Segueing to our next topic, look it’s Aion again! Barely a day after announcing the introduction of G-Unit (Not the rappers, as I discovered) to fight bots in Aion, NCsoft has announced a mass ban following the maintenance reboot earlier this morning. Nearly sixteen thousand accounts, too. The bans are anything from gold farming, botting, buying gold, to spamming and advertising.
So is there any recourse for players who feel they were wrongly banned? Unlikely, as NCsoft feels quite sure of themselves, using multiple instances as evidence rather than just one. If you do feel that you were banned improperly, you can always create a support ticket to have it looked at.
I wrote this knowing that I’m going to get a lot of emails asking “Why are you pushing NCsoft’s propaganda?” Two years ago, I would have picked Jagex for the most dramatic mass bans with the trade restrictions and other massive game mechanic changes. This year, however, the prize definitely goes to NCsoft and Aion for the most dramatic showmanship. The sixteen thousand on paper sounds great, until you go in-game on the same day to realize that the bots are back in full force.
More after the break…
Not to say that NCWest is being lazy, but it is difficult for a 40 man team to beat back thousands of gold farmers pouring into the game every week. Thus I am using this venue to officially announce my candidacy for NCWest’s Bot Banning Efficiency Manager. Forget 16,000 accounts, my mass bans (not unlike my intended salary) will contain six digits, and will occur every other day. Why would I be more efficient than a 40 man team? Well for starters, I don’t have any of that pesky developing to do in addition to banning bots, so that gives me a few hours. The whole not sleeping thing is a bonus, and the willingness to work off the books and have my overtime paid in subscriptions to various competing MMOs (It would certainly break down my paperwork, keeping track of my various subscriptions). I’ve heard performing mass bans should be pretty easy, considering all I would have to do is walk through the main towns and ban the legions of private shops advertising websites.
If anything, this bodes well for NCsoft financially. If all of those bots come back, and they were referring to 16,000 accounts, that goes to 16,000 fresh Aion units that will be selling in the next several weeks.
So hopefully this bodes well for Aion, the recently introduced Game Surveillance Unit, and my impromptu resume. Sure there is likely a few accounts of collateral damage, someone making a sarcastic comment on buying their uber-character online. Before I forget, I don’t discriminate on what form my paycheck comes in, but preferably not Zimbabwean dollars or Linden Dollars.
More on me banning you from Aion as it appears.
MMO Fallout 