Curse

Eviance · Aug 31, 2006, 02:27 PM // 14:27

Well Tuna I seriously doubt that most farming botters (ebay gold *hores) actually take the time to read the forums or keep up with "current" events. That being said, they wouldn't know if mods were randomly messaging them on dnd as they are usually never "really" at the computer. Thats the whole point of a bot program - you can just up and walk away!

*sighs* I've stopped farming even though I was just fixing to start back up with my 55 necro, but meh now >_<

Silver_Fang · Aug 31, 2006, 02:56 PM // 14:56

A bot program is better at reponding to a Hi, if the only requirement is a Hi back.

Haggard · Aug 31, 2006, 03:10 PM // 15:10

Quote:

Originally Posted by Uther Charrsbane

i have said this a few times: Anet are a nerfing bunch of geeks that have carrots up their asses and they cant do their job properly.
i have been banned once on another account and i am a saint too.
but lifes unfair and we have to live with it

I'd agree with you, but then arenanet would ban me.

Taurus · Aug 31, 2006, 03:38 PM // 15:38

I dont know who cares about this topic, the only ones who support this whining are the other bot farmers, and that lil history at the beggining of the topic... what a joke.

Let me say you all something : NOBODY cares if your stupid money bot farming accounts got banned except for others like you, it WILL NOT, no matter what you say, reduce the ammount of players that will buy nightfall and if your account gets banned for good, GJ ANET, 99% chance its a bot acount anyway.

To bots, heavy farmers and other stupid players that cheated and got their account banned : Boo-hoo-hoo!

ChildeOfMalkav · Aug 31, 2006, 04:21 PM // 16:21

Quote:

Originally Posted by Taurus

I dont know who cares about this topic, the only ones who support this whining are the other bot farmers, and that lil history at the beggining of the topic... what a joke.

Let me say you all something : NOBODY cares if your stupid money bot farming accounts got banned except for others like you, it WILL NOT, no matter what you say, reduce the ammount of players that will buy nightfall and if your account gets banned for good, GJ ANET, 99% chance its a bot acount anyway.

To bots, heavy farmers and other stupid players that cheated and got their account banned : Boo-hoo-hoo!

Wow. Blantant flamebait. Or you really are that dense.

Eviance · Aug 31, 2006, 04:42 PM // 16:42

Quote:

Originally Posted by ChildeOfMalkav

Wow. Blantant flamebait. Or you really are that dense.

Isn't it obvious? He was one of the unfortunates that DIDN'T get banned with the mass banning stick, so he wouldn't understand. I'm sure those that were smacked with the mass ban stick are just waiting patiently till its his turn.

Logic states that most bot farmers don't frequent the boards, but yet the OP has been a member here for a while now even if not as long as others he was indeed here before he was ever banned which gives him a bit more credit than those who register just to complain that they were banned. Obviously he didn't read the entire thread which does indeed leave him open to tons of flames.... *giggles* If he wants to call all of those that were banned during the festival bot farmers... Well then that shows how little his post really means now doesn't it?

Franco · Aug 31, 2006, 05:14 PM // 17:14

Damn I feel for you... for what you say my acount aint even half as good as yours is and Id be really devastated if that happened.

But these mods piss me off so much... How can someone make such a fantastic game and not be able to detect a trojan or a keylogger/bot whatever when they see one =S what the...

aaronsgh · Aug 31, 2006, 05:36 PM // 17:36

Quote:

Originally Posted by wilderness

Originally Posted by areanet
Hello Bracken,

Thank you for contacting the Guild Wars customer support team. A game moderator did witness automated behaviour in game while observing your character, this indicated the use of an automated third-party program, which is why we closed the account. In this case, as you are a one-time offender, we will remove the ban. However, please be aware that if we notice similar behaviour in the future, we will have to close your account permanently. Please allow 24 hours for this to take effect.

Please feel free to contact the support team again if you encounter any other problems.

Regards,

GM Trent

Guild Wars Customer Support
NCsoft Europe
http://www.guildwars.com

this is just so fundamentally wrong....
so do we all get a first chance at being caught for botting? or is this just anet's way of saying 'i'm sorry we screwed up' but are just too tuff to admit it in the right words.... v disappointing.. =(

Loviatar · Aug 31, 2006, 06:21 PM // 18:21

Quote:

Originally Posted by aaronsgh

this is just so fundamentally wrong....
so do we all get a first chance at being caught for botting? or is this just anet's way of saying 'i'm sorry we screwed up' but are just too tuff to admit it in the right words.... v disappointing.. =(

or maybe what Anet said was the simple truth and they are giving him/her a second chance.

you dont know
i dont know

remember when this happened?

Quote:

Don't believe that all who complain are honest; when Valve banned pirated Half-Life 2 serial numbers and people who'd used a bug to download HL2 for free, there were literally HUNDREDS of people in the Valve fora screaming about being unfairly banned, all of them swearing on their mothers grave they weren't pirates.
And again, Valve _only banned known pirate serials_, straight outta the bittorrent .inf.

Ole Man Bourbon · Aug 31, 2006, 06:58 PM // 18:58

You have to wonder how many wrongful bannings are simply a case of mistaken identity. Seems like it happens a lot.

lyra_song · Aug 31, 2006, 07:53 PM // 19:53

I think Anet is doing what they are supposed to do.
Looking at suspicious behaviour and deciding if its a bot and taking action.
Now, Im not saying every ban is correct and every ban is not correct.
I'm just saying they are doing their job. Looking for bot-like behaviour.

Wether or not a person or a bot is showing bot-like behaviour is irrelevant. (feel free to disagree)

The fact is Anet is looking at it. I think we can all agree on this.

Its the decisions and actions they choose on accounts thats questionable in SOME situations.

Some questions that should matter:

How many real botters get caught and get banned daily?
How many real botters dong get caught dont get banned daily?
How many real botters get caught and are ALLOWED to exist to catch more accounts in the bot network?
How many honest players get caught in the crossfire?

--------------------

Now some things we can find out:

How many players who go to guru have been banned?
How many players who go to guru have been banned and unbanned?
How many players feel like they MIGHT get banned?

aaronsgh · Aug 31, 2006, 07:55 PM // 19:55

Quote:

Originally Posted by Loviatar

or maybe what Anet said was the simple truth and they are giving him/her a second chance.

you dont know
i dont know

remember when this happened?

Quote:

as you are a one-time offender, we will remove the ban

afaik, the above statement does not equate to "because you have chainmailed us and/or pleaded with us we give u a 'second chance' "

i'm talking about the principle behind a pban or a temp ban and the logic or non-logic behind "giving him/her a second chance."; not about whether the OP is guilty or not.

why would anet change a pban to a temp ban after a few emails being see-sawed if they were so sure he was guilty (and thus a pban at the start)?

also, if anet enforces a banning protocol that has no room for error (as we might have witnessed from anet's first reply) why change their mind?

as i mentioned earlier, it is FUNDAMENTALLY wrong, not a question of who's guilty and who's not.

Eviance · Aug 31, 2006, 08:56 PM // 20:56

Quote:

Originally Posted by aaronsgh

afaik, the above statement does not equate to "because you have chainmailed us and/or pleaded with us we give u a 'second chance' "

i'm talking about the principle behind a pban or a temp ban and the logic or non-logic behind "giving him/her a second chance."; not about whether the OP is guilty or not.

why would anet change a pban to a temp ban after a few emails being see-sawed if they were so sure he was guilty (and thus a pban at the start)?

also, if anet enforces a banning protocol that has no room for error (as we might have witnessed from anet's first reply) why change their mind?

as i mentioned earlier, it is FUNDAMENTALLY wrong, not a question of who's guilty and who's not.

Not the most well written post but probably the closest to how much of us who believe in wilderness's innocence feel. I've read other cases of banning and they usually fall the same way, after a few emails Anet lets them off the hook. I think that this in large comes from the fact that most botters won't argue the point as they likely have enough money to go out and buy another copy or still have multiple copies still in fine working order. Most botters are in it for the money. Granted I am sure there are your regular smojoes who have a bot program for their farming just to get gold and better items and keep them in game.

Just like I am sure that Anet makes mistakes ...
Now I am not saying that every goon that comes here is innocent, but in the case of wilderness, I think this was another innocent banning and should be examined far more carefully and dealt with a lot better than "You looked like a bot" - ever seen someone lagging? They look very much like a bot glitching all over the place. If they are going to ban everyone who looks like a bot then we are all eventually doomed at some point and time.

ubermancer · Sep 01, 2006, 02:34 AM // 02:34

Quote:

Originally Posted by Eviance

Well Tuna I seriously doubt that most farming botters (ebay gold *hores) actually take the time to read the forums or keep up with "current" events. That being said, they wouldn't know if mods were randomly messaging them on dnd as they are usually never "really" at the computer. Thats the whole point of a bot program - you can just up and walk away!

*sighs* I've stopped farming even though I was just fixing to start back up with my 55 necro, but meh now >_<

That program I talked about has a variable in it that automatically records what you were whispered, and by who. While I dont see any of the public scripts utilizing a log of whispers (save one which is nonfunctioning due to a logic error), much less an automatic response, I am sure that it is just this which the infamous '30k ok' bot traders use.

johnmedgla · Sep 01, 2006, 03:03 AM // 03:03

Actually I've just noticed something of a contradiction.....

From the GM Trent E-Mail quoted above:
"A game moderator did witness automated behaviour in game while observing your character, this indicated the use of an automated third-party program, which is why we closed the account."

From Gaile Gray's response to the 'Mass Banning Fiasco':
http://forums.gwonline.net/showthrea...16#post4222216
"By the way, no one is banned solely for observed behavior. I'm sorry that you're confused by the response from support, but that is what triggers an investigation, not what results in the banning! You are 100% right: A bot cannot be detected simply by visual observation!"

Anyone else find these two mutually exclusive?

lyra_song · Sep 01, 2006, 03:16 AM // 03:16

Quote:

Originally Posted by johnmedgla

Actually I've just noticed something of a contradiction.....

From the GM Trent E-Mail quoted above:
"A game moderator did witness automated behaviour in game while observing your character, this indicated the use of an automated third-party program, which is why we closed the account."

From Gaile Gray's response to the 'Mass Banning Fiasco':
http://forums.gwonline.net/showthrea...16#post4222216
"By the way, no one is banned solely for observed behavior. I'm sorry that you're confused by the response from support, but that is what triggers an investigation, not what results in the banning! You are 100% right: A bot cannot be detected simply by visual observation!"

Anyone else find these two mutually exclusive?

I think we can play semantics a little.

Anet logs our actions and text. This is a fact. Im stating this as a fact because NOT logging things would just be complete and utter idiocy...i dont even wanna consider that for Anet as possibly not logging out actions and text. Just on the legal merits alone. Logging covers their asses.

Anyway....

Someone "observing" could be someone keeping track of the log of your character vs "observing" as in watching your character while you are in a town or outpost.

I think thats what the two meanings we are seeing here. But this is speculation.

ChildeOfMalkav · Sep 01, 2006, 03:17 AM // 03:17

Quote:

Originally Posted by johnmedgla

Actually I've just noticed something of a contradiction.....

From the GM Trent E-Mail quoted above:
"A game moderator did witness automated behaviour in game while observing your character, this indicated the use of an automated third-party program, which is why we closed the account."

From Gaile Gray's response to the 'Mass Banning Fiasco':
http://forums.gwonline.net/showthrea...16#post4222216
"By the way, no one is banned solely for observed behavior. I'm sorry that you're confused by the response from support, but that is what triggers an investigation, not what results in the banning! You are 100% right: A bot cannot be detected simply by visual observation!"

Anyone else find these two mutually exclusive?

Yep. Also it seems that in other cases they do no observation of behaviour. When I got banned during the Dragon Festival (I was afk gambling for 2 days) it was obvious that there was no GM actually observing me standing in the rings, instead they used some automated detecting system to conclude that I was some bot.

It seems they're very inconsistant in their methods, using only one or the other instead of using them all to be double sure.

EDIT: Of course, Lyra could be right that their form of observation is no more than just looking at logs.

wilderness · Sep 01, 2006, 06:41 AM // 06:41

Thanks for all your support guys, really appreciated.

And I'm not here to argue my innocence, this thread is merely what the title suggests: A warning.

To those players who frequently spam/go afk/farm robotically etc, and also a reassurance to those whose accounts have been unjustly banned, that if you protest your innocence, you will get your account back.

Saying this, it has now been 8 days since Areanet said they would unban my account within 24 hours.

In this time they have duplicated automated emails (slowing the process considerably), 'unbanned' the wrong account (one my roomate bought me after this my first account was locked. This account was never banned to begin with...), passed my case between two different GMs who appear to have no idea how to read my tickets discussion thread and now simply appear to be ignoring my mails.

Apparently this is progress...

The problem I have with A.net is not the way they ban people, sure it's inconvenient, but if you're innocent I have faith that your account will be reinstated, eventually. The problem I have is the way they have dealt with me as a customer.

It's like they don't care.

johnmedgla · Sep 02, 2006, 02:22 AM // 02:22

Lyra, I tend to agree the statement is rather vagye, but then that's the point. Read literally, either Gaile or GM Trent is either misinformed or simply lying. The point seems to be that they don't actually have any clear and reliable method of detecting players who bot, but rather people whom they suspect (using some arcane and utterly opaque criteria) are immediately slapped with a ban, a sort of 'fix it later' mentality. I'm not suggesting they inform us how they detect bots, the problems there are both obvious and well discussed above, but I would like to have confidence that tehy have a rigorous and reliable system based upon something more than the fact that I get stuck on one of the guards in Kaineng Centre every time I auto-run from the Henchies to Michiko.

The whole thing just seems so, well frankly shoddy. I have a somewhat personal interest, as one of the people banned permanently (for around two hours in fact) during the Dragon Festival. After sending several worried e-mail to support, my account was unblocked, but I'm still waiting for an apology, or even an acknowledgment to the messages I sent.

Many of the arguments here are interesting, but there are a few points thatquite annoy me.

1) Innocent people banned tend to be farmers of one variety of another.
Quite true, and so what exactly? The game purposefully includes Elite Missions which take anywhere from 1 1/2 hours to over three, depending on how good your team are, so A-Net can hardly blame people for farming over entended periods. Urgoz's warren is little more than a Giant Farming Run anyway!

2) No one 'needs' masses of gold and rares, so it's the farmer's own fault!
How a company can purposefully create Massive gold sinks (and before anyone starts, for Non-Ebayers FoW armour is a HUGE expense!) then punish people who develop efficient ways of acquiring the resources needed to acquire them is just beyond me.

3) It's really hard to tell who is and isn't a bot, and so some innocent people will be caught up in the crossfire.
True to an extent, but how on Earth they can fire shotgun bans at people they suspect of botting, while obvious botters operate day in and day out with impunity is beyond me. I sell a few items on GuruAuction, and when the buyer is in another territory we usually mee in Ascalon/Kaineng/Shing-Jea Interbational 1. Every visist, and I do mean EVERY visit, there's someone hawking gold for real world cash and advertising their website. Ever visited Droks Int 1 and looked at the Army of Mo/W marching in and out of the Talus Chute gate, all following precisely the same path? Or how about the people who can miraculously type ~1600 words per minute spamming every channel with WTS, (W)TS, Selling, \/\/TS etc etc. If these people AREN'T using a 3rd party program to automate their powerselling, they must be very close friends of Mavis Beacon!

4) The actual responses from A-Net posted here beggar belief. They can be summed up thus: 'We're not sure if you were botting, you might have been, you might not, and given that we're giving you back your account, we accept that you probably weren't. HOWEVER don't ever do that thing you were doing (you know, the one we haven't told you we have issues with, and therefore can't possibly know what you've done to earn our wrath this time) or so help us... You'll be sorry!

I suppose I really want to see three things.
1) A more robust approach to bot-detection than 'What you were doing looked automated.'
2) A recognition that, given the in game economy A-Net have knowingly created with rare skins and perfect weapons, farming solo for several hours in one or two locations IS perfectly normal behaviour for a significant number of HUMAN players.
3) Perhaps just a little more contrition and recognition of error in A-Net's support department. Apologies for the length of this post, I tend to babble on once I get going.

sindex · Sep 02, 2006, 04:18 AM // 04:18

In all actuality I disagree with the statement A-net is doing their job, because it seems clearly that they are not. First of all this is a crime; not a small one, but a pretty large crime in FRAUD. As a customer I can see the point of license agreement, to keep the program(s) (or product(s)) from being manipulated by the public or even stolen. The fact is how well does that agreement hold up, and if it does not bend towards manipulation of the customer (to otherwise benefit the company instead). A-net knows that what they are running an MMO and for that reason alone they should know, of what the customer goes through while establishing that online connection (i.e. Hackers, Software Viruses, Identity Theft, and etc). What they did to this particular customer sounds like an assumption by one individual, (a human being (flawed if you will)) seeing a particular pattern; then establishing it as breach in contract. Furthermore they did not only band this customer, but they stated that the customer is a liar and a thief. After which the customer goes to the public, and then actions are changed stating: even though your account was permanently band we are giving you a second chance, but if we see this breach in contract again you will be permanently band (no apology or reasons of). Now if this customer had certain specialists go through the computer and state that there was no evidence of these so called “third party programs” running in the background; and furthermore if there is evidence that “Guild Wars” was a key entity to bring in this third-party program into this customers computer (that there was a hack from their servers brought back to the customer) A-nets fully liable.

This brings me to what the customer now feels, two big emotions paranoia and anger. Some people will go the rout of forgiving A-net for its supposed mistake in their minds. However other people (and including myself) sees one thing, “being taken advantage of as a paying customer” (with a company dealing in Fraudulent Affairs); which will inevitably lead to one major setback to the company: “LAWSUIT(S).” This will also lead to people being wary of the game where people will lose their faith in the company. Finally bringing them to canceling out all together; of course when you have no customers, you have no product, and you have no company.

This opinion of mine does not reflect this customer thought(s) or feeling(s), but are my opinions alone.