Guild Wars 2

Seeing as this looks like an area for players just to talk to players about there issues and such, i thought i’d make an update.

Well it is the second day of being suspended for me, it really sucks because some of my only friends are on Guild Wars, either i’ve met them there like most of them , or for a few it is due to me moving and friends moving, so that’s one of the only places I can be with them. You can’t do much with facebook, not to mention it is overrated, so that is one of my only sources of contacts with them.

I’ve been looking over this little Forum, and seeing a lot of talk about botting, which doesn’t apply to me at all since i don’t farm in the first place, but anything could happen by accident, but i still dont think thats the reason i got banned, i havn’t visited orr since i picked up my pact weapon. all i do is dungeons, and play with my guild :p

I’ve been playing Guild Wars 2 since september, i pre-ordered Guild Wars 2 Collectors Edition from Game Stop last spring.
Now someone mentioned that could be the reason i was banned, something about the serial code, and someone trying to hack my account and Arenanet, denying access. I would be actually very thankful if arenet suspended me for this since they would be saving my account. But i hope its not this either since that makes me feel unsafe if someone was hacking my account, since it has personal info on it and such, like credit cards for gems and things.

I did buy gem’s back in september, but the credit card company denied it for some reason at first, so i hope thats not the problem.
Recently i also bought 4 gem cards at gamestop (but that was with a gamestop card)

Now as for tickets and such, I have submitted 2, one yesterday and one today, the only reason i did the second one was because the first one was sloppy, and it didnt include my serial code, since i couldn’t find it yesterday (but i found it today at the bottom of my guild wars tin) So i made a new ticket including that and some player names and a more detailed explanation.

I see people are saying be patient, and i saw how Galie said Arenanet doesn’t like multiple tickets. So I am done on those. I guess i’ll just wait it out since people seem to have got there accounts back in 2-3 days in the comments above. I just really hope i do to, especially to be on for the lost shores next week.

feel free to respond to me if you bothered to read all of this, im pretty much just stress typing it out because i have nothing else to do.
Ta-ta for now.

HeroOfTime

I want to openly say that I was just recently banned while playing in WvW with my guild for botting.

Apparently, although my character has never really sat in one place and killed monsters before I have been banned for botting. I have put in a support ticket, but now my night of fun filled PVP with my friends has ended because an automated program probably has claimed me to be a botter even though all I ever do is PVP and run TA.

I have no clue how Arenanet could not make the distinction between my character and a bot.

I have friends staring at rangers named 3427fd8 and so on killing mobs over and over again for hours doing the same combos while I, a person who clearly isn;t botting, Typing in chat, picking up and placing supply, using supply items, killing people, rezzing people, healing people, have to sit here and wait for a support ticket to be looked at because you guys decided somehow that a perfectly functional character is a botter.

In some cases, I can understand if someone farms PVE monsters a lot in one area. But for someone who is actively playing, talking, changing groups to be banned for botting is clearly wrong.

If there is an automated system in place, it needs to be changed. I am not going to sit here and get banned a bunch of times and have to wait for god knows how many hours over someone else’s flawed system.

This is how dedicated players get turned off from the game right here. I have been playing since beta 1 with my guild and have no reason to bot whatsoever, but now that my account has been suspended without any warning or way to appeal before banning I have good reason to leave the game because I am not buying another account and I am most certainly not levelling up 3 more characters to 80 and getting them all the gear and skins that I have just lost.

Your Guild Wars 2 account has been suspended for an account issue. Please contact Support for information

I wish they specified why they suspended my account

KrisV.5612:

Stupid if those who arent botters get banned for farming cause they want to actually not always be broke in this game omg. For Anet to say this game been setup to where ya dont need to farm is complete bs given the low drop rates on alot of the stuff required for Legendaries to where you have no choice but to farm to try to collect the items and money to do so. Either let this amazing game turn to crap by treating us non botters like crap and constantly banning us cause we’re trying to make money in this game for items we want or to help friends in the game. Or get this crap fixed to where we who report botters or whatever the issue is on why we’re being fixed and those who been wrongfully banned compensated for Anet’s screw up.

I haven;t even been farming and I got banned for botting. I spend all day in WvW Pvping with my friends and I got banned for botting.

And guild member just said I was just shown online even though my account was banned so if its Anet checking on my account. I have done nothing wrong to cause this. Only today made 12g almost from throwing Exotics I got from forge on the TP. IF thats bannable then thats utterly ridiculous. I really want to know why cause I did get the suspended for botting, excessive unattended play time, which does that mean I cant go afk for like 20 minutes to eat dinner? Again ridiculous.

Gaile Gray.6028:

• We know there are false positives. When you’re banning thousands, there is some chance that an innocent player will be banned. We regret that deeply, and we work constantly to improve the processes (which are not automatic, by the way) to avoid false positives.

• Most importantly, you should know that a number of the people in this thread posting about their “unjust ban” are, in fact, botters. They may be RMT workers from a foreign country; they may be the guy down the street who is using a bot program and doesn’t think we can detect it. Not everyone is guilty, for certain! Not even the majority posting here are botters! But equally certain, not everyone protesting an account termination here is innocent, either. Please keep that in mind when you read this thread: The volume of posts, or the heat of the protest does not equate to the actual number of innocent players.

And again, we want to help, and we will, if you file a ticket and let us review the case.

This is what makes me so angry. If they are botters in a real sense, they will buy another account and bot some more. They wont cry about it, they will go and start making profit again.

Also, there is no way to get a false positive if the system isn’t automatic. Most certainly not a false positive like myself.

If the system is automatic, then how do they ban a person running around and PVPing in wvw showing no signs that indicate they are making profit through a third party program, showing no patterns or automating the character because I am dropping siege, using supply, switching characters, talking to people.

How do you make the mistake you made with me if it isn’t automated?

How do you make a mistake where a character literally signs on, gets into a battleground and kills other real people and mistake that for a bot or a macro or whatever if it isn’t automated?

Something is not right here and it needs to get fixed. If it is a clerical error and people are putting in the wrong account names, someone needs to get fired.

I am livid and I am going to post rather heated comments because this is no way to treat someone that you want to stay and play your game. And it seems like it happens OFTEN for however many thousands of bots get banned. there should not be an error of this many wrongfully banned people.

I am a bit alarmed at the “official” position that “a lot of the people making complaints of being falsely banned are actually bots”. This is a terrible assumption for a company to have of their customers, and it doesn’t go very far to giving me confidence that ANET is going to satisfactorily fix this…
Clearly there is something wrong with the banning system in place if ANY player is getting falsely banned.. But 17+ pages of people who have been falsely banned.. I just can’t believe that all of those people are lying about this.
I know I am innocent of the crime I am accused of, (Trading real life money for gold) and a quick look at my account transactions (which I’m assuming they have) should show that I’ve never had any more than 4g on my account.. And I LEGITIMATELY traded gems for that. (Don’t know why I’d bother with the MUCH worse conversion rate of gems for gold if I was the kind of person who used the real life money gold sellers but eh) I hope ANET gets to the bottom of this soon… and if they don’t, well then I know I won’t be giving ANET any more of my hard earned money.

This is the 4th time I’ve been the victim of a mistake caused by arenenet that prevented me from playing GW2 properly. And the past few posters bring up good points.

It seems like the people directing these decisions just think “We’re just a company and it doesn’t matter what we do to our customers as long as we can fix it in a few weeks”. Or maybe some just think “well it’s just a game so who cares if you get called a botter and a cheater, who cares if you get banned, who cares if you get insulted, it’s only a game”.

But to many of us, Guild Wars is a lot more than a game. We’re not just emotionless consumers. For a lot of us, a game like this is our life.

So what happens after this? We get unbanned and pretend it never happened… I guess. Will it happen a 5th time? A 6th? Is this really what GW2 is supposed to be?

I’ve been playing Guild Wars for 7 years and I’ll keep playing it.
I’ve been supporting ArenaNet on forums and outside the internet with good advertisement for 7 years and I’ll keep doing it.
I’ve been supporting ArenaNet with micro transactions in the stores for 5 years and I’ll keep doing that.
I’ve been supporting ArenNet with feedback to improve the game since E34E and I’ll keep doing that if we get more chances to do this.

All I ask Gaile Gray and the other people at ANet who really care about their fans is to take a good look at their support system and how their fans are being treated, then look at how they can really make this system as excellent as they imagine it to be. Hell, look at the dozens of other games which do not have shoddy customer support and use them for inspiration if you have to, because it’s been done right plenty of times before, there’s no reason ANet has to be stuck doing it wrong.

I hope that this mistake if fixed quickly and I can go back to playing the game I love(it’s been 3 days since I was banned now), but I also hope I don’t have to play in fear of this happening again, and being stuck in the shoddy support system again.

MIZERI.3867:

Sabastian.7126:

Did you guys get the same ban message as me? Or did it go something like Your Guild Wars 2 account has been suspended for botting ?

Your Guild Wars 2 account has been suspended for an account issue. Please contact Support for information

Yes i did just a few mins ago while killing some skritt…. :-(

Account blocked due to unacceptable behavior, Please try again after block expires.
"""blah blah blah,
crap about botting and sitting in one spot,
""""blah blah blah
BAN IS PERMANENT!!!
Error Code : 45:5:1:779:101

Thats the message i got

thanks for your reply.

can anyone else share their ban message? I’m convinced that I got banned for a different reason and not for botting. I wish my ban message specified what reason!

Tonight, after playing from a Dunkin Doughnuts for about 30 minutes while waiting for my daughter’s art class to end, I came home and attempted to login only to find my account had been permanently terminated for botting… I have NEVER botted in my life, what the heck? I wouldn’t know how to do it if I wanted to.

I would really like to know what it was that made them think I was a bot. Considering the fact that I have reported NUMEROUS bots (aka nude archers) I think it’s pretty ironic that I’m getting blocked for botting.

Anyway I just submitted a ticket but reading here that it will take 2-3 days to fix makes me sad…

5 people in 1 hour.

Not counting those who haven’t spoken up.

Toble.2968:

An no, no one but myself has been on this account, i checked the IP addresses, they are all at my location, so no one else is botting on my account either.

I want my account back and faster than a week please.

How do you check your Ip adress?

Penthos.5148:

I came home and attempted to login only to find my account had been permanently terminated for botting… I have NEVER botted in my life, what the heck? I wouldn’t know how to do it if I wanted to.

I would really like to know what it was that made them think I was a bot. Considering the fact that I have reported NUMEROUS bots (aka nude archers) I think it’s pretty ironic that I’m getting blocked for botting.

Anyway I just submitted a ticket but reading here that it will take 2-3 days to fix makes me sad…

Sad Day indeed for Guild Wars 2… “sigh”

I was banned for the same thing which now make me think there is a massive ban taking place right now and multiple random hardcore gamers are getting their accounts banned for trying to enjoy their nights,,

again… Sad Day For Guild wars 2

2 – 3 days.. pfft!! sorry to say but it took me 5 days to get my account back when i got banned on 10/28/12 Directly after witnessing my account being hacked (12 slot bag and all trade-able mats stolen)

121109-000319

I would also like to say that 2-3 days isn’t necessarily a terrible turnaround time for fixing reported problems. I’m used to dealing with Nexon support staff, and it is not at all uncommon to have to wait WEEKS for a response from their “customer service” department, and when you do get a response from them they usually dont even end up fixing the problem.
I won’t be too upset if i get my account back in the next 2 days or so (it’s already been over 24 hours) But… and this is important… If it ever happens again, I do not think I will be able to forgive ANET.

MasterFhyl.3014:

I would also like to say that 2-3 days isn’t necessarily a terrible turnaround time for fixing reported problems. I’m used to dealing with Nexon support staff, and it is not at all uncommon to have to wait WEEKS for a response from their “customer service” department, and when you do get a response from them they usually dont even end up fixing the problem.
I won’t be too upset if i get my account back in the next 2 days or so (it’s already been over 24 hours) But… and this is important… If it ever happens again, I do not think I will be able to forgive ANET.

Nexon is probably the most hated MMO company in the world. So if ANet decides to look somewhere to compare their support to, it should be the last one they look at, unless they want to end up in the same boat.

Cerise.9045:

MasterFhyl.3014:

I would also like to say that 2-3 days isn’t necessarily a terrible turnaround time for fixing reported problems. I’m used to dealing with Nexon support staff, and it is not at all uncommon to have to wait WEEKS for a response from their “customer service” department, and when you do get a response from them they usually dont even end up fixing the problem.
I won’t be too upset if i get my account back in the next 2 days or so (it’s already been over 24 hours) But… and this is important… If it ever happens again, I do not think I will be able to forgive ANET.

Nexon is probably the most hated MMO company in the world. So if ANet decides to look somewhere to compare their support to, it should be the last one they look at, unless they want to end up in the same boat.

I agree, Nexon is terrible, thats why I no longer play any of their games, but a lot of the people in this thread are saying theyve gotten unbanned in less than three days. If we were dealing with Nexon, we’d all get a response email saying “we’re looking into the problem” and no response even weeks later.. Except maybe a sporadic “we are still looking into the problem” auto generated message.
Ask me again in a day or two.. But as of right now, ANET is nowhere near as bad as Nexon. (Who have had their own slew of false bans by the way)

I know people are upset at having their game suspended, but we also want the bots removed from game. I wonder, though, how people would go about removing access for accounts known to be botting while still leaving non-botting accounts active? Especially when there is evidence that an account has quite possibly been compromised by another party and then used without the account holders knowledge to bot-farm?

It’s a sticky situation for ArenaNet. We want the bots gone. It also appears that there are a number of cases happening here where accounts have in fact been compromised, even though the account holder sees no evidence of that. How would you handle that if you were on ArenaNet’s end?

I believe that they are doing the right thing here in suspending the account so that the bot cannot function and then working with the account holder to secure and restore the account. In the end, it’s my opinion that it is better to suspend a compromised account – especially when the account holder was not aware of the compromise.

Sabastian.7126:

can anyone else share their ban message? I’m convinced that I got banned for a different reason and not for botting. I wish my ban message specified what reason!

“Your Guild Wars 2 account has been suspended for an account issue. Please contact Support for information.”

Their billing/banning system(s) has/have clearly gone haywire.

Hey ANet .. how about give us the benefit of the doubt and quit banning our perfectly good }}cough{{ deluxe }}cough{{ accounts*?

(*) I picked up a (deluxe) copy for my friend, too, and he was banned on the first day. Ridiculous.

Ashlar.2519:

I know people are upset at having their game suspended, but we also want the bots removed from game. I wonder, though, how people would go about removing access for accounts known to be botting while still leaving non-botting accounts active? Especially when there is evidence that an account has quite possibly been compromised by another party and then used without the account holders knowledge to bot-farm?

It’s a sticky situation for ArenaNet. We want the bots gone. It also appears that there are a number of cases happening here where accounts have in fact been compromised, even though the account holder sees no evidence of that. How would you handle that if you were on ArenaNet’s end?

I believe that they are doing the right thing here in suspending the account so that the bot cannot function and then working with the account holder to secure and restore the account. In the end, it’s my opinion that it is better to suspend a compromised account – especially when the account holder was not aware of the compromise.

If they were able to log in without showing up on the logins in the security tab on my account details, despite there being an authenticator attached to the account, then there is something ANet is doing wrong with their security.

If they were able to bot without any of my characters leaving the Heart of the Mists then they deserve to have the account… because that would be really impressive.

Furthermore, ANet/Gaile Gray have said on multiple occasions that there are people manually checking each report of botting. It’s not some automated process that can go wrong because it’s not fine tuned enough, there are real people responsible for deciding who should be banned and who shouldn’t. This means those people royally messed up. If they think someone who doesn’t do anything but SPvP is somehow a bot.

Ashlar.2519:

I know people are upset at having their game suspended, but we also want the bots removed from game. I wonder, though, how people would go about removing access for accounts known to be botting while still leaving non-botting accounts active? Especially when there is evidence that an account has quite possibly been compromised by another party and then used without the account holders knowledge to bot-farm?

It’s a sticky situation for ArenaNet. We want the bots gone. It also appears that there are a number of cases happening here where accounts have in fact been compromised, even though the account holder sees no evidence of that. How would you handle that if you were on ArenaNet’s end?

I believe that they are doing the right thing here in suspending the account so that the bot cannot function and then working with the account holder to secure and restore the account. In the end, it’s my opinion that it is better to suspend a compromised account – especially when the account holder was not aware of the compromise.

My account was not compromised, and if it had been.. I doubt that the offending party would buy gold from a gold seller with their own money on my account, trade it to a different account, and leave all of my own gold and items alone, and give the account back, all without me knowing,
It makes a lot more sense to me that either some person, or more likely some program (I know Gail says they don’t use a program, but I am VERY hard pressed to believe that a live human being could be making so many obvious mistakes..) is not doing their job correctly. If ANet wants to avoid being lumped in with the “bad” companies, then they will address this issue, whatever it is, quickly… And keep us informed of what actions are taken to insure it doesn’t happen again.

Ruith.5861:

There is something we can do about this problem – that is complain to customer services and hope that they sort it out. What we shouldn’t do is tell people who have been wrongly banned that they should just accept it and get on with things, lest it happen again to other innocent players. That is, assuming you care about the game…

Certainly… at no time have I said you shouldn’t file a ticket to have an inappropriate ban reversed – quite the opposite, if you are innocent that is what you should do. But being rude, demanding, and insisting that someone unban you right now is not going to do anything. You just have to have the patience to let them do their work and it will turn out alright.

I’ve seen several postings about reversed bans. The accusation is not that you, personally, use the account to bot or sell gold, but that someone appears to have tried to do so. If the account was accessed by someone else then they need to determine the true owner in order to release it.

You are reading things into my post that are not there.

tolunart.2095:

You are reading things into my post that are not there.

What you are saying is that when something bad happens, we should all cover our eyes and ears and just accept it instead of trying to get it improved. If so many other companies can do this properly, why should ANet be one of the bad ones instead of the ones that do it properly?

My account was just turned off for botting how do i go about resolving this issue?

You are welcome to your opinion. I believe that these issues involve an extremely small sample of the players and that they are doing the best they can with what they have to work with.

Farming events in Orr with my guild, suddenly banned for botting or using mods, neither of which I have ever used. Thoroughly disgusted.

tolunart.2095:

You are welcome to your opinion. I believe that these issues involve an extremely small sample of the players and that they are doing the best they can with what they have to work with.

It sounds like you’re trying to deny that other companies are doing a far better job with customer support, but that’s simply not true. Or you’re choosing to ignore that other companies are doing much better. Why? Don’t you want GW2 to live up to its potential?

If you don’t want to use a comparison, just look at the quality as an absolute value rather than a relative one. Right now the quality of the support is far below where it could be if they put more effort into it, hired more competent people, gave them better training, and most importantly changed their policies. The quality of the support would be much higher and it would make the game more enjoyable because of it.

I’m not making any such claims. I have no investment, emotional or financial, in Arenanet or Guild Wars 2. I bought the game and play it casually, that is all.

Cerise.9045:

tolunart.2095:

You are welcome to your opinion. I believe that these issues involve an extremely small sample of the players and that they are doing the best they can with what they have to work with.

It sounds like you’re trying to deny that other companies are doing a far better job with customer support, but that’s simply not true. Or you’re choosing to ignore that other companies are doing much better. Why? Don’t you want GW2 to live up to its potential?

If you don’t want to use a comparison, just look at the quality as an absolute value rather than a relative one. Right now the quality of the support is far below where it could be if they put more effort into it, hired more competent people, gave them better training, and most importantly changed their policies. The quality of the support would be much higher and it would make the game more enjoyable because of it.

Nothing is perfect, there is always room for improvement. When I say do not expect immediate results, this is what I’m talking about. You can’t just snap your fingers and dozens of well-trained cs agents appear. It takes time to put those plans into place, and in the meantime they faced a huge pr problem with people insisting they “do something” about the bot problem.

Well, they did something. And that leads to the current problems, where people were caught for being bot-like but not actually botting, and people who were caught botting are confusing the matter by claiming innocence.

Arenanet is erring on the side of caution – if it looks like a bot, they stopped the account until they can sort out who is and who isn’t. It’s not for me to tell them how to do their jobs. The only reason why I am posting here is because people allow rumors and wild speculation to run out of control, I’m trying to encourage reason and patience instead of demands and insults.

tolunart.2095:

I’m not making any such claims. I have no investment, emotional or financial, in Arenanet or Guild Wars 2. I bought the game and play it casually, that is all.

I’d say I have a pretty big investment in it because I want GW2 to be as good as it can be.

tolunart.2095:

Arenanet is erring on the side of caution – if it looks like a bot, they stopped the account until they can sort out who is and who isn’t. It’s not for me to tell them how to do their jobs. The only reason why I am posting here is because people allow rumors and wild speculation to run out of control, I’m trying to encourage reason and patience instead of demands and insults.

This doesn’t seem to be what’s happening at all, they’ve stated in several places that they carefully check everyone that was reported for botting to see if they’re really a bot or not. In my case, if they had really spent more than 2 seconds looking over how I play the game it should be obvious there is no botting involved.

Cerise.9045:

tolunart.2095:

I’m not making any such claims. I have no investment, emotional or financial, in Arenanet or Guild Wars 2. I bought the game and play it casually, that is all.

I’d say I have a pretty big investment in it because I want GW2 to be as good as it can be.

Not everyone has your enthusiasm. It’s a game, not the Civil Rights Movement. If the servers shut down tomorrow I’d say “oh, what a shame,” and play something else.

tolunart.2095:

Cerise.9045:

tolunart.2095:

I’m not making any such claims. I have no investment, emotional or financial, in Arenanet or Guild Wars 2. I bought the game and play it casually, that is all.

I’d say I have a pretty big investment in it because I want GW2 to be as good as it can be.

Not everyone has your enthusiasm. It’s a game, not the Civil Rights Movement. If the servers shut down tomorrow I’d say “oh, what a shame,” and play something else.

Then why do you get so upset when you see people asking for improvements?

Believe it or not there are a LOT developers at ANet that care equally about the quality of the game as I do, probably even more. You may not care about feedback, but they do.

tolunart.2095:

Cerise.9045:

tolunart.2095:

I’m not making any such claims. I have no investment, emotional or financial, in Arenanet or Guild Wars 2. I bought the game and play it casually, that is all.

I’d say I have a pretty big investment in it because I want GW2 to be as good as it can be.

Not everyone has your enthusiasm. It’s a game, not the Civil Rights Movement. If the servers shut down tomorrow I’d say “oh, what a shame,” and play something else.

It’s not a matter of enthusiasm or “Civil Rights movement” to want the good or service you spent your money on. I am capable of being calm and rational over this, but I don’t want to undersell it, this is a fairly big issue.

Cerise.9045:

This doesn’t seem to be what’s happening at all, they’ve stated in several places that they carefully check everyone that was reported for botting to see if they’re really a bot or not. In my case, if they had really spent more than 2 seconds looking over how I play the game it should be obvious there is no botting involved.

I do not work for Arenanet and do not have access to their records or employees. I also do not know anyone posting here IRL and have no idea how their claims compare with reality. I do, however, trust official “red” statements more than the word of a random player, so when they say that a human checks out each situation before a ban I believe the statement to be true. When people insist that they must have been banned by automated software I consider the claim to be wild speculation that is unsupported by facts.

I do not know who you are or the circumstances around what seems to be multiple bans for suspected botting. Other than the advice I gave you earlier – and you rejected – I won’t say anything about your situation.

But based on what happened to me in this case, I have every reason to believe that the people checking the bot reports are doing a horrible job.

I suggest not making any more assumptions, because your track record is pretty bad.

Never did I say I’m “rejecting” any advice, I said I can’t act less bot-like because I spent almost all of my time in PvP, fighting other people.[/quote]

I’m not interested in your opinion of me.

Based on a single person’s experience, you judge the entire cs system? Talk about making assumptions…

We do not know how many cs agents there are. But we do know they have mass-banned bots in groups of thousands. When one person is responsible for checking hundreds of accounts in a matter of hours, he cannot spend several minutes observing each player in the game to judge whether it appears to be a case of botting or not. It is inevitable that some errors will be made. These errors are in the dozens at most, not hundreds or thousands.

What level of accuracy to you expect, if >99% is not good enough?
Edited by Moderator: Quote about a deleted post removed

Less than 20 minutes ago I was banned “due to botting, extended unattended play, etc.” I do not bot or cheat in any way, and I rarely leave the game unattended for more than 5 minutes unless I have to use the restroom. I’ve never been in trouble for anything like this and I quite frankly have no I idea why this has happened.

tolunart.2095:

What level of accuracy to you expect, if >99% is not good enough?

There are a lot of things about this situation that aren’t handled anywhere close to how well they should be handled.

I’m not interested in your opinion of me.

Based on a single person’s experience, you judge the entire cs system? Talk about making assumptions…

We do not know how many cs agents there are. But we do know they have mass-banned bots in groups of thousands. When one person is responsible for checking hundreds of accounts in a matter of hours, he cannot spend several minutes observing each player in the game to judge whether it appears to be a case of botting or not. It is inevitable that some errors will be made. These errors are in the dozens at best, not hundreds or thousands.

What level of accuracy to you expect, if 99% is not good enough?[/quote]

If they can not accurately ban hundreds of accounts in a matter of hours.. (we’re now at 18+ pages of people who are possibly falesly banned) Perhaps they should either hire more people.. or slow their work load a bit.
I do not have the blind enthusiasm that ANet is telling the truth about not using an automated account blocking program.. But to me the alternative is actually worse. That a person,. or people are so bad at their jobs that they can not tell if someone is really botting/buying gold with money/whatever or not.. or more likely don’t care. Theres something wrong here either way though.
Edited by Moderator: Quote about a deleted post removed

Just want to give you people who are innocent some hope. I got my account back this evening. It was a nerve-wracking wait, but Support did come through. The time was two work days, but I am not complaining. It seems like they have a lot on their plate at the moment. Good luck to you all!

There is NO WAY that every ban is checked by a human being. I bet for 75% or more of us, if they just check our chat logs, our move patterns, and our sporadic use of skills, they could tell we’re not bots.

“If they can not accurately ban hundreds of accounts in a matter of hours.. (we’re now at 18+ pages of people who are possibly falesly banned) Perhaps they should either hire more people.. or slow their work load a bit. "

I don’t see where the number of pages indicates anything. My conversation with Cerise spans at least two pages and does not add a single person to the list of bans. Several posts are repeats of information and people saying “still banned, what’s going on?” Others have had their accounts restored and have posted about it. This is not an 18-page list of names.

What is going on has already been explained – when an account has been compromised, it is locked until the owner can claim it. Most of the people banned for “assisting with RMT activities” botting and such seem to be people who Arenanet believes have been hacked or are deliberately working with RMT scammers. If the account was accessed without the owner’s knowledge or permission, an investigation will result in the return of the account to the owner. The cs agents require time to do their jobs and people who are posting multiple messages because they’ve waited 10, 15, 24 hours and are tired of waiting are not doing anything to help the situation.

It has also been stated that some of the appeals are done by those who knowingly engaged in these activities, probably in hopes that they can con their way through the system and get the account (and the gold in it) back. These “false false positives” rob the innocent people of the time it takes to investigate the ban and discover that it was in fact the correct thing to do.

I don’t know the ratio of innocent/guilty appeals. But if there are three actual botters followed by one innocent being investigated, what could take one hour will take four because the cs agent will waste three hours investigating the appeals by people who know that they were correctly banned.

I don’t blame the cs for the delays, if people were basically honest about what they are doing, then there wouldn’t be nearly so many problems with this in the first place.

Not sure whats worse…

Wrongly getting banned for botting
or the fact that how I play Gw2 seems like botting
maybe I need to dodge, switch weapons, and use different skills more often.

http://i0.kym-cdn.com/entries/icons/original/000/006/026/futuramafry.jpg

My account is restored after 3 days of false-positive ban.. Im posting that here just for give hope other really innocent and frustrated gamers.

BoominB.1647:

Not sure whats worse…

Wrongly getting banned for botting
or the fact that how I play Gw2 seems like botting
maybe I need to dodge, switch weapons, and use different skills more often.

http://i0.kym-cdn.com/entries/icons/original/000/006/026/futuramafry.jpg

It wont help. I spend all day in WvW on three different characters and have to switch weapons in combat all the time.

There is literally no method to it. You just got to be one of the unlucky ones like me.

honestly i just want a response from arenanet.

Hey guyss, I too got my Account terminated. I got back to the game after getting smthing in the kitchen n baaaaAm, it says my account was banned for botting etc. I dont know how they consider me as a botter when I constantly talk to my party n to everyone and I even go to WvW quite often :/. I really wish I could get back to the game. I worked soo hard trying to get the legendary n I was finally getting close to it..:(

Thing is, with this mass influx of banhammer right now, Arenanet needs to put people into overtime this weekend. Whatever they did to try and automate their system screwed something up and now it seems so many regular players are getting banned and frankly, the bots are not.

I can’t see this getting resolved for me too soon since there are so many others having this problem too.

And it isn’t just pages. It’s THREADS. There are now multiple threads on this topic.

That is a problem.

Ashlar.2519:

I am not letting the bots win, it’s a war and the players will be the victors with ArenaNet’s help in clearing them out. I will continue to report botting when I see it, giving notice in /say that the reporting is about to happen. I also will continue to farm in Orr on occasion. I don’t do it every day, as I do have multiple goals I would like to reach. However, when going into one of the zones, I party up with a could of guild mates or friends. If there is room in the group for a couple of others, we usually put up in /say that we have x spots available for the events. I know it’s frustrating, but don’t let them win. The Support Team is working as hard as they can to get through the tickets and restore as many people as possible. Try to be patient and understanding – and don’t let the bots win by quitting.

do its ppl like you that are so diligent about reporting boting that got many of us here. and you talk about patience and dnt letting bots win… if it weren’t tragic it would be comic. how about this: person that reported another person who then turns out not to be bot, gets same amount of ban time!?

Btw I have a set of CoF and Arah gears which I dont think any bots can possibly have sice u have to do the entire dungeon to get the tokens :/

PetricaKerempuh.7958:

Ashlar.2519:

I am not letting the bots win, it’s a war and the players will be the victors with ArenaNet’s help in clearing them out. I will continue to report botting when I see it, giving notice in /say that the reporting is about to happen. I also will continue to farm in Orr on occasion. I don’t do it every day, as I do have multiple goals I would like to reach. However, when going into one of the zones, I party up with a could of guild mates or friends. If there is room in the group for a couple of others, we usually put up in /say that we have x spots available for the events. I know it’s frustrating, but don’t let them win. The Support Team is working as hard as they can to get through the tickets and restore as many people as possible. Try to be patient and understanding – and don’t let the bots win by quitting.

do its ppl like you that are so diligent about reporting boting that got many of us here. and you talk about patience and dnt letting bots win… if it weren’t tragic it would be comic. how about this: person that reported another person who then turns out not to be bot, gets same amount of ban time!?

We need to hope that ANet learns from this and make sure they exercise a lot more care before deciding to ban someone.

Right now the solution is worse than the problem. People are getting banned just for transferring gold or being afk. If I have to be paranoid for accepting gold from a friend, then just disable the feature all together. Why have it if you will just ban someone who transfers 100 gold?

If the bans are not automatic, then the people doing the bannings are doing a lousy job. Why don’t they spend more time doing it right the first time, rather than dealing with all this nonsense? If I get banned but I’m innocent, then how is it so easy after the fact to determine my innocence?