Mass-Banning

Thank you very much for your response Martin.

You mean duped by someone smart enough not to show off seven stacks of armbraces?

I think I'm going to cry...

YAY to anet for fixing the problem...now maybe i can get my ambrace

This dilema has rasied a few questions about later aspects of the game where duping could be possible. If any mods or Gaile would like to hear me out on a possible dup scenario please pm me on guru.I dont want to elaborate and give any ideas to poss. dupers. But i would like to voice my concern and dont really know where to do so.

Sure. My guild used to consist of me, my mule account, and some guy from Australia. 3 whole accounts. It's closer to 30 now, but it is very possible for an "entire guild" to be less than 10 members. Only need 8 to GvG (or you should only need 8... there is disgruntlement about including heroes atm).

That's completely not fair to say. Many people, myself included, bought tormented items/armbraces NOT in stacks, but only one because they had aimed to buy it previously.

I know I found a 100k +50E Sheild, so I bought it. Hours later, I learned of the incident and am now rushing emails to Anet asking them if the code on my item is legitamate, or if my account is at risk.



Stop generalizing. If you think I deserve a ban for that, you need to reprioritize.

I can imgaine these numbers got quite high, since it was common knowledge on the forums for a at least an hour or two before reconnects were disabled. Word spreads fast and entire guilds probably learn how to exploit this leeding to a lot of bans.

I'm very pleased with efficiency you guys have in cleaning this mess up though. Congradulations and I hope it has little effect on business in the future The ban sweep parameters seem very thorough as they got the guys who tested with just a single red dye. Its reassuring this will have should hopefully have little impact.

Just in case anyone has not done the math.


250 Armbraces times 100k 50e

250 times 100k = 25,000k

250 times 50e = 12,500e

12,500e times 5k = 62,500k

Total = 87, 500k


250 times 70e = 17500e

70e time 5k = 87,500k


I am just showing the math for ONE stack, which is absurdly high.


87,500 time 7 = 612,500k



Of course before anyone was able to sell off 7 stacks the market would have been dead for most everything so they would not be making nearly the totals.

I am the father of this particular post name. My 14 year old son was banned and all he could talk about was Guild Wars. He spent many hours this summer playing and was very excited about the upcoming release of the new game. He is still uncertain what he may have done wrong because he tried to log on and just received a message that he was banned, no warning, no explanatory message, and no evidence presented of intentional wrongdoing on his part. I have a hard time believing he is one of less than ten across the world who have been banned for something he claims he doesn't even know anything about. He feels wrongly accused and punished and I am taking him to Game Stop tomorrow to transfer his early reservation from Guild Wars to Halo 3. I am sure something needed to be done for people who do this duping thing everyone is talking about, but I am pretty sure my son isn't one of them and since he received no warning, as the legal section of the website indicates, I call it yet another episode of idiotic Texas justice out of Austin.

I am very impressed by the way Anet handled this whole issue! Great job on punishing offenders. I also hope that some bans that were done to victims of the whole scam will be analyzed carefully, so only the evildoers will suffer the consequences.

Congrats of swift and precise action

With an Avatar like Gonzo, I wouldn't expect you to know what coherent is. I've re-read over what i've said and it makes sense to me. What i'm getting to in there is that there have been alot of noticeable factors that no one seems to be taking account of in regards to why the drop in ectos. Let me break it down a little bit easier for your uncomprehendable mind to follow.

1. Ectos spiked to 12k+ when people got their dervies and paragons through NF and wanted their FoW armor.
2. After weeks of that, obviously fewer and fewer people wanted FoW and prices drop to 9k. This trickled down over weeks.
3. After that, hard mode was introduced. This allowed for more frequent drops, ectos being one of them.
4. UW scrolls allowed for access to UW during moments we didn't have favor.
5. Long time players who accumulated a fair amount of ectos had literally quit the game, which was evident by a few that i knew as well as many posts i'd seen on guru of people unloading 200+ ectos and various greens/golds and declaring they were quitting the game. That in itself puts alot of ectos back into the market, creating even less of a merchant demand.
6. With the intro of Loot Scaling, ectos, because they are a rare material, were unaffected so to allow for continued solo farming for them.
7. The drop in ecto prices didn't suddenly spike down overnight. This happened over a period of months. If a dupe like what happened to armbraces was really the situation, then we'd see ecto prices hovering around that of jades, ambers, and steel. We wouldn't see them around the prices of rubies and diamonds.
8. One thing i'd just remembered as well is that during that time we'd gone through several small holiday events as well as a couple of festivals. It should be well documented that when special events occur, they directly impact the market and especially the ecto market.

So there is that coherent enough for you? Broken down into parts rather than in one big paragraph? Several factors over a period of time that allowed for the drop in ectos broken down in such a way that actually makes perfect sense that as I said, when you take 5-10 min to think about, it actually makes SENSE! A few might be in denial and make it appear that ectos suddenly spiked down almost as if overnight, but that wasn't the case. I still remember times that during the whole fear of ectos dropping where i'd see the slow 500 gold every 2 weeks trickle down effect happening with ectos. For about a month if i remember, ectos were hovering between 6.5k and 7.5k before creeping down to the 5.5k state they are now. That isn't a sign of duping. Duping is a sudden immediate impact whereas this took several months.

I didn't dupe crap. The game logs show that. I didn't receive anything duped either, at least not to my knowledge. I just looked at the post from the turd running around with 1750 armbraces where he says how to do it. I don't even own two computers. Already ahead of you, created a support ticket the second I saw I was banned. But I'm guessing the high volume of support tickets others have created because they were unjustly banned too, are clogging up the system. If I get my ticket back and it shows that I received a mass quantity of something duped, then I'll shut my mouth and accept my ban. But honestly, I haven't received anything other than tokens this month, and I didn't hear about a duping problem till last night. Excuse me for not knowing I shouldn't accept 500 tokens from a guild mate, whom I helped acquire the tokens with.

it looks to me like some of the bannings have been done to STOP the spread of these items.

Since the dupers are frozen, the ones who have the duped items are next.

Thats what i see happening now.

If all you did was purchase a duped item, then go through the proper support and get your account back.

So someone who bought 250 armbraces of truth should be let off because he didn't know how much they were worth? If he didn't know what they were worth, why did he accept them as payment? If you had a rare mini, would you sell it to the first person who offered you 250 bolts of cloth for it?

What about if I buy an ambrace cheap for 50k , because the guy who is selling them is trying to get rid because he has stacks of em >?

ps i only buy one.

If you are his father, which I doubt, I would expect you to be grown up enough to understand why bans are done... especially considering you have a fairly young child, which I doubt you'd want hanging around unscrupulous sorts of people. Not just in the case of this dupe exploit, but in any ban where misconduct of any sort was found to have happened. Instead, however, you make childish comments to the effect of "idiotic Texas justice out of Austin." Mature, very.

I suggest reading through the thread, specifically posts from Gaile Gray, concerning what you should do if you feel you have been wrongly banned. PM Gaile the account information, she can surely have it checked out. Not only the exact reason why your son was banned, but find out exactly what evidence they have pertaining to the case. It may turn out that your son just so happened to be banned for something else around the same time that this duping incident occured. Spamming, swearing, racial slurs, scamming. Possibly even an accidental ban for, again, nothing at all connected to the dupe. Which can easily be found out and cleared up, if that is the case. Knee-jerk reactions are never a good thing. But, being a parent, you'd know that, right?

By the way, children never lie to their parents.

EDIT: I lol'd. S W O R d is in the same guild as our pals thechunkymonkey and MistsEle. Considering the connection, I'd say it's more than likely your son was involved. Direct knowledge or not may be an entirely different story, however due to the fact that we know for certain thechunkymonkey had these items, MistsEle declared that someone in their guild had given them and, well, "the rest of" their guild a bunch of armbraces, I'd say it's more than likely he had the items in question in his possession.

LMFAO at everyone who got banned. Don't be such a pansy next time and buy hacked items. Your fault, not Anets. And also, I highly doubt you just got "some" items. It was probably like 30armbrace, so they banned you. I think thats perfectly fair. Everyone with over... like 10 armbrace SHOULD be banned.

@ S W O R ds dad (lol)

"I am sure something needed to be done for people who do this duping thing everyone is talking about, but I am pretty sure my son isn't one of them and since he received no warning"

Sorry this isnt first grade, there are no warnings with exploiting games, thanks for playing.

Love it. Ban them all for the sake of this game.
love watching dupers like [ohno] cry now

Idk i found some guy spamming wtb char bag 60k.. so i sold them a char bag. After i sold it they asked what its function was .. with the banning i don't agree with more then a temp ban for those people that sold an item for a large amount of armbraces, just to control the duped items and if possible rollback the transaction. I don't want another Diablo 2 so gj on the bans i hope your records go back far enough to get every one of those jerks.

yes this sure sounds like the words from an innocent man. sound defensive much?

if u get banned theres probably a reason. seeing as ur from the same guild as chunky though, SEVERLY hurst ur credibilty.