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Originally Posted by Gaile Gray
Hi,
Ironically I was just posting about this subject in another forum. I'll share that below--reduce, reuse, recycle!  -- but I wanted to address some of your specific issues. We have various ways in which bots are identified. One is observation, it's true. A few weekends ago I played the role of "observer," just to see how easy it was to identify bots, and let me tell you, when you watch the same characters spin inside a chest for two hours, you can be pretty sure that's not backed by a human player.  When you see the same odd pathing, or the "weird pathing parades" mentioned above, or when you see precise, predictable timing of appearance and actions over hours, you can make some level of assumption about "Is that real or is that a bot?"
We have a lot more people working on bots, on three continents. (Numbers mentioned in the discussion above are not even close.) Further, we can pull data on a suspected bot within a minute or two. We could run through a dozen names, and carefully review the data and make the daily/weekly/monthly numbers that we've publicized with ease. So don't worry, no one is getting an insta-ban for crossing a low threshold; they're getting blocked after several multiple reviews. (And HawkofStorms is right -- PMing is not a real good measure of bot-ness.)
Now, let me share a bit about bans: The number of people who are banned in error is miniscule. It may appear to be a "major problem" because those who are banned are vocal about it, sometimes understandably because the ban was in error, sometimes manipulatively, because they hope if they make a big enough fuss, they'll get unbanned. (Like the forum member a month or two ago who claimed his "store-purchased" account was closed unjustly, but who in fact was using a re-purchased PlayNC account that got closed in a charge-back scheme.) When you see protests, remember that what you often don't see after the "I was banned" thread is "I was unbanned" or "Ok, yes, I was botting and I (deservedly) lost my appeal," or "I said I was banned for botting, but in fact I was banned for scamming people or gold sales or something else that's disallowed, and I was trying to weasel out of it by joining the 'unjust ban' crowd."
The Support Team really does use a careful and conservative set of parameters for banning. They also take care to review all the data in cases where the ban may have been placed in error. That's not to say errors don't happen, but that's also not to say that an appeal is a "Get out of jail free card." Bans for clear use of bots should and will remain in place. However, the team is not inclined to ban for banning's sake, and they will give careful attention to issues with account actions and will discuss potential changes to the parameters if it appears that issues have arisen with how bots are identified or confirmed.
There may be some small risk in my saying all this, which is that it may encourage botters to appeal, or to think that if they only protest loudly enough "I didn't do it!" we'll say "Oh, ok, fine, you're cleared." We cannot do that! By the end of this month, the Support Teams will have banned about 8,000 bots. That is a good thing for the players and a good thing for the game economy and it's something that we will continue to do, always using care to ban only those who deserve it, and always showing consideration in setting the bar to avoid nabbing those who do not. |
-why is it so hard THESE DAYS to get your case studied and get a real reply if you ask about a banned account or any other game issue? i understand that some "casuaities" happen in mass bans but i noticed a significant change in the support department in this regard.
i've had first hand experience with the support staff and it just degrated in time. about a year ago, if you emailed about your problem and asked them to verify, you would get an actual reply. i personally know of 2 accounts that were banned for no reason because anet made a mistake. the person emailed them, provided the info asked and them to rechek their data and then they reopened the account and said sorry. this is OK, was good support.
BUT if you email them TODAY about the same issue, things have changed. first of all they strait up send u an auto-reply stating that they don't adress permanent ban complaints. if u keep e-mailing them, they'll ask for you cd-key. they did NOT used to do this. if you can't give the key for whatever reason, u'll simply get ignored. this measure only prevents players from getting the support they deserve.
now i think that this cd-key issue is very important. just ask your friend list and see why STILL has the cd-key of a game that's been out for 2+years and that only required the code to create account. you'll be surprised that most of the ppl don't have this info anymore. if something was to happen to them, they will get ignored. also about the claimed "careful study of bot activity", why doesn't anet EVER provide any proof of your wrong activity since they claim you breached the code? a simple piece of evidence will put all complaint at rest if they are not legit.
on another note, real botters generaly won't bother going through all the trouble of emailing anet about being banned coz they know anet has proof. and generally speaking wasting 15 mins on making a support tiket about something u know u did wrong, is just not productive.
-another issue i find weird is the lack of support of playNC. if you never visited the official gw store, they sent u to this link to PlayNc to create an account. WHAT THEY DON'T TELL YOU, is that once u link your account to the store, (which is the only way to view its content) you will be unable to ever change your guild wars log-in name. and IF you want to change you gw password, you have to do it through your PlayNC account. You can never change again your account info and password by editing IN gw.
now if you happen to put some bogus name/adress/brithdate in PlayNC and you forget it, u're done for it. you can't ever change your gw password. this actually happened to my friend. he simply wanted to look at the store and had no idea that his gw account will automatically link with PlayNc.
he emailed the staff, told them the story and they asked him his cd-key, picture of the game card AND fax of his gw game reciept. he didn't have these things. to this day he can't change his gw password.
i just don't understand why you guys don't put a warning about this linking of gw account to PlayNc. arnt you aware that this gw and store linking led to many account thefts?
-in the end, the support staff got less responsive during the past year. they keep coming up with all of ways of avoiding helping the customer by implementing unrelistic requirements to even get them to look at your demand.
come on, pictures and faxes of game card and reciept?
next step is asking for our own picture with the game in hand.........
The game has many more players than it once did. The number of professional gold sellers has risen since the early days, as these people try to capitalize on the popularity of our games to make a (illegal) buck. So there are more bots in the game, we all see that. Beyond that, I think that the number of appeals from actual bot users may be rising, as people work to try to find "the right buttons to push" to get that their ban lifted, so they can go back to gold selling. So: More players; more bots; more unjustified appeals. 
