Curse

El Presidente · Dec 03, 2007, 10:27 PM // 22:27

Quote:

Originally Posted by Xue Fang

So it's illegal to use a name that MIGHT offend a few users with horrible reading skills, but it's okay for them to put on a celebration for Halloween, which may offend many people with religious beliefs?

DOUBLE STANDARD?

OK, correct me if I am wrong...but is there not a boss in the Shiverpeaks (I think it's Snake Dance) with the last name of "Blacktracker"??? I find that offensive as it can be interpreted a number of ways...Wait, then Anet will ban themselves and we'll all be playing WoW (kill me now).

Lady Lozza · Dec 03, 2007, 10:55 PM // 22:55

I have long been of the opinion that obviously a number of players need re-education in the English language. The idea that Faq is pronouced even similar to that word we aren't supposed to say is ridiculous.

English words with a single vowel have the stress placed on that vowel. Where stress is placed on a vowel, that vowel will NEVER sound like another SINGLE vowel. "A" has two different stress sounds associated with it, three in some languages. "U" on the other hand is a harsh sounding vowel when stresed.

1) the "a": cat, bat, sat, at, mat, rat, chat, and FAQ

2) the "ah": car, cart, chart, bar, tart

3) the "u": umbrella, under

Anyone seeing the difference yet? #1 doesn't even come close to the pronunciation of a certain four letter word - unless you're stuck in the BSG universe. #2 (ar) might be an okay substitute for "u" especially allowing for regional accent.

Conclusion? Young kids running around in games these days see a chance to make anything and everything something dirty because it is "cool", it's "leet". If I said I ate an apple today I'm sure they could make something rude of that too. Yet I see little point in sensoring ideas and words reasonably removed from the "intended/juvenile" meaning, else we will sensor ourselves silly.

Gore · Dec 04, 2007, 01:06 AM // 01:06

Quote:

Originally Posted by arcady

After the above, the rest of your post read line a 'QQ / whine.'

It is very disingenuous to call for no whining within your own rant / whine. That was hardly an example of constructive criticism. the phrase 'constructive criticism' cannot be applied to anything to make it so. The words have to actually be constructive, and not rantish or otherwise accusatory.

If you read well, and yhea this tread is lots of qqing now, it's only an observation here. I am not asking to unban or realease his name. Anyways, Gaile has answered and now the situation is "cooler " then it was.

Cheers ya all, paly good , play safe, live and die by the rule.

GOre

Gaile Gray · Dec 04, 2007, 02:00 AM // 02:00

Hey now, I know you're all having fun here, but what I'm trying to figure out, seriously, is if we're having people banned for gold purchases (which apparently results in an 045 message) right now. Like in the last, oh, 24-48 hours.

Can you please let me know if you were banned in the last few days, and if so, give me your support Incident or Report Number so that I can do some research on this?

Thanks for the help.

We now return you to the regularly-scheduled thread silliness....

Rexion · Dec 04, 2007, 03:01 AM // 03:01

Quote:

Originally Posted by Gaile Gray

Hey now, I know you're all having fun here, but what I'm trying to figure out, seriously, is if we're having people banned for gold purchases (which apparently results in an 045 message) right now. Like in the last, oh, 24-48 hours.

Can you please let me know if you were banned in the last few days, and if so, give me your support Incident or Report Number so that I can do some research on this?

Thanks for the help.

We now return you to the regularly-scheduled thread silliness....

gaile, you are my hero!

/perma-ban everyone else for not gaile worshiping!

VitisVinifera · Dec 04, 2007, 03:08 AM // 03:08

Quote:

Originally Posted by Gaile Gray

Hey now, I know you're all having fun here, but what I'm trying to figure out, seriously, is if we're having people banned for gold purchases (which apparently results in an 045 message) right now. Like in the last, oh, 24-48 hours.

Can you please let me know if you were banned in the last few days, and if so, give me your support Incident or Report Number so that I can do some research on this?

Thanks for the help.

We now return you to the regularly-scheduled thread silliness....

I have a better idea. Take a walk down the hall and ask the network folks why they are autobanning people for doing such hideous things as shifting gold between accounts or giving gold to friends, all the other horrible things people have mentioned in this thread, and then tell them to stop doing that. Instead of this end-around making people submit tickets, tracking their responses, and trying to recreate everything, then piecing it all together yourself after the fact.

edit: in case the above is too confusing, I've created this flowchart.

Gaile's method of finding out what is going on, I call this the 'tail that wags the dog scenario':
1. Player gets auto-banned for doing something completely normal and acceptable (see 324235 examples above).
2. Player has to figure out what the error code is, what it means, and what to do about it
3. Player submits ticket
4. Player eventually gets automated response back that saying they are banned for doing something they've never done before, has no relation to what's going on, and just adds frustration
5. Player comes to this thread to share their disgust at yet another mass autoban debacle
6. Gaile pipes in to ask autobanned players to describe what really happend and forward their ticket directly to her
7. Gaile does her own investigations and tries to piece things together
8. ? what is Gaile's exit strategy once she actually finds out that players are getting unfairly autobanned? No idea. This has happened before many times and we keep getting assurances.

***alternate flowchart, I call this the 'shortest distance between two points is a straight line' scenario:

1. Gaile walks down the hall and talks to the people who are scripting the autobans and slaps them around and tells them stop being so lazy and incompetent.

Snow Bunny · Dec 04, 2007, 03:09 AM // 03:09

Quote:

Originally Posted by Gaile Gray

Hey now, I know you're all having fun here, but what I'm trying to figure out, seriously, is if we're having people banned for gold purchases (which apparently results in an 045 message) right now. Like in the last, oh, 24-48 hours.

Can you please let me know if you were banned in the last few days, and if so, give me your support Incident or Report Number so that I can do some research on this?

Thanks for the help.

We now return you to the regularly-scheduled thread silliness....

Gaile, it's not silliness.

I know two people in real life currently who have been banned within the last week and a half.

They're both PvPers, and have been playing this game for quite a while, and were both banned for gold-purchase incidents.

I normally wouldn't be able to speak in their defense, except for the fact that they equip their characters in Reward Point armor and weapons and thus would not care about gold whatsoever.

ANet's automated bannings are silliness. That's what.

<----Goes to check account to see if banned yet.

Gaile Gray · Dec 04, 2007, 05:08 AM // 05:08

I will say this again. Please read each word:

For the most part, these people are not getting banned; they are getting blocked.
There are no automatic blocks.
There are no automatic bans.

Now, apparently people are getting blocked. I think it is tied to exchanges of gold or items at high denominations. But from all that I can tell, and from all that I have learned in researching these issues, these players truly are not getting blocked without a review. Clearly, what's at fault is the review process itself, and an error in the review process is resulting in some number of inaccurate blocks.

I'd like to help, and in order to do that, I'd like to work on this together. But let's do it in a constructive way. After all, it's utterly counterproductive and more than a little tiresome to have to plow through large numbers of valueless posts to try to find the germ of truth or the issue of merit. The usual flames, nonsense, rumours, untruths, and ArenaNet bashing are not helping. And in fact, ArenaNet wants to help.

So for those of you who legitimately are affected by this, or who honestly know someone who is, please share the information with me that you have. This is for those who are currently out of the game or for those who have been blocked within the last five days. Please tell me:

The date of the block
The time of the block
Your territory
The reason code that you see when you try to enter the game
The account user name or associated charactor name
The support Incident or Report Number. (This is assuming that anyone who was blocked in error has been wise enough to report the situation, and if not, please encourage him or her to do so and give me the Report Number after that is accomplished.)
The outcome, if any, of the contact with Support.

Out of respect for your privacy, you don't need to provide this level of information here in a viewable thread. Please send the information via email to [email protected]. The entire Support thread is more than welcome.
You see, it was my understanding that inaccurate blocks were a result of a glitch in the review process, and it was my expectation that the review process was being modified, or the people involved in it were being retrained, to avoid this problem. It was my impression that these blocks were halted sometime last week. That's why I want to track this down and find out what I can learn about the whole situation.

Thanks for any help you can give in resolving this issue, and again, our apologies for those who have been affected by this.

Quote:

Originally Posted by pamelf

Has that about summed up the Gaile patterns from past threads?

Not in the least. Let those who are trying to help do so without getting insulted, mmmk?

Quote:

Originally Posted by Snow Bunny

I know two people in real life currently who have been banned within the last week and a half. They're both PvPers, and have been playing this game for quite a while, and were both banned for gold-purchase incidents.

I normally wouldn't be able to speak in their defense, except for the fact that they equip their characters in Reward Point armor and weapons and thus would not care about gold whatsoever.

Are you telling me that they made no movement of gold -- even their own? Are you saying they do not have gold in their inventory, did not move a large amount of gold between their accounts (via muling), etc?

Naturally, they should be able to move their own gold, give it to someone else, do anything but sell it for real-world cash. That's not the problem! I'm just wondering if you are saying "These people have no gold and were blocked for gold purchases." Did they help someone else "mule" gold? Did they wear a few of Koss' gold chains? (Ok, just being silly now.

)

I'm trying to figure out how this happened, so I need a bit more info, if you'll provide it. Or better still, have them provide it via the address above. But keep in mind, I'm interested only in incidents that took place after last Wednesday. I'm curious about your friends, but my focus now is about any blocks that were placed after we were told that such blocks were no longer being placed, you see?

Avarre · Dec 04, 2007, 05:35 AM // 05:35

Keep the spam posts and trolling in OT and clear this thread for actual replies, people.

Gaile Gray · Dec 04, 2007, 05:35 AM // 05:35

There are no automatic bans or blocks. Yes, someone is reading the data, across about 20 parameters, and is accidentally making an assumption about certain transactions.

Regrettable, yes. Resolvable, certainly.

I think it might help this discussion -- and I'm still hoping we can have one -- if I explain a bit about how blocks and bans happen.

We have several levels of Support. The upper levels train the lower levels, and stay in frequent communication with those individuals to help them refine their processes. Obviously, at some point, there was a failure in refining the process and people who should have not been affected by gold selling network actions were blocked or banned. And once again, we're deeply regretful for that error.

As you know, it is a breach of the User Agreement to (1) sell Guild Wars gold, (2) transfer or hold gold for sellers, (3) in other ways help in the sales of gold, or -- and this is key -- (4) purchase Guild Wars gold.

Some time ago, we decided that in order to protect the integrity of the game we needed to start actioning gold sellers. We realized that they had and continue to develop very clever ways of "masking" what they are doing. They spend a lot of time assessing what we're doing, and they hope that if they change things up, we will not be able to identify them and ban the account with which they're making money. When we set certain parameters for investigating an account, suddenly, the accounts are not doing that, or are doing whatever it was just below "the line" to catch support's attention. It is very much like playing cat and mouse or whack-a-mole.

It helps all of us players to have gold sellers removed from the game. It preserves the economy and retains the fairness of the gameplay system itself. In order to find gold sellers and other members of the gold selling networks, we do "data mining." A few of our top programmers created several programs that obtain a lot of information about accounts. Those programs look at hundreds, actually thousands of data points and, if there are a number of actions on a list of things often associated with gold selling, that account is flagged. While it might be easy to think Support just "hits the switch" and bans that person, they don't. Someone actually pulls specific information at greater detail about the account that was initially flagged through the data mining. The account is reviewed -- yes, by real humans -- and based on about 20 or 30 different parameters, the account is then either actioned or not actioned.

Recently, in order to expand the effectiveness of the blocks/bans of the gold selling networks, support team members started looking beyond gold sellers and gold transferrers to gold buyers, as well. And that's where the error crept in. I can't go into details. It would be downright foolish to reveal "These are the data points we look at in figuring out if you're a bot or a gold seller" because that would allow the gold selling network profiteers to avoid getting caught. Let me just say that when these team members started looking at gold buyers, they made some errors in how they viewed the data. I think you can figure out some parts of that error from the various reports of the blocks.

The bottom line is that we asked support to halt the blocks of this nature while the process of data mining review is given a thorough review. Gold sellers will still be blocked, as far as I know, but those who might have been blocked for gold purchases should not be blocked at this time -- not until we have a much, much better system of identifying them.

Frankly, I think there are glitches in the reviews for both sales and purchases. I'll talk to support and the programmers to learn more about it, and to see how we can come up with a system that does the good thing -- removes the gold traffickers -- while leaving honest players alone.

mcsumo · Dec 04, 2007, 08:32 AM // 08:32

Well said Avarre. A little bit of silliness is fine so long as the serious discussion is furthered too. Is good to hear from you too Gaile.

Please guys don't jump down Gaile's throat the moment she appears. Her job is to liaise with the community (that's us), which is what she is trying to do here. If she can get straight answers she will take these issues to those that can correct them. Gaile is not the one doing the banning and has no direct control over the process. We just need to help her get the info to figure out what exactly is going wrong.

I would also like Gaile's opinion on this 'offensive name' silliness. Some people are obviously getting temp bans/being forced to change character on the basis of /report. Sometimes for things that can only be considered 'offensive' at a stretch, or if you have particularly delicate sensibilities.

As an example I created 3 characters, pretty much purely for mule purposes. We Need This K Rap, Give Me More Baby and Empty Your Load. Now at the time I thought it was just a bit of harmless fun. But somebody could take offense and report them. What would happen then? If that character just disappears along with dozens of dyes/alcohol/tomes/whatever I am going to be seriously pissed off.

Do we get a warning? How exactly does it happen? Is it just a name change? Should I offload and change those chars now (which would also pee me off for birthday setback) ? And should we be empowering neurotic kids (in some cases) with the decision on whether a name is offensive? Heading down the road of 'this could be offensive to "example A" ' is extremely dangerous and could snowball out of control don't you think?

N8mare · Dec 04, 2007, 08:51 AM // 08:51

Quote:

Originally Posted by Gaile Gray

It helps all of us players to have gold sellers removed from the game. It preserves the economy and retains the fairness of the gameplay system itself.

Lol. You've done everything you could to preserve the gamers from getting "rich" (implemented loot scalling, etc) - in that way ppl who have played GW for - let's say - 10 months are unable to compete with those who played it for 2y. Where's the fairness if gamer A was able to get stacks of ectos thanks to farming system 1 while gamer B can only go and find some burried chest in hope for some gold? Oh, it's sooo fair... Don't make me laugh.

After you've done that - you noticed that more and more gamers started actually buying the gold. Any conclusions ?

If there's DEMAND for the gold - there will be SELLERS. You can do NOTHING about that, ppl will still find a way to buy it, if they need it.

This is YOU and YOUR team's decisions which make gamers go for buying the gold. With all these bans, blocks, spying on accounts, flagging the accounts and investigating - you try to cure the results, not the real problem, which is caused by YOU. All these actions are working against you, repeling ppl from GW. Sad. Regards ;-)

Lord Sojar · Dec 04, 2007, 08:53 AM // 08:53

Quote:

Originally Posted by Gaile Gray

There are no automatic bans or blocks. Yes, someone is reading the data, across about 20 parameters, and is accidentally making an assumption about certain transactions.

Regrettable, yes. Resolvable, certainly.

I think it might help this discussion -- and I'm still hoping we can have one -- if I explain a bit about how blocks and bans happen.

We have several levels of Support. The upper levels train the lower levels, and stay in frequent communication with those individuals to help them refine their processes. Obviously, at some point, there was a failure in refining the process and people who should have not been affected by gold selling network actions were blocked or banned. And once again, we're deeply regretful for that error.

As you know, it is a breach of the User Agreement to (1) sell Guild Wars gold, (2) transfer or hold gold for sellers, (3) in other ways help in the sales of gold, or -- and this is key -- (4) purchase Guild Wars gold.

Some time ago, we decided that in order to protect the integrity of the game we needed to start actioning gold sellers. We realized that they had and continue to develop very clever ways of "masking" what they are doing. They spend a lot of time assessing what we're doing, and they hope that if they change things up, we will not be able to identify them and ban the account with which they're making money. When we set certain parameters for investigating an account, suddenly, the accounts are not doing that, or are doing whatever it was just below "the line" to catch support's attention. It is very much like playing cat and mouse or whack-a-mole.

It helps all of us players to have gold sellers removed from the game. It preserves the economy and retains the fairness of the gameplay system itself. In order to find gold sellers and other members of the gold selling networks, we do "data mining." A few of our top programmers created several programs that obtain a lot of information about accounts. Those programs look at hundreds, actually thousands of data points and, if there are a number of actions on a list of things often associated with gold selling, that account is flagged. While it might be easy to think Support just "hits the switch" and bans that person, they don't. Someone actually pulls specific information at greater detail about the account that was initially flagged through the data mining. The account is reviewed -- yes, by real humans -- and based on about 20 or 30 different parameters, the account is then either actioned or not actioned.

Recently, in order to expand the effectiveness of the blocks/bans of the gold selling networks, support team members started looking beyond gold sellers and gold transferrers to gold buyers, as well. And that's where the error crept in. I can't go into details. It would be downright foolish to reveal "These are the data points we look at in figuring out if you're a bot or a gold seller" because that would allow the gold selling network profiteers to avoid getting caught. Let me just say that when these team members started looking at gold buyers, they made some errors in how they viewed the data. I think you can figure out some parts of that error from the various reports of the blocks.

The bottom line is that we asked support to halt the blocks of this nature while the process of data mining review is given a thorough review. Gold sellers will still be blocked, as far as I know, but those who might have been blocked for gold purchases should not be blocked at this time -- not until we have a much, much better system of identifying them.

Frankly, I think there are glitches in the reviews for both sales and purchases. I'll talk to support and the programmers to learn more about it, and to see how we can come up with a system that does the good thing -- removes the gold traffickers -- while leaving honest players alone.

I am going to off a limb and assume they were making the error of looking for high gold transfers and perhaps assumed gold buyer based on amount? If that isn't the case, then just ignore me.

But alas, I was banned recently, and I must say... for a long period. Due to my schedule, and other 2 accounts, I really didn't look into it. But looking back on the situation, there was some brat 12 year old threatening to report me for just about everything I did (which included offering her 4,000 USD for her "5TB HDD", at which point, she reported me for offering to buy Guild Wars items for real cash... to which I replied that hard drives are not Guild Wars items, and if they are, well Western Digital and Seagate are certainly not happy right now. But what really has confused me is the length of the ban. It was around 360+ hours. My PvE account has never been banned before... The rapid escalation of hours makes me wonder who is providing this "support".

Let me quote your website Gaile:
"The suspension periods are designed to be effective and fair. The first mark results in a relatively brief suspension; players who slip up once in a great while will not suffer dire consequences. The suspension periods do scale up, though, in order to better handle those players who are in regular breach of the Rules of Conduct. For them, the account marks can add up to weeks of suspension."

Now, my PvP account was scaled correctly. First time, inappropriate name = 24 hours. Second time, I called someone a Nazi, 72 hours for racial slurs. 3rd time was discussion in Grotto that turned into some debate about banning. I apparently and unknowingly made allusions to the Holocaust, which were deemed antisemitic. I however, will contest that to this day. Burning in the fires of the Bannoovens didn't cross my mind at the time as being an allusion the human ovens used in the Holocaust... it was a rather lengthy stretch in my opinion. This ban was 240 hrs. Now, I have been more careful with regards to references to any historical event that has been deemed "sensitive." I see the scaling pattern there. However, and I must stress this, my PvE account has NEVER been banned.

So, are my two seperate accounts treated as one account because they are both under the same PlayNC account? If that is the case, that is silly, considering my PVP account is currently NOT banned. I mean, either ban both, or don't flag both for the offense of one. It is rather confusing and mindless. Any clarification on this point Gaile?

Roshi_ikkyu · Dec 04, 2007, 09:07 AM // 09:07

Quote:

Originally Posted by Gaile Gray

I will say this again. Please read each word:

For the most part, these people are not getting banned; they are getting blocked.
There are no automatic blocks.
There are no automatic bans.

Damn your got a seriously hard job PRing this matter Gaile.

But is these "There are no.." comments like the old "There is no farming code" comments from almost a yr ago?

N8mare · Dec 04, 2007, 12:02 PM // 12:02

Quote:

Originally Posted by Alleran

I do not know what I have to do now.

Give up playing Guild Wars and tell all your friends intending to play GW to give up this idea ? Choose from several other gw-like games to play without all those maniacs investigating, spying, blocking and banning...

GW is now really not worth to spend time with - with ppl afraid to to anything in the game because of a baning madness.

Alleran · Dec 04, 2007, 12:13 PM // 12:13

How many people got ban and never write to support?
They do not know how do it.

IslandHermet · Dec 04, 2007, 01:13 PM // 13:13

Quote:

Originally Posted by N8mare

Lol. You've done everything you could to preserve the gamers from getting "rich" (implemented loot scalling, etc) - in that way ppl who have played GW for - let's say - 10 months are unable to compete with those who played it for 2y. Where's the fairness if gamer A was able to get stacks of ectos thanks to farming system 1 while gamer B can only go and find some burried chest in hope for some gold? Oh, it's sooo fair... Don't make me laugh.

After you've done that - you noticed that more and more gamers started actually buying the gold. Any conclusions ?

If there's DEMAND for the gold - there will be SELLERS. You can do NOTHING about that, ppl will still find a way to buy it, if they need it.

This is YOU and YOUR team's decisions which make gamers go for buying the gold. With all these bans, blocks, spying on accounts, flagging the accounts and investigating - you try to cure the results, not the real problem, which is caused by YOU. All these actions are working against you, repeling ppl from GW. Sad. Regards ;-)

I hate to agree with a pre-searing cadet but the man has a point here.

nerfed farming=people buying gold because they cant farm it anymore

Aleta · Dec 04, 2007, 02:48 PM // 14:48

Quote:

Originally Posted by IslandHermet

I hate to agree with a pre-searing cadet but the man has a point here.

nerfed farming=people buying gold because they cant farm it anymore

I agree too. It's sad. I had played for two years almost. Can't make a slim copper anymore. Yes I believe they pushed people into the arms of sellers instead of away. Heck you can't even sell a decent green for anything anymore

YunSooJin · Dec 04, 2007, 02:57 PM // 14:57

Quote:

Originally Posted by Aleta

I agree too. It's sad. I had played for two years almost. Can't make a slim copper anymore. Yes I believe they pushed people into the arms of sellers instead of away. Heck you can't even sell a decent green for anything anymore

The reason why you can't make bank is because ANET upped the drop rate of rare items (or made getting items with perfect stats) easier to get.

Why?

Because the pve scrubs would not stop whining and moaning. Well, I'm pretty sure any of the old traders have absolutely ZERO sympathy for you guys. We knew this was happening, and while we were angry that our own items were being devalued under our feet, we knew it would screw everyone else over too.

Here's what happened:
Under the old system, you couldn't find a 15>50 weapon. No how, no way. Was rare and extremely expensive to get. When greens were introduced, greens were AMAZING!!! I mean, wow, perfect weapons with perfect mods that cost ~50-100k!?!? Another gold weapon of comparable stats would be upwards of 150-200k! Fabulous.

When ANET upped gold drop rates, not ONLY did they destroy golds, they were undercutting greens.

When ANET introduced inscriptions, they completely killed the market for caster greens.

Now the market is always where it was - rarity. The rarer or harder an item was to get, the more expensive it was, as long as there was demand. That's why some items still cost a lot.

However, since the majority of skins are now easy to get or ugly, you basically have a market of skins that NO ONE is willing to buy for higher prices. You have a market of high priced items that everyone wants, and no middle market.

No middle market, no middle class. You're either poor, or you're rich. The only reasonably reliable way to gain gold is just to farm your ass off, which by the way, is just grind. Trading used to be a better way to make money, but good luck with that now, if you have no cash.

Alleran · Dec 04, 2007, 03:09 PM // 15:09

Quote:

Originally Posted by GM Justus

Thank you very much for contacting the PlayNC Customer Support Team.

After reviewing our documentation on your case we have now removed the block from your account. The review showed that your account was indeed blocked in error and we would like to ask you to accept our apologies for this. We take steps to ensure that we do not accidentally block accounts that have not violated our rules, but in your case this has unfortunately happened despite our best efforts.

Together with your account, we have also unblocked three additional members of your guild that have been blocked due to the same error.

You should now be able to play again as usual and we are sorry for any inconvenience that this issue may have caused.

Agaion, please accept our apologies and thank you for your patience and understanding in this matter.

Regards,
GM Justus

PlayNC Customer Support
NCsoft Europe

End of Story