[MERGED: Bannings] Wanna see ANet ppl right here, right now ! (this is insane)

As far as I know, I was not banned (haven't been home to check yet today), but for the innocent people who were banned and inconvenienced, ANET seriously needs to provide some restitution.

It is significantly erroneous to simply say "Oops, Sorry we made a HUGE mistake, k thx."


Make no mistake, this isn't people asking for something for nothing. This is people who were banned, possibly lost items, lost time to play a game THEY ALREADY PAID FOR, and also had to deal with the nagging fear that noone will help them.


This "if you haven't done anything wrong, you've got nothing to worry about" business is for the birds. Frankly, I have heard many, many horror stories about Support handing out bans to players (who have not breached TOA) and never restoring them.

I would hope that GWguru keeps an eye on this situation for the forseeable future, to avoid any hapless players being further victimized. If not, remember you can always report it to Consumer Affairs.

i hope they keyword banned wts orbs lol
I usually dont read follow up posts but i did on this one. I really feel bad for you guys. I get innapropriate conducts bans every once and awhile that are now lasting 72 hours because i guess i deserve them. i try to watch what I say now. If I was to ever get a message that said permanent ban on something that ive put over a years work and insane amount of time into I would or sure be a weeping 31 yr old man. I really hope they fix this for who didnt deserve it.

I was banned at about 3:50pm est, I have sent a ticket and I am trying to see what happens, I have never used a bot and I don't even stand afk in places for too long (I do sometimes stand afk for about an hour or two though). I really hope that Anet can fiz this problem because my account had rank 10, over 3 million gold and 2000+ hours on it

Sorry to hear about all the bans... that REALLY sucks!

I left my character online at the ring games overnight....
Apparently I got the err=7 at some piont... exactly 146 losses away from my Hapless title.

I guess I should be happy that I didn't get the ban!

I hope you all get your accounts restored.

Dwig

Yay! Just got home from work and took a deep breath before logging on and my account was not banned! :-))

I really feel for those of you who have suffered from this. Just the thought that my account might have been banned was bad enough.

Well, some people got banned by mistake, but id say for every 1 person banned by accident, another 40 bots were banned, i was in ascalon int1 for a while and noticed that the botters are replacing the banned accounts with new ones.

hundreds of [Mo/W2] all over ascalon all getting run around the game by the looks of it, lots of W/Mo about with no guild and the usual random bot names there possibly to run them to granite citadel and elona.
Anet did a good job with the bans i think, theres a lot less bots around in the major farming areas, they just need to keep banning.


plz ignore the firestorm, its there for comic value xD

Add me to the list as of last night. Sent in my message and haven't recieved word back yet. Alas, I'm not worried and I'm in no rush to play. I just don't want to be feeling the urge to play this weekend only to find myself still banned for no good reason.

I would like to know how A.Net determined we were bots, even if its just a piece of the email the send me back to tell me I'm unbanned. What did I do in my 5-7 hours of play over the past 2 weeks that flagged me as a bot?

I don't farm. I don't play the buy/sell game. I didn't gamble. I don't afk often (though I did so for about 30 minutes total to get 2 dragon helmets). I don't zone a lot. I don't swear online much (I've always felt that the more you swear, the less intelligent you appear to be). I, like many of you, am a model player. I am the type of player A.Net loves because I bought their game and use very little bandwidth

Yet here I am, banned...........and it's unfortunate not because I have to take the time to get myself unbanned, but rather that I'll never know why nor what I did wrong.

This thread has become the who's who of bots, extreme farmers, e-bay buyer/sellers, scammers, spammers, and every other ill that affects the community-at-large LOL.

IMO many of the "erroneous" bans were mainly those with accounts having million(s) of coin. Having 3 million coin in your account with 2000+ hrs game time might very well draw suspicion of bot farming, purchasing gold for real world money or other undesirable activity. This would especially be true if you had the most expensive armor and uber weapons of every kind.

I mean no derrogatory offense, flame nor insult, however, that is a very general statement. I have crappy platemail armor, 90k in storage (lucky drops of dye from helping guildies through tough missions) and I barely manage to stay alive when solo'ing. I would hope that there are more honest players (like myself) than players who are cheating, buying gold, over-farming, or hacking.

For future reference, please avoid insulting others by generalizing those individuals who are in a difficult situation.

: )

Banning players who are legitimate is the worst thing you can do if you're trying to incorporate some sort of anti-bot code. If it were done carefully and appropriately, thousands of accounts that have used bots would now be banned, and the legitimate players wouldn't have noticed a thing. Instead it is done with incompetence, and we have the whole big debacle going on now. Hundreds, possibly over a thousand accounts have been unjustly banned, and they're now spamming tech support with hundreds (thousands?) of emails demanding their account be fixed immediately. A good number of these are probably bot users themselves, and they'll get unbanned and likely find a way to continue their bot using for months (years?) to come.

One of my friends was banned. He plays very sparingly (about 30 total hours), has 3k gold, and still hasn't beat the game with his Assassin. Assuming your arguement is correct, how would you explain his banning?

I totally agree.... thats very weird, only 30 hours... ive been playing for way too much, i guess, but ive got holidays so that kinda explanes it, but getting a ban for liking the game too much .... come on... this is ricidulous...

ive been banned for over 12 hours now and still no unban message....

Thanks, my account and of my others friend, un-banned, has ben un-banned.
God exist

banned 4000 bot users and hunders of innocent people
lets call it "mission accomplished"

I dont have anything against BANNING bots or even Banning people who are doing illigit stuff (ie ebay gold) I do think however that ANet should warn those people its only fair. Some people REALLY dont KNOW that ebay gold is a bad thing for example. AT LEAST WARN PEOPLE, then if they violate again they have nothing to complain about

Both me and my friend got banned yesterday around this time. He got banned first, then me about 10-20 seconds after. He got his account un-banned about 2hours after that. And im still banned....24hours banned, hoping as all others who're still banned to get un-banned asap. keep up the work Anet.

Try looking at it from the bright side. At least they are very tough on bots, and eventually you get your account back.
I just wished I knew what my characters names are

We got their money.

/ban em all.

They should have had a press release like last time, so we'd know.

Whoop de doo, they're tough on bots.

A botter will just buy a new account, and think nothing of it. A casual player won't. Many of the botters will have a new account already. I don't/wont.

ANet are showing people: We don't like botters, but we don't really give a shit if we ban innocents at the same time.

one really irritating thing is a clown who pulls figures out of his..........and has no way of knowing how many were banned wrongly or not as the sorting is still going on.

i heard this i heard that

/bs and more bs compounded

unless you have an official Anet link to the future to post?

So if you're a legitimate player who's too good at guildwars you should be banned... thanks, please go back to the USSR.

some people still arent getting the point...

I dont care if it was only a few people who got an unjustified bann....

look we dont pay monthly for this game... you cant farm resorces out of existance... if someones bot is farming yea we dont like this unfair advantage but really what is it hurting us... i want the botts banned to but not at the expense of innocent people thats the real point...

at wiff of this incident Anet should have unbanned ALL of the banns... i dont care if botts got their accounts back the point is getting ALL the innocent people back in... that includes those who are on vacation and dont even know they are banned yet... some people are still banned and havent heard response... some unbannings were fast and other are not...

again the right thing to do in this situation would be to undo all the banns fix the problem and rebann the REAL bots...

people asked for cheaters to get banned not innocent people... and there are a bunch of posters on here that believe that the few hundred who where unjustly banned is justified because a few thousand bots where banned...

BULL &^%^% so far i havent seen one person that was unjustly banned that felt this way... its easy to say some crap like that if you werent one of the victims...

again I wasn't banned but im also not narrow minded...

innocent people getting banned is not justified by anything PERIOD... and if you feel that way perhaps the next round when you are the one getting banned youll be singing a different tune...

If i were one of the people getting banned id sure as hell rather deal with 3000 bots running around NOT directly affecting my play time versus being banned for the game for xx hours when i did nothing wrong that does directly impact my play time....

this game is NOT a persistant world bot have such a MINOR effect on games like this its pathetic... it really comes down to oh thats not fair he has all that because he bots while he's sleeping... he stole nothing from you mind your own and play your game.... DO NOT GET ME WRONG... again i hate cheaters but this all comes down to punishing the cheaters at the expence of the innocent players its plain WRONG...

I played UO for 7 years and i really hated cheaters and not really because they cheated but because the game kept getting changes to it that would slow down the cheaters needless to say it also slowed down the innocent players ultimately having no universal effect... example.... bots/scripters mined all day and night getting thousands and thousands of metal ore... so UO decides to make the gui mroe complex so its not so easy to script (more clicking, more random things) lower weight limits stuff like that... sure it slowed the cheaters down some... but it also screwed over the legit players... now instead of the half hour a player has to play they used to get say 1000 ore because of all the new clicking lower wieght limits in that half hour time they can barely get 500... who got hurt the most... thats right the innocent players that are actually playing and wasting their real time getting no where while the scripters are still not wasting anytime because their scripts are doing eveything for them while they sleep...

Alright, so I was also included in the banning this past week but it was fixed within 24 hours after using the PlayNC Support System even with a redirect after I sent it to the wrong department. I'd have to say that the GW staff was very efficient and courteous during the matter.

For those of you still waiting, perhaps your mesages also had to be redirected to different departments. Furthermore, if ANet is investigating each innocent claim, they may be under a heavy load of both messages and backtracking. The more 'bot-like' activity you have on your account, the longer I would expect it to take to be resolved.

I'd have to say when I was banned, I was upset for losing the account with some 1500 hours of my time put into it. I even swore off Guild Wars if they didn't fix it. However, remember that bots hurt the economy for everyone, so if they have to take a few days to rebuild their character stock, I'm happy to see ANet taking some action. Of course, that said I wouldn't mind compensation for being misbanned.

Well I did earn the Charmed (20k short of next title) and the Unlucky title...DIDN'T GET BANNED ---> I did camp on on ring...I did occasionally afk I'd say an hour max...but most of the time i was camping on one ring but chatting the whole time with my allies about builds, what not ~ then would go jump and do the new mission or get orbs for another mask...then back to ring...but was same ring everytime and didn't run around...so then maybe it seemed like a bot but get this...occaisionally i would get that weird "lost friends connection and re-enter your password thing" so i would do that right away..wonder if that made the difference..

Overall this ring thing comes off as a ploy to bot bann and by doing this title just begged for afk~ seems like their blanket answer has damaged many honest people's feelings...or maybe just super annoyingly inconvenienced them.

Ok, i was wandering around on different fan site when i saw someone saying he was un-banned without any reply from PlayNC support.
So i start to check my account from times to times.

Now, 23hours after my full account information answer to PNC my account is finally un-banned.

Just in case then:
D't expect any reply/apologize from the support anymore and check your account instead of your e-mail.

Just one thing:

Ok we'd be ban, but so many were at same time that it'd trully appear to be a mistake/error/whatever.
But what's worry me is when only few people are screw like that, almost none will listen to them and the common answer they're pretty sure to get is: "U deserve it u m..ther f..r bot"
(already happened and concidering this "event" i feel bad for those to whom it may happen in the futur)
Sad but true, the less you are the less you'll be listen at.

ANet has said hundreds, just look at Gaile's posts. The thousands did have "possibly" in front, so, of course, there are no solid numbers on that. However, it's also quite possible that even ANet don't know the numbers yet.

When last I saw a count (and that was over four hours ago), they had restored about 200 accounts. Based on the postings on the boards - who was still banned and who was restored, I'd doubt that was even half the full number. On top of that, we're talking about less than 24 hours since the banning took place. How many people haven't logged in yet and don't even know?

I think part of the problem here is that everyone, including ANet, is drastically underestimating the number of people affected.

And, regardless of the unknown quantity, isn't two hundred people enough to know that they screwed up and restore all the accounts? If I released code that was 5% buggy to a customer, I'd recall the release as soon as I could and start over.

Bots are bad.

Unjustified massive bannings of innocent people without proper investigation is far worse.

I'm not ticked that I got banned. I'm ticked at the carelessness of ANET. A ban is a very serious thing. And I'm pretty shocked that they were so careless with the bans. I thought they investigated the account BEFORE they ban you not AFTER.

I'll check when I get home but I would also like to say that the right thing to do in a situation like this would have been to just go "Oops!", unban everyone, and apologize with an explanation that the event unexpectedly triggered anti-bot code.

Mind you, I'm really not that torn up about it since I wasn't really planning on playing yesterday or today anyway, but I agree with sinican in the belief that banning legit players on a scale as large as this one was just to get the bots is rather unacceptable and should have been undone immediately. As Gaile said, they'd get the real ones next time anyway, right?

Funny thing is a buddy of mine had been wrongfully banned before for buying/trading on ebay. He hadn't actually done it, of course, and had to jump through 3 days worth of email hoops to get his account unbanned.

I can only imagine the look on his face when he found himself permanently banned for the second time on the same account *laugh* Needless to say, he was pretty pissed. Last I talked to him he had gotten an email back from support asking for his information that he provided in his first email to them.

Ah well....

30 hours passed, 3 e-mails further, still not even an automated reply form A.net -.-. I don't want to flood them, but seemingly, i've got no real choice as of this matter. Everyone already had gotten a reply, even if it was only an automated one, everyone i know that got banned for "Botting"that is. Here i am sitting in fear for a remaining permanent ban for their program glichting, marking me as a bot cause i maybe play 10 hours a day doing things, if not more...

30 hours passed, 3 e-mails further, still not even an automated reply form A.net -.-. I don't want to flood them, but seemingly, i've got no real choice as of this matter. Everyone already had gotten a reply, even if it was only an automated one, everyone i know that got banned for "Botting"that is. Here i am sitting in fear for a remaining permanent ban for their program glichting, marking me as a bot cause i maybe play 10 hours a day doing things, if not more...

did you email them or open an official support ticket?

the auto respond should have sent you a response to a support ticket.

Maybe Anet ran out of room with so many people buying Factions, creating Assassins and going AFK because they never get a group?

Anet wands a bunch of AFKers with their 20/20 Req7 Banning Magic cane.

Any word anywhere about this? Luckuly for me Ive never breeched any "User Agreement"

ok for all the people in regards to emails on this issue...

I do recall Gaile said something about NOT using email to get your issue resolved but instead to submit a report ticket... sorry im unfamiliar with this process i myself wasnt banned...

but id hate to see all you people getting delayed in getting a correction because of not submitting the issue the correct way...

im not flaming anyone and if your saying email mistakingly eaning u sent a support ticket sorry...

i still say they should just unbann all banned people at this point to ensure that ALL innocent players are able to play their accounts...

we as a community should be able to deal with the bots for a few mroe days/weeks whatever... im more concerned about the innocent

Id like to start a petition on this matter but im not sure the impact it would cause in this situation especially since there are more than likely a lot of cheaters that where justly banned... don't know i just want the innocent to be 100% corrected if we have to let botters back in for a while to achieve this... again im ok with that

just to report that im unbanned at last, 24hrs it took to get it online, just every 30 minutes trying to re log in and i worked, didnt even get an email to say that i was unbanned unlike the others posted on the forums.

So ArenaNet posted a notice on the official site saying they banned 4,000 bots...

(including 3,000 innocent people!)

I cant believe they even have the nerve to announce that. And no official apologies from them either. An apology in a couple of posts by a PR person in a fansite forum doesnt count either.

And this is the price of progress. Everyone persistently moans about the bots ruining the aeconomy, but offer no understanding when actually banning the bots has some (severe) reprocussions. An apology on a forum is better then none.

Not that it matters, but I've never "moaned" about the bots. And Im not sure what kind of understanding I should offer to ANET. I just know that they were really careless about their banning procedure which led to unjustified bans. All I want is for them to rethink their process on how they ban people.

But seeing them boast about how they banned 4000 bots with no mention of an apology to the innocent people they banned just irks me.

Gaile did post an apology on The Guild Hall Forums Below is her post and the post she responded to.

You just can’t buy this kind of good PR. Two heartfelt apologies for major screw ups in one week, we should all feel honored. I can’t wait to see what’s next, I just wish they had my Credit Card number.

to bad her post contradits itself...

they dont ban lightly and its a long complicated process...

well 4000 banned accounts doesn't seem like they took too much time VERIFYING WHO they where banning...

its startting to look more and more like their ego has gotten the best of them...

if they verified anything BEFORE they started banning this wouldnt have been an issue...

but as someone in the thread already stated they shot firt and asked questions later....

more i think about it the whole GW page with the 400 bans statement is completely uncalled for...

first as many have mention they failed to mention the part that they banned 200+ innocent people on "accident" in the process...

second is that deducting the innocent unbanned players changes the amount they legitamately banned for botting doesnt it

someone seriousely need their arse kicked

this had better be sarcasm, though I can't really detect it.

because.....anyone who could consider this good pr, and that we should be honored by this, and isn't being sarcastic, is on cracketycrack!