[Dev Update] Exploits and Bans – 10 January 2008

i still feel that the duncan example plays a big part in anyones defense and i advise them to look through the thread to see why as i dont want to repeat myself over and over

This has to be one of the most hysterically funny rationales yet offered.

"Yes, we all went farming and my buds got oodles of goodies but I got squat, so I shouldn't get the same punishment." Certainly looks to me like the "crime" was the same, only the pay-off was different.

Or was that statement referring to the difference between murder and manslaughter? In that case, the pay-off is the same - someone dies - with the difference in the crimes being the matter of intent.

I suppose next you'll try to convince us that you never participated in these farms with the intention (or expectation) of collecting oodles of goodies. You only did it for the fun factor, right?

HI GUYS IM BACK,

OK, I have to come forward with my absolute and total ignorance of this game. I am posting this as a FULL APPOLOGY to the GUILD WARS COMMUNITY, and to the FORUM ADMINS, and to GAILE GRAY, and to A NET.

I AM SORRY I CALLED YOU LIARS< ETC> I AM VERY VERY SORRY I was SO very ignorant about this game/hack.

I was thuroughly convinced this was a bug/glitch, A NETS fault.
I did NOT realized this town was not legit.

I AM VERY SORRY FOR THESE THINGS>

I had a VERY interesting Conversation last night, with a person I cannot name here, and thru this conversation I have become 100% convinced this WAS INDEED A HACK.

I am EXTREMELY sorry to admit, that it is nearly 100% confirmed as a hack, and I am pretty much a total retarded idiot.

Again, I appologize from the deepest areas of my heart. I hope the Hackers are brought to justice.

Thanks everyone, for telling me I was wrong. I now know I was.

Please forgive my Ignorance.

Thanks a lot guys,
Puritans AID

If you look at the EULA, Anet can essentially ban you for any reason even if its as stupid as you didn't give them the correct information. If I'm not mistaken, the words are "terminate at our discretion".

So I completely disagree with these bans if there was no hack involved. If it was simply a bug in the game, I don't think any bans should have been given out. They should have removed the benefits gained from the exploit and fixed it.

That being said, Anet lied one way or the other. I remember Anet previously stating that the game was unhackable, and now there is a claim of a hack. One way or the other...

Once again, it comes to my attention, people shielding themselves from the EULA saying, that some exploit is worst than other, I have been playing NC Soft games since CoH appeared in the shelves of the stores around USA, and Before that I was a Diablo Player, a definition of Exploit as a "experienced gamer" is for a fact the use or abuse of any bug or flaw in the system, and the terminology used as hacking the system its wrong, in any case they cracked the server, why do I say the server, lets say you are the best hacker or cracker in the world, it would do nothing to help you to "hack the client", why?, first of all the client does "nothing" gamewise, the client only contents are graphics, sounds, videos, skins, models, etc..., the server controls everything that happens in-game, I'm going to get a lot of, that is not true, how many of you have lagged out and you were in one outpost and suddenly you appear in another outpost, which was the one the server registered you in before lagging out, or how many of you have rubberbanded in-game during a "run" or a "mish" to suddenly realized you are either death or miles away from where you thought you were...
The point of this is to say that any exploit been done in-game is inside the server, there is no way to say hack the client and get some response from the server that you want, you can modify the packets to a certain extent to tell the server to do something you want, but that would require for you to have a "trainer" or a software to do it, external from GW... because GW.EXE its only a client so there is "conversation" between Your computer and the server, the server side decides if the order you are doing goes or not, well we are going too deep in this.

One other thing that the "haters" don't get is that, this outpost was a secret or a mistake or simply the way that elite mish was gonna be, either way, someone told this supposed "hacker", Hey dude, did you know there is an outpost that goes straight to Mallyx?", cause I mean, unless you told me this guy was from ANET, or the "Hacker" itself was a former employee, I don't see some player exploring the entire code to see if there is something interesting, loosing "GAME TIME" which all of us know that is precious if you enjoy the game... and ALL OF THE GUYS BANNED KNEW THAT HACKING IS BAN, that is why all of them defend their position of non hacking the client.

What I'm trying to get with this post is that, any player who abused form a bug, a flaw in the system, or any other wrong do'er, should receive the same treatment as this poor guys, a lot of people put Duncan as an example, but that is not the only one, the Guildhall trick was an exploit too and I don't see all the lvl1's who have all the outposts including EOTN in this list.

ANET, wants to set an example, but the example is too harsh in comparison of other "exploits" which do cause "Economic Issues" or that do affect Gameplay...

Well I guess those 117 or 116 are gonna be WoW'ing or playing other games, cause ANET is so Square minded that don't care that those players were "exploiting" an area, but didn't affect economically the GW World, In My Opinion, they even helped with dropping the prices of GEMSETS and Armbraces, and for those who say that Duncan wasn't that bad, Economically a lot made a good money from selling ONYX and Gold Drops to prices that people don't mention in their Posts


Luv, Da Mathman...

I think a more apples to apples comparison would be Duncan= a pfishing email sent to banking customers looking for account information. Mallyx=A direct breach into the bank's servers to empty customer's accounts.

The first is something a bank would want to warn customer's about, the latter perminantly damages the banks reputation for security.

You can not compare Duncan to this!

Anet forgot to put doors on Duncan AT THE RELEASE OF GWEN allowing access for everyone who completed GWEN reguardless if they did the required sub quests or not. They noticed their mistake & fixed it by addidng locked doors.

Anet DID NOT forget to put a way to keep people from doin Mallyx prematurely. Someone hacked their client & got access to Mallyx without doing the subquests.

I can hardly see how these can be comparable.

Now that's what I like to see, people owning up. Apologizing, even. Good on ya, bro.

News flash bud, that's effecting the economy.

Oh, and Dream. They said the servers were pretty impenetrable, not the client itself. This was a client hack.

Well Mathman, please do the math again, because 18k per gemset for 15min or less of work, rinse, repeat, would seem to be pretty economically upsetting to me, but maybe you're using the 'new' math.

I have to reiterate, life is NOT fair! A-net does not have to be fair. They get to choose what punishments they institute for breaches of the eula.

Abnaxus, Mallyx without the hack would be extremely close to the Duncan bug. And I think in that case it should be treated as Duncan was treated.

Also Mathman for the past 1-2 pages we've been talking about how Anet did not ban because of economy effect or how much wealth one got from either exploit. But the fact that one used a HACK and the other was a bug which was on Anet's side. The fact there was a hack involved changes all the rules. I'm pretty sure that is what Anet is thinking, as it seems logical from their past actions on Exploits.

So Duncan was a small exploit compared to Mallyx because Mallyxs' used a hack.

stop kicking these guys whilst they are down!
what i have a said is to "taken into consideration" not used as an "excuse" ok?
jeezuz give these guys a break
rip me apart all you want i stand by what i said and i TRUELY belive the bullet points hold value although some more than others...you are not the just so dont swing your long arm around here...i for one are not here to discredit either side.
please for gawd sake be productive and unbiased

Anya....did support un ban your account with these things in consideration?
Or, are you trying to give the other 116 some filler to put on their tickets?
Honesty is the only option open for any of them, not someone elses opinion.

If that was the case, and It was stated by ANET that the max guy had 638 landings in the outpost that is a total of 14 armbraces my friend, not 18k every 15mins, even if it required only 2 landings per gemset, (638 / 2) /15 = 21 Armbraces...

So, before posting about economically upsetting issues, do your math homework , as people responded me, 1 or 21 armbraces are more than what people have, but still doesn't have an economical impact, cause there are players with more than 500+ armbraces, how, I don't know, and I don't what to get involved in that, just think about it...

no

i will be unbanned because i didnt exploit nothing
and i aint all that fussed about these guys posting more tickets because imo they deserve a severe punishment not a perma ban
like i said i am not supporting the major exploiters
only advising the minor exploiters that they dont deserve such a severe punishment for exploiting items to the value of below 40k

And the doors didn't get blown off this whole thing until one single person out of the many who exploited it posted it on the the forum asking "WTF".

The rest of them knew full well what they were doing.

dont judge me as you know nothing, dont tell me you know more about my case than me because you dont. i was banned for residing in the area and didnt exploit ie "gain/profit" anything.
i will be unbanned if justice is served.
im the only none biased poster in the last mob of threads...i have no time to reply to silly posts no more and i have done all the explaining on the many earlier posts i submitted...my advice to all you guys is read the whole thread before pointing fingers and slurring words
being there isnt "exploiting" nothing. clicking the "accept mission" is the exploit. the moment you press that button you skip all bosses of DOA. just residing there, provided you have reported the bug and not told anyone about it, IS NOT BREACHING EULA

Thank you for having the guts to apologize when you were wrong. That's something we could use more of around here.

One thing still bugs me though: Were you really partied with a hacker (or someone who had previously partied with a hacker to get the outpost, or someone who had previously partied with someone else (who had previous partied with someone else, who had previously partied with someone else, etc.) who had previously partied with a hacker to get the outpost) when you thought you weren't, or did the hack leave the outpost accessible to you without any connection to the hacker at all?

No I do not see the difference. Both were in the "wrong." One had no consequence, the other had the ultimate penalty.

i wont stop... i will fight for what i think is fair until told by someone with the authority otherwise...
seems im the only sympathetic ear here. i have been unbiased entirely and stuck by my own beliefs and own thoughts.
tired of all you guys kicking these guys when they are down

Um Anya, being there is exploiting. It's not suppose to be on your map, it was placed on your map by a hack, that's why you got banned. You might not have hacked it, nor anyone in your party, but they got the "virus" and gave it to you as well and you suffered the consequences for it even though you might not have done much.



I think it spread like a virus would among people. Hacker gets the outpost, passes it to people, those people past it on..so on and so on.

Also I am not trying to kick you guys down, I'm trying to steer you from false hope.

So, am I to assume that you were taken there, stayed there without farming it for the purposes of informing a-net "hey see where my char is? I'm pretty sure this is a bug."?

Or, were you keeping the 'door' open for guildies or friends? In which case, that WAS the personal gain.

That's what I'm thinking. Everyone here among the 117 has claimed to have been ferried there by someone else. Now, we can assume these people were also ferried there by others, etc, leading back to the original hacker. Like gareth said, like a virus.

Of course, it's all just assumption until someone comes in and verifies.

this is the last silly post i will reply to then i will let you all bicker amongst yourselves...
EDIT: to all those questioning my ban and my case i will send you reply from support when they give me my account back. if they dont then you are justified then flame me all you want. dont think you know all because you aint got a clue..and also they can prove who was ferrying so you rule that crap out


definition of online gaming exploit:
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

being in a town or area with no benefits or self gain is not exploiting...the actual ACT of clicking accept mission is the exploit. that is when you gain the advantage to skip all areas....
im off for a bit... i cant repeatedly do this without getting stressed

Yea both thieves but the main point of my analogy was by leaving the doors unlocked/bug in game you got to accept a small amount of the blame.
Anway that analogy wasn't too good i admit.

If you did nothing other than sit in that outpost and inform a-net of the bug, you will be reinstated. if you were a conduit to the town for others to exploit it, that's NOT doing nothing.

"Sometimes killing a fly with a sledge hammer is entirely appropriate. It doesn't make the fly any more dead, but the rest of the flies sure sit up and take notice."


I think this is ANet's intention, for all of you saying a perma ban is a little much.

Okay then we will not say you exploited. But you did have an outpost on your map that was brought to your map by a hack. That I think is against the rules and the reason you were banned. You might not have exploited, you might not have gone there on your own accord, if so Anet will unban you once they find out. You've been sending support tickets in, so there is nothing more for you to do.

Hah, whoever wrote that one is silly. Flies don't care what you kill them with they'll still buzz around your head. Also you'd most likely miss the fly, and smash something valuable/pull a muscle.

I may not be the just, but I'm not the one banned...
Anyway, I took it point by point to show that -argumentwise- they've been dealt with before and they suck.

So...Productive and unbiased eh?

Alright...

Start by apoligising. Repeadedly. Say crap like you'll never do it again if you manage to get your account back. Say you'll take any alternative punishement they can find as long as you get your account back. In other words, beg. Don't find lame excuses, they read them all here. They see that the community doesn't like them and rips any argument to shreds. Fact of the matter is that the people that got banned -safe from the accidental "we did it to report it" ones- abused an exploit. Willingly? Yup. Knowingly? Most likely. Did they know the exploit was caused by a hack? Maybe not, hard to prove really. What's easy to prove is that they did.
You can compare this to real life situations all you want, where one would get less punishment in such and such case, but this is different. ANet has 3 options. Do nothing (yeah...don't expect that), Temp Ban or Permaban. Apparently, they deemed it so severe to skip right to Permaban. That's probably got to say something, right? So, ANet is serious about this situation. Then you should get ready to seriously ask for your account back. Not with lame excuses, not by pointing the finger at someone else, not by saying "you didn't ban him", but by really, really asking sincerely for your account back.
And even then, they'll probably not do it if you did it too much.

Unbiased is hard in this case. You are either one of the banned, or you're not. If you're not, you want to see that actions against the EULA do not go unpunished. What we see here is that people were abusing an exploit that has been around for several months and got a lot of Ambraces in the process (one person more than the other...), and that the exploit was caused by a hack (according to ANet). So the question now is, is a Tempban sufficient for this kind of behavior? IMO, no. A tempban worth a few days to a week is NOT sufficient in this case. A permaban is fitting the crime (actions against the EULA), so it's justified.
Does that mean alternative punishements aren't an option? No, but they still have to be severe enough to discourage this kind of behavior in the future. If I can run around exploiting making several thousands in gold and get away with it with a tempban, I'll be on the first row next time an exploit pops up. Who wouldn't? ANet would have to find a punishment that's severe enough to discourage. At the same time, the people that got banned here want that ANet takes their opinion into account (why actually? Why should Anet take it into account? But anyway...), and thus want their account back. So ANet would have to find something between Tempban and permaban to both keep the banned people and the community "happy".
The obvious answer would be Tempban + extra. There have been several suggestions, like deleting all misgotten items, Character deletion that participated, and a few more. IMO, Tempban + account sweep (keep chars+titles, remove armor, money, weapons, items,...basically, they get their [email protected] xp with titles but beginner armor+weapons) would be enough as a middleground agreement. It is of course unknown if Anet can actually do this...
ANet would show "don't exploit or else" and the people that are currently banned would have their account back, at a hefty price. Still, for those that overdid it, I think permaban is the only possible answer.

Hacking is much simpler than people believe, and you certainly don't have to go through the entire code. Without wanting to go into details for online games, we can look at the web for examples.

Say we have a web page to change your account password:

Although to access the site you need authentication, the page itself may be missing certain checks. A hacker, with no knowlege of the code, could very well change the end to userId=116 to attempt to put the server in an unauthorized state (in this case to change the password of another user). Using trial and error, the hacker may get the server to respond in the way beneficial to him.

Furthermore, to exploit a hack, you do not need to be a hacker. Say a hacker changes the password of an unsuspecting user so that song downloads are comming from his account. He can now craft a second url to profiteer from this.

Now if he shares that url with his friends so they get free downloads too and these people click on it, although they access the site through what seems to them as 'normal' everyday means, they are in fact still hacking (perhaps unknowingly) the download site by sending in inappropriate information and successfully putting the server into an unauthorized state.


This is also the reason why this is so very different than other bugs/exploits that people love to bring up. People were putting the server in an unauthorized state -- visiting a dev-only area -- which they should have realized, as reasonable people, was in violation of the rules.

Edit: Without wanting to turn this into a separate discussion, there is a subtile difference between hacking the client and a client-side hack

They are saying that Anya because the key point here that your missing is just being in the outpost was use of a hack/exploit which is why you where banned.

If you truly where there only once and didn't engage in fighting Mallyx, obtaining rewards I hope you get your acct back.

But leaving a bulleted list of what people who where banned should say to support is just asking for trouble.

The problem I see with this is who 'overdid' the exploit, and who did it 'just enough' to deserve a second chance? Where do you draw a second line in the sand? And once that second line is drawn, you'll have the final '97' saying "well, I only did it x more times than so-and-so, and they got their account back."

Give a rat some cheese and he'll demand a glass of milk.

Anya I hope your correct in assuming this, I never exploited anything, I got a ferry (I didn't have a hacked client), I got taken into the mission (I didn't enter of my own free will and the mission itself was a joke as there was only 2 of us in the group as my friend wanted to show me where the mission started), I never gained anything financially off this, I got to that outpost and then 2-3 days later I got the ban only because I was chopping and changing through characters to move items etc around on my account (btw I had no gemsets on any characters or in storage) and due to the game schematics its going to say I went there x amount of times when in actual fact it was only once, I've already outlined what happened to my account and why I was there in other posts in this thread.
My account was terminated remember although I still maintain my innocence but at the end of the day ANet has the final say, its hard to loose something you worked 27 months or more towards only to have it taken off you this way . There are others that still play that used this exploit for financial gain but I don't see them banned and then there are people like you Anya and myself who were there once (according to your posts) and got banned due to 1. An over zealous mod. 2. Ignorance. 3. Making up numbers?
To those that say its in noway like Duncan, sure you have a point to a certain extent but that fact remains that the majority of the banned didn't have hacked clients (like ANet said) but got a ferry (like people used to do with Duncan). I'm not condoning that both were ok to do btw.
So in closing.. Good luck to those with open tickets still, my ticket was closed (a little premature IMHO but thats the way the cookie crumbles (mmm cookie)) so I made another one only to have that added to my already closed ticket lol..

Well, according to Gaile, there were those that did it just over the limit and those that did it over 600 times.

There's probably a good place to draw the line somewhere in the middle...

Probably somewhere under 20 would be fair...

But yeah, that'd be another problem ANet would face, people just past "that line". Although for their sake, it's better never to reveal such a line. Or people would again know how far they can go...

Still my friend, hacked client or not, you had the hacked outpost. That right there was the rule breaker, the knot on the end, the silver string among the red. Because someone ferried you in, they made you an accomplice to the whole act, they made you carry the blame as well. Anet might see sympathy towards that and let you off the hook, you can only hope.

Also I must ask how could you say you didn't enter the mission of your own free will, couldn't you have Xed out of the game if you knew something was up? Wouldn't that be the smart thing to do? (not berating you here don't take it as such please).

Mathman it's not any better if someone was tampering with the Server in any way shape or form. If it was a bug and had no human hands involved then the ban is unwarranted I think (according to Anet's past).

20 is too lenient considering it supposedly still takes 20 minutes to do.
Imo anything over 2 and your farming it.

Mathman where do you think the instruction comes from in the first place ?yes, the modified client.
Out of luck on that one im afraid :P

I was partied with someone who had partied with someone who had partied with the hacker... yes, the hacker got the outpost, but the outpost was accessable to people who had been drug to it without hacks,

IE my client, and the guy who took mes client werent hacked, but the guy who took the guy who took me, hes client was hacked, according to the info I have atm.

Puritans Aid.

I can stand constructive criticism
Theres a little thing called curiosity that 99% of humans have and generally that gets the better of you.
Just remember I never condoned what I done I just want ANet to have a better scanning process and I also outlined what happened to my account, it would be nice to have my account back but I'm a realist and I can honestly say that I can't see ANet backing down from this as it would be an admission to guilt on their behalf (sure I'm guilty of landing there and being curious once but to ban someone because of the way the game schematics are set up is a little harsh).
I've admired some of your posts my friend as they weren't in favor of either side but merely to point out to both sides where they went wrong, constructive posts are always welcome instead of like others flaming or begging or whatever they do (keep up the good work).

you havent had a reply to your new ticket?
their reply to my second ticket read as follows:

Hello Paul

Thank you very much for contacting the Guild Wars Customer Support Team. We are currently investigating the problem you have reported and we will contact you back as soon as we have any news regarding this issue, or in case we require further information from your side.

We appreciate your patience and cooperation in this matter.

Regards
GM Benito

Guild Wars Customer Support
NCsoft Europe

my response to being denied the first time is as follows:

i already sent you a ticket about 3 days ago.i was banned from gw for alledgedly exploiting an area within the game. i cannot stress enough that to exploit must mean i have something to gain. i did not gain nothing from the exploit. your assessment was all wrong you said i was there like 18 times. you are wrong i went to mallyx ONCE from the bugged area and LEFT mid battle. on this note i did not breach EULA nor user agreement.Please conduct a thorough investigation.Also, i farm DOA on a regular basis. i do all areas within 1h30m and rinse and repeat, all legit. the one time i went to mallyx from the bugged area i was already prepared quest wise to defeat mallyx. look at drop rates or pick up rates... look for patterns which prove i did city>veil>gloom>foundry as this was the common run i used... i made roughly 200k+ gw gold from these runs so please dont see my ingame richness as cause for concern. im sure you have the means to rectify this and in turn return to me something which was taken away unjustly. please if you need more info i will tell you everything. i did not exploit nor gain nothing from this.
thank you for your time but please conduct investigates apropriately please, you are looking in the wrong places.
sorry if i sound to be raging etc its just upsetting to be told untruths about yourself.
i dont mind waiting for my adjudication and totally agree with the bans providing you assess these claims in a competent manner. i have suffered no inconvenience from the ban as i understand the nature of it but please dont do me an injustice.
i have no evidence myself as i was unaware that this would happen to me being that i stood by my innocence as a good enough defense, i just hope you have the means to delve into this deep enough to see the truth of it

i was rage typing so grammar kinda fell apart

LOL I'm not a lawyer, but if I were I'd say you are following a totally wrong defense approach.

- you're trying to convince everyone (and yourself too) that you're totally innocent (and you're not).
- you're trying to compare what you did to other exploits like Duncan, which has a totally different story, and A.net won't listen at this.

I would suggest a different line:

1. instead of stubbornly claim your innocence, admit you're guilty
2. try to convince the jury that you acted in a state of semi-mental-infirmity (don't know if this can be a correct translation)
3. thus, instead of asking for no penalty at all, try to negotiate a lesser one: now you have death penalty (permaban) try to noegotiate for 30 years jail ( 12 months ban).
4. hope in the clemence of the court.

My WHOLE story with Mallyx.
Some freinds of mine were all getting together and doing DoA with Ursan (Don't get me started on that skill btw) We cleared the areas with Ursan quite quickly. Afterwards a trusted friend told me to go to talk to the snake, go into the Mallyx part of the quest and die, then meet in his GH. I did just that. Then to my surprise I am in a little town called The Ebony Citadel of Mallyx.

I ask how he found about about this and I am told it was a gift from a beta tester, and that it was only known to a few people. He made me keep a promise, that promise was to keep this area a secret and not tell anyone. I kept it as my morals are Friends and Family first. I did not tell one soul and Anet can check my chat logs for that.

I obviously saw it was not the REAL mallyx quest as I had to die to get there. But to me it had made me a beta tester, I got to see how it would work in that aspect, and It worked perfectly. Because I was informed it was in beta I figured that is why there were no merchants, or Xunlai Chests.

I made 10 perfect runs, and messed up twice, give or take a run because I was having fun, not counting how many times i had gotten the quest. Now, for those whom weren't told this and still claim they thought it was the real way to do it, this is possible as well. In a very recent bug me and this friend tested to see if infact we could use the Guild Hall exploit to get our toons to the area without doing the quest. This was proven a yes.

So to those whom I have flamed, i sincerely apologize. I did not know this was in fact hacked into and given to us this way. The Friend i have been referring to is NOT the hacker. I was informed I probably did not know this hacker, which makes me greatly happy. That means not one of my friends has lied to me as far as he was told. And I can quit GW's knowing I was not lied to and that I can always trust friends.

To the 117, many of you are some of the greatest players I have ever played with and am proud to call you my friends. Puritan thanks for the information that made me see my faults.

To Dire Straits for just being kick ass.

Sincerely,
Aiden Arcana
Amber Aragorn
AA
Deryk
Or whatever else i was called, mainly a variation of "noob"