Rally 'round to send Square-Enix a message!

[Pawkeshup]

This was posted over at Allakhazam, in regard to the banning and other bizarre behavior from SE. See after it for a link to an Alla editorial on it as well:

Allakhazam.com: Final Fantasy XI

Let’s get this started, and get some sh*t out of the way. We’ve had our differences, guys, I know you don’t all like me, and there are a lot of you I’m not to fond of. Right now, however, something needs to be done, and to do this, we need to put aside our differences and band together as a community.

I’m speaking, as you may have discerned, about the recent banning spree that SE has gone on. It’s getting ridiculous. We’ve put up with a LOT of flack from SE over the years. We all have our issues with them, be it their love of ninja updates, their failure to test things well before they release them, or their wasting of time on pointless events/items that no one uses after the first week, but honestly, we don’t deserve this.

As it stands, innocent players who have done nothing wrong are being banned for no reason, and SE refuses to acknowledge it. They hide behind their blanket “we can ban anyone for anything” clause in the player agreement (which, honestly, is not very easy to find unless you know what you’re looking for) and ignore the overwhelming feelings of disapproval we give them.

I know many of you have been shrugging this off for a while now. That needs to stop. I realize that “eh, it doesn’t affect me” is a natural response to many issues for most, but that isn’t true here. Imagine how you would feel if your Linkshell leader got banned for no reason, or if the guy/girl you duo’d all the way to 75 and became great friends with was banned for no fault of his/her own. You know you’d care. It has happened, it is happening, it will continue to happen, unless we speak out.

This is beyond Absolute Virtue, beyond Pandemonium Warden, beyond the NASA bot, beyond amazing failures like the magic resistance issue. This affects us on a much, much grander scale. Any player, newbie or veteran, casual or hardcore, Taru, Galkan, Hume, Mithran, Elvaan, is subject to this. All of our accounts are at risk if this rampage continues, and we all need to band together to put a stop to it.

Granted, I’m well aware of the fact that no, it likely won’t happen. I know that there’s no physical way for every poster on all of the premier forums to agree to a truce while we handle this issue. That would be foolish to believe. Even if I manage to pull off a decent group of people, some how, there’s still no guarantee that it will accomplish anything. However, that does not mean we should no try.

I am not speaking as “Professor Jinte, well known poster on allakhazam” but rather, “Theytak, a galka on the siren server.” We have to get over our pride, we have to let go of our grudges, even if it’s only temporary. As it stands, we have one common threat, that being SE, and we need to unite long enough to deal with it. From Valkurm Dunes Nublet to Relic Wielding Ground King Camper, we’re all going to be affected by this, and we all need to speak out against it.

I ask you, not as anyone other than a fellow player, someone who loves this game, to let go of your differences with others long enough for us to get SE to stop this nonsense.

I know that most of you are too apathetic about the issue to care; since it’s yet to affect you, and I know that you’re to lazy to bother doing much. As such, I’m not going to ask much. All I need from you, friends, acquaintances, rivals, enemies, etc, is to spread the word. Get my message out to all places FFXI. Tell your linkshells, tell your forum servers, talk to people you exp/assault/endgame/mission with. Open eyes. It’s just generic copy-paste a link, or mentioning it in a conversation. If we’re going to get anywhere, we need to unite to do it.

I’m posting threads on alla, BG, KI, and wiki. However, I cannot spread the word out to every LS and Server site, that’s a task no one man can handle. I need your help. That’s all I ask. Spread the word. It doesn’t matter what you think the end result will be.

Honestly, what would it hurt? I’m not asking you for much. I just ask that you mention this idea to others. That’s basic communication. I’m not saying that you should go spend hours on end posting about/discussing the issue, just simple comments on the matter. If you want to do more, that’s great, more power to you, but I know that the vast majority of you don’t care enough to be bothered.

Please, discuss the issue, but think for yourself. How would YOU react if you had been banned unjustly? What if that really awesome guy everyone likes on your server was banned for no reason? Imagine if the shellholder for your group, who everyone respects, was no longer going to be playing due to SE banning him for something ridiculous? Talk with your shells about it. Talk on your forums about it. Make it an issue. Work with me. I know that we can all agree on this, but we need to stop being lazy.

For once, just once, we need to get off our collective asses and do something. You saw how SE reacted when we got all hot and bothered over the Magic Resistance bug. We need to do that again, but even more.

How you choose to protest this is your own decision. I will never say “lets go picket SE,” or “lets just stop playing for x amount of time” because the ideas are just silly. All we need is the collective attitude of “wtf are you doing, SE?” and that should be enough.

Seriously, I ask you all, Stand up for those who have befallen this fate, stand up for your ls mates, stand up for your friends, and stand up for yourselves. We CAN do this.

Now, I ask you.

Who is with me?


sincerely, Theytak, a Galka of Siren, FFXI player.

As well, here is a link to Digg and read the Allakhazam editoral

Read: Allakhazam.com: Final Fantasy XI: Has Square Enix Banned Logic?
Digg: Has Square Enix Banned Logic?

[Mog]

Re: Rally 'round to send Square-Enix a message!

SE isn't going to do anything about this, more than likely. They even state in the ToS that you can get your character taken away from you at any time without cause.

It's a nice effort, but "protesting" to SE isn't going to change their mind much, imo.

[Omgwtfbbqkitten]

Re: Rally 'round to send Square-Enix a message!

I'd like to see some hard data that shows the levels, length of play and the like in regards to this so called rampant bannings.

It doesn't take long to see in the EULA where SE says they can ban you for any reason, but the reasons are usually as follows:

(1) Erratic use of credit cards
(2) One credit card applied to multple accounts
(3) Low level players engaged in RMT functions
(4) High level players heavily involved in endgame and involved in some form of exploiting the system.
(5) High level players involved with those exploiting the system, knowingly or not.

What I'm certain that you'll find that practically no one at the intermediate levels of the game will be banned from the game. Sky RMT seems practically dead now, so you don't see those little clusters of identical BLMs much these days. RMT are more and more of a minor nuisance. So who's left to ban after that?

Not everyone plays by the rules, a lot of players have had RMT transactions and perhaps that's why the bannings seem so random or arbitrary now. You'll believe the guy who helps you get stuff wasn't a gilbuyer, right? If you cry on their shoulder and talk with them deeply, you'll believe they're above exploiting the game, right? Oh, and let's not forget the temper tantrums and harassment thrown around by your friends at other players, we can't get permabanned for these things, right?

The axe had to fall on others eventually. Its not just "clean up RMT and the job's done."

The thing is, due to the anonymity the internet allows and the EULA, we're not going to get good, hard data on why these bannings occured. Some people will lie about the nature of their banning, others will not. Some people will just throw their hands up, sigh, and move on.

I refuse to believe the process is arbitrary because most of Titan got the shit cleaned out of it on Jan. 22. These were not people disliked just for the sake of disliking them - they were creeps, MPKers and dramaqueens of the highest order. They made Titan endgame a miserable experience for anyone that crossed their path. Half of them acted like they were vindicated, but that was just raw denial. They were not above exploitation, period.

[Aksannyi]

Re: Rally 'round to send Square-Enix a message!

(1) Erratic use of credit cards

See, this one strikes a nerve. I'm broke. I don't always have money. Sometimes I have to change my card, sometimes I have to deactivate my mule account so that only Aksannyi gets charged. How does that make me a shady/fraudulent person? Especially considering my cards have all been under my own name? As long as they get their money every month and it comes out of my own monetary means, what is the problem? So now only securely financially stable people are allowed to play their game? Fucked up.

I wish they'd at least impose an appeals process for the banned. RMT aren't going to waste time appealing, but real players are. And I'm fairly sure a lot of people who know they did wrong (hi botters) wouldn't try to appeal their use of 3rd party claiming tools, but I bet people who have changed their payment options more than twice are going to be more than happy to prove that they own their cards or if they're not, (like perhaps dad's card) that they are authorized to make payments from them.

The entire idea of banning someone who has just been struggling to pay for their game is ludicrous, and this is what I've gathered from a lot of the posting on BG in the "LM-17 wtf" thread. That plenty of people changed their card, or they were overcharged and then were told by SE that the charges were legitimate. Upon doing a chargeback for the extra funds, however, they get permanently banned. How is that fair? They fuck up billing and we're just supposed to overpay them I guess, if we want to keep playing.

I'm sorry, it's bullshit. I could understand a bunch of different cards with differing names, or perhaps a string of no-name gift cards might looks suspicious, but an account under the name of Maria Andrews (fake name lol) that has paid for her accounts with a card that had Maria Andrews on the front of it, and later changed it to another card with Maria Andrews on it, how is that suspicious or illegal? How is changing cards for a recurring service illegal, unless the cards themselves are proven to be stolen?

Doesn't add up. They are just not looking hard enough at accounts that are perfectly legitimate. I deactivated Yamila a bunch of times because I didn't have the money to pay for her, but every single payment done on that account was done in my name, so there should never have been any issue.

[Pawkeshup]

Re: Rally 'round to send Square-Enix a message!

(1) Erratic use of credit cards
(2) One credit card applied to multple accounts
(3) Low level players engaged in RMT functions
(4) High level players heavily involved in endgame and involved in some form of exploiting the system.
(5) High level players involved with those exploiting the system, knowingly or not.

This is not a complete list, but I'll point out one flaw in those:

My wife and I pay for my stepdaughter's account on one card. Banning us would be retarded, as would banning anyone with multiple accounts on one card without some other evidence of misconduct.

And it's already been proven that the RMT-PWNER banned gardening mules of legit players. Selling/NPCing items grown isn't using an exception to any code or any exploit, it's as valid as farming and NPCing garbage drops.

[Omgwtfbbqkitten]

Re: Rally 'round to send Square-Enix a message!

My wife and I pay for my stepdaughter's account on one card. Banning us would be retarded, as would banning anyone with multiple accounts on one card without some other evidence of misconduct.

So when 5 to, oh, 24 accounts are paid off the very same card, its not just a little suspicious to you? Then the credit card changes to accomodate the same accounts.

Did you know that RMT in China will sign up for credit cards under one little sweatshop and max that credit card before moving to the next card to cover those accounts? RMTPWNER profiles this stuff.

And again, its their turf you're playing on - they don't need a reason to ban you at all. If you go to Six Flags, you can get escorted out of Six Flags without explanation. Its their park and they don't owe you anything.

Also, I have to point out that every MMORPG on the market eventually bans the so-called "innocent" player. They have the exact same terms in their EULAs. Its not up for debate no matter how much you want it to be when it comes to these companies. They do it to cover their asses and avoid frivolous lawsuits.

See, once they start giving reasons behind bannings, they give the end user means to weasel their way back into the system and leverage to the RMT as well. Do you want the RMTs back? Well, let's just open the floodgates and make SE give us reasons for what they're doing.

Its their game, they can do what they want with it. You do not own your character in any way, shape or form. You purchase a license to access it and nothing more. Point to your physical copies of games all you want, you do not own those properties, you own a license to access them and little else.

[ItazuraNhomango]

Re: Rally 'round to send Square-Enix a message!

The entire idea of banning someone who has just been struggling to pay for their game is ludicrous, and this is what I've gathered from a lot of the posting on BG in the "LM-17 wtf" thread.

Don't know a kinder way of saying this, but people who are struggling to pay for the monthly fee should have bigger, more pressing worries than getting banned.

* * *

I regularly talk with about ~15 people in-game, would catch wind of people's happening in LS quickly, and sort of would be interested in probably 30~50 other people and would get info by word of mouth if they are banned. As of last night, I know of NO ONE banned.

Speculations aside, no clue what SE is or isn't doing, but the bottom line is clear; the banning so far it has ZERO effect on me.

Not that I'm completely unsympathetic to those wrongly booted out of the game, but the only thing pervasive right now seems to be the hysteria.

[Kailea]

Re: Rally 'round to send Square-Enix a message!

lol Se has no logic, wow, people really need to wise up. We as the players, dont have near the amount of info SE has at a touch of a few keys. How can we say there is no "logic" when we have so many "unknown" factors to deal with. Just alot of people all QQing at once.

[Aksannyi]

Re: Rally 'round to send Square-Enix a message!

Don't know a kinder way of saying this, but people who are struggling to pay for the monthly fee should have bigger, more pressing worries than getting banned.

Except I need to do something in my spare time, don't I? I could go out and get drunk for $50 a week or I could stay in and play a video game with my free time. I can't be all work and no play without going insane, this is something that's been proven. And that's beside the point, the point is the money I paid my accounts with is mine, and I'm perfectly within my rights to tell SE that I'm not interested in them taking money from Visa A, when I want them to instead charge Visa B. This is the reason I was banned, and that's absolute and total bullshit.

Their statement that they can terminate you at any time for any reason is a cop out and you all know it. They are saying that so they can catch you with their little RMT-PWNER because you decided to fish one day instead of XP, and ban you for it saying, "Well, you looked like RMT. Oh, you're not? Well, we can still ban you, because we said we can." That's terrible service. Absolutely terrible. There are at least appeals processes in other games for the banned. Large scale RMT operations will not appeal because they don't have a damn leg to stand on. Legitimate players who get caught by an automated ban tool will.

Everyone who touts the ToS and says you can be banned at anytime is perfectly happy to run that line over and over and over, until they get banned, even when they did nothing against the ToS. Just because they say they can, doesn't mean they should, and it makes them look like heartless assholes who don't care. They don't listen to anything anyone says about their damn game or their shitty practices and it's time someone spoke up about it.

I was legitimately paying for two accounts (when I could, I'll admit I had some hard times, paying for stupid books that you "have to have" but never actually use in school is fucking bank rape) and one of them got banned, only because I change my credit card, perhaps more frequently than most. And the other one, which also gets changed fairly frequently, was temp banned but then unbanned. Where's the consistency? Same account name, same credit cards. Make sense? Hell no.

They need to fix their shit and they need to actually listen to their customers. They do neither. This is why I won't pay them another cent of my money.

[Kailea]

Re: Rally 'round to send Square-Enix a message!

LIke SE is the only one that does this, this is nothign enw, and has been around since Ultima Online, people know this when starting to play these things, and then get upset later. SE has the legal right to do what they want, when they want, for any reason they want. Is it fare, no not really, can you do somthign about it? Yes call customer support, they wont help you? Call again and again till someone does. If you where banned "for no reason" then you can get yourself unbanned.

[Aksannyi]

Re: Rally 'round to send Square-Enix a message!

That's the thing, I called about 20 times and they all told me the same thing, "illegal activity" which is ... stupid I guess. I'm done fighting with them, they don't want to take 5 minutes to see that my account name and my credit card names all match, well, fuck them.

I still think it's fucked up and that I have a pretty good reason to bitch though, lol.

[ItazuraNhomango]

Re: Rally 'round to send Square-Enix a message!

Except I need to do something in my spare time, don't I? I could go out and get drunk for $50 a week or I could stay in and play a video game with my free time. I can't be all work and no play without going insane, this is something that's been proven. And that's beside the point, the point is the money I paid my accounts with is mine, and I'm perfectly within my rights to tell SE that I'm not interested in them taking money from Visa A, when I want them to instead charge Visa B. This is the reason I was banned, and that's absolute and total bullshit.

Not that it matters much for this topic, but I guess I can point out when one pays using a credit card, it isn't his or her money--it's the bank's money. Yes, it really is other people's money. Of course, it is one's own money when paying the credit card back, unless it's paying off one card with another.

I can also point out there are plenty of recreational alternatives which can be cheaper (free air shows), healthier (jogging/biking), and even good for family bonding (um, airshows, book fair, farmer's market, various cultural festivals, something...? Don't have kids myself... Can you bond over preparing picnic lunch together?) compared to beer and a video games which requires a player to concentrate on the monitor to the exclusion of his surroundings, but I would be guilty of hypocrisy since I'm an FFXI addict who don't participate in those things much.

Well, OK, I do make use of the public library and its books frequently. I even watch the (free, over the airwave) TV at times. (Local news and reality shows make my eye roll, but PBS can be interesting when not in kiddy mode.)

[Aksannyi]

Re: Rally 'round to send Square-Enix a message!

Up until recently I didn't have a TV (my dad got a new one though so he gave me his old one! yay!) so I didn't really have that, but I was just making a comparison, comparatively, for something I enjoy doing, FFXI is a lot cheaper than some other alternatives, and kept me occupied for far longer. And I won't deny I was pretty addicted, too. Although lately without it I've become quite the annoying troll on forums, but I made the decision to quit and I miss it a little less every day. It's probably similar to quitting smoking, on a lesser scale though.

So yeah, it was probably a bit fucked up to scramble for the extra money, although I figure it's better than twiddling my thumbs which is what I would have been left doing. (Gas to go to any of those places is expensive, etc.) So I had to scrounge a bit and cut back some things to be sure I had the $15.95. I'm probably not the only to have ever done that, but I guess my way of paying looked shady to them.

Oh well. It's over. I shouldn't complain so much because I did quit, but it really just bugged me that I'd really done nothing wrong or abnormal.

[Pawkeshup]

Re: Rally 'round to send Square-Enix a message!

So when 5 to, oh, 24 accounts are paid off the very same card, its not just a little suspicious to you? Then the credit card changes to accomodate the same accounts.

Did you know that RMT in China will sign up for credit cards under one little sweatshop and max that credit card before moving to the next card to cover those accounts? RMTPWNER profiles this stuff.

Did you also know that RMTPWNer also flags things like accounts with more than one character that gardens, anyone that fishes, as well as those people who NPC harvests regardless of whether or not the gil they generate actually leaves the accounts that are generating the gil?

And again, its their turf you're playing on - they don't need a reason to ban you at all. If you go to Six Flags, you can get escorted out of Six Flags without explanation. Its their park and they don't owe you anything.

But at the same time, this company should realize that frivilously banning customer will lead to the demise of their subscription base, as well as jeopardize their future MMO offerings. I do not expect anything for my monthly fee beyond the ability to play. However, coming to me one day and stating "Sorry, for reasons we will not tell you, you're banned" definitely would leave me pissed off and demanding some answers. Now have I (or Jinte) been banned? No, but we all know someone who has. There was one very famous case on Alla where a guy with a fisherman mule that got banned not one, not twice, but three times. And each time, he was told that he got nailed due to the RMT-PWNER, and that it would not happen again. Yet it did, and still does to many people.

Square-Enix has constantly moved away from serving their customers to serving their own laziness. The great conspiracy of the security token is the biggest joke I've ever seen. Allakhazam (and I'd bet here) have more security than the average account SE has. Did you know that you can change all your information (account name, address, password, payment info and password) and NOT be logged out at any time to verify any of it? Hell, at Alla, if I change my e-mail, it forces me to log out and re-validate! That step right there would have put a roadblock to hackers. Sure, they could also get the info to log into their email to authorize the changes, but it would still be better than 0 security measures at all.

This new credit card nonsense is the same thing. They had chargebacks due to overbilling their clients, hacked accounts that people wanted refunds on, and what not. Again they place the responsibility on their client instead of taking steps themselves to audit their own procedures.

This would be similar to a phone company telling you that if you want to keep using their lines, you have to go climb the pole outside your house and rewire it for them. These administrative issues should be the sole responsibility of the service provider. No other MMO I've ever been a part of has required anything like this, nor will they.

See, once they start giving reasons behind bannings, they give the end user means to weasel their way back into the system and leverage to the RMT as well. Do you want the RMTs back? Well, let's just open the floodgates and make SE give us reasons for what they're doing.

This is an absolute cop-out. Providing the reasons behind the multiple bannings would allow legitimate players avoid the behavior to begin with. But considering that it's not a human being doing the banning, but a piece of software, I think it would be handy to tell them that they've seriously screwed something up and should, you know, review any accounts subject to be banned.

And, news flash, RMT is still here! At least 4 new services have opened to provide gil to people in the last 6 month, as shown by the appearance of brogames et all! So you know what this proves? It proves that all their methods still aren't stopping the sale of gil. All it's doing is controlling the influx of them to some degree and banning legitimate players in the process. This new validation step will slow them slightly, but as already seen, prepaid cards can be used just as well with this validation as are normal cards. It will stop nothing, and all it does is further infuriate the player base.

Its their game, they can do what they want with it. You do not own your character in any way, shape or form. You purchase a license to access it and nothing more. Point to your physical copies of games all you want, you do not own those properties, you own a license to access them and little else.

And you can sit on your high horse till the day your friends start disappearing because they, too, get caught by a mindless database crawling piece of shite software, just don't come crying in any forums in regard to it. Because, in your mind, anyone banned was already guilty of something!

[ItazuraNhomango]

Re: Rally 'round to send Square-Enix a message!

And you can sit on your high horse till the day your friends start disappearing because they, too, get caught by a mindless database crawling piece of shite software, just don't come crying in any forums in regard to it.

And, what percentage of the people you know have been banned because SE messed up within the past month? 1 out of 10? 1 out of 25? 1 out of 100? 1 out of 500?

Really, how big of a problem is this? Currently, it looks like people are running scared of the upcoming CC policy change and blowing the may-or-may-not-be related problem of problematic banning out of proportion.

Seriously, with the avalanche of posting across all the forums, you'd think every other player is already LM-17'ed. Give me a break...