A little while back John got back into Guild Wars and harassed me about getting into it again. Since it is free to play (after initial purchase), I figured I’d give it a whirl, even though I had logged maybe a couple hours total in the last year.
Enter problem: Your Guild Wars account has been terminated for using a bot or other third-party program, which is a breach of the User Agreement and Rules of Conduct. This action is permanent. (Code=045)
Solution: Contact support.
Unfortunately, it wasn’t as easy as that…
Day 1: Quick response from support letting me know it is being escalated.
Day 2: Response explaining how temporary bans work, which isn’t applicable to me. I wait for a more satisfactory response, which brings me to…
Day 14: I send another email seeking clarification, explaining that I feel there has to have been some mistake.
Got a response apologizing for the confusion on the previous email, and lets me know that I am in fact permanently banned and that due to the “great care [used] when analyzing accounts prior to termination” and because they “only take action after [they] are able to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that such use has occurred” there is no appeal process.
I sent them a reply (with the help by John) explaining how little I had played as well as noting that our guild page showed me as having left the guild on 4/10/2009 (at a time that I didn’t even have the client installed). After doing some googling, I asked if my running the client under Wine possibly caused a false positive. I also explained that I really wanted to play Guild Wars again.
Next, I got a response again explaining that there is no appeal process.
I sent a flippant response almost immediately and then something a bit more professional (again with John’s help) and asked for more information from a technical perspective, after all if I can’t have my account back, I’d at least like to know who took it and how they got it (especially as I’m a fairy security conscious individual).
Day 15: Success! I received a response explaining that further investigation revealed that my account was accessed by gold sellers and it was now unblocked.
In summary, if you ever find yourself in a situation like this, the key is to keep asking questions; be relentless; be persistent; and most of all, try to be polite.