Christmas celebrations recently took place in Guild Wars 2, and arrived in the form of Christmas-themed events, referred to in the game as Wintersday. The entire event ran from December 14 to January 3.
The Christmas update brought with it numerous things for players to do and special monsters to battle, including haywire toys and Grinch-like creatures who stole gifts. In addition to these events, players were also treated to new items, some of which were snowflakes which could be used by skilled crafters to create special new items.
One item in particular, a high-level snowflake, was exploited through the use of a Black Lion salvage kit and metal to generate unlimited amounts of ectoplasm, an important item that ties together the game's economy for its use in high-level crafting recipes.
ArenaNet dealt with the exploit almost as soon as it surfaced, but they couldn't prevent a few hundred players from taking advantage of the unintended bug. The players, whom many would argue knew what they were doing was wrong, were given permanent bans for their infractions.
The only players who received bans for the exploit were those who did it hundreds of times, not those who may have done it by accident. An ArenaNet community manager who posted on Facebook explained the bans:
"It is a very bad idea to "assume" anything regarding the number of accounts terminated for abusing this exploit. The number was actually under two hundred total, and the people affected used the exploit hundreds and sometimes thousands of times. ~RB2"
Whether ArenaNet did the right thing by banning the users instead of simply warning them or penalizing them through some other means is up for debate. But if this ban and previous bans for exploiting in the game are anything to go by, it remains clear that ArenaNet takes the economy of its world very seriously and players would be stupid to challenge them with full awareness of the consequences.
