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Guild Wars : 3,700 Botters Cut Down by God of Death; ArenaNet Responds
Posted May 28, 2010 by Michael Bitton
Guild Wars players recently noticed that Dhuum, the god of death, was cropping up throughout the game world cutting players (more specifically, botters) down with his scythe. As it would turn out, Dhuum was delivering bans (3,700 of them!) by order of the powers that be at ArenaNet to many Guild Wars players (and even disbanding 12 guilds) who have been caught botting and manipulating PvP matches.
Guild Wars Design Director James Phinney explained the situation in a recent update to the official ArenaNet blog:
Today we terminated more than 3,700 accounts for botting and match manipulation. In cases where guilds were found to be involved in these activities, the guilds were also disbanded. More than a dozen such guilds were disbanded and many others are under continued investigation. Today’s actions are significant not simply because of their immediate impact but also because they represent a new era in enforcement for us.
As many of you know, Guild Wars has seen a significant increase in the number and sophistication of bots in recent months. Particularly visible were new types of bots used in PvP. As with any hacks or exploits, our primary concern is the potential negative impact on the experience of other players. To a varying degree, cheaters hurt other players by inflating the economy, devaluing hard-earned accomplishments, or annoying everyone with RMT chat spam to sell gold gained through botting, but cheating in PvP is especially odious because it so directly affects the play experience of others.
ArenaNet will be seriously ramping up their anti-cheating methods going forward, and James offers some parting words to those of you out there who may consider cheating, or even doing something that may be dubious with regards to the User Agreement:
If you have any doubts about whether or not something is allowed by the User Agreement, don’t do it. Don’t take that risk. Account termination means losing not only everything you’ve built up in Guild Wars, but losing the ability to have those accomplishments recognized in Guild Wars 2. Let me give you a real example from today. Here’s an actual account we just terminated: 2,469 hours, 38 titles, 913 plat, 268 ecto, Eternal Legendary Vanquisher monument, Mini Gwen, Chaos Gloves, Mallyx’s Strife, The Holy Avenger, etc., etc. It’s all gone now. Forever. You will not want that to happen to your account.
Read the full blog entry here.
[Thanks Piasek for the tip!]
That may be over half the community right there.
lol... about time they stepped up their security.
Hahahahaha, hell yeah!
Planning on buying the trilogy + expansion pack as soon as I'm done with my last exams. :D
Loving ArenaNet more and more!
Lol, that account had some serious gear and plat. ArenaNet know that if anything will hurt GW2 it will be this,it's a great sign.
I think coming up with a Grim Reaper to cut them down as they were banned is customer service with a healthy bit of style and panache!
Not a bad way to get the word out about the effort :D
Why would this hurt GW2? It was botters and gold sellers,they deserve that and to be tortured. Hate them,let them be killed.
I think he meant if anything would kill GW2 it would be the idea that spammers and botters could take over and annoy everyone. I am curious though, when companies do this, what are the chances of false positives in the mix?
A purely political play. ArenaNet is known for being lax about botters and it's creating some mixed feelings about GW2, so, in a grand display, they perform a mass ban. The kicker is how they talk about it being a 'New Era'. Sure, they want everyone to think that this was a sign of their new, more hardcore, stance on botting and exploiting but once GW2 is out they'll slip right back into their old routine.
...at least the bots were banned with style :D
LOL ArenaNet is awesome. Doing it with style. :)
xaldrax, this is not the first and only time that ANET has brandish the banning scythe. there were many times in the past 5 years that theyve banned people. but this is indeed the 1st time that Dhuum got out of the Underworld to take those botters with him. a spectacular display indeed!
Sure, power players who use bots and got the scythe will hate ANET for destroying what they "work hard for", but i think they got what they deserve for ruining my game when they leech in Jade Quarry, Fort Aspen and Alliance Battle.
It is pretty impressive that they are doing things like this still with GW1 even though no more expansions are planned and they have no monthly fee for the game.
That's a great bonus about running a B2P model, they don't have to worry about losing subscriptions, their biggest worry is making sure they get their facts right, which is still what sub based games have to do but the financial problem of losing subs I would suspect holds them back more.
Lol too funny good to see. But at the same time that is like a few hours earlier we could get GW2 released :]
Can't say I've noticed any bots lately whatsoever, but the less the merrier!
Totally classic way to get banned !
Heck, it would almost be worth getting banned to see that.
Couldn't read the text, wonder if a system message goes out declareing that so-and-so has been dragged to hell.
LOL
ArenaNet your Integrity has increased +5!
ArenaNet your Style has gained a new level!
Proceed to GW2 to collect your rewards!
If this kind of thing has been going on since launch I am very happy to see it. If this is a stunt because of GW2 drawing more attention to GW...
Wow that is what I am talking about. Way to show how seriously you take cheating, I am very impressed. Having an in-game reaper is also a great way to show players how seriouis Arena Net is about cheating, and then the director making that satement - fantastic.
I agree it is an awsome way to get banned but the game is made by NCSoft who have a terrible reputation in the MMORP community for truely horrible customer service. NCSoft games are KNOWN to have mass amounts of botters, Ebayers, real money traders. NCSoft don't care about customer service they only care about the $.
Published by NCSoft, not made by, or moderated by them. That's all ArenaNet
Good thing it's not NCSoft that deals with Guild Wars then, it's ArenaNet.
Thats classic! The God of death appears and nukes the botter, AN does have a sense of humor. ^^
Thats pretty funny. I kind of feel like playing GW now to get all those goals accomplished. That game can get hard though. Especially since theres never enough people online when i play
Have to agree with previous posters. NCSoft has a very bad reputation when it comes to gold sellers and botters. They do a horrible job in general, controlling this problem.
Hope this is a new era for them when they begin to actively address these problem areas in their games. I know it was a hotly debated topic when it comes to Aion. While they have controlled it somewhat in Aion, it is still prevalent.
We will just have to wait and see if they continue to get better in this area because it will definitely be a problem in GW2 if they don't.
You couldn't be more misinformed about the size of the GW community.
Now this is the kind of permadeath that I like.
Yes, in this case I totally agree. It also shows that AN has quite the sense of humor. Not to mention there is a public demonstration aspect to this. Its one thing to say you are banning lots of bots. Its quite another for the Avatar of Death to appear and strike them down publically. ^^
Guildwar been out how long? And it took them this long to ban hammer? I dont know if i want to buy Guild war 2 now..
Because this is the first time ANet has ever banned anyone in Guild Wars right?
NC use to have GMs in AIon that you could see in game running around and when they would find a botter or gold spammer they'd hit them with a massive nuke that perma banned them and all associated accounts. there's videos of them on youetube i'm just to lazy to look it up again >.<
I always loved the idea of how they dealt with perma banned accounts on that anime .hack//sign. if you haven't seen it the anime is about an MMO world and on there when people got perma banned their characters was taken out and they had public executions so the whole server could see..lol THATS what i want, not some article stating "hey we banned some people" i'd love for them to do it in front of us so we could see the names of the known botters going down the drain.
Must be if they are making a big deal about it...LOL
Or maybe because they're banning 3,700 simultaneously.... you never know right?
Or maybe because it meant to be a very visual warning to it's playerbase to deter other players from doing the same rather than continuing to ban in silence.
I'm mean honestly think these things through.
Wow do any of you actually play Guild Wars... If you do then you have been asleep since forever.... This is not the first time the ban hammer has come down en-masse and publically. This has happened multiple times in this manner. Just not with Dhuum.
They do a mass wipe at least every year as I recall. Its not even the biggest wipe they have done. I know the one in 2006 was at least 4k accounts. There was another that I remember in 2008 and fairly certain about 2009 too. Its just significant due to the public execution style banning. Its a publicity stunt of course because any Guild Wars player knows that Dhuum is a creation of the Guild Wars Beyond project. They are cleaning house and making way for GW2. It also sends a clear message to any player in GW or GW2 that they now have an automated system to detect you.
Now they ban you with style!!! My guess is they are able to link one bot account to its real owners account and ban all accounts involved. Serves them right anyways. I stopped AB, JQ and FA for these reasons...
Gold spamming is a nightmare for a new launch MMO because the demand is high. All Arenanet can do is make it as difficult as possible and put systems in place to make it unprofitable. This looks to be the case coming into GW2. Arenanet has put some serious thought into the dynamic scaling. Everyone gets the same drops whether solo or in a group because the encounter dynamically scales. No more exploiting mobs for drops in solo. I believe that this is what the karma system is about. Karma is non-transferrable but will likely allow access to the better items etc.
No system will be perfect because while there is money to be made the gold farming will continue. But if gold selling is essentially minimised it will allow the economy to find its own true value rather than the inflation that is cause in nearly all MMO's by gold farming and exploiting.
Now thats what I call good policing of an mmo, a shame other companies dont do the same.
Good Lord there is an alarming number of people who think botters deserve to be murdered. That's well..... odd.
And you wouldn't half feel the pressure if that grim reaper was walking towards a group of you. This is done how it should be :)
The Ban for all eternity will suffice.
Actually, eternal damnation sounds better.
But we will have to settle for perma bans.
Arena.Net, I need you to listen to me. I need a serious conversation.
We've flirted in the past. You've made your advances at me, and I've let a couple through. I've been hurt before, but I really like you.
Please be gentle. There might be other fish in the MMORPG sea, but I don't think I can swim forever in these waters. I want you to know that I'm crushing on you, and I'm crushing really hard. Please don't use me and dump me years later. I don't think I could deal with that.
You've got everything I'm looking for: a great history, great PR, great concern for the product and the customers. But they say that people change. Please don't change. And if you do, please continue to change in the way you've shown for the past 4 months.
I want this relationship to last. You're a great company, and I'm a big fan. Feel free to formally ask me out now... shall I mark my calender for GW2?
Nice work.
Still didn't beat eve's 9000 in righteous fury, though much more stylish way to do it.
I wonder if we could get into a competition to see which company could ban the most at once.
I think it was pretty cool they way they took care of the botters. Pvp botters were the worst in GW for me. Poetic justice. I wish I was there to see it.
Yay, maybe then I can go back to playing Guild Wars. I had quit years ago due to the botting and gold sellers and complaints to CSR was ignored that I just up and quit.
Glad to see the community is getting cleaned up. Wished I would have seen some of the bans. Kudos goes out to Anet for a creative way to ban botters/hackers/ect.