Recent Account Bans

So does the /report bot option work now or is it still better to fill out a form? Cause anet missed a few spots during their bot sweep and I'd like to point those out for them.

Ps. Anet can check if someone is interrupt-botting right? (Sorry for noob question)

No, they cant check it that's why u have to learn to play against them. All they can is checking dll injection, bot type doesnt matter...

proof?

I have never used KSMod but apparently it requires .dll injection and the people that used it were left unharmed. Obviously Anet does more than check for dll injection.

@StormX - here is the report info from guildwars.com article. You can also continue to use /report, but the email allows you to give more details.

"We’re now working more aggressively to identify hacks and potential exploits much more quickly. In addition to our efforts in house, we’re asking all of you to help us identify issues. Many of you have done so before on forums, but we will now provide a clearer way for you to get this information to us directly:

Please report game abuse to [email protected] using one of these exact subject lines: Botting, Match Manipulation, or Game Exploit. That will ensure the message is quickly routed to the right personnel and will expedite a review of the issue. You will be sent a confirmation that we’ve received your report, but in general we will not give out more detailed responses directly to individual players. In a situation like this, information is power. We maximize our ability to catch offenders if we operate in a confidential manner."

Dont count on it you are RED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GOed just as me the gm's dont care they ban some innocent people.

Well, if you are telling the truth and anet didn't made a mistake you could have given your account info to some of your friends before you left the game.

They could have botted on your account.

Hello!

I also have a problem with this. On the 22th of August, I got banned from Guild Wars for no apparent reason. I was farming in Tombs and suddenly I get banned. I contacted to support immediately, but it seems that only GM Amaury is responding me. I've read a lot of forums about this bannings, and a lot of people got banned my mistake, including myself. I've got my account for over 4 years now, and I've spend about 150 € on my Guild Wars collection. I've amassed everything I have with my hard work, didn't use any bots or illegal third-party programs. Maybe if I have a virus or a spyware on my computer, that could've caused the ban. But I've check my computer and I found nothing.
Anyway, GM Amaury... I still do not know if it is a automated responder or a real GM, because all I got so far was was this:

Hello Rok,

After further investigation, we can confirm that your Guild Wars Account has been closed for using an illegal third party program. We want you to know that we use great care when analyzing accounts prior to termination. We are both diligent and conservative in determining which accounts are using these programs, and we only take action after we are able to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that such use has occurred.

After this response I updated my ticket several times so I could get the attention of a real GM and not an automated machine. I got this:

Hello Rok,

We have reviewed the logs and records on the account and we can confirm that you were using an illegal third party program.

I am afraid that the account will stay banned for this reason and we will not be reversing the decision in this case.

Regards,

GM Amaury
Guild Wars Customer Support

Then I was talking about how I would never put my account into danger of getting it banned. Not after 4 years of hard work and 150 €. And I would never use bots or anything illegal. I'm a protective person when it comes to expensive equipment-computers and other stuff. I scan it frequently and keep it clean. I asked them to check my account logs again. Then I got this:

Hello Rok,

After another review of the logs, we can confirm that you were using an illegal third party program therefore we will not be reversing our decision.

Furthermore, I'm afraid that we cannot disclose the information we have on record about this case to detect the use of third-party programs to automate the behaviour of the characters. We need to keep some of this information to preserve the efficiency of the bot detecting system.

Regards,

GM Amaury
Guild Wars Customer Support

So, now my question is: is it still an automated responder or is he a real GM? Plus, I'm innocent in this matter. So how can I make them believe me? This account means a lot to me so I will definitely keep updating my ticket and won't give up without a fight.

~Rokzor

Looks like an auto reply to me, they cant disclose it what a load of bull, you bought and paid for the software, if you are innocent, id would have thought they would have to tell you what you did, espically as there claiming 3rd party software, what if it was malware etc that you didnt find on your system,

And i love this part.

Really, when my g/f started playing the game about 18 months ago, i gave her my old account that was never used, and she got banned after a few months, when she contacted support she got the same replies as above, after pushing it more and more with them she got a reply stating oh where sorry we banned the wrong account, and they unbanned her, i guess there analyzing went right out the window on that case.

Using the above, they could easily just strip out anyones account and never give a reason for it, oh you been farming somewhere and we dont like it, hit them with a ban and tell them 3rd party software,

Seriously look at all the speedclears of REAL TEAMS you could ban them all for going the same way, using the same skills, etc etc etc, i dont think enough consideration is given to the innocent players that are banned in the game, its to easy for a GM to sit there on the other side of the world and say, thanks for your money, bye bye.

Its this sort of bad support that is making me less likely to get GW2.

widow.

Thanks for your quick reply. I am completely innocent as I said before. But they insist on telling me that I used third party programs and bots, which I haven't, unless I somehow got my account hacked by another player or something and then he could use a bot.

I got this just a while ago:

Hello Rok,

We can confirm that you are talking to a real GM and that your account was banned following the use of a third party program which was not a spyware nor a virus.

As explained before we cannot disclose the information we have on record about this case to detect the use of third-party programs to automate the behaviour of the characters. We need to keep some of this information to preserve the efficiency of the bot detecting system.

Therefore we will not unban your account. This is our final decision.

Regards,

GM Amaury
Guild Wars Customer Support

So, now I am totally clueless what to do. I told them I will keep on updating my ticket in hopes we can work this out, but I just don't know... It this is the real GM, he must have an icy heart.

~ Rokzor

Well that gives me very little hope. I haven't got a response yet, but I can assure you that you are not alone. Someone yesterday mentioned the same thing according to one of my friends over in TOPK.

I've read about this on the other thread, and 3 people on that thread were also banned by mistake. A user named leprekan (he was also banned for no reason) suggested that you blow up the support ticket. Everytime they reply to you with discouraging responses, you have to reply to them by updating the ticket. He had so send A LOT of emails before he finally got his account unbanned. With constantly updating your ticket, you move ''up the food chain'' at Anet and sooner or later, they have to address your problem efficiently.
But I fear that this won't work in my case. If that is the real GM, I think there's little more I can do.

PS: I got banned in ToPK also. After farming for about 30 minutes, I stood still in the outpost and was chatting with a friend on X-fire. Then suddenly, I got banned.

~ Rokzor

This is how bad it got with my g/f, support pretty much told her the same as you, our decision is final bla bla bla, they did tell her that she was accused of doing something in RA, ( keeping in mind she had only started the game and didn't know what RA was let alone play it ) HAD they checked the logs they would have seen the account never played RA before.

This went on for about 3 days, in the end she ended up getting a contact number and phoned them UP direct and had it out with there support team, then the day after she got the email stating there apologies for the mistake and unbanned the account.

If you are truly innocent, id be pushing at them continuously until they sort it out.

Try contacting Support through [email protected] and put BANNED IN ERROR in the subject line. Include account name and support ticket number in the body of the message. Explain the problem clearly and politely.

A last resort, if the problem is not resolved, is to contact Gaile Gray with the problem via her wiki user page. http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/User_talk:Gaile_Gray

If you were using a third party program, don't bother doing any of the above.

I'm glad that we rezzed this thread again ^^ At least I know that I'm not alone.
Light and Peace: when did they ban your and your family's account?
The next time they reply to me, I will post a link to this thread. Maybe it will help.
And yeah, I will NEVER, EVER stop updating my ticket. I know I'm innocent. But then again, I could have a virus or something on my computer, but they said that didn't caused my ban. It was a third-party program or a bot, they said.
This last reply I got was a bit disturbing for me. First of all, they said I'm talking to a real GM, then the next thing was: This is final. Nice, very nice I have to say. -.-
Edit: I live in Slovenia, so I cannot possibly phone the support. The bill would probably be enough to buy another key...

~ Rokzor

I've been struggling to get my primary account back lately too. Some of the information they're asking for is just simply stuff I cannot provide, like the serial numbers for everything on the account. My primary had all the campaigns, special additions, bonus missions... it's ridiculous that I could probably hand them my birth certificate with my name on it and it probably wouldn't have sufficed for them. My name IS my email, it shouldn't be too hard to confirm it's me.

This banning is just wrong. I understand they clean bots from the game as much as possible, but to sweep away innocent players... That is a big issue. And it has to be fixed. I asked of them if they could provide me with solid evidence of me botting or at least the name of the program or something so I could delete it in case that I would buy a new key. But no all I get is this: This is our final decision. We will not unban your account.
Nothing that would prove that I botted. Of course, I didn't and I wouldn't risk it. Not after I bought all 4 games and enjoyed them for over 4 years... I think they should be more reasonable and less cold-hearted.
Just now I got a reply from them, stating the same as always (they won't unban me, etc., etc,...) plus this: Do not reply to this email as we will not answer anymore.

~ Rokzor

This forum does not serve as a platform for official communication with ArenaNet. Contact support, as has been mentioned before. Gaile Gray also has a wiki page setup that you might want to try.

Wooooot! My account was unblocked today. Gaile’s wiki page is definitely the way to go once support has told you to leave them alone, my account had been banned for almost 3 months so it may take you some time to get it back. My advice be patient, be polite and try to provide them with as much info as possible. So glad that I can buy Guild Wars 2 now, the clips from GamesCom look epic.

Just wanted to update everyone on a few things:

For those who care, I was unbanned yesterday and they said it was in fact an error on their part.

Currently, on gaile's feedback page for support issues, there are several wrongful ban appeals going on. At this point, there doesn't seem to be any large increase of false positives from what Gaile has been privy to.

They are currently talking to the Live Team, Support in Europe and America to review the false positives, which may end up changing their bot profiling techniques.

To those of you who are interested, her feedback page is here:
http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Feedb...Support_Issues

I also wanted to comment that macro's really aren't an issue if they are in PVE and again require you to be present to execute them properly. Self repeating macro's of course would be full automation and thusly against EULA.

To those who gave me the benefit of the doubt, thank you. For those who didn't, I hope you understand false positives do occur.

If I get any more updates from Gaile about what they are doing, I will go ahead and post them here. Obviously we won't be privy to the actual criteria so they can maintain their screening effectiveness without the bot programmers finding a way around their detection methods.

This is much like piracy. Seems to be a constant one up-manship going on.

I am still concerned about farming anywhere at this point obviously.

Quote from Gaile:
We are reviewing the parameters for bot detection, as we do after nearly any false positive. I feel that you should not be overly concerned about the other account. There were particular elements involving your own account that, from your description, would not be a factor in a review of your alternate account. Therefore I feel quite sure that account would not be blocked for botting.



How can you say for certain that macros really are not the issue? What "particular elements" do you think gaile may be refering to? If not macros then what else were you doing? Using macros in PVP vs PVE?

My son was farming the crap out of TOPK with the exact same builds you were using during the same timeframe and has had no issues. I personally have farmed the living crap outta this game for 5 years and never ever have had an issue.

Not buying your diagnosis doc! My money is still on the macros.

IMHO Stay away from macros and stay ban free!

It wasn't the macro, if fact, the alternate account doesn't have an assassin. It might be that. The alternate account has the same macro because it's on the same computer with has the same hardware and I have dervs on both accounts. Capish?

Please make an effort to read thoroughly instead of rendering a moot opinion on a situation that has been proven by their own words an ERROR. Thusly, it wasn't the macro. Elements or not, it wasn't a banning factor.

In other words, be constructive.

Oh, and if you have an issue with my particular case, why don't you PM me? I'm more than happy to take my personal case and and discuss it with you there.

since i have only read every few pages of this post and it appears that anet's stance on texmod is that it is ok in its "original" form. so my question is where do you find the "original" form or how do you know that the ones on wiki are "original" forms and won't result in a ban?

There's no real way, and honestly Anet's ability to detect whether or not you're using the "original" form of Textmod is unlikely.

Honestly, they can't even distinguish between MAC addresses, even though they can read IPs. They don't have the best tools in the world, and it shows in their bot-detection techniques and bannings.

if anyone, at this point, is trying to draw very fine lines about where they think legal and illegal differ, and want to step right up to that line, I sure hope they don't have any strong attachments to that account

What ArenaNet was saying is that at this time they have no problem with the TexMod in use. But they are reserving the right to object in the future if alterations are made or even if another program appears with the same name.

Many of us on guru have used TexMod to work on our Cartography titles, myself included. As long as the program is only affecting what you see on your computer, it is fine. If someone adds a bot program to a TexMod version and you use it, then watch for the ban.

The basic rule is no program is permitted that allows you to play the game without interacting with the keyboard. Macros are an iffy area so with those you are taking a chance. But TexMod is not a bot program, nor is it a macro. It doesn't let you walk the edges without constantly directing your character, it just shows where you haven't been yet.

Check the checksum!

http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Guide...-game_graphics

I recall someone posting this, after me saying Anets basic rules on third party programs.
Which brings me to what Black Metal said earlier
I think a lot of people need to read that over and over till the light comes on..

Their ability to detect TexMod is unlikely, whichever the version.

TexMod is pretty much a launcher. It reads textures in the graphic card buffer and replaces them on the fly. The scene is rendered as intended, then TexMod kicks in and swaps the chosen texture, producing alterations to the local visualization.

There's no way Anet could detect such a process, since it doesn't interact with the client-server operations in any way.

That's if you use the "original" TexMod. Modified versions could come with other optional tools, such as bots. Or GWCA bots could rely on TexMod for optional features. Those tools could well trigger a ban, not TexMod itself.

Theoretically, wouldn't a memory scan work?
No such things exist.

Quoted for emphasis and not only this, but they were banning MULTIPLE accounts relating to a banned account. I know several people that had multiple accounts banned even though they only ran the bot program on one account.

In other words, if you are attached to any of your accounts, dont see how far you can push it.

Sure thing, but they just can't do it.

They're not allowed to scan your local memory without prior approval. Even if they do, they're likely not allowed to store and use the results against you.

Also, TexMod running in memory doesn't imply you're using it to mod Guild Wars, or that you're using it with any mod at all. TexMod is a texture ripper/modder that works with any D3D application, so, detecting TexMod in memory isn't enough.

Scanning processes to check wether TexMod is running and also launching Guild Wars is definitely something they can't do. Even just for the extra burden it would cause to the client/server communication, multiplied for all the clients connected at the same time.
Mine was just hypothetic speculation. Since I never had any interest in bots or bot-like programs, I don't know for sure, just trying to figure out how a "tainted" copy of TexMod could cause an account ban.

It can't. If Anet bans an account that was only using TextMod, then it means that the account also fit some of their other bot-behavioral rubrics.

Honestly, Anet's support has a hard time telling the difference between 3rd party programs, and anything that uses .dll injection will probably send up a red flag almost immediately.

And there's no such thing as a corrupted version of TextMod being used to bot; however, there are ways to automate processes that don't involve .dll injection or game manipulation in any way (so they're undetectable short of character behavior), and are being heavily used now to do basic processes like farm for Nic, run a sin in RA, etc.

TexMod doesn't use .dll injection anyway.

I was pretty sure there wasn't one even before.

I was just replying to this:

fires element in turn likely refers to the in game conversation with GMs, when they claimed they had a shortlist of "tolerated" 3rd Party Programs. They also underlined that those wouldn't cause a ban in their "current, original form".



So, I said: TexMod, for how debatable its use can be, is likely safe, as it's not detectable (in its current form) by any reasonable means.

There are no "corrupted" or "tainted" versions of TexMod that I know. Only way for TexMod to become dangerous is if it was bundled with some (hypotetical) bot, or a necessary component of some bot. Then again, the subsequent ban would actually be caused by the bot itself and not TexMod anyway.

So, you say there is no bot working with TexMod. As I tought.

But still, there are multiple download sources for TexMod. The archive could contain a perfectly fine copy of TexMod, and who knows what else. Any unaware user could inadvertently launch stuff and end up being screwed. Not by TexMod itself, but by something else they downloaded together with it.

so downloading texmod from the official wiki won't/shouldn't result in a ban since those are considered "original" forms of the program?

i apologize for the paranoia but i just don't want to be banned for using texmod since it has been said thats its ok but then there are people that claim they only used texmod and still got banned

TexMod modifies textures on the fly as they are put into memory by Direct X (memory = your physical RAM) I fail to see how it even touches GW or even gives the remote chance of a possibility you will get banned. Your DAT/EXE is NEVER modified.

TexMod =/= Game Modification

I've used TexMod on OFFLINE games before, forced a shut down to see if it made the mod stick in game files and it didn't. This is all the proof you need that texmod works with game textures in RAM just like if you went and screwed with jpg's in your browser cache and reloaded a webpage.

If they were to change the EULA to cover for it, 99% of people wouldn't even notice.

It would. Of course, it would also be the sort of ridiculous privacy breach that would lead me to uninstall instantly and boycott NCSoft permanently. (If I weren't already boycotting NCSoft permanently in response to their terrible handling of security issues...)

Diditn diablo 2 start using some software that scanned your task manager to see if you had the old pindlebot running?!

I believe it was called "warden"...

If they can do it without issue, can anet not also?

They technically could....but then they're in a difficult grey area. Kind of like when Sony installed rootkits on peoples' computers w/o their knowledge and got sued.

And Anet doesn't have the staff, tools, money, or know-how to actually get something like that into their client.

That's correct; they also use it in WoW and WC3 afaik.

There's been some uproar about Warden being invasive, but for the most part, nobody cares - as long as it's in the EULA.