Account blocked - Reason? Take a wild guess....

So, I log onto GW this morning, only to find that my account has been blocked for "unacceptable behavior." No explanation of what that behavior is, what the nature of it was, when it was, to whom it was directed. Nothing. Just ubiquitous big brother saying, "Guess what, you screwed up, or so somebody said, so go sit on the bench for a while, and if you keep doing it, we're going to ban your account."

Now, I’m trying to figure out what it is I've done. If I don’t know, what’s to prevent me from doing it again? I don’t go around cussing people out, being rude, being explicit. I've invested several hundred dollars in this game now, and hundreds and hundreds of hours of my life leading a guild of really good players to a decent rank. I think at this point that I've earned the friggin right to know what offense I've committed. This "unacceptable behavior" is nonsense. Tell me what I've done. I honestly don’t have any idea.

I go out of my way to be polite to people and work towards bettering the community. I give items away for free on a regular basis. I answer questions people post. I try to end disputes rather than create them. How can this happen?

I’m sitting here trying to recall what I could possibly have done in the last several weeks to offend anyone. Trying to recall who I could have said something to, who I could have been wrongful or hurtful or spiteful to. I can’t think of what I've done wrong, and Anet won’t tell me. How the hell is this productive?????

I am seriously let down by this game right now. If this is the kind of response I get from a company that I've worked so hard to promote and bring people too, in addition to spending as much money and time on their product as I have...to have my account banned for some indiscriminate reason is seriously giving me the short end of the stick. I think ALL of us deserve better than some universal script window saying that we can’t play anymore. Show me something. Give me a legitimate reason. A screenshot. A REASON. PROOF. Anything is better than "unacceptable behavior." What is that? I've re-read the EULA about 10 times now. None of my behavior fits into the things they list. I want to know if some script kiddie is photoshopping my name into a screenshot and posting it as authentic or not. At the very least tell me what it was that I did so that I don’t do it again. This isn't big brother. It's a friggin video game. I am a paying customer, and I deserve better treatment after spending hundreds and hundreds of dollars on it and promoting it to dozens of people.

Make sure to let us know what you did if you find out. Other then that, go buy another GW game and make sure not to step on anyone's toes again!

Care to explain how?

Ebay, Prima guide, t-shirts. Cant think of anything more. It may be that youve sold or bought stuff on ebay.

Perhaps also putting money into advertising the game as well? I dunno... If you haven't done anything wrong, I hope you get your account back soon :\

Well... what some people consider 'acceptable' others will consider 'unacceptable'. Anet doesn't owe you a response, or even a clarification as to what was unacceptable. You know what you did, and why it could be considered unacceptable, but you are unwilling to fess up. You stand behind a defense that is "prove it". That works great in court, but this is a game run by a company. They ban people and have no responsability to "prove it" to you or to any other. That's the way these things work.

My guesses as to what you did were:

1) Naming of a character inappropriatly.
2) Using bot like (or bot in fact) farming tactics.
3) Using guild functions to exploit GvG (like creating sub-guilds to farm for points).

You indicate that you have purchaced more than one game. Any chance you are using one account to augment your others inappropriatly? This dynamic ruined DAoC and I doubt that Anet will tolerate it.

What's that supposed to mean?

Wow....this is a lot of responses, and it's awesome that this community is this active, which is why I love this place.

Anyhow, to answer some questions:

I only have 1 account, and one guild, of which I am the leader (which is why just getting another game and starting over is not an option.)

I have never used a bot, or power leveled.

I have never farmed, nor have any plans too. Nor have I created a sub guild (whatever that is) to get faction. Neither has my guild or any of it's members. We been spending our time just trying to figure out how to become better GvG'ers and get our guys levelled up. We dont even really do PvP at all. Mostly RP and GvG.

Just... woah.

I am sure that ANet doesn't have a vested interest in banning or sidelining accounts for no reason. If you're as nice a guy as your post indicates, then there would be no reason for banning you. However, methinks there's much more to the story than you're saying. I'd go with Shagsbeard on this one:

From the official patch notes, so it isn't a bad name.

Well, you sound like a reasonable guy, Macievelli. I can't imagine. Maybe it's something that some of your guildmates did using the guild name? *thinks* Hopefully, you'll be given an answer.

Oh
my
god

You spent 100$ on a sigil??!!

Well, frankly I don't like people who pay real money to buy virtual items, but you seem an ok guy from what you wrote. As long as the EULA doesn't explicitly forbid to buy in-game's items on E-bay or such (or maybe just forbids it "to an extent"...I'm not totally sure), I don't really know what may have caused your ban.

Thought so. That's why you got banned. As for how they caught you, they have logs you know. You must have transferred the items ingame so A.net checks the logs and sees 100k or a sigil been given for nothing by a known botter to you, you get banned. Pretty simple and sorry but when you agreed to the EULA you agreed not to trade items for real money. Admiteddly most EULAs require you to sell your soul and contain all kinds of unfair rules but to be fair it should be pretty obvious that something like this could get you banned.

Why doesn't Anet go after the people advertising on Swagvault and Ebay? They could easily 'buy' the stuff from these people and, when the IG transfer comes on, they invalidate the CD key.

ANet should be going after the -source-, not the buyer. I can see 'sidelining' the buyer for a day---AT MOST---but they need to go more vigilantly after the people selling. Maybe if they offered IG 'bounties' for turning over scammers/RL money sellers, they'd "catch" more of them?

That's still the most retarded thing I've heard regradless of EULA. And if he got banned for inappropriate behaviour, that's equally as stupid since there are language filters. There's no reason to ban accounts, best thing to do IMO would be to ban for three days, then a week, then delete the account. Sure it's just a game but when you've invested countless hours unlocking stuff, EULA or not you're at least entitled to something. If they keep doing stuff like this word will get out and they will lose some customers that I can guarantee.

Bots are against the EULA. Makes sense that buying from bots is as well. Sorry, but, duh.

Dalia

While they don't HAVE to give a reason, sometimes it makes sense. Occasionally there -are- people who make a stupid mistake (like buying a sigil for $100) who, with a warning from ANet, would certainly stop and would probably help ANet out a lot by spreading the word!

Banning is OK but doing it without a reason, while not required, is certainly good manners and goes a long way in the GW community.

he has been buying large amounts of gold or items from IGXE or another such services (ebay) which alone is terms for being BANNED for violation of rules of conduct and EULA. But there is a grievance. They will unlock your account but it will be wiped (as in like it was on the launch from the beta). All I can say is We all warned people Many Many times that buying gold from those services was not going to be tolerated by NCSoft for long, and eventually they would see log activity sufficient enough to ban for it.

Now your only recourse is to contact support staff and submit to an account wipe, if you want to rejoin. Isn't that nice... Now you wasted your hundreds of dollars for nothing. Congratulations.

Just out of curiosity, Mac, how much gold -did- you buy?

1) It's not stupid, an EULA is an agreement.
2) Language filters are not foolproof, people swear by substitutig numbers, putting spaces in words and so on. I support banning those who are racist or excessively rude in game. And don't give me any free speech argument, it doesn't hold water.
3) "EULA or not you're entitled to something"; yeah, you are entitled to think about how you broke the contract you agreed to. Remember the "I agree" button?
4) "They will lose some customers". Oh well, sucks to say bye to botters, racists and those who support botters.

LOL! Good one and I couldn't agree more. The language and legality of the EULA is ironclad. Thinking that "I'm just going to slide this one little time" won't cut it.

I've worked to get others unbanned in the past, but I'm sorry, I can't find it in my heart to help on this case. Not as many posts as we have been making about these services in the past few months... and Warning people DON'T DO IT.

Just submit to the wipe. you'll be allowed back in after that.

i think ANet is doing the opposite of what shoudl be done, you do NOT punish the person who bought the game, you punish the person makin the real profit on the game. The person who in the trade offers 100K gold in exchange for nothing is obviously the one in violation here. BUT! some ppl (myself) have been known to actually save lots of money and then give away funds to guild mates for nothing. The most i gave to a close guild mate was 20k for nothing. They should just stick to the bad names thing and ignore the rest. they should also give a warning so u can transfer any good items to a new account in storage.

I have done the retail thing b4 and that is like banning a customer from a store when they had a 3rd party coupon to redeem a free item. blame the coupon maker!

Its like cops busting people on the street who just bought drugs and ignoring the one who just sold it to them.

They probably check that. It's easy to do - you check:

a) if they have played together before, and how much.
b) if they play in a guild together

If the answer to a) is essentially none and b) is no, then check c)

c) volume of text whispered each other and content.

Why don't you summarize that post of yours in 4 words, namely, Why Was I Banned, and ask ANet support? You'd actually get some results. I'm sure they don't need to hear your life story on a gaming forum, and we certainly don't.

well thats not actually true I have given 100k to guild mates for stuff.

Not for profit or anything just internal to our guild. normally its for fissure armor and supplies to get it.

we also trade for 0 gold all the time in our guild hall.

Well... seems my guesses where a bit off the mark. No cookie for me. But buying in game stuff with real money is a violation and just a really silly thing to do. They need to ban both buyer and seller. Thing is, the guy selling stuff doesn't care. He's making enough money off you buyers to get himself a few accounts. They need to ban the buyers as well to get the sellers to stop.

Why? Because there are people in the world sacrificing their educations and childhoods to make money this way. It's not as bad as shoe factories, but it's still wrong to support these item mills. Sure, a real person is behind the character, but it's no longer a game. It's a job. I applaud Anet for being proactive in getting rid of real money transactions. Why they don't publisize this type of ban is beyond me. I'd be putting it up all over the place.

Well, if it's against the rules to buy anything outside the game, you can bet your last dollar....well, no, actually, that would get you banned, so dont bet anything. You can be sure that I wont be spending a single red cent....no wait, that would be considered politically and/or racially offensive. Hmm....ok, you can be sure I will never again spend real money on anything ever again. *whew*

My characters all have names that are well away from offensive: Macievelli Club OC, Club Oc Macievelli, and Errol Flynn. SO that counts that out.

Again, never used bots, and never farmed in my life. Wouldn't be a good farmer if I tried...dont have the patience for it or the desire to do so.

If the A.Net logs were to ban me for using items like a bought cigil, why would it take months to come into affect, and then be listed as unacceptable behavior? (which according to the rules of conduct is behavior that is considered rude, racist, sexist, offensive, morally questionable, etc.) THis is what the offense was listed as, and I just don't behave that way to people in game.

The only thing that I can think would be even remotely offensive is our guild tag. Club Overclocker guild (from the web site of the same name) is listed as COC. Now, it certainly wasn't tagged that as some kind of perverted insinuation. I'm 37, and the time for finding humor in poopy and weenie jokes has long since past. It's a legitimate tag based on a legitimate acronym for a legitimate guild that's from a legitimate and well respected web site.

I'm totally in the dark on this one. I haven't offended anyone in game, cant think of any remarks I've made or incidents where I've had it out with any players. This has caught me completely off gaurd, and it really is a great big turnoff. I've gone out of my way to try to help people in game. Answering questions, giving items away to low-level strangers in Ascalon from time to time, trying to end disputes and arguments between people rather than escalate them. This is my first RPG, and I really love this game. I dont have much of an active social life, and this guild and the time spent there with those people has given me somewhat of a sense of community and friendship that is missing from my life (I work on my computer at home about 60 hours a week.) To have this happen is really quite disturbing and upsetting. I don't think I've done anything wrong here, and I feel let down by all of this.

I appreciate the responses Ive gotten here. It is this very sense of community which has prompted me to continue to get involved in this game...the kind acts and genuine concern of the many (disregarding the acts of the few) is what I play this for in the first place. While the game itself may be a virtual reality, with virtual characters in a virtual environment, it is driven by the real people with real hearts and real minds which play those characters and populate that world. That is the real environment, and you in it are the real Deus Ex Machina.

FOR OC AND HONOR!

I said the same thing earlier, Akilles. However, I can see suspending the buyer's account and submitting them to an inventory/storage wipe. But the ones who need to be actively pursued are those who are profiting IRL from the sales of virtual pixels.

My thought, and I think it's a good one, is for ANet to offer IG rewards for bounties put out. They would not give names of people for whom to look but they could operate something like Silent Witness: The "crime" is scamming/selling items for real money. Bounty hunters would 'make the deal' and take screenshots, save chat logs and such, turn them into ANet and, if proven true, the player is given a 'reward', either an item or gold. LOL! Sort of the old west come to life again!

IXGE has over 200 accounts... all with really wierd names. From what I have heard they average 3 or 4 accounts getting banned a month..

So are all characters on account blocked or just one? (So far I have only read about specific character blocks).

Yes buying from ebay & such is against the EULA.
(And as all EULA:s it has a magic instant ban clause(sp?) regardless of any actions).

Can't ANet get the websites closed down and encourage Ebay to suspend accounts that are selling what is tantamount to 'stolen intellectual property'?

Both drug dealers and drug users are breaking the law, however. I applaud Anet for tackling the bot issue. Removing the market for bot products helps to reduce the amount of bots. Bots are hugely determental to the game and need to be curtailed as much as possible.

It won't be surprising if the majority of people who complain about this player's banning are people who've purchased bot-made items themselves.

There's another issue, too, that I haven't seen mentioned and that is the issue of intellectual property. Something to think about.

Dalia

Anyone who says "blame the seller, not the buyer" must be living on a different planet. This is along the same lines of saying that gunshops, not killers should be punished, and dealers, not druggies should be in jail? Sure, both should be punished, but saying that it's purely the sellers fault is ridiculous. Maybe in a situation where the buyer is completely ignorant, which, this time, is not the case.

This is very typical modern purely inwardly way of thinking

If you want you can submit a request in to support for a grievence, and get your guild to patetion a reversal. BUt I'm sure they are going to give you one heck of a talking too before allowing anything special. as in unlonking your account before a wipe to transfer your leadership to someone else. I have only seen them do it once however... So be real nice about it and talk to support on tuesday. they are closed today for the 4th.

I have never said "blame the seller not the buyer". As was said earlier, BOTH are to blame and, yes, the problem should be cleaned up. That said, the buyer has already shelled out money. They should absolutely have their account suspended and wiped of all gold/items. That would probably chagrin them enough to stop them ever doing it again. I would venture to say that most people who resort to spending their hard-earned cash on pixelated items are RL law-abiding people. A suspension of account would probably humiliate them enough that they'd stop for good.

The seller should be permanently banned.

Anybody with a character named Errol Flynn has to be okay.

Would it be that the EULA only covers things during gameplay?... so if you buy something out of the game, they can't get you until they catch you 'in game' using it.

I don't know, I just thought I'd throw that out.