Anet Has Gotten Themselves Into Fishy Waters

Anet has gotten themselves into fishy waters with community relations.

Originally this was going to be a post in the rawr got deleted thread, but I decided that the rawr situation, along with the rawr getting disqualifed are just examples of the situation between Anet and the playerbase community.

MMORPGS (or massivly multiplayer online games in general) usually take one of two stances: Completely disconnected from the community in terms of relations, with the CR as the bridge to relay the specific opinions of the community/company without bias from the other side.

The other would be the company being very involved with the community/playerbase, restoring hacked accounts, actively trading/communication between the community and devs or other company figures.

The latter stance is usually one of a private server or FREE game (where RL currency is not directly involved). Large businesses where the game is openly marketed and sold almost always adapts the first stance (or at least attempts too). When the company employees and public start to mix is when issues like favoritism and the sort crop up. I believe this issues even being rumored of IS VERY BAD FOR ANY COMPANY. Free games can get away with this as no currency nor the health of individuals is (usually) involved, giving claims no legal grounds.

WHEN REAL CASH IS INVOLVED, COMPANY FAVORITISM AND THE THINGS IT BORDERS ON AND LEADS TO CAN BE CONSIDERED ILLEGAL (or, as said, lead to things considered illegal).

Which would, of course, lead to legal actions taken against a company.

And I believe Anet has gotten into a situation where they are BEGINNING to mix company with community. The rawr deletion, and rawr DQ situations are all possible example's of this. (Notice a triend that all 3 are based around guild-Anet relations?)

Perhaps theres some sort of law or act somewhere protecting Anet from this sort if thing, but regardless of the laws (as the laws and policies can be blurry things, especially on a global basis). And its when lines get blurred that stuff happens.

Im also, self admittedly, very uneducated on the topic of what global MMO companies can and can-not be sued for. Any info here would be great.

The early minipet thing was cleared up. Andrew apologized. What more do you want?

I see no favoritism either. AP joined rawr to help them set up for the tourny. It would have been stupid not to.

Also, there has been no official confirmation of anyones account being restored so thats just ideal gossip.

Less conspiracy theories, more playing.

You dont get the point. There shouldnt be conspiracy theories in the first place. Just the fact that there is reason to have conspiracy theories is BAD news when real-world currency is involved. That, and only 1/3 of those were conspiracies. Also please keep the 4chan to a minimum. ohwait, nvm

And that's all that needs to be said. At least, I'm assuming you read the thread that made it clear in order to know this.

Every single game has conspiracies about it. The larger it is, the more ludicrous it becomes. My favourite one being "ArenaNet makes gold from the gold sellers!" Yeah, that one is as old as the internet.

Still, if you believe the conspiracies of an online game...

Alright, edited out the minipets thing, appeased? Try not to focus on one small part of the big picture.

Forums breed stupidity. Stupidity breeds rumors. Rumors breed conspiracy theory threads.

It's a vicious cycle.

Only if Conspiracy Theory threads breed forums

Win xD .

Team QQ forums!

Win XD

i find it unfair, no matter how upsetting it is to go through, for some, and some to not be able to have their proven hijacked accounts fully restored.

if you have gum, you better flippin have it for the whole class.

I work for a games developer and i can't stress just how important it is to maintain the trust of your playerbase/community. So far Anet is failing at this more and more by staying quiet about the recent and rather shockingly large number of accounts that have been hacked.

Perhaps instead of releasing updates about skill reversions and balancing the game they could make accounts more secure so people will be more inclined to continue playing the game.

The lack of direct communication and relaying of information between Anet, specifically Regina, and the community is somewhat disconcerting. Obviously we cant be told the exact details for the fixes they make to counter hackers but some information regarding what Anet plans to do would be nice. Do they ever plan on giving back items lost to players who were hacked? Are they going to start improving account security etc?

Its these sort of things we need to know and while i understand Anet is focused on GW2 at the moment. They need to remember NOT to forget the huge playerbase still playing GW because at the present moment if the GW2 account security is anywhere like it is for GW i'm reconsidering buying GW2.

Anet harvests the organs of little kids for sale in the black market.

Conspiracy theories are JUST conspiracy theories. They are completely baseless. Just because some rumour blows out of proportion does not mean it holds any weight.

From a legal standpoint, nothing a.net has done even comes close to being illegal, like at all.

I can understand the favoritism complaints (and the sticky situations you see with ZoS), but there is no law protecting a.net from this sort of behavior... because there is nothing illegal about their behavior that needs protection.

Anet created this thread as a conspiracy to keep our attention away from the real conspiracy... Anet was playing AoC all the memorial day weekend.

Not really as of yet, but the current situation is leading down the road to the sort of thing.

Plat cape guild gets the cape restored.

Silver cape guild doesn't get the cape restored.

The leaders/members/officers of both guilds are customers. Some customers get different treatment than others? Perhaps if you could "buy" your stuff back it would be fair, but obviously that not the case. Sounds fishy to me.

This is not the "[rawr] got DELETED" thread part 2. Stop posting about whether certain hacked people should have things restored.

Anet is giving up on GW, I've heard countless times about how they are going to fix things. Then when GW2 was announced they said they'll fix it for GW2 and leave GW how it is; full of bugs, exploits, and shitty security. Anet doesn't want to admit their flaws so they try blaming other people. Your account gets hacked they tell you to use a better password and say it's your own fault. When several accounts get hacked they don't say a thing and run off to hide in the corner.

I hope it doesnt end up like that. But the hacking/restoring issue is part of the bigger topic, as is rawr getting deleted. Neither of these are the focus of what im trying to get at, just parts.

If you're restricting posts specifically (and only) about people getting they're stuff hacked and not contributing to the main Idea, then I completely agree.

If you're restricting anything even hinting at/mentioning hacking and the sort then lock it now, as discussion will be severely limited.

They are rawr, have earned (albeit, sometimes controversially) 5 gold capes.

Whatever silver cape guild you're talking about, has not.

Rawr helped organise Rawr Cup. Silver cape guild DID NOT.

They hadn't gotten their 5 cape reward cape (STOP SAYING PLATINUM, IT'S THE SAME COLOUR AS SILVER YOU IDIOTS), so they should on their remade guild.

End of discussion.

When will people learn that arena net does not care what we think or how we feel. We already spent our money on their product, they only have to make their next product as appealing so we (the stupid consumer) will buy it again. And after we spend our money on that product they wont care how we feel or what we think. Its anets buisness model.

I see only one solution that will affect future treatment by anet.
If we,you,I don't like how anet handles things. then Quit playing guildwars and do not buy guildwars 2. This will show them that even stupid consumers wont put up with crap forever.

But I know that no one will do that, People are way to soft or they don't think it will ever happen to them. All I ever seen of these posts is what anet is doing, not what we the consumers can do about it.

We know about all the problems, we know its going to keep happening, nothings going to change. So stop acting suprised when it happens.
Find a solution that thousands of stupid consumers are willing to act on.

Anet won't change, its up to the players to make things happen.

Read savio's post, this IS NOT ABOUT RAWR BEING DELETED, I understand you're replying to my post (which was equally specific) but if you're going to be specific dont make it about rawr specifically, make it about any guild that wins 5 monthlies.

Anyway, I NEVER EVER EVER said I didnt respect rawr for what they've done for the game, if anyone deserves it they do.

Sadly the court wouldnt give a crap about what rawr has done for the game, a lawyer would simplify it to the point of "one paying customer was treated better than another paying customer".

I'm sorry, I missed the LAW passed by your state legislature saying a company can not restore a platinum guild cape without doing the same thing for a silver one.

Read the EULA. A.net can make their own decisions about the product they own. You pay for the right to play on their servers. You have no ownership rights to the characters you make or the digital items you "own" because a.net owns them as they are stored on their servers. That is why a.net can ban people.

As long as they don't discriminate based on race, sex, religion, or creed, a.net can do whatever they want. Until "guild rank" gets added to the list of things it is illegal to discriminate based on a US Supreme Court ruling (since a.net is a US based company) nothing is going to happen.

Grow up and stop ranting.

As seen in the past, Anet can do what ever they want. They have our money, they can do what ever they feel like, be it bend rules, favour players, etc. I don't care much as long as they don't restore Awowa's account, as no one else gets that done for them.

Giving back a cape to a deleted guild is fine, they earned it after all.

I <3 Ctrl-Alt-Del

ANet owns the servers and all the accounts players use, and have the right to do whatever they want with them.

The world, and more importantly, privately owned property are not always fair. You can complain, but ANet already has your money, so the chances they really care, deep in their hearts, is pretty low.

PS: The above comic becomes better if you remove the middle two panels which are just useless walls of text.

This post not only delivers, but summarises the entire situation.

Anet most likely don't care what people think, as they have our money, and it's their game. All you own is the right to access their servers. They own all your armor, they own all your heroes, they own all your skill bars. You are just paying to use it.

@OP:
Where did you get the notion that Anet has already decided to favor [rawr]? As far as I know it's memorial day. That means most of America is taking a day off.

/closethread

p.s. love the comic and malice's words of truth

Ok, maybe I came off wrong, but im not saying they've done anything that could or ever would be considered illegal. What im saying is, the road that things have been going down, they are starting to adopt a dangerous CR policy, by that I mean the increasing mingling between Anet employees (or the company in general) and paying customers.

Now im not saying that "OMG DEVS SHOULDN'T EVER BE ON PUBLIC SERVERS", I know alot of other games have mods and the sort that are out in the populace daily, but the way its been going the mixing has been increasing, and as a result drama, conspiricies, and the sort (and yes, a good portion of those conspiricies are going to be plain stupid), have been increasing aswell. There are potential problems down the road if that trend continues, whether thats GW, GW2, or any other game Anet makes.

In most other games (atleast that I know of) mods or employees are around simply to regulate and ban dem noobz, or they play on they're own purchased account simply as another consumer. GW doesnt have mods obviously, and CR's or devs can go out and talk in purple chat or whatever if they want, as it is they're game, but that sort of uncontrolled, unregulated behavior, though harmless in itself, can lead to problems down the road.

On topic, I'm sure they have a general policy against restoring hacked guilds, lost items, deleted stuff, etc. Once you start allowing it, everyone is going to want it for every little thing, legitimate or not.

From what I hear of the latest [rawr] thing, they recreated the guild and were credited with the capes they earned earlier. It doesn't sound as if any data was restored.

It amazes me how when something bad like this happens in GW, the posts start flying about legality and how the player base will be upset.

Here are some observations of mine from reading the 1st post about raw's name being deleted, this one and the joke of a post on QQ forums.

1st. Anet can do anything they want, it is their game!

2nd. Allot of people are confusing getting their guild name and ladder standing back, with someone who gets their account hacked. Honestly people their is no comparison! Their are numerous reasons someone can have their account hacked, and because of that no way for anet to confirm what happened. In this case "If" and I say if because nobody has actually confirmed what happened.(but going by what people have said) It is pretty obvious even to a 2year old that this was a malicious act by someone, examples of this are all the alliance members being kicked, then guild members, then Awowa's name but not account being dleleted. So I say where is the egregious harm of giving the top guild for over a year their name and capes back when something malicious was done to them.

3rd. To those who say Anet would be setting bad precedent. Precedent to what exactly? for 99% of the prob 1% of teams this has happened to before you just go back to your guild registrar and get your name back, re-invite everyone and wooohoo the world is right again. To the 1% of the 1% of teams where nothing was done, well to be honest boohoo for you. You were not a guild that put prob 100's of hours giving back to the guild wars community, you were not the guild to hold 2 successful rawr cups that gave 100's of guilds the chance to play in a huge tournament, win lots of good prizes and put people who honestly shouldn't even be allowed to hold a pizza pizza sign a chance to be on a internet radio show.

4th As sated in sooooo many QQ threads, the guild ladder hasn't meant squat for along time. Also by Anet's own remarks the guild ladder is now more of a historical chart of a team. So if anyone can explain to me how history has been changed by someone deleting rawr's name I would love to read it. So I would say again what would be wrong with putting them back on the ladder where they were?

5th This whole thing about being disqualified is just annoying. Rule are rules all of you who say that are completely right on that matter. But what you are failing to grasp is when a group or company or anyone has to determine what the punishment for a rules violation they HAVE to look at intent. Did rawr go out and recruit anet employees NO, are the members of rawr anet employees NO, did rawr pick up the phone and call anet and say "please can some of you join our guild we want to win" No. What happened was Izzy asked to join their guild so he could communicate with them better about the collaboration of Anet+rawr+rawr's sponsor Guild Cafe on the rawr cup. So when any objective person in a position to hand out punishment for a rule violation looks at happened they would unanimously say their was no Intent to break the rule so no punishment is needed.

Also the whole disqualification point was brought up originally a few months ago by someone who by his own words hasn't played the game in over a year. Who also still has his nickers in a twist he was canned as a beta tester and is someone who, just by reading all of his posts thinks everything he writes is always correct and that is so high on himself the air must be thin around his head. (I'll let you all decide who I am talking about)

I wanted to be as objective as I could be, with these 5 posts. (except the last part, had to do that) please feel free to discuss if their are parts you think I am right and parts you think I am wrong.

Oh and 1 last point... Please Please Please To anyone that right now believes people create porn sites with key loggers so they can gain access to GW accounts STTTTTTTTTTTTOOOOOOOOOOOPPPPP pretty much their are 4 main reasons. You went and tried to buy free gold or hacks from a website. You gave your account information to other people. Someone took your email from a forum and used a password program.(doubtful) A forum administrator of a GW site you go too, gained access to your email and password and tried to see it is the one you use for Guild wars. (I think i read that guru servers don;t allow admins to see passwords.) But most forums do allow it. Also I know allot of programmers who could prob figure out how too if the site server didn't allow it.

Unlike the OP, I find that Anet is depressingly aloof from their player base these days. When they created their wiki, I thought their talk pages would be a fast conduit to the developers with none of the fansite/forum/CR nonsense. Unfortunately, the reality is that the wiki is completely ignored by Anet. Izzy hardly ever responds to anything on his talk page (granted there is far too much stupidity there). Gaile used to respond mostly to frivolous stuff. Regina is as good as nonexistent. I haven't seen the other CRs ever. Their resolute silence over the pervasive botting in places like Melandru's Hope and all the reports of account hacking seem to imply that they have abandoned GW1 players. I don't remember Anet ever being this uncommunicative; certainly one of the things that got be interested in GW in the first place was how visible the Anet devs were in the player community.

Andrew is possibly the most interactive Anet insider we have ever had, and he was rewarded for his pains by being run out of town.

... you've probably witnessed, firsthand, how CCP operates Eve Online.

The problem with conspiracies is that you can't prove the difference between the tinfoil-hat wearing nutjobs and the dire warnings that just can't be proven yet.

This statement's failure cracks an epic level.

Anet is responsible for providing whatever implied or express level of service came with the purchase of their product. If ANet failed to do that, ANet could be sued for damages.

That probably has nothing to do with this, specifically (I don't even know what this cry thread is about, frankly), but a company certainly cannot just do whatever they want because they happen to own a database and a few servers.
Take Anet to court and prove that they failed to provide whatever service was offered or implied for your $49.95 and you'll find out pretty quickly that ANet cannot, in fact, do whatever they want with your account.

Of course, I can't imagine having the spare time to argue a court case over a $50 video game, but whatever...

I believe the precedence was not about any guild being deleted, but one that had a cape reward.

I am also reasonably sure that rawr needs no presents from Anet other than the instant clearance to play. Besides, loosing all the goods and then struggling back to the top makes for a far better storyline in any novelizations or subsequent movie deals.

I also remember Jeff Strain talking about GW being a "service" to the customer. In that regard most services run better if they follow a distinct set of rules and are not subject to arbitrary tyranny.

You've already agreed legally that ANet can do whatever they want. Good luck pretending otherwise.

EULAs are mostly legal fiction as they have never seen precedent setting litigation.

The EULA, however, is a higher authority than the random-armchair-lawyer gamer who is upset that ANet has no need to do anything.

This is a topic I could go on about for hours, so I will try and keep it short and to the point:

Establishing trust with your community is vital. If you want healthy relations and a good atmosphere to grow your playerbase through word of mouth then it is hugely important.

Trust is all about setting standards, hard rules and precidents, and then sticking by them absolutely - or having a damn good reason otherwise, which is the second part of building trust: Communication.

If your rules state that X action leads to Y with no exceptions listed, then that had better be the case for absolutely everyone. Even if you have simply made a habit of doing/not doing something you had better have a reason to give if you want to suddenly want to change that.

You must be air tight, impenetrable. Communities are good enough at inventing reasons to bitch without you also giving them ammunition. Every time you break one of your precidents or bend a rule for someone you are opening yourself up for criticism. It very easily triggers the snowball effect, and one example of 'favoritism' can spawn dozens of other conspiracies. Every time this happens your community becomes a little more jaded and unhappy with you, regardless of how well founded the original issue was.

On the same note, the message coming from your community staff and from your developers should be 100% consistent. If you want to build trust between your players and your community staff then people have to know that what they are reading is the god's own gosbel truth coming straight from mister chief head-honcho supreme lead developer.

I don't disagree with [rawr] not being disqualified, but I feel it was handled badly. We got no real explanation or statement, and as far as I am aware the rules have not been changed yet - though I believe that at least is in the pipeline.

I don't disagree with [rawr] getting their cape back either, but again there has been a complete lack of communication about the issue. (Not to mention [rawr] has had their cape badly restored before some other guilds have even been given their trims from the last monthly. If you are going to do it, at least do a proper job.)

This brings me to the final point in building trust: If you are going to bend rules, break precidents or do something out of the ordinary then you damn well better be open and honest about it. Release a statement explaining the issue, and you can in fact turn what would have been a negative into a positive. All it takes is one forum post:

"Dear community,

In light of [rawr]'s commitment and dedication to the Guild Wars community we have decided to make an exception and restore their gold cape trim that was recently lost in an unfortunate incident."

If you keep quiet on pressing issues and don't communicate then all you achieve is encouraging speculation and criticism. This is what leads to a jaded and bitter community, and an unhealthy environment. If you are open and honest then you can go from being the bad guy to looking like the good guy.

This part of the industry is not about what you do, but what people think of what you do. Anet already has a particularly bad track record in this field, one that I was sincerely hoping they would improve.

As I have said in other similar threads: I had hoped that the communication between Anet and the players would pick up with the introduction of the new community manager. Instead it seems they are ignoring this fanbase, as if it were an annoying child tugging on their apron strings. However, this community is the foundation for Guild Wars 2. Most of us registered on this forum will probably go on to play the sequel at some point, and probably again be active members of the community. If we go into that with an unfavorable impression of ArenaNet then it will undoubtably spread and taint the atmosphere of that community also. It would also be good experience and practice for Anet to actually work on stronger community relations now, rather than to go even further into uncharted waters with Guild Wars 2.

Guild Wars has become little more than a sandbox for ArenaNet to test ideas out for Guild Wars 2. GW:EN was a lot of fun, but everything since than has clearly had minimal planning, poor execution and next to no communication at all. That goes for game updates, additions, or simply how they have dealt with issues like this.

Anet, you are making a mistake.

I don't know what level of fail you get to once you've completely shattered "epic" levels, but you've managed to find it.

First of all, the status of an EULA as a binding agreement in any given case is skethcy at best.

Second of all, even if it is assumed to be a contract, any contract of any stripe given any circumstance is challengeable.

Finally, your agreement to the EULA does not absolve their responsibility to meet their obligations regarding your purchase of their software. They offered you a certain product for $49.95, and if they failed to provide it, the EULA becomes a moot point. If they breach their obligations, the EULA is irrelevant.

Want to see this in practice? Go buy a used car that's a lemon. You can agree to any damn fool thing you want, and, even without the lemon laws, if you can prove that the company or individual misrepresented what was being sold, you've got yourself a winning lawsuit.

Prove ANet failed to provide what was offered for the $49.95 asking price, and you've won yourself a lawsuit.

You can dig this hole deeper if you want, but the fact remains that click-wrap licensing is still on very shaky ground, any contract can be challenged in whole or in part for any number of reasons, and they are not absolved of their obligation to provide the represented product just because they put up some latte-addled peabrains brain droppings on your computer screen after you bought it.

ANet cannot not do anything it wants, nor can any other company. Unreasonable, intentionally deceptive, and outright malicious contracts can be nullified, are nullified, and will continue to be nullified, regardless of how many times they say "this cannot be nullified because you clicked an icon on your computer screen".

Whether any of this applies specifically to ANet or this instance, I couldn't say - though I'd wager it probably doesn't. The point is simply that you cannot make yourself immune to litigation simply by putting a bunch of mean-spirited garbage in your contract.

In their defense tho, Regina has been out of office and probably didn't get back yet. Same for most other staff. Which leaves the European community managers, who can't really say much about this because they probably don't have the needed info to make a statement.
Also another thing in their defense, there is a complete lack of facts in threads like this. We have people saying all kind of things, but as far as I know there is no sign that Anet did more then giving them a gold trim. Awowa didn't get his stuff back, rawr didn't get their guildrating back. And remaking their guild was something they had to do on their own too as far as I know.

This is just another blown up story. Awowa lost his account, rawr got disbanded, sucks for them. Rawr remade itself, got the cape they won this monthly, end of story. If you can actually call it a story.
And about communication, if Anet has to make a statement every time the community starts making up things, they have no time to do their normal job anymore.

The internet is a marvelous thing; you can get it almost anywhere!

That being said, my post was mostly about their long term track record as opposed to purely recent events.

That's rubbish. It takes 30 seconds to send the relevant developer an IM message, a few minutes to get a response, and a little while longer to turn it into something postable and put it out there. You don't have to be in the Anet office to do that.

Indeed. As I said I don't really have a problem with what Anet did (other than the shoddy job on restoring the cape), and wouldn't ask for more than a simple forum post to explain it.

It's hardly every day that something like this happens. My main point was that by not leaving issues open for speculation you do in fact save yourself time that would otherwise be spent squashing conspiracies.