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ArenaNet Suspends Digital Sales of Guild Wars 2
kungfugleek writes "Throughout the launch of subscription-free MMO Guild Wars 2, ArenaNet has stated that the player-experience is their top priority and, if necessary, they would suspend digital sales to protect their servers from crushing loads. While the launch has been considerably more stable than most big-budget MMO's in recent months, some players, especially those in Europe, have experienced trouble logging in and getting booted from servers. So yesterday, ArenaNet held true to their word, and temporarily suspended digital sales from their website. Personally, I think this is an incredible show of customer-centered focus. To turn down purchases, especially first-party purchases, where the seller gets a higher percentage of the sale, during a major title's first week of sales, would be inconceivable by other companies. Is this a bad move for ArenaNet? Will there be enough of a long-term payout to make up for the lost sales? And does this put pressure on other major studios to follow suit in the face of overwhelming customer response?"
New submitter charlieman writes with related news: "Yesterday ArenaNet banned players for exploiting an error in their new game Guild Wars 2. The so called exploit was in fact an error on ArenaNet's side, leaving weapons at a low price from some vendors. Players saw this and started making profits buying and selling the items.
Should players be penalized for errors committed by the game developers? Taking in account that the game is fairly new, the economy hasn't stabilized yet and most don't know the value of things. Today they've given these players a 'second chance', but shouldn't they be apologizing instead?"
To be honest, I do not think it is necessary. Most folks know what is right from wrong in real life. The fact that it is a game means very little.
If, for instance a electronic trading firm decided to offer shares at far below market price and I decided to buy, they only need to put in a call to their local stock exchange to cancel it. How is this any different? ArenaNet accidentally offered something for sale for too little money, and the players, being rational consumers bought at a low price and sold at a higher price. This is capitalism.
As a general statement, of course not. But these players *should* be penalized for knowingly exploiting those errors for profit - that goes against the spirit of the game, and lowers the general quality of play, things that should be greatly frowned upon when done intentionally.
LegendMUD
And I suppose being arrested for receiving stolen goods after taking advantage of a shady boot sale is also terribly unfair?
There's this little voice in your head that says "this is too good to be legal," and you're supposed to listen to it.
If you're a gamer and you found a way to make the game do something it clearly shouldn't let you do (i.e., teleport across the battlefield, buy high-end gear at unreasonably low prices, disconnect other players, etc.), you're exploiting. Period. And if you keep doing it, you're knowingly and intentionally exploiting. And a lifetime ban is simply the kindest thing you deserve.
Contrary to popular opinion, "whatever you can get away with" is not a valid ethical choice, and if you get busted, whining about it just looks douchbaggish and immature.
Welcome to the Panopticon. Used to be a prison, now it's your home.
Sorry, no sympathy. The people who got banned bought *thousands* of weapons. That falls *squarely* in the realm of exploiting game mechanics, it doesn't matter where the fault lies. This comment on Reddit says it best:
Your hair look like poop, Bob! - Wanker.
I've heard this shit several times that if the developer doesn't produce magical bug-free code then dickheads have every right to exploit the shit out of the bug and ruin the game for everyone else as it's the 'fault of the devs' for 'letting them do it'. I've seen other MMO economies trashed by such stupidity on the part of the players and so at the very least temp bans should be handed out to discourage such retards from wrecking other people's enjoyment.
After a very cursory and unscientific perusal of the comments on reddit and slashdot, I find it interesting that (in general) slashdotters seem to more supportive of the banning of people who exploited the bug, while redditors seem to think that ArenaNet acted too harshly.
LegendMUD
About sales: the game is still available in box form from game stores and online (such as Amazon). The digital sale stop was not meant to completely stop incoming player population, just to slow it down.
Furthermore on this topic, ArenaNet has been trying to keep the number of servers low so they don't end up with a lot of empty servers when the initial hype dies down. Though, due to player and guild names being globally unique, doing server merges are much easier compared to other games.
About bans: ArenaNet is banning for exploiting because they want to send a very clear message that exploiting design errors will not be tolerated. If something seems too good to be true, it probably is and shouldn't be taken advantage of. There was an item for that that was selling for a fraction of its expected cost, so some people bought hundreds (or thousands) of that item to be used for other purposes (crafting and mystic forge). ArenaNet banned those player. People that did around 50-100 purchases just got a 3 day suspension.
To add, people that were banned are being given the option to submit a customer service ticket and have their account unbanned and converted to a 72-hour suspension instead. They must also promise to delete any items or money they gained through the exploit. This was done as it was the first exploit found in the game.
ArenaNet is doing all this to send a very clear message on how they expect their players to behave, and I'm happy they are.
Its not what it is, its something else.
The problem with reversing it themselves becomes very large scale if any player-player interaction is involved (and, umm, this is an MMO, it's all about P-P interactions).
Player A exploits loophole to illegitimately gain 1 million gold
Player A buys 100k weapon from Player B-1, 100k chest-armor from Player B-2, and 100k ring from Player B-3
Player B-1 uses that 100k that he got from a legitimate sale of a legitimately [farmed/crafted/bought] item, and buys 50k worth of consumables
Player B-2 uses that 100k along with 900k that was all made using legitimate means to buy 1m item legitimately Etc, etc... the list goes on
Realistically, Players B-1 and B-2 have no idea that the money from A was fake/illegal (and in digital world, they have no way of knowing), so they can't be penalized and have their new consumables or big-ticket item removed.
Player A should lose his 3 items, yeah
But, if this were the other way around, and Player A bought 10 items from vendor for 100k each with that 1m that he made, and quickly turned around and sold it to other players for 90k each, or crafted it with other legitimate items for sale for 200k each, you can't really break up the amounts now (as half of that 200k-each is legitimate).
Now, go one-step further, and say Player A shunted that 1m gold into powerlevelling a craft.
The benefits of the higher crafter levels will net him huge, legitimate (arguably), returns throughout the game, especially early-on when other don't necessarily have crafting levelled so high.
Can they simply "delete" the "profits" of their actions? Not without re-rolling their toon, or choosing to never use that skilled craft again.
Back-rolling exploited vendors is a very, very labor intensive process. This has happened in almost every MMO at least once, and also in many single-player games.
Were I ArenaNet, I'd just ban the players who exploited, too. They've all been around the block a couple of times, they know better, and it's not worth the time I pay my devs for to back out something like that.
The players who exploited can always just create a new account (for which they have to buy a new license to the game, one-time) if they want to play again. This not only backs out the problem caused by them exploiting, but it also sets precedent that any breach of the ToS will have a monetary value attached to it to resolve, and that monetary value is capped (at the cost of rebuying the game).
Oh don't worry. I'm not saying it's easy (I'm in the industry, so I understand tracking and deleting at this point is tricky)), just that... it'll be hard for anyone from ArenaNet to verify that the profiteers actually deleted "enough".
If I had 33k before the exploit, and I ended up with 100k (not counting anything bought in the mean time), how would ArenaNet know what I should have been at before I started using the exploit? Unless they have very specific and thorough save data journaling (unlikely, considering they aren't reversing things themselves), it seems like subjective guesswork from a customer service drone.
"Just because you can, doesn't mean you should."
There are people out there that forget this, or flat out don't believe in that line of thinking. Cheating is cheating, whether in a game or in real life. Unfortunately, my nephews were brought up believing it is perfectly fine to use public aid as much as you possibly can regardless if you actually need it or not. The problem is, their yardstick for measuring what needs are is broken compared to what hardworking folk would think. Most people will file these things under desires or even luxuries, but seldom are they actually needs. For my nephews, that line of thinking easily crosses over into computer games. They think that because they found a way to "beat the system" means they should do it as often as possible before it gets changed. Their morality compass is skewed by how they were brought up to think. They honestly find nothing wrong with it. Their normal mode of thinking is selfish, and they never think about how their actions will affect others in the same group.
This is just my nephews, who unfortunately, were brought up this way. I know of many more people, some personally, some through friends, that have this same type of default mode of thinking. I will even go as far to generalize that this type of thinking can be very generational - as in it is passed down generation through generation.
Kudos for ArenaNet for towing the line and banning people who are obviously exploiting game inconsistencies or bugs. With a system this complex, nobody can expect everything to be 100% correct all the time.
For a different example, I was watching a YT vid of a GW2 raid. The leader of the raid was actively telling the other people how to use positional exploits to avoid damage so they could get through content without much danger. That kind of thing pisses me off. For almost exactly the same reasons. It almost makes me wish there was a community reward program for reporting players like this. Unfortunately, I fear there is more room for abuse then what good it would do.
Where in the rules does it say "dont buy this jsut to sell it"? That would be like banning players In TOR back when slicing would net you a giant heap of credits every hour. If its in the game and you dont have to break anything to do it, its legal.
I know I didn't anticipate it, but one of the unforseen benefits of a "no monthly fee" game is that they can do this - flat-out BAN players who exploit the game, or who ignore repeated warnings.
Anet has made a significant effort to warn people about names like Penishead or FloppyTitLover as inappropriate, giving them 72 hours to think about it when they don't change.
And they've aggressively suspended accounts for people shouting 'faggot' over general chat.
Now they flat-out ban people that are obviously exploiting the game.
I don't care if it's dull as checkers, I'm going to buy their next expansion just to show me support for this behavior.
What I find particularly pathetic is that people are having so much trouble over this. "But there's no stated POLICY that I couldn't name my toon 'D1cksm0ker'!" and
"They didn't rez me, so I got angry and called them a faggot on chat, so what, free speech!"
If you sincerely have trouble understanding appropriate conduct and inappropriate conduct in these obvious circumstances, either your parents failed or you're starting to believe the internet libertarian lawyer brigade who assert that if it isn't specifically prohibited, it's practically mandatory.
Personally, I prefer a world in which there ARE social norms like saying please and thank you, and not calling someone a "cocksucker" just because they play better than I do in pvp. I don't find the behavior boundaries that hard to conform to, nor do most people.
-Styopa
no they fix problems and punish people who abuse an obvious flaw.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
No slicing still gives free money, it's supposed to. It's just supposed to be rate limited, and the rate was too high initially. This would be like finding an instant respawn that infinitely re spawned slicing container that always produced a significant amount of credits. Looting it once is legitimate. Looting it twice is understandable. Looting it for hours over and over is clearly an exploit.
When they *didn't* ban people after having had the one day huge honour exploit on ilum they screwed up PVP for months, there were suddenly a pile of people who did exploit, that were now rank 60 and getting all the best gear, and everyone else who needed a couple of hundred hours of work to get to the same point. It was a mess.
All the companies will have in their TOS that you can't exploit a game bug to personal benefit, and that you can't take unfair advantage of game mechanics the same way, this is probably technically the latter, but that's the point - it's exploiting a game mechanic to make money. Buying and selling once could believably be legitimate, a couple of more times and it's not really serious (imagine you could do this every day, but only twice, well.. so what? ) but for hours on end, that's bad....
So if I exploit bank software and take all you money, it's legal?
How about exploiting a flaw in your router and moving all your data to my machines, is that legal?(Note I said mv not cp)
No, abusing obvious exploits is rude, and it's wrong. Note everything need to be codified into a strict rule book. Welcome to a society, watch you manners and have fun.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Oh really? I remember back after a major patch in WoW where PvP gear was mistakenly put up for nothing, and a few bans got issued for exploiting it. Not to mention the screwed up launch of LFR, where several guilds got bans that took them out of contention for world firsts because of gear exploiting the mistake by blizzard that allowed gear trading.
WTF is with these "economies" in video games? People can't even set up a properly working, stable economy in the real world due to greed, corruption, and outright stupidity. If thieves like Goldman Sachs are allowed to cheat and get away with it to the tune of billions of "real" dollars, who the fuck cares if someone makes a few extra gold coins in a fucking video game?
Dude, I didn't roll a lawful/good character. Deal with my chaotic/evil ways. :P
#SickNotWeak
Clearly, if this cost them a sale, then you have a problem with exploiters being punished.
I'm pretty sure the GW2 community won't miss you. Enjoy Rift.