Do Ban Appeals work?

Has anyone here been banned from GW, appealed, and had the ban shortened or removed?

Yes, if you can provide a good reason why they're wrong, and provide all the other information that they ask for, you will be unbanned.

Good Luck

Very rarely, and I do mean VERY. Perma bans have never been removed. When a moderator bans someone, it is within their best judgment, and as a result, will typically never be shortened or removed.

So, let's just go off on a limb and say "No, unless it is under EXTREME circumstances."

He was asking about GW not GWG.

LRN2RD

I've only seen it one time when a buddy of mine happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. He was passing through on his monk when the bots were farming Arborstone explorable and was banned for being one of them. He placed an appeal and his account was reactivated the next day.

My account was banned for my sons actions.... I pleaded with them and eventually was reinstated. I think it just depends on the offense. Hopefully you learned from whatever got you banned in the first place.

I've been permenently banned twice and have been unbanned of both occasions.

Depends why you were banned and what defense you can offer.

The appeal itself is good for your account. Not appealing a short ban will leave the misdemeanor on your account.

on the game GW or the GWG forums? The quote you speak of is from someone who thought my post was about GWG (it's about GW the game).

in gw it depends on what you were banned for....there have been a bunch of people banned in error (botting etc) and reinstated. I recall one poster who said that he had been misbanned 3 times (there is a thread somewheres in the archives about this).....and then a few of the people who have helped with exploits were banned and then unbanned....but these are rare exceptions not the rule!!!!
If you have been banned the ONLY way to get unbanned is to contact support and plead your case, it has worked in the past for those who can prove they were banned in error---not for everyone, and I am sure a few innocent people have also been banned (I know of one who just was never able to find his original prophecy key----)....

contact support and throw the dice.

Funny, no one knows about that ban on here. I assume you are talking about in game, and not the forums.

Perma bans are always upheld on Guru.

And yes, I /fail, as Ryker pointed out.

I wasn't misbanned. I just felt that the punishment was severe like the death penalty for a traffic ticket. Support hasn't messaged me back in over a day and the site says it takes 1 day. It says unresolved so the question is, do they have to resolve it, or am I being ignored by support?

got temp banned for 3 days cos of "sharing account", 3 days later it turned into a perma ban. sent a letter saying that i got hacked instead of "sharing account", then they unbanned me the next day

nothing got stolen except 200k, i was fortunate :P

Same thing happened to me. My warrior was in Arborstone. I did notice an endless chain of monk-bots running through the outpost. I went idle while looking up a boss location on wiki. When I returned, I noticed I had been disconnected. On reconnect, it told me I had been permanently banned for using a third party program. It also said the decision was not reviewable.

So I sent them an email, got a response within a few hours asking for my character name. The next day I was sent an email stating they checked, it was an error, and that I was re-instated.

Seems to me they did a sweep to kill the bots, and a few innocents got caught in their net. I was impressed with their quick response though.

Anet used to ALWAYS perma-ban.....untll they had to keep unbanning the innocent, gullable and stupid!!
Thats why the temp / warnings came into being.

Making a legit trade with someone else that has broken EULA rules does not warrent a ban. It happens.

Giving someone a large amount of plat - or rare item worth loads - does not automatically mean you bought off ebay - so does not warrent a ban. It happens

The "we always fully search the account activity on anyone we ban" does'nt stand up when you see the ammount of complaints - and confirmations that the account has been re-enabled. (a few waa waa, why me posts when completly caught in ther act are bound to be about - but then they dont come back and say they are now un-banned).

The " this is a perma-ban and as such is not negotiable" stance is also a bit of a joke when you see the ammount of complaints - and confirmations that the account has now been unbanned.


I got banned a few years ago - still not sure why and too long to dig up old ticket - but info here if you're interested.

http://www.guildwarsguru.com/forum/a...t-3045500.html

Was either trading with someone that ebayed/duped - whatever - or was at the wrong place/wrong time ina bott clearance weekend.

Took several weeks of polite support ticket emails - turing into ranting - turning into pleading - then - BANG -" you're account has been reinstated - we're sorry".

Fully agree with banning in general though - botters and others that wreck the game should be banned so keep it up Anet. - still see some places full of botts though so banning them does'nt seem to work - nerfing what they're farming seems to move them off.!!!

Just try and get the real, honest players sorted from the ones that you absolutly know - beyond any shadow of a doubt - that they deserve a ban.

I understand support have now streamlined their 'unbanning' policy so anyone banned unfairly should be back on ain a few days.

when you get banned from GWG all you can do is change your IP and make a new acct

and rahja you dont fail "too" often so i think we can give ya a pass

I got a 3 day ban last night.

As i'm goin for an expensive title atm i need a constant flow of gold.
Cos i ran out of gold and found some1 who could sell me alot of sweet tooth points a friend of mine (irl) offered me to loan 400k in gold.
He needed some things i had, so we traded in balth temple.

3 hours later i lose my connection.
When i try to log in again i get a message: code 045 - temp ban for x hours because of breach of rules - accepting gold/materials bought online + the removal of the gold i got from my m8

I filed a support ticket to explain the situation. Within 15 minutes i got an answer through mail saying they checked the logs and were not gonna unban me. Somehow their logs state that i bought gold online and that the trade was that delivery.
I couldn't believe this was happening so i send another ticket in, result: another email telling me the matter was send to a senior.
He answerred me that his collegue was right and that the temp ban was not gonna be removed.

I still don't understand what happened and why they think i'm breaching the rules. I didn't buy gold online, and yet ... their logs state i did.
How can this be?

well mostly its because of the high amount of gold your friend gave you. When doing such large transactions your should take a screeny as well as both players acknowledging its a legit trade. all in all GW support is one of the worst ive seen and if they say no, specially twice i doubt youll get the gold back.

Umm, where did your friend get the gold? You can be banned for accepting gold that was bought online.

If they checked back on your friend's account and saw a 400k gold transaction with another player, then that would be the problem.

If you can get your friend to email them collaberating your story that might help, of course I am sorta surprized that he wasn't banned as well. Now if he got the gold through a RMT, you are now guilty by association, and sorta out of luck.

Loans and post to pre trades are probably the most false positive anet gets.

This is the answer i got after appealing a 2nd time:

Hello,

Our records confirm that you accepted gold or items in game in exchange for real world money or virtual items outside of the Guild Wars service. We do not provide the exact methods used to pinpoint the offense, as this preserves our ability to track and monitor the offending activity being used. Please note this is our final decision regarding this issue. As such, any further correspondence regarding this issue may be closed without response.

Regards

I just send another ticket asking for more information about that 'record'.
According to privacy laws in my country i have the right to know what they keep in records about me, my actions and my account. I'm not sure about what gw rules say about this though.

I haven't talked to my friend about this yet, haven't seen or heard him since the ban occured. It's strange they even noticed this. I needed gold, he needed things i had, like materials, green wep .... so every time he traded me i gave him something.
To be honest ... i'm not sure it's good to keep sending in tickets about this. It's 'only' a 3 day ban, lose alot of gold (:s), but after that i can play again. I just feel treated unfair and not helped by support at all. It's like they judge me based on some facts gathered by an automated system, and won't get into things.

One has to wonder how they can prove you did anything outside of the Guild Wars service. Sure, trading 400k in gold might be suspicious, and sure the person trading it *might* have bought it, but how can they prove he didn't farm it, or save up, etc? The idea of "he didn't farm for it, and he didn't save up for it therefore he had to have bought it outside the game" is a load of crap. If they look at these things, and look at the "evidence" as proof, they should be questioning it. But by saying "Our records confirm..." they are saying they know it was bought outside the game and I'd like to know just what these so-called "records" are. Are they spying on our every move when not logged into the game?

Same kind of thing I went through with eBay awhile back when they falsely accused me of shill bidding. I got the same song-and-dance from them, and yet I knew for a fact that they didn't have any records of anything. I told them I'd never, ever sell another item on their service and that they'd seen the last dime of my money they'd see due to extremely poor quality customer service (trust me, not a good idea to lie to your customers). This, to me, is just as bad. If Anet really does have these so-called "records" that supposedly confirm an outside purchase, we're all in trouble.

ANet and NCSoft prosecute gold-seller organizations. They are not going to expose their investigation and detection methods to a player.

I would say that the money was sourced from a gold-seller and ANet considers you an end-user, but not part of the original gold sell/buy transaction. Thus you are only temp banned and the gold removed. Thus teaching you to be more careful.

As to records and your right-to-know, not a chance, kid. Read your EULA. Your only recourse is don't play the game.

I have a feeling the laws of a country, if the country chooses to enforce them, may very well trump an EULA...

EULAs are commonly regarded as worth the paper they are written on. As of the current date clicking "OK" or "I agree" or what not does not constitute a signature, and thus not a legally binding contract. If brought into a legal matter of debate (court for instance) it would reside with the judge or whomever makes the final decision to decide if both yours and the EULA's writer gave each other enough of an intent and understanding of an agreement - and thus his/hers, not the EULA's, final decision.

There are several companies (Apple, if I remember correction is one of them) pushing to have clicking "OK" constitute a legally binding contract.

Another thing to keep in mind is in some cases physical locations of servers dictate policy and not simply you connecting to them from your country.

Best of luck though!

---

Back on Topic:

I was banned once a couple years back. Someone had gotten a hold of my account (which was somewhat confusing, since I gave my password to no one and used only personal computers to log in... my best guess was it was similar/exact to another log in more easily accessible) and started to say some pretty non-flattering things to anyone and everyone possible.

I sent in a support ticket stating that I was in the middle of no where, many, many miles away from any source of internet connection and definitely without a computer... and that 180 Marines in my company could vouch for me.

They re-activated the account and luckily nothing was missing. Though my Guild did have an interesting conversation with me about some of the things "I" said.

This would drive me nuts as far as the plausibility of it. Unless they possess some sort of Orwellian technology currently unannounced to us it would seem impossible to confirm without a reasonable doubt that you did such a thing.

There are numerous scenarios that come from that:

1) Person A has a character on Guild Wars, Person B using same computer purchases Gold (person B may or may not have an account) from Gold Seller A. Person A and B (or just A) are now banned.

I would think it would be idiotic to have your Guild Wars character on your Gold Selling page, so one would assume the "This character will deliver you the Gold" comes through a source like email or IM client. Also, to log in and/or operate your Gold Selling business from the same location as one you log into Guild Wars seems equally ridiculous ("Hey Bob, this location operates an EBay page and the GW Client from there also donates thousands of platinum to characters with infrequent interactions.")

So to have a confirmation without reasonable uncertainty you need to not only associate a Gold Seller's EBay location to the Gold Seller's client, but you need to associate the buyer's bidding location to his/her client, then monitor them interacting.

Unless of course those steps aren't used, that trick seems a little hard to be confirmed.

And what about the chance that any or all of those locations were public computers like at a University or Library?

I think I'm going to check the eyes on my GW game boxes and see if they're watching me, paint my windows black, and put on my tinfoil hat.

Guild Wars is watching you!

(I hope that is taken with jest, and not aggression.)

They won't prolong your ban or terminate your account for opening too many support tickets. At worst, they just ignore you or just keep sending canned responses. So I would pursue it, if I were you. The temp ban and gold might not matter much in the long run, but the marks added against your account does.

And definitely talk to your friend. Find out if there was anything wrong on his end and if he could open a ticket on your behalf as well.

From the game, first time i got perm banned when the duping was happening, second time was a mistake of their part, i got a screenshot to prove this also as it is hard to believe.

You'll want to get in touch with the Guild Wars Support regarding bans. The staff here can't do anything in regards to Guild Wars accounts.