Regarding recent actions taken against RMT and Botting activities

[Kyu]

Hi everyone,

 

As the game has increased in popularity over the Summer, RMT and botting related activities have also been increasing noticeably. There seems to be some misunderstanding about what isn't allowed in-game, so I would like to clarify that today.

 

Real Money Trading and other illicit services upset the balance of the game by providing an unfair advantage to some players, and as such, are prohibited under the Terms of Service. RMT activities also contributes to other forms of cheating, such as where RMT vendors will use dedicated botting characters in order to create and sell gold. Since August, we have terminated more than 3,500 accounts related to RMT activity and botting, and are still banning hundreds per day.

 

You may have heard stories of players professing their innocence by claiming that they were banned for trading with their friends, but we do not ban for normal trades with friends, transfers between alternate accounts, giveaways, or in-game sales of Gift Shop items. Often, players have been banned for receiving millions of gold from automated script characters while trying to hide the source of the money. Other times, players may have a dedicated botting character which they use to cheat on, then they are shocked when we take their main account, because they "weren't cheating on it." Regardless of how we find them, there is no statute of limitations to these types of rule violations. Usually, we will take action a few weeks after we find the violation, when they think they are safe.

 

We are not immune to mistakes, but right now, the rate of approved ban appeals from these types of violations is less than 5%. When we make a mistake, it's almost always due to a legitimate trade with an RMT vendor. We believe this false positive rate is still too high, and we are working to improve it.

 

In order to ensure the fairness of the game is maintained, we have diverted significant development resources to our administrative tools so that we can better handle this scale of cheating. We hope this knowledge will put normal players at ease.

 

Finally, we would like to thank the players who have taken the time to report RMT and botting activity to the Game Masters. Reports help immensely, and we are very grateful for them.