Guild Wars 2

Ideally, we’d add these to every major city over time. I’ll put it on the backlog for future consideration.

Closing this thread as it has gone well beyond the original point and has turned into a rather large misinformation campaign. The user mentioned later in this thread was not unbanned, but had their account termination changed to a temporary one due to leniency for first offense (as is the case for many users who are just now getting their first account action).

I honestly believe that after 2 years, it might be difficult for some players to understand what an exploit is and what isn’t. This is why leniency (in some cases) is just as valuable as a permanent block for the health of the game. Education of our user base is important, but repeat education is not something that we are going to put up with. Repeat offenders will be actioned heavily.

I’m not going to go into any more particulars for this specific case, the forums are not the proper place to get into this conversation. If you wish to discuss this further, feel free to open a ticket with Customer Support.

We are already working on a fix for this event chain. In the mean time, please report players that are being overly toxic (chat) during these events for “Verbal Abuse” as this is a violation of the User Agreement and Rules of Conduct.

The initial plan was to have these tours (or some appropriate alternative) in all the major cities. The Divinity’s Reach tour was created by Kim Kirsch, who was the content designer for DR, and I ran out of time to implement this with the other cities which I was responsible for during the first iteration. Before I moved off of cities onto some of the event maps, I managed to sneak in the “runners” in Hoelbrak and Black Citadel who would take you to places of interest, but they only had generic lines for getting players to follow them. Then, when we got closer to shipping the game and I had the chance to come back to the cities, it was decided that it really made the most sense to have this tour be an exclusive feature of DR as a very human thing to do, and we tried to tell the other race’s lore with other means (the norn spirit shrines, the Citadel military statues and plaques, the mentor/student circles in the Grove and the colleges in Rata Sum).

Canach is very much still working through some of his anger issues, and we will be delving more into that side of him, as his involvement with our cast of characters evolves. He has a lot to atone for, and he genuinely wants to, but it’s not something that’s going to come naturally to him.

The idea of password protection in intriguing, but I wanted to say that from my perspective, and I’ve been looking at support issues since 2004, there is no guarantees with any system.

How does a guild bank get pilfered? Here are a few ways:

• Guild member gets hacked and the thief sashays into the bank using his/her victim’s guild bank access in order to loot the bank.
• Guild member shares an account and the second person strips the bank. Never share accounts.
• Guild member resells his account and gives access to an unknown person. Never resell accounts; never buy used accounts.
• Guild member steps away from his unsecured computer and is victim of The Evil Little Brother Syndrome™.
• Guild member gets a key-logger or Trojan which, if you think about it, also would give a hacker access to the guild bank password.
• Unscrupulous person joins guild, gets bank access, strips the guild and takes off for high ground.

Guild Banks are a marvelous thing, but in the end, the guild must be very careful about who has access and must be fair enough to realize that items stolen can be sold, traded, even given to innocent people, so the thought of “chasing the items and gold” is not feasible or fair. The idea of simply duplicating the items and gold and handing them to the guild could be extremely harmful to the game economy as a whole.

Bottom line (expressed with complete sympathy for victims): Own your security.

WhiteWolf.2374:

Gaile Gray.6029:

runeblade.7514:

3rd day of not being able to buy gems.

Well rats! Our provider did put through a change and according to records, they believe they corrected the issue for everyone affected by the bug. Therefore, I think what you’re running into is an individual issue, so I encourage you to submit a ticket to allow an agent to help you.

Just wanted to let you know that I’m able to purchase gems with my CC.
The Providers change did work for me Thanks Gaile and your tech team for the help

Awesome, WhiteWolf. And thanks for your continued support. (Yeah, I remember you, as I remember a lot of the other people in this thread, and we appreciate all of you so much!)

Eight O Eight.8257:

I don’t have those ticket numbers any longer.

Edit: I was able to dig into some recovered deleted emails and found this: Request #744128

Thanks, that allowed me to look into this. The last I see is that one of our top agents looked into this extensively and was baffled. You sent us an image (screenshot) of the error message, which is something that PayPal requested. In mid-July, our agent asked if you had contacted PayPal to ask them for their input on this problem.

Trust me: I’m not trying to pass the buck here, but it seems — from reviewing the ticket — that we’re sort of stymied, and that the next point of contact should be PayPal. They appear to have told us there’s no issue, but if you can’t purchase, using their system, I have to say I’d be submitting a support ticket to them to find out what gives.

If I’m misunderstanding any of this, please forgive me. It’s late, and I might not have read correctly. But the basic question is: Have you contacted PayPal? If so, what did they say? Think we could get a copy of that ticket correspondence?

I have flagged one post for removal because it’s inflammatory and non-contributory. I feel that I need to present some information on this topic for those posting in or reading this thread.

There are quite a few accounts that require very careful review because more than one person is claiming ownership. The fact that unscrupulous people have access to information that allows them to claim an account they did not buy isn’t something that we can control. We can, however, try to help you deal with this issue. But that takes time, and that’s why these cases are taking longer than normal.

Because each case is different, because the compromise of your personal information is such a sensitive subject, and because posting your understandably-biased opinion about what should be done as opposed to what reasonably can be done is in conflict with the Forum Code of Conduct, I suggest you restrict your conversation to your support ticket and discuss the matter with an agent (or more than one agent) in order to get these things sorted.

If you feel that the outcome of a ticket needs review, post the number and a brief, neutral post in the Tickets for Review thread. There, and only there, please.

I am closing this thread and asking you to be patient and to try to understand the limitations of how much we can do for you, in cases where someone had breached your personal security. These are not game-related issues, per se, in that we have no control over your personal security. However, do be assured we’ll do the very best we can to help you.

Sorry to hear this, Eight O Eight. I’d like to review your tickets. Could you please provide those numbers?

Please do not post about this again. You’ve used the forums on multiple occasions to vent, and that truly needs to halt. I fully understand that you’re not happy that you were declined your third restoration. But honestly…

In a rhetorical sense — that means I do not want or need an answer — I must wonder what you feel is the proper response. To endlessly invest our team member’s time and efforts in resolving issues over which we have no control? To restore an account repeatedly, thereby potentially duplicating the items on it, which impacts the game economy as a whole? To offer re-do after re-do, with no assurance that measures will ever address the root cause, which lies, again, outside our control?

The issues that you are experiencing are far greater than simply the compromise of a game account. You are experiencing continued and repeated security issues on your end. And we are very, very sorry that you’re having these challenges and our team has helped you each time to regain access, and has given you not just one but two account restorations. We’ve also offered advice on how to address the problem on your end, where it exists.

However, while we very much want to help our players — and do so many times an hour — at some point, it’s only prudent, fair, and reasonable to say that we no longer can reverse the effects of those external, personal security issues.

Marcus Greythorne.6843:

Anthony, can you tell me why karma seems much less important now that it has been at release?

We have added a few karma sinks along the way but typically new content comes with a new currency, eg. candy corn or geodes. I haven’t personally implemented all of this content or currency but if I had to guess I would say that this pattern exists because we actually want to give you specific rewards for specific content.

eekzie.5640:

John Smith.4610:

The TP Issues are technical issues. While they could fixed, it would be time consuming and we feel there are bigger issues we should be putting engineers’ time on.

Couple weeks ago the TP was absolutely flawless and super fast.

Any easy way to get it to be like that again?

Yes. The TP runs on Scotch. We put in a nice 25 year in that week and it really kicked it up a notch.

In seriousness though we’re constantly working on improving performance and I expect the TP will get better and better over time.

The TP Issues are technical issues. While they could fixed, it would be time consuming and we feel there are bigger issues we should be putting engineers’ time on.

Hi All,

We will starting a CDI soon on…….Guilds.

It will be broken down into time boxed discussion sections such as Guild vs. Guild, Guild Activities, Managing Guilds, Guild Content etc.

I will update when I have more details on when we start. I am very much looking forward to it.

Chris

Hi All,

We will starting a CDI soon on…….Guilds.

It will be broken down into time boxed discussion sections such as Guild vs. Guild, Guild Activities, Managing Guilds, Guild Content etc.

I will update when I have more details on when we start. I am very much looking forward to it.

Chris

Hey Henry and anyone reading,

The next time you get lag, can you type /ip into your chat and post your results here?

Would be helpful in tracking this down!

Thank you for sharing your experiences and insight, Nessarose. I am sure it will be helpful to others.

BG — Rest assure, the process of resetting a password or user name is different that you thought, so please be reassured about that.

Glad everything sorted out ok for you. Thanks for the update.

runeblade.7514:

3rd day of not being able to buy gems.

Well rats! Our provider did put through a change and according to records, they believe they corrected the issue for everyone affected by the bug. Therefore, I think what you’re running into is an individual issue, so I encourage you to submit a ticket to allow an agent to help you.

If you believe your account was compromised, and if you request a restoration, then yes, any progress you make will be lost in settling on the proper “snapshot” we can use as a restoration point.

Thank you for these thoughts. If these ideas have already been brought up before I did not seem them and so I am replying in this thread instead of the possible past threads.

(1) If we want the camera to point down at a sleeping character we would need the camera to know about the emote happening. On top of this right now, from my understanding, most players who do screenshots use /sleep in order to get their character out of the frame. If we were to change this functionality we would want to give players another alternative to hide their character.

(2) I personally like this idea.

(3) How close is closer?

(5) Camera orientation changing seems like it would be very jaring when in combat. I would be curious to hear your ideas for a control scheme for this.

(5b) Would this be like a ‘lock on target’ look-at?

Moving to the profession balance forum where dis belongs!

Would-be hackers often “ping” a lot of possible e-mail addresses to see if they can access an account. This is especially true if they acquired a functional e-mail address from a site that was previously hacked. So say you belonged to [insert website name here] and that site was hacked. The hackers would have access to a functional e-mail address, and they then might try to reset your GW2 password using that e-mail address.

Fortunately, the system stopped them, but if you’re concerned, or if you’d like to just get a new account name (perhaps setting up an e-mail account exclusively for Guild Wars 2?) do feel free to contact Support and we’ll help you accomplish that.

Hey everybody,

This week on Episode 21 of Ready Up, Josh will be covering competitive event updates and will be joined by Competitive QA Embed, Jessica Boettiger to talk about the WvW Fall Tournament. Stay tuned until the end of the show for the final installment of the Skill Bar with Karl McLain where he will preview upcoming changes to the guardian and necromancer professions.

Date/Time: Friday, August 29 at 12:00pm PDT (19:00 UTC)
Location: http://www.twitch.tv/guildwars2

Hey everybody,

This week on Episode 21 of Ready Up, Josh will be covering competitive event updates and will be joined by Competitive QA Embed, Jessica Boettiger to talk about the WvW Fall Tournament. Stay tuned until the end of the show for the final installment of the Skill Bar with Karl McLain where he will preview upcoming changes to the guardian and necromancer professions.

Date/Time: Friday, August 29 at 12:00pm PDT (19:00 UTC)
Location: http://www.twitch.tv/guildwars2

Sorry, no. But I believe it’s coded and in testing, so I don’t think it’ll be weeks and weeks.

HHR LostProphet.4801:

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Hi All,

We have decided what the next topic will be and I will be updating the Call for Topics thread shortly.

Chris

Offtopic: Hi Chris, your inbox is still full, so I’m not able to respond to you.

Clearing now. Sorry have been very busy.

Chris

Mokai.2480:

Gaile Gray.6029:

• I want to prevent someone from seeing me. Players may desire a display name change for personal reasons. For instance, they once were friends with someone and now wish to stop interacting. Or they claim they are being “stalked” by another player. Changing for such personal reasons is not supported. More importantly: If we completely change your Display Name, people who once had you on their Friends or Blocked list still will be able to identify you. There is no way to “reset” an account and wipe its history. If someone knows the old Display Name they’ll simply see the new one. (I believe that the system is designed this way to prevent people from losing their contacts if they have to change their Display Name for a genuine security issue.)

To address this particular problem, wouldn’t the easiest solution be to appear as permanently offline to people one has on their block list? I’ve always found the lack of this to be a bit odd! One could opt to go invisible, of course, but only after logging completely into the game, hiding their status from everyone, and rendered unable to communicate with their guild.

I feel there should be some room for stalker control without having to go to such an extreme. :c

You ask a valid question, Mokai, and I’ll see if I can learn more about this suggestion. It seems to me that we discussed this long ago and it was not possible, in a technological sense, but I certainly can investigate. Thanks.

I think I see what’s going on. You’ve had a few compromise incidents, and beyond the first restoration request — which generally is easily confirmed and executed — the team needs extra time to review the ticket to ascertain how they can help.

I’m sorry for the delay but the ticket is being reviewed and will be answered as soon as possible.

Hi All,

We have decided what the next topic will be and I will be updating the Call for Topics thread shortly.

Chris

Lux.7169:

Identify the philosophy of your team-mates and react accordingly based on whatever class you are playing (although if you really want to boost your win rate you’d do your best to counter comp the enemy and bring the class that would most benefit your team).

I think the worst thing you can do is engage in a negative form of communication in any way—especially blaming someone. Not only does it COMPLETELY destroy morale, but it throws everyone off their game and some players are going to be more hellbent on pvp’ing in the chat box than doing basic things to win.

This!

If I remember the correctly from discussions with our server programmer, this is something we could add as a “nice to have” check in the matchmaking system, but I don’t think it could be something that would be 100% required to start a game. As you mentioned, making this a requirement for roster creation would add a considerable amount of time to the queue.

Not to mention every match has 10 players and there’s only 8 professions. 4v4, anetpls.

Personally, I’m OK with how boss stealing works.

Just because a creature has spawned doesn’t mean you need to kill it. In fact, in a lot of high level games, you’ll see the creatures up for long amount of time without being attempted. Players understand the value of a kill, but they also appreciate the risk associated with the attempt.

Before you attempt a creature, you should ask yourself the following questions:

• Where is the enemy team?
  • Talk with your team, or at the very least try to get a rough approximation of enemy player location by reading the mini-map. Also try to be cognizant of enemy respawn timers, as players will often times push to far point off of a respawn, setting themselves up for a perfect boss steal opportunity. On the flip side, watch the NPC mini-map icons for movement – if you see it move at all you know that the enemy team is attempting a kill.
• Do I have the ability to safely secure this boss kill?
  • Often times you’ll see players with tanky builds or condition-based builds attempting to take creatures by themselves. There’s a good chance that if a burst spec’d enemy player comes across you while you’re fighting an NPC, they’re going to steal the kill.

At the end of the day, it really comes down to map awareness and risk assessment.

Avoiding mechanics by standing in a singular area isn’t an exploit, it’s possible bad dungeon design (for example the cage room in the newer flame and frost fractal…sorry I can’t remember the name of the dungeon it’s late). In that fight there are areas in which you can avoid almost the entire fight mechanic, that’s an example of poor dungeon mechanic design.

Standing on a rock/ledge/platform while the boss attempts to hit you from below (yes there are some bosses that still have abilities that hit you), is a problem with pathing and the boss not resetting when it can’t reach the target. This is exploiting a bug.

Kiting and using geometry (running AROUND pillars and such) is a perfectly valid tactic.

Standing outside a stationary boss’s range is not an exploit, the boss “should” reset after an extended period of time, but is not. This is an example of poor boss implementation, and not an exploit.

Using terrain to block/dodge boss mechanics is also considered a valid tactic (standing behind a pillar when a boss charges).

At this point we are getting very nitpicky at each individual boss and each mechanic in question. I’m sure most of you are aware of what is an exploit and what is a mechanic/tactic. We are working on fixing these “Safe Spots”, but it’s going to take some time to get it done, and will probably happen over time. (Sorry I am not going to go into particulars for fights/changes)

I’ll be very clear here:
If a GM finds a player that is using a “Safe Spot”, that player will be moved out of the safe spot and warned (via in-game text). If they are caught again, that account will be temporarily suspended.

If a GM finds a player that is using a “Safe Spot” and selling the dungeon run, that account will be temporarily suspended without warning.

“Safe Spot” – Standing in a location to hold aggro or attack a monster/boss while it is unable to damage you (basic attack) and does not leash back to its original starting position.

This is an abuse of a geometry and/or pathing bug, and is considered an exploit.

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Kiwicharr.8051:

Hey Chris, thanks so much for all the posts and attention this thread is getting now! Really great to see some more Arenanet interaction with the players, its something that is really needed at the moment i think.

In the interests of transparency could you please explain why the atlas was removed from the website without anyone from Arenanet mentioning it? Also why do we get a lot of big changes not listed in the patch notes? Communicating things like these would really go a long way i think. People would really like to see why you make the choices you make with how you develop the game moving forward.

Hope you enjoyed your weekend!

I will speak to Steve Fowler about this who is our Head of Marketing and an all ground great guy.

Chris

So the question is why we brought down the Atlas? The reason is that this website was a promotion in celebration to the season 1 finale. It was used to build up suspense, speculation and excitement as to what the final ending would be to the Scarlet story-line, and ultimately showcasing how she was responsible for the destruction of Lions Arch.

As to the patch notes thing I am not the right person to comment

Steve

Update: 26 August 2014

846312 – Resolved. Please do not submit duplicates tickets in the future; they delay the response that we can send you and other players.
845174 – An agent is actively reviewing this now. However, I’m told this issue appears to be resolved, so could you kindly try again now and update the ticket if you still cannot purchase. Thank you for your patience!
854830 – Agent requested additional account verification information. Please respond to that e-mail so the ticket can progress.
837122 – In queue for continued review. (I note you’ve updated your ticket with additional information that clarifies your request, so thank you.)
834621 – In queue for review.
836620 – In queue for review.
857504 – In queue for review.
845646 – In queue for review.
829223 – In queue for review.
846296 – This issue is still being analyzed and we hope for an update soon.
844991 – This issue is still being analyzed and we hope for an update soon.
68483 – Final Response: This will be addressed in the ticket; please do not post updates in this thread as they are unnecessary.
849987 – Final Response: The person contacting us does not appear to own the account, so this request has been denied.
Xadera.9184 – You may not post in this thread unless a ticket has been submitted and it is at least three days old. Please review the suggestion above. It will probably correct the situation.

IMPORTANT NOTES:

• Do not ask for a review of someone else’s ticket unless you know that person. Culling random comments from other forums or social media is not appropriate.
• Always include a ticket number in your request.
• Responses flagged as “Final Response” will not be reviewed again.
• If you still need assistance and your ticket is at least three days (72 hours) old, feel free to post in the Tickets for Review – 3 Days and Older – Part 2 [merged] thread at the top of this forum.
• Please do not submit duplicate tickets for the same situation. Instead, please update your ticket by simply responding to the most recent e-mail that has the existing ticket number in the subject line.
• Please do not post in multiple threads on the forums asking for assistance.
• If you believe your e-mail may have been compromised, submit a new ticket from a new, secure e-mail account and include the old ticket number in the subject line. Please be prepared to provide proof of ownership, but we will do our best to help in this situation.

Update: 26 August 2014

846312 – Resolved. Please do not submit duplicates tickets in the future; they delay the response that we can send you and other players.
845174 – An agent is actively reviewing this now. However, I’m told this issue appears to be resolved, so could you kindly try again now and update the ticket if you still cannot purchase. Thank you for your patience!
854830 – Agent requested additional account verification information. Please respond to that e-mail so the ticket can progress.
837122 – In queue for continued review. (I note you’ve updated your ticket with additional information that clarifies your request, so thank you.)
834621 – In queue for review.
836620 – In queue for review.
857504 – In queue for review.
845646 – In queue for review.
829223 – In queue for review.
846296 – This issue is still being analyzed and we hope for an update soon.
844991 – This issue is still being analyzed and we hope for an update soon.
68483 – Final answer: This will be addressed in the ticket; please do not post updates in this thread as they are unnecessary.
849987 – Final answer: The person contacting us does not appear to own the account, so this request has been denied.
Xadera.9184 – You may not post in this thread unless a ticket has been submitted and it is at least three days old. Please review the suggestion above. It will probably correct the situation.

All right everyone, to the Ossuary with you!

It looks like we’ve got it fixed, so let us know if you encounter any further issues!

You have received the only response possible in situations like this: We absolutely cannot restore Guild Banks. It’s not a matter of choice, we do not have the technological ability to restore Guild Banks, and given the complexity of that feature, I cannot say if that option will become available in the future.

We will not offer some sort of “compensation” for matters of this nature because to do so could be ruinous to the game economy. I’m very sorry for what your guild experienced, but we’re not able to help in the manner you’ve requested.

In situations like this, which are clearly related exclusively to your account, it’s great if you can submit a ticket so an agent can help you.

Best of luck.

Bettik.4982:

Hi John, just so you know, one of those cupcakes over on https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/cupcakes-for-arenanet was bought for you. You might not actually get one, but hey, RNG…

Thank you!

Chris Whiteside.6102:

IvanTheGrey.2941:

Mr. Whiteside, sorry to bring it up again, but can you clarify the changes in instance ownership? I believe that there’s a genuine concern for griefing, and I was hoping that you could put our legitimate worries at ease.

Thanks again for replying!

We have been discussing this for a very long time. Can you PM me so i remember to get back to this point when it is appropriate to do so please?

Chris

I could answer this! It is true two people could be invited and then boot out everyone else to “take over” the instance where as before two people could only kick the instance owner out closing the instance destroying it for everyone. While this isn’t ideal and something we need to look more into, the goal of this change was to reduce the more common case of the instance owner leaving. For now Ryan is looking into adding some logging (see post here) so people can report people abusing this.

Hitman.5829:

Hi John Smith,

Chili peppers, lemon grass, and a few other crafting materials are ridiculously high on price. What is anet doing to solve this problem?
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/bltc/Farming-Prices-on-TP-must-go-down/first#post4326876

I’m not sure we’ve all agreed that’s a problem.

Kaida.1478:

I was just doing as I was told to, but I thank you for your replies Gaile, I appreciate your time, and THANKYOU very much for pointing out my copy and paste fail with the ticket number !- It should hopefully be the correct one now (I hope) XD

Though you’ve kind of made me a bit afraid to post on the forum now, I do have one last question to which I couldn’t find an answer to on the support, search or google and I’m afraid to make a thread for it now.

Is it possible to get an account completely deleted?
Or is the only thing equivalent to this when an account is permenantly banned/suspended?

Posting in the forums is perfectly fine, but we ask for a single post to reduce the redundancy of repeated reviews/read throughs of the same issue. No worries about forum participation.

If you could direct your question about account closure in the ticket, that would be most helpful. Thank you.

DoctorOverlord.8620:

Zackie.8923:

i assume the perpetrator in question will get the ban hammer

Does anyone know if Dhuum shows up and kills the character of someone who gets banned? I know they used to do this in GW1, I thought it was a rather amusing way to do a ban.

There’s no animation effect that plays when an account gets terminated in Guild Wars 2 at the moment.

timmyf.1490:

Crise.9401:

I mean I know developers probably have access to similar things a these new official GM’s do, if needed, so besides it being clear distinction between the two technically not that much has changed.

Actually, ArenaNet has been pretty clear that developers do not have any special access on their live accounts. They can rep the ArenaNet guild to show the tag, but otherwise, they have the same options as we do.

That is correct. Developers do not have access to GM abilities. They play the game just like everyone else, without any sort of special in-game commands. Our non-GM accounts do not have access to GM abilities either.