Recent Account Bans

cant believe i actually read this whole thread......

well, let me start off by saying that none of my accounts are banned. yay! those who dont want to read a story and listen to my opinions regarding third party mods/bots, just stop reading now.

as a returning player (quit 3.5 years ago for WoW, then quit WoW in november of last year and came back to GW shortly after), i enjoy this game as a casual. i want something i can log into from time to time and have fun playing, but not something that "sucks you in" and consumes all your time/life. that's exactly what i feel the game is for me right now.

i fully applaud anet's ban on botters. maybe i'll be able to get back into PvP now- i know im not the greatest at it, but the bots just made me not want to even bother with that aspect of the game. i also congratulate anet's ban of PvE farming bots. that sort of thing has been destroying the economy since before i originally left. i'm not saying this will FIX the economy, or that botters will not be back in some form or fashion, but this is definately a positive step.

however.... lets move into the "grey area." as many have already stated, i would LOVE to hear an official "YES or NO" for certain mods. and please dont quote the EULA or any other post in this thread- ive already read it. keep in mind that what you are about to read is my OPINION on each of these. i feel that anet should use (and from my personal experience, IS using) is a common sense approach. AKA "who does this effect?" "what benefits are gained?" "will anyone else's game play be negatively affected?" ...yada yada

1) textmod- a 3rd party program that technically DOES alter the GW client. when i left GW, i had spent a LOT of time on tyrian carto, and i was only 98.6%. using textmod, i went back and finished in just a few hours. also using textmod, cantha and elonia were cake compared to how much time i had invested in tyria. this program should NEVER be considered a bannable offense. in no way does it negatively affect another player. all it saves you is TIME. yes, as many of you will say ...."well i was able to do it without the mod, and so should you!" thats garbage- some people have a higher quality monitor than others, some people have better eyesight that others, and some of those spots are just downright LUCK. i mean, you have to twist, turn, spin, and do the hokey pokey just to clear it out. textmod makes carto EASIER, but does not give you any advantage over another player.

2) multilaunch/GWx2 - 3rd party program that lets you run 2 clients at once. seriously, this mod is for GW what the invention of the wheel was for mankind. not having a mailbox system or any way to trade items or gold between accounts was a HUUUUUGE bummer. i actually bought a cheapo comp JUST for GW years ago so i could trade between accts. this mod should also NOT be bannable. it certainly doesnt hurt anyone else's gameplay, and it saves you tons of time and frustration. i consistently use GWx2 to trade my travelers gifts to my "main" acct and trade items to my storage mule perma pre from my other perma pre. i bet im not the only one who does this. also, being able to actually PLAY an account while death leveling charr or spending the whole festival event on the nine rings is a bonus. in no way can i fathom how this mod can ever be considered bad.

3) drunkardbot - many of you will disagree with my opinion, but at least hear it out. while those who use drunkardbot cannot argue that it is indeed a BOT, ironically, it is the only 3rd party program i have mentioned that does not change the GW client at all. it simply clicks your mouse at a variable spot a variable number of times at a variable time interval. does it give you an advantage? yes- it saves you TIME. does it hurt other players? absolutely not! i'll freely admit to using it. i manually clicked the first 1000+ minutes before i quit GW years ago, and honestly, its not fun. and its not fun to zone-drink for the title either. oh i also drink while "shopping" in spamadan, but its nice to be able to afk a decent chunk of the title, esp for those of us who dont log on every day. if you consider this bot logically, you can say that it POSITIVELY affects GW's economy. those who use "db" are more likely to buy booze from other players. also, due to the convenience, im sure many players have gone for ale hound on alts, putting even more money into legit trading. also, id like to point out that using "db" is pretty much the same as going afk with a vamp weapon while you pay someone to vanquish areas for you.... you're getting credit towards a title while you do nothing, correct? do we not have a service for this type of vanquishing right here on guru? how can one be ok and the other not?

sooooo.... hopefully i wont get banned for admitting to using these mods, but im sure ive used each of them in the last month or so, and as i stated earlier, none of my accounts are banned. to those who swear that the ONLY way they were banned for use of one of these mods, i have to say that either you're lying, or you should definitely contact support. assuming these mods are safe to use, i would like to say kudos to anet for using common sense. a huge THANK YOU for eliminating those who ruin the game for others, while showing sensibility toward those who simply wish to save time and frustration.

in closing, i would still love to hear an OFFICIAL "yes or no" here. a "yes" would rock my socks and take a load off my mind, and obviously, if the answer is "no", i would happily discontinue using those programs. but until then, i guess i'll just take my chances and stand by what i feel is common sense.

Cash i actually agree with you on those points.
But i have been banned and contacted support about it, they escalated the ticket and all i can do now is wait.

If you actually read the thread, you would have seen the screenshots of the official response.

1 & 2 are O.K. (Caveat: Unaltered) #3 not listed.

In fact, it's copied to the FIRST POST on this page of the thread as well.

It's great to see Anet doing something about all the botters. I don't really play all that much anymore, so it really didn't effect me, but it's really sad to see all the people seeming to revel in other peoples misfortune, regardless of how deserving. [fyi, I wasn't banned]

to be fair, there really isn't much going on nowadays. At least it'll be entertaining reading the QQ threads

It's called Shadenfreude.

Bumping this because I really would like an answer.

The smurf guilds don't ever play they are simply extra guilds that auto forfeit the first round. They are necessary for early morning AT's because without them there won't be enough guilds and the AT just won't take place. This is an incredibly common practice, every early morning AT for over the past two years has had this practice go on.

(How about those permabanned from GW be banned from GWG forums, as their GW input will become outdated and no longer relevant?)

Oops, was thinking out loud again. Sorry.

Anyway, nice move to Anet.

Since its manipulating the winner of the match it does count as match manipulation and anet has the full right to ban you. But in a past gvg tournament I remember guilds manipulating matches were only punished by losing there gold cape trims for a period of time.

I don't think Anet would do anything about that because there is no true way to prove that the guild had the intention of forfeiting. Everyone knows it happens, but can't actually prove that the team just couldn't get eight.

Also, I'm sure they believe playing>not playing, so there is little, if any, incentive to stop this practice. Technically, I suppose it is ladder manipulation, but the ladder hasn't mattered since the GWFC.

I somewhat agree, these threads are alright for now because this is new but there will come a time when we will need to move on. If you don't own a gw account any more then you don't really belong on a gw fansite especially looking for sympathy after guru made a 40 page petition asking for this to happen.

I don't understand people who have sympathy for botters. They say they were a big part of this community, they invested a lot of time in their accounts and stuff like that. So what? Anyone can be "leet" with bot farming for them 24/7 and having unlimited cash in their storage.

Why should anyone farm, trade or play to earn cash in a fair way when others get it without a sweat.. I mean.. should this game be full of botters, and everyone that actually plays the game would be stupid for doing so? That wouldn't be enjoyable experience for me..

As a veteran player with 5 years under my belt, GWAMM and lots of PvP experience, when GW gets boring, I just stop playing it, and focus more on my life or sometimes I pick up another game and have fun with that.. I come back in few months, or half a year if I see new content or I want to replay something again and have fun again. Nobody is forcing anyone to play the game so you have to bot. You guys should be thankful for thousands of hours of fun that this game gave you, there are only few games ever made that can make that possible. If you don't do anything in your life except play GW so you have to bot to be super-successful, thank ArenaNet for banning your account and giving your life back to you.

I'm bumping this post. I am curious on what Arena.Net's answer is for this:



Hmm...

not everyone who was banned botted to this degree, yet everyone received the same punishment. someone who only experimented and tried out a bot once or twice perhaps not even earning more than 1k received the same punishment as someone who has botted "24/7 and having unlimited cash in their storage".

i don't think curiosity deserves a permaban.

furthermore, there have been many accounts that have used other cheats/exploits that have similar damage (pve-wise) that have gone unbanned. so the banning process has been very selective (almost random).

First off, Thanks ANET

Second, 34 pages, I'm not going to say I read them all because I didn't.
What I did find interesting is there are people that seem to think that transferring
items from a their bot account to their main account, should keep their main since it
didn't bot. Thankfully Anet threw the flag on that one.
Also I don't get the people that seem to think because they botted and got all their wealth/accomplishments, that it was actually them working to get it.
It's called a program honey, you install, go afk, come back and you get something for nothing.
But look at the bright side, at least you did get something, and so did we.

It's funny to read about how so many great people lost their accounts.
Great people or great programs, its unfortunate their are those that can't tell the difference. It is odd to me, if those people are as great as we are to believe, they would never have had to bot.

grand publicity stunt is... grand publicity stunt

frankly, cheating in this game is so widespread that dart board bans are futile. fixing the holes that exist would be more reassuring.

i'm sure the most common bot usage was farming for money. i'm also sure that a lot of people who have used farming bots have actually gained a lot of titles by themselves without the use of bots.

furthermore, you'd be surprised at the amount of accounts with titles earned through botting (most commonly drunkard and lux/kurz) that have not been banned.

i believe the focus of anet was not the damage botting has done to titles, rather the damage botting has done to the economy.

I can't possibly make it through this entire thread to find the answer to this question, so hopefully someone kind enough will give me a quick answer:

My assumption is that most of the bans were bots reported by pvpers. It is well-known that some bots farm dungeons and WiK escort missions. Have people botting in pve where noone is around in the zone to notice and report them getting the bans too?

If so it would seem Anet can catch people using some sort of detection mechanism. If not it would seem they are relying on in-game observation and from /reports.

^read the link on the piece written by james phinney. they have "detection" methods that they don't want to reveal anything about. they have also increased the amount of support staff dealing with botting.

I stand corrected, I should have put (some) of their wealth/accomplishments) instead of all. I do believe a lot of people still got away with more than we know.
I do feel bad for those that got caught in the crossfire. And hope they get their accounts back very soon.
Those that are guilty, I am glad are gone.

They didn't get banned for "curiosity".
They got got banned for cheating.
They knew it was wrong. They took the risk. They paid the price.

the point i was trying to make was the varying degrees of punishment. yes they cheated, but it was a minor crime and therefore deserves a minor punishment (like a tempban or stripping of inventory, etc).

Yes it does. Everyone signed an agreement stating they would not do it. It doesn't matter when you did it, what you did it for, and how long you did it for. If you do it, you break the agreement. By that agreement you are subject to whatever punishment A.Net deems fit. In this case, the punishment was a permaban, and that is the risk you run for breaking a contract.

Yes, that's what they claim, and I have read Phinney's article. I'm wondering if we have first-person accounts or testimonials from people who have used pve bots such as I described above. As for increased staffing that could simply be operators who process /reports.

there are far worse things deserving of a ban, and many of them have gone and still go unpunished. the way things are being run, it appears its better to have a mentality of not what you can do, but rather what you can get away with.

They didn't catch everyone who cheated so they shouldn't punish anyone?

nice logic

Anything that breaks the agreement is subject to a ban. Whatever you think the punishment should be does not matter in the least. A.Net is jury, judge, and executioner. If they deem something worth a ban, then it is worth a ban.

And here I can play the opinion game too. I think anyone who cheats should be banned no matter what. I don't care how, why, when, where, etc. You go outside the normal play of the game then you should be banned. I feel that way about everything, Guild Wars, Recreational Sports, Professional sports, School, anything. You bot in Guild Wars, you deserve to be banned, you use steroids in baseball, you deserved to be banned from the game and all your solo achievements erased, You plagiarize your research paper you deserve to be expelled from school.

Does my opinion matter? No, Because I have no authority over any of those things. Neither does yours for the exact same reason. You can voice your opinion all you want, and hope people from A.Net (who do have authority) will read it and agree with you, but frankly you have no power to decide what actually is an appropriate punishment for something you have no power over. They broke their agreement, they got banned. It is an appropriate punishment well within A.Nets right to do so, and Justice has been served.

I would say this is the start of those other things getting a ban. Is it making an example of botters? YES! Is it Harsh? In mosts opinion, not harsh enough, but in the end, was it justified, fair, and within Anets right? YES! i will assume that this fine example of what you CANNOT get away with will put some real and deserved fear into those that would break rules they agreed to abide by. if not, by all means do it again, Anet getting revenue from your new accounts feeds GW2 getting here faster!

I wonder how many of those 3,700 were unfairly banned and not bots. I know that Anet is not very good about differentiating between a botter and a normal person farming. Seen too many farmers get banned and have to go through hell to get their accounts back.

I disagree they got permabanned because they chose to ignore the ToS/EULA. Some of those people have played from 5 to 3 years prior and knew full well what would happen if they where caught. They even had warnings about third party apps on the Login announcements. There was even a /report function added in so people could report botters. There were many warnings and people continued to ignore them.

And there are people here who feel that Anet did drop the ball on that, they should have been banned and yet they were not. And Anet will have to do damage control when this mistake comes back to bite them in the a**.

There are ppl who used injection on multiple accounts and none of those accounts have been banned, if that answers your question. If you need more, most of the people banned, if not 100%, are the ones that were using easily available bots, in their default configuration, or the accounts logging in from the same IP as the the botting account, using available automation software [bot].

Sorry, I have to disagree... as much as I despise botters and as much as I'm quite happy that Anet rolled out a large dose of the BanScythe... this isn't Guild Wars, this is a FAN FORUM... having an active game account is not a prerequisite of posting here, what's more, former players still have has much right to comment on the game as current ones do, that is, their opinions are no more or less valid than yours or mine.

Well, okay... they're less valid than mine, but I'm egotistical, that's not the point.

I agree with you, but to be honest, if they got banned for using a ruptbot in PvP, they should be banned from the internet forever

reading comprehension ftl. minor punishment for minor crimes, major punishment for major crimes =/= no punishment for anyone.

i'm sowrie if i have little faith in anet/ncsofts competency. maybe if they haven't left so much other broken shit unchecked i'd be able to feel the same way you do.

welcome to internet forums. if one is not supposed to voice opinion here, it'd be a barren place. did kj's botting petition have no bearing whatsoever on their recent actions? have not the ursan/sf/etc qq have no bearing on them becoming nerfed? honestly, your whole post is irrelevant; if you truly feel the way you do, then why the hell are you even posting?

How would YOU verify between "I only botted for 5 minutes because I wanted to see what the hype was about" and "I botted on 10 accounts, but forgot to turn off the bot when I switched to my main account to transfer all my ill gotten gains..."

The answer is that you can't, and can you even take them at their word? They are cheaters. There's a reason Dante has the 8th level of hell comprised of the cheats and liars...

You have a valid point I hadn't thought about. (The, "I forgot to turn it off on my main/side/mule/whatever).


I +1 this post for truth.

That's right, you can't. Or?

That's why the punishment is scaled appropriately to the offence. And that is how it should be in this case too. And if it is not possible to judge the severity of the offence, the capital punishment should not be used in general. Just imagine if that happend IRL.

In game environment it is pretty easy to set a sane limit of gain of anything/per time unit. If you want to of course

My neighbor and I each bought the new Delorean, a very technologically advanced vehicle. When I went to start my car, some text flashed on the center console and an icon appeared on the touchscreen that said you must press here to start the car. I pushed the icon so that I could drive my new car.
I went out on the highway to see what my new car was capable of. I opened the engine up and was flying down the road.
Apparently, I must have zipped past my neighbor, because he called the Delorean company to tell them about my driving and they came and took my car away. Apparently the icon that I had to press in order to start my car gave Delorean the right to come and take my car from me if I broke any traffic laws or used the vehicle in any manner, which they generally did not like.
On a related note, I have a co-worker who put a "Gas, Grass or Ass" bumper sticker on his Delorean. They came and took his car away for two weeks. According to Delorean, they have the right to do this, because he pushed the button in order to start the car.

My power-drill vs screwdriver Metaphor was better. XD
A noble effort however.

I found some official word about Drunkard Bots:

http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Talk:Bot

Clearly, using a Drunkard Bot or auto-clicker to enter and re-enter Fort Aspenwood is a serious offense and should be punished with the swiftest fury available. An earlier example was about that, and not progressing a prestige gold-sink title.

From what I understand and believe, if you use a Drunkard Bot or auto-clicking piece of hardware and give no reason to be reported by another player for it, there is a very good chance you won't be banned for it.

It's a low priority, and rightly so. Any Guild Wars player would prefer a spamming or leeching bot to be banned moreso than a player in their own guild hall performing emotes occasionally. If you disagree, your priorities are off. Would really you prefer less new content, if only the drunkard bots were all rounded up and given a stern warning?

I'll echo what other people have said, but no so cheekily: if you want to use or have used the Drunkard Bot to achieve the Drunkard title easier in the past and are still playing, continue doing that.

I'm currently stockpiling my alcohol. When it's full, I will use a drunkard bot for it's intended purpose, as I used TexMod for Cartographer, and GWx2 for trading Zaishen Keys and minis from alt accounts. That's my plan, unless I'm told my a Anet rep that I'm now on the radar, and at risk. In which case, I won't. Pretty simple.