Guild Wars 2

Fluffy.6529:

Fluffy.6529:

The issue my friend has means she can no longer post on the forum so here I am instead and it has been 3 days.

[Incident: 130204-001927]

It looks like her account got compromised, and thus accused of RMT by whichever pest got in to it. I saw 2 Accepted IP addresses which have nothing to do with her. The only locations relevant to her are in Denmark (DK) So it was probably both of those. (we also removed these to hopefully stop more damage)

She has now Scanned for viruses, changed passwords on absolutely everything and is formatting her computer today.

She just had her account reactivated but it’s been trashed. All items sold/salvaged etc by the little bugger who got in to it. Can she get her account restored to before it happened? We believe it was late Thursday night/early Friday morning around 1AM – 2AM.

Thanks.

Please have your friend update her ticket — the one in which she was informed of the account hack and reinstatement — and she can discuss the possibility of an account restoration with the team.

Attention: The Forums Code of Conduct expressly prohibits petitions. That includes people posting valueless posts with testimonials on behalf of another player.

ONE forum member may post here to ask for a review of a friend or family member’s ticket. Multiple posts are unacceptable, and must stop. I have just wasted time, and our moderator team will now need to waste time, dealing with a number of off-topic posts. Folks are not reinstated because their friends ask for it; they are reinstated because they are innocent of wrong-doing and that is determined based on the facts, not the numbers of pleas submitted on their behalf. The outcome of appeals will be determined fairly, without any input from petitions, testimonials, or other “contributions” from third parties.

Thank you for understanding, and I expect to see no further posts here or elsewhere about 130206-001636.

Hi there. I wanted to let you know that I edited your post to remove the account-specific information. I don’t see any value in having account and character names visible.

So please have your friend submit a ticket and the team will help him!

You ask “Why else would my support account have been inaccessible if not for the ban? I’ve seen other users in this forum report the same thing (when perma-banned).”

My answer is that perhaps you are using incorrect credentials, or maybe your email account or your support account was also hacked.

I mean, if we closed access to Support, then players would not be able to contact us, to file an appeal, to update their tickets, and as you can see in these forums, lots of people do that every day.

We do not prevent players from reaching Support through their Support Account, so I encourage you to try again. If you still have troubles, then I recommend setting up a second account for support using a different email address so that you can get these questions answered for you.

I hope this goes quickly for you and will you please update when you have a resolution?

BelleroPhone.4238:

Gaile Gray.6028:

I think Michael has made a very useful suggestion. Can you give it a try (while keeping in mind that if it makes your refrigerator blow up, it’s not on us. )

Because you guys have no means of accessing our refrigerators… right?

Sadly, no.

I understand, Kuro, and sadly a few players might try to grief others by false reporting. But I think we have it covered in two ways: (1) reports are verified, and (2) those who submit false reports are subject to account action (if they do it repeatedly — an accidental mis-report isn’t going to land someone in trouble).

So it’s not likely that the blocks on the account were prompted by a person reporting three of your friends. I hope we’ll be able to sort out what did happen and get them back into the game very quickly.

That’s great — thanks for letting us know.

I think Michael has made a very useful suggestion. Can you give it a try (while keeping in mind that if it makes your refrigerator blow up, it’s not on us. )

Thanks for the kind words, HeatBlast!

kiba.2768:

same thing happened to me, void. send in a support ticket and have the support team review your account history. turnaround is quick if you’re able to get their questions answered as soon as you receive them via email or through your support account.

best of luck!

Thanks for your comments, kiba. Please note, void, that the more information contained in the first ticket — or added by updating it — the faster the team can help you. That’s why I link to the How to Submit a Ticket post.

See above. And stop posting about this.

Enough.

The character name was offensive. You were warned against such choices. You were suspended, which you were foretold.

Your display name also was offensive. It was changed. No additional suspension was placed on your account, although strictly speaking that could have happened within the expressed policies about name infractions.

You were kindly allowed to rename.
You were generously given a display name close to your chosen one.

Hereby ends the discussion of your issue. If you choose to troll the forums about this, if you choose to take over other players’ posts with your personal complaints and irrelevant “contributions” to threads that are not about you or your issue, you will serve a time out here, as well. There is only so much kindness and generosity we reasonably can be expected to show.

Nothing has changed in our bot detection. And as always, we are happy to review any case where a false-positive has accidentally blocked a legitimate account. Please continue to discuss this with Support.

If you find you still need help after three days, feel free to post in the Tickets for Review thread, which is at the top of this Account Support sub-forum.

No, we cannot help with issues related to selling a game account. Selling an account is strictly forbidden, and we should use our support resources to aid legitimate players, not those in breach of the User Agreement.

Thank you both for your kind words. I’m really happy that the team was able to help you so quickly, and really — it means a lot that you took the time to write here, so I can share it with the team.

Feel free to read the Naming Policy for an answer to your question. You might note exclusions pertaining to human anatomy.

I did not take action on the name, but I assume an agent did so based on reports. And I imagine that the opinions expressed by Darth Llama are not unique.

They will look into this for you. Please don’t worry — it’ll get sorted out, I’m sure.

I’m sorry for the distress, but the fastest way to get to the bottom of this is for you to contact Support by filing a ticket through the “Ask a Question” tab on that linked page. They will be able to assist you. For tips on what information to provide in a ticket, please read this post.

Tuggernutz.2897:

void.6705:

Michael.4791:

void.6705:

I also was banned for being accused of botting…. I would like to see any records of me botting or anything like that yes I run the same zones a lot but I am always on my account… I havent receieved any emails or anything to let me know exactly why I was banned

Write a support ticket and ask them there.

Oh I did trust me they heard from me

Michael.4791 assumes people don’t make tickets before they post on the forum.

Many people do not understand the process and believe that posting here, or listing their guild members’ or friends’ names here, will get a review started. That is not the case, so reminding folks to contact Support by filing a ticket through the “Ask a Question” tab on that linked page is in fact a very helpful thing to do. That should actually be the first step in getting an issue resolved, although it’s fine to post here after the ticket is submitted (and especially if the issue has extended 3 days or longer). Whether posting in the main forum or in the Tickets for Review thread, please always provide me with the 12-digit ticket number as a starting point in researching the issue.

Thanks.

I am sorry that this is happening, and I want, first, to point you to a post that I made earlier today, because while the form of messaging may not be clear, I believe that this situation does apply to some of you posting in this thread (or your friends or guildies). Here’s the post.

I don’t mean to appear to be making excuses for our errors. We have made them, and we do make them, and I agree with you that we need to reduce the number of false positives. That is something I will spend my tomorrow looking into, you have my word on it.

Tuggernutz.2897:

Michael.4791:

Don’t post on the forum – it will not help.
Write a ticket and ask for review – that will help.

Doesn’t help if they don’t respond to your ticket….

Some tickets are prioritized above others. A log-in issue — “I’ve been banned and I didn’t do anything” or “I cannot remember my password” — is of higher priority than "My name was blocked and I’m not happy.

I don’t mean to single you out, but it’s plain truth that some situations deserve more immediate action than others.

Having said that a team member usually responds within hours, a day or two at most. And we have a sticky thread at the top of this Account Support Forum for anyone who has waited 3 days or more.

I have no way of knowing what happened here. You can submit a report, but I don’t know that you have any evidence that this took place, and it feels as if it may not be worthwhile to investigate at this late date.

Perhaps the notes in this thread will help you. I suspect the situations are similar.

I believe you will hear from the team very soon.

When an account is blocked for an offensive name, the account is given a 72-hour suspension. At the end of the suspension, the account holder will need to rename any censored characters before the characters can be accessed. (Appeals are seldom successful and they are unnecessary because the player can handle the renames when the suspension expires.)

Now, if someone continues to use offensive names, the suspension period becomes longer and usually the player is not given the opportunity to rename the character but instead a support team member renames the character.

So as you can see, it’s best to be careful in all name choices and especially if you have been actioned for an offensive name in the past.

Kruhljak.2705:

@Kraggy: What you saw was a bot teleporting to the node you were near, using it, then teleporting off the next node in their circuit. This teleporting stuff is actually a sort of hacked trick, not something the character is actually doing legitimately.

As you’ve found out, friending them in order to report them is the easiest method to deal with them. If I see someone appear out of nowhere at a node, I immediately screenshot it, refer to it to get the exact spelling so there’s no mistaken identity issue, friend them, then report them for botting. I leave them friended until I haven’t seen them for quite a while. Because bots will tend to remain functioning until they’re forcibly removed, I assume not seeing them for several days means they’ve been dealt with. This sometimes takes upwards of a week, though. I’ve reported perhaps 50 bots of various types, and most of them have disappeared (only the most recent ones I have in my friends list are still hopping around).

I’d say that these reports are working. Those that handle them don’t really need too many details from you, as I believe they just review whatever metrics they keep on how the character’s been being “played” either in general or around the time of the report datestamp.

To the last question, you can report them by targeting them and right-clicking on their portrait (top center of your screen). There’s an option to report them from there, though as noted with regard to mining bots, you’re unlikely to be able to do all that while they’re still in front of you. The method I noted above removes the issue since a screenshot takes less than a second and the info’s there until you have some time to deal with it.

My advice is to report them every time you see them, even if you’ve already reported them (assuming some reasonable time has passed since the last report). The more distinct reports, the more likely they’ll be noticed. I expect ANet uses a weighted priority system to determine what order to address each suspected bot; more reports, higher priority.

Valuable comments, Kruhljak, and thank you.

Kraggy.4169:

Tell me, does using the ‘report cheating’ really work?

Thing is, as a relative noob I saw several time characters appear at a node, farm it then log off. I asked on here if these were bots and was told ‘yes’, report them.

The only way I have found to do this is to ‘friend’ them, then use Report. However, there is nowhere for me to describe the activity at all. Thus, my ‘report’ consists of me simply naming them as a ‘bot’: there’s no evidence collection, no information is asked for at all.

Are these ‘reports’ REALLY taken notice of? I took a screenshot, simply to be able to remember the character’s name, but that wouldn’t be evidence since obviously faking screenshots is easy, so I’m left wondering just how useful this reporting scheme is.

Also, if this is considered useful by Anet, why isn’t this ‘report’ option available simply by targetting the bot, instead of having to try to remember a name that is often deliberately designed to make remembering something seen for only a few seconds difficult?

Yep Kraggy, it really works. We have team members reviewing the in-game reports pretty much around the clock. Player reports are very helpful to us: either the in-game report system or putting locations of concern in this thread.

Thanks for asking!

SacuraShadow — We are all on board with making sure that players we action are indeed guilty of the infractions they’re being flagged for!

A lot of times, someone who is flagged for botting was actually hacked and the hacker used the account for cheating. The account owner gets the message and it’s a little scary. It’s also a double-whammy of hurt: Get hacked and get “accused of cheating” is how it appears. Well, both happened, but with research, we’re able to figure out that the account owner was innocent of cheating and we help him/her get back on the account and of course remove the flag for cheating (like botting).

Long explanation, sorry. We’ll take care of you boyfriend. Just ask him to follow up on the ticket and explain that he was not involved in cheating, and the agent can look into the situation to see if there was hacking+hacker cheating involved.

I think this will get sorted pretty quickly.

Sinsko.9342:

While I personally have never experienced anything where I required a support ticket, I can say that even just getting feedback from ACTUAL reps from ArenaNet here on the forums is actually pretty easy.

While ArenaNet comes across as having pretty ‘strict’ guidelines, they are just involved and active, unlike ummmmm every other online company. Pretty much encouraging the players to shy away from trolls and agony that plagues pretty much any community out there.

I’m glad that you got your account back and although it took a few hoops… I understand why they do it the way they do. What is great is that even with your support ticket.. that you’re e-mailing an actual human being… not getting the canned automated responses the first 3 times to filter out people. For me, as a customer… this speaks VOLUMES!

Although I don’t always agree with the moderator warnings I seem to get on the forums (lol), I really respect ArenaNet as a company, and how engaged with their customers they actually are.

Thank you for your day-brightening comments, Sinsko. We really try to be accessible and communicative. (And that’s why I so want to work to improve the messaging that folks get in situations such as the ones that Ritz mentioned.)

There are two ways to interpret that statement. If you were not guilty of racist chat, but were only making a harmless comment about how a certain ethnic group created delicious foodstuffs, then you can discuss the matter with support.

Mint Jelly.2569:

An account I know of was permanently banned recently, and its owner allowed me to have the old character names if I wanted (since they obviously weren’t going to be used), but I get a notification saying they’re still in use.

I’ve heard that banned accounts are in permanent suspension, but do the names ever get cleared up? The owner said the support ticket for the ban said the action was permanent, and the ban would not be lifted. If that’s the case, what’s the point in holding on to the data and tying up the names?

We do not free up the names because the loss of the character names is one of the by-products of getting one’s account terminated. If we were to free up the names, someone could just start a new account and use the old names. Too, if we freed up the names and later the original name-holder wanted to use them, we’d have a dispute because two players who both felt they “owned” the names.

So leaving the names locked is best.

Sinsko.9342:

Is it a violation of TOU to be logged in both at the same time?

(Not account sharing, but sometimes need to log in to the other to check things out since the accounts are linked).

No, it is not a violation for you to be logged into both your Guild Wars and Guild Wars 2 accounts, as long as they belong to you, and as long as you’re playing legitimately (or reviewing your accounts, you know, something that is not cheating )

I really encourage your brother to contact Support by filing a ticket through the “Ask a Question” tab on that linked page. They will look into this. It’s possible he was linked with botters and got caught in the sweep, but I cannot say that with certainty. (And we do not intend for that to happen, naturally! Legitimate players should be and are intended to be free to play as they desire.)

For tips on what information to provide in a ticket, please ask him to read this post because including that info will speed up the ticket for him.

synch.2980:

AimForThatFace.7814:

So if a user shared his account details you’ll be banned, how would you find out if a player has been on a website and used a power leveling service unless you seen there screen when they bought it?

Also what happens if you want to share a account with a friend so they can take in turns leveling a character is this not allowed?

Sharing an account is against the terms-of-service. So no, it’s not allowed. They’ve stated that several times on the forum, look through Gaile’s post history for some of the reasons why

As for powerleveling services, they’re not going to tell you how they identify accounts that use the services – but it doesn’t take much imagination to come up with technical means that might be used to do so.

No system is going to catch everybody, and I’m sure they’re going to err on the side of letting a few slip through rather than bring down the banhammer on someone who didn’t do anything – but why risk it?

Thanks, Synch — this pretty much sums it up.

AimForThatFace.7814:

Also what happens if you want to share a account with a friend so they can take in turns leveling a character is this not allowed?

No, it is not allowed.

You have updated your ticket approximately 30 times since you submitted it yesterday. And now you’re posting the exact same content here. Please stop doing this! Your tickets has been reviewed and responded to now.

You chose an offensive name. It was racist and it used “creative spelling” to mask a nasty word. The fact you were able to create the name does not reflect negatively on us, for it’s impossible to block every single possible offensive name when people are intent on using them.

Our policies are clear and the outcomes are explained on our Legal Documents page. Your warning was in the UA and RoC that you accepted. At the point you breach the agreements, you have earned a time-out and that is what you’ve been given. You will be allowed back in the game when your 72-hour suspension expires. Choose a new name, and choose wisely, because flailing out with another offensive name will result in a more extended period of time out, as explained in the Conduct Breaches and Outcomes, linked on that page.

Yuki.4190:

I also have this issue with a few extras to it…..

Not only is my email shown in the guild tab, I also have the problem of losing all information in the guild tab. It will show no players online and I am unable to do any maintenance to the guild.

I also lose all ability to use my chat. I can not see any Guild/Party or Whisper that may be in coming or out going. I get the error 42:1000:9001:4105:101 (which I know another member posted a picture of earlier)

The strange thing for me is it only happens in the evening! I can play all day time and it will work fine, but towards 6pm (uk time) I get the error and the above kicks in.

I run AVG and have the “Guild Wars 2 Special” option so I’m unsure if it’s a firewall or security issue like the error message tells me.

I would suggest that you submit a ticket or, at the least, post in the Technical Support Forum. The error code you described is monitored on that forum, and I think you may find answers there. If not, the TS Team is more than willing to help!

There are numerous detection systems in place in addition to frequent player reports. There’s no rule against someone leveling up quickly, but there is a rule against sharing accounts and the use of disallowed services. First, do keep in mind that people say silly things, and that this may not have happened. Secondly, did you report this player so the team could take a look?

First, let’s be clear: This is decidedly not an account issue.

Secondly: Thirty seconds? You’re joking, right? You can’t base a review on what someone tells you a program does. You must dig down and find that out directly. Therefore, “vetting” a program could take days, even weeks. And even then, the core program that appears fine can be warped into a harmful, disallowed program with the addition of malicious content after a review.

Please understand that every day, we get requests to review, approve, endorse, or publicize this site or that tool or that other utility. Now, in a world of finite resources — a reality with any development company — should we spend staff members’ time on reviewing third-party programs? How much time? How many people? Or should we invest that time instead doing what we do so well: developing new content, improving the game, fixing bugs, balancing, addressing player concerns; in other words, generally focusing our developers on… developing our game?

Given the sheer volume of stuff “out there” and based on the many requests that we receive daily — despite our making it clear we do not offer reviews, approvals, or endorsements — we could spend an entire sub-team reviewing other people’s creations to see if, perhaps, they are harmless and would be allowed by the User Agreement, Content Terms of Use, Rules of Conduct and our Copyright. (See Legal for details.)

The best thing for us to do right now is to set out our policies as clearly and concisely as possible without misdirecting a potentially-increasing number of staff members onto projects that belong to someone else.

All that could change in the future, but for now, that’s how things stand.

Rytz — I am sorry you had difficulties. And I have shared one of yoru points with the team previously: It would be better to block a purchase than to allow its completion and close the account a day or two later. Even so, I sort of wobble on the fence of “But what about those players who have to wait for a review?” I mean, when I buy something I don’t want to get a message that say, essentially, “We’re thinking about whether to let you buy or not.”

From what I understand, addressing this situation is a very significant goal of the Fraud Team and I do believe they will take steps to address this pretty soon. I will see what I can do to correct the messages that players receive. Couldn’t agree with you more than vague messages are not helpful. We fixed one this week (and have fixed others in the past) and we’ll try to find better ways of giving players accurate and updated info.

Here’s a challenge: A player buys the game, gets hacked, and the hacker uses the account in disallowed ways. Account owner comes back and sees “You’ve done something wrong” when he/she did nothing whatsoever wrong. I want us to be able to tell players, “You account was hacked and the hacker did something wrong and that’s why we need you to contact Support.” We’re moving towards that.

Lastly: Your game account and your support account are not linked, so having any sort of block on your account — from termination to suspension — does not prevent you from contacting the team via your support account. Submit a ticket using the “Ask a Question” tab on this page: http://support.guildwars2.com/. The credentials for your account can be the same — although for security reasons I recommend against that — but the accounts themselves are separate.

Farming is fine.
Grinding is ok.
The number of false positives is few, and repeated marks far fewer still, but if you’re involved, please simply contact Support and we’ll work with you to get this resolved.

I’m not in a position to give “tips on not getting blocked” as far as botting because, well, every RMT and botter out there would ask for just those details. (I am sure you are not that sort of person, DL, just explaining the challenge here.)

We don’t normally go into an area and just make a huge sweep and call everyone a “bot” so that should be some reassurance to you. I think some of the suggestions in this thread are helpful, and hope you’ll play without this weighing too heavily on your mind, knowing our greatest goal is to get people back into the game if there’s an issue, and not to kick people without reason!

Have fun out there!

Veeber, looks like this post was made about half a day ago. Can you let me know if you are still having these issues? Some issues were corrected today, and I’m hoping that you’re ok now. Thanks!

These situations are usually individual to the player and the account, and really the only way to get assistance is to contact Support. They will help you, and we all appreciate your support of Guild Wars 2!

Yes, by all means, do write a ticket. If you were hacked, I imagine you’ll want help assuring your account is secure, so ask about the server question at the same time. Best of luck!

Why thank you, I Love Root Beer, that’s very kind… even if I’m not a dude.

Edge, you’ve presented information about which I was unaware. I spend my forum time here, in the Account Support Forum, and therefore have not been aware of a reported issue. I am writing this late at night, having served Jury Duty today (and perhaps for a few days to come) but I will send an email tonight to ask the team to route this to the appropriate parties. Thanks for providing those details.

Update: Email sent.

We’re happy to research this, but all reports that I know about contain visuals only of the client-side issue. I haven’t yet (personally) see a screenshot of, say, a guild member showing that he could seen someone else’s email address. So at this point, given a lack of evidence to the contrary, we believe that this is not an issue, and that those who see their email addresses are the only ones seeing them.

If someone can establish different facts, we would be happy to look into this further.

Tarvoskemwer.9671:

my naming reservation failed due to problems with passwords at the time, so I couldnt merge accounts at the time and didnt get it done. I experienced problems resetting the password for Gw1 and can only guess its because I used the same email. So I’m rather uncomfortable with the forced password change as I fear getting locked out due to having used the same email for both Gw1 and Gw2.

Oh please don’t be concerned. Many players use the same log-in name for their accounts! I don’t think you’ll have any troubles at all, but if you do, Support is as close as the “Ask a Question” tab on that linked page.

Your friend should contact Support by filing a ticket through the “Ask a Question” tab on that linked page. They will be able to assist him.

Please keep in mind that the team will need to verify that he owns the account. There are numerous ways for an agent to do this, but for tips on what information to provide in a ticket — to expedite the process of getting him back in the game — please read this post.

This happened to another player a few days ago. For him, it was simply a matter of doing a complete restart on the computer. (And to tell the truth, I did that a few days ago at the office.) I don’t think this is a major issue, and could you kindly try that as the first step in looking into this issue? Please post back with the outcome.

Thanks.

Franzman.4107:

Hi. My friend is trying to buy Guild Wars 2, but he is unable to as when he enters his information it denies it. This happened to me to but eventually I got a call from the credit card company and I told them to let it go through. I told him to call them but he doesn’t want to go through the trouble of calling them now. Is there any other way to fix this? Thank you in advance for your response.

I hope that your friend was able to purchase the game, but if not, then I really encourage him to contact Support by filing a ticket through the “Ask a Question” tab on that linked page. They will be able to assist him.

Thanks.

Hey there, Carlozius. Did you use the Contact Support button? If so, is there a 12-digit ticket number for this so I can look into the matter?

Or did everything sort out and did you find you were able to purchase the gems?