Big Disappointment on GuildWars' System Admins

Please consider reading the posts in the thread first.

There hasn't been one thing in common between any of the people that got banned. I got a permanent ban after buying a 5k shield in LA. I was later UNbanned with an oops our bad email from Anet.

The point is people are getting banned by ERROR. The almighty Anet is making mistakes and seems to be doing it rather often. I don't even farm at this point and my buy/sell is only done in game NOT Ebay. People keep assuming it is something the person did to deserve the ban. What happened to innocent till proven guilty?

No offense but if your guess to the cause is even remotely accurate ... all trades would stop. Anet would have to be completely out of their minds to even think about banning for something like that.

Here's a possible explanation: it may not be that Anet's anti-ebayer ban system has gone haywire... maybe we're seeing more of these erroneous bans because Anet is now doing more bans than before -- resulting in, of course, more errors. (So instead of 100 bans resulting in 2 errors, perhaps now we are seeing the result of 1000 bans resulting in 20 errors.)

Of course these errors are bad, but at least it seems one can get their accounts back with enough persistence.. on the other hand, if Anet is doing more banning of ebay-farmers, then that's a good thing.

As for having to continuously send Anet support emails, that's how it seems customer support is often handled these days with most companies -- you gotta work hard to talk to a real human being. I'll bet most of those who are legitimately banned don't try hard to get their accounts back, and that's why Anet has this system.

To the OP: I'm glad you got your account back, that restores my faith in ANet just a little bit more

To everyone saying EBay can't do anything about GW Gold/items: flame me if you like, but I used to play runescape. Jagex ltd, the game's owner, routeinely looks at ebay and reports accounts/items/gold for sale because they VIOLATE THEIR COPYRIGHT and are trying to sell items that are, rightfully so, the intellectual property of the game company.

It's not that EBay is slacking, it's ANet. Granted, it may not be cost-effective for ANet to assign someone's job to "look through ebay and report all the sellers" like Jagex does, but someone has to report them.

If you REALLY don't like it, and have lots of free time: go through ebay and send reports that the auction advertises copyrighted intellectual property. 90% of the time they get removed.

With the huge mass of auctions on ebay, it is impossible to have every auction reviewed by human eyes. They rely on their buyers to be experts on what they are purchasing, and inform them if something is mis-represented.

Look, this will be the perfect time for you to go outside! DDDDDD

Almost as perfect a time as it is for you to log off! And never come back.

Assuming morons.

I strongly believe you would have a different point-of-view if you had played this game as much as some of us have, and were subject to a ban which you did not deserve.

Well Arenanet acknowledges that he was banned in error. How many days were you banned for? I think they should give you some game items or gold or something in apology, since they acknowledged that you were banned in error. But at least you're back in. They may keep a "watch" on you or something.

Make sure your computer is clean and you change your passwords. It's a far stretch, but someone could have hacked your GW account and used it to have items hop to your character and onto another to sell items and put the suspicion on you.

Yeah we can do that. When I used to be a Nintendo fanboy, I used to report auctions for N64 emulators and roms and stuff LOL.

Last time I checked Ebay out of curiosity, black dye was being sold there. Some other sites sell black dye and large amounts of gold too. They're not hard to find. One of the reasons why I got GW is because getting items supposedly doesn't involve Ebay. I don't believe in having to use real money to get items.

Also, I wish Arenanet would slowly make black dye more available. I don't like it when companies make certain items rare just to make them rare. Like how some Magic the Gathering cards are intentionally made rare so it's the elite kids with lots of their parents money who get all the best cards.

imm glad u got ur account back! and i've noticed that Leprekan and the guy whos guildie got banned with no reasons were the only persons who said ANYTHING supportive... morale of the story - majority of ppl prefer to laugh till it kicks them in the arse... then mb they'll see that there're more than 1 explanation to evrthing...

Just hint for those with multiple accounts who transfer cash and items to and fro. Never do an empty trade(for example 50K>with nothing coming back)

It would be simple to do a query that asks select everything where tradecash>50,000 and itemcount=0. I suspect that is one of the measures they do initially.

That would flag up the vast majority of ebay transfers. So as not to run the risk of being on the investigate list make sure you always put an item in the trade window.

come to think of it, this might have been the reason behind my account getting banned by error! actually i have two accounts, and just the day before i got banned, i transfered 20k from my account to my other account with out any item in exchange!

if you're wondering how i did it, i asked my girlfriend to login to my other account and then we did the transfer! i didn't wanna risk anything by running two clients simultaneously! coz tampering with the client is against the rules of conduct!

Congrats to the OP for getting his account back, i would /signed if someone opens FaQ for: "What to do if you are wrongfully banned." and have it sticky. It would help players who are desperate and prevent more indivdual : "i am banned!! help me!!" threads.

Thanks alot!

hrmmm that would be a great idea, someone could prolly pick out some important points from this thread and create a FAQ or walkthrough from those points!

Hmm, Ive said it before and Ill say it again to anyone who hasn't read, expectations and assumptions ALWAYS get you in trouble.

Ever try as a company to get another company to do something thats not in that companies best intrest. Yea thought not.

You assume with no basis that I haven't played the game as much as some of you have.

And regardless of what you strongly believe, I continue to have no problems with banning with no explanation, as I continue to believe that Anet has reserved the right to do whatever it wants. I suffer no delusions as to what I "own" -- I paid $50 for my game client to be allowed to connect to Anet's game servers, and nothing more.

Whether a ban is deserved or not is simply irrelevant, in my opinion.

oops just ignor me.....

I must say Im on the boat with stabber. But thats from my point of view after having to manage Forums like this and Game networks before. Most people think its so simple to give them the evidence they want, all the while they forget the privacy laws the prohibit such an act in most cases. In effect though stabber is absolutely right here, I paid 50$ to have the privilage of connecting to the world servers nothing more.

Or better yet, wait for Factions. If you are not to overly dissapointed, you had to buy it anyway
I hope I never be the victim of an arbitrary Anet action, if this was one. There are always two sides to a story.

short story. there is no way to get your account back, they clearly state they wont be adressing protests in this matter, and they have the right to stop providing their service at any time they want to, so you have no way to sue them.
technically it does not matter what you did, or if you did anything, they have The right to do this
That said, i do not believe they would do it just because they can, i'm sure you did something wrong, even if you did not know it was wrong, if you sell something to a guy who then resells it over eBay, you are the supplier, and therefor you are just as guilty as the guy selling it. even though you made 99 other trades JUST like that one, it still is wrong in that particular case.

because you did not know what you did was illegal does NOT make it legal.

Yes easy for some of you guys to say, get a new copy and blah blah! Others would also say there are other things in the world that you can do besides playing Guild Wars, but hey its a free country. Staying at home and playing on-line games doesn't necessarily mean you don't have any life... There is what we call time management. There is always a time to play online games, hang out with friends and family, go camping or whatever, go to work, all those can be done with proper time management! And this is what i do! and i think most people too... So with all the efforts you've spent for something that is part of your daily activities and that something was stripped out from you for no reason at all, or for a reason you dont deserve at all, then i dont think it is lame for one to fight for what he/she believes is right! Yes, i know, What is right for someone may not always be right for the other! That is why communities such as where you're now exist! To post and gather insights and see if there is still hope, to see what others has to say about it and see if what you have perceived is the same as other people!

I have read all posts from the beginning to the end and I must say I'm really scared!
Mistakes like these shouldn't happen! I did not know what code 45 was and I hope never to see it!

I have two accounts too, one was my husband's but he got tired of GW so I continued to use it. Very often I transfer items, crafting materials, dyes and gold to this second account to keep mine free of clutter. As a matter of fact I just did that today!

Now I have reached a point in the game where I don't know what to do, all my characters are level 20 and they have done all the missions, quests, cappings and because I really don't like PvP or GvG I'm starting to use my monk for farming ....... just out of boredom and to see what is all about the 55 invinci monk.

My actual Guild is hopless nobody online most of the time, so I like to help people on PUGs with missions and quests and usually give to them all the items I find.
Very often I give away items too in Ascalon to low level players for nothing even gold, this last one not often tho!

I bought items on GWguru auctions ...... sigh is this allowed?

Concluding am I allowed to trade with players or will I risk to be banned?

If something like what happened to Ricebox and all the others would happen to me I would be devastated and I don't think I would go on playing this game, which I like, anymore.
I hate wrong doing, Anet should check carefully before banning innocent people, in my opinion it's not enough saying: "Sorry we made a mistake".

That's all.

First of all try to love PvP.. it's the core of this game! anyways about transferring from your first account to your second one,i guess it's better if we are careful with this! an example would be when we transfer large sums of golds or plats, dont leave the other side of the trade empty, try putting some items, like ordinary weapons (white ones), crafting materials and etc.

Of course it is allowed to trade with other players. What's the use of having a trading system if you're not allowed to trade at all..

I also participate in Guildwarsguru Auctions, As long as you trade an in-game item for another in-game item then you are not violating any rules!

Lastly, if you've been very careful and still got banned, and you're completely innocent... then do what leprekan and i did, keep blowing those support emails until they'll hear you out! don't completely trust their automated responses!

To Ricebox,
I'm glad you got your account back.
Cheers, mate.

To Angelica,
Like Ricebox said, try out PvP. Go have some basic PvP training in the Isle of the nameless, try the Zaishen Challenges. After that, its time to have a go in the Random Arenas. Its best to pack some form of self heal when you fight in the Random Arenas though.

To ANET,
I'm very dissapointed that innocent people gotten their accounts banned. This is not the first case.

Wow. I just started GW. Do you have any spare cool stuff for a ranger like me?

Did you? well done!

I agree, This is very disturbing indeed!

I understand everyone who feels that accounts bans from ANET MUST be legitimate and dont offer any sympathy, but in this case, you were WRONG!

People who get banned legitimatly dont bother to make such appeals or such a fuss, I have had this happen to me on other games and when I read about appeals like this it makes my blood boil with rage!

You wouldnt like it if your account was banned for no reason!

I'm so relieved that you got it sorted Ricebox, at least ANET will listen and accept mistakes happen.

Congrats to the OP for getting your account back. Props to Leprekan for the help.

To the neysayers... Would a china botter give a rats behind about his account being banned? Sending in e-mails to suppoort would be a waste of productive man hours. They can just use their ill gotten funds to buy a new access key directly from NCsoft. Even if they did do the e-mail support route, what would they say? Use your head before you speak it will open up whole new worlds for you.

To the people that think there ought to be a sticky somewhere for this type of error. /signed

I rather find it disappointing if they didnt check the originating ip adresses of the 2 account. Many of us has 2 more account and are moving gold/items between those account.

So, basically, never interact with anything but the server lest you become tacitly related to somebody who's abusing the system?

You must really enjoy your multiplayer experience XD

Starting off: Gratz on the acct.

Now to defend Anet alittle here...

First of all, about legal actions (some people were saying sue, etc). When places like Wikipedia say EULAs can be defeated in courts, it means EULAs of services like Paypal...not video game EULAs.

Example: one of these cases is worth trying in court, one isn't. you pick. First, you sign an agreement with Paypal for them to transfer your money, but in their EULA they say they can take your money whenever they want without consent. You decide to sue on basis of unfair EULA. Second, you go to a friends house and he agrees to let you play his Xbox for 10 bucks, but says he can make you leave when he wants - you play for an hour and he tells you to leave, you decide to sue saying that is unfair.

have you picked yet? yea....Suing here would be like the Xbox example...

Video games are letting you use THEIR servers, so they can make the rules they want about you using them. Its required to keep order.

Also about "giving evidence". I don't know ANY MMO or any other online type game that gives you the exact reason they banned you. It would become too much of a liability to them. See, if they were required to show you screenshots or logs of exactly what you said to get banned, in the future that information could be used against them to loophole the rules. Thats why they have to be as vague as possible. If they start having to give examples of what they ban for exactly, they start defining these terms, which cuases more trouble"

Example: say for this example that a rule is "Refering to pigs is prohibited", over the months they have banned people for saying 'pig', etc. So someone is in Lion's Arch and he wishes to test his luck and say "Those animals that make ham" and he gets banned for it. He starts arguing that he didn't say 'pig' like the other cases so they cant do anything to him. See how their past cases of defining 'pig' has cuased more problems here than needed?

Its a silly example, but if they released the exact action that they considered "botting" in a case, botters will try to loophole around what happened in that case, which is just unneeded. Its better, and easier, to keep it vague so they can keep more control.

I can't see how this transfer made you get whacked by the ban-bat. I've been giving ecto and raw gold in fairly large amounts to my guildies, because they needed those for their FoW armor (which I already got at that point). I traded it without getting anything back, so it's been one-way trading for some time. I also seem to function as our guilds dye-mule, all the dye thats collected by our guild will be transferred to my storage, so the rest get more storage space. Never pay anything for it, if a guildie wants some dye, they can ask and I deliver.

So i guess it's just a major oops from Anet, it could happen to any one of us. (off to check if own account hasn't been perma-banned by accident )

Anyways, congrats at getting your account back Ricebox, have fun playing again

well, it's been 24 hours since their last reply (to which I replied in 5 minutes) hopefully I'll get a response from Anet today, I still can't believe they banned my account...

Yeah, that response floored me too. Holier than thou much? Also, he obviously didn't read through the posts. If he had bothered to, instead of judging the OP, he would've seen that ANet was the one in the wrong in this case.

That's more B.S. than I can handle. If you trade with ANYONE they could turn around and sell your old item on EBay illegally. There is a BIG difference between being a supplier and randomly selling someone an item. Yes, area net has the "right" to shut down anyone/everyone's account, but that does not mean they should.

Even though they have this "right," it doesn't mean this guy should stop complaining. Why? Because customer service hits home when it affects sales, and if enough people think area net is treating people unfairly, then ANet can have all the "rights" in the world but will not be able to act on them because they will not want to lose money through future loss of sales.

EDITED: just noticed you got your account back. Congrats!

By that standard, everyone on guild wars is guilty and Anet should be shutting everyone down.

"awareness of criminal conduct" is required for full punishment in most cases.

I have blind on me!

Actually, posting here did benefit him seeing as he got great constructive advice from Leprekan, which ultimately resulted in Anet saying they made a mistake and his account being unbanned.

Thomas, look at the email and make certain it does not say CLOSED on it. If it does click the link and reopen it. A reply to the email won't work you need to do it throught the support page. The email they send has a link on it if their reply did not resolve the issue. When you follow the link and type in your rant make certain to click UPDATE. Anet is slow but they don't leave trouble tickets open for 24hours (everyone has a boss so do the help desk people).

It's still active, I havn't gotten a "closed email" and my ticket on the playNC site is, according to it's status "updated" as I understand it they won't close it for another 24 hours. Guess I can do nothing but wait for a response or them closing it so I can reopen it

Nope. I didnt wait for them to close them Just keep updating it (this is how you get their attention) there isn't a limit to the number of times you can update a trouble ticket. By the time you have 10 updates sent in a supervisor will be contacted to address the problem. Don't send a thousand but definitely keep sending them in on the hour every hour. Keep it polite yet firm after all if you are innocent then you have every right to be mad.