Tag: Ban

Why Does ArcheAge Have Sixteen Thousand Spammers?


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ArcheAge is currently in alpha stage getting ready for its launch under Trion Worlds. Players are in-game thanks to a $150 package, where they are bug testing, balance testing, and apparently gold farming and spamming in massive quantities. How massive? Trion Worlds banned sixteen thousand accounts for spamming chat and botting gold. In an alpha.

We’re pleased to report that over 16,000 nasty, evil, foul, and most importantly misbehaving accounts have been reactively and proactively removed from Alpha. These accounts were purchased using ill-gotten funds and have been used to farm gold with bots and to spam chat channels, neither of which is allowed in ArcheAge.

Patch 1.2 arrives next week and gives Trion more power to rid the game of evil spammers and farmers.

(Source: ArcheAge)

Zenimax Realtime Bans


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It looks like Zenimax is ramping up their efforts against gold farmers in The Elder Scrolls Online. Intrepid explorer Necropsie over at the MMORPG.com forums snapped a screenshot in-game of a game master announcing to the area to step away from the boss or be slain. Presumably those slain by the GM would have their accounts flagged for review, if not banned outright.

This isn’t the first time an MMO has employed lethal force against bot. Back in the day, Aion GM’s could be seen executing accounts used to spam gold selling websites.

Zenimax Admits False Positives In Mass Bans


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Zenimax Studios has announced that an investigation following a recent mass ban resulted in a number of false positives discovered and reversed. While the forum post in question did not mention just how many accounts were caught by accident, it did report that players identified should have had their bans lifted as of last night.

As part of our continuing effort to combat gold spammers, botters and exploiters, we recently banned a number of accounts. After several players appealed, we were able to investigate the matter further and discovered some legitimate accounts got caught up in the sweep. We unbanned accounts last night, and have email responses going out for those affected from our support group. It is never our intention for legitimate players to be harmed as we work to keep your game free of cheaters, and we sincerely apologize for the mistake.

This week has not been kind to Elder Scrolls Online, with Zenimax shutting down the game’s guild bank temporarily following the discovery of an item duplication exploit, as well as reports that players were being banned after their characters fell through the game world. The world of Tamriel is still being slowly taken over by a massive army of bots and gold farmers, and the company is still working on a fix for players missing banked items, deposited gold, skill points, etc.

(Source: Elder Scrolls Online)

Elder Scrolls Online: Fall Through World And Get Banned?


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Be careful when traveling through the lands of Tamriel. According to a growing number of reports on the official Elder Scrolls forums as well as third party websites, players are experiencing situations where their character is either falling through geometry or being catapulted off of the world and into the abyss below. I personally experienced the bug on the fourth when I jumped into the queen and was thrown completely off of the map (pictured below). It looks as though Zenimax has implemented some sort of anti-cheat measures since then to prevent exploitation, because players are reporting that falling through the world will now result in a disconnection from the server and automatic suspension of one’s account.

If you are caught by this system, the only thing you can do is to contact support and appeal the ban.

eso 2014-04-04 14-43-47-01

Not Massive: Sony Won't Ban You For Early Playing


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If my childhood is anything to go off of, Sony’s consistent public contradiction of Microsoft is going to net them a belt buckle to the head, you know once the two are out of the public view. Take Two and Rockstar Games have been going insane with shutting down any outlet for pre-release Grand Theft Auto V goodies, going as far as apparently threatening legal action against some publications. Look around and you’ll find a pile of now banned accounts on Livestream, Youtube, and more.

Microsoft has continued their policy of working in tandem with the publisher and handing out console bans to anyone caught leaking pre-release gameplay, IE: Anyone caught streaming or posting screenshots/captures of their gameplay online. It is important to the conversation to point out that the bans are related to the leaking of game footage before the official street date, and not the mere act of playing the game.

Enter Sony, a company whose past few months of public relations can be whittled down to “the opposite of what Microsoft just said.” Sony is not banning anyone with a legitimate copy of GTA V who post footage of their game online before Tuesday’s launch, a move that will likely net them brownie points with the gaming community if at the expense of Rockstar’s goodwill.

If you do manage to get ahold of a copy, you’re pretty safe as long as you don’t start streaming or leaking footage.

Not Massive: Sony Won’t Ban You For Early Playing


GTA_V_59100

If my childhood is anything to go off of, Sony’s consistent public contradiction of Microsoft is going to net them a belt buckle to the head, you know once the two are out of the public view. Take Two and Rockstar Games have been going insane with shutting down any outlet for pre-release Grand Theft Auto V goodies, going as far as apparently threatening legal action against some publications. Look around and you’ll find a pile of now banned accounts on Livestream, Youtube, and more.

Microsoft has continued their policy of working in tandem with the publisher and handing out console bans to anyone caught leaking pre-release gameplay, IE: Anyone caught streaming or posting screenshots/captures of their gameplay online. It is important to the conversation to point out that the bans are related to the leaking of game footage before the official street date, and not the mere act of playing the game.

Enter Sony, a company whose past few months of public relations can be whittled down to “the opposite of what Microsoft just said.” Sony is not banning anyone with a legitimate copy of GTA V who post footage of their game online before Tuesday’s launch, a move that will likely net them brownie points with the gaming community if at the expense of Rockstar’s goodwill.

If you do manage to get ahold of a copy, you’re pretty safe as long as you don’t start streaming or leaking footage.

Jagex Ignoring Permanent Ban Appeals


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No system is perfect, which is why companies institute checks and balances to ensure that people are not unfairly punished. In the case of Jagex, the company is pretty confident that if you’ve been permanently banned, there’s nothing more to talk about. According to the company’s account FAQ, appeals for permanent bans are not being looked at.

If your account is currently permanently banned, we deem the offence serious enough to permanently remove the account from our game. At the moment, we are not reviewing these bans and if this changes, you will be notified.

If it is any consolation, the player who sent us this tip noted that it the rule isn’t exactly being enforced and there are some false positives being restored.

(Source: RuneScape Wiki)

MMOments: One Man's Ban Is Another Man's Treasure


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Playing 07Scape, I stumbled across a rather ingenious way to level up fletching (bowmaking) by buying logs from the general store, turning them into unfinished bows, and selling them back. You see, the genius of this plan is that the logs sell for less than the store will buy the unfinished bows. A paltry profit of four coins per bow, but it does mean that I can sit there and gain experience while sacrificing nothing in the process, so long as I can find a world where bots players are selling logs to the store. I joked over Twitter that I’d probably get banned if I were in, say, Guild Wars 2.

And then reality struck: There are actually games that would ban me for doing this. Whenever an mmo issues a mass ban for players finding a way to make money by playing NPC shop prices, I receive emails from other gamers asking how you could possibly think that such an action was within the rules. The answer is pretty simple: It is, at least elsewhere.

If an MMO doesn’t want players to be able to utilize shops in such a manner, that’s fine. That said, it doesn’t seem appropriate at all to ban players on the first offense with an attitude that they should have known all along that what they were doing wasn’t kosher. Instead of reaching for the banhammer, simply send the player a warning. Remove the profits they made, why not.

Such an activity isn’t as obvious as, say, using bot accounts or cheats. The topic of making a profit by buying from one NPC and selling to another is rarely mentioned in a game’s terms of service, instead it is hidden in the “don’t exploit stuff” clause. It isn’t as obvious to the player as the developer often thinks it is.

MMOments: One Man’s Ban Is Another Man’s Treasure


scaperune3

Playing 07Scape, I stumbled across a rather ingenious way to level up fletching (bowmaking) by buying logs from the general store, turning them into unfinished bows, and selling them back. You see, the genius of this plan is that the logs sell for less than the store will buy the unfinished bows. A paltry profit of four coins per bow, but it does mean that I can sit there and gain experience while sacrificing nothing in the process, so long as I can find a world where bots players are selling logs to the store. I joked over Twitter that I’d probably get banned if I were in, say, Guild Wars 2.

And then reality struck: There are actually games that would ban me for doing this. Whenever an mmo issues a mass ban for players finding a way to make money by playing NPC shop prices, I receive emails from other gamers asking how you could possibly think that such an action was within the rules. The answer is pretty simple: It is, at least elsewhere.

If an MMO doesn’t want players to be able to utilize shops in such a manner, that’s fine. That said, it doesn’t seem appropriate at all to ban players on the first offense with an attitude that they should have known all along that what they were doing wasn’t kosher. Instead of reaching for the banhammer, simply send the player a warning. Remove the profits they made, why not.

Such an activity isn’t as obvious as, say, using bot accounts or cheats. The topic of making a profit by buying from one NPC and selling to another is rarely mentioned in a game’s terms of service, instead it is hidden in the “don’t exploit stuff” clause. It isn’t as obvious to the player as the developer often thinks it is.