this was nipped in the bud quite thoroughly, and while research continues and more bans may be put in place, we're not going to obsess about tracking down every last armbrace and banning the person in whose inventory is lies.

Be smart, people! It's not worth risking your freedom for a stolen TV. It's not worth risking your account for a duped in-game item, no matter how sparkly they are!

Dont forget the guy with 10 fofillion armbraces

So entire guilds of people are single digits ey?

For the greater good. If they are duping items they deserve a ban, plain and simple. We were all warned in the EULA what is and is not allowed in the GuildWars online gameplay. Those who do not comply should be punished, just as if they ignored clearly stated laws.

I have the fix. Stop making things so sparkly!

This is the best way they could have handled this.

Ban the duping idiots trading billions in gold and leave the rest of us in peace. No rollbacks, no fuss, no muss. Maybe now prices can come down and ecto can stabilize a bit.

Bullshit.

If that's true, then why are so many members in my guild banned?

Well there's the problem, isn't it? How we do we know whether an item is duped or not? I guess abstaining from purchasing armbraces for the time being would be wise, but since the exploit isn't unique to armbraces there's no real way to know what you're buying.



BTW: I think you guys handled it rather well, great job.

Actually, I found it hilarious how quickly MistsEle and Chubby Monkey shut up as soon as Max posted that screenshot in this thread.

Max, you're my new hero.

Really, Miss Gray?

I would buy this except for a couple of things

1: You are exaggerating - the game does not go to 5 gazillion in anything

2: ANet repeatedly has assured players in the past that duping items was impossible because the information was all server side (thus assuaging some of the suspicion that would normally arise in the player's mind when being offered multiple armbraces)

3: ANet recently made DoA easier to access (and advertised this quite efficiently) leading to the reasonable assumption that armbraces and gemsets would fall in price quite rapidly.

4: I had no real idea myself how much an armbrace was worth in this game until this issue - many other players surely are in the same boat. Had I been offered one for 50k or even as a gift I would have known I was getting a good deal but I never would have realized how much of a good deal. If I had a rare mini and was offered a 1000 armbraces for it, I probably would not have realized the discrepancy. I collect certain things and know the price for them but anything else would simply leave me in the dark.

5: Posts about being offered many armbraces for rare minis were started some time ago from what I understand and ANet did nothing. If you read the first few posts that alerted the community this week you will notice that many refused to believe there was a problem - ANet's lack of action lulled them into thinking everything was surely ok and other factors were responsible for the number of armbraces.

6: And finally - let's face it, this exploit has been around since December - and now that we look back was probably greatly responsible for the sharp drop in ecto prices. Yet NO ONE suspected anything other than deflation caused by hard mode and loot scaling. Why do you, then, expect people to see armbraces differently?

Yes, many are to blame - some may have suspected there was a problem - but given that ANet was responsible for a huge part of the problem I think you need to err strongly on the side of caution before claiming any person should have known there was a problem.

They are no more to blame than ANet - because ANet SHOULD HAVE SUSPECTED THERE WAS A PROBLEM LONG AGO!!!

Please do not say what others should have suspected when you must be painted with the same brush.

Give me a precise number. Better still, PM me the IGNs and I'll look up each and every one.

A guild can consist of a single individual. Guilds often number in the single digits. Let me have the facts on yours and I'll look up the whole thing. Not because I think you'll be able to appeal, but because I want you to be 100% certain that we were very careful, very conservative and entirely fair.

It would be in Anet's best interests to play down the problem. Pretend it was not as widespread as believed. Looks better for them and makes out the problem is not so great. That is a possibility. I am sure we will see in the next week what the damage caused by the duping is.

From the number of people in-game with insane amounts of wealth and screenshots here it is possible that the number involved was in the double digits.

Wow old thread was split.
Sorry for stupidity and not knowing how this all worked so please bear with me
but I am still unsure I always thought there were a set amount of things in the game
at any one time and ONLY the programmers could release extras into it through the data base.
5 million tanned hides ummm 100 pandas 20 million char carvings
1 million ectos ect ect ect ect ect

For example
lets say 5 million tanned hide squares across the whole game
now some are kept in storage and some are at traders and some are just waiting to
be dropped by loot or salvaged BUT there will always be and ONLY be 5 million hides
in the game UNLESS the programmers put in more and added it to there data base.

How can the data base say we had 5 million hides 2 hours ago and now we have 5 million and 500
wouldn't something trigger saying 500 had been added to the game and NOT by the programmers?
As I said I am sorry for asking but it don't make sense to me.
Thanks for reading.

This would work if and only if they think they can keep a lid on it for the next two weeks until the copies of GW:EN are sold. It would be a pretty risky move to act as though there isn't a serious problem if there is; they'd be playing double or nothing, gambling with players' confidence in their word in an effort to shore up confidence in the integrity of their servers and the economy.

My guess would be that they'll avoid talking about it as much as is feasible, but that they won't try to blatantly spin it. The risk associated with getting caught in a lie right now is just way too high.

How are you supposed to know if you have duped item? HOW ABOUT 7 STACKS OF ARMBRACES.

while we are on this topic...

Ecto's prices are outrageosly low for the kind of item they are. This has led me to three options that I believe would inflate the cost of both ecto's and shards. For one, anet should consider lowering the price to get the armor crafted from 15k to 1.5k, my reasoning, you already have to pay and arm, leg, half an ear, and part of your tounge for the materials. Reducing the cost of the armor itself may increase the appeal of the armor and, inevitably, increse in popularity which, in effect, brings up the price of shards and ectos. This is a public change, everybody will know about it. but then again that is wanted. The second option, decrease the drop rate of ectos and shards. This will not be made public to the entire guildwars community but, instead, will be kept completely secret. When the flow of ectos to the trader is less than the flow out, ectos and shards shall increase in price. And with the new favor set-up, and the UW and FoW more accessable than ever before, this is not as much of a dramatic change as it may seem. Finally you have the blatant option of making some, if not majority, of the Rare material ecto and shard stock, disappear. This would cause the prices to raise based on the regular supply and demand formula used by the in game vendors.

I also believe that this would stimulate the economy. Ectos are one of the most popular items to use as in-game currency. This could lead in upgrading the market. Well, who knows.

Oh, for goodness sake, people, stop the "business analysis," ok?

It is in our best interests to tell the truth.
It is not in our best interests to try to "spin" anything.
We know how many were banned, and we know why they were banned, and we're not exactly being quiet about this and trying to tamp down the discussion. In fact, if you think we're trying to avoid the topic, I'm more than happy to increase the volume of the discussion: If you break the UA, if you take advantage of an exploit, if you do something that damages the game, you will suffer serious consequences.

Can it be any clearer?

Let me know and I'll try to make it so.

Ok but what word on not making things so sparkly im still waiting.

How about I've never even seen an armbrace in a trade window before. I don't have 250 of anything, except for common crafting materials and victory tokens. Oh, here's another thought, why would I dupe victory tokens when I could've just as easily duped creme brulees to get my sweet tooth title. I don't care if you don't believe me, the account people need to go in and look at my account. There is NOTHING, NOTHING duped.

gaile can say whatever see wants because there would be no way any of us could actually prove or disprove it.

maybe a handful got banned, maybe a boat load got banned, who knows.

for all we know there could be dupers that were smart about it and duped in small quantities over a long period to amass tons of ectos only.

I'm asking all of you to abstain from personal attacks. Thank you.

Sure it does. You just don't know how much a gazillion is. "an extremely large, indeterminate number."

http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/gazillion

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What I really want to know is what happens to the people who only bought one armbrace. If someone paid 100k+50 ectos, there's no harm in letting that stand. But what about someone who bought one armbrace for 10k? Does he get off scot free? Does the trade get reversed? Does the armbrace (or item turned in for it) get deleted?

On another topic, is this ArenaNet's fault? Yes, in the sense that bugs are always the fault of whoever coded them. But all computer programs of significant length have bugs.

If they had known precisely how to do this particular exploit long ago, they'd have been irresponsible for not doing anything about it. But they didn't know that out of all the millions of bugs that could potentially exist, this particular glitch would be the one that existed, could be exploited, and would be found and abused.

If you want to blame them anyway with the advantage of hindsight, then let's try another situation where you don't have that advantage. What's the next abuseable glitch that will be found? Please find it and tell ArenaNet now, so they can fix it before it gets abused. You could be a hero to the community, you know. And that's really only slightly less unfair than expecting ArenaNet to have known that this particular exploit was coming.

But really, it seems that people don't know what it looks like when a company doesn't fix bugs. I used to play a game called Chain of Command. There were some pretty severe game-breaking bugs, like being able to walk through certain walls, invincibility, kill the other side before the match started, etc. They were easy enough to find that some newbies would accidentally use one now and then without knowing what happened. And they were very predictable for those who knew how to abuse them.

The company took months to fix them. Some "fixes" basically consisted of disabling features. The "fix" to walking through walls was to create new maps in the hope that players wouldn't know which walls in the new map players could walk through. Of course, to someone who knew the bugs, it only took seconds to find out. And then the company that made the game went out of business with the dot-com bust. I can't really say that they deserved otherwise.

O RLY!? Then please, Gaile, oh GOD of all things PR, go into my account and tell me what exactly is amiss. Tell me what exactly I traded or was traded that resulted in my ban. Give us an exact number of banned accounts. Because us 5 people in [OhNo] had to of been the source of all these problems. -_-; Nevermind the other people in this forum saying their entire guild has been banned. I'm sure our 5 + theirs = single digits. How can you possibly track down the "dupers" but yet, you fail to ban people who use FARMING BOTS!? And tell me why there are still people running around with 100000 armbraces.

Not necessarily - as someone else pointed out many of us do not deal in high end stuff and know how much things cost. I have *some* idea how much an Ambrace costs (I knew over 100k) so with them but if someone had said "100k+10 ecto" I wouldn't have thought anything about it even though I now know that is WAY less than it should be. But then, I wouldn't have purchased it because I do not deal in purchasing high end stuff so the chances of getting offered one is slim.

However, a few hours before all heck broke loose here I put "WTB Elite Ranger Tome - 10k" in trade and was bombarded with PM's, I picked one, purchased, and used it - in retrospect there is a good chance of getting a dupe. 10k isn't strange, my general feeling is that if I want to move an item (instead of maximizing profit) offer on the high end for purchase, on the low end for sale - so 10k was bout right. I usually move things fast that way, though the number of whispers was high. There were also quite a number of tomes for sale at 8k, chances are a few of them were dupes - again no reason to think that 8k is too good to be true and I'm willing to bet a decent portion did what I would do - set my price around what I see others on chat offering.

Even if it *was* too good to be true - say someone selling one for 2k - and I whisper them with the real price and they respond "yea, I know, but I do not want it and just want rid of it" again, no real reason to think "scam scam scam - gonna get banned", people have done that same thing since the very first - heck I've given away stuff in the 10k range because I do not want to fool with it and do not care about the plat at the time.

Only the *really* too good to be true should be known - 1000 ambraces for or 5k for an ambrace, if you know what an ambrace is at all you know that is so far out of line that something is *seriously* wrong. If you do not know what one is then you will not be in a position of wanting them.

But then, from what we are seeing from Gaile is that this is the way they are acting. As I said last night - I am enjoying all the complaints from the ultra greedy who did something they knew not to do, they just figured they wouldn't get into *real* trouble.

True; that said, recall the Dragon Festival mass-afk ban. If a ton of people got nailed, we'll hear the agonized screaming in the forums. This, by contrast, appears to be what Gaile is claiming it to be. So far I count representatives of 3 guilds complaining that a half-dozen members or so got banned.

Which isn't the end of the world if these ectos were already tradered for cash, but could be problematic if they're still hiding on a bunch of accounts. Still, the market has soldiered on through previous ecto devaluations.

this quote is from this thread.

this guy seems a little suspect but what if he hadnt given away those armbraces to his guildies and simply traded the mini island guardian for 250 armbraces?

would something like that be a bannable offense? its obviously not out of the realm of possibilites for someone to have 250 armbraces because there was a legit player [for all accounts] in high-end that was selling 250 armbraces for 70e/each a couple of days ago.

if there were transactions made for rare minis in excess of 100+ armbraces, are sellers of those minis going to be perma-banned as well?

Yay! ban the whole lot of them I say...currently now, I think there are people who KNOW of this exploit and are still trying to get away with it...(see kamadan d1 and DoA)..."WTB Armbrace - 100k" or "WTB Armbrace" spam. All of a sudden there are a whole bunch of people who seem to have the money to buy an armbrace?? I saw the screenshots on the other posts and it really made me sick. I'm all in favor of Anet continously cracking down on these people. As for the ones who claim they're innocent...I hope they learn to become more educated buyers. It's sad, but if they need anyone to blame, I think it should be the person they traded with and themselves.

Edited:YOu know what... nevermind

May I introduce Mr. Strawman! "I know I duped, but what about them bots, hmmm?"

If you or someone you know was banned, they are one of very, very few who were so actioned. I am not your court of appeal. You need to write to Support and provide all the information that you can about the matter. Support will then ping those at ArenaNet who pulled the records for a discussion of the ban.

I am not saying that we are infallible. Two members of these boards were banned for a couple of hours because they were caught in the dupe sweep. However, when you think about that, doesn't that give you faith that the bans were appropriate? These guys worked on the issue, confirmed the dupe process, and get banned. They were later reinstated, but the key words are: They duped, and they were banned.

Again, please let Support know if you wish to appeal. But please, for the good of the game that I would assume you still care about, don't waste the time of people working on this issue by appealing frivolously when you know that, at the core, you were guilty of duping or of accepting large amounts of duped items.

If say another 20 people come forward crying about account bans Anet could just turn around and say, "O look we caught a few more." Noone would be able to prove otherwise.

Which sounds better: -

A tiny group of players managed to trash the limited mini pet market using a dupe and avoid Anet's detection.

Or: -

A fairly large (maybe few dozen) group of players managed to trash the limited mini pet market using a dupe and avoid Anet's detection.

One is more embarrassing than the other.

I just find it hard to believe the number banned / involved in duping is only in single digits. The guy who posted about the crazy offers on his rollerbeetle said how I believe 3 people wispered him each offering a higher amount. Apparently one said something like, "He shouldnt be offering on it yet," or something. Just from the screenshots alone I have seen on here there has to be more than single digits involved.

Big companies put spin on things all the time.

Maybe only a few are involved but I find it hard to believe a dupe could go on for so long and only be known to a couple of people.

I would hazard a guess he sold a mini for a load of armbraces which were obtained through a dupe.

Since when does Gaile have to give us any details about this matter at all? There isn't even an announcement about it on the log-in page, yet she has already disclosed a great deal to us. For those seeking more information, do you want her to give you in-game names, some sort of server charts (I don't know how the hell they store information, but I do know I wouldn't understand a bit of what goes on with Anet.) or what?

That being said, there are many people who play Guild Wars without conversing with others much, without analyzing current prices of items, and without checking any game related forums. How the hell are they supposed to know that they shouldn't purchase any armbraces? Lets get some sort of log-in page announcement or something.


Finally, since it still pisses me off, what the hell makes anyone think Gaile is lying to us? And if she is, what the hell could she possibly do to make it seem as though she isn't? I take it if she told you there was some elaborate business conspiracy underway to cover up an exploit you would post saying "Good job Anet, A+ for being honest?"

I really think everyone wants something to be negative about. Go play a different game, I dare you to.