Today there were over 3,700 accounts banned from Guild Wars as ArenaNet's latest move against the burgeoning bot market. Bots are popping up in greater numbers in the last few months if you watch any of the GW related forums and it's no surprise that ArenaNet is moving fast and furious to close these accounts down and remove the items from the game.

The following quote caught my attention:

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.

3,700 accounts with just 2,469 hours of /age. My account currently has over 1,000 hours of playtime on it character wide, so this means that the bot users are playing it smart and using alternate accounts to run their ill gotten software.

As a personal warning to all of you out there: DO NOT BOT. If you bot then you will likely get banned. If players catch your robotic behavior somehow then they will likely harass you and email [email protected] using one of these exact subject lines: Botting, Match Manipulation, or Game Exploit reporting you (those are the exact directions on how to report someone if you know someone who is botting.

Bots are BAD news for any game because they help automate the RMT industry by farming the gold to sell to others which in turns inflates the market and keeps legitimate players like you and I from enjoying the game the way it was meant to be played. No one wants to pay 5 plat for some Iron nor do we want to see Lion's Arch overtaken by the RMT spam bots.

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.

Design Director James Phinney on the Recent Account Bans is viewable over at Arena.net


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Last Updated: Mar 13, 2016

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