Was termination really appropriate?

Firstly, I didn't insult you... I pointed out that you got a ban for your actions.

I also suggested if you were honest about the extent of your botting you should contact support... that might seem kind of obvious, but one never knows.

And yes, if I was working NCsoft support dealing with the flood of botters demanding their accounts back, I would stop and laugh when I came across a guy who botted so little that he never made it out of the outpost... and assuming you weren't using an outpost based bot (Drunk bot, trade/scambot, Gold seller spam bot etc...) I'd still be laughing as I unbanned your account.

But, you're a rude, obnoxious little RED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GOwit and I don't care if you contact support, I certainly no longer care if you get your account back.

Have a good day, I know I will.

Is not what you said,its how.

Nope, perma-ban is it. No negotiation in this case.

Sorry you are banned, you should not have use a bot when you've agreed not to use one, period.

so this is interpretive QQ now? move over regular QQ the new less definitive more open QQ is here. perhaps he put in an angry period, or a menacing apostrophe ? is my question make glaring at you the wrong way? oh no another one! EKK AN UPSETTING ECLAMATION POINT...

Jesus christ,this is my last reply to you...

I'm here to discuss the bans,not argue with others.

GG,you won,you beat me,etc,etc.

No offense to OP, but this made me lol

what is this i dont even

Botters are cheaters. Cheaters are evil. Evil never wins. If you botted, you cheated, and you got perma banned, rightfully so. Goodbye to you and good luck.

I'm thinking it was either an absolute fail attempt at a strawman argument or attempted humor. Then again, he may just be the transcriptionist for the voices in his head.

Botting itself should not be punished,but the benefits from it.

Like; If a person botted and all it did was take 20 steps in a town,does he deserve a ban?

Can you expand that to include all of us? please please please

You said you wanted to tell your story. check {way to many times IMO}
You said you wanted to see what other people thought. check

Now please stop repeating yourself and just deal with Anet support about getting your acct back.
You are really sorry should be a good enough reason so I'm sure you will soon be able to spam your story in outposts all across the land.


YES

as i have said before, a second or a lifetime depends on which end of the barrel you stand... you say it was just 20 steps, the next guy says whats a few ecto, come on , i'm not as bad as so and so... so and so says, well one stack of ectos isn't like a stack of armbraces... its not about the first step you make its about the step of the guy that follows you... one of you is racing to the top of the heap, its just a question of whos step started the race...

Yes, they do. If you used a bot, in any form, you deserve to be perma banned. Personally, I think they should be MAC and IP banned from the game, so they have no chance of returning. There is zero excuse to use a bot, no matter how you word it. It's against the ToS/EULA, and the punishment fits the crime. Cya botters!

I'm only repeating myself because people keep saying stuff that contradict what I just said,hence,they are not reading it or don't understand it.

If I am to shut up because I am repeating myself,then everyone here needs to shut it.




I respect you,and anyone that has that opinion. Especially since I have my PC because of your help...

Anyways,so,according to your opinion,a person that gained nothing deserves the same punishment as the one that gained hundreds of ectos...

good statement, and i agree with it. botters definitely deserve to be banned.

one problem here though:
not everyone who has tried or used a bot program would i consider a "botter".

Zarion, no offence man, but you have been pleading your innocence with people who did NOT bot, sympathy stopped the second you knowingly did what you did. for the love of all that is sacred STOP ASKING OUR APPROVAL YOU WILL NOT GET IT. i promise, if i could personally hand deliver your plea to support just to get you to stop repeating your sob story, believe you me, i would crawl there. If by some form of divine grace an Anet staffer sees this sad, long, overly exaggerated thread about the 20 steps ( we know it was 20 steps, you have apparently counted the steps you took years ago, committed them to memory and then drilled them into our heads) you took to your ban, goes over all the info they gathered on you and by some spectacular act of ignorance allows you back in game, please for the love of god don't tell us about it!

Actually, i do not think ArenaNet would wrongly ban anyone, if you really did not bot, go talk to their support.

ArenaNet did however take a long time to deal with this issue, that is probably to make absolutely and be very sure that those people they banned deserve to be banned. With whatever technology/programming/data gathering program thingy they write.

So, plea if you must, I am sure they have the evidence/data collected to back them up of all "botting" activities that leads to the banned.

now listen Judge I did not know that robbing a bank, stealing a car and murdering 500 people was wrong so your only going to give me 5 days in jail right? Cool...NOT BOT=PERM BAN..
close thread, light goes out all is over.

Just because he was late to the botting scene and only got to use his for 20 steps doesn't mean he doesn't still deserve his punishment. They downloaded the bot for a reason, and whether or not they had the chance to use it shouldn't make a difference in their punishment as they had the intent to use it.

Also just wondering if it was pretty cool to watch Dhuum appear before you and kill your character?

hehe no,I was watching T.V when I got banned

Well it's pretty obvious that Anet was making a bloodbath out of this (hey lets have Dhuum come and knock them out of the game to make everyone watching shit their pants!). To me it looks more like their trying to appease the mindless masses than actually do something good for the game and its players. And its worked...

Tell that to the OP.

Yes he does. It's against the rules. You knew the risks, took them, got caught... the end.

That's a lesson.

Oh yeah not to mention that I'm pretty sure you did more than walk around 20 feet in a town with that bot.

Ok,maybe 21 feet.

No but seriously,I shutted the bot off before it went to the explorable area.

Whether you belive it or not,its irrelevant. I know what I did.

Build a bridge cheater. I bet you think you are L337 now lol.

Well it seems that people need to reminded of it time and time again because 3,700 seemed to have some how missed this warning. And we woudln't want anyone using the excuse "we didn't know" in the next set of bans.

If you bothered to read this from Anet you would have found there is more to it. And yes every ban should be permanent how else will people learn there is no excess for ignoring warnings and thinking nothing will happen to you.

If you are caught breaking the law you are punished bottom line, if you are caught speeding you get a ticket and if ignore that and you get three tickets within a year you lose your license (depending on state). Anet has said time and time again in the tos, eula, login announcements, ingame chat announcements, on the forums, on the offical wiki on their main site in the FAQ for the past five years. All those were/are and will be your second chances there is no excuse you nor anyone else can give.

They can it's called contacting support.

People seem to want a lot of chances when they ignored all the other warning about illegal activities. And it's the same gripe every time Anet mass bans people "we didn't do anything wrong", "we didn't know", "I only did it once", "We didn't deserve a ban" later we all find out there was more to it they didn't just one thing wrong they did a list of things.

And if they and you are innocent then that's something you can take up with support and may they lift the ban.

ok, its clear that a temp ban on botters accounts is not a solution, give a cheater a week to return, and they will have a new bot that is less detectable. this is the same as people that challenged nerfing of UWSC, given one shot, no matter how much further they nerfed things in game, they were determined to post game breaking speeds, they never cared that their results just worsened the nerfs, botting has the same results , nerf my bot? i'll find a better one, but go straight to Perma ban the account and guess what? no temptation, and a reduced desire by the remaining community to even try to bot. the arguement that one person only did x amount of botting so they only deserve x amount of punishment is bull, simply put, you put the same game breaking bot into play as the guy that did it for years. YOU BROKE THE SAME RULE. duration of your offense doesnt change the rule.

Huh? Not enjoying the rampant cheating in every PvP format makes you a mindless zombie?

The blanket ban of 3,700 accounts may have been a tad draconian but every player that was banned, from those that were botting daily on multiple accounts to those that only tried a bot once out of curiosity deserved it. The top level players that were banned due to the latter reason should have known better.

Look at it from Anet's perspective. You have a big bot problem. Lots of your players are making the decision to download and use bots in your game, which you do not, under any circumstances, want them to do.

Now, when deciding how to deal with this, you have to make the decision whether to place defining what is an offense up to your staff, or up to the players.

If you leave it up to your staff, you will end up with a more or less black and white system: here is the line - if you cross it, you've committed an offense, and you are punished. With easily definable terms, you can examine the data and mete out the punishments in a quick and consistent manner. The downside (from an offender's point of view) is that it does not leave much room for differentiation of punishment based on scale of offense.

If you leave it up to players, all of a sudden you've got 3700 shades of gray:
"I used a bot once, but deleted it before I got any in-game benefit."
"I used a bot once, but only got 10 gold, then deleted it."
"I used a bot to finish off my drunkard title, which I don't feel impacts the economy."
"I put 5000 hours into the game, and only used a bot for a week toward the end. I'm a loyal player who made a mistake because I was curious."
etc.

So, you go through all 3700 offenders on a case by case basis, which takes many more resources to process. And in the end, what you end up with is a playerbase that:

1. Understands that they have some wiggle room to explore the boundaries of what is considered an offense. They will experiment with new bots, exploits, etc, because they know they can push the envelope with minimal fear of retribution.

2. Will rationalize decisions to cheat. "I'll use a bot, but only to get 10k, then I'll delete it - I see that much as OK, but any more would be an offense". This means that some players who would be dissuaded from cheating in a black and white system will be much more likely to cheat in the gray system. After all, if it doesn't seem like cheating, it probably isn't.

3. Will compare punishments in forums like this and decry any apparent discrepancies that the subjective punishment system led to.

As a game developer, this is not what you want to deal with.

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

The thing to learn from this is that Anet defines what is and isn't an offense. Whether you benefited from your cheating is irrelevant. The only thing that matters is that you trespassed. It doesn't matter that you decided against stealing from the homeowners; you saw the same locked door that every other player saw...and you made the conscious decision to break in. You don't get to decide whether to press charges.

Sorry to barge in again, but I really think, ArenaNet has a data collection system/program in place before they took the banning action, I stumble upon an ArenaNet's programmer webpage sometime ago, and he was talking about some kind of data collecting thing he's working on in two parts, although it was not mention that it is for Guild Wars, but what this guy can do to collect data in a game is very impressive. Its like a tracker. so, I do believe that ArenaNet has all the evidence they need before (not that they need it, since they have the right to terminate anyone they like in the first place) sweeping the scythe. (must find the blog ... , god damn computer die on me again)

Lets Just consider the possibility that...

ANet was on the problem a good time before we demanded a response on botting, if you believe that they banned retroactively for a considerate amount of time...and...It seems to be way personal issue with Anet hinting the skill dhumm used to slay and humiliate the offender. I would be pissed to if i was part of a staff who is paid to keep a vibrant gaming experience for fans.

http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Vengeance_is_Ours

Show for the mindless masses?

We DEMANDED for a response for a month and they replied, everyone that witnessed is now reminded botting will not be tolerated...honestly i can't think of more effective response to our demand.

Thank you for the reply Anet. We hear you loud and clear

^ well put

Might be so... but where to draw a line....
Basic is...they knew that they where doing things that where not justified by the rules....

As far as I'm concerned you're proving my point. Bragging about banning a shitload of people and doing it in an extravagant fashion such as this is clearly a show for the masses and it appeases their need to watch people get shitted on while using their crimes as justification. They could have done this quickly and quietly but they chose not to. And people are getting warm fuzzy's about it.

Sure they broke the rules. Sure they got caught. Why don't you punish them the same way you have everyone else before? I mean seriously the makers of this game are SHOWING OFF that 3,700 of their players thought the game was too much of a pain in the ass to play.

You seem totally offended by the fact that people were banned publicly? why? You know they broke the rules...and why care if its a pain in the ass?

For one, there is no clearer way to show who is in control than "showing off" if by that you mean enforcing rules that create a game.... just like the police will pull your ass over with flashing lights and sirens..to remind people you better not speed or drink and drive we will get you too. Sorry apparently there is enforcement to rules... by spreading that message they are doing people a favor by reminding people there consequences to botting.

I have never seen that announcement INGAME and on the forums or on the wiki doesn`t count. Even the login screen isn`t enough, because you can add a command to the shortcut to GW and automatically login, never seeing that login screen.

Permanent punishment without a warning shot first are not OK!

It's called the End User License Agreement and the Rules of Conduct. The EULA is your in game warning that you are required to agree to the very first time you play, or any time it is updated. ANet already warned everyone. It's not ANet's fault if someone ignores the warning or did not read it.

Just because you didn't read it doesn't mean it wasn't announced.

It's in the EULA, the thing you agree to when you register the game.

The usual EULA excuse, even though it has already been mentioned that the EULA is legally highly questionable especially in Europe.

Or don't you think that "We can ban you without any reasons" isn't extremely one-sided and to the disadvantage of the customer? It's like saying "We expect you to pay for a service that we then decide about if we actually provide it or not!".

What disturbs me the most is that so many people are extremely hateful on this topic and fine with ANet being Accuser, Judge and Executioner in one person even though ANet never provides proof for anything.

In a virtual world someone used a program to get virtual results and lost REAL MONEY! How hate-filled and stupid do you have to be to agree with you?

hahahah they did what i exactly wanted them to do a mass ban without warning mwuahahah