Today, ArenaNet’s Lead Producer Chris Whiteside, posted an update on Guild Wars 2 Reddit about giving a second and final chance to all players who were permabanned because they exploited the karma weapons bug.
This is a rare thing to see or hear from any online gaming company, and I must say that ArenaNet surprised me with this announcement considering how much they have shown since the 25th of August 2012 that they mean business. Inappropriate name or language for a 72-hour ban as a “warning”? That is how serious they are.
How to take advantage of this amnesty?
Follow up:
If you want to get your account reinstated, you simply have to follow these steps:
- Contact the Guild Wars 2 support team at: support.guildwars2.com via the “Ask A Question” tab
- Use as your subject: Karma Weapons Exploit Appeal
- Then confirm in your body of the ticket that: I will delete any items/currency that I gained from the exploit
Submit only one ticket, do not spam them and never bump your ticket.
Once a support agent gets to your ticket, your account ban will be lowered from a permanent ban to a 72-hour ban.
You then have to delete the items in question as soon as your first login. For the currency, since we can not delete it, the only obvious way is to buy some useless or lowest type of item then delete that item. It will show in their logs that you deleted it. The Guild Wars 2 hack team will then check your account if you did what you “promised”, otherwise, prepare to get permabanned again, and this time there will be no second chances (or third).
Tip: When you encounter something that you are not sure of, better ask someone. There is the /map chat command that you can use. Do not risk getting your account banned and waste your hard-earned money (or your parent’s hard-earned money).
Here’s the post of Chris Whiteside, quoted as-is:
Source: Karma Weapons ExploitToday we banned a number of players for exploiting Guild Wars 2. We take our community and the integrity of the game very seriously, and want to be clear that intentionally exploiting the game is unacceptable. The players we banned were certainly intentionally and repeatedly exploiting a bug in the game. We intended to send a very clear message that exploiting the game in this way will not be tolerated, and we believe this message now has been well understood.
We also believe and respect that people make mistakes. This is in fact the first example of a widespread exploit in the game. With this in mind, we are offering the members of our community who exploited the game a second chance to repair the damage that has been done.
Thus, just this once, we will offer to convert permanent bans to 72-hour suspensions. Should those involved want to accept this offer of reinstatement, contact us on our support website–support.guildwars.com—and submit a ticket through the “Ask a Question” tab. Please use the subject heading of “Karma Weapons Exploit Appeal”, then confirm in the body of your ticket that you will delete any items/currency that you gained from the exploit. You should submit only one ticket. Once you have done so, we will lower your ban to 72 hours, and following your re-activation we will check your account to make sure that you have honored your commitment. If that commitment is not hindered, we will re-terminate the account.
This is a first and final warning. Moving forward, please make sure you that when you see an exploitable part of the game, you report it and do not attempt to benefit from it.
We look forward to seeing you in game,
Yours Sincerely,
Chris Whiteside- Lead Producer ArenaNet