640 replies to this topic

[Bryant Again]

Momorazor, on 07 January 2013 - 02:06 AM, said:

What happen with dont cheat and steal. I wouldnt have problem with forgiving them, honestly, but thing is humans are nasty sort of creature. Lot more than half of humans dont care about right and wrong. That is reason why we have laws.

What I'm saying is there's a big difference between detention as expulsion, and I feel like ANet could've still delivered a 'message' if they learned more towards the former.

Still worth mentioning this is the result of a bug. True, people shouldn't steal and it's lame that they do, but you also shouldn't go to the bathroom at work with no one to cover the store.

[XPhiler]

FoxBat, on 06 January 2013 - 03:10 PM, said:

Turning mithril into ectos, not duping ectos infinitely out of thin air.

That is a problematic and ecto value-damaging oversight (mithril is common as hell no matter what the price jumps to), but I agree it's nowhere near the level of duping, and therefore not obvious ban material.

Using a blacklion salvage kit was probably a bit too expensive. Better use a master kit and and buy a pristine snowflake / "harvest" a pristine snowflake.

But anyhow this conversion of mithril to ecto meant that if you used a master salvage kit hence had a 20% chance of loosing the snowflake it meant that every 5 salvages you'd have paid about 3s for the mithril. The price to get the snowflake (if at all, spending a few hours gathering presents could give you quite a lot of free snowflakes) and in return you'd get about 4.5 ecto one of which you needed to use to rebuilt the jewel every 5 salvages. So essentially people paid 3s + snowflake to get 3.5 ectos which before the exploit were valued at 1g 22s.

There was a big disparity of what you put in and what you got out and thats the reason why its considered an exploit. You can consider it duping ecto out of thin air because if you sold just 1 ecto you got before the exploit drove prices of ectos down you could use that 35s to run this exploit cylce (A cycle is crafting 5 earings before loosing the jewel)  a wooping 15 times meaning by selling just 1 ecto out of the 3.5 you got in the first cycle you get to create another 67.5 ectos.

[Red Sonya]

Gilles VI, on 04 January 2013 - 09:56 PM, said:

Name me other MMO's that have a sub fee that don't charge a box price?
And following your logic it would also be good for other devs to ban people

Anet:
Someone buys the game = 60$
Ban them and they buy the game again = 60$
Total = 120$

Blizzard:
They buy game = 60$
Sub fee for 5 months now = 90$
Ban them and buy the game again = 60$
Sub fee every month = x*15
In total blizzard gets more from the ban because all the time before the ban is wasted, and because sub-fee MMO's rely on time wasting mechanisms to keep people playing people will need to do play that amount of time again, so blizzard just made 150$.

Mostly because Subscriber based games have BETTER clients than NON-subscriber games because of the added COSTS per month. Lil 8 year old asshole Joey can get mom or dad to buy him ONE copy of a game for $40-$60 but paying that much PLUS $15 a month plus tax is where mom and dad draw the line. Thus on NON-sub games you get the most riff raff the most assine the most ignoramousess and thus more BANS. Normal MMO's like Everquest hardly have any riff raff and plenty of GUIDES and GM's to handle bannings. Guild Wars 1 and 2 don't so they just have to rely on the public to tell them who's being bad and why and just use a generic reason to BAN them. Large MMO's don't need to BAN to make their money (WOW is a good example) little F2P's like GW2 do though. Plus with the population decreasing all the time in GW2 they have to use EVERY method they can think of to get as much money as possible.

It's not to say every MMO out there that is F2P uses these BANNING methods but it's pretty clear to SEE that Anet and NCsoft are. I've never had much trust of ASIAN markets and businesses. They are like the Feringi of our World here. lol

[Gilles VI]

Red Sonya, on 07 January 2013 - 12:57 PM, said:

Mostly because Subscriber based games have BETTER clients than NON-subscriber games because of the added COSTS per month. Lil 8 year old asshole Joey can get mom or dad to buy him ONE copy of a game for $40-$60 but paying that much PLUS $15 a month plus tax is where mom and dad draw the line. Thus on NON-sub games you get the most riff raff the most assine the most ignoramousess and thus more BANS. Normal MMO's like Everquest hardly have any riff raff and plenty of GUIDES and GM's to handle bannings. Guild Wars 1 and 2 don't so they just have to rely on the public to tell them who's being bad and why and just use a generic reason to BAN them. Large MMO's don't need to BAN to make their money (WOW is a good example) little F2P's like GW2 do though. Plus with the population decreasing all the time in GW2 they have to use EVERY method they can think of to get as much money as possible.

It's not to say every MMO out there that is F2P uses these BANNING methods but it's pretty clear to SEE that Anet and NCsoft are. I've never had much trust of ASIAN markets and businesses. They are like the Feringi of our World here. lol

I don't even know where to start.

• Your logic about a sub filtering out the little kids is just complete bullshit sorry..
  
• Anet bans people because they used an exploit, I remember blizzard and other devs from MMO's banning people too if they used exploits..
  It's quite normal for devs to ban people if they used exploits really..
  
• Anet (and other games) mainly use programs to detect who's banning, because people report people for botting for anything.
  Going afk for 5 mins in fractals? boom reported for botting,...
  
• GW2 is B2P, not F2P, learn the difference, and I wouldn't directly call GW2 little..
  
• Anet is a pure american company..

[raspberry jam]

Gilles VI, on 07 January 2013 - 01:11 PM, said:

Anet is a pure american company..

Arenanet is owned by ㈜엔씨소프트. They might be "pure" American, but all the money ends up in glorious 대한민국.

That's NCSoft and South Korea for those who can't read the language of your masters.

Edited by raspberry jam, 07 January 2013 - 01:49 PM.

[Gilles VI]

raspberry jam, on 07 January 2013 - 01:49 PM, said:

Arenanet is owned by ㈜엔씨소프트. They might be "pure" American, but all the money ends up in glorious 대한민국.

That's NCSoft and South Korea for those who can't read the language of your masters.

Anet is the developper right?
So they made the game right?

Then my point still stands.

[raspberry jam]

Gilles VI, on 07 January 2013 - 01:56 PM, said:

Anet is the developper right?
So they made the game right?

Then my point still stands.

Your point was in reply to "I've never had much trust of ASIAN markets and businesses". As long as the business decisions are made in 서울 it doesn't matter who develops it. It only matters who the developers take orders from.

So no, your point is... pointless.

[Gilles VI]

raspberry jam, on 07 January 2013 - 02:01 PM, said:

Your point was in reply to "I've never had much trust of ASIAN markets and businesses". As long as the business decisions are made in 서울 it doesn't matter who develops it. It only matters who the developers take orders from.

So no, your point is... pointless.

And yet GW2 is developped by a western company, and is managed like many western MMO's, so..?

[Lucas Ashrock]

Gil,  i would drop the discussion if i was you

[Nikephoros]

Resolve, on 07 January 2013 - 04:00 AM, said:

Am I the only one who just does not care about the people that got banned for exploiting this?

If you exploit then you should be prepared to face the consequences for it. They don't even ban you for doing it a little bit, it's only when you abuse the shit out of it that you get a ban. Pretty funny that people still haven't learned this after the karma weapons drama.

The issue, guy, is that it hardly resembles the definition of "exploit."  It more likely resembles the definition of "capitalizing on an undervalued asset."  

Therefore, when  folks like myself don't even consider it an exploit (at worst a very grey area) then yes, we ARE upset when people get banned.  Ban people for cheating and stealing and buying gold all day long.  Don't ban people when the offense is so questionable and there has been proven to be 0 damage to the game econ.

[Lucas Ashrock]

Also, some serious security department taking care who is banned (regular players , real abusers, and mostly goldsellers) don't come back ingame.
This is ask a serious environment. Happyness because your buddy playing with you till yesterday maybe just attempting to complete his mesmer scepter is permanently banned is just disgusting.

Edited by Lucas Ashrock, 07 January 2013 - 03:04 PM.

[Jentari]

I have been watching this thread for a few days and I can not believe the people that think Anet went to far in banning these cheaters.  If this is how the community of the game thinks, that cheaters shouldn't be punished  then I fear for what this game is going to look like in the future.  I guess if the cheaters get their way then this game will be like Warhammer Online is today, cheat central.

[Lucas Ashrock]

Until we talk about junk, sharks planning to ruin our game, yes, less in game, better is the game. For a few minutes until they buy a new account restoring their old role. And if part of a cooperative, getting back his share of thousand golds by his guildies, keep ruining the game, more careful next time, the loss is minimal. As you see Jentari, the cancer is how the game is managed by this company and what allows, not what the people posting here thinks if Anet pushed too far or not. This, is what makes me wonder what kind of future this game and his community truly expect.

Edited by Lucas Ashrock, 07 January 2013 - 03:11 PM.

[Jentari]

Lucas, as long as Anet sticks to their guns and bans people for exploiting/cheating then things will be fine, but if they end up caving to the players pressure then this game is in big trouble.  I applaud Anet for the bans and I hope they continue to ban people for cheating/hacking.

[Lucas Ashrock]

No doubt who deeply , in a harmful way, abused of the bug deserved the ban, and better get rid of them. As i said, until they are back.
Yes, without duped ectos maybe. Still, we will have this cancer ingame. They are all back 5 minutes later after the ban.
Noone is hoping Anet softs his hands banning  heavy abusers.

Edited by Lucas Ashrock, 07 January 2013 - 03:19 PM.

[raspberry jam]

Lucas Ashrock, on 07 January 2013 - 03:18 PM, said:

Noone is hoping Anet softs his hands banning  heavy abusers.

Weeeeeeeeeeeell...

Actually I think that in the case of some exploits, the player is to blame. In other cases, ANet is to blame.
Is the case that you can hack the TP by sending a special binary command using a third party tool that give you direct access to the socket stream? Sure, ban for that. Or is the case that if you send 300 buy orders per second to the TP, you will get duplicates of the items you buy? Sure, ban for that too.
In this case however, if the data structures used (for creating recipes and defining salvage drop rates) are given even a fragment of a thought, it's so easy to get things right that the fault is squarely ANet's. Banning people for this is no different from the SW:ToR bans of low level people who went to high level areas in order to open chests there.

[MisterB]

raspberry jam, on 07 January 2013 - 04:46 PM, said:

Banning people for this is no different from the SW:ToR bans of low level people who went to high level areas in order to open chests there.

Did that really happen? I'm glad I don't play that game.

I'm not happy with ANet's habit of punishing people with account termination for the mistakes ANet created instead of suspension and deletion of rewards. They started it back with Augury Rock, when they banned players who took really low levels in to get to 20 in one mission. I don't necessarily disagree that rules were violated or that it wasn't clear, but their response to violations in some cases bothers me. I still think their response to Augury Rock was completely ridiculous.

[SirGamesalot]

The people who did this knew they were going to get banned, so I guess they had it coming.

Edited by SirGamesalot, 07 January 2013 - 06:04 PM.

[Millimidget]

raspberry jam, on 07 January 2013 - 04:46 PM, said:

Actually I think that in the case of some exploits, the player is to blame. In other cases, ANet is to blame.
Is the case that you can hack the TP by sending a special binary command using a third party tool that give you direct access to the socket stream? Sure, ban for that. Or is the case that if you send 300 buy orders per second to the TP, you will get duplicates of the items you buy? Sure, ban for that too.
In this case however, if the data structures used (for creating recipes and defining salvage drop rates) are given even a fragment of a thought, it's so easy to get things right that the fault is squarely ANet's. Banning people for this is no different from the SW:ToR bans of low level people who went to high level areas in order to open chests there.

This.

Banning people for the developer's own mistake is ridiculous. The whole thing reeks of entrapment.

I'm personally more bothered by Anet's statements, however. It's never good when developers appear as zealous as fanboys, which is what I saw on display here.

Meanwhile, they have an obvious hard-line approach to tanking their own in-game economy. If it seems short sighted, that's because it is.

Edited by Millimidget, 07 January 2013 - 07:17 PM.

[WrathfulForce]

It seems that there are few main issues that people have with these bans:

1) one reason why people dislike these bans is the fact that the bug was left in the game for a rather long period of time instead of being removed/fixed right away.

2) even some players that made very little profit were banned

3) the bans were permanent bans

I personally really don't see any major issues with this case. The bug people exploited was rather obvious due to its nature (from what I've heard you got the main ingredients back almost every time, so you could almost create stuff out of thin air) and I doubt many people that were banned for this really thought this was how it was supposed to work.

Yes the bug should have been fixed as soon as it was discovered but that doesn't mean you should try to abuse the bug regardless.

As we have no real information of how the bans were selected precisely (salvage amount, gold profits etc.) there's little we can complain about "but he just made 5g profit" kind of stuff. Yeah it may seem harsh if a player merely makes a little profit but it is still exploiting.

As harsh as it may seem the permanent bans are pretty much the only way this could have gone. If they simply had banned the players for a week they wouldn't have learned anything. If they had been banned for a month and their progress had been re-rolled back to where it was before the exploit they would most likely just try again later. One must wonder, why didn't these players simply report the bug and move on? If something seems to be too good to be true, it most likely is.

So yeah, it is brutal to be banned for something that may seem very harmless but some I think I read somewhere that some player would have made even thousands of gold with this exploit hadn't he been banned. With that kind of gold amount you could cripple market quite a bit if you wanted to. But anyway, exploits are against the rules, report them, don't abuse them :/

Edited by WrathfulForce, 07 January 2013 - 11:57 PM.

[Millimidget]

WrathfulForce, on 07 January 2013 - 07:33 PM, said:

With that kind of gold amount you could cripple market quite a bit if you wanted to.

I think what infuriates me the most, even beyond the pettiness Anet displayed, is that this is considered banable, while precursor manipulation is considered legitimate.

The conclusion I keep returning to is that Anet is also manipulating precusror prices, which means they're manipulating them up, which means they're really trying to push hard these gems sales, even though for the gold price you'd be insane not to choose a 3rd party site over Anet's gems.

I'd say far more harm is done to the community and to the game with insane precursor prices and Anet endorsed precursor manipulation, than whatever damage could have resulted from this increase in glob supply.

Which reminds me, I still haven't seen anyone make a case for how this was going to negatively impact the economy, or at least the economy with regards to how 99% of players interact with it. Even if the one guy had made thousands of gold in profit, what harm could he have done which isn't already being perpetrated? Further manipulated the price of precursors up? But that's exactly Anet's goal, so what the hell are they doing banning him.

Petty, with an air of doing something for the sake of being able to say you did something, no matter how insignificant the results may be, or how detrimental the unintended consequences; not unlike the President and Congress.

[Lucas Ashrock]

I would be surprised, but no, they are not managed by Anet. Precursors, and the market, is in the hand of a little number of players who made their way (abusing of the system at beginning) and growing more and more manipulating the market slowly till be so uberrich, today. And log, destroy something, move prices in a mad way, logoff. For the sake of the lolz. Hehe. I have a friend from this kind of elite group, he perfectly explained me how fun and cool is this game A hint, you can recognize some of them, when you attempt on the main forum to push a thread about this topic , and asking anet to put an end on their business, they are the one going angry or flaming making the thread locked, or laughing about you as a crybaby. Yup, it's them, protecting their interests. Minor rich players on the high tier too clearly wants to keep the game on this way, don't forget. Reason because it's not so easy as i explained to catch em

raspberry jam, on 07 January 2013 - 04:46 PM, said:

Weeeeeeeeeeeell...

Actually I think that in the case of some exploits, the player is to blame. In other cases, ANet is to blame.
Is the case that you can hack the TP by sending a special binary command using a third party tool that give you direct access to the socket stream? Sure, ban for that. Or is the case that if you send 300 buy orders per second to the TP, you will get duplicates of the items you buy? Sure, ban for that too.
In this case however, if the data structures used (for creating recipes and defining salvage drop rates) are given even a fragment of a thought, it's so easy to get things right that the fault is squarely ANet's. Banning people for this is no different from the SW:ToR bans of low level people who went to high level areas in order to open chests there.

No doubt, i was talking in general about Anet and ban of abusers with our mod answering. As i said on an other post, i think it's Anet fault releasing bugged junk, and a total lack of QA work done. Perfect proof of patches absolutely never tested at all. When dev said it's done, it's online. Regardless if it will will destroy customer's bank making it empty, or a bug allowing dupes of ectos. Ban. Em. All. Instead of Fire. Those. Noob. Devs. and. those. pathetic. QA employee.
Also, it's fun how the community forgot the dev post telling us they truly, deeply enjoy leaving exploits and bugs around, waiting if the community find them, or even finding new form of exploit not tought before. We are guinea pigs, shortly. When trap ticks on our leg, we are banned too. Great game huh

Edited by Lucas Ashrock, 07 January 2013 - 08:30 PM.

[DuskWolf]

Spoiler

WrathfulForce, on 07 January 2013 - 07:33 PM, said:

I doubt many people that were banned for this really didn't think this was how it was intended to work.

No, but they didn't know that they weren't supposed to use it, either. It was there as an aspect of the game, and why should they have to be afraid of engaging in the game? After the bans for simply buying an item too cheaply in the past, I'm wondering if ArenaNet will eventually come up with some 'walking forward' ban. It's getting ridiculous.

the solution is, has always been, and continues to be a public test shard. Ultima Online had one way, way, way, way back when, and there's just no excuse for ArenaNet not having one with Guild Wars 2. They could land things on the PTS, have a select group of the userbase test it, and once it's been thoroughly tested they could then land it on live.

Instead, they just land incredibly buggy, broken content to live. When was this ever an acceptable practise? That's kind of like saying that Diablo III's error 37 was acceptable. Really, consumers are their own worst bloody enemy. Make an enemy out of your fellow player to toady up to the business. But a business is just a faceless thing, it doesn't want to be your friend or your daddy figure, it doesn't want to pet you on the head and tell you that you're a good toady. It's just there to sell you products. On the other hand, these are real people who're being banned for what was the fault of a faulty, broken product.

If they had a public test shard, then there would be no exploits making it to live. No exploits making it to live means no bans. For things like what we're talking about here, the only person to blame is ArenaNet. But for some damned reason we have some people who want a business to be their daddy figure, so we're dealing with illogical, specious arguments in support of them. Like the one I'm quoting.

Yup, they were clearly asking for that ban by just playing the game!

There are other, really bad thought patterns that follow along those lines that lead people to think that crimes are okay. That thought patterns is just broken. They were playing the game they paid for. They paid for it. ArenaNet should have tested the content before landing it, and if they didn't land it, then they had no right to ban people for their own laziness and cheapness.

WrathfulForce, on 07 January 2013 - 07:33 PM, said:

Yes the bug should have been fixed as soon as it was discovered [...]

No! The bug never should have been on live in the first place to be exploited!

WrathfulForce, on 07 January 2013 - 07:33 PM, said:

[...] but that doesn't mean you should try to abuse the bug regardless.

Because playing a game as intended by what is possible within the game as a standard element of that game is willingly and openly abusing a bug. No, I'm sorry. That's silly. You're silly. And you should feel bad for your specious argument.

Think about what you're saying, here.

WrathfulForce, on 07 January 2013 - 07:33 PM, said:

[...] but it is still exploiting.

The specious argument keeps coming back! Playing the game as it was intended (according to the content that was landed on live) is somehow exploiting! What next? Killing mobs is exploiting? Walking forward is exploiting? Getting lucky is exploiting? Where do we draw the crazy line, here?

How about no? How about exploiting is exploiting, for which you're actually talking about using third party programs to interact with the game, as was mentioned by raspberry jam. That's exploiting. Playing the game according to the parameters of the game is not exploiting. If the game is bugged, then that falls on ArenaNet's shoulders, and it means that they should have had a ... deep breath ... public test shard to land this new content on, first.

WrathfulForce, on 07 January 2013 - 07:33 PM, said:

If they simply had banned the players for a week they wouldn't have learned anything.

Because it wasn't their fault to begin with? You're talking about your fellow players as though they're dirty, criminal masterminds. And when you get banned for something, unexpectedly, do we talk about you as though you're a dirty, criminal mastermind?

WrathfulForce, on 07 January 2013 - 07:33 PM, said:

If they had been banned for a month and their progress had been re-rolled back to where it was before the exploit they would most likely just try again later.

Because all people, everywhere, are dirty, filthy, lying, cheating scumbags. And the only saints can be found at ArenaNet. Good grief. ... Good grief.

WrathfulForce, on 07 January 2013 - 07:33 PM, said:

One must wonder, why didn't these players simply report the bug and move on?

Because they didn't recognise it as a bug? You're assuming that every player is hardcore, follows the forums, and understands the mechanics of the game in and out. Now, those people do exist, and if ArenaNet had a public test shard then those people would have reported it as a bug, and then it would never have ended up in the game in the first place.

This is ArenaNet's fault. No one else's.

WrathfulForce, on 07 January 2013 - 07:33 PM, said:

If something seems to be too good to be true, it most likely is.

Everything in a damned fantasy game is too good to be true, that's the point of fantasy. How do you tell players where to draw the line?

Oh, you're having too much fun. You're probably exploiting a bug!

Gah!!!

WrathfulForce, on 07 January 2013 - 07:33 PM, said:

So yeah, it is brutal to be banned for something that may seem very harmless [...]

It is, especially because it's a ban that's being doled out because a business is too lazy and too cheap to have a public test shard.

Gah.

That was genuinely infuriating.

How can anyone blame anyone other than ArenaNet for not having... really now, come on... a public test shard. This whole debacle could have been avoided! There's no defence for ArenaNet other than nonsensical, specious ones like the one I just waded through.

Seriously... public test shard. Anyone from ArenaNet reading this? Public. Test. Shard.

That is all.

Edited by Feathermoore, 08 January 2013 - 03:16 PM.
Do not quote wars.

[Lafiele]

There were under 200 bans.

Every single person who got banned knew it was an exploit.

Saying they should have just taken the items away and not banning is like saying if we capture a thief, we should take the money they stole away and let the thief back onto the street. (i.e. exploiters will keep exploiting and more people will keep exploiting if they know exploiting will have NO negative consequences. Why not do something with zero risk at all?)

Playing the trading post is not an exploit. Big money is made off masses of dumb people. monopolizing wouldn't work if the demand didn't match the supply. For example, a smart person would understand what an items real worth is and would only buy below a certain price. A desperate or a dumb person would buy an item regardless of the price. Sadly, the majority of the world in game and in the real world are full of dumb people.

Yes, it was Anets mistake for letting in this exploit, but no game is without bugs or exploits. How they handled this was perfect however. As I have mentioned above, if they didn't show the exploiters the consequences, people would just keep exploiting, thus promoting an environment which strongly promotes exploiting. So with any new patch, the game would be concentrated on finding the exploits before everyone else and getting ahead. It's like a society without law and police force, it would be in chaos. People would rob and kill as they please because they know there is no one who can stop them. Why work hard when you can steal someone elses hard work? Humans are horrible creatures, we'll kill our own for the sake of our own selfishness and greed. Therefore, the banhammer was a necessary and good thing. When I see people defending this action by Anet, I wonder if they were the ones banned or they exploited but got away and want to be able to continue exploiting in the future.

Edited by Lafiele, 08 January 2013 - 12:44 AM.

[phabby]

I have been following this on the gw2 forums and from what I have seen above everything the way in which this was handled is what  most ppl are getting upset about and the very lack of comment from Anet.

Point 1- They were asked  early on  in the  start of  the crafting on redditt and  gave NO REPLY
              this would indicate to anyone doing it that well it must be ok cause they haven't said no don;t do it

Point 2- They were asked in game( there is a screen shot on main forum)  And again refused to comment and admitted to doing it themselves. So were they banned?

Point 3- They implemented a recipe that they tested? cause they put it in not the players creating one out of thin air.So whom every is responsible for testing that side of things  needs to be held accountable .

Point 4- Not once has Anet addressed the issue in regards to what about  the existing game content and Can We get banned for playing the game normally now, since NO ONE knows what Normal is and what is an exploit in game or what has been tested and has passed as normal.


I think everyone would like to see anet stand up and answer questions and not give statements like they have been that don't address any concern of the player base especial over what is a coding error .


cheers

[Lucas Ashrock]

phabby, on 08 January 2013 - 02:50 AM, said:

Point 2- They were asked in game( there is a screen shot on main forum)  And again refused to comment and admitted to doing it themselves. So were they banned?

Can you link me the main forum where i can see this picture?

No, don't expect any more official answer. At best, you can have an answer about refund, maybe, confirming it has been approved. Anet attitude to ignore the community leaving his guinea pigs talks alone, you know?

[Trei]

Lafiele, on 08 January 2013 - 12:23 AM, said:

Spoiler

There were under 200 bans.

Every single person who got banned knew it was an exploit.

Saying they should have just taken the items away and not banning is like saying if we capture a thief, we should take the money they stole away and let the thief back onto the street. (i.e. exploiters will keep exploiting and more people will keep exploiting if they know exploiting will have NO negative consequences. Why not do something with zero risk at all?)

Playing the trading post is not an exploit. Big money is made off masses of dumb people. monopolizing wouldn't work if the demand didn't match the supply. For example, a smart person would understand what an items real worth is and would only buy below a certain price. A desperate or a dumb person would buy an item regardless of the price. Sadly, the majority of the world in game and in the real world are full of dumb people.

Yes, it was Anets mistake for letting in this exploit, but no game is without bugs or exploits. How they handled this was perfect however. As I have mentioned above, if they didn't show the exploiters the consequences, people would just keep exploiting, thus promoting an environment which strongly promotes exploiting. So with any new patch, the game would be concentrated on finding the exploits before everyone else and getting ahead. It's like a society without law and police force, it would be in chaos. People would rob and kill as they please because they know there is no one who can stop them. Why work hard when you can steal someone elses hard work? Humans are horrible creatures, we'll kill our own for the sake of our own selfishness and greed. Therefore, the banhammer was a necessary and good thing. When I see people defending this action by Anet, I wonder if they were the ones banned or they exploited but got away and want to be able to continue exploiting in the future.

I'll lean towards the offenders side for a change in stance and play the devils advocate a bit.

Should this thief be given a life sentence for stealing some jewelry?

I think there is something to be said with regards to the severity of punishment dealt versus that of the offense.

Nevertheless, we would never know what exactly the complainants actually did to deserve permaban; there's always three sides to every story.

I'm inclined to believe anet has good reasons for taking this course of action and I don't see the need for them to justify it to anyone other than those directly involved.

Edited by Trei, 08 January 2013 - 05:17 AM.

[phabby]

http://i.imgur.com/0SICA.jpg

I  sent you a pm Lucus, hope the linky thingy works not good at that stuff. Anyway it was posted on GW2 forums in a now closed thread called-the tale of two Jewles and the link is on  page 2 . I think everyone will find this very interesting  and add more debate to it all

[Lucas Ashrock]

Well, if my memory works good, he's a QA. So he was testing the behaviour posted using the method and if was as explained.
Then filled a form, reporting it to Anet. Thanks to him confirming it was a working exploit, and people whispering confirming others was doing it and widespread, lead to what we saw, the mass ban. Clearly no, he's not banned doing QA test hehe. Except what he was doing on a serious game is done before the junk goes online, not on live server while customers play. Such a junk company huh?
Considering just to add he uses a normal client and a normal account, just guildy of Arenanet guild, doing an exploit on a live server abusing of live content as much funny can appear, is bannable. But like RL teach us, is not how things works. The reality on this game is he goes free with loads of ectos, customers are permabanned.Not a surprise the thread containing the pic was deleted. After all is a proof of what i wrote now and can be turned against Anet quickly if the discussion is allowed and public, digging the company and the game. Nah, the rug works better, a delete-thread-broom and voila', we have again our beautiful game, now smile and type on the main forum "ty Anet best game evah" or you're banned

Edited by Lucas Ashrock, 08 January 2013 - 07:53 AM.

[raspberry jam]

MisterB, on 07 January 2013 - 06:00 PM, said:

Did that really happen? I'm glad I don't play that game.

I'm not happy with ANet's habit of punishing people with account termination for the mistakes ANet created instead of suspension and deletion of rewards. They started it back with Augury Rock, when they banned players who took really low levels in to get to 20 in one mission. I don't necessarily disagree that rules were violated or that it wasn't clear, but their response to violations in some cases bothers me. I still think their response to Augury Rock was completely ridiculous.

But there were no rules. I never heard of a ban for doing Augury Rock at low level, but I don't doubt your word.

I remember reading an interview from long ago (2006 or so) when some dev said that Droks runs were something that really took the devs by surprise (which I partially doubt since Lornar's Pass seemingly only exists for that purpose), but that they were happy to see it, and viewed it as a piece of great player ingenuity instead of as an exploit, even though it partially was. How times have changed, huh? I can only begin to imagine the waves of bans that would happen if the equivalent of Droks runs would happen in GW2.