Players Banned due to abuse of Karma Weapons Exploit

     A number of players were banned from Guild Wars 2 due to the abuse of an exploit found via a Karma Weapons vendor. The exploit involved obtaining high level weapons for a fraction of the intended karma cost. These weapons are then salvaged or tossed into the forge get high level materials or better quality gear. Based on feedback from the community, it seems that the people banned were those that really abused the system e.g. buying 1000+ copies of the weapon as opposed to those that bought just one or two. Though it may be best to just delete all items and weapons associated with this just to be on the safe side.

     Initially these bans were permanent but, according to a recent Reddit post, the Arena Net team allowed those banned due to these to file an appeal to reduce the sentence to a 72 hour suspension. The team then emphasized its no tolerance policy in terms of exploiting bugs found in the game.

     In my opinion, I think Arena Net is taking a correct stand about this issue since the exploit can severely damage the economy of the game. However, the more debatable concept around this is what if some people did not realize it was an exploit in the first place. This can't be really applied in this case since the weapons that were supposed to be selling for around 21,000 karma were selling for 21 but it poses the question on some of the less obvious exploits. Only time will tell how Arena Net will respond in the future. For now, it is pretty clear that they want to keep the game as legitimate as possible for everyone.

See the post in Reddit: Karma Weapons Exploit by Arena Net Team