Arenanet have permanently banned 3,000 players from Guild Wars 2 for taking advantage of an exploit that allowed them to craft high level weapons at "one thousandth of their normal price." An emergency patch has closed the loophole and players that "significantly" exploited it have been thrown out of the game. 72 hour suspensions were dished out to lesser offenders.
Lead producer Chris Whiteside posted on Reddit with further explanation. "Today 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."
He goes on to say that Arenanet are "just this once" offering to convert perma-bans to 72 hour suspensions. The exploit involved buying abnormally cheap items from a karma vendor and then fusing them to make high level items at the mystic forge. En-masse exploitation of the loophole threatened to flood the market with powerful items and destabilise Guild Wars 2's economy.
"Let me assure you: All the people we banned were fully aware of it being an exploit," said Arenanet on Twitter . "If you bought a few weapons - you were not banned. If you massively exploited it - you were."
Popular Youtuber, Kripparian was among those banned. You might recognise him as a member of the first team in the world to beat Inferno Diablo on hardcore mode. He was live streaming the exploit on Twitch TV and issued a 72 hour suspension in the middle of the broadcast. Arenanet confirm that this was later turned into a permanent ban.
Kripp posted a video response to the ban on Youtube. Skip to 7:30 to see the moment that the suspension landed.
Most of us are playing quite a bit of Guild Wars 2 at the moment, but none of us as much as Chris. Take a look at his ongoing appraisal in our Guild Wars 2 review in progress . For inside info and exclusive videos, check out the series of articles contained within Guild Wars 2 week .
