Guild Wars 2

Cool so actually there are more people like me, living in China. I got suspended, mostly, I think, for one of the reasons Amon mentioned. I think I wasn’t careful enough not to switch proxy servers too much. I use Battleping, excellent service, but well… I was greedy to try to find the BEST BEST BEST connection, in order to get the best experience on my gaming without any single spot of lag. So yeap, at the end… it seems I got suspended because at 3:40am (China) my Battleping got disconnected for some reason and automaticly went through my chinese DNS ip, and BANG… I received the nightmare message, and as well the email, which I check and effectively it was my own ip… so I can imagine them looking at all my connections from USA and then all of the sudden “CHINA” it is like a horror movie hahaha

Remember Reinth to follow Amon’s advice, you can use VPNs as support people have said, but just be careful just use one server, don’t be greedy

Anyways I hope I get unsuspended soon… exactly 3 days of waiting T_T
Ticket number: 121108-002361

Neurol.2768:

My account was suspended at 8/11, for who knows what, “account issues” apparently.

hahaha I just noticed… your name… probably we got suspended the same day because you had an account name similar to mine O_o

I am the NEURON ( kidding )

Account suspended while playing around (already converted to Pacific time) 11:40am on Thursday, 8 November 2012.
Reason: Unkown
Incident named as: Account issues
Ticket number: 121108-002361
Screenshot attached.

Renegadeimp.8439:

Atually, if we want to get techical here, Customer support is a luxury after purchase. They don’t have to do it, especially since by all accounts it is free.

Your original purchase of the game covers all costs incurred by Arenanet in developing the game to release, and adds a small profit on top, just as any other business would have.

Again, in an non subscription game, you cant expect the same level of customer service as you would in a pay to play game, such as WoW.

Sorry to say you are wrong, the support team doesn’t work for free, where have you ever seen that happen? you think there are people in this world working for more than 8 hours without being payed and even getting flamed by people that got suspension on their accounts? impossible. I am a business man, american, living in China, I know a lot about business as I sell cellphones out to america and other countries, support crew works for salary. Lets take a simple math, saying there are exactly 25 servers in NA (and not to mention there are also 27 servers in the European servers, I checked that info). Then just simply multiply a small amount as 3000 people per server (which is false, some servers goes far more than 30,000 people at the same time on a day), you get a total of 75,000 people (as I repeat it is just an example, in reality is far more than this). How many employees do you think ArenaNet has?, lets exaggerate and say 300 people in NA. From those employees lets say and again, exaggerate and say they have 100 support (which I doubt they do have that many, otherwise we wouldn’t have people waiting for more than 5 days). 100 people in support crew, everyone getting a salary of 2000 dollars (which I doubt is that much, for sure is just 1,200 or 1,500 that is the salary I would pay for support in USA) which makes a total of 200,000 dollars.
Ok so support = 200,000 dollars
Now, how much do they get?
Lets use the ultra minimal number which I used as an example = 75,000 people playing the game (yeah right this little hahaha sure) multiplied by 60 dollars makes a total of 4,500,000 dollars which is a small ammount compared to the reality (in reality they are far than 30 milllion dollars by now, taking real numbers).
Now lets pay those 200,000 dollars… we still have 4.3 Millions and growing… ohhhh and not just that… people daily buy gems to get accessories., clothing, gold, etc. There are people buying gems, and accessories everyday, adding around 1 million dollars per day. Remember they tried to use the tactic LoL is using, “free game” but getting billions of dollars, this is what these companies make us think as a propaganda, “it is for free”, but in reality, it is not, you will get into the game and there are just a few people that wont spend anymore money rather than paying 60 dollars, on the other hand there are thousand other ppl that keep buying every small thing that would be offered, “EVERY SPECIAL EVENT”, I have seen lots of people with the mad king’s outfit, didn’t you? Oh and not to mention those who buy the collector’s edition special package($150). So, in conclusion my friend… we business people know how this business is taken, and sorry to take your hopes down, there is no such job as support working for free, specially those in GW2 receiving so many complaints of the lack of a good banning system. And btw, yes they are many grown ups, professional ppl, business people playing these kind of games, cuz we relax ourselves in such nice piece of art (I enjoy GW2 for its scenery more than anything else).

control.4356:

the Support told me to buy new serial key to access my old account so i buy new serial key and registered as what they said but my account still blocked after registering. T_T did i just waste my money?

Did you try to give them full details of the new serial key? try to give them full information and then let us know if it worked for you, cuz I’m eager to find a way out even if I have to buy the game once again.

Message to support crew:

• My ticket number is 121108-002361
  I gave full detailed information with pictures, date, time, ip address, key code, etc. Easy to solve please help.

Almost 3 days now, and not a single answer from a real person. Please I beg for an answer. I already gave more than full information in my updated ticket. Please check it.

My ticket number is 121108-002361

Save.5137:

Drachdhar.7016:

I bought my digi-copy right from the web-shop here… Also suspended without even getting to play yet, so I somehow doubt buying it from here is gonna make much of a diff… and I am not the only one that has this experience.

Really? Is it possible to buy a copy from here and also have problems with the originality of the cdkey? :S

Seems Incredible but yes, I have read so many people with this case… they would even be called fraudulent hahahaha amazing right?

I would buy my key once again just to get to play asap, but I tell you if they suspend me for a second time I wouldn’t spend a dime on gems nor buy the game anymore. See them going down on clients if they continue THIS BAD.

Renegadeimp.8439:

noobftw.9654:

I waited 5 days before there is an answer that actually makes sense. Before that, it’s all repeating ’what’s your cdk? what’s your email address’ over and over again. If there is anyone who needs to be banned for botting, it’s ArenaNet.
The customer support here is a real letdown.

Well, you’re not paying for it, so its going to be minimal.

We as clients are paying for it, you know how much money they do from each game sold, and also each time people uses real money to buy gems and stuff in-game? also… not to mention how many of us get SUSPENDED for nothing and it seems they forces us to BUY the game ONCE AGAIN in order to have our characters back on a new account, that means, we are paying twice the real price. You know how much money they do? tell you if they continue like this they would for sure find some people suing this company for big money. So they better start improoving support and more than that, FIXING the problem with their AUTOMATED bans, because no one will tell me they are not using auto banning programs.

karrak.3597:

“I am escalating your ticket for further assistance. Once your ticket has been reviewed, someone will be in contact with you as soon as possible.” 2 days ago… nothing new!

almost 3 days here, exactly the same message T___T

The funny part is… “as soon as possible” should be added to dictionary saying “in GW2 means more than 5 days up to 1 month”

• My ticket number is 121108-002361
  Detailed information with pictures, date, time, ip address, key code, etc. Easy to solve please.

karrak.3597:

Or anyone can tell me why I got suspended?

I got the exact same screen as you got, the same build number and the same Error code. Did you use anything like Battleping or any VPN service and then used more than 2 servers?

Just a small question:

If we use this Google Authenticator, would it also help us to avoid getting wrongly suspended? I am currently suspended as many others because I used Battleping VPN. GW2 didn’t say we cannot use it but it is just ok, but still I got banned because I am an american living in China and I got disconnected from my VPN (USA) and then automatically connected with my chinese ip. So would this Authenticator help this better than using email authentication?

I think I should pass this out to everyone that is currently suffering from a suspended account as I am right now. I already have almost 3 days of waiting, as everyone, I felt anger because I didn’t do anything wrong and I just bought my game a few days ago. I happened to read some posts, and I noticed how many people rage and flame GW2 staff. Instead we should just start giving full information, for example in my case I use Battleping VPN because I am an american living in China, so I had to use this sort of VPN to make my gaming experience better without any lag. So what I did in my last update is what GM Gaile said:

-Your GW2 Username
-Your serial code
-A character name, if any
-A detailed description of the issue that you’re experiencing
-Any error code that you are getting

I would add to this:
-Your ticket number: I know it’s dumb but just put it
*By the way, if there is a GM checking this post, my ticket number is 121108-002361 (also called incident number)*
-Your current location: Country + state or province
-Your real DNS ip address: This way they will check all the log-in ips and check which one was your ip, because sometimes we might get hacked and we don’t even know.
-Programs you used while playing: Some people uses teamspeak, some others might use mumble, some other people like me would use Battleping.
-Which server are you playing in?
-If you were using a VPN or you have a dynamic ip then provide those ips that were sent to your email to authenticate. This would speed up the support crew’s follow up, and you might get results really fast.
-Your details you should mention what were you doing, or what happened, or what do you think made this suspension get triggered, and if you have no idea, then at least give the exact time, date, that way also speeds up the search. You just have to image these people trying to search line by line, chat logs, log-ins, server log, but if you tell them "it is exactly 44 hours and 37 min from now " or you can say “it was approximately 44 to 45 hours from now” that would totally speed them up, cuz they just have to go directly to that line and they can see the time you are sending your ticket.

Also please read your emails, maybe the answer is there, who or which ip did you allow to get in? check the ips… KNOW your own ip (this is something YOU should know).

I tell you guys this because I discovered by reading my emails:
Apparently since I used Battleping everyday to play, I got all of the sudden disconnected at 3:40 am for just a little, and that triggered the auto suspension. You can imagine, the server log saying I was getting online 5 differnet servers in USA (I would daily check which one would provide the lowest ping), and then all of the sudden BAAANG someone got in using a CHINESE IP. Of course they don’t know I live in China and that I work here as a teacher. Apparently I received an email to allow a connection from China, which I checked is MY own IP here in China and probably I got banned just because I played all the way with USA servers and then all of the sudden I got disconnected and connected to my CHINESE ip. Now that might look like a hacker getting into my account, so that’s why we need to provide full information, let them know which ips you used with Battleping or smoothping (I read some posts of people mentioning that one) and which is your own IP.

My last words is, support crew are people as us, they work hard, they are not responsible for mistakes that this server might do like banning or suspending innocent people, but we can help them to get this thing going easier and faster. Just provide more info instead of just raging and telling them you would sue their family. My suggestion to all ArenaNet crew is, I kinda think you guys are using a program to auto-ban, auto-suspend cuz I know that’s what happened to me and many of us, please make something like 1 warning and then after warning if you don’t provide full info, you are banned, that would save you trouble. You guys might say “that would get us thousand of emails” but guess what, you guys are already having thousands, and now is even worst because you get them not just once after a warning, you get them every minute of the day, because people are desperate to get their accounts back and not all of us are so patient and we know we paid money for this and we are clients. So improove the suspension/banning system cuz it isn’t working at all, when you have more than 100,000 thousand innocent people you can for sure know something isn’t working the way it should. As for VPNs, you guys might want to provide a VPN server, that would help us so much for all of us on the other side of the globe, VPNs does work if you are this far (The difference from pushing a button, getting your skill animation after 5 seconds without VPN, and just half second or instant with a VPN).

Good luck to all of us which are going through this. I feel your pain

ChungHan Ho.5837:

My account was restored about 9 hours ago. The whole process took 51 hours and honestly I am quite satisfied with the efficiency and very grateful for the efforts the support team made.

However, I still have one little complaint to make that the last mail from ANet didn’t tell me anything about why I got banned. While I did notice that the error message I got when logging in change from “terminated due to botting” to “accessed by an unauthorized individual” not long before my account was restored, they didn’t specify the reason I got banned. Despite that Amon is very kind to submit a ticket about proxy server and the answer from GM did clarify the issue a bit, I still have no idea that the reason I got banned was due to happening to use the same IP range as the bot did, unauthorized login attempt, being reported by the real bot, or something else. In other words, I am not sure and hence pretty worried that I might get banned again because now I don’t really know what I can or can’t do.

Don’t want to sound ungrateful, in fact I am, but we need a more clear message about the proxy server policy and what you mean by “at your own risk”, especially when bot/RMT is involved, since the proxy server does improve the connection quality pretty much for us oceanic players.

Anyway, thank you, support team, Amon, and NeuroN, for the help you provide and good luck to those who is still waiting.

I’m so glad for you that you got this lucky, Right now I’m around 40 hours by now waiting. I hope I get as lucky as you, and get back to play. I actually swallowed my desperation and my unhappyness, and decided to update my ticket by providing full… full… full information, of all the ips that i’ve used from Battleping, the locations, my own DNS ip my information, details of my account, and details hours, timings, mailing, etc everything very detailed, cuz I thought… instead of raging I might better provide more information to be useful and help support team to solve my problem. I started to imagine how many raging message would they receive and also imagine how fast would I work solving a problem if the clients would instead provide full detailed information so to process everything faster and make things easier for them.
Still I agree with you and with Amon and with some others, we should be informed a little bit more, not just for what we did wrong, because I’m pretty sure that everything I did wasn’t bad, but for, “what would be things we should avoid doing, in order to avoid getting automatically suspended” because know that I get to understand a little more, in my case, using 5 different server locations + my own DNS ip, it might have probably triggered the alarm and auto suspend my account.
I also checked something VERY interesting:

At 3:40 am (I know I was on a full night of playing haha) I received an email saying that I should authenticate an ip… and guess what, it was my own DNS ip. It seems my Battleping got disconected for just a little bit, and that caused to get into my own DNS connection automatically. You can imagine, playing with an USA ip and then all of the sudden switch to a Chinese IP, and just that moment, exactly that time, I got suspended. I just noticed that just now that I was checking all my emails from Arenanet. It seems I ran out of the time to authenticate, because I was playing, or probably just because it switched and they might have thought my account was hacked. Anyways this teaches me to only use two… or maybe just one server from Battleping, after I get suspended. We all learn from mistakes.

As someone else pointed in this post, I think it is a great idea for Arenanet to provide their own VPN for Guild wars 2 and Guild Wars 1, they might even do a nice profit, and ask for the same payment Battleping has, around 15 dollars for 3 months. I would be glad to use their service.

Anyways greetings to you ChungHan Ho, if you happen to be in Sorrow’s furnace we could say hi to each other in Chinese hehehe

Amon.5042:

Got an answer from support about this via GM Xionaque.

“It is not against the rules to use a proxy server to connect to the game. But doing so is at your own risk. Team speak is also ok but we do not support it on any level. These rules could change at any time, depending on what the proxy server host does or what Team speak does. At this time it is ok to use them.”

I’m more relieved after getting this answer. The proxy server in question is a legally registered company from Australia. That was one of the reasons why I chose Battleping. It wouldn’t be in their interest to do anything that could damage their reputation with players, game companies, and aussie law.

I’d advise anyone to stay clear from a VPN since this kind of service uses strong encryption tools which makes the connection slower. It’s ideal to establish a safe connection for business or to circumvent censorship. But it’s really not recommended for a game because it slows down speed.

A proxy server like Battleping, and others like it, worries only about getting the best route to the game’s data centers and at the lowest latency possible. It’s not perfect. Nearly every day I have to check which server is offering me the lowest ping. That in turn activates the security authentication because I’m tunneling through a different server. From GM Xionaque’s statement, it doesn’t seem that ArenaNet will ban someone for doing this but I wouldn’t want to activate the security authentication too much in a single day since that could raise the alarm.

I hope this helps dispel concerns over the issue.

Amon really thanks a lot for your answer really makes me able to breath once again. I know I carelessly did what you just mentioned:
"Nearly every day I have to check which server is offering me the lowest ping. That in turn activates the security authentication because I’m tunneling through a different server. "
I was just worried about getting the best tunnel to get a fluent game, and I am 100% sure Battleping really helps with my connection because without it I noticed my skills being casted around 5 secs after I press a button, and with battleping is almost immediate casting.
Anyways, I will be careful next time to only choose one of the servers that Battleping provides in order to avoid triggering the security authentication alarm.
As I can see I was too greedy to just get to see my gaming 100% fluent, so that’s why I was choosing between 6 different servers every day, hehehe I think I should have been careful. I just thought the authorization emails were enough to avoid getting problems, but seems not. I’m also installing Google Authenticator in my cellphone, I read this one is better than email notifications and would also prevent for getting problems like the one we are having now T_T.

ChungHan Ho.5837:

NeuroN.1420:

ChungHan Ho.5837:

Hi, NeuroN, I read a post on Battleping forum that for oceanic players, it is recommended to connect to west coast servers despite that GW2’s servers are located in Texas, as far as I can remember. Just a little reminder.

Good luck to both of us.

How long have you been suspended by now? I’m frustrated already. Are you chinese? I learned chinese and I can understand most of it, but it is so hard to hand-write chinese, I preffer typing it haha.

Hi, it’s been almost two days but feels like two weeks No constructive responses yet, mainly requesting additional information.

By the way, I do speak chinese but I am from Taiwan

Cool ur from Taiwan, u have a good english btw. Well this is my first day by now, I was playing like crazy yesterday 3am, and then BANG my account got suspended. I already received one email saying that they are escalating my ticket to their Payment Review Team to research my issue and someone will contact me as soon as possible. I still don’t understand, I provided full info and screenshots, they shouldn’t take so long. anyways I really hope they get this fast, good luck on yours too. Were you using Battleping too?

ChungHan Ho.5837:

Hi, NeuroN, I read a post on Battleping forum that for oceanic players, it is recommended to connect to west coast servers despite that GW2’s servers are located in Texas, as far as I can remember. Just a little reminder.

Good luck to both of us.

Yeah, I kinda deduced it since they keep saying PDT, I usually use servers from west coast but yesterday I felt like trying another one (Chicago) to see if there was any difference… and BOOM, now I think they suspended my account because I used around 4 different servers available in Battleping… once they unblock my account I might just use one server T_T I learned the lesson.

How long have you been suspended by now? I’m frustrated already. Are you chinese? I learned chinese and I can understand most of it, but it is so hard to hand-write chinese, I preffer typing it haha.

Gaile Gray.6028:

Just talked to the Security Team coordinator. He said that the use of VPN may appear to give you better service, but you’re not seeing what goes on in the background. If you VPN into a proxy, and the proxy then connects with Guild Wars 2, you can see only the latency from the proxy to the game. That segment may appear to be a better connection, with reduced latency. What you are not seeing is the latency from your system to the VPN/Proxy location. Overall, your latency may not improve at all.

And as an additional note, connecting through routes that are known to be used by RMT companies isn’t a desirable thing.

I started using Battleping because everyone said it is the most reliable VPN for gamers. My account was suspended yesterday “your Guild wars 2 account has been suspended for an account issue” Build 15977 Error code: 45:6:3:2114
I presume I’m not the only american living in China working as a teacher and doing business, I already submitted my ticket I gave all information. I just want to say 2 things:
1. if VPNs are not welcomed, then GW2 should mention it before you get to buy the game. VPNs does improve latency, simple test for that is to go to your task manager>performance>click “resource monitor” button> then check your latency shown up. I tried with my normal chinese connection and it shows more than 400 something, and when I use Batlleping it would be 200-299 max which is much better and I can asure, that I can feel the difference. Simple test, cast a skill… without VPN = 6 to 8 seconds to cast… then the same with VPN = cast the skill and u get the skill, sometimes for the worst would be just 1 sec.
2. Everyone uses VPNs and I know your point about someone using the same ip range for something else, but at least send an email, and if the email isn’t answered in 8 hours, then you suspend the account. My point is, please let us know about the suspension and at least warn us by email, same way u guys auto send email to allow an ip, so that we can provide information asap to avoid getting unfairly suspended.

I am about to go to visit my parents back to america (December). I only have November to play GW2 and relax a bit, once I’m visiting my parents, I will have 2 months without playing GW2. I paid for 1 month of service from Battleping…. time is ticking and every hour means money, so please I expect to have my account unblocked soon (as for now).