[Dev Update] Exploits and Bans – 10 January 2008

And yeah, Ima just shell out 40 bucks to start over, when I spent 2.5 years on an account, building up my HoM for GW 2....you also assume I have that type of money, and a car to drive 26 miles away to the nearest shopping mall. Which I don't, nor a credit card. I'm 15.

lol
where the hell was you when this was all goin on? you could have saved the day!!
bug was reported way back in 2007 numerous times apparently....
no fix so people got twitchy, not to mention the countless other people who where getting away with it week in week out, you think "6 months and still no fix, ok maybe it may be ok to do it" possible...
duncan farm....
55 farm...
bots....
ferries....

ding ding - we have a thread winner!

I cant believe that its taken 90++pages for those spl0iterz to finally admit they are guilty of violating the EULA.

Its taken 90++pages to get to past Denial, Anger, Bargaining, Depression and finally to Acceptance, congratulations.

Who needs Dr. Phil when youve got GWG?

Ok, I have been trying to be more sympathetic to the ones who got banned, but their behaviour here sure is making it impossible. I tried giving you advice on how and what to submit in your report tickets and what do I get? Accusations that I'm being self righteous and lying. And just when I thought the misunderstanding cleared up, it starts up again.

So from everything I've seen posted from the people who got banned here, I've seen no convincing arguments from them that they were innocent and coupled with their bad attitudes, I'm now totally convinced it was well deserved.

I was one of the "lucky" ones that got banned for no other reason than an ANets mod inability to read logs properly due to the way that the game engine schematics are set up and has also cost me an account that I spent 7000+ hours on and had all 4 campaigns (including 2 Collectors Editions + also pre-order packs), does ANet really think I would actually intentionally go about getting an account like that banned?
Did ANet take into consideration when reviewing the logs that when you change characters after you map into the guild hall and then change to another character that once you jump onto the character you just changed from that it puts you back into the area you were at before going to the guild hall?
ie, character1 @ Lions Arch -> Take character1 to guild hall -> Change to character2 -> change back to character1 -> once loaded it loads in Lions Arch NOT the guild hall.
And since I change characters quite often to try and move items around on characters and also try and create storage space in my storage chest then my Paragon would of been deemed to be going back to the so called exploitable area. But the Paragon never exploited anything in that area. All the Paragon done was map back to the guild hall only to be taken back to that area in question.
Did I exploit that area by doing this? NO
Did I gain anything out of that exploitable area? NO
Did I take anyone to that exploitable area? NO
Here is my scenario..
I got told to meet a "friend" in his guild hall, he sent me an invite so away I went to see him. I joined his party and next thing I'm being transported to an outpost I never knew existed, I loaded into this outpost and as soon as I loaded my friend entered the mission after the priest got killed which took around 30 seconds we returned to the Ebony Citadel outpost. Apart from that one time I got taken into the mission I did not enter nor take anyone to the town/mission to exploit anything.
Perhaps having a full storage was my downfall or perhaps I am right in assuming that I'm a victim of an over zealous GM.
BTW ppl that know me in-game and from here also know that I would never intentionally exploit anything (I guess you can call it maturity) and I would never do anything to loose my account and what was on it.
People are going to assume the worse but thats human nature, I'm just hoping that ANet will learn how to efficiently read the history logs.
One other time I got banned for being a bot for 16 days, I don't run macros nor 3rd party software and it took ANet 16 days to figure this out and reinstate me, I just hope ANet resolves this issue sooner rather than later. I've submitted support tickets to no avail so now I'm sharing my plight with you.
But please take note about the changing characters scenario as I think this has caused me to loose my account and not me actually so called exploiting anything.

no sarcasm pls..these guys already took enough blows
the guy below me is hunting forum points...

How in the word did you come to that conclusion? In no way shape or form has she said that.

First you need to completely stop with the comparison between Duncan and what you where banned for, because they are two different things and here is why..

You where in a restricted outpost, an outpost that you never meant to be in that same outpost that you visited that counted towards your ban every time you account stepped foot in it. It doesn’t matter what you did mission or not it’s is a plus one every time you where in this restricted outpost, if you went to this restricted outpost and no one was there and you left it still counts against you, if you grouped there plus one, if you ferried someone else in that’s a plus one and a check mark because you ferried them in.

Do you get it now? The Ebony Citadel of Mallyx is that restricted outpost that you never meant to be in. And it is because you where in that outpost (give or take a few other reason) you where banned.

So stop with trying to shift the blame off yourself and your own actions.

I was one of the "lucky" ones that didnt get a banned. and all my loot has been giving away to new players or for cheep in all 3 chapters of guildwars, still have some left, am upset that these 117 got banned for a glitch tha was reported about 6-7 months ago..
ps. i still buy gold from anet, and give to the poor people or beggers/dancers.

lol
seriously i care nothing for the results of this, if i did wrong by entering the area 3 times then so be it, i didnt gain nothing and to me that is morally right, to you? who knows? who cares? this thread is for the people affected mainly, your opinion is welcome but show some respect and atleast try and understand where i am coming from and stop trying to counter argue.we aint here to argue, we are here to explain and summarise, maybe even help with the final outcome....
i would also like to add that i know members of your guild who did the same the thing.

well least they could do for the banned people who EXPLOITED it is whipe there chars and storage[leave campaigns] and let them start from scratch for being idiots, and for all the HACKERS = perma bann

Tickle anet have set a boundary so to speak. they are reviewing each ticket and seeing how many times you accessed the affected area, so far if it is below 4 times you may get your account back..although the jury is still out as to wether going to the area then moving on to mallyx or just going to the area to speak to friends is bannable...although lots of people here want to see everyone banned for just being there even though you do no wrong doing...and aim not to benefit from the exploit in their eyes you still in the wrong...but if you have only been there less than 4 times you should get your account back...be patient only submit one ticket and wait for a response jus like me

Im going to throw in my two cents here
For the msot part I completely agree with Anet course of action, however i think there is one serious problem.
The approach taken here, as it stands so far, is pretty much an all or nothing approach. Meaning that either people got permabanned, or they got nothing. As I said this is just the situation now, it's likely to change in the near future.
Usually this approach would be fine, however it's only fine if everyone knows exactly what the "cut-off" point is between getting nothing and getting perma-banned. So far Anet really hasnt made it clear and some of their responses contradict each other. Currently we have no idea what EXACTLY constitutes a permaban while others who also used the exploit can get nothing.
Personally I think if this was made exactly clear a lot of problems could be resolved.
But hey thats just me.

There's some delcious irony to you getting banned because of Anet's "kick you out of hall" bug.

The bannings were idiotic really, ANet. Admit you left a gaping hole for six months and just now fixed it. Banning those who weren't actively hacking is just to make people not revile your negligence.

I feel for you and the others. Though I didn't do this Mallyx thing I do know people who did and are in the same boat with you.
Maybe if more people knew about it no one would have been banned, like all the past exploitable things that have happened.

I personally hope that A-net's support lifts the perma bans off these folks.
That is what seems right to me. I realize the exploits are wrong, lots of people try it when it happens, it is human nature to be curious. And then repeat if it was a good time. You wouldn't give the death penalty to kids who went out joy riding. Maybe suspend their license for a while.

This thread is full of support for the ban and for the banned.

Thanks GWGuru for letting us share our opinions.

Thanks Gaile Grey for taking a personal interest in this and giving us feedback, even if it is hard to swallow. I hope when the weekend is over we will know a final ruling, whatever it maybe.

Good luck to those banned, I do wish you all the best, everyone makes mistakes. I hope you get a second chance.

I thought we already had a 'final ruling', 'Ban them all and let Grenth sort them out' seems to be order of the day - incidentally, one that I whole heartedly support.

As an aside, almost 100pages. . .does that in of itself qualify this thread for 'epic' status?

being there in and of itself IS the wrong doing. that is what some of you just don't seem to get the gist of. I'm surprised that you few are even getting the benefit of the doubt.

to the few that suggest that anet wipes the characters and hands out a temp ban..
the smart players already dumped the junk on their alts, or they used their alts to begin with.

This whole thread is about bickering and whining about being banned for knowing or not knowing about this exploit. Hard Missions and Quests cannot be just warped there in an instance without having to go through the whole thing. Anyone with half a brain will notice that this hard mission just got easier by just being brought there without a struggle.

Why whine here and not represent your case through an email to Arena.net? This thread has died, and become spam to relentless non-relevant conversation.

To those banned, I cannot say I feel sorry for you, but you came along with the exploit, you get the punishment. As Gaile said, appeal through email and see what happens.

I have no clue why people will flame,piss and moan, and whine in this thread. It does no good, it really doesn't.

Not really a complain per say. But just a wake up call to this thread. Not to be blunt or anything but this thread really doesn't do any good. It doesn't appeal to Arena.net about the people who were banned. It dissolved really into nothing or than just a thread to +10000 your post count.

Then why are you here?

Even if you really did, I guess they would be banned for it. However I see no mention from anyone in my Guild on our private Guild forums that anyone has been banned for the abuse of this exploit. But clearly you haven’t figured out that there can be any number of the same Guild Tag.

It’s clear what you are purposely trying to do, how ever I will not fall into this trap. When you are ready to have a serious discussion this thread my still be here.

That would never work, all they would do is transfer their items to friends and then get them back once they could come back.

Really hard to not ask this .. exactly how would anyone transfer anything if the account was wiped by Anet. No need to answer that .. you showed so much just by saying it to begin with.

Please do not presume to be able to judge us or why any of us did it. Each case is likely to be different. Trying to play up it was a super secret outpost is ridiculous. People could get to it by typing /resign when in mallyx. You would then return there. Why MANY of us didn't even think it was a "super secret outpost". I can honestly say I didn't see it as any different than the 1000 other ferrys in the game that were not a bannable offense. Somehow I doubt you posted at great length on banning people that used other ferrys in the game ..

This is why you see the 117 posting to begin with. Duncan and the multitude of other things that people got a ferry for were never permabanned. If those had been things that were a ban offense NOBODY would have done this. No matter how it is twisted this is BASIC COMMON SENSE. In 32 months we were shown that a ferry was NOT a ban. I would not have done it with an account with 9000 hours if I even remotely thought it would be a permaban. Give us some credit for even a basic IQ of 70. MANY here praising the ban exploited the hell out of Duncan and HOS so the holier than thou attitudes are wearing a tad thin.

To preface, I'm not one of the 117, nor have I used the exploit, nor do I have banned friends. I had heard about this exploit before the banning spree but the guy who told me was only a passing acquaintance.

My biases revealed and having scanned through most of this thread, I really think we need to take a step back and try and look at the arguments being thrown around a little more logically.

"Ignorance is not a defence"

This is true to the extent that one cannot claim they haven't read the EULA and are thus allowed to break it; however, this does not apply to someone who knows that, to take the worst case, hacking is against the rules but does not know that they are taking part in a hack. In such cases ignorance is indeed a very solid defence, not even the nuttiest legal systems would enforcement. The law was always the same, the enforcement changed. Anet, quite properly, posted a big warning that they would be enforcing this law as opposed to hanging in kaineng/kamadan/LA for a day and banning everyone.

People took part in an activity which had been treated consistently in the past (at least as far as they were aware) and expected that consistency to continue; I think that is quite a reasonable expectation tbh.

"Duncan/Urgoz/Deep ferries didn't have HAX so they are completely different"

Assuming that this exploit did use hacks, which we'll probably never be completely sure of, the hacking itself is irrelevent to most of the 117's behaviour. It is unreasonable to punish identical behaviour differently. I think we all agree now that if hacks were involved they were used by a very small minority, and whilst we can argue that most of the 117 must have known this farm wasn't exactly kosher (much like the duncan trick) we can't come close to proving they realised it was a hack. This is demonstrated well by Truzo's story halfway through this thread about how to get to the outpost without hacks; regardless of the reliability of this story it was certainly plausible to a lot of people, without gaile's previous testimony it would have been to more I'm sure. With this in mind we have to accept that if the hacking aspect is key to the argument, most of the 117 would be absolved due to their acts in isolation being quite unrelated to actioning or knowledge of any hacking.

"It's Anet's game they can do what they like"

Of course this is true, but is it really a meaningful comment? Anet defended by this argument could do pretty much anything to the game, and indeed they could; however, it is the communities response that matters in these cases. If Anet banned all characters with names beggining with f we would surely find this unjust and there would be an outcry of sorts. It would be a jerkish ban and even people who weren't banned would complain. Perhaps a better example is if Anet banned everyone who had used texmod or taken the consulate ferry; these acts are clearly bannable offences, the communities understanding of these offences however makes a banning spree by Anet unrealistic.

"Entering the outpost is as much a crime as completing the mission"

This isn't a serious argument. If this outpost lacked an enter mission button and people had hacked in to dance and get drunk we'd all be laughing about the super leet area and noone would be banned. It is the mission that makes this a potentially bannable offense.

Now to look at the matter practically. This punishment is graded against two main metrics firstly damage minimisation and secondly deterrent. We can almost ignore damage minimisation for most of the 117 because with the economy as it stands a few armbraces isn't going to make a dent, the number of entries required for a ban shows that protecting the economy is not the prime motivator in this round of bans.
Moving on to deterrence, it is important to stop widespread use of exploits in the future where they could harm the game more seriously than this one. I honestly suspect, however, that temp bans and a warning that perma bans come next would have done the same job, people have too much to lose to risk calling anets bluff. Furthermore, ignorant parties are completely unaffected by such attempts to deter; the most moral of people will sin if they don't realise their sinning.

Finally to look at how plausible the claim of ignorance is. Against this claim we have the following points: they visited a new outpost noone had ever been to; they completed the mission without the normally required preperation; the method required using the guild hall; the outpost had no npcs. OK, we really can't assume everyone reads guru and the wiki for all the visitors knew lots of people may have been to this outpost; furthermore this is an MMO and new things get added. Players needed only have done the quest properly once to use this exploit; there are other quests, such as SF, where the preperation quests are required only once to get to a repeatable final section. The guild hall thing is totally normal, even ignoring the Urgoz/deep usage I've been invited to pugs which then decide to set up at their guild hall on more than one occasion. Finally npcs ... really? Who here goes looks around for npcs when they portal in to start a mission and are not the leader?

As for evidence supporting the claim, we have heavy usage of main accounts. As demonstrated by the successful dupers, if your doing something you think is a real offence you make the connection to your real account as far from obvious as possible. The relatively modest farming rate, I'm inclined to believe that at least a sizable portion of the 117 were not farming the area for all it was worth; noone in their right mind would take a risk like this for two or three armbraces. Most of the 117 were ferried in by friends/guildies; I give my friends a pretty fair allotment of trust, if one of my guildies had taken me to this outpost, sure, I'd be suspicious but if they told me it was all legit I'd buy it. From the sound of things this is the case for a fair few of the posters here. In fact when I first heard about this outpost I asked how it was done, the guy told me that it was a ferry trick from this guy that had gotten a passage scroll from the zaishen chest; I'm not sure if he made that up or was told the lie by someone else but it's actually pretty believable. We know the zaishen has some, as of yet unseen, unique drops; a passage scroll with such a low drop rate wouldn't be imba if it wasn't for the ferrying capacity; a lot of people QQ about DoA being too hard on these very forums.

I'm not trying to suggest that all or any of the 117 were truly ignorant of their actions; I just don't think that we can really be sure enough not to give a number of them the benefit of the doubt. Sure we can say things like "why didn't they think about suspicious evidence xyz", but, to be honest, I know I don't hyperanalyse every new farming run my guildies show me. Punishing people based on the fact they could have theoretically figured out what was wrong seems a bit like hercule poirot calling for everyones arrest at the end of the novel because the evidence he used to solve the case was available to all making everyone accomplices in their silence.

Well that was longer than intended, don't really expect people to read all that, but twas kinda fun to write.

I think what he's saying is that if wiping accounts becomes the standard procedure for punishment then people will just move their stuff to an alt account in anticipation of any wipes. Of course, this doesnt apply to you and the current 117 banned accounts since you can't access them right now.

But I say an outright perma ban is the way to go if indeed players are exploiting and cheating. No reason for leniency for such things and no reason to change the way cheaters are punished now. Why should there be an exception in this case if these people are guilty?

In my personal opinion, I think there should be perma bans for any kind of hack (and whatever parameters constitutes a hack I have no idea), temp ban for any exploit, and temp ban + account wipe for any exploit that could or did negatively impact others (economy, pvp exploits, etc) on a severe enough scale. Of course this is just how I'd do it.

Gaile made an interesting comment a few pages back

Gaile is quite right, even getting to the place is using an exploit. But one thing i'm not sure on is that in the dev update she said

Now lets say you could'nt actually get to kill Mallyx or do the mission. You just got mapped to the fake outpost, and all you could do was dance, run about and generally party. For arguments sake we'll call it 'Mallyx club' (the first rule about Mallyx club is...)

Now what personal gain or damage to the economy in just knowing about Mallyx club or visiting it other than "I know where Mallyx club is ner ner ner"?

Would Anet have banned people for visiting Mallyx club if all it was, was a secret party town. I'm not sure. Technically they can, but then we still have the statement of personal gain to contend with

So for me there should be a distinction between those who made no personal gain(just went to Mallyx club) and those who actually won money and items at Mallyx club, as the latter group DID get personal gain and DID affect the economy.

To deal with someone who just went to Mallyx club, and someone who gained rewards at Mallyx club the same just seems a little harsh.

For those who did abuse it, hacked it got armbraces etc. Sorry but you got caught, but you made money out of something you should'nt have.

For those people who just visited Mallyx club, maybe just showed a few friends around it without actually gaining any XP,drops or rewards then I have some sympathy for. I would hope Anet relents a little in these cases and only makes those bans temporary.

The thing is, rampaging at Anet like a load of demented gibbons calling people liars, fraudsters and the like will not get them to look on peoples cases any more favorably. In fact quite the opposite, they are human beings who need sleep, rest and to be treated with respect and courtesy.

I know its a small technicallity, but I believe you are using the word, EXPLOIT, wrongly.

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In the realm of online games, an exploit is usually a software bug, hack or bot that contributes to the user's prosperity in a manner not intended by the developers.

If someone DID map the town, then leave, even several times, with no user prosperity, they were still not "exploiting" but would still have been/were banned.

Unless A net has their very own special meaning for the word EXPLOIT>

Puritan

This s wat happened to me before the update came i had done this by accident to yet my accounts got banned. altho i resigned at the end of mallyx then to GH not know anything about it.

Well said, Shanaeri, and I 100% agree. There should be a distinction between those who exploited it and actually gained something from it (one of the definitions of the word 'exploit' - "to utilize, esp. for profit"), and those who just went there once or twice, and/or didn't take part in ferrying or killing Mallyx. Maybe that distinction is there and all 117 did profit in some way (either ferrying or repeatedly killing the gorilla), maybe they didn't. I at least hope that distinction is made (if not now, then soon) and 'punished' properly.

which is exactly what happened here...
truly i cannot believe how people are willing to play with words to try to get unbanned. it's getting ridiculous.

You seem to have figured out how to exploit a glitch/bug/hack. And thought you wouldn't get banned for it.

Anyways Creeping Carl was able to figure It out.

We all know people would do this, why matter of fact some posts here of those who have been banned admitted transferring item to a second account which resulted in that account also being banned.

Human nature is really predictable..
There is no need for me to do that, since Anet has done that already. All I am doing is agreeing with them about there decision.
See this is the point you don't seem to understand or don't want to. Bottom line is that it was a restricted outpost. Further more it's one that you exploited.
Let’s stop playing dumb here, the only reason is because you don’t like your punishment for being caught for cheating. And you want your account back.

You folks who are convinced that you ended up to the outpost by accident and didn't go ahead and exploit it repeatedly (that would be bannable still), should give the support some time to sort this out. It's the weekend, I don't think they spend extra hours on this outside workdays.

Out of the thousands of things I wanted to quote and mention, I'll only quote the above (see also Inde's post on page 88). It is uterly ridiculous because: 1) it's only your word; 2) I doubt anyone serious about government clearance would use this in a game fan forum; 3) even if it's true, it does not prove anything. Trust is something that is built rather than bought, it takes years and not minutes. If one were to look at your several posts in this thread, one would realise quickly the problem.

This thread is the perfect example of the situation I mentioned in the thread What is cheating? And to mention hallomik's take on the issue, one can boil it down to:

1. It uses external programs never envisioned.
2. It violates the EULA.
3. It makes fair competition impossible.
4. It directly harms another player's experience.

Number 1 has clearly been done by one hacker, while number 2 concerns the "exploiters" that were contaminated by simply joining with a hacker (for the first round of exploiters) or someone that copied the hack method (which technically make them a hacker, though legally not liable at the same level, see the situation of "script kiddies"). Number 3 seems obvious though not discussed here (people would rather create a diversion and mention the other exploits rather than discuss this one). Regarding number 4, there is the issue of trust in other players (I've read so much hypocrisy in this thread!), but that's another discussion.

This situation of the mallyx-exploit was "cheating" and trying to prove the contrary would lead you to twist the meaning of words (see comment above on government clearance). Furthermore it would be ridiculous to have some form of "justice" by having those that exploited (though not via client hack, as this is a SERIOUS hack) previous bugs banned too, because this can also clearly be seen as a form of "retaliation" (a.k.a. I suffered and I'm going to make you suffer too/I won't go down alone).

A script kiddie is someone who thinks of code as magical incantations and asks only 'what do I need to type to make this happen?

And gee what a surprise. Look at all the people now claiming how they accidently /resigned from MallyX and that's how they ended up in the secret outpost...multiple times. The excuses keep changing.

Yah huh yeah sure right and you expect us to believe you. lol I just loveeeee the lies the guilty tell after the fact don't the rest of you? hahaah Guilty by accessory I say. Birds of a feather flock together. Ignorance of the law is no excuse. Package them up and ship em out to Alcatraz.

As was the ferry to Duncan the second the Ferry left the zone it was a bug being exploited. Those in Duncan were blatantly exploiting a place they were not supposed to be in yet. Feel free to show me the list of permabans from this.

Those of you stating this does not apply are full of it. If Anet has shown over the course of 32 months that a ferry is not a ban offense. It is MORE than reasonable for people to assume this would not have been as well. Said it before and still applies .. many passing judgement on this are guilty of taking a ferry some place before this. How quickly the tunes would change if they decided to go even deeper into server logs to Duncan and ban for that.

It is possible that the first time you were ferried, being in the same party as someone that hacked the client (or someone who was previously in the party of someone who hacked the client, and so on), this unlocked a special flag on the server, which applies to the whole account. In other words, the exploit "contaminates" accounts.

Obviously you don't read and I do. I read Gailes comments awhile back on how banning goes for bots. Was even in one of the Dev update pages that not only was the initial account banned, but, any accounts associated along with it from the same IP, address, name and any other identical information in their system. So you are wrong an ignorant buddy. Read the facts and stop thinking like YOU KNOW cause you don't you just proved it IGMO.

I never did. And I'm not going to use this to pass a judgement, because Anet did pass this judgement and I believe that it's not only their right, but they did it with carefull consideration. At one point, there's a guy that hacked the client and may (we only have theories so far and mine is only one possiblity amongst many) have unlocked dev-specific code on the server, contaminating other people who then became suddenly able to ferry to Mallyx.

Or else, the hack you describe is true and we will never know because it was apparently fixed in the Jan 10 update.

You cannot defend the position of "exploiter" in this case. With the thousands of hours you and others have in the game, it should have been clear that something fishy was going on. So may I ask what you're trying to achieve here?

I would lean towards no. No way for anyone to answer server side questions except Anet. The person that was the original ferry for me was said to have been the original. Annoying person yes .. hacker? LOL. No offense to him but gifted in code does not spring to mind when thinking of him. When the dust settles it will prove to be a generic guild hall ferry.

The ferry seemed to work like ALL the rest of the ferry from guild hall things .. deep urgoz etc. One had to have been there first then resigned to guild hall. After that they could exit guild hall to prior area .. aka ferry.

Once again nobody is saying that you yourself ever hacked anything. The very first person to get into the outpost/zone is the one that hacked it. Once they were in they could just ferry everyone else, unfortunate for those ferried. I am willing to believe that some of you didn't realize it was a restricted zone. However if you want me to assume you have the IQ 70 or better than I'm going to assume you would know that there is something fishy about an outpost that lets you skip all the long and hard parts of a quest and jump straight to Mallyrx. Not to mention anyone with an IQ 70 or better would know that you can't justify one wrong based on another. Just because people didn't get banned before isn't a justifiable reason to do it again, especially since anyone with said IQ would know it was an exploit. Sure its sucky that Anet decided to do something about it this time, but whats the saying... Misery loves company?

Its also quite possible that the person lied about being the original. Merely wanting credit for the deed.