Guild Wars 2 issues bans for 'snowflake' exploit

ArenaNet has issued permanent bans for Guild Wars 2 players who took advantage of a "snowflake" exploit during the recent Wintersday event.

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A holiday event turned exploit opportunity ended with permanent bans for some players of Guild Wars 2. The Wintersday event inadvertently opened an exploit that allowed players to print their own money, figuratively speaking. ArenaNet promptly put them on the naughty list.

Massively reports that players could use one particular snowflake, a Black Lion salvage kit, and combine it with some metal to make near-limitless supplies of ectoplasm. Ecto is used to craft most of the high-end items, so flooding the market with it would have its share of side-effects. The exploit was subsequently closed, and bans issued.

"I've seen the numbers, and the damage to the economy could have been substantial, if the exploit wasn’t closed down and if these people were allowed to use their ill-gotten gains," ArenaNet support liaison Gaile Gray said on the game's forum. "People whose accounts were terminated were the worst offenders. I'm talking a lot of ill-gotten gains that posed a significant potential impact on the economy."

Grey then addressed the original poster directly, who complained of being banned. "I know the OP will disagree. But we've been more than kind, in the past, and everyone needs to own up to his/her errors and recognize: We all are part of the game economy, and those who exploit it are hurting the rest of us."

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From The Chatty
  • reply
    January 4, 2013 9:00 AM

    Steve Watts posted a new article, Guild Wars 2 issues bans for 'snowflake' exploit.

    ArenaNet has issued permanent bans for Guild Wars 2 players who took advantage of a "snowflake" exploit during the recent Wintersday event.

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      January 4, 2013 12:10 PM

      Banning the guy who told them about the exploit is a dickmove unless he also used it massively. Then he's just as bad as the others and the ban justified.

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        January 4, 2013 3:33 PM

        They banned people who were selling the stuff they made on the AH. If he told them about it but didn't profit from it they wouldn't ban him.

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          January 4, 2013 7:59 PM

          Yeah, and they would be the same people who would find the next one to exploit the game, and with essentially no penalties if they found them.

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      January 4, 2013 1:08 PM

      NC Soft should learn how to plan things properly, there have been too many exploitable things in Guild wars 2 since launch.

      And after all that happened at the beginning, if they still haven't learned the lesson its a bad sign.
      Because exploits doesn't happen if there isn't anything left in the wild that can be exploited, and obviously as a developer you have to think about those before you release anything... but it seems someone isn't doing his / her job.

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        January 4, 2013 3:27 PM

        They probably could have rolled back the characters affected to before the event instead of flat out banning them. That said they shouldn't have exploited to begin with. If is too good to be true it probably is and you probably shouldn't risk it.

        NCsoft probably could have tested and fixed the bug but complex games like this bug like this aren't immediately obvious. Players might end up doing things in a weird order or combination that was never intended. The only real way to find some bugs is to go live in some form ie. live or beta server.

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          January 5, 2013 3:46 PM

          They've already set a precedent of being very strict with banning exploiters. If the exploiters knew about this and still cheated, they deserved the ban. If they didn't know about this, now they do.

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        January 4, 2013 3:35 PM

        World of Warcraft has had ton of exploits throughout its life. It comes with the territory. I'm not saying they shouldn't spend more on testing things but you make it sound like this is only NC Soft's problem.

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      January 4, 2013 4:04 PM

      I blame NCSoft. Y'all should never give them your moneys and stop playing all their games which you should have done when they shut down City of Heroes.

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        January 4, 2013 4:28 PM

        City of heroes was awesome for 20-30 levels but it just didn't seem like there was enough variety of things to do.

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          January 4, 2013 4:56 PM

          If you didn't like the gameplay, then sure.

          If you liked the stories and were okay with the gameplay, there were mission arcs, radio missions, task forces, signature story arcs, alignment missions, bank missions, holiday events, street hunting, all the previous shit as a villain or hero, half of that as a praetorian, solo or in a group. Then there was crafting & auction house stuff, creating/playing Architect missions, base building and Incarnate missions and trials. I'm lead to believe that there was also some roleplaying going on in the middle of that.

          So, yeah, sure. Not enough variety.

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            January 4, 2013 5:10 PM

            Many of things were added later. It makes me wonder if having lots of those additions as free updates instead of packaging a bunch of them into an expansion pack might have worked against them. With expansion packs they might have drummed up publicity for the game at regular intervals, plus some extra revenue. I know at least I started playing again when Villains was released, but I stopped playing not long after and kind of forgot about the game.

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              January 4, 2013 5:17 PM

              It's an MMO; add-ons is how MMOs work.

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                January 4, 2013 5:29 PM

                Yeah, but my point is they can be done in different ways. With CoH they did lots of smaller free add-ons and only a couple of big paid expansions. I was just thinking whether it might have gotten more publicity and done better if they had mixed in more regular paid expansion packs kind of like Guild Wars and WoW does.

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                  January 4, 2013 5:41 PM

                  GW since it was entirely designed around paid expansions; that's it's business model. There never were paid subscriptions.

                  I'm of the option that one of the reasons for what longevity CoH had was that we were not forced into more paid expansions. Also, WoW can get away with making people pay by virtue of it's insane appeal.

                  Comparison to the western world's bestselling MMO is perhaps, unfair.

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      January 4, 2013 4:28 PM

      Man I haven't played in Weeks

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      January 4, 2013 4:52 PM

      I don't see how exploiting would hurt anyone.

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      January 4, 2013 5:04 PM

      Good. The fewer scumbags exploiting the game the better. Anybody who thinks they can just get away with this kind of stuff, while fucking the game over, deserves to lose their accounts.

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      January 4, 2013 8:01 PM

      [deleted]

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        January 5, 2013 1:12 AM

        Im guessing they were all on holidays.

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      January 5, 2013 9:46 AM

      Thanks arenanet for validating my decision not to buy your game.

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