When it comes to gold buying/selling, we've always had zero tolerance for it. Since the launch of K3 we've banned well over 700 accounts for gold buying. It has never been hidden that we ban those who buy/sell gold, and it's posted in our rules that all players are expected to read before playing* (*note: I'm not delusional enough to expect that everyone has the rules, but it's not our fault if people don't read'em).
One thing that I don't think anyone who hasn't been in our position can really understand is the amount of lies we're told by players on a daily basis. RMT is one of those big issues where lies are rampant. From the smallest of story to the most intricate story that couldn't possibly be fake given all the nuances to their argument, we have heard almost everything. In many cases where players claim they've never bought gold, their story changes and they finally admit "they were being stupid and bought gold".
I am also not delusional enough to believe that everyone we ban is 100% guilty. Just like the current criminal systems in life, nothing is perfect. We're likely not 100%, but I would bet the farm that we're at least 99% accuracy. Given the amount of stories you hear from players, you'd think we'd be a lot lower than 99% since many players claim to be completely innocent. Many times, these same players will admit in private they broke the rules but are doing their best to get public perception on their side hoping it will help their cause.
I can tell you I hate every ban we have to give out, absolutely hate. But what I hate more is being lied to by people who are trying to get out of their consequences. I hear all these stories, and I want to believe. I really do want to believe, but in most cases the stories are fluff. There are times where we have unbanned players because their story matches up with what we saw so they get the benefit of doubt (that 1%). Lying to us just makes it more difficult on the player.
Here's a story which happens all too often, the names have been changed to protect the identity of those involved.
Herbert was a prominent player and member of his guild with responsibility. Herbert decided to buy some gold, and eventually got caught as the release of a raid was coming up. Herbert came to our team and admitted to us that he bought gold. During this entire time, he was feeding his guild lies as to why he was banned and blamed the false ban on us staff. We refused to remove the ban because the infraction took place and gold buying is considered zero tolerance. He continued to feed his guild all the lies about his wrongful ban that he got numerous members of his guild to attack our team in private. We provided a screenshot of his confession to the members of the guild, many of them did not believe us because "he would never do that". Eventually the player came clean to his guild, after all the lies he told them.
This story is not uncommon, and at one point we did offer some form of leniency to players. At one point early on we used to give buyers one chance. We'd remove all gold/epic riding etc.. from the players and gave them a reduced ban of 30 days instead of permanent. This policy really didn't help as players continued to abuse gold buying and lessons just didn't get learn, but the gold sellers did...
What did they learn? the gold sellers who infest Kronos know that we're one of the projects that really puts in hard work to catch the buyers/sellers. They know that on Kronos it's harder to make profit because of our tenacity to bust gold selling. So with the launch of K3 they devised a new strategy at the expense of our team policy. They learnt that players who bought gold would get caught. So they started telling these players to expect a ban but simply tell the truth and admit it and they'd be unbanned (per Kronos one chance policy). So the gold sellers would then send the actual gold sell after the ban (hoping our team wouldn't catch it). Sneaky, but not sneaky enough. What this does however is forced our team to remove the one chance penalty for anyone who buys gold because it's a new tactic the gold sellers are trying to use to their advantage. There are more reasons that we no longer give one chance anymore. Such as the dozens of players who we gave "one chance" too. We'd catch them weeks/months later breaking the same rule.
In a perfect world I'd love to trust people when they say they won't do it again, they're sorry etc... but it's just not possible in a position where lies are thrown at you 24/7 and need to work hard to decipher truth from the lies.