Guild Wars 2 – Holiday Bans – ArenaNet Doing It Right

Widely regarded by many to be the best MMORPG release of the last decade, ArenaNet’s Guild Wars 2 has captured the heart of thousands with its intense PvP, intricate PvE and extensive character customization. However, it’s the actions of the developers that put Guild Wars 2 into today’s headlines.

During Wintersday, the recent holiday event that ran from December 14 to January 3, thousands upon thousands of players were enjoying chasing the grinch-like creatures but a few were enjoying a less respectable aspect of the event. After the event launched on December 14th certain players discovered a glitch using high level snowflakes from the event, an item that could be used with a variety of materials to provide an almost endless supply of the high-end crafting item, Ectoplasm.

The glitch was discovered and fixed within hours but that still left a large enough window for almost 200 players to abuse the exploit. ArenaNet released an official comment on their Facebook profile stating that players using the glitch just a few times were not banned, but excessive use of the exploit resulted in a permanent ban.

It is a very bad idea to “assume” anything regarding the number of accounts terminated for abusing this exploit. The number was actually under two hundred total, and the people affected used the exploit hundreds and sometimes thousands of times. ~RB2

It’s not exactly major for 200 players to be banned from an MMO game but this does demonstrate the dedicated big-brother approach from ArenaNet. Out of the millions of players they were able to single out 200 that over-abused an exploit? There’s pretty impressive tech even in today’s industry, maybe someone should email Sergey Titov?

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