[Dev Update] Exploits and Bans – 10 January 2008

I'm in the 40% tax bracket, I contribute enough already

just a question, what was the visual appearance of this outpost? what appeared when you hit "M"?

are you kidding me? the whole time all you did was use foul language boss people around flame the hell outa anyone without takin 2 seconds to listen to thier point of view.. this is spose to be a community and unfortunatly for you not every strives to be a premodanna .. a paragon of good this isnt a game its the cold hard facts.. when you actually figure these things out i hope it isnt too late lol

I dont know about you, but I'm far more pissed that the rules change depending upon how many people are affected and how much work would be involved in catching the "exploiters."

small number of people combined to one area = ban
large number of people over many towns = nothing, just close the "exploit"

Cant piss off too many people or they might not buy GW2 now can they?

i added some more thing after you quoted, anyway
i will put them here again

1) there are cheating and cheating. ( Like someone who steal 10 bucks and someone who rob a bank)
2) Wasn't a lie someone actually did hack the game.

later days chaotic im outa here before he starts whining about how he found this dam thing hes a HEEERRROoo again. i already have a headache from watchin all my friends get banned just because.

Do you even know whats this thread is about progtes? Its people who have been banned giving there arguments that they should not have been banned by not knowing they where the victim of 3rd party software.

And for the record, all it took was just 1 click join party. Not programming a hack wich all people became victim off.

somone might have hacked this game, but none of the people gettin banned new about this thats for sure. you validate that hundreds of people should get banned for something that hapens ever stinkin day. for things people have gotten away for for years.. and in the end it was all so a half ass game company can save face. gg way to stick together guys i cant take this anymore

lishi argument something please.

what is the definition of cheating? does solo farming a dungeon count as cheat ? buying ectos at the merchant at 100g cheat ? joining a wrong party who maps to wrong town cheat ? then taking advance of the situation cheat ?

thats the point of the thread, just clearance.

Ignorance is no excuse for committing a crime.

"Not knowing" that you're breaking a rule does not exempt you from punishment.

Yes, not everyone used the hack, probably only one person did. However, what I see is that those people who benefited from that one person, while they did not directly use the hack, have indirectly utilized it to their own benefit.

If you're banned because you exploited this, then good riddance.

Note: This post is meant to clarify what me and a lot of my in-game friends actually involved ourselves in when we were performing this so-called exploit. What I say in this post only reflects what I and the people I farmed with did and I can not be certain for all 117 of those initially banned, however I personally know at least 30 of those that were affected. I have not posted this to start more flaming, only to inform the people that dont really know what happened with this glitch. Also, I am only posting this because I'm sick of the Dev Update Thread on this topic where 99% of the people posting have no clue what it the glitch actually entails.

Also: I did this glitch for a couple hours everyday, since mid-november, and farmed 15 armbraces, that's my credibility on the subject.

First off, I myself nor anyone I farmed Mallyx with have never hacked Guild Wars client, and yet I was still able to farm The Ebony Citadel of Mallyx, or monkey farm as my groups of friends like to call it. I was approached by someone who I had been playing with for over a year now, saying he was just showed by his guildies, this awesome Mallyx farm, involving an outpost that takes you right to the Ebony Citadel mission without having to kill the four lords. Of course I was interested on how it was done. I've been a big Guild Wars player for over a year and a half now, and I felt it was my turn to farm some cash before this bug got fixed.

To me, it was no different, and a little less profitable than the Heart Of The Shiverpeaks Chest Run when GW:EN first came out. You and a bunch of friends run to the end of the dungeon, drop a bunch of barrels on a giant worm, collect a dungeon chest that was 40% onyx gemstones, which were worth 10k each at the time. The run took 5-7 minutes, and it got nerfed pretty quick once people caught on. (I made more money doing this in that one week than I ever did farming mallyx in 1 week, did I get perma-banned for that?)

Anyway, I got guested to a guild hall he brought me to this 'glitch' outpost with an enter mission button. We threw in our heros, and pressed the Enter Mission button to start at the beginning of the Ebony Citadel of Mallyx. This is another misconception, we weren't teleported right to Mallyx, killed him in 30 seconds and got our gemsets. We still had to fight for 10-15 minutes against all the groups that rushed in. Then once all the spawning groups were killed and we went and faced Mallyx. Killed him. Collected our reward from the High Priest from the Mallyx the Unyielding Quest obtained in the Gate of Anguish.

From there, we would have 1 person go the guildhall everyone else go pick up the quest again. We would get back to the guildhall, he would ferry us all back to the glitch town, the group would go back to the guildhall while the last person grabs the quest. Ferry the last person from the guildhall to the glitch town and start the mission all over again. It would take about 20 minutes from enter mission to enter mission, and the reward each time was a single gemset.

I've known and been actively doing this glitch since mid-November and farmed 15 armbraces. Never once getting Coffers, only trading 15 gemsets for armbraces. Now 15 armbraces is a lot, but its a lot less than what people are thinking. There is only person I can think of that *may* have farmed more than I did, but thats of the ~30/117. For a fact i know about half of the people I know farmed 5 or less armbraces, including some that only did 5 gemsets and still got banned.

On another note, there are no innocent parties, Anet spared those that actually didn't participate. My alt account for one had the scenario where it was taken there, and never did any runs. I left my alt accounts necro 'parked' there to ferry us if we didnt have anyone that could ferry online. It did not get touched by the ban because it never once completed the mission from the glitch outpost, however did enter the mission from the outpost. So all the people that are complaining that oh they got pulled there and they knew it was wrong, left the team and never went back there are lying. They would have missed the ban just like my alt account did.

Now that you are informed what went on in the glitch, you can make an accurate opinion on whether or not a permanent ban is a just punishment. I would like you to remember, however, that there are plenty of people out there that did not get caught 'duping' armbraces and ectos or they got caught and unbanned. How do I deserve the same punishment as people that duped stacks upon stacks of armbraces. And there were people that client hacked items into pre-searing, is it just that I get the same punishment.

Anyway, I hope you enjoyed some insider insight =].

EDIT: Spelling / Grammar

then tell me the other millions of hack,of this magnitude , you can do in this game.

Oh right you dont know any

I can say now more than ever after the damage control has been applied that i know well over half maybe even a good 3/4 of the people banned only because many diffrent people I know had multiple accounts banned. I also know that every single one of the people I know didnt meet up with a 0mG Teh haXXOr and get into the town. That if this exploit is months old and Anet claimed that their servers are secure. How many of us truly knew it was a hack that we're from benefiting from.

Points to make in reply :
1) Lack of respect - what - for people cheating the system - give me a break.
2) Cornerstone - sorry mate - they rorted and got booted - there will be some great people amongst this, but they lost any claims to cornerstone with this act.
3) It's not ANET's fault if thousands are affected - its the rorters fault for not thinking things through to logical conclusions - thay saw phat lewt and grabbed it. They made an ASSUMPTION that when discovered they would not get hung out to dry. They ASSUMED they could better interpret the EULA and they HOPED it would be seen as similar to Duncan. What right would they have to do that? Where and how is anything here ANET's fault?
4) Exactly what consideration do you really think is due here from the general gaming community that abides to the rules?

Now having been a bit harsh in that response, I am already on record earlier in the thread as not wanting perma bans for everyone. That should only be reserved for the hacker and any people taking groups in. The majority of people lie outside that group, and should have temp bans that fit the crime (ie 72 hour suspension per run they made, and all gems, mallyx, tormented items removed from account etc).

It will be interesting to see where the dust settles.

You can cheat your friend of its school meal.
You can scam a old couple of their life saving.

Sorry about being off-topic, but what does tl;dr mean? I keep seeing it, I have no idea what it means...

If you would buy one of these items for 10k do you also take risk of getting banned, i mean in the back of your head you know its worth 20k, it could have been gotten unfair

I think lishi's point is that committing a crime is still a committing a crime, regardless of the magnitude of the crime.

Thus, exploiting a hole in the game for your own benefit is still exploitation, regardless of the magnitude of the exploit.

For me, it would trigger a "Does this guy know how much it's worth?" marker and make me question his legitimacy. But unfortunately, common sense seems to elude most of the player base in MMO games.

LF Monkey Group....woops wc.


Nasty I didnt see you mention the part where we used consumables^_^

All 117 should stay banned and all the dupers that where let back in should have never gotten back in either.

well, its was.

There are something is not really necessary to be punish (well stealing the meal of your friend is still bad ) and there a thing who need to be punished.

i wasnt.

I was saying you don't need to punish all the cheating.

A definition of cheating can depend more on the person beliefs then some absolute

This is exactly what a majority of the posts are here are about. pretty much 90% of account have exploited a cheat or exploit of some sort regaurdless of the magnitude.

but there were dupers that were not even banned and are still playing with hundreds of armbraces and thousands of ectos.

The only problem I have is people got banned for this, but not Duncan/Heart of Shiverpeaks/Guild Hall ferrying.

Oh and Rel you fail! Hahahahahaha.

Lying and excuses? I just told you how we did it, and i never once said I didnt exploit the game. Just wanted everyone to be informed on what went on because I'm tired of ill-informed posts.

Now, think of it this way: A crime is a crime, however, the punishment for the crime will depend on the magnitude of the crime. For example, 1st degree murder, 2nd degree murder, manslaughter, etc.

The lines are clearly drawn in the "real world" situation. However, in a video game, the lines are not as clearly defined, and it is entirely up to the game masters and developers to decide where the line will be drawn, and how the punishment will be delivered.

=== EDITS ===

Very true.

More drama! Hurrah! Actually, don't want more exploits, though I don't think they'll stop popping up.

to all that got banned:

You say ANet hit you with the ban-stick... but they really gave you a Restart Life coupon.\


EDIT:
LOL at the post below me!

Can't wait to see what exploit comes next week....

"Some people" like being ignorant so they don't have to face the fact that they were wrong. NOTE: That wasn't aimed at you or anyone who got banned but the people like Mister up there.

Yep I know I see people offer 250 armbraces for one of my items. But at least they did something abut it this time.

These people knew what they where doing at this outpost or they where just really really stupid!!!

Economy is shot to hell ever since dupes and supposivly this mallyx trick was happening for months too. I doubt all they got was just 15 armbraces.

Translation: Can't wait until I get banned and get a new life.


Right?

I can honestly say I have never exploited anything in this game, or any other game.
Why well for one I get greater satisfaction knowing that I did things on my own with out cheating with out taking any short cuts. I'm not rich in game nor do I care to be. I play because its fun for me.

This was something that anyone playing the game for any length of time regardless of it being a glitch or a hack should have known was not right, and was not intended for normal players to use. I'm not going drag this post on so i will get to my point.

Bottom line is you tried to take the easy way out when you knew there wasn't supposed to be one. You have all admitted it several times.
So man up, take the ban, and move on.

Because these didn't involve hacking the guild wars client to access an inaccessible outpost?

I stopped reading after the bolded bit. I even said in my post that I didn't read your whole post. That bolded phrase is both a lie and an excuse in my mind. I've read the reast of your post, and I stand by my original summary. Although your post was more informative, I don't really care about the details of how the exploit was acheived.

CLAP CLAP CLAP, you got it bro. Gj man Can't argue with that lol

so by the above thread you're saying you're guilty of farming 15 armbraces? What more evidence do you need than from the guilty party saying they did it. What's your point?

saying Anet didn't catch all armbrace dupers does not justify what you did.by your logic, next time you do this, don't get caught then.

ding ding ding we have a winner lol

funny how thee hacking part isnt mentioned bymost of those people complaing about the ban

Folks, this wasn't a "bug." It wasn't a "run." It was a blatant, outright hack of the game client. These individuals (and probably, originally, one of them) found the loophole, opened a way to reveal "development outposts" on their in-game map and the ability to map-travel to them. All games have these - they're there for QA/Testing purposes. This is not anywhere close to the same as "LF Ferry Ascalon -> Desert" - it'd be more akin to opening your in-game map and map-travelling to the Desert without ever having been there prior.

Reading the last few pages as well, i don't think many of you've noticed the update from Gaille Grey. Again, update on page 1.

They didnt get very many because it took 20mins to get one GEMSET. 15armbraces=15gemsets each thats 225 GEMSETS soo that would be 4500mins or 75 hours.