Recent Account Bans

As some of you may have already heard, we banned more than 3,700 accounts today. Those banned were positively identified as botters or players engaged in PvP match manipulation. We also disbanded whole guilds that were involved in these activities.

We saw the threads about your concerns with botting over the past couple months. We weren’t ignoring you, but we couldn't talk about what we were doing beforehand, as we didn’t want to tip our hand and inadvertently alert the botters to our plans. We take this issue very seriously and will continue to hunt for botters and cheaters of all sorts. There are consequences if you engage in botting or match manipulation.

Our Design Director, James Phinney, has provided more information about the bans and about our plans for continuing to pursue those involved in exploiting in his most recent blog post. Head over here to check it out.

Thank you!!!!!!!!!!

I found this hilarious on the blog:
"Here’s an actual account we just terminated: 2,469 hours, 38 titles, 913 plat, 268 ecto, Eternal Legendary Vanquisher monument, Mini Gwen, Chaos Gloves, Mallyx’s Strife, The Holy Avenger, etc., etc. It’s all gone now. Forever. You will not want that to happen to your account".

Poor stack of ecto...

Thank you for responding to concerns that many people on guru have.

Very nice, very nice, keep going on!

Thanks guys! However i doubt this will really stop the endless qq'ing of the pvp community. What downers.

Wow I didn't expect it to be so numerous but wow good job on giving it to those botters.

wow, half the population of guild wars wiped out in one day

Is it very probable or even possible to get 38 titles in less than 2500 hours? I guess to me that seems fishy by itself since it would require getting the very time consuming ones. Or maybe I just had a lot of playing hours that weren't title directed. /shrug * Unless it was 38 titles on account and included doubles.

Anywhooo... good work ANet.

Thanks for delivering Regina.

Nice! Hopefully now the bvp aspect has been dealt with (even if it is temporary) I'll be able to get back into enjoying pvp.

/agree

Thank you.

A couple of quick things about presentation:

1) If the account you cited is the "best" account you killed, you have not yet identified the worst criminals. If it isn't, cite the "best" account. For instance, rumor has it that some r15s ate bans. I think 100,000 fame and the associated hours dominates Legendary Vanquisher.
2) James claims, "rest assured that bots of all different types can be identified." In the absence of evidence, that statement really isn't convincing. 3,700 bans proves that you can identify some bots. It doesn't prove that you can identify all of them.

I am very glad to see that you are taking measures to deal with the problem.

And before you ask, I still have my account, Borat. The RBR times are legit.

Yeah, just read that...and lost "the ability to have those accomplishments recognized in Guild Wars 2".

Kudos to Anet!!!

Well, I'm sure we'll soon see the endless "I was unfairly banned" threads starting up on here and other forums...but the mods (here) are good at shutting them down.

Awesomeness.

I wonder how many new guru accounts will be created the coming days to post about this grave injustice heaped upon them.

QQ deluge in 3... 2... 1... engage!

Thank you Regina this makes me very happy to see progress and an official response from anet on botting.

Nah... I like when we keep those threads open so Regina can respond to them.

I especially like the one where the guy said he was falsely accused of botting where she responded by saying "actually, you were banned for in-game harassment, after you had been temp banned 12 different times for using racial slurs"
/pimpslapped

Many thanks ArenaNet.

“If you have any doubts about whether or not something is allowed by the User Agreement, don’t do it.”

Well put. I've removed KSMod for now. Don't wanna take the risk.

3,700 bot accounts banned in one day?

Perhaps you could unban those that have just been banned for no reason ?
People being dhumm spiked in GH and accounts being terminated..
Good job anet.