Guild Wars 2 online sales reopen
ArenaNet has finally reopened online sales for Guild Wars 2 on the official site after a strong influx of players during the first week of the game's release forced the developer to find a way to lower player "concurrency" rates.
ArenaNet has finally reopened online sales for Guild Wars 2 on the official site after a strong influx of players during the first week of the game's release forced the developer to suspend purchases and try to find a ways to combat high player "concurrency" rates.
The developer said the temporary halt to first-party sales, which went into effect August 30, has been lifted and the company is again filling orders from retailers. ArenaNet has also added more game servers in North America and Europe and also more than doubled the number of people handling customer support.
"Preserving the customer experience has always been our top priority," said Mike O’Brien, president and co-founder of ArenaNet. "We're supporting Guild Wars 2 for the long run. We'll always do what it takes to deliver the best online gaming experience for our customers, even when that means throttling sales."
The company also released a rather unconventional trailer for the game, entitle "Our Time is Now," directed by James McTeigue, who worked on V for Vendetta and the Matrix Trilogy.
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replyJohn Keefer posted a new article, Guild Wars 2 online sales reopen.
ArenaNet has finally reopened online sales for Guild Wars 2 on the official site after a strong influx of players during the first week of the game's release forced the developer to find a way to lower player "concurrency" rates.-
"Preserving the customer experience has always been our top priority"
Yea... like permanently baning people who buy an item FROM A VENDOR IN A TOWN, that you made the mistake of putting it more cheap; and then, oh!, some time latter reverting it to a 72 hour ban because of "exploiting" (yea... clearly buying something from a vendor with ingame currency is a exploit.... well in their eyes it is ¬¬).-
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They offered to lift the ban to anyone who promised to not take advantage of things like that in the future and destroyed any gear and mats they gained by doing so.
So of anyone was permanently banned it was because they either didn't know about this offer or they refused to take it.
Arena Net should have made their in-game rules of behavior more in-your-face but this event got the message across. -
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KIT KAT BAR
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I have to laugh at the people defending Anet over this - I know you play WoW and we both know that blizzard has never punished anyone for their own mistake. The only actions required are rollbacks and fixes, and blizzard has done that each and every time.
Lets review:
1) Arena net programs the wrong prices on a vendor
2) Arena net then punishes players from taking advantage of said prices
How fucked up is that? Fix your shit arena net, don't punish players. The good news is, they realized their mistake in punishing players like this and have unbanned players (even kripparian).
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It's not like no other MMO has ever handed out bans for activity just like this. As if people don't know that it's wrong. And BUYING the items wasn't the issue, selling them back to NPCs was.
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Im not talking about the chilly peppers thing, im talking about the weapons vendor.
My point is, they screwed things up with that vendor, and instead of working on it, shutting down the server for a few mins, hotfixing it, and removing the items bought by people from that vendor during that time; they went and banned people and left the vendor there just to make the number of banned people grow.
It was a really bad way to handle their mistake. And it wasn't anything intrincate, it was a f***ing vendor on a town.-
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Just to get this straight, You are saying that you don't like what a game developer does without even playing it? Way to go, pal!
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They didn't ban anyone until after the issue was resolved.
And they didn't ban people who just bought a few items, they banned the ones who clearly knew damn well that it was a bug, and were buying the dirt cheap items and then using the Mystic Forge to upgrade said items to free endgame loot.-
Other MMOs have never, ever done anything like this - lets make that clear. WoW has never punished players for a developer mistake, and this is PRECISELY a developer mistake. The good news is that arena net unbanned everyone is acting less heavy handed now, they have also unbanned kripparian and personally apologized to him.
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The big question here is why can they not do a rollback and remove all of the incorrectly purchased items? This has happened in WoW before and they just remove the offending items and fix prices. I find it ludicrous to ban people over something like this.
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You're obviously misinformed.
First off, the vendor listed one price, 21k, and only charged 21. It was an obvious mistake.
Also, They didn't permaban people who bought a couple, or even 50. They perma'd those that bought hundreds or thousands of the set items, and then used them in the mystic forge for top level gear.
Even then, they still offered to reverse the perma if said people forfeit the items gained from the vendor.-
Obvious mistake? Is this a goddamn North Korean MMO where you get banned for taking advantage of a good price on a vendor? You people defending Anet are ridiculous.
Lets not look past the fact that this error was ARENA NETS ERROR.
I also have good news for you buddy, arena net realized they were acting like idiots and have unbanned everyone - even kripparian. You don't ban people for your own programming mistake. I don't give a flying fuck if its obvious - you do a rollback and fix. You don't perma ban people over your own incompetance.-
You're pretty angry about this, were you permabanned over this too?
I'll admit to being incorrect about the vendor pricing, as well as concede that areanet used a big-hammer solution (that they mostly reversed on) that certainly deserves some shit.
It's still a good game though, and I'm certainly not giving it up over a few ruffled feathers. -
Read the post again. It listed 21000 karma price, and when you purchased it only 21 karma was removed. That's not a GOOD PRICE, that's a BUG.
If you went to the bank and withdrew $10 but it gave you $100,000 instead, do you think you are entitled to that money??
Also people were unbanned for destroying their illegal gains, much like a bank suspending your account until the money is returned. ArenaNet "acting like idiots" is your claim.
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My mistake then.
Most of us are outsiders in this debate anyway. Some of the rumours floating around are based on sketchy info and third hand accounts.-
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Cuz I'm an asshole with a dog in this fight ( I wan't to play with all of you, damnit! )
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Actually, you are wrong - no other MMO has done this. While I like GW2, lets make one thing clear: This mistake was 100% on the developar part, they did not code prices in correctly on a vendor and then PUNISHED players for taking advantage of this. Similar situations have happened in WoW like this, such as arena vendors having improper prices on tier 2 arena gear. I have played WoW since vanilla and EVERY TIME THIS HAPPENED they did a rollback and fix. NEVER EVER did they ban anyone.
Arenanet were fucking idiots to do this, and they reneged on their action. Justifiably so - It was their goddamn error. I know the fanboys will come to their defense on this, but you don't fucking ban people for your own mistake, you fix that shit and do a rollback. The good news as well is that kripparian was called on the phone by GW2 lead dev and was issued an apology and unbanned, much to the chagrin of said fanboys.-
The perma-bans and such were a bit over the top, but I don't see what is wrong with punishing players that were clearly taking advantage of the system. It's not like this was an accident on the players end, it was exploiting the system which we all know could have had a very profound impact on the games economy.
Also, just because Blizzard hasn't done similar things in the past, doesn't mean it should never happen. I personally like that Arenanet is heavy handed with exploits such as this, same thing goes for the profanity bans. I'm just sick of dipshits online attempting to ruin other peoples experiences, and putting some sort of accountability into their hands is fine with me.-
I still wonder why we are using WoW as an example of it never happening, especially since there have been hundreds of player bans for similar situations over the years.
Some of those were reversed after a rollback, others were not.
The only difference being that blizzard will remove the items, whilst Areanet might be attempting some altruistic tactic to make the player remove the ill gotten gains themselves in some solomonesque sort of way (which is not unlike the modern judicial systems around the globe).-
Just google 'wow account banned for economy exploitation' and the cases go on and on and on... Many of them are for buying items at incorrectly set vendor prices too.
WoW is a really shit example here. It's not like blizzard and areanet are the only ones either. The only exception seems to be eve online!-
I'll state this again: blizzard has never banned anyone for a vendor price error, ever - and it has happened with arena vendors during several seasons.
The exploits you googled in terms of economy exploitation are along the lines of gold selling or modifying your client and changing the map files. Obviously that warrants a ban. Again, Blizzard has never , ever banned ANYONE for their own vendor price mistake.
You keep trying to make a contrast between WoW and GW2 but its the same situation - programmers make a mistake with a vendor price, yet blizzard will fix it simply by removing the items and doing a rollback while GW2 in their asshattery attempted to ban players. Good thing is, Anet came to their senses and realized how fucking stupid they were - they won't be perma banning players over their programming mistakes again.-
Or will they? The permabans were a bit extreme and I'm glad they toned them down, but the precedent of sending out bans for users that exploit the game was set. Hopefully people will think twice about taking part in future exploits as they come up and the game will be a better place because of it.
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Well, you have a good point here. That event probably "set the tone" so to speak and will make all players think twice before doing obvious shenanigans (botting, etc). Perhaps it was a farce from the getgo simply to send a message to the playerbase...that actually wouldn't be a bad move.
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All bugs are mistakes on the developer's part. Taking advantage of that is an exploit, no matter how easy to reproduce the bug is. ArenaNet has stricter policies for player behavior than Blizzard and that's not a bad thing.
Kripparian was not unbanned, his ban was reduced to 72 hours and they've made it clear that they are still going to ban people for this behavior in the future. -
and i would have to say thank you to arenanet for punishing the abusers instead of punishing everyone and rolling the entire server back.
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+1....
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Are people still all pissy about the exploit bans? ArenaNet backed off and even apologized. Sheesh!
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lol. people come into a game just to find the early economy exploits and ruin any normal player's chances of buying stuff in a month. companies that don't crack down on that are wrecking their own product.
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Yes, worth it - it's a great game.
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Overall it is good. I don't know that it will hold my attention past 2 months (or even past BL2), but it is definitely something I will come back to in the future when they release more content - like say for example, an endgame.
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