Guild Wars 2

Please read this entire post before commenting, especially the note at the bottom.

I want to start by saying that I was not one of the players banned for the snowflake exploit, nor do I even know anyone who was. I’ve played both Guild Wars and Guild Wars 2 since their respective betas without ever botting or exploiting. I’ve reported everyone that I had strong enough evidence to believe that they were botting, and have consistently encouraged other players not to exploit even if they know they won’t get banned. I’m very unsympathetic towards exploiters in general.

That being said, I believe the snowflake exploiters should not receive a permanent ban. I do believe their bans are justified, just that they should not be permanent. This exploit was relatively mild compared to others that come to mind, so I don’t see why its punishment was stricter.

The ideal way to handle the snowflake exploiters would be to punish them with a temporary ban, and prevent them from receiving any benefits from their ill-gotten gains.

My suggestion is to make snowflake exploiter bans temporary (duration to be determined by Arenanet) and roll-back exploiters accounts to right when Wintersday began, before the exploit, to remove any potential profit from said exploit.

NOTE: Please do not use this thread to plead your innocence. This thread is to discuss the harshness of the punishment and not to discuss any individual case.

This is a tough one. I think I would have to said ANET did the right thing. Otherwise you have to get into people arguing the level of extremity of an exploit… a can of worms that can’t be opened. An exploit is an exploit.

To add to the other point of view although I would not go that route. If you did something like you propose I would also add on a gold penalty. set back to original date as you specified then remove 50% or even 75% of total gold on account including and all tp pending sales are forfeit. If they exploited for gold then taking the gold is where it will hurt.

Personally, I see an easy divide when it comes to exploits. Those that come from external sources (ie. hacking, gold selling, botting) deserve to be ejected from the game. Those that come from within the game (ie. taking advantage of development errors and other in-game code exploits) deserve to be stripped of all items and gold and suspended for X days.

That’s my opinion, at least. I see a big difference between someone who is maliciously hacking the game or seeking to gain an advantage via external means versus someone who is just using the game’s own mechanics to their advantage.

Please refer to this thread for further discussion. This topic is closed.