The developers of the MMORPG Guild Wars 2 announced on the night of October 7th that 83 accounts were banned for their involvement in manipulating PvP tournaments. We explain what this is all about on MeinMMO.
What happened in Guild Wars 2? For a while now, the so-called “Win-Trading” has been a problem in the PvP community of Guild Wars 2. This involves deliberately selling matches that the buyer can then win.
This violates community guidelines, and in some cases, these matches are even manipulated by bots or through multi-boxing. That is players using other software to log in two accounts simultaneously to play against themselves.
While the latter option is technically not prohibited, it continues to lead to manipulated rankings in the leaderboard and in monthly tournaments. Through these methods, bots and players can extract a lot of gold from the tournament winnings, which also causes problems outside of PvP.
Why has this issue become significant now? One of the biggest “Guild Wars 2” streamers, MightyTeapot, released a video in which he expresses his frustrations about win-trading in PvP and calls on ArenaNet to finally take action.
He complains that the state of PvP has become so ridiculous that even PvP players cannot take it seriously anymore. “The ‘Guild Wars 2’ PvP is turning into a complete meme, ArenaNet must act and they need to do it now,” he repeatedly states in his video.
MightyTeapot even goes so far as to claim that the best spots in PvP in Guild Wars 2 are bought. At least on the North American server, he claims to have seen evidence for this. He concludes the video with a renewed call for the developers to act immediately.
You can watch the video here:
The video from MightyTeapot was released on October 3rd and received almost 500 thumbs up and nearly 15,000 views. MightyTeapot is one of the largest “Guild Wars 2” streamers and is an official partner of ArenaNet.
ArenaNet takes a hard stance
How is the developer responding? In a forum post, ArenaNet acknowledges that manipulation has occurred in sPvP and in the monthly tournaments (via forum.guildwars2.com). As a result, the developer has banned 83 accounts that were proven to have been involved in these manipulations.
The 83 banned accounts will be permanently blocked and removed from all tables and leaderboards to restore a fair ranking. The servers on which the banned accounts are located have not been disclosed.
The specific methods of how the games were manipulated were also not disclosed, nor whether bots were actually involved in the PvP tournaments. Additionally, ArenaNet states that their investigations are not yet complete and that they are continuing to work on preventing these interventions in the tournaments.
The mood in the community is tense
How is the community reacting? The post from ArenaNet has received some support but also a lot of ridicule. Some in the community feel that 83 banned accounts are just a drop in the bucket and will change nothing.
Others are upset that the problem has existed for so long and that ArenaNet only acts when a major streamer complains about it. ArenaNet is accused of “acting over the heads of the community”.
In general, though, the mood is a bit more relaxed now that the developers are addressing the problem and presumably more bans will follow in the future. Win-trading is thus taken seriously and some PvP players feel a weight lifted off their shoulders. It remains to be seen whether ArenaNet can ultimately solve the problem.
Have you had any experience with win-trading or manipulated PvP matches in Guild Wars 2? What do you think of ArenaNet’s reaction? Are you glad that something is being done or do you feel it is too late? Feel free to let us know in the comments here at MeinMMO.
The “Guild Wars 2” community reacted much more understandingly when the MMORPG had to prematurely cancel a beta test after just a few hours.
