We know Guild Wars is like the free version of WoW. Both games share many similarities and differences. I found a new blog which is supposedly made by a real ex-employee that worked with Guild Wars. The first post is somewhat long but it is worth the read. Check it out here. This employee claims that Arena.net has been aware of “dupes” in the game and also worked closely with the gold farming companies to generate revenue. I pulled some snippets out of the article for anyone looking at a quick summary:
- “This article addresses and exposes the truth behind many issues, most public, some private, and the reasoning behind the cause and effect of such issues.”
- “Perhaps the most important thing to know is that A.net is run by carebears.”
- “We only perform actions that will increase our revenue. Wrongful ethics are only wrong if there is public knowledge about such ethics.”
- “If you are shocked by these truths, please know that every MMO company will probably have some aspects of these truths in their company. You just don’t know about it. Welcome to the real world.”
- “I shall begin by addressing botting. As technology increases and Guild Wars’s popularity increases, the botters will increase.”
- “The game monitors how an individual plays. It monitors mouse activity and keystroke delays for recurring trends and irregular movements. Any keystroke, mouse movement, or click is recorded and analyzed. Chat logs are also analyzed.”
- “Now we didn’t ban accounts until the public outcries gradually became large enough for us to “care”. Why? Very simple. It required additional work. ”
- “We initiated several “ban floods”… These were waves which bot accounts would be banned. The GFCs (Gold Farming Companies) knew the accounts that were being banned. We provided them a list of accounts that would be banned. Some GFCs were told to remake the accounts under different character names to thwart the PvE community, or remain inactive on those accounts until later periods.”
- “It makes the game appear “community driven”, and makes the community think we care.”
- “Banning accounts helps our business model. Because we do not charge a monthly fee, the botters have to buy new accounts.”
- “Most of the GFC’s accounts are protected. This provides an illusion that we are working against the botters as players have no insider knowledge of GFCs.”
- “Know that every MMO company that has a large GFC presence in their games will use this to their advantage and form an unofficial partnership to boost income.”
- “Some of these connections may not even be known to higherups and seniors. We are the latter. Even if the seniors do know, they will most likely do nothing about it.”
- “Along with botters being banned, the GFC industry looked “bleak” for Guild Wars. Of course this was simply an illusion. The GFCs used this as an excuse to raise their gold prices. “
That’s a quit list of some important quotes I could pull out of the post. I believe this employee’s post to be genuine but who really knows? Feel free to voice your opinions on the matter in the article.
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