False Positives & Account Termination

#1 - July 28, 2013, 1:15 p.m.

Saturday night, my brother and I were playing Guild Wars 2 for a couple of hours and our accounts were abruptly blocked. When we tried to log in, we received the 45:6:3:2205 error code, informing us that our accounts were terminated for botting, using macros, cheating, etc. But we were not cheating.

So we filed support tickets (#130728-000613 and #130728-000632) and, by Sunday afternoon, Anet support reinstated our accounts. Thank you! But this was their reply: “While our investigation points to the fact that your account was involved in a violation, we are going to extend leniency to you on a one-time basis. We have reinstated your account and you may rejoin the game now.”

The problem is that we were not cheating. Our behavior that night must have triggered a false positive in the system. Here are the activities we did leading up to our termination:

20 events in Kessex Hills (for a Cutthroat Politics Achievement)
Path 1 of Citadel of Flame
Level 2 Fractals of the Mists
Some WvW

My brother and I were using the voice chat program Mumble and play on a home network (so we share an external IP address).

Would any of those actions have triggered a false positive? I would like to know, so we can avoid going through this again.

Gaile Gray

#6 - July 29, 2013, 5:25 p.m.

This isn’t something that a forum member can answer for you, and in fact it’s not something Support necessarily can answer because we need to protect our means of detecting people who are misbehaving in the game. I do appreciate that it’s frustrating to be caught in a false positive, or to be told “you did something and we’ll let you back” without telling you want not to do to avoid another block.

All I can say is that false positives are rare, and each time it happens we try to refine our processes to reduce the chances of it happening in the future. In addition, quite often, someone who is given leniency in a reinstatement usually has a pretty good idea what he did that triggered the whole incident. I suggest you discuss this with your brother, review what other people have done in a similar situation, and, basically, don’t do that thing again.