I can guarantee that this has happened to my guild today. I am not condoning exploit abuse but I fail to see why the entire guild is being punished. There was no collusionā¦but thatās what we have been slapped with. No doubt that a similar fate has been dished out to the guilds of the other scoundrels. Thatās a lot of angry players.
Itās been a while since i saw such good news about the game. People need to learn to own the s#1t they are doing and the bans are fitting.
17/10 ā Exploiting a bug on the score system.
Now, if we can make some changes on the artwork of some troops and also rebalance a certain kingdom things would be nearly perfect at this point.
2 Likes
Cheating bad.Also gem sale.
1 Like
Speaking of gem saleā¦figure real currency into this exploit say $1USD per 10 gems. Or $1 USD a click shows a different angle. Banning people for exploiting $100 to $7000 worth of gems is reasonable lol
4 Likes
Thank you devs for your quick response on this exploit.
Does not matter how one phrases the action, cheating is not tolerable or excusable.
Every single player who took advantage of it deserved the consequences. Although it is unfortunate their guilds suffered especially during a GW week, any ripple effect from those bans should stand as well. In my view every individualās actions in the game affect their guild - positively and negatively.
4 Likes
Is it true the people who spent the gems are only getting a temporary ban?
I got the message several times with the 10 gems. I thought it was odd but didnāt spend the gems as I had already bought gems myself and used them so I didnāt need them. I then bought more gems and noticed the message this morning about adjusting the amount. I was fine with that. I donāt know how someone took advantage that way. I only got a few messages and once I accepted the gems the message was gone.
I was trying to do the class event or something so I didnāt really pay attention other than that. I didnāt get that many gems from the messagesā¦ And the ones I got I didnāt spend and didnāt mind they were taken back. So are you saying I should be banned? I play on my phone.
No. You have probably done exactly the same as most of the playerbase. However, some did rack up considerable gem stashes (tens of thousands) that they did not actually spend. So they exploited with caution and got away with it. Thatās one of the problems here. Spending has become the distinguishing factor in the eyes of the devs.
1 Like
Are we even sure the trophy reductions for your guild are related to the mail exploit? Perhaps the player was banned for botting instead of exploiting the mail? If so then your guild would definitely lose all of the trophies gained illicitly.
@Sirrian @Saltypatra @Cyrup can we at least get some kind of verification that guild trophy loses were or were not related to the mail bug exploit punishments? I know policy is you canāt/wonāt discuss cheating investigations but trophy reductions feel completely unrelated as there isnāt really a way to translate gems directly into trophies. Please put the speculation & subsequent ādiscussionā of this issue to rest before people go ape 
Edit: I see someone also started a new post about this issue as well while I was reading/posting here
I totally disagree with a lot of the comments here. lets state some facts:
- There where at least two bug reports that I know of. They where more than 8 hours apart and the last one was totally during office time of the devs.
- both bug reports got deleted after a certain time
- conclusion is: somebody knows about this
- there was no need for a third or whatever new bug report
The only reasonable reaction from the devs would be an official acknowledgement of the bug and if they think that collecting this mail is an abuse they had to make it clear that they consider this cheating.
Remember we have a policy here in this forum about explicit language because minors are playing this game. Not everybody is an endgame player who knows that this may be considered cheating. But everybody is treated the same right now, everybody is an adult which has to take responsibility for this actions. But next time somebody say f**k the post may be deleted.
If you play this game a lot - letās say competitive PvP - you will collect a certain number of rewards during the day. My guild is not very active, so we complete a guild task or 2 every day. That results in maybe 10 mails a day which you have to collect. And every time this mail about the green gems appears. Tell me that you donāt collect everything in that case right now. So an arbitrary number in the lower 10 or something collected mails is totally not acceptable for a ban.
Iām really furious about this by now - even more that yesterday. There was a bug that was reported more than once and there was no action. I think that it is very interesting that there is no second post of a dev in this thread after the first one anymore.
What a lot of the people ignore here is that the āexploitā is that you collect an email that is send to you more than once. This is not cheating using a program modifying some stats, this is not exploiting some race conditions that can occur during certain circumstances, this is exactly no clever stuff but using something that the game gives you for free in game.
I knew that this is something that is morally inappropriate of course. But I strongly feel that the actions taken and especially the explanation and the justification are totally shortsighted.
This is actually a tipping point in the whole game and Iām under the impression that you move on very thin ice right now. Maybe your general business term cover that issue, but Iām not convinced about this.
Banning people afterwards for doing stuff that was completely āin gameā is very very lame. There is absolutely no excuse for this. You screwed up, people used it and now you ban them? Fine by me, but then you can keep your game for yourselves.
6 Likes
wow well put bravo couldnāt agree more
My guild has lost about 500 trophies that corresponds to the trophies of an expelled player. The reason for his expulsion is global mail. Therefore I can confirm that you have removed trophies won legally. Who steals who?
Iām paid to do a job if I fail itās not the CUSTOMERS fault itās mine if donāt deliver on time on money with everything correct if I donāt Iām responsible as are they I hate when businesses try pass the buck for their shortcomings on to the consumer
this is a free game so is nothing free?
First of all, my account is ok, I did not take advantage of this bug.
So I donāt want to talk about that. I want to talk about another one:
Thereās a guy in our union who does a weekly event, and the first prize goes to an orb of power, and he wants the orb of power, so he spends a lot of diamonds, so heās the first prize.
But all of a sudden there was a guy who was less than 200, and he got to the top.So my friend knows heās cheater, but heās still chasing after him.Finally, he didnāt catch up and he got the second place.
So after the official closure of the first cheater, only 200 levels, how is it possible to hit the first?
So the question is, should this guy in our union, should we give him an orb of power?
Finally, the official complaint, he did not get the orb of powerć
oh Johnny Ringo
I thought a lot about this. And yeah what if one of the exploiters went 0-5. Then had their account rolled back.
That would mean they would get a redo on those matches. Thatās just how it works. Their account to revert back to like āa save stateā on their account.
Butā¦ It would also mean. All those folks who lose GW matches due to bugs. That can prove they lost due to a bug. Would of course want a redo of their GW matches and request a roll back.
So for a second I thought the devs did the right thing by banning folks. But then I realized they were just trying to honor their time old tradition of being borderline useless in regards to GW support. There was one circumstance where I had someone on the support team go above and beyond due to a guild wars related issue. Outside of the 2-3 months she helped. The usual response with GW bugs is āit sucks to be youā. 
My feeling is if you are in a guild that lost lots of trophyās I would find a new guild with people in it that are not bank robbers lol. If the GM got banned I would leave at reset even if he was re-instated. There is no excuse for this crazy nonsense and the people that exploited it hundreds of times should be ashamed of them selves. Look at it this way. Would you teach your kids to do this? If Walmart left the back door open and I could go in and take free stuff does not mean I would do it. This is a game we like and play. The people that work there have real jobs and bring weekly content to the player base and they get paid just like we do at our jobs. If people are getting 1000ās of free Gems then who is going to spend real money to support the game.
5 Likes
What the banned players did was that the developers had to do ā check what they were implementing. The player should not play the game and try not to go to another hole in the game. If the developers did not want to debug their code before entering into production, then they should correct the consequences of their actions. It would be possible to punish players if there was a possibility of taking benefits from the game. And so all problems are solved inside the game.
What problem do developers solve with ban? Several players will lose accounts and will not play. Whatās next? Tomorrow there will be a new bug and there will be new bans instead of correcting the consequences of their bugs. Those. over time, the quality of the game should only fall, and the number of bans only increase. If so, then I do not want to play this game.