Was termination really appropriate?

I lol when people disguise their bad decisions as good intentions. To say that you helped your friends and guild by jeopardizing their accounts with ill-gotten goods and gold is some form of penance for your decision to bot is not only silly, but down right sad, i'm sure any who would get banned for your efforts would surely raise you up on their shoulders and parade you around as a hero(wait, why are we headed to that bonfire? whats with the pitchforks?).

They don't know the sense of accomplishment that goes into finding a feebas, screwing up on the sheen (stupid poffins), only to be relieved you were smart enough to catch a male and a female.

Bull. It's a multiplayer environment. There has to be zero tolerance for cheating, or cheating would be out of control. Cheaters are just mad that Anet is doing their job, but the rest of the playerbase is happier for it.

Well Robin Hood did the same thing and everyone thinks highly of him..be him fictional or not.

Anyways, for those that got banned..why are you worried? You do realize how many games out there top GW at the moment right? Go play those and you'll forget GW soon enough.

i think the bans were justified, but i would like to see them do something with the ill gotten items. maybe they should give them to the shining blade and come up with a new npc that will hand you some random items confiscated from banned botter accounts for medals of honor

I was banned for botting, I'll go right out and admit it. I am disappointed (I have been playing Guild Wars since '06) but I am not going to lie to myself and try to justify it. I broke the rules and I payed the consequences. I know what I was doing was wrong, but I was lazy and felt I deserved all the nice things other players had without working. I fooled myself into thinking that I would not be banned, even though deep down I knew that sooner or later I would be caught and punished. I have nobody to blame but myself, so I applaud ANET on their decisiveness. I'm not saying this just because I am already banned. If ANET somehow knew all the accounts that were botting, I would rather them give them a perma ban than take the pussy way out and "give them a 2 week ban" to "a chance to reflect on their misdemeanors."

I'm not disguising anything, I quit GW ages ago and decided to leave with a bang. Made money, used that money for positive support, had the best 3-4 weeks of GW I ever had since I started. I just think it's absolutely silly that I'm now scum for somehow hurting you in inexplicable ways.

You're the one assuming I'm making excuses, I just created a thread for discussion. Enjoy attacking me all you want, it doesn't make you seem more intelligent or witty, nor does it make me feel worse.

So my point is, provide me an actual rational and sound opinion on the subject, rather than LOL BOT YOU TRASH I HOPE YOU DIE. Frankly, I'm not the one being immature here.

1. Let's.
2. The way to deal with the problem is to deal with it on the front end.
3. I am a person who likes analogies. However if you're going to use them please put a little more thought into them.
3.(Cont.) and 4. I did not say they should get away with it.

You seem mature, polite and admiringly honest but that doesn't change the fact nobody likes a cheater regardless of your motivation, flippancy or the fact you went Robin Hood with your profit.

You do have a point but seriously...what did you really expect.A group hug?

I don't think I've seen any personal hatred or disdain here as opposed to expected reaction against those crying foul citing their personal motivation to bot as an acceptable reason for leniency.

Sorry but it just doesn't work that way.

If they decided not to ban every player who claimed their "neighbour", "friend" or "insert contact" as the person who botted on their IP there would have been zero bans.

Most honest post I've read so far.Kudos.

I agree to disagree.Regina already posted their reasoning for the time taken to react and it's sound.

The only rational opinion I have is that it plainly states in the EULA no bot usage.

Maybe you people that got banned didn't read it or figured you didn't apply to the rules....

My advice is get a new account, start over, and play straight.

You have done things that the End User License Agreement you accepted before starting to play the game - forbids doing, and explains the punishment for it.
Is that mature enough for you?

Take Note Kids
This is what is called person responsibility {something that is sorely lacking these days IMO}
ALL of the people twisting and contorting to justify cheating "I only did it once" "Everyone else was doing it" " it happened along time ago so I shouldn't be punished" "I did it to help my friends" "blah blah blah" should try to learn how to do what Pugs has done here!

@ Pugs
A+ for manning up
F- for cheating in the first place but GL to you.

Some people,like a friend i know IRL,were banned for textmod/multi launch. you were just lucky I guess.


Ofcourse, IDK if its dll detection but it probably is.

"Was termination really appropriate? "


Yeap.


I love all the rationale being said here, i never had so much amusement on these forums.

also lol @ Zarion.

Much respect ! now thats the sort of person that i can say will be missed in game, one that mans up! hopefully with that attitude of both awareness and owning you're decision we see you in GW2 ready to be better then you were before

@ ShaneOfMach "Enjoy attacking me all you want, it doesn't make you seem more intelligent or witty, nor does it make me feel worse.

So my point is, provide me an actual rational and sound opinion on the subject, rather than LOL BOT YOU TRASH I HOPE YOU DIE. Frankly, I'm not the one being immature here."
don't recall saying any of that, hmm, mad much ?
lets hope you mature to half the level of Pugs here.

You know what would have been way cool? If the banned accounts were just flagged and had Dhuum spawn in every explorable area and outpost to kill them over and over again

CAN'T RUN FROM DHUUM BABY

Yesterday dhuum attacked all known botters and breakers of the Eula but was it enough? i relize areanet banned 3,700 accounts but they missed key accounts that have at least admitted to buying and selling illegal items such as duped items now. Duped items have always been a problem but ive seen a few people openly admit of "passing on duped mini rolls to other accounts and friends" on public forms and with their characters names and when innocents are banned but not them it gets me a little annoyed. I personally was not banned but several of my friends who to be honest werent smart enough to figure out how to work a bot and were so poor that theirs no way they botted get permanatly banned.

So i would like others opinions am i overracting or is it that this isnt right?

you called 2000 botters, 2000 active players. I lol'd

Yup, you botted, you took the risk, you got rewards, you got banned by dhuum's scythe haha. Buy on a serious note, why give a 2 week suspension, because when the 2 weeks were up, more than half of you botters would transfer the ectos and platinum to an alt account that never botted for safekeeping. Anet thought ahead and they let Dhuum take charge on you botting lames. 5 years EULA was the warning.

I'm sure they must have done something to deserve the ban. If they didn't, they can appeal to it by the customer service. So far all the people I know who have been banned deserve it. When somebody says: "I've only used textm0d wth!" I don't take it for granted tbh.

I've already admitted it and I already knew it was wrong. I apologize if I haven't sucked your dick while I was "manning up".

What's interesting is that I really don't care about being banned, but even so others do. This thread is not about me, I'm just simply bringing up a topic for discussion.

Dhuum wanted his ecto back and was very mad ofcourse, sounds like an appropriate punishment.. But realy, you took the risk and you knew there was chance you could be banned. This could have happen at any moment.

YESSS THE ECTO IT'S ALL MINE
/proceeds to swim in a tub of ectoplasm

I, for one, would love to see this.

I love it too, these retard botters are so pathetic at lying. If you look around at some of the admitted botters, you have people having anywhere from 2-30+ side accounts (lord knows how many the gold sellers have, and i wont take them into account), and even if we make the average around 10 accounts per 1 person botting (yeah i know thats a bit low), thats >400 people total effected...and i'm being generous, the number is prolly a bit lower.

"oh noes GW is gona b ded wit out botarz"

"comuniti iz ded"

"dis gam iz ded an empti nao"


No. Stfu and gtfo.

shame you think that the one person to be at the very least responsible for their actions was doing any such thing. more so the reason you no longer being in game is not a loss

for a person that doesn't care, you are rather defensive, i rather prefer the term Bott-hurt for people like you. but lets see where this open discussion that you won't allow to have a different opinion is going, what exactly were you opening for discussion? all i'm seeing is ME ME ME from the last few posts, might want to have a point other then being rude and apparently angry.

If it was true, all the accounts injecting .dll would be banned. But not all of them are banned. More likely, it was some guy/guys checking widely available list of bots, running them, and then just standing in outposts they knew that the bots are for, collecting nicknames.

--------------

On topic, yeah, it is too harsh. The general reaction to people complaining about being banned is also harsh. In virtual reality, this was 3700 deaths sentences carried out. To a cheering crowd of course. Welcome back to Dark Ages.
The fact of the matter is that most of the banned people were not some evil RL traders selling stuff for dollars and buying cars and houses with it. Most were just PvE players doing some titles, getting some gold for their own use or getting PvP titles they could not otherwise get [champ points anyone?].

I'm pretty sure that a slap would be more than enough to stop those players forever from botting. And if not, and if the tools ANET has are so sophisticated, they'd only have some more time before the perma ban [assuming they re-offend].

Why there was no warning? Maybe because they don't really have any special tools, just some peeps sadly watching outposts for bot-like activity? If they give a warning in such situation, most ppl stop botting, but not all. And soon enough, those that continue botting realize that 'detection tools' are a big piece of PR talk, and they can bot no problem, undetected [unless they do smth stupid like going back to old bots, in old outposts etc.]


P.S. Is it really necessary to gloat so much, and take so much joy in others' misery? LOL & FFS. I know you'd all kill the poor guy on the chair in Stanley Milgram experiment, but at least try to pretend you're something better. And those few that want banned goods to be redistributed - that'd be against EULA, no? And also, why would you want filthy botted stuff anyway? :P

For someone that doesn't care, you're still participating in a discussion on a fan forum on the topic.

That's indicative of not having let go, and altruism because "others do" rings kind of hollow.

In one word yes

Some of these people have been around for five to three years and knew what was at stake for engaging in such things. They have warned people about the what would happen if they where caught doing something wrong in previous bans and the announcement on the log in screen, that was the first, second, and last warning before termination.

Coming here trying to appeal what happened and to gain the support and sympathy from the community to over turn the bans isn't going to help, your best chance it to contact support.

Damn, that's some good stuff you're smoking there. LOL

I usually dont like being arrogant but in this case...

For god's sake, STOP CRYING LIKE A BABY!!!

the EULA is A.Nets contract with players. There is clearly stated that if you bot you WILL get banned if they judge it right, and when you press the cute little button called I AGREE you just accepted for as long as you play the game, that you will play by their rules or face the punishments that A.Net judges fair.

But, if you got banned and you REALLY did not use anything else than Texmod, KSmod or whatever you honestly think was not a malicious bot program, then sorry for being rude and please contact NC Support, they will listen to you and try to solve it if you are really innocent.

So, TL;DR: IF YOU BOTTED, STOP COMPLAINING CAUSE YOU AGREED TO BE BANNED AT FIRST PLACE!

The Dark Ages reference seems very appropriate in an online fantasy game,
maybe we should have pillories in the major cities so the culprits can be vilified publicly. What I think is harsh are all the crazy justifications for what they were banned for.

“The worst crime is faking it”

Kurt Cobain

Alright, I agree, unban the accounts.

Instead I think a simple solution works:
Strip all items & gold off all of them
Make them unable to pick up any items or gold
Unable to send chat messages to local, party, or whisper,
Reset all titles and HoM
Unable to party with anyone except henchmen, who all ragequit upon entering any instance.

Wait... we had bots in the dark ages?

Seriously though, I can't be bothered to mourn the lose of programs. The real people behind them weren't even playing anyway. lol

LOL History repeats itself. This is exactly what it was like back when Blizzard banned the crap out of everyone for botting in D2. Then a month later they turned around and banned everyone that was using Maphack.

Send your lame motivations and excuses for botting to the ANET support desk, maybe you will get a cookie there.

Botters have been banned since the beginning of this game. It is a constant cycle and will continue as long as hackers and game companies continually update their methods.

I hope the bans continue in larger numbers...

She was asking for it! Seriously, the guilty have the nerve to blame the victim and somehow feel justified? That's pretty lame right there...

Yeah, that's what it is... all the activity is poor, downtrodden botters that are crying out at the injustice of it all. We can ignore the fact that the majority of the posts are either cheering Anet for catching you scumbags or just lol'ing at your stupid excuses. Two months is a hefty suspension? You're sure that many botters would reconsider botting? Well, a permaban is the only way to deal with the worst scum in the game, botters and gold sellers... and I'm pretty sure a permaban will do a whole lot more to dissuade future botters than a slap on the wrist and an invite to come back and play some more... it sends a pretty clear message.

You knew what the risks were, you knew that you could get caught... you took a chance and you lost, and now you want to cry about it... no sympathy.

Read: I didn't want to be a cheating scumbag, I'm a good person, ArenaNet MADE me do it. Taking responsibility for you own actions has never been so unpopular.

Okay, and here is your first free English lesson. English is a proper noun, and thus it is capitalized.


Everyone else is doing it (a lie to begin with) so why can't I? Stop blaming other people for your bad decisions.

The people most attached to this game are the ones who would never jeopardize their account by doing something so foolish that they know is against the rules, is likely to result in a perma-ban if caught, and by it's very actions is destroying the game they care so much about...

That would be relevant if you at anytime had ownership rights over any of the intellectual property that ArenaNet is denying you access to... you never did, so it's entirely irrelevant here. Such IP laws might become a nightmare for companies like Second Life, and possibly even EVE, but they are a red herring here being used by desperate cheaters, unwilling to take responsibility for their own actions.


To the OP, no sorry, a permanent ban isn't heavy handed or over the top for botting... botting is insidious and difficult (and costly) to combat, destructive to the game community. A clear set of warnings and a zero tolerance policy all clearly spelled out before you get to install the game makes it very clear what the outcome of botting is. If they catch you, they will ban you.

And, to be honest with you, ArenaNet backing down on these bot bans would be enough to make me reconsider ever buying another of their products. If ArenaNet doesn't want to run fair games where people aren't rewarded for being cheating scumbags... I have no interest in giving them my money.

OP: Yes.






I just read the topic.

8000 hours of play or 8000 hours of botting?

If you guys really cared that much about your precious accounts, you wouldn't have cheated your ways into uberness. You guys knew it was illegal and took the risk. Too bad!

i agree with op partially. punishment should have varying degrees depending on the such factors as the amount of botting and the amount earned through botting, etc. anet's detection methods are most likely shit though, or they couldn't just be arsed to look at each case on a per individual basis. at this point however, its much too late to revoke the bans. what's done is done.

yes the terminations were appropriate.

what I don't agree with is the prevention of future accounts being bought by the same person.

Thank you so much for banning these botters. I was beginning to have second thoughts about gw2 because I was worried that the botting problem would get out of hand there too. Termination was very appropriate and I feel like working on my HoM and pvping is more worth my time. The majority of the GW population fully backs this decision, just look back at the anti-botting threads