Guild Wars 2

This was a topic in Mumble recently, and I wanted to get the WvW community’s opinion on it. There are reports that certain server’s players are purchasing new alt accounts when there’s the 75% off sale, and placing these accounts on rival servers (when a slot opens up). At peak NA hours, the players log into their Alt accounts, and queue up opponent BLs by camping their alts at spawn.

Question here: Does Anet consider this to be an actionable offense?

The way I see it, artificially inflating an opponent’s queue to prevent backup defense is match manipulation. However, such an act is hard to prove or report on, since we don’t know the intention of said players AFKing at spawn. They could be legitimate players on a restroom break, or stepping away to get a drink. I don’t want to report players like this because Anet also punishes for false reporting.

seems like a lot of effort with multiboxing just to mess with 1 bl heh, just do like T1 and get alts for all 3 servers and just play whatever color you want every week

makes things more relaxed when everyone just jumps around week to week heh.

This was bound to happen sooner or later, cheap sales just made it easier & cheaper to do it. Too often there’s a fake queue, we all see it, and it’s very annoying. A lot of the times the commander would rally most everybody up and have only 25-30 players on pin. This is without any other guilds running tagless on the map. You can’t really defend a garrison against 2 map blobs with that number. It’s also impossible to get guilds willing to port in to help because they know 80% of their guild won’t get in.

One solution I can think of is since you’re always facing 2v1 on home BL, I think the home server should get an advantage in map cap. So let’s just assume map cap is at 85 right now, on your home BL the home server should have a map cap of 110. So it would essentially be 110 vs 85 vs 85. In any 2v1 situation you’ll still be outnumbered, but the extra map slots should help the home server get some guilds in to help. You would leave EBG at 85v85v85 of course.

I don’t think there’s a way to stop people from doing what they’re doing, nor is Anet going to go ban people for it. So raising the home BL map cap for the home server is about the only solution I can think of.

Raising the cap for the home BL isn’t fair for the other 2 servers. With this new problem in WvW, I think we should be allowed to report AFKers, and then the GMs can run an IP check to see if multiple accounts are running on rival BLs. If a GM sees the same IP on different servers, both in WvW, then they should kick one of them out.

If you report, you run the risk of a suspension every time if the opponent is in fact just waiting for his friends to get into the bl before doing anything. I remember when I was new to a server, we had to gain respect of everyone and we did that by running organized raids. However, there were times when it would take 30 minutes to collect up our team so much of the time players were just sitting in the BL waypoint waiting.

I don’t think it’s a good use of Anet’s already limited time to investigate alt accounts at spawn. If people are going to that extent to match manipulate as you say, then there is a bigger issue. I can’t see guilds purposely wasting time, money and resources in order to gain a say 20 person advantage.

Smooth Penguin.5294:

Raising the cap for the home BL isn’t fair for the other 2 servers.

Since when is 2v1 or fake queues fair? Let’s be real they aren’t going to go through all that just to check if someone’s afk or have multiple accounts. No MMO’s hire GM’s to do that. If someone isn’t hacking or cheating, don’t expect them to get banned or removed.

And that’s the inherent problem. You don’t want to report someone if they’re legitimately AFK. One way we used to check for spies when I played on Maguuma was to add a person, and look at their Achievement Points. If it was low, we knew someone was tag/map watching.

2 v 1 isn’t “fair”, but it’s part of the game mode when you have 3 different servers on the same map. Having alt accounts just sit in a server’s map to take up queue space is something completely different. That led to my question to see if it’s an offense than a GM can kick someone from the map. I know GM Chris did this to AFKers in PvE when we had the hostage rescue map challenge from last year.

There will be people with low achievement points on the map. These alt accounts cross server in t1 at least, are openly transparent about there intentions. It’s not for match manipulations, and there really is no need for paranoia. It’s WvW a casual game mode, where t1 will have no-low achievement people coming in over the next while. You’ll even see some of these low achievement people tag up eventually. I just welcome the players, but hey that’s just my mentality.

This is a 2012 meta; if people are doing this in large numbers again, it means they’re desperate, and your server will probably win anyway.

This is has been going for a long time, it used to happen a lot during the old t1 days with SoR getting constantly spied on, having the ts ddosed, alt accounts clogging queues etc, and a whole lot of other garbage. WvW is competitive and competition will always drive some people to engage in shady and unethical behavior, its just part of it.

That’s nothing compared to all the people getting alt accounts for siege and supply griefing — something becoming really common these days (particularly the latter).

Groups with every intention of helping a server, but waiting at spawn for all of them to get in while map is queued are as big of an issue. One decent sized guild did this all the time (or their driver went on break a lot) – always annoyed me…..

People actually waste money and time to do this ? LMFAO !

Caedmon.6798:

People actually waste money and time to do this ? LMFAO !

People buy alt accounts for many purposes, like additional bank space. Parking an alt on a rival server and using it to log in to AFK in the BL or EBG is just an added bonus for them. It’s only $10 on the big sale days.

Smooth Penguin.5294:

Raising the cap for the home BL isn’t fair for the other 2 servers. With this new problem in WvW, I think we should be allowed to report AFKers, and then the GMs can run an IP check to see if multiple accounts are running on rival BLs. If a GM sees the same IP on different servers, both in WvW, then they should kick one of them out.

Well virtualbox m8 ^^U can set diffrent ip at virtual machine and diffrent at ur main system. Also did u see ANY GM during last months / years? And just think about the amount of reports And players banned for over over overreporting ^^

GM Prohealz suspended a siege griefer on TC last month, so I know he’s active. He mentioned that the player might receive a perma-ban if it continues.

But even if he’s active in WvW, the question remains if Anet will take action on this type of tactics.

Well my first inclination is no it’s not an actionable offense because they in fact paid money for that alt to be there. Whose to say they aren’t waiting for friends to show up before raiding?

Guilds often do this and sit at spawn for nearly 45 min while the guildies show up. Whose to say they aren’t waiting for their entire alt guild to show up for that raid?

Why are they sitting at spawn when they could be depleting supplies by building random trebs, catas, and rams inside the enemy keeps, à la Far Hackerpeaks?

There is only 1 solution: Give people control over their team, i.e. get rid of open servers and replace them by

• closed alliances i.e. large guilds of guilds (where people can play serious)
• random teams (where you just hop in to play a bit)

msalakka.4653:

Why are they sitting at spawn when they could be depleting supplies by building random trebs, catas, and rams inside the enemy keeps, à la Far Hackerpeaks?

1. Hard to play two avatars at the same time.
2. harder to prove grief play
3. completely sufficient to keep the enemy away from the map

I don’t see the issue since everyone with common sense stopped carring about the score years ago. Whoever has the most coverage throughout a whole week will always win, regardless if you get queued at primetime ‘mysteriously’.

msalakka.4653:

Why are they sitting at spawn when they could be depleting supplies by building random trebs, catas, and rams inside the enemy keeps, à la Far Hackerpeaks?

We had a guy doing this on TC, and Prohealz gave him a 2 week suspension. That’s why it’s safer just to AFK at spawn, since it’s harder to prove spying or griefing.

Right now the only way to get a GM to remove someone is to A) report that person, or PM a GM in-game, and hope he catching them doing something wrong at that moment. With reporting, you can’t just report someone without a reason, or you can get in trouble for false reporting. So the only way we can do this is PMing GMs if they’re online.

Smooth Penguin.5294:

With reporting, you can’t just report someone without a reason, or you can get in trouble for false reporting.

That’s a myth. For you to “get in trouble” for a false report, they’d have to actually investigate the said report to rule out foul play. Just take a look at the Blackgate hacker Thief thread: all those reports, including video footage, and not a kittening thing has been done. Had they investigated something, the hacker would be long gone. Had they found him to have flown in through walls by legitimate means, surely all those people reporting would have gotten “in trouble”?

I mean it’s nice to keep dreaming that somebody’s answering phones or opening Outlook at ANet’s abuse department, but the fact is there’s no Santa Claus and Elvis isn’t cutting records anymore.

Yeah, I’ve noticed that, quite often, there is a queue, but then hardly anyone actually active on the map.

It would make sense if this is what people are doing.

On the other hand, sometimes I’m just innocently AFK myself; so, as you say, you can’t just assume that is what everyone is doing.

But, I’m sure ANet could look into it, if they wanted to.

Dayra.7405:

There is only 1 solution: Give people control over their team, i.e. get rid of open servers and replace them by

• closed alliances i.e. large guilds of guilds (where people can play serious)
• random teams (where you just hop in to play a bit)

I think that would be a shame, though.

It’s really nice that it’s completely open and you can jump in and out of play, as you like.

As soon as you make everything team-based and allow people to kick each other etc., it takes away that feeling of open-to-all and makes it a far more intense type of activity.

Yes, you need to make sure people aren’t intentionally abusing the system, but I think ideally you would leave it the way it is.

After all, the game kicks you after 10 mins AFK, anyway and it might take the other players almost that long to do the same thing, in a large team situation.

Smooth Penguin.5294:

Raising the cap for the home BL isn’t fair for the other 2 servers. With this new problem in WvW, I think we should be allowed to report AFKers, and then the GMs can run an IP check to see if multiple accounts are running on rival BLs. If a GM sees the same IP on different servers, both in WvW, then they should kick one of them out.

Just some questions/things to consider…
I live with somebody who also plays GW2. This might create an issue for multi-gaming households. Wouldn’t we have the same IP address?

Can’t you only log into one account at a time per PC?

I can’t imagine it would be very fun for someone to park an alt in a wvw map and have to return every few minutes to not get logged out. I also can’t imagine someone who really loves wvw doing this, as they wouldn’t be able to participate while they’re on another account (unless you can log into multiple accounts, of. Still silly IMO).

Zepher.7803:

seems like a lot of effort with multiboxing just to mess with 1 bl heh, just do like T1 and get alts for all 3 servers and just play whatever color you want every week

makes things more relaxed when everyone just jumps around week to week heh.

But it is evident that there are players out there do things like these especially from JQ. There is a lot of toxic players from that server ever since release of the game and still they try to ruin any type of fair game which is fine in some levels. However, enough is enough and Arenanet needs to intervene and fix our queue system especially in Blackgate. We have 4 battlegrounds and almost every night and only one battleground that is not outnumbered.

Smooth Penguin.5294:

And that’s the inherent problem. You don’t want to report someone if they’re legitimately AFK. One way we used to check for spies when I played on Maguuma was to add a person, and look at their Achievement Points. If it was low, we knew someone was tag/map watching.

2 v 1 isn’t “fair”, but it’s part of the game mode when you have 3 different servers on the same map. Having alt accounts just sit in a server’s map to take up queue space is something completely different. That led to my question to see if it’s an offense than a GM can kick someone from the map. I know GM Chris did this to AFKers in PvE when we had the hostage rescue map challenge from last year.

They need to implement concrete and/or reinforce necessary measures to identify and remove these rogue accounts locking up the queue. One of which is by adding honorless debuff like they did in GW1 that or place GM in each battleground to keep an overview of the entire list of players and identify those rogue/afk bots.

Wake up and smell roses people anet does not care about there w v w they making money off all the people buying alt account. They why guilds like tw/twl ons/onsl are cancer

pandora.8475:

Wake up and smell roses people anet does not care about there w v w they making money off all the people buying alt account. They why guilds like tw/twl ons/onsl are cancer

that’s even better then… more account they ban/suspend more money they make from those type of players.