False Positives Happen: The Response Is What Counts

Good morning/day folks,

A couple of threads on this topic appeared during the night and rather than replying to each one of them I thought I’d create a new one.

We have, as you know, recently banned a large number of users for violating our User Agreement. If you found yourself unable to log in after the night, that would be the reason.

If you are 100% sure you have not been involved with any activity that would violate our User Agreement (this would also include anything related to RMT), then we suggest contacting our Customer Support team at Support | NCsoft who will be able to look into your case.

We understand that the timing is very inconvenient and will make sure that inquiries on this matter are made top priority. Our GMs will be working through the weekend to sort this out as quickly as possible.

– Ayase

Mass bans in any game remind us as to why police officers don’t take down an armed suspect in a crowded mall by firing an automatic rifle into the crowd and hoping to hit him. You’ll hit your mark eventually, but you are the one that will be explaining to little Tina why daddy won’t be waking up.

When the subject turns to real money trading (RMT), the situation turns from cop-in-mall to a McCarthy style commie hunt, the commies being the gold farmers and buyers (Note: Not a jab at China). Hunting down goldfarmers is akin to searching for a criminal by attempting to listen to their thoughts (Note: You are not Matt Parkman, nor do you work for the FAA). Banning for gold is an even hairier issue. Take for example the following issue: Xkcd sends TwinkpOwn892735 twenty thousand gold. R3dsp0t sends X Dalton X twenty thousand gold. Both of these transactions actually happened in an unnamed MMO, and one of the two were gold farmers. I’ll come back to that later.

The issue of false positives appearing in a goldfarming related mass ban, in Aion, was large enough to garner a developer response, as noted above. If you were banned, and you were 100% sure you didn’t violate the EULA, then send them a message and they will personally investigate your account. Any way you spin this, NCSoft is at least marginally admitting that they may have made a mistake with at least a small group of players.

I’ve mentioned before that NCsoft is putting a lot of work into making the user experience the best it can be. In response to the server queue issues, NCsoft has already taken action to reduce the clog on the servers, introduce new servers, allow free server transfers for people who did not want to re-roll characters, addressing gold spammers, increasing experience gained in quests, and promises of major content updates once a year.

Recent reports show Aion has what most other MMOs dream of: A high retention rate. Not only is the MMO that dominated sales charts, for multiple months, gaining countless new players each day, but it is keeping them. Perhaps NCsoft wasn’t insane when they declared themselves as the (to be) #2 most popular MMO underneath World of Warcraft.

Oh, and about the quiz I gave above: If you chose banning Xkcd and TwinkpOwn, you were wrong. Xkcd named himself after a popular webcomic, but thanks to his name coming off as jumbled and nonsensical (The kind an account bot would create), in any comparison he is likely to be picked out as the gold farmer. Also, with a name like TwinkpOwn and that many numbers, players are likely to assume he is no older than thirteen, and will judge him based on the fact that his username is obnoxious.

Choosing random usernames for mule accounts is a pretty elementary mistake, as they are easy to pick out. In a survey I personally set up, players were also more likely to choose the user who’s screen name sounded particularly Asian. Nine times out of ten, with equal evidence, XingJiang will be banned over John Connor.