Guild Wars News: Bots Banned

A staff of 110 devs is a lot of money. Bandwidth, while cheaper then a few years ago, is not cheap especially not the kind that Anet uses and needs, that requires stringent SLA's and uptime guarantees that consumers neither get or need.

As for storage and server hardware, I have no idea how much it takes up in space but I do happen to know a few things about hardware, such as that there is a limit to how many accounts a server can handle no matter how small the transaction involved is.
We're not talking consumer level equipment here, Anet does not go "Dude, you are getting a Dell!" for $399.

I never broke down the price structure, I'm going by what are industry standards for profit margins, something I know something about and you obviously do not. I factor into my figure of $5 the montly upkeep costs of Anet's gaming infrastructure.

Well, I have here 2 CD's (well, 4 counting my wife's copies) of Guild Wars & GW Factions, you are telling me those arent real products then?
Not only that but those products are being maintained on a daily basis (unlike some gaming companies we all know and hate) and even get free expansions.

The IP is the concept of GW, the IP is the network code of GW (a work of true art btw) however, since Anet does not sell or licences those but instead sells a product called Guild Wars which has no monthly fees simply claiming that this is only IP makes no sense.
GW requires that Anet provides bandwidth and server to run, that makes it a product not simply IP.

Sorry to hear about your banning. Let me explain what I can remember from the last incident.

What they track is the trading and sales activities of accounts that they know use bots (not easy to find out, and it has to be 100% certain). After that, they see who and what that account traded with, and they then track the items. Let's say one of your characters came into contact with a botter and you sold them 20+ Obsidian Shards for in game currency. They then went and sold those Shards on e-bay as well as the shards they collected themselves with the bot programs. A.Net may assume that you're a player aiding a botter, and as such terminate your account, even if it's not true. It doesn't even have to be like that. You may have had multiple dealings with the same account, but all different characters. Or, maybe you bought something from them, and it seemed suspicious. That could be how innocent accounts get caught up in the crossfire.

This makes sense to me, because A.Net would want to get rid of not just the bots but those that help the botters as well.

All I can say is, keep trying with the support ticket, as they're the only ones that can help you. Just, be polite, they don't actually have to help you or unban you, and they may just learn how they made the mistake (if one was made) which helps everyone.

it is important to note that the following.

• there is a multi tier stage to getting banned its not a instant thing. It takes 3 or 4 incidents for a permanent account ban to occur. Normally they temp ban first and this gives you an opportunity to communicate with Anet to find out why through support.guildwars.com.
  
• in many cases a ban can be reversed with some conversation with support. Generally it entails an explanation of what happened and basically saying you will not do it again, if you broke the rules in some way...
  This option often entail a punishment of an account inventory and equipment wipe... Like end of beta.
  
• it is important to also note there is language in the EULA that states that for ANY reason Anet reserves the right to terminate the agreement or license at any time. I don't remember the exact section its in but I remember reading it. (Its in almost every EULA in existence actually)

anyway. I have had some success getting anet to listen to people that were banned that are were from our guild and got positive results on the matter in the past. So its worth starting a support ticket on the matter and getting the Support team involved in your case if you did nothing wrong under the RoC or the EULA, then they will help you. If it was a ban on a certain type of activity recorded from logs, it will entail BOTH parties involved speaking to support. To prove its not botters... See a Bot accct or reseller generally will just wipe their hands of it and get another account from their hacked list... They do not buy retail copies. for the most part they either steal passwords and hijack accounts, or purchase them from ebay for gold farming purposes. This too is reasons that particular activity is not allowed...

anyway good luck. I know the GMs over there will get it all sorted out for you. Jason and Moogie were very helpful to us in the past.

For the record one such activity that cause a trigger to hit was pooling gold for guild hall services. since it was around 600K transferred to one account in sevral transactions in a few mins. Looked suspicious in logs, and triggered a temp ban flag, but when I showed it was used for GH services in the logs they cleared our record and lifted the ban without a wipe, NP at all... After all that was a new situation that they didn't think of when it was implemented... But you can see the kind of thing that can happen...

Another incident from a very long time ago was a fellow co leader of our guild Bought some gold from one of the exchanges and got caught... Well he was banned and after some finegalling (especially since he was the guild leader at the time) and swearing that he would not do it again. we got a temporary lift of the ban to make me the leader of the guild, AND his account was wiped... SO basically he had to start over from scratch, but as I understood it if there was another incident like this he would not get his account restored again in the future. So I assume its a case by case basis that the GMs handle these problems.

What Anet needs is a GM message system at login that shows warnings on your account... That way if there is a flag that went off you can explain it to GMs in support early without it going to a point of a ban... Just a little warning message with a incident # for reference in support pages. Something like that...

Ingram...

Thx Ingram for that info

Seeng that I am a guild leader as well it is good to know how to approach problems like this if they ever arise. Luckely we are still a small guild but we have talked about pooling togethere to buy some stuff for the GH.

After reading this I think I will just get one item at a time lol

Thanks again

I have just thought of a reason that my guildie Arlan Tempus (above) may have been banned and would like to discuss to see if you guys know whether this could cause it.

We have had a member of our guild leave recently and he has left us his account as he choses not to play anymore. The guild now use that account as an inventory store and as such the same charachter will be giving and receiving a large number of items, Gold/Green/Rare materials etc from now on. Would Somebody donating to this guild pool a large amount of trading items or materials possibly trigger the events that arlan has seen above whereby he is permanently banned for apparent out of game trading, even though the only reason he is performing zero cost exchanges is for the good of the guild ?

Recently I have given away a V Bulwark and a couple of green staffs, I have not been out farming much I just seem to get lucky with the drops but instead of going through the hassle of trading I give things away if not to my guildies to people I have been on a team with who I think are alright and could do with them, will I be next to be banned ?

I sincerely hope that would not be the reason

I have created an assasin in factions but did not really like playing him that much, and have kept the character for just that. To use as a pack mule, seeing that my storage is basically full and i don't like to run around with my bags full on the char (you never what you might find )

If that is the cause of his banment then I think there will be quite a lot of other pll in serious line of fire because i know of a lot of ppl that uses one of their less prefered characters as mules

Plz let us know if this was the reason

I do not think that there would be a problem transferring between two characters on the same account, however there may come an issue when a completely seperate account is used. I could be wrong of course and hope I am as soon our whole guild may be banned

Dakron I am sure that all the transections will be able to be traced to that account and that they will see that all the ppl trading to that account are all in the same guild (mostly if I understand you correctly).

I think however that you guys have started about this in the right way to create a ticket and that this will be solved

Plz let us know what the outcome of this situation will be

Hi
Many thanks for the advice guys - the ticket has been opened for approx two weeks now (log can be seen on website forum www.starcainam.com) - and although at first i ranted a bit once i realised they have complete power I started responding sensibly.
I had NO warnings - no temp bans/in game messages - so i presume this is for the 'major' infraction - for which they must have cast iron proof?????
I have been saving over the last few months for a sup vigor - but everytime I get to about 40 plat i seem to find a staff i must have - again - no massive increase in game gold in a short period.
Once i do get a live response (not automated which is mostly what i have received so far) I will for sure advise the reason in this thread - because i for one have not got a clue!!!!

I was also at one of the desert missions and saw about 20 odd monk bots - was i screen captured iwith that lot? Do they think my monk is a bot? Although the reason as stated is 'selling in game items for cash'.

Ho hum

the fight continues.

Arlan

remembet one and all that after 24 hours withour a reply from you the automated system assumes it solved the problem so that ticket is closed (after all you never said it didnt work)

then you have to open a new ticket and start over

reply quickly
reply politely
be persistant but keep your cool.

TO DARKRON

NO

SINCE THE GOODS ARE STAYING IN HOUSE AND NOT EBAY NO FLAG IS RAISED

Laughable at best.All together now, "too little too late".
No the bot users wont buy another copy(if ya think they bought the original copy, boy are you delusioned), they'll just have to use one of the thousand bootlegged copies they have access to. DUH. I Quit this game a long time ago, a game I loved to play mind you, mainly because Anet dont do squat for anyone but themselves(and judging from all the unfamilar posters lots others did too), but mostly because Anet dont do squat for any of the problems people asked and asked to have addressed. Nothing zip nada, heres an 'expansion' woops did I say expansion, I mean heres a new game for you, full of even more problems than the last one, shut up, its got no monthly fee.'
How long has botting been a problem, since about 4 months after the release, how long has the economy been a problem, since release, whoooopdeddooo they banned 1000 botters, theres only another 10-20 thousand out there botting away like mad. 1000 botters , are they proud of that, what a joke 1000.
Ive never seen another Fanboi following such as the one that follows Guildwars, "Yuck yuck....but its free, NO MONTHLY fee goll durnitt" , ya well so is every other online game if you half an iq over 50.

I think identifiying/banning/minimizing bot effectiveness and people selling gw things is not a difficult task (from where my small mind sees things):

1- Disallow trading in International Districts - If you cant switch between Realms, why should you be able to trade between them and allow gold passage back and forth? If gold on certain servers becomes useless, then additional costs may prohibit gold farmers from continuing farming because profit protential may be too low
2- Identify the companies perpetrating the acts and ban the accounts giving the money away. It isnt hard to open up ebay and type in 'guild wars' and see the 5,000 listings offering 100k for 5$.
3- Cross reference email accounts selling guild wars gold on ebay to email account logins on guild wars to identify the sellers and buyers - this wont get the large companies but it will discourage the small ones (obviously the source of the information is via 3rd party and the resources required might be difficult to muster, but it would go a long way in detering people from getting involved in the first place)
4- Create a popup (like the "please take a break" messages, but forced to respond) at different time intervals (only in towns?) and say notify the player they cannot move until they click this/that button - this would probly create the auto-logoff/login from bots but that type systemic, repeated action can be easily found through macros monitoring user activity

i could sit here all day coming up with goofy ways, but you get the idea

Have no fear. Bots are discovered through exception reports which generate sever out-of-the-ordinary account/character usage and other such discrepancies.

For instance, Joe Schmoe Char entered Elonas Reach 500 times over 48 straight hours spending right about 10.6 minutes in the area each time. Continuous, unorthodox patterns like this are the red flags which identify bot users.

When people set up bots, they are set to perform a specific function/set of actions over and over and over again, literally and figuratively 'mining for gold,' but on a specific group/type of monsters.

The computer nerds @ Anet are able to run reports which can pull that information out and put it to good use - banning those *********.

prices were standardized in the great trader reset some time ago so gold is of equal value in any district.

as for going after bot networks and supporters it is very old news as seen here. (oct 05)

Actually....MMORPG type games cant be bootlegged, especially GW. Everything on GW is server side. You cant crack it, if you dont know how the algorithm works.

Bootleggers DO have access to stolen, falsified, etc credit cards and thats what is usually used (difficult to trace).

Its sad to hear that you quit. If you have been playing, maybe you would have noticed that Anet does care and does listen. Issues are SLOW to resolve because theres so many. But the most important ones like exploits and such get patched rather quickly.

Anet opening up the Elite missions and beginner missions is a perfect example of them listening to all of us whine. And a pretty quick response if i might say so.

Anet doesnt have to tell us that they are banning bots. However, they tell us this as a PR move, to comfort the community and calm us down. It would be naive to think otherwise. However it would also be naive to think that Anet would let bots run amuck on their servers without doing something about it.

Yes, you can play MMORPGS for free on private servers, anyone with google can do that. But this is not a private server. This is a full fledged international online game with millions of players, a large community, corporate financial backing, sponsors, CUSTOMER SERVICE and access across many servers for free. Thats the big difference. Dont even try to compare.

I don't play a bot and my account was one of those banned. It's been 14+ hours and I still haven't heard a reply from GW or Anet. This is very frustrating as I have never used a 3rd party program. I've played GW for over 8 months and have always used my skill to farm in a few of those areas and never a bot. It happened without warning. I played it one morning, went to work, arrived home from work and my account was banned. Since I don't use 3rd party programmes I would really love to know why it was banned. I normally conduct myself in an orderly manner and give away alot of stuff to new ppl to the game and also guild mates. If that is a breach of conduct or a breach or the user agreement then I apologise for been so generous. I cant say I agree with the bans since they really buggered it up by banning an account that is actually legit.

Hi Tickle - Join the apparantly growing club!!!!

You'll have to raise it with GW Support and open a ticket. I beleive there must be quite a few in our boat as the response time is a little on the slow side!!! :-)


Good luck and keep us posted on how things progress. I'll do the same.

regards

Arlan

Good luck also Arlan, it really is all too surreal I must admit I had no idea what was going on as it took me by supprise when I went to loggin and saw the message. I raised it with GW support basically straight away so hopefully they will respond in due time. I've spent over 2000 hours on GW and anything I have gained as a result has been through human playing time and not via bots. Disconcerting as it is and very frustrating I will probably go back to the game as I enjoy it so much. Hopefully my inventory will not get wiped as I have spent countless hours going after my globs/shards/amber and also other rare materials for 15k armour.
*WOW, this post just made me a citizen *

i just hope guildwars stays around for a long time and this banning should generate more money so its for the best for all of us in many ways

Hi everyone - this is my first post on guildwarsguru, so hope this is the right way to do it :-)

I know Arlan, who has recently been banned and I think I have an idea as to the reason. On April 28th at 22:59, me, Arlan and another mate Missy arrived at Elonas Reach. What did we see?

Dozens of monk bots all standing at the merchant, one on top of the other. Monks as far as the eye could see and none of them talking. At the time I recall making a comment that they looked just like Arlan and he even ran over to them to compare himself.

Now, I am 100% certain that they have mistaken him for a bot. Either some well intentioned person did a screen shot and sent it in and Arlan was in it, or ANET ran some automatic system to pick up on monks in there at a certain time - well I can't be sure.

All, I can be sure of is that I have screen shot evidence of Arlan being in my team and us all looking at an army of duplicated monks as far as the eye could see. Its time stamped, so thats why I know exactly when we were there.

I completely agree that bots and cheats of all types should be combated, but their reaction flies in the face of the comments in their legal section that says that they have no intention of banning large numbers of players, and banning is a last course of action. Banning seems to be the first course of action and is in complete breach of their own advertised terms and conditions. I believe such an action may in fact be illegal if you were to take it to the extreme.

There has to be a better way of targetting cheats without impacting upon players whose accounts have been active for 10+ months and have played in excess of 1000 hours and have purchased their accounts fairly. Not only that these players have introduced others to the game and have actually helped ANET make money.

Come on ANET reinstate them now - you developed what I and many others would consider to be the best game we've ever seen, yet don't seem capable of identifying an automaton from a human player!

That's odd because occasionally I have farmed Elona's as well as doing the mission/bonus with guildies. I recently went and farmed 5 mino horns with my monk so I could craft a Necro's Bone staff. I stood next to the other farmers (both legit and botters) at the storage agent and merchant and I haven't had my account banned for that.

So many times people have posted on these forums how they've been wrongfully banned. You never know if it's true or if they've cheated, been abusive or traded with gold/item sales company. I really hope that you're telling the truth. A part of me really doubts it, but none of us can ever know for sure. If you are, then I hope you get your account reinstated, if not I hope they ban any of you that bought gold or items from people who sell for real money.

I can honestly say I have no idea why I got banned, all I really ask is why?

I have played for over 2000 hours, I have helped people with builds, I have ran people places not expecting payment, I have given away countless items to guildies and even new people to the game, I have given countless materials to strangers just to help them get armour, I have never used a bot nor have I ever sold anything from GW online..

All I simply ask is why?

My 2nd GW account was banned for similar reasons as above, mistaken identity!

I was playing my Canthan Mo/W (not a 55 monk) and was at Drok's Int 1 to buy some skills with my friend, (we were in international district because my account was Taiwanese region and his was American).

That's all I did that I think they got me confused with all the other Mo/W bots, I never bot, I never ebay and I rarely play with PUGs. I have contacted GW(NCSOFT) Taiwan about this wrongful banning. I hope it can be reverted. Looking at my history will tell you my account wasn't botting.... sigh...

I tend to agree with this stament made by Fyre brand, and once again I'm not trying to knock anyone or call anyone a cheeter but on the other how would we ever know. There are friend of Arlan that say they have proof that they were in a party together Good that sounds like evidance, I just don't think that Anet will just ban ppl for no obvious reason and without some concrete evidance. Ok I also know that mistakes can be made and with any action like this there might be collateral dammage.

Keep us posted on your progress plz

"That's odd because occasionally I have farmed Elona's as well as doing the mission/bonus with guildies. I recently went and farmed 5 mino horns with my monk so I could craft a Necro's Bone staff. I stood next to the other farmers (both legit and botters) at the storage agent and merchant and I haven't had my account banned for that.

So many times people have posted on these forums how they've been wrongfully banned. You never know if it's true or if they've cheated, been abusive or traded with gold/item sales company. I really hope that you're telling the truth. A part of me really doubts it, but none of us can ever know for sure. If you are, then I hope you get your account reinstated, if not I hope they ban any of you that bought gold or items from people who sell for real money."

A friend had his storage account banned a month or so back for something similar, no advance contact, no warning no nothing just permaban.
When he contacted them he was told that he had been selling for *real money* when you read the EULA it states that you can be banned by *association* with a farmer (whatever that means) ... or even if you are on the same pc network as someone who breaks the EULA you can be banned... basically they can ban whoever they want whenever they want.
It's tough for him, he had all his ecto's & shards on the account that he was saving up for a FoW set with... all gone no easy form of appeal no evidence as to exactly what he had done It left me worried too as I (& others) have played our accounts from his pc occasionally... I have nothing against the banning of Genuine farm Bots... but perhaps they should instigate a form of appeal rather than just a ban?

Well, I for one would not know for definite that someone I am trading with is a farmer... you can make an educated guess, but at the end of it all, it's just a guess... If I walked into a district & wanted to sell something how would you know I had got it legitimately or if I had used a farm bot program?
you wouldn't.
I can understand the whole software tracing patterns of behaviour thing, but I really think that some form of appeal would be great...... after all a *real* farmer would find it easier just to buy another account than to go to the effort of filing a petition against the banning & spending lots of time & effort on forums complaining about it!

I agree with it being unfair, a friend of mine who does'nt even have a monk, let alone 55 hp has been banned. But if you think about it, when 2000 people get banned you have to expect some errors, no one is perfect....not even anet
But yeah....you have to expect around 100 or more out of those 2000 are unfair bans, half of whom i doubt will get thier account back, quite a few of who may have losts ecto's/shards/cash beyond what you can think, simply by playing for a long time (fair farming also). Imagine how that must feel, 2000 hours of your life down the drain because of a mistake, and i know for a fact that some people play games like these because they have issues (anger problems ect) Short periods of time on games are actually reccomended by doctors to calm you down unless they get aggrovating. Now, put your self in the position of some one thats been playing for 5 months +, and they get back from work/school ect and they find thier account banned..... , i mean to any one thats gotta piss you off large style for the next few hours.
But hey, mistakes happen and i quite a few of those people will get thier accounts back and it will be like it never happened, and even better, less bots And the less bots there are, the less mistakes there are in trying to ban them, oh yeah, ecto's go up up up

Keep the bot bannings up anet, pwn those noobs
/bow

Section 3 of the Guild Wars EULA:

Subject to the terms of this Agreement, NC Interactive grants to you, for your personal use only, a non-exclusive, revocable, nontransferable (except as permitted in Section 4(a)) license to use the Service, and a non-exclusive, revocable, nontransferable (except as permitted in Section 4(a)) license to use the Software in connection with the Service, without charge except for new Chapters which will be charged on a prepaid basis according to Section 5.

Note the bolded word: REVOCABLE

Taken from section 7:

You may not sell or auction any Guild Wars accounts, characters, items, coin or copyrighted material, nor may you assist others in doing so.

Does buying in game weapons (obtained by farming bots) with in game money, (which in turn will be sold on eBay), constitute as assisting?

i think it has to do with how often you do it and what you do with the weapon.

if you buy a bunch and give them to a known seller again and again it might raise a flag (or 2 or 3)

if you buy one for personal use or a gift to a guildie i dont think flags are raised as they track over time.

remember that they announced in oct 05 they were tracking networks for future banning so it is repeated behavior that attracts attention.

Not to mention that you don't know if the guy you're trading with is a bot... We get victimized by either the botters or Anet.

We, the players are cornered

I have a feeling is how some more honest players are getting tagged. Repeatedly buying from known botting networks adds them to the network.

I have stood in the tower of farming monks in elona before,oops, i will NEVER do that again. Dont want to be mistaken for a bot. One thing i do when leaveing talus chute to farm tundra giants, is bow. never see nonhumans doing stuff like that. i allso chat wile in towns.What i'm saying is take steps to insure you arnt confused with these bots.

How long after a "repeated behavior" has been flagged does one become banned?

Hi all,

To follow up my previous comments:

It is my belief that it is possible for an innocent player with a monk to approach a group of monk bots at the same time that someone takes a screen shot to report the botting incident. The innocent, none-bot player could then be banned just because they happened to stand next to them - which I may point out is not an illegal action.

Now, I have no clue how bots work - probably they record the keystrokes from the first farming expedition and then play the sequence back continuously???? It should be possible therefore to automatically track such activity - i.e. accounts where repeated keystrokes occur over and over again. But, I don't think in a game with 1 Million active players they can do that very easily - not without impacting on game performance. None of us actually know what ANET do, because they don't tell us (which is understandable if they want to catch the cheats).

I think it more likely that ANET could well rely on visual reporting of such incidents in which case it is possible that Arlan and others could have been unlucky enough to be screen shot in the vicinity of the bots. Those who have walked past a bot and not been banned - well you weren't unlucky enough to be screen shot at that time.

I do have a plan - call 'Bot, or not a Bot' - This involves sending out an experimental none-bot character - standing it next to the bots, screen capture the image using another player and complaining to ANET about the bots we have observed and see how long before our experimental account gets banned - I reckon it would get banned for sure!

This would unfortunately indicate that the comment in the GW's legal section that there is no cause for appeal because of the indepth research they do is a false comment. After all standing there looking dumb isn't against the rules of the game :-(

We will be submitting my screen shot - which clearly shows Arlan in my team at the time. This is also time / date stamped and can be verified as authentic by at least 3 players. This happens to be evidence, something that ANET don't produce.

The 'Bot, or not a Bot' experiment will be employed as a last resort. I will keep you posted on how things proceed.

As a final statement - I still think this game is brilliant and the people who run it are doing a real good job. It is unfortunate that in banning cheats that sometimes ANET target the innocent by accident - I just want them to reinstate those whose very willingness to step forward and make themselves known to the wider gaming community goes a long way to proving their innocence - afterall if they were bots, they would be off obtaining another dodgy account to continue botting from!

Hi
Well - i was given no pre-ban warnings - and up to now have had no real information from GW Support on how far back my supposed 'infraction' was.
Did i buy/sell from/to someone several months ago who maybe regular farms and possibly came into contact with a bot?
How far down the line connecting buyers/sellers have Anet looked and banned?
Without specific answers from Anet - how can we protect ourselves (or prove innocence) from future wide sweeping 'bot' banning.

Lyra - you raise some very valid points most of which i agree with and some of which i have included in my ongoing Support discussion - however - yes, the licence is revokable but surely not without specific proof - and visible proof at that - .

I would love to see the first response (or the banning message) from Anet saying something like - "you have broken Rule 7 in that you collected in game items for real world selling - ie: on Thurs 25th Feb at 11.46hrs in Ascalon Int 1 you 'sold' 100 shards for 1 gold piece"A specific reason is given - thereby allowing 'innocents' to argue their case fairly.
I presume genuine botters would'nt bother because they know they would never win a case.

The fight continues!!!

good riddance

Botting in GW is not really profitable now that Factions was released. If you get your account banned you will have to buy each chapter again for every account banned.

I think GW is a game that might be able to pull off a bot free environment after a few more chapters.

40 hours after the banning and still no word from support, I have since emailed them again. Here I am a pure innocent in this case and they aren't even following through with emails. Unlike these botters who do sell stuff on online auctions I cant afford to just go out and buy GW/GWF again BECAUSE I DON'T SELL ON ONLINE AUCTIONS NOR DO I USE 3RD PARTY PROGRAMMES. Not only that but I also got bills to pay that come before any leisure activity I might involve myself in. Perhaps in hindsight I should of sold all my perfect weapons online but I aren't like that, I play within the rules and got banned for doing so, whats up Anet, surely you can contact those of us protesting our innocence instead of ignoring the issue. It's easy, check the support emails and reply to them... plz, I encourage you to do so..

If you haven't got anything of interest to add to the conversation please keep your thoughts to yourself instead of trying to get your post count higher through silly posts that do nothing but irritate those of us trying to protest our innocence. I'm sure you meant it in jest but in this conversation I honestly dont think its a laughing matter.
Anet has honestly screwed up here by banning innocents and now that they have, they aren't interested in what we have to say to prove our innocence. An automated response said they would reply in 24 hours.. from my previous post that time is nearly doubled.