Alright, something needs to be done.

Anet needs to do something about this ridiculous banning crap. I was playing HB and won, it was a close match too 20-18. The person i was playing with tells me im a noob and reports me then taunts me saying "haha reported"...Normally i could have cared less because i figured hey just one report won't do anything. I log off go to bed, wake up go to log in and im banned! For my name...My name is Mr PMA which as far as i know isnt anything offensive. In fact PMA stands for positive mental attitude. This idiot got me banned for 72 hours and i'm pissed. Why is it that leechers dont get banned and abusers get away with reporting tons of people. It's just stupid.Somebody please fix this...Anyone know if theres a way to get my account unbanned before the 72 hours is up? Ive heard of support tickets or something? Ok, now you can tell me to qq less.

1)QQ less.
2)No one cares.
3)Contact NCSoft support via their web site and tell them why you shouldn't be banned.
4)QQ less some more.
5)??????????
6)PROFIT!


P.S. Doesn't really matter what you think PMA stands for. It could have a multiude of meanings as seen at http://www.acronymfinder.com/PMA.html.

so i just go on the ncsoft site and email them or what?

http://www.guildwars.com/support/ pick a language and it'll tell you what to do.

The funny thing is, even if he does contact them, by the time they get back to him, the 3 days will have been up.

The best you can hope for now is that the guy who reported you gets a ban instead for misusing the system.

I agree with the OP. This ban for name just because someone reported it is stupid. don't they actually check the name before banning to see if it is offensive or not? The least they could do is require the reporter to defend why they found it offensive before issuing the ban. Business wise, I would think in the end they would lose more people who get upset by being banned than people who leave because someone else's name offended them.

I'm with OP on the ban crap getting ridiculous.
Look at this:
http://img91.imageshack.us/img91/1916/gw071eb4.jpg

Now I got this:


All for a little silliness in a T rated game.
I sent a ticket to NCSoft, but they're too inconvenient.
GW was best without the report command

Normally I'd agree but do you really think they have enough people on the live team to check every single report and follow through on it?

Surely its obvious the way to deal with it is to report leechers for their names.
Its been proven time and time again they dont check the names they are banning.

Yep I completely agree with everything you are saying! Kain that's why I don't even talk in local chat Mr PMA banned for that name WTF! Dude that sucks. I have a guild mate banned because he didn't pay for a run. The guy said he could do a run in 1 hour took him and 1 hour 30 min he refused to pay him got banned. Thought anet was against people who ran but what ever. Another friend banned because he did not pay this guy on guru in a timely manner so he got a ban. Another buddy banned for recruiting i mean cmon this has to end. This ban stuff was intended for abuse of the game yet normal people get banned everyday for little crap. No wonder this game is getting less and less players everyday.

Y have a feature that results in a ban that they DONT check?
Honestly if anet won't back up their bans with proof
Then they shouldn't ban

Its ike how U can't get arrested bc someone said u stole something
They need proof before they act.

Anet needs to be responsible and check before they act

this is something minor through the eyes of Anet, it's all they can do right now to prepare for the canthan new year festival and keep people playing the game while they continue to postpone and not mention anything about GW2.

This banning stuff is getting ridiculous, and I'm starting to think that the QQers actually have a point.

Don't take it too personnal, but what you said in that screenshot wasn't really a mature and brillant attitude. I didn't find it funny to be honnest.

As for the subject of this thread, the best way to avoid unfair bans is to avoid weird usernames. For myself, I create real names to my characters, that way I avoid of being reported as inappropriate name because what mean something to you might not have the same meaning for somebody else.

As Nightow said, "PMA" can mean many different things. With the amount of players playing on GW and GW2 in development, Anet doesn't have the time to verify each names and its true meaning everytime one (with a weird grammar?) is reported, knowing how many are.

If someone report a name like "Jack Cruise", nothing will be done.
But if someone report a name like "Isux Iou" or "IAGTKU", which can have thousand of meanings, it's understandable that they won't take any chance and ban, temporarily, since it would take too much time to verify.

Plus, it's not a permanant ban, so yes, it's frustrating, the best you can do is to send an Email to Anet, not to be unbanned, but to report someone abusing of the reports and that there is something that needs to be done with it.

I agree with Chabby. Regardless of how severe, this was an extremely annoying and immature conversation, which could easily be taken as offensive. Deserving of a ban, maybe not, but it sure was dumb.

OT: This is getting annoying to hear about. All of my names are clean, no contest, but get real, almost anything could be contorted/distorted and reported for offending someone. Had a friend serve a name-ban for Bbw Want A Twinkie. Yeah what? If any of my names are reported I'll be incredibly aggravated and will send in the (completely benign) meaning with my complaint.

I think it needs to be said that people need to stop trying to make their character's name into a statement and just use regular names. If you don't, then don't go QQ'ing about it.

Kain, your conversation was immature and un-necessary at the least. You deserve your temp-ban as the others have said, now get over it.

Rule I have always followed on that kind of stuff is; If I have to wonder if the name is ok or not, then I shouldnt even bother with it.

And yes I agree, the "making a statement" names are getting ridiculous. Making a characters name a sentence is not clever.

They are not suppose to banned scammers on run unless they are repeat offenders (meaning they have scammed on runs multi times). What I read on Gaile page I was under the impression that they would review the chat records to prove there was an agreement and it that agreement was violated.

You may want to check Gaile archive (around November 2007). Not only is running approved, designers built it into the game.

The banning has to stop and an easy fix is make it so it takes multiply reports for a ban to take place. If one person reports a name it is questionable, if twenty people report a name they may be something to it.

I see Banning as a good thing, it weeds out those that would take the fun out of the game. At the same time banning people without looking into needs to stop, I could see a ban if it was PMS but PMA, that is just stupid.

Okay some of you who are accusing others of QQ'ing are doing a whole lot of it yourselves. There's absolutely no reason that Mr PMA would constitute a ban nor would any person even know what that acronym was supposed to stand for in this case.

Mister, you must contact Support to get this resolved. Unfortunately there is nothing we can do about it here.

I agree, something needs to be done. Mostly about all this qq.
Who cares if you get banned for a couple days. Go out and see the sun once in a while. People have been using the /report offensive name lately to get other people banned unfairly. Moral of the story is to not get into a stupid internet argument with someone who who could do this (i.e. anybody).

I got banned for this name: "Yaa Btch Yaa"

Now, I understand why, but I can't understand why someone with the name "Fux" or "Sht" doesn't get banned, and they were playing in Top GvG matches (I forget who had those parts in their names) which are viewable to the public.

Maybe Anet, when looking at your name, assumed the worst, like it stood for "Pussy Mutilating Agency" or "Pick Me, Apeshit". Something around there.

However, this has gotten out of hand, especially when I have yet to see a single case of someone being punished for reporting-abuse, like the feature states "overuse or unnecesary use of this command will result in your account being banned" or something along those lines.

This seems like a case of unnecessary use of the reporting command, as well as highly immature seeing as it is a response to losing. But, we do not know the both sides of the story, which is necessary for your arguement. Nothing against you, but I believe in fairness....to an extent.

Someone once told me they were reporting me for an inappropriate name. The name is 'Mome Raths Outgrabe'. I didn't get any sort of ban from it.

Whats also wierd is that I had a bannable name, got reported and didnt get banned.

I was running a couple of builds using some OP skills like Palm Strike, RoJ etc, and was running a pvp char named: This S H I T Is Op. Didnt get banned.

Looks like ANet doesn't care about checking on name bans. This means it is a new exploit that can be abused to get anyone you dislike, banned.

Lewis Caroll fan?

Maybe some poor illiterate thought it meant something rude about their mom.

or your name changed, keep report feature till after the weekend - then it can be removed

I think I can honestly say, I don't agree with ANY of these comments you keep posting. Especially the crap about them not having enough time or people to go through reports. If they really don't, then what the hell are they doing banning people. Pretty BS if you ask me.

What on earth is the point of all this, some of you are running around like headless chickens over this when you don't know if its true or not and there is nothing you can do anyway.

Its not that I am unsympathetic to the OP but all the thread has done is get some people angry otherwise its achieved nothing.
He is no nearer getting back to playing and even when he does he will have no way of knowing if the person who reported him has been punished in some way.

Its a generally unsatisfactory situation over which no one here has any control, as has been said many many times before.

Don't like the reporting system ok then either start a poll or blog on it collect a few thousand names and email addresses and send it to the correct place.

Posting these threads here just indicates 2 things neither of which I believe to be true.

No one who has been banned was ever guilty of anything but they know many who should have been banned in their place.
Anet are totally inept when it comes to running the report system.

I was under the impression NCSoft were the ones handing out the bans, not Anet.

This is why I:
* rarely talk in all chat
* never PUG
* never PvP

I play GW with my guild/alliance friends or solo. This is another reason why that's a good choice. Immaturity was another.

Those would be unjustified assumptions, it certainly doesn't seem like they bother to even look at what's being reported. Perhaps so much is being reported they just don't have the time.

It's gotten out of hand because the report tool has nothing to do with punishments for actual bad behaviour any more. It's now just a raw tool for people who get beat in PvP, or people who get their build criticised in PvE to feel like they can give their opponent some "punishment" back.

It's a case of when "giving players power" goes very, very wrong.

I'll say it again: ArenaNet/NCSoft needs to take more responsibility for how it's game is ran, and not rely on immature players to act as "pseudo game moderators".

As long as that statement or name is not offensive, there isn't any reason to ban that account. If I want to express my love for Shia LaBeouf in game and name myself "I Love Shia LaBeouf" and some Shia hater decides to report it, I shouldn't get banned. Period.

I remember the Guru thread when people first started complaining after it was introduced and some said they'd abuse the feature so that it becomes unmanageable and they remove it.

And then, year+ later, people come here and say it's not working. Guess what, "we" brought it onto ourselves as a community. Why aren't we discussing, instead of Anet NCsoft's name-ban policy, why there are ass-players instead and what we can do about it? (I can already people boo-ing me, "I'm the customer and AnetNC/soft has to bow to my every whim", "how do you dare question me?" "f-word you!")

You know, to date, I don't think I've ever heard of someone getting banned for "abuse" of this report feature.

I don't think people would come to Guru to say "Look, I abuse /report and got banned, GG NCsoft!". NCsoft support is so limited that it's globally accepted on Guru that congratulating them on their hardworkd with limited resources is "LAME". And no one wants to discuss "asses", because it may be "you" (I don't mean you Shayne Hawke but the people talking on Guru that's reading the discussion, an ass will simply ignore it and such a thread would end up empty or with +1s, the other solution of pointing the finger at asses when you see them is an off-topic).

If we're discussing the validity and usefulness of the current reporting system, that's fine.

Just make sure and keep in on topic.

Honestly, I'd like to see some statistics of bans before and bans after the report feature went into effect.

You are absolutely right, it's NCSoft that does all the banning and stuff. So you guys, go complain to them, not anet.

Not sure I mind deadbeats getting banned, but they are getting too heavy-handed lately.

This reporting for saying a bad word or not being a slave to the reporter and asking if your bent over far enough is one of the reasons why besides guildies, I have very little to do with people in this game


I have to admit though, it's funny in LA or Spamadan because of some of the arguments and banning reasons, makes selling stuff a little less boring

Some of us have been trying to point out the flaws, possible exploits, and actually occurring exploits of the report system for over a year. Too bad we keep getting told we don't know what we are talking about. Most often by players that do not know the system and have never bothered to look at its actual in game effects. And if you come in here to say that a player should be fine so long as they don't pug, don't use local/trade, and don't pvp, seriously, shut up.

Finally enough people are aware of the exploits and using them to the point that these type of threads are finally seeing more frequency.

Remember when there was a bot that searched chat, all chat including guild and pm's, for foul language and automatically issued a ban? The first people to discuss the matter were told they didn't know what they were talking about. Again by people that never bothered to look at any empirical evidence. I personally got an alt account (previously with 0 marks on it) banned by a string of filthy language, each line followed by "no one hears you."

I've heard a lot of bans. Most of then occurred to friends of mine. They've been banned for a whole string of things. I can honestly tell you that "report abuse" is not one of them. If organizing team/guild reports for erroneous charges all the way to syncing into RA/AB to report the odd man/group out I don't know what does. How about using team/local chat(but not actually using the report function) to get everyone in a RA match declared a leecher? I dunno, but I've done that too.

Maybe I'm just brazen, but I don't care if I talk about doing this type of activity on a public forum. Some people would be scared off, afraid that someone would track it back to their account. But I know the truth. If I haven't been banned for report abuse for over a year of actively abusing it, but suddenly I get banned for it after a post on a public forum, then it is not a case of the 'system' catching its errors. It is instead a company that had a problem exposed try to bandage the wound and cover their trail rather than actually addressing the root cause.

Of course that is not all. I can do more than just point out flaws. I can show things that would make great improvements to the system, both making it more effective and reducing the amount of human work required. But if things continue as they have been, no one cares to listen. Going through any effort to explore a new system is just as much of a waste of air as an unknown posting how they would skill balance.