Guild Wars 2

My friend and I have been successfully trading the TP for decent profits, and we have been getting bored with the game even as we get more involved with the community, so we’ve decided to help out. We like to hold silly, dumb contests in level 1-15 zones with rules that are in everyone’s favor. Rules like

“Anyone want a free gold?”

“Pick a number between 1-2. If you guess right, you get a gold. Limit 2 tries per character”

“Come to [waypoint] and dance and you get a gold”

“Come to [waypoint] and race everyone else on my mark. Winner gets 2 gold, 1 gold for participating”

etc. etc.

It’s a way to remind ourselves of how much we make and how much different that is from what others make, especially in the early levels.

However, he got banned for “selling gold”. The likely cause was that ANET watches if you send a lot of gold through the mail. There have been cases of guilds funding a leader to get commander, and everyone gets banned for sending too much gold in the mail. It was a perma-ban, which he appealed and got unbanned for in two days, but he got no response whatsoever back. If ANET had told him “Oh sorry we’ll be more careful not to ban for kindness in the future” this wouldn’t be an issue.

However, no response at all means that a very real possibility is for a moderator to see “prior ban for selling gold”, ignore why, and assume my friend is a repeat offender because he’s “selling gold again”, and my friend will be denied the appeal and lose everything.

This is really lame, and I don’t know what to do. We’re just trying to have fun in our own way.

What can we do?

Give items instead of gold.

By giving other players Gold so easily, you reduce their potential desire to buy gold from the shop.

Welcome to Guild Wars 2. Welcome to ArenaNet 2.0

I miss GW1. It didn’t feel like a prison.

Masaki.2153:

Giving you the benefit of the doubt and the two of you are not exploiters.

We share market ideas together, and try to be extremely aware of the connections. This has resulted in a good amount of money. Honestly, I can share with you exactly how I get the gold I do, but PM me. That isn’t the topic

Czinczar.3786:

Give items instead of gold.

So I’m expected to lose 15% of what I send because I’m afraid of the company?

StopSign.7124:

Masaki.2153:

Giving you the benefit of the doubt and the two of you are not exploiters.

We share market ideas together, and try to be extremely aware of the connections. This has resulted in a good amount of money. Honestly, I can share with you exactly how I get the gold I do, but PM me. That isn’t the topic

Czinczar.3786:

Give items instead of gold.

So I’m expected to lose 15% of what I send because I’m afraid of the company?

I’m sorry, I meant I believe you are not exploiting, since there are plenty of people doing what your doing and see it as legitimate while seeing how Anet dropped the ball (again)

The price of keeping gold spam down is that occasionally someone that isn’t selling gold gets banned for a couple days until it’s sorted out. In my opinion that’s not too high a price to pay if one in a thousand is innocent and it gets fixed.

StopSign.7124:

What can we do?

Do you remember any of the people you sent gold to in these little games? If so, you might want to ask THEM to send in support tickets about it as well. Maybe they will, maybe they won’t, and I don’t know if it will even help, but it’s worth a shot.

… unless they’re worried that THEY’LL be banned too, and I couldn’t blame them if they are.

Olfinbedwere.5049:

The price of keeping gold spam down is that occasionally someone that isn’t selling gold gets banned for a couple days until it’s sorted out. In my opinion that’s not too high a price to pay if one in a thousand is innocent and it gets fixed.

Right, that’s fine. But what if we both just keep doing it?

I think there are 3 options of what will happen:

1. The cycle repeats. Banned -> appeal -> 2 days later, unbanned -> hand out more gold -> banned. I get to play every 3 days.

2. The cycle stops, negatively. A mod sees “you’ve been banned for 10 times for gold selling. This time you get no appeal, and you’ll stay permabanned” and then it’s done.

3. The cycle stops, positively. ANET puts a flag of “this guy’s legit” on us and we’re never troubled again. The problem with this, however, is that if word gets out then the gold sellers will just first be kind to everyone, then sell gold.

I just don’t know which one ANET would do, and the lack of communication means it’s anyone’s guess

StopSign.7124:

Olfinbedwere.5049:

The price of keeping gold spam down is that occasionally someone that isn’t selling gold gets banned for a couple days until it’s sorted out. In my opinion that’s not too high a price to pay if one in a thousand is innocent and it gets fixed.

Right, that’s fine. But what if we both just keep doing it?

I think there are 3 options of what will happen:

1. The cycle repeats. Banned -> appeal -> 2 days later, unbanned -> hand out more gold -> banned. I get to play every 3 days.

2. The cycle stops, negatively. A mod sees “you’ve been banned for 10 times for gold selling. This time you get no appeal, and you’ll stay permabanned” and then it’s done.

3. The cycle stops, positively. ANET puts a flag of “this guy’s legit” on us and we’re never troubled again. The problem with this, however, is that if word gets out then the gold sellers will just first be kind to everyone, then sell gold.

I just don’t know which one ANET would do, and the lack of communication means it’s anyone’s guess

I was going so say something similar to this. In the end it’s kitten if you do and kitten if you don’t kind of situation since right now Anet is dealing with a serious bot/gold seller infestation that they don’t want them to get even one inch in (and they are trying I feel but it leaves much to be desired on many fronts). There’s also the lack of foresight and ingenuity with dealing with scenarios like these.

I would suggest that the two of you still appeal your bans more than likely the moderation team will look and see what you’ve done overturning the decision. What really is the question is what happens afterwards?

What can you suggest as someone who wants to give to the community that can achieve your goal and help to lower gold seller circumvention?

Perhaps something like the cash shop party box where you can place a box on the ground for your event/giveaway that would allow players to get a random bit of gold/items that you directly purchase with gold through a NPC?

Allow for more organized events/guilds to submit a sort of form to the moderation team citing the dates/times/guild/event so that they can flag those mails (even maybe wave the mail suppression) for that certain time?

I think perhaps you and your friend would be the best form of input to Anet at the moment regarding the best way to handle events/giveaways. I would suggest that you advise them of any ideas that they could perhaps implement. I don’t think they ever intended to stifle community participation, but that it’s an unfortunate side effect due to circumstance.

RoChan.1926:

I would suggest that the two of you still appeal your bans more than likely the moderation team will look and see what you’ve done overturning the decision.

I would like to make it clear that neither of us are banned currently and this is not a plea for help to get unbanned. There is no reason to delete this thread based on “support tickets should not go in general forums” or anything.

RoChan.1926:

What can you suggest as someone who wants to give to the community that can achieve your goal and help to lower gold seller circumvention?

Perhaps something like the cash shop party box where you can place a box on the ground for your event/giveaway that would allow players to get a random bit of gold/items that you directly purchase with gold through a NPC?

Allow for more organized events/guilds to submit a sort of form to the moderation team citing the dates/times/guild/event so that they can flag those mails (even maybe wave the mail suppression) for that certain time?

I think perhaps you and your friend would be the best form of input to Anet at the moment regarding the best way to handle events/giveaways. I would suggest that you advise them of any ideas that they could perhaps implement. I don’t think they ever intended to stifle community participation, but that it’s an unfortunate side effect due to circumstance.

I would love to help ANET figure out a solution, but the only way I could do that is if they brought me and showed me how their current system works and what information they have access to. As is, all I can do is say that banning for sending gold through mail is not working, and they need something else.

I’ve actually heard of this. Guilds having contests or fun gatherings where the guild leaders hand out gold and exotics as prizes and then suddenly get banned for it, having to go thru the whole process of getting the account unbanned by the players of the guild contacting Anet support and telling them what happened.

It’s very weird to see. Since when is it against the rules for guild leaders to give his guild members gold for participating in a guild event?

Olfinbedwere.5049:

The price of keeping gold spam down is that occasionally someone that isn’t selling gold gets banned for a couple days until it’s sorted out. In my opinion that’s not too high a price to pay if one in a thousand is innocent and it gets fixed.

Actually, it is a big price. I got the RMT ban for sending 150g to my fiancé. As in, the guy I live with and share an IP with. As a result, I missed out on 2 days of daily rewards(which is actually important to me). And that managed to happen after I’d contacted them about a security issue with my account and informed them that I’ll be sending the gold. Inconveniencing your players to battle bots and gold sellers is not an excuse. It might be the easy way out, but it’s definitely not the best way out. And, no, e-mail restriction, DR, /m limit etc are also in no way justified. The first step would be revamping the cash shop so that buying gold with gems is at least on par with gold sellers(both in terms of desirable items in said cash shop and conversion rates).

To be clear:

The person in the OP was banned…then after 2 days the ban was lifted.

Everything after that is speculation on the part of the OP on how ANet will handle similar cases in the future.

I think a lot of people are just assuming he got banned and can’t play anymore…

I came to this game because people got bans for exploiting the karma weapons. Not despite, but because. I was playing Lineage2, a game that I really liked but it had cheaters all over the place. Not just some. Not just loads. They were everywhere.
You could not play anywhere without running into botted players, not goldfarmerbots named Lughyfghenjnf but normal regular player chars, who were undoubtedly and obviously botting. This game, that I really liked, was totally ruined by the lenient stance NCSoft took on cheating, and I was extremely happy to find a new game that appealed to me where the company actually would do something against cheaters. And hey, I have absolutely no fear of getting banned. None. Not for exploiting, not for making hundreds of gold on the auction house by loophole recipes, not for botting. I am absolutely confident that my account will be neither “hacked” nor banned ever, even years from now. Just as my Lineage2 accounts.

Now you on the other hand give gold away on a regular basis to all sorts of random people and then wonder that you get caught by a ban? Oh my, who would have thought this could happen. Maybe a sensible person would realize that sending numerous mails with sizeable amounts of gold to random people who are absolutely not affiliated with your account is exactly what goldsellers are doing? And no, just because you somehow managed to successfully play “Trade Wars 2” and make a fortune on the auction house does not mean that 1 or 2 gold is a small amount. People who play the game normally, without using market surveillance tools like GWSpidey or spend hours buying or selling often do not have more than a few gold total on their account. Friends of mine do not have that much time to play and they have been playing for months and neither of them has more than a few gold.

So you got one ban so far, which was (quickly) taken back after reviewing your account? And here you are, scared like hell, contemplating what might happen, imagining doomsday scenarios of evil customer support employees thinking things like “this account was banned 10 times already, this time I will not take it back”? Oh my.

To me, the story just proves how effective ArenaNet handles cheaters and how reliable they unban innocent people after a review, and how paranoid some players are concerning bans.

tigirius.9014:

I’ve actually heard of this. Guilds having contests or fun gatherings where the guild leaders hand out gold and exotics as prizes and then suddenly get banned for it

This actually happened to one of the officers in my guild, took him about a week to get his account unbanned. It kinda makes you a bit scared to send anything to anyone using the mail system including mats to a friend for them to craft you something, or just to help them out a bit.

Shikigami.4013:

You could not play anywhere without running into botted players, not goldfarmerbots named Lughyfghenjnf but normal regular player chars, who were undoubtedly and obviously botting.

And they’re still here, teleporting around picking up nodes. Some people still see the old style ranger bot trains, untouched for weeks.

Shikigami.4013:

So you got one ban so far, which was (quickly) taken back after reviewing your account? And here you are, scared like hell, contemplating what might happen, imagining doomsday scenarios of evil customer support employees thinking things like “this account was banned 10 times already, this time I will not take it back”? Oh my.

To me, the story just proves how effective ArenaNet handles cheaters and how reliable they unban innocent people after a review, and how paranoid some players are concerning bans.

Take it from someone who has been banned 3 times then. I have directly asked what is being done to keep it from repeatedly happening. No one has ever answered that, despite all of my support tickets and even a BBB complaint. I’ve taken that as a pretty clear answer that nothing is being done to keep it from repeatedly happening. The last ban that was given to my account had an appeal denied initially. I almost didn’t get it back.

I have transferred hundreds of gold to my alternate account (actually, my brother’s, but he’s not using it) via a guild bank. Just saying.

I think this is the solution you’re looking for. If someone is proven to be a gold seller, they can just ban everyone associated with that guild.

@phabby
your guild members can just deposit their funds into the guild stash. Change the permissions so only the commander can withdraw.

if the issue is who sent what, then sorry. I can’t help you there.

Shikigami.4013:

I came to this game because people got bans for exploiting the karma weapons. Not despite, but because. I was playing Lineage2, a game that I really liked but it had cheaters all over the place. Not just some. Not just loads. They were everywhere.
You could not play anywhere without running into botted players, not goldfarmerbots named Lughyfghenjnf but normal regular player chars, who were undoubtedly and obviously botting. This game, that I really liked, was totally ruined by the lenient stance NCSoft took on cheating, and I was extremely happy to find a new game that appealed to me where the company actually would do something against cheaters. And hey, I have absolutely no fear of getting banned. None. Not for exploiting, not for making hundreds of gold on the auction house by loophole recipes, not for botting. I am absolutely confident that my account will be neither “hacked” nor banned ever, even years from now. Just as my Lineage2 accounts.

Now you on the other hand give gold away on a regular basis to all sorts of random people and then wonder that you get caught by a ban? Oh my, who would have thought this could happen. Maybe a sensible person would realize that sending numerous mails with sizeable amounts of gold to random people who are absolutely not affiliated with your account is exactly what goldsellers are doing? And no, just because you somehow managed to successfully play “Trade Wars 2” and make a fortune on the auction house does not mean that 1 or 2 gold is a small amount. People who play the game normally, without using market surveillance tools like GWSpidey or spend hours buying or selling often do not have more than a few gold total on their account. Friends of mine do not have that much time to play and they have been playing for months and neither of them has more than a few gold.

So you got one ban so far, which was (quickly) taken back after reviewing your account? And here you are, scared like hell, contemplating what might happen, imagining doomsday scenarios of evil customer support employees thinking things like “this account was banned 10 times already, this time I will not take it back”? Oh my.

To me, the story just proves how effective ArenaNet handles cheaters and how reliable they unban innocent people after a review, and how paranoid some players are concerning bans.

Claiming I’m a gold seller or not is a strawman argument. With as much information as we know ANET has access to, there is nothing I’ve done or can do that a gold seller couldn’t also do. However, why does ANET have to ban for sending gold at all? Is that really the only way to screen for gold sellers? Why is that system in place, when there are so many legitimate reasons for sending gold to each other?

To this discussion, I’m providing one legitimate reason for sending gold to other people. Other people are providing more examples of how any player might do it. That means proving that a gold seller is able to do everything I’ve done has no relation to this topic

To be honest, this constant fear of bans has again put another dent in the fun I’m having.

What if I get a precursor for a legendary item my wife wants, and I send her to it? Will we both need to buy new accounts? It sounds so rediculous you’d almost think it couldn’t happen, but frankly, it’s a real concern to me these days.

Anet, loosen up on the control freaking both ingame and on the forums, or suffer less gem store purchases from terrified players that are scared to lose their investments.

When my spouse and I exchange gold/items in the mail, the body of the mail generally consists of dirty talk. I don’t imagine gold sellers have the time or the inclination to titillate their customers in such a fashion.

Of course, I could always get banned for solicitation bwahahaha.

“Gems of Kindness” are for sale in the gem shop. Buy one of those and you can give 1-2 gold to other players without getting banned…for 45 minutes.

All the gold sellers I see posting in game are selling like 100+ gold at a time. So if they actually banned you for sending people 1-2 gold at a time to different people then it really shows their incompetence/laziness at actually finding the gold sellers if anything.

StopSign.7124:

Claiming I’m a gold seller or not is a strawman argument. With as much information as we know ANET has access to, there is nothing I’ve done or can do that a gold seller couldn’t also do. However, why does ANET have to ban for sending gold at all? Is that really the only way to screen for gold sellers? Why is that system in place, when there are so many legitimate reasons for sending gold to each other?

To this discussion, I’m providing one legitimate reason for sending gold to other people. Other people are providing more examples of how any player might do it. That means proving that a gold seller is able to do everything I’ve done has no relation to this topic

1) Nowhere in my post did I claim you were a goldseller. In fact, as you were unbanned quickly, you most definitely are not, which is quite obvious. There was no strawman argument in my post.
2) Noone here claimed that banning for sending gold was “the only way to screen for goldsellers”.
3) The system is in place to catch the non-legitimate cases. There are thousands over thousands of users sending gold to other users every day and they are not getting banned. It is just the few extreme cases like yours with your goldseller-like mailing behaviour which end up getting a (unjustified) ban (which was undone quickly after a review).
4) Providing that a gold seller usually does what you have done (send gold to numerous people) has no relation to this topic? Of course it has. Is was the reason for your ban and thus for your topic. Had you not sent sizeable amounts of gold to numerous accounts, you would not have been banned. This does not imply that the ban was justified, that you may not send gold to other people, or that arenanet did not make a mistake. However, claiming that drawing the obvious connection between a gold sellers behaviour and your behaviour is not related to the topic is nonsense.

Speaking of gems……Some of the banned players purchased gems, converted to gold, and shared with friends/family. Why would an RMT use their credit card to sell gold at a loss? These are obviously real people that didn’t need to be banned.

Eosin.2078:

Speaking of gems……Some of the banned players purchased gems, converted to gold, and shared with friends/family. Why would an RMT use their credit card to sell gold at a loss? These are obviously real people that didn’t need to be banned.

Oh please. Of course they would not using “their” credit cards. They use stolen credit cards as one of their numerous means to acquire the gold they sell. Other means include farming bots and the stripping of stolen accounts (and then making farming bots out of those accounts….).

I got banned before Lost Shores happened for “botting” because I happen to farm alot to make money and work on getting Twilight. I never got an apology either or explanation on why I was wrongfully banned. And yeah I still worry with me still farming earth eles for lodestones(part of the reason I think I got banned) will happen again. I agree with this doesn’t feel like the same Anet. In GW1, people would farm the same stuff over and over again like UW, FoW, Zaishen Elite,etc and never got banned.

While the gold botters is bad, I honestly don’t care about the farming ones, only thing it does is keep prices of items down on TP and as long as they don’t interfere with my gameplay, again I don’t care. Now do I support botters, no so don’t think I’m saying they should be in the game. But when their systems are causing fair playing gamers to wrongfully banned, whether by sending gold through mail to friends,guildies, like StopSign is doing, or by farming. It makes the game and company look bad IMO to keep new players wanting to play. But again just my opinion..

Hi everyone,

Stopsign, please contact support. They will be able to help you with your issue. https://en.support.guildwars2.com/

Thanks for your understanding. This thread is closed.