[Dev Update] Exploits and Bans – 10 January 2008

That has absolutely NOTHING to do with the ban however. It doesn't matter how it was exploited and hacked. All that matters is it was.

If you're the corpse in a murder investigation, it doesn't matter how you died, just that your are now dead.

Your right, Im a noob who didnt realize it was a bug, haxor, whatever. Im a noob, because, I didnt do them? I did actually. i did the quests a few times. Somehow you seem to think I didn't? Maybe if you had a slight clue what you were talking about, that would be nice.

Ok, so theres a quest. it gives u a reward. and a chest. It didnt register with my brain. I didnt even think about it. It still seems the same to me as urgoz/deep towns. Not on map etc. Same.

I guess you didnt do it? I guess you have no idea how it is? I didnt even know you had to do 4 quests eveyr time you did mallyx. I never new that at all. I Am now reading thats apparenly how its set up. I did hte quests, when I did them, for gymstones that they give. the 4 quests. Then I assumed you could do mallyx over and over. I didnt realize it was a repeatable.

Maybe im not explaining this very good, but if it says, do these 4 quests, and youve done them a few times, then it lets you figh tmallyx, I assume its made to be that way.

I didnt assume its been hacked or something. I guess I need to start looking for the bad in everything, and not take things at face value.

Like I said, I am a bit of a noob for not realizing, I guess. But if you were in urgoz in the first month of Factions, or if you did a quest chain, then got the fight say, shiro over and over, it seems normal game play to me.
I guess Im a total noob.

I really know a lot of people who got banned. I am the only officer in my guild who didn't get banned, because I live in Europe and my friends live in the U.S.A. They did some Mallyx runs late at night. I know of a lot more people who got banned too. let me assure you: None of them ever used third party programs. With A lot, I really mean I think I know about 100 banned people by (in game) name. This makes me think about the amount of banned people. If even I already know so much...

Since they were amongst the first people to find out about the glitch (yes, a glitch. Not an exploit.) I can say with a great deal of certainty NOBODY hacked in there. None of the people I know are hackers, I am sure. In my opinion there was an Anet staff member whole also liked to play the game that zoned the first people there (amongst those people guildies and friends of mine). I don't know whether or not it was by accident (having the outpost stored as default location when u leave the gh, for example). I guess that too is the reason why people kept it secret, but still went on with it. I know Gaile lies in at least 90% of the cases when she said the people hacked. The outpost was already there and people got ferried to it. I don't see why that would be a breach of the EULA.

Next point. The highest amount of armbraces obtained by 1 person I know if is maybe 30 armbraces. With all of the duping and other unfair things going on, that doesn't even seem worth mentioning. Besides, Anet can just take them of the accounts now. I only know of 1 person who still holds about 5 armbraces on a second account, although I only asked this to about 30 people.

Aside from the views guilt/innocent or good/bad or whatever: the reality that I almost lost half of my guild and I lost over half of my friends list. People I've been playing with for a long time. People that got R4 and R5 KoBD. Those people will quit gw for sure, if they can't get there accounts back. That doesn't only affect them, it will affect me too. As a completely innocent person, I get punished by losing most of my best friends. I'm unsure what to do if the people remain banned. Quit people too, I guess? Join them in WoW from now on?

Thank you for reading.

do you ever think that the people used it simply because they dont like wasting their time looking for a group that would pick up a noob and fail I dont believe he exploited it if he only got 1 armbrace because the meaning expoit is . to utilize, esp. for profit; turn to practical account and he did not use it for profit since he did not do it in the faster than the time it takes a normal group

you dont even make sense. I play gw for fun. I did the 4 quests a few times, on different characters, etc for fun.. I did malyx in what is now being called an exploit for fun.

I didnt even KNOW IT Was an EXPLOIT. I DIDNT make any huge amount of gold on it. Maybe u dont know what an exploit is? Aparently this is a bug? or hack. No one seems to know. SOme are saying, and I believe its true, that someone happened into it in game, un hacked, just a bug. OR someone hacked to get the town. I dont know, and I didnt know.

EITHER WAY, if I had EXPLOITED a BUG for instance, or a HACK,
I would be uber rich, and I would have used the thing a lot.

I didnt. Im not uber rich, any more than I was before. I didnt use it a lot, and The fact I used the bug, not knowing it was a bug, for the essence of 1 armbrace, in 2 months, I dont think at ALL falls under the definitin of EXPLOIT.

Like I said, look it up. This is either a hack or a bug, that has been exploited by many others, apparently knowingly.

My whole point is I didnt know it was a bug/hack whatever, I didnt EXPLOIT IT, and I dont think you have a single clue what your talking about here......

I've done DoA enough to know you defeat the 4 bosses then talk to snake guy in DoA outpost to gain acces to Ebony Citadel =D

Not joining a group and ending up in strange outpost...

and to give you an indication how much i done DoA...

so yes i have no life and did doa to much =p

anyway go post your QQ to ANET support kthx

Peace out

LOl what makes me laugh about all the "QQ" is that the people that were banned were knowingly using the exploit.

I farm DoA a LOT and for the past 3 weeks certain "guilds" were inviting people to join that were up there farming, after getting into a conversation with a few of these people they were advising that there were 3 people that knew of a way to continually kill mallyx without having to clear the 4 primaries, at one point they were spamming in town, "farm 8 armbraces in 3 hours with us" they even made their guildnames in mockery of what they were doing and the majority of people in DoA for the past 2 weeks could probably have told you who will be banned.

By the looks of things a-net allowed a lot more than most other games in that they gave people the benefit of the doubt for travelling to this outpost a few times.

Apparantly the chances of getting to this outpost by mistake are infinitely small, yet a-net gave a little leeway.

The simple truth is those that have been banned deserve to be banned as they knew full well what they were doing.

GG A-net

I see a lot of mis understanding about the mechanics of the exploit here.

I suspect VERY few people knew how to gain access to the outpost in the first place. To be the first EVER person there you needed to hack the client.

Once you had gained access to the fake town you could take anyone who had killed Mallyx once there as part of your team. The People you dragged with you DID NOT need to hack the client.

It was obvious the place should not have been possible to get to and that it was a serious exploit in the game. It was also obvious that to farm the place would be inviting trouble. The responsible thing to do would have been to report the exploit to Anet staff, inform your guild or guild leader there was an exploit and tell people not to use it. Then dont go there ever again.

Therefore I suspect most of the people banned did NOT hack the client, but their actions once there are critical. Did they think OMG this is wrong and map out right away, did they farm it loads of times knowing it was wrong?, Did they think this is cool I must show xyz, did they think this is wrong i'll test a few things out and report it? Anets job is quite hard as they dont want to ban innocents, nor do they want to let people who abused it off the hook.

What I think they did, is similar to what happend in the duping case where they did an initial sweep and then fine tune later.

There are it seems a few catagories of people

1. Who hacked the client and got there
2. Who did NOT hack the client and went there with the intention of farming it to death
3. Who did NOT hack the client with no intention of farming it but did the mission.
4. Who did NOT hack the client and were dragged there accidentally
5. Who did NOT hack the client, went there tested the minimal amount required and then reported it right away with the details of their testing

People in groups 4 or 5 should not be banned IMHO. Group 3 people are harder to prove and chat logs would help in that

Group 4 people are easier to prove. They will have been there very few times, and will have sent in tickets, PM's to Anet staff etc. I expect those people, like Fenix and Enko who found the dupe exploit will be unbanned. (http://www.guildwarsguru.com/forum/s...it+report ing)

People in groups 1 and 2 I have no sympathy for(esp 1).

I suspect this will run and run tho...

PS this post is a cat free zone..

It doesn't matter if you play gw for fun, hardcore, anything, if you want to get something, get it the way it was intended.

Ok so I did as you said and looked up exploit;
1. exploit - use or manipulate to one's advantage; "He exploit the new taxation system"; "She knows how to work the system"; "he works his parents for sympathy"

So this applies to the exploit, it can be taken advantage of, and it is used for your benefit. But it doesn't matter what it is, because you still benefitted form it unfairly and you presumably got banned appropriately for it.


I dont care if you play for fun, you used this exploit to get something easier, if it didn't give you an advantage, then why use it?

And Yes you did exploit by getting one ambrace faster than usual, you still selfishly gained from it. It doesnt matter if you didn't get uber rich.


You exploited a bug/hack/exploit


Thanks for reading.

Dude, wheres the endication how much you did doa? I dont get it.

I had never done doa much. just 2 or 3 of the quests before this. I was with GUILDIES who talked like it was same as urgoz type town, and said it was ok. I did the quests several times in the 2 months. I never did talk to the "snake guy" to go to mallyx, I didnt know it was required. I even did mallyx a few times without the quests not know ing anything about it. It never did make sense to me fully, but I never thought it was a glitch/bug either, as I said I guess Im a complete noob.

Anyway, I did send several tickets to A net and they are responding with all the speed of a snail stuck in quick sand. I got the 4 automated requests sure, but a real live person writing back? not so lucky yet.

OH, and I want to point out, EULAs ftl . .I read a big article on them, and it seems tons of ppl get screwed out of 100s of dollars every day by buying games, having htem a week, unknowingly breaking a eula, and getting banned.

I knwo they need rules etc, but some of the stuffs rediculous.

there were ppl in my guild banned up to 3 times for FAST FACTOIN FARMING. as far as I know this isnt even bottable We had hzh with like 90m faction. We had teams of 6+ FFFing round the clock. we got banned for being addicted to a game aimed at making you addicted > Finally a net said they would make a list of known true FFF ers to not ban.

My point is, EULAS are needed, and fair. But sometimes people get caught up in things that they dont know are rong, or simply arent wrong. I am hoping they see this graciously, as they have seen other things graciously in the past.

I woulda had no guild left months ago had the FFF bans stuck. So lets hope I have a guild again soon, after this mess.

Ok everyone this is not an exploit because you can not gain more money doing this so called "exploit" than you can doing the regular quests so you cannot gain anything from it. that you would not of gained from it normally. And they already proved to arenanet that they had the skill "(from what gaile gray is trying to say)" to actually beat the other 4 bosses before them This so called exploit does not let you gain anything more so the Bannes are meaningless other than they all just wanted to do something out of the ordinary to gain profit rather than going with the herd of people that may give them a noob and make them end their regular 4bosses run

It saddens me that AreaNet chose to use such harsh disciplinary action on the individuals in this case.

A great many of them are my friends, many of whom saw it as another temporary glitch - we've all seen them, and experienced them. Whether its the "Edge of the world" or some Necrotic transversal jump - we've all seen things in the game that didn't fit and said nothing. So why now? Why the bans?

Hacking, most certainly can suck the fun out of any game. Many of those who play Guild Wars are familiar with Diablo, and the prescense of Ultimate PK item killing machines: Thier power not earned but rather designed through some crafty program.

However in the case of Guild Wars, the line of acceptable playing behavior is blurry. One could claim the 55 monk build to be a game exploit - some unforseen reversal of values in order to wield immense power. Others call it ingenuity - but like before - the difference between inventiveness and hacking in GW in a hair thin prospect.

AreaNet Is somewhat contradictive in its statments on its attempts to "stabilize" the game's economy. Events like "A Weekend to Dye for" and game updates that Nerf new inventive builds destabalize it. They shifted the market from one favorable to sellers to that of buyers. It was not some pissant dip, it was a crash. Swords Like The elemental blade went from 100k +ectos to 70k and below. Market trade goods like Black Dye went from 11k a peice to 6.5k. Players lose faith in what they work for, and the game - which has many titles centered around high costing goods- has lost its interest. For many of the most hardcore players it is the difficulty in obtaining that perfect rare 100k +item that makes the game worth playing. Don't lower the bar just so you can suck in new players.

And let us not forget people that we are dealing with fake money here. The account those 117 lost were real, tangible, and cost them real (and sometimes substantial amounts of) money. As many of the posts before me have mentioned or at least implied - AreaNet doesn't mind screwing a few hundred people so long as they keep buisness booming. (sounds an awful lot like a game by the name of WoW).

AreaNet should have done this: Sent a PC representative to the Outpost and issued a cease and desist warning to those who entered. Fixed the exploit - and moved the heck on.

For a long time I had nothing but good things to say about Guild Wars. It has changed - and so has the attitude I express when convincing my college buddies to buy or hesitate when it comes down to it.

AreaNet: lift the ban - you made the exploit, you fix it. Don't punish those unaware of the implications of your mistakes.

isnt the reason that they didnt gain ?much? money from this spl0it is because they failed most of their runs and the few that they did manage to complete were done very, very slowly?

IMHO, just because they were incapable of abusing this spl0it to the maximum potential, doesnt make it less of a spl0it.

1st of all.. thats all? xD
2nd.. the "QQ" is about shut if u dont know whats going on.. and dude stop saying exploit = banned cuz there were a few exploits before and nobody did nothing.. including gaile said "was a great one I did it too" lol
3rd.. if gaile knows about this why so many contradictions hun?
4th she wasnt there and preffer to say hackers(that is a hard pretty high word and some day will cause a demand) than explain "yeh we left a breach opened and some ppl abused of it but thxs to god we have the EULA for clean everything" ok so now u used the EULA before ffs.. and really most of u yeh if is a bug or an exploit /report and its done.. sureeee u will report something that is against u but this I dont think so.. well except this guy who started all well seems he posted cuz somebody kicked him from the team but gg anyway.. so ppl dont talk cuz u have mouth only plz think

There is powerful semanticmancery afoot in this thread..

When you take advantage of something in the game it is an exploit no matter how little you profit from it or how ignorant you are of what you are actually doing.

Taking a backdoor directly to a boss is exploiting. There really is no other way around it.

By the rate you were apparantly going, it would have taken you longer if you did it normally. so by exploiting you shaved time off of it?

If you could have done it in the same time, then why use the bug to get there?

Riddle me that.

Unaware, please...

They were completely aware of what was going on as it was explained to them as a way to kill mallyx without having to do 4 quests.

a-net already advised it gave some leeway in those that were there a few times (which is more than fair TBH)

The simple truth is the exploit was discovered (call it a glitch or whatever you what to call it but it was an exploit gained originally by modifying the game client and this knowledge was passed onto 2 - 3 other guild leaders) did those people report the exploit to a-net in the hope of a fix? NOPE

They chose to use it to fast farm and flood their accounts with armbraces (as advised before they were spamming "come and farm 8 armbraces in 3 hours" in DoA over xmas) and a number of people signed up with their new guilds.

So please stop with the "it's a-net fault, they are innocent etc..." BS they are guilty plain and simple.

Bugs are bugs and the idea behind the EULA is that if you find one you report it right away, they did'nt they exploited it as far as possible and got banned.

GG A-net

One its not always a failure and not always do normal groups get through it perfectly fine all the time man ive had groups the just totally wipe on the 30 mobs that you have to beat before getting to mallyx so I seriously doubt that all normal groups never fail so its still equivalant It just makes it so that they dont have to get 2 hours out of their day to do it like the rest of us and I personally understand because, I wish that there was an easier faster way to do it rather then getting together experienced people and having to spend 2 hours out of my day to get the 5 gemsets that I usually get.

Why is URSAN still ingame when you follow this logic?

(it was the thing that allowed easy mallyx kill with abuse of this exploit anyway, without it majority of exploiters would just be able to start mission but would fail.)

BUT: Kudos for banning action, it was much needed!

I found this link from the "game bugs" thread:
http://www.guildwars.com/support/leg...sofconduct.php

Whether or not you got rich out this is not important IMO, I believe ANet could have banned more people than they did. If they applied the EULA, you could even say they were lenient.

It's a critical exploit and the people who abused it deserve their ban.

The thing is, I read that a select few bunch knew about this for months. That's a sure way of destroying in-game economy. Now I know why Gemstone and Mallyx green prices got so cheap. They've already made an impact on the global ingame economy.

if they knew about their bug on november 19th then why didnt they stop and close it then rather then waiting and waiting for more and more people to actually go into the town the glitch of anets is their fault and theirs alone sometimes they should go back into the individual accounts like wow has done and remove the estimated money that they made off of this "supposid Exploit" now why cant anet simply do that rather then banning all these people and ruining their weekend fun.

After reading some posts in this giant thread, I'm doubtfull about the way Anet handled this.
117 people who purposely, knowingly, HACKED the GW client? I seriously doubt that's true.
PERM bans for all those who entered this outpost? A bit harsh. There were people among the banned that got transported there in a party, and didn't hack anything. Did they even KNOW it was an exploit??? When IS something an exploit? I can tell you I'd never know if anything is an exploit or not, I know zip about programming, I just play the game.
Was it truly an exploit created by hacking? Or was it a bug that could be exploited by the more computer-savvy players, like Anet has had dozens of allready...

Long story short: Anet should only ban those who actually hacked the client. Prove it before you ban! It was a flaw in Anet's game client imo as the outpost should have been deleted entirely from the client, and I doubt the economic impact is as big as Anet says. They left it in there, so big surprise that someone with some programming knowledge finds a way to get there. Might even have been a few who found a way, but 117? C'mon...

I think the punishment is too harsh and one-sided for the actual impact it has. I mean, who cares really? Sure, ban hackers, but be 100% sure that they ARE in fact hackers before banning 117 people...

I totally disagree with that statement.
It kinda feels like I should now be extremely vigilant when playing their game in case I stumble apon a bug/exploit, and risk getting permbanned. Makes me feel uneasy. I'm not their gametester, I want to play without worrying about Anet's mistakes in the game. And this is not the first time I've had that feeling...

you guys are completely missing the point of what I am saying, as ussual. Put blinders on a horse, and he only sees straight. Theres Only black and white, not grey. The other colors exist, but shouldnt, because black and whites all you need right? I think your all complete morons. I didnt try to exploit anything. I thought this was part of the game. I admited my noobness on that now, after reading 500 posts on it. OK? Done with that part.

Fact is, we did very well, tell me a guild/team who can kill mallyx in hard mode and not die 2 out of 7 times? thats 5 complete in 7 tries, in hard mode . Show it to me. I will type /bow.

OK moving on a bit. I didnt not make money because I suck etc. I didnt make money because I didnt want to/need to. I didnt know it was a hack/glitch whatever, I didnt understand, what I do now about the quests etc.

OK!

now, I played it lets see maybe 4 to 5 times each time, a total of 25 times max. OK> thats over 2 months. Meaning I CHOSE to only farm this, stupid end boss 5 times total right? Does this make sense to you? 5 times in 2 months? I wasnt trying to EXPLOIT something. I thought it was legit part of game. OK?

I did it as much as I could for fun, then didnt. After 5 runs, of ursan way killing, things just arent much fun anymore, and 5 times in 2 months is very very very normal. I have done URGOZ and the deep simular amounts of times in simular amounts of ALOTED time.

Maybe your missing the point still? I play for fun. The EULA says, KNOWINGLY USED AN EXPLOIT/HACK/3rd person program RIGHT?

I didnt know, yes ok IM A NOOB, but really, it took me 3 years to figure out how to 600 monk.... so idk I guess i am,
but

I certainly didnt go around trying to exploit anything.

Thanks.

people who are poor are not complaining about the drop in price on the mallyx items or items only the super rich people are complaining about these drops cause that was how they became so rich.

So please stop with the "it's a-net fault, they are innocent etc..." BS they are guilty plain and simple.

Bugs are bugs and the idea behind the EULA is that if you find one you report it right away, they did'nt they exploited it as far as possible and got banned.

GG A-net

----Ok, so all people are guilty.. fine. But shouldn't there be some sort of differetiation between those that unknowingly did a few runs or even knowingly did a few runs.. as opposed to the people who apparently were "getting 8 armbraces over XMas"? Shouldn't there be a realistic scale of ban? Murder > Armed Robbery > Robbery > Theft > Misdemeanor type progression? Maybe not that thorough, obviously, but I can't see how you can lump a person who did it like 6-8 times and maybe didn't know it was an exploit for most of em.. and someone who got like 15 armbraces. I think that is a rather civil question.. hopefully i'll get a rather civil response.

Count Aristotle
--And Jake Steel.. don't presume that just because some people wanted some quick cash in GW [or whatever their reason was].. automatically makes them some awful human beings. I am one of the banned, I have many friends that are banned, and I will vouch for them that they are some of the nicest, family-oriented people I've met in an mmo. Not all, of course. But many. So please don't prejudge or generalize an entire group of people, most of whom you probably have not personally chatted with. Sorry for the rant.

I've been posting this very same thing over the last few weeks.

The Message has to be VERY CLEAR: people exploiting game-holes, altering the game code to find exploitable game-holes, aswell as people joining their fellow taking advantage of them exploiting HAVE TO BE BANNED.

Should it be necessary to ban few "innocent" people who joined and killed mallyx just once to spot and ban all the serious exploiters, I DONT CARE, BAN THEM ALL.
Else we will always have people who miraculously escaped the ban-axe and will keep looking for exploits making the game experience unfair for honest players.

i have a incredible amount of maxed titles, a ridiculous amount of hours played over my account. i don't log in the game since early this week because i'm letting it go.
Yet i don't feel the need to try to launch the client and check if my account status is fine, because i never did anything that was close to be ban-worthy. i don't even need to go check if i'm banned because i know that it's technicaly impossible to happen.

A.net does have to protect the game and the honest people playing the game, else the honest people feeling "fooled" would pack their things and their money, and look for another game to play.
Protecting the game sometimes means banning few innocent people to be sure that the hackers/serious exploiters don't have a chance go free? Fair, rest in peace.

My only question is.. [and I know you are squeaky clean, I'll take your word for it].. would you be singing a different toon if by some crap chance you ended up on the innocent end of some vicious perm ban?

And I'm not saying.. let people go free. I'm just saying.. since they know who, how many times, and the other specifics.. can't they really differentiate between "threats" to exploit and people just caught in the stream? I mean, the LEAST anyone should get is a 72 hour ban, up to perm ban IMHO.. but the 72 hour should at least be instituted for those who did very few runs or have a long standing record of squeaky cleanness.

But we'll probably just have to settle to agree to disagree on this.

Count Aristotle
--Banned and feeling it.

Here's a secret of why you where banned.

You

Used

An

Exploit

the end.

no...don't think just accept it.

The other thing people are forgetting is that a-net already gave a degree of leniency and didn't just ban every person that went to this hidden city.

They allowed a number of times on the off chance that it was un-intentional, they somehow how just ended up there, they were taken there by party leaders etc...

But once you have been to this place more than say six times, are you still unwittingly being taken there, unaware that you have to do the first 4 quests? NO, in fact the first time you are taken there you are aware of what you are doing in that it is an exploit as you are not having to complete the first 4 quests, sounds harsh? then I'll explain.

the logic behind the exploit was:

1. you had to have completed all the missions and killed mallyx once and have taken the reward for completing the questline and receive your gemset.

2. you take the questline again (i.e you must kill all 4 overlords then kill mallyx)

3. Certain parties were spamming to fast farm mallyx without having to complete first 4 quests, ursan r8+, if you joined the party you were asked if you had already completed mallyx once or you won't be able to be transported.

4. the party leader then "exploited" the game to take you and the rest of the party to a hidden place that allowed you direct access to mallyx again without having to re-do all 4 of the previous quests.

5. you kill mallyx, collect your green and gemset

6. Rinse and repeat

This is exactly how the exploit worked, so how can anyone actually claim any type of innocence in relation to this?

You entered the party knowing full well what was being done and that there was an exploit that allowed you to repeatedly farm mallyx over and over again.

Maybe Gaile should have been clearer and outlined exactly what they had done and it would have stopped a lot of the QQ'ing in this thread.

Someone explain exactly why they shouldn't be banned then please.

No no no these people weren't banned because they used an exploit, they were banned because they used it multiple times.

I don't care either way, I get happy when people exploit because I want this game to go down in flames, but that's probably cause I dislike all the fanbois and want them to go away.

Regardless Gaile said you were only banned if you did it more than +5 times. So people gotta stop lying. Gaile might not know what she's talking about most of the time but it's their game and they can do whatever they want. However I'm still wondering why the let half of these "morally" good people play the game. Ridiculous spots upon the earth, all of them.

edited your post since I think they banned players who has done it more then once...

one of my guild member was in a group who was using the exploit was not banned since he knew something was odd and was smart enough to avoid doing DoA...

I can't help but say that I agree with what Anet did here. Ban the majority of the people they can see that did this repeatedly, then let them appeal on a case-by-case situation.

And this is purely for Mickey. You start off with doing it once. Then a few pages later you jumped up to 4 times. Then it was up to 5... By post 332 you were at doing it 6 times. Now you're saying you did it 7 times but it shows 24 times you entered? Honestly, I'm finding it funny.

I respect that AreaNet is not entirely to blame for this mishap but conversly they should understand that this does not mean that those 117 are all to blame, or all with malicious intent.

Like in all Gold Rushes people can race in without knowing the consequences of thier actions. Simple truth the outpost should not have been there. And thats where AreaNet comes in plain and simple.

Yes it is not right for people to hack the system - yes those people who hacked knew what they were doing was wrong and violated EULA. But these are usually the crimes of small groups 4 to 5 people not 117.

I bet you anything if it hadn't been done in a "shoot first ask questions later" fashion, it would have been found that many of these people just assumed it was another glitch AreaNet was going to plug sooner or later - not get perma banned for.

There was no forewarning. Trust me my alliance leader would have informed us to stay away from anything that he knew could get us banned. Thankfully I just stick to questing and avoid the rushes. It was a shock to all of us when just your average farmers, looking for the get rich quick flavor of the week, got caught up in all of this and got banned.

These guys aren't hackers - they're die hard Guild Wars fans, who put a lot of effort in thier accounts and now have to stew over whether or not to start over or just move on.

It may be wrong of me I guess to expect the best in people but these guys in my alliance who got banned had already earned my respect. I don't know about the others involved but surely we can't assume that all of them are as you say "guilty plain and simple." Every story is different.

If nothing else, AreaNet should evaluate what determines guilt. If you find someone actually hacking in - not party warping but actually manipulating the game - then punish them. If they feel its an exploit then shut it down with a program. Otherwise just recognize that 999,999 out of 1,000,000 of us are regular joe schmoes and not hacking geniuses with malicious intent.

On a side note:
I wonder if some of the people who post on this forum thread have invested in the Office Space "Jump to Conclusions" Mat. Seems likely.

only question i have out of everyone got banned most where mostly rich as all get up,which means one thin how many rare mini are stuck forever on those toons, aka pandas oni and such,

last word i knew about the bug i knew how to do it but knwing it had to be down by one person in the frist place that hacked the lient i knew it had to be serious banning.

only thingi feel sorry for is the pople that didnt start the whole thing but at the very end was with groups that went in, a couple of times, not knowing how the exploit worked,

i think the first 8 to 10 pple who did the exploit should get no mercy they new 100% what they did was worse then any exploit in the game worse then doping.

last thing can the person who frist did this admit to it , and tell the other he is sorry , nope i dont think so

If GW is going to have areas for "testing" should they not be on a secure server?
I Anet can make a game like Guild Wars should they not be able to tell if ANYONE is hacking the so-called dat.file? I have programs that tell if my comp is being hacked.
I think Anet brings these kind of things on themselves. The economy......please? Anet ruined that themselves, I remember when ecto was worth something. Since Hard mode came out everything has dropped in price, except armor, or anything from merchants for that matter.
So lets ban everyone that did this DOA thing, oh no wait, lets just ban a few, I mean, after all, Anet cant even tell when someone is using a bot or not, lets just pick a number and run with it, 117 sounds like a nice number. I got banned for "botting", took 3 weeks for them to figure out I wasnt. They either need to ban all or none, put their "testing" areas on a secure server and get some real "hacking" detection software, companies the world over use it every day, it cant be that hard to find. Yup, banning 117 people is going to fix the GW economy, I sure hope someone dosnt give me a "Duped" item. OH NO!, I bought the gems needed for a Torment shield several months ago dont ban me!! Oh wait, they did already then unbanned me. Ok, Im done, Im gonna go farm so I can buy something cool and maybe help the deflated GW economy.
I know some of the 117, great people, most have to ask for help sometimes with a mission or whatnot, a true hacker needs no help, most need a weapon or item sometimes, a true hacker needs nothing. Enough said.

heres the problem with a lot of what I* am seeing. THERES NO 4 QUESTS BEFOR E MALLYX. THERES 1 QUEST!! 1 QUEST!!! it says, YOU MUST KILL, it lists 4 bosses, in 4 areas, then you can kill mallyx. I had killed all 4 of these bosses, and thought I could then kill mallyx. I am a complete noob, and didnt realize, you must apparently do all 4 bosses/hard areas each time? I didnt know this, and I made a net aware of everything I do know/didnt know in a ticket, and am praying for their mercy.

The fake town was not a test area, but an internal staging post the game uses on it's way to porting people to Mallyx. It could'nt be removed as it's integral to the way DoA works(as tempting as it sounds to remove doa tho)..

I never realised it was an exploit of the client. I thought it was a simple guild-hall glitch (like the 12v12 GvG glitch).

I suppose those who 'abused' it got their commuppance. I'm a firm believer in 'if it seems too good to be true, it most probably is.'

There is 1 questline with 4 sub-quests and the ending of ebony citadel (i.e kill a boss in each of the 4 areas then go and kill mallyx)

unless you are quadrunning ursanway then they are treated as 4 individual quest, noted by ppl spamming "lfg gloom, lfg city, lfg foundry, lfg veil"

that is why people are saying 4 quests.