"If a function in a game is "broken" due to an oversight by coders and/or game developers, and the flaw is "exercised" by some portion of the player base, it is the developers' responsibility to fix said flaw so the exploitation ceases."
Gamers traditionally call this "constructive use of game mechanics", skewed or otherwise. Is it "grey area" of morality? Of course it is but...
The developers have now effectively STOLEN $60 from thousands of people (real money, not roll-back game money) when the mistake was theirs.
It doesn't matter how you shape it. This game company are now not only incompetant, but also theives. I'm so glad, so glad, I didn't buy this retail. ANet just really pissed off thousands of opportunists with half a brain. Very bad things will come of this.
Nah mmo players in general know if they are using a cheat to gain themselves in the game.
It isnt Anets fault, the no brainers thinking they will take advantage of a game , thinking because they get away with it in other games , this one would be the same.
The sort of people who agree with what you have wrote , are the sort imo who would cheat in a game.
If i leave my front door unlocked your saying that if anyone opens the door and steals from me , its my fault for not locking it when the "poor thief" was only looking to see if it was locked ???? bulls hit
This isn't the same argument. No burglary occurred. I like the example for the $1 IPODs at target, and provided there was no conspiracy to price said items thusly, no one can be punished except the store itself by losing revenue (and employees) in that situation.
I don't see how that can possibly be the case...ANet has to be betting on repeat cash shop revenue returning a profit above and beyond the cost of maintaining the game and developing future content or I don't see how they could have convinced investors to fund this game. It's bad business to throw out permanent bans on first-time offenders, and it's especially bad business to do it right at launch, when word of mouth could discourage some people from buying the game for fear of spending $60 on a drink coaster after getting slapped with a ban by an overreactive customer service department.
Hey, I want a fun, friendly community as much as the next person, but ANet could create that kind of community just as easily with GM warnings followed by temporary bans and clearly defined communication with first-time offenders as to the reason for their disciplinary action. Some of the things I've read about the way ANet is reacting to its issues this week makes me wonder if ANet isn't equipped to handle this game growing too big too soon and is purposely making decisions to keep population stable for awhile until it has hired some new staff and made some changes to their plans for the game's future.
And to people to buy the game they have to make sure it is free from cheaters... exploiters are amongst that crowd.
And if someone feels they are treated unfair they have possibilty to check it quickly enough if you post on reddit. That way they also tries to avoid people falsely claiming they been banned while they haven't.
And this was /only/ 3000 accounts... I wonder how many false claims there really from people that just want to troll a game.
Anet already got their money from the Box price. Banning exploiters is good PR and doesn't cost them anything. It's a smart strategy.
Keep that in mind if you see any other good "deals". Like an ore node that lets you continuously mine it or price errors such as the one above or...anything really. /paranoid now....
I don't see how that can possibly be the case...ANet has to be betting on repeat cash shop revenue returning a profit above and beyond the cost of maintaining the game and developing future content or I don't see how they could have convinced investors to fund this game. It's bad business to throw out permanent bans on first-time offenders, and it's especially bad business to do it right at launch, when word of mouth could discourage some people from buying the game for fear of spending $60 on a drink coaster after getting slapped with a ban by an overreactive customer service department.
Hey, I want a fun, friendly community as much as the next person, but ANet could create that kind of community just as easily with GM warnings followed by temporary bans and clearly defined communication with first-time offenders as to the reason for their disciplinary action. Some of the things I've read about the way ANet is reacting to its issues this week makes me wonder if ANet isn't equipped to handle this game growing too big too soon and is purposely making decisions to keep population stable for awhile until it has hired some new staff and made some changes to their plans for the game's future.
People aren't getting banned for just playing and having fun, they are getting banned for breaking the games rules that they agreed to when they first started playing. If someone looks at these bans and goes "I best not buy this game because I will be banned when I do something wrong," then good, I dont want those people in my game anyways.
I've played dozens upon dozens of MMO's through the course of over 10 years, want to know how many times I've been banned, a big fat 0. Why? Because I dont break the game rules that are designed to creat an enjoyable playing experience.
I don't own retail GW2 but I'm willing to bet nothing in "game rules" states:
"If an item is priced too low in game don't buy it"
This isn't the same argument. No burglary occurred. I like the example for the $1 IPODs at target, and provided there was no conspiracy to price said items thusly, no one can be punished except the store itself by losing revenue (and employees) in that situation.
The cashier would not let an item of that price sell for $1 without checking it up.
Anet already got their money from the Box price. Banning exploiters is good PR and doesn't cost them anything. It's a smart strategy.
Keep that in mind if you see any other good "deals". Like an ore node that lets you continuously mine it or price errors such as the one above or...anything really. /paranoid now....
I don't see how that can possibly be the case...ANet has to be betting on repeat cash shop revenue returning a profit above and beyond the cost of maintaining the game and developing future content or I don't see how they could have convinced investors to fund this game. It's bad business to throw out permanent bans on first-time offenders, and it's especially bad business to do it right at launch, when word of mouth could discourage some people from buying the game for fear of spending $60 on a drink coaster after getting slapped with a ban by an overreactive customer service department.
Hey, I want a fun, friendly community as much as the next person, but ANet could create that kind of community just as easily with GM warnings followed by temporary bans and clearly defined communication with first-time offenders as to the reason for their disciplinary action. Some of the things I've read about the way ANet is reacting to its issues this week makes me wonder if ANet isn't equipped to handle this game growing too big too soon and is purposely making decisions to keep population stable for awhile until it has hired some new staff and made some changes to their plans for the game's future.
The ones who have just "dabbled" in the exploit by the sound of it HAVE just got a temporary ban.
Its the ones that have been seen to be blatant non stop cheaters , using an exploit that they must have known wasnt right.
While I'm not against these bans (maybe the perma ones are too harsh, a 1 week one would have been fine imo), let's not avoid the real reason they did this. Money. They wanted to send a strong message agains using these kinds on exploits, because, if people would use it, it would cut into their profits, since you can buy gems for gold and would no longer be needed to spend real money on them.
Two types of people in this world, some are contructive to the community and some are only contructive to themselves. I support the people that contribute to improve the community and I share as much concern for the selfish as they share for me.
As far as I'm concerned Anet did the right thing.
All of my posts are either intelligent, thought provoking, funny, satirical, sarcastic or intentionally disrespectful. Take your pick.
I get banned in the forums for games I love, so lets see if I do better in the forums for games I hate.
I enjoy the serenity of not caring what your opinion is.
This morning there was a widely-publicized, newly-introduced exploit in which specific cultural weapons were selling for one-thousandth of their normal price. We fixed it with an emergency build this morning. We want to thank the vast majority of players who became aware of the issue, responsibly reported it, and did not exploit it. However, a smaller group of players did significantly exploit it, each purchasing hundreds or thousands of these weapons. We permanently banned 3,000 accounts of players who substantially exploited it, and applied 72-hours bans to another 1,000 accounts of players who mildly exploited it.
There's nothing unusual about banning player for exploits. Dev teams favor a responsive playerbase (One that reports bugs and exploits) over a playbase that is opportunistic (Uses exploits, bots, warez) and other types of methods to gain what they see as an advantage (usually over other players). I cant blame them for being heavy handed this kind of nonsense can out of control fast.
"If a function in a game is "broken" due to an oversight by coders and/or game developers, and the flaw is "exercised" by some portion of the player base, it is the developers' responsibility to fix said flaw so the exploitation ceases."
Gamers traditionally call this "constructive use of game mechanics", skewed or otherwise. Is it "grey area" of morality? Of course it is but...
The developers have now effectively STOLEN $60 from thousands of people (real money, not roll-back game money) when the mistake was theirs.
It doesn't matter how you shape it. This game company are now not only incompetant, but also theives. I'm so glad, so glad, I didn't buy this retail. ANet just really pissed off thousands of opportunists with half a brain. Very bad things will come of this.
I disagree that they have stolen $60 from thosands of People.
No one in a civilized society is exempt from personal responsibility. No matter what society it is. Even a MMO society ingame. The Players that massively abused the error knew they were taking advantage of a bug, and they know that is frowned upon by most Players.
Those Players chose to take actions that were wrong in a MMO and they knew it... hence why they bought so many of the items... they knew they would turn a huge profit.
Those Players you Defend were attempting to be Thieves against other Players.
They knew they were being naughty (first wrong) and they assumed nothing would happen. Turns out they were wrong on both counts.
I'm not defending anyone. I'm saying the gaming company is more wrong in their inept handling of the situation. They could have/should have collected data and "rolled back" said exchanges for the wrong value. Instead they punished others with their real $60 retail value for their own mistakes and laziness handling the issue, instead of spending time to "dock them" in-game appropriately.
But hey, it's their game. They can do with it what they want.
No I think the situation was handled quite well.
Out of hundreds of thosands of lines of code, out of dozens of ingame features, out of perhaps hundreds, maybe thousands of virtual items there was a error or two, well I think Anet did a ggod job of responding to the bug reports and fixing the problems.
As for the Players that KNEW they were taking advantage of a bug, and did it many times over? I say this: They got what they deserved. They took a risk and it backfired on them. They chose to do what they did.
If Anet are this serious , then there is still hope for GW2. It's pretty rare to see a Dev team answering this quick to exploits inside of a week's release. +1 to Anet for banning people and another +1 for the quickness and another +1 for having respect to the players that are trying to be legit. It's pretty rare I do this even myself. Keep it up Anet!
This isn't the same argument. No burglary occurred. I like the example for the $1 IPODs at target, and provided there was no conspiracy to price said items thusly, no one can be punished except the store itself by losing revenue (and employees) in that situation.
They weren't listed at a lower price, their price remained the same, it's when you went to buy it you werent charged the correct amount of karma. It should have cost 21k, instead you were charged 21. If I go to the store and buy something thats supposed to get charged $100, and only get charged $1, yes its the stores fault.
It becomes my fault when I go back to the store and attempt to buy thousands of them to resell for my own gain, thats theft, thats exploiting a broken system, and that IS against the rules. Those who only dabbled in it got short bans, those who went bat crazy, well good riddence to them.
If those items got injected into the market, it could have done perma damage to the economy, that is something that can effect the entire player base.
The sheer effort they put into banning exploiters and chat trolls has made me a permanent fan.
A LOT OF MMOS CAN LEARN FROM THIS! It does not pay to cater to the community-destroying populace, whose only intent is to consistently belittle and upset everyone around them for cheap laughs.
Originally posted by Furrballs Anet must be completely batty, any exploitable flaws in game design are completely their fault, what should happen is just removing the exploited items gained and moving on, its just the nature of people to exploit something in a GAME if they can, perma bans for customers that just paid them $60+ is just insane and is incredibly bad business practice..
Single player games, have at it. Use cheat codes, mods, exploits, w/e you like. But in a massive multiplayer game where your actions can impact others you play by the rules. What they did could have severely impacted the economy, look at a game like MO and see what I mean. I say thank you Anet, thank you a thousand times over. It's about time a company did this and it will earn them a great deal of respect and praise in the gaming community.
Very good business practice, protect your legit customers.
The sheer effort they put into banning exploiters and chat trolls has made me a permanent fan.
A LOT OF MMOS CAN LEARN FROM THIS! It does not pay to cater to the community-destroying populace, whose only intent is to consistently belittle and upset everyone around them for cheap laughs.
Originally posted by SuprGamerX If Anet are this serious , then there is still hope for GW2. It's pretty rare to see a Dev team answering this quick to exploits inside of a week's release. +1 to Anet for banning people and another +1 for the quickness and another +1 for having respect to the players that are trying to be legit. It's pretty rare I do this even myself. Keep it up Anet!
I agree.
I decided months ago NOT to buy GW2 because I did not agree with how Anet screwed up some of the classes for PvE gameplay in GW. If Anet felt a change to a class was needed for PvP gameplay they went ahead, even if it screwed up PvE for that class. They angered me and others doing that and I wasn't going to buy GW2 because I wasn't sure I could trust Anet again.
Then they discover this exploit with the help of the Players (thru bug reports) and they reacted in a way I thought Devs had forgotten how to years ago. Anet showed I perhaps could trust them again.
I am eating Crow right now by the way... pass the Tabasco please...
Most people are opportunistic. I'd like that to be different, too, but it's human nature. We always want the best value for our time spent and we always look for ways to improve "our positions" by and large hopefully not at expense of others, but no human being is obligated by that restriction.
We're always pushing the envolope. We do it as children consistantly, pushing the boundaries of rules to learn the limits of those rules and even why those rules even exist. This is indicative of intelligence, because those without insight are conformed to the molds of external pressure.
When a parent makes a mistake, mis-detailing an agenda or leaving some exploitable opening bad things occur and it's the parent's job to fix said issue, because they are the adults and they are the people in charge. If the punishment is too harsh the behavior of the child becomes even more rebellious, even more outlandish, next time with appropriate measures so the parent's likely have no concept of awareness.
ANet just kicked the kids out of the house for a poor reason in a knee jerk response. The least response will be collective organized disdain. I can easily see, though, some number of spurned "children" finding a way back in and utterly causing chaos in many and assorted varieties.
Honestly , the more they do this and the other things like banning the constant vulgarity spewing trolls/chat spammers, I love it.
The more they advertise they will ,and are , banning this type of player who would exploit or make a vulgar character name etc the better.
They made rules and are enforcing them , and the juvenile idiots are shocked by this , becuase other devs have given lip service to actually trying to have a good community.
I guess there's a reason in game general chat is x10000 more friendly and better than most every other recent mmorpg out there.
I think I've found a permanent home for an mmorpg.
The fact they get to take 60 bucks from the cheater crowd then ban them makes it even better.
Strike at the immature, the exploitive and the cheating crowd at the beginning and you know people won't mess around in your game. It's the correct way to do things, and the community as a whole will be better for it. If only LoL would ban people who curse at others, I may actually play and spend some money in that game.
Sad to see some defending the exploitation, but happy to see that it is detering these people from playing the game. In the real world, even if you pay for it, if you enter a league focused on games, sports or whatever, you adhere to certain rules and guidelines. Lack of respect or common sense will get you kicked out of the league or suspended with a large fine. The gaming community has been a toxic place long enough, what with people claiming the problem is everything but themselves and not having/accepting any consequences.
That said, I'm not sure a permanent ban was appropriate for this circumstance as this was the "wake up call" for a lot of people; breaking the ToS in any way will result in a real and serious penalty.
Due to frequent travel in my youth, English isn't something I consider my primary language (and thus I obtained quirky ways of writing). German and French were always easier for me despite my family being U.S. citizens for over a century. Spanish I learned as a requirement in school, Japanese and Korean I acquired for my youthful desire of anime and gaming (and also work now). I only debate in English to help me work with it (and limit things). In addition, I'm not smart enough to remain fluent in everything and typically need exposure to get in the groove of things again if I haven't heard it in a while. If you understand Mandarin, I know a little, but it has actually been a challenge and could use some help.
Also, I thoroughly enjoy debates and have accounts on over a dozen sites for this. If you wish to engage in such, please put effort in a post and provide sources -- I will then do the same with what I already wrote (if I didn't) as well as with my responses to your own. Expanding my information on a subject makes my stance either change or strengthen the next time I speak of it or write a thesis. Allow me to thank you sincerely for your time.
The sheer effort they put into banning exploiters and chat trolls has made me a permanent fan.
A LOT OF MMOS CAN LEARN FROM THIS! It does not pay to cater to the community-destroying populace, whose only intent is to consistently belittle and upset everyone around them for cheap laughs.
100% agree,
For every cesspool exploiter who won't buy the game because of this there will be many more who will.
Most people are opportunistic. I'd like that to be different, too, but it's human nature. We always want the best value for our time spent and we always look for ways to improve "our positions" by and large hopefully not at expense of others, but no human being is obligated by that restriction.
We're always pushing the envolope. We do it as children consistantly, pushing the boundaries of rules to learn the limits of those rules and even why those rules even exist. This is indicative of intelligence, because those without insight are conformed to the molds of external pressure.
When a parent makes a mistake, mis-detailing an agenda or leaving some exploitable opening bad things occur and it's the parent's job to fix said issue, because they are the adults and they are the people in charge. If the punishment is too harsh the behavior of the child becomes even more rebellious, even more outlandish, next time with appropriate measures so the parent's likely have no concept of awareness.
ANet just kicked the kids out of the house for a poor reason in a knee jerk response. The least response will be collective organized disdain. I can easily see, though, some number of spurned "children" finding a way back in and utterly causing chaos in many and assorted varieties.
I think you are correct .
All i can say is that if any of these perma banned account users tried using legal methods to contest their ban, I don't think their case would be baseless enough to be thrown aside as frivolous litigation.
Especially if it was an error in the game which allowed people to exploit the bug, which it seems is the case. The responsibility would be with Anet.
They seem to be trying to regulate morality......Good luck with that Anet, you've got an up hill battle, and in the end, you'll probably be hated for it : /.
We may all talk about how nice it would be to have a game with no jerks in it, but let's be honest, there are a lot of jerks in the world and a lot of them play online videogames. This game has a heavy focus on population-based activities like dynamic events and large-scale PvP, and its long-term success depends on maintaining a pretty high population of active players. If the choice is between 2M players with a ton of jerks, 500k players without a single behavior problem, or 1.5M players with 95% of them following the rules (numbers pulled completely out of my ass to create exmaples), I think the latter is the best situation for the community to be in. All I'm suggesting is that a more traditional process of disciplinary action--with permanent ban being the final straw for players who have proven they can't play by the rules--can work just fine if the company stays on top of it.
The real reason why A.Net is so active with the bannings is to avoid any economical exploits that would mess up the gold-gem trade.
This said it's nice to see a developer paying attention.
It shows they didn't have the insight to incorporate effective data collection and roll-back capability. Instead they make sweeping bans. This is a sign of poor design and an effort to cover their own mistakes by denying consumers their $60 product.
If this is the case they should admit it and freely refund said banned consumers' investment.
Comments
This isn't the same argument. No burglary occurred. I like the example for the $1 IPODs at target, and provided there was no conspiracy to price said items thusly, no one can be punished except the store itself by losing revenue (and employees) in that situation.
And to people to buy the game they have to make sure it is free from cheaters... exploiters are amongst that crowd.
And if someone feels they are treated unfair they have possibilty to check it quickly enough if you post on reddit. That way they also tries to avoid people falsely claiming they been banned while they haven't.
And this was /only/ 3000 accounts... I wonder how many false claims there really from people that just want to troll a game.
I'm so broke. I can't even pay attention.
"You have the right not to be killed"
I don't own retail GW2 but I'm willing to bet nothing in "game rules" states:
"If an item is priced too low in game don't buy it"
The cashier would not let an item of that price sell for $1 without checking it up.
I'm so broke. I can't even pay attention.
"You have the right not to be killed"
The ones who have just "dabbled" in the exploit by the sound of it HAVE just got a temporary ban.
Its the ones that have been seen to be blatant non stop cheaters , using an exploit that they must have known wasnt right.
Two types of people in this world, some are contructive to the community and some are only contructive to themselves. I support the people that contribute to improve the community and I share as much concern for the selfish as they share for me.
As far as I'm concerned Anet did the right thing.
All of my posts are either intelligent, thought provoking, funny, satirical, sarcastic or intentionally disrespectful. Take your pick.
I get banned in the forums for games I love, so lets see if I do better in the forums for games I hate.
I enjoy the serenity of not caring what your opinion is.
I don't hate much, but I hate Apple© with a passion. If Steve Jobs was alive, I would punch him in the face.
There's nothing unusual about banning player for exploits. Dev teams favor a responsive playerbase (One that reports bugs and exploits) over a playbase that is opportunistic (Uses exploits, bots, warez) and other types of methods to gain what they see as an advantage (usually over other players). I cant blame them for being heavy handed this kind of nonsense can out of control fast.
As can Anet, and its a wakeup call to any cheaters thinking of buying it.
No I think the situation was handled quite well.
Out of hundreds of thosands of lines of code, out of dozens of ingame features, out of perhaps hundreds, maybe thousands of virtual items there was a error or two, well I think Anet did a ggod job of responding to the bug reports and fixing the problems.
As for the Players that KNEW they were taking advantage of a bug, and did it many times over? I say this: They got what they deserved. They took a risk and it backfired on them. They chose to do what they did.
They weren't listed at a lower price, their price remained the same, it's when you went to buy it you werent charged the correct amount of karma. It should have cost 21k, instead you were charged 21. If I go to the store and buy something thats supposed to get charged $100, and only get charged $1, yes its the stores fault.
It becomes my fault when I go back to the store and attempt to buy thousands of them to resell for my own gain, thats theft, thats exploiting a broken system, and that IS against the rules. Those who only dabbled in it got short bans, those who went bat crazy, well good riddence to them.
If those items got injected into the market, it could have done perma damage to the economy, that is something that can effect the entire player base.
My Guild Wars 2 Vids
The sheer effort they put into banning exploiters and chat trolls has made me a permanent fan.
A LOT OF MMOS CAN LEARN FROM THIS! It does not pay to cater to the community-destroying populace, whose only intent is to consistently belittle and upset everyone around them for cheap laughs.
Single player games, have at it. Use cheat codes, mods, exploits, w/e you like. But in a massive multiplayer game where your actions can impact others you play by the rules. What they did could have severely impacted the economy, look at a game like MO and see what I mean. I say thank you Anet, thank you a thousand times over. It's about time a company did this and it will earn them a great deal of respect and praise in the gaming community.
Very good business practice, protect your legit customers.
well said
I agree.
I decided months ago NOT to buy GW2 because I did not agree with how Anet screwed up some of the classes for PvE gameplay in GW. If Anet felt a change to a class was needed for PvP gameplay they went ahead, even if it screwed up PvE for that class. They angered me and others doing that and I wasn't going to buy GW2 because I wasn't sure I could trust Anet again.
Then they discover this exploit with the help of the Players (thru bug reports) and they reacted in a way I thought Devs had forgotten how to years ago. Anet showed I perhaps could trust them again.
I am eating Crow right now by the way... pass the Tabasco please...
Most people are opportunistic. I'd like that to be different, too, but it's human nature. We always want the best value for our time spent and we always look for ways to improve "our positions" by and large hopefully not at expense of others, but no human being is obligated by that restriction.
We're always pushing the envolope. We do it as children consistantly, pushing the boundaries of rules to learn the limits of those rules and even why those rules even exist. This is indicative of intelligence, because those without insight are conformed to the molds of external pressure.
When a parent makes a mistake, mis-detailing an agenda or leaving some exploitable opening bad things occur and it's the parent's job to fix said issue, because they are the adults and they are the people in charge. If the punishment is too harsh the behavior of the child becomes even more rebellious, even more outlandish, next time with appropriate measures so the parent's likely have no concept of awareness.
ANet just kicked the kids out of the house for a poor reason in a knee jerk response. The least response will be collective organized disdain. I can easily see, though, some number of spurned "children" finding a way back in and utterly causing chaos in many and assorted varieties.
Honestly , the more they do this and the other things like banning the constant vulgarity spewing trolls/chat spammers, I love it.
The more they advertise they will ,and are , banning this type of player who would exploit or make a vulgar character name etc the better.
They made rules and are enforcing them , and the juvenile idiots are shocked by this , becuase other devs have given lip service to actually trying to have a good community.
I guess there's a reason in game general chat is x10000 more friendly and better than most every other recent mmorpg out there.
I think I've found a permanent home for an mmorpg.
The fact they get to take 60 bucks from the cheater crowd then ban them makes it even better.
Do it! And be proud of it, but when it backfires don't whine.
That is how it worked before teh internets.
I'm so broke. I can't even pay attention.
"You have the right not to be killed"
Strike at the immature, the exploitive and the cheating crowd at the beginning and you know people won't mess around in your game. It's the correct way to do things, and the community as a whole will be better for it. If only LoL would ban people who curse at others, I may actually play and spend some money in that game.
Sad to see some defending the exploitation, but happy to see that it is detering these people from playing the game. In the real world, even if you pay for it, if you enter a league focused on games, sports or whatever, you adhere to certain rules and guidelines. Lack of respect or common sense will get you kicked out of the league or suspended with a large fine. The gaming community has been a toxic place long enough, what with people claiming the problem is everything but themselves and not having/accepting any consequences.
That said, I'm not sure a permanent ban was appropriate for this circumstance as this was the "wake up call" for a lot of people; breaking the ToS in any way will result in a real and serious penalty.
100% agree,
For every cesspool exploiter who won't buy the game because of this there will be many more who will.
Cheers to AN.
I think you are correct .
All i can say is that if any of these perma banned account users tried using legal methods to contest their ban, I don't think their case would be baseless enough to be thrown aside as frivolous litigation.
Especially if it was an error in the game which allowed people to exploit the bug, which it seems is the case. The responsibility would be with Anet.
They seem to be trying to regulate morality......Good luck with that Anet, you've got an up hill battle, and in the end, you'll probably be hated for it : /.
We may all talk about how nice it would be to have a game with no jerks in it, but let's be honest, there are a lot of jerks in the world and a lot of them play online videogames. This game has a heavy focus on population-based activities like dynamic events and large-scale PvP, and its long-term success depends on maintaining a pretty high population of active players. If the choice is between 2M players with a ton of jerks, 500k players without a single behavior problem, or 1.5M players with 95% of them following the rules (numbers pulled completely out of my ass to create exmaples), I think the latter is the best situation for the community to be in. All I'm suggesting is that a more traditional process of disciplinary action--with permanent ban being the final straw for players who have proven they can't play by the rules--can work just fine if the company stays on top of it.
The real reason why A.Net is so active with the bannings is to avoid any economical exploits that would mess up the gold-gem trade.
This said it's nice to see a developer paying attention.
It shows they didn't have the insight to incorporate effective data collection and roll-back capability. Instead they make sweeping bans. This is a sign of poor design and an effort to cover their own mistakes by denying consumers their $60 product.
If this is the case they should admit it and freely refund said banned consumers' investment.