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Well, we hoped we could talk about the preview release of Module 15 today, but apparently Cryptic had other plans and carried out the ban wave they announced a week ago for exploiting the Ravenloft Hunt bug. This also means that the few bans on streamers we reported was only the tip of the iceberg. The majority of the accounts were banned yesterday. We’re being told that sanctions range from 1-day suspensions to permanent bans while also a bunch of minor offender were stripped of their (rough) Astral Diamonds. Judged by the information we have, this might actually be the biggest ban wave on player accounts the game has seen so far.

Insane. Every person on my friends list banned. All guild and alliance leaders banned. I heard some alliances on ps4 and Xbox had 95% of their players banned. It’s a huge mistake by them. — The Assist Man (@ImTheAssistMan) September 22, 2018

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You have to be careful because of the general hyperbole involved in things like this, but it certainly looks like many major endgame players were hit. Of course there’s also always rumors that innocent people have been hit as well. Cryptic is notoriously known for not always getting stuff right, but covering the game for so long (and talking to guys that got banned) we think that the sanctions indeed mostly hit accounts that actually exploited the Hunt bug to some extent. Since most haven’t gone public we are hesitant to call out specific guys, but one person who’s very openly communicating his ban is popular streamer and YouTuber Nova. He’ll probably make a video about the incident soon enough, but being banned on the same day you get the chance to interview Lead Designer Thomas Foss is certainly one of the more bizarre Neverwinter stories this year. As mentioned quite a lot of hardcore endgame players received at least suspensions. So we’ll probably hear about more bans in the coming days.

How to Deal with Bans?

The extent of the ban wave is surprising to us, because the exploit, historically and economically, didn’t do a whole lot of damage. So the assumption is that Cryptic felt like they had to take a stance here. We’re even hearing perma-bans for 1,000,000 to 3,000,000 exploited currency. That’s a lot, especially if you’re a new player, but in the grand scheme of things hardly matters. People back in the day got suspensions for ten times the amounts. Also people that have spend ZEN in the past weren’t sanctioned as harshly, which is always a point of contention.

Now, if you got banned and are sure you didn’t do anything wrong, please follow what we’ve written in this article to contact support and make them look into your case again. Be polite but persistent until you get what you want. If you’ve been exploiting it doesn’t have to be the end of the line as well. We would just sit out suspensions unless they are unjustified, but you can also try to appeal a ban. We would advise you to offer them an apology, and that they are free to strip Astral Diamonds and maybe even Enchantments from your account. It’s something that has worked in the past and worth a shot if you absolutely can’t live without Neverwinter.

Always on Fridays

We’ve talked about how Cryptic handled the bug in depth around here. So we won’t get into it again. In case you’re interested, many YouTuber have released opinions that can be listened to right now. However, one thing that’s always annoying is how Cryptic purposely carries out these waves on Fridays. Unless something changed, official support doesn’t work over the weekend, which means players have to wait three days until they even get a chance to talk to someone. It also feels we’re moving backwards in terms of communication. We praised the studio of being more open with ban-waves, but this one was neither acknowledged yesterday, nor did they allow any discussion about it. This statement about account inquiries is all we got before the devs fled into their weekend and was a reaction to players swarming the forum to either rant or asking for help.

In case you do want to talk the implications, don’t try your luck on the official Subreddit or Arcgames. Mods on both platforms as always are deleting posts left and right. On the sub you at least have the opportunity to post in this thread, but it’s tightly moderated as well. You can however freely jump into the discussion on our Discord or message board. There’s also a new, and already quite active, alternative Neverwinter sub that allows open talk on the game. If you want to track the mods’ actions and see what users have posted, you can use one of the Reddit undelete services and our ARC Undelete tracker.

Hope Everyone Made It out Alive!

Phew. That was a lot to digest for the community today. We hope you guys made it out alive and don’t miss too many friends ingame!

What’s your take on the ban wave? Share your thoughts and experience on our social channels, in the comments below, or visit our message board!

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