Account Banned -- But Why Can They Still Play?

[Lord Kynd]

I wouldn't be pissed at EA. But my kid wouldn't sit solid for a good month. QUOTE]

kinda violent are we ?
you know you can go to jail, get put on the registry thingie, and loose your kid for doing that ?

and how would you ( not person i am quoting) prove who was playing what account ?
are you going to sit with a cam corder filming your every UO moment just for proof you didn't do something ?
even that isn't good enough either being as all footage can be manipulated,photos edited,messages edited.. etc..


risk vers. reward
these people knew the risk's. period

you might get away with something for a little bit, but eventually it will bite you in the arse.

 

[drinkbeerallday]

Yeah... getting back on topic, I'm in complete agreement with ya (hence why I started the thread). It just doesn't make any sense, because they can just pick right up where they left off without any additional effort.

And to my understanding, not only were the accounts banned, but they were supposed to also block the credit card number associated with the account.

Obviously people paying by gametime don't have this issue, because banning by IP address could take out all of the AOLers -- or potentially any IP that wasn't dynamically assigned, so it's an insecure method of banning.

But credit card number is very secure. They're unique.

your credit card number can be changed simply by calling your bank or the credit card company. you will get a new card in a few days.

 

[drinkbeerallday]

People, admire the defensive position of an exploiter. Don't try to tell me anything else, this position can only belong to an exploiter.

"It's not their fault". I suppose that if you got robbed because you forget your house door unlocked it's not a robber's fault as well.

People are ALWAYS responsible for their action, and that includes exploiting. When you joined th game you agreed not to exploit. You did. So you are banned, or at least I hope so. Better late than never.

Mind you, I do agree that EA is responsible to fix the game so that cheating is not possible, just as much as you are responsible to lock your door when you go out. But that does not detract from the fact that you cheated. It was your choice, not EA. Period.

Bha, what a waste of electrons...

i didn't get banned and i don't cheat. and yes I'm sure they know who I am.

 

[Lord Kynd]

Cheats/Exploits have been running rampent in this game for years if your stupid enough to use them or Buy that rare pixel even tho there shouldn't be as many you should get banned Buyer Beware.

Kids these days dont care about UO. Fact is one of Pacific's more popular PvP forums just opened a board just to post scripts,cheats,exploits,dupes in. its saddening.

all the more reason to support such a site, i would rather be informed as to what is going on than to be left in the dark and be scared to do anything. least there i could find out what not to do.
it is up to the that person who gets to pick what they do in there life, not anyone else but that person.

very positive thing.
what is the addy please ?

also such site's would keep EA/Mythic on there toe's and maybe actually do something about the stuff posted. E-mails are a crappy way to report things.
also
it would be easier for EA/Mythic to find out about bugs and all that and the steps ...if posted there.. needed to replecate the actions so they can fix them.


god i wish people would stop being dence and single minded. be informed, be safe !

this stance on total silance is definitly not working, not when you have at least 1/2 the game population to scared to do anything because they do not know what they can do anymore.

 

[drinkbeerallday]

Buyer Beware. .

no, not buyer beware.

players who did not cheat should not be banned. period.

 

[drinkbeerallday]

No one is forcing ANYONE to play this game. It is by choice. No one forces ANYONE to break the rules. Again it is by choice.

That is, in my opinion, the problem with society now, the inability to take responsibility for one's actions. If you choose to break a rule you should take the responsibility for it also NOT blame anyone and everyone else.

I agree. but it is not a crime to cheat in a video game. people shouldn't be treated like the scum of the earth because they gamed the system.

you broke a stupid rule, fine you get banned. that is the punishment. it is not like you beat your kids like radial filth

 

[Lucy of Kenton]

ok wellagree with the comment above about wilki. tbh i dont now care who i upset at ea and frankly wilki was the last person who actually seemed to know how the players felt and was open and frank. nothing that i have seen of jeremy leads me to believe that she has the same frankness and openness and professionalism that the wilkster had.
during teh mass bannings and trillions seized way back when there was a europa player we all knew was involved in bad things bleating on here and wilki came on and made it perfectly clear what he had done confirming what we knew.

 

[Lady_Mina]

no, not buyer beware.

players who did not cheat should not be banned. period.

word !

people who did not commit the crime , should not have to pay for a crime someone else has committed.

This EA justice system does NOT make any sense...

It's pure poison and ruining the community.
EA already has very little REAL UO costumers left , who have been faithful and playing by the rules for YEARS...and now they're punnished.

It's currently safer if you don't log in at all...so you can't feel tempted sell , trade , buy...

 

[Lord Kynd]

There will always be cheaters. It is not their fault. They are merely exploiters. That is not even a IRL crime. The real criminals here are EA. They promise a specific product, then fail to produce it.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------


Real life crime?? Check this out, they are replicating copyrighted artwork, yes, it can be a crime.....blaming EA's a cop out......
QUOTE]


i don't know if i agree with this..
now if the person took that image and sold it to another company or put it on there own product that would be illegal, but if the image resides on the original server ( EA's) then it is still EA's they just got another one.

just end all outside sale's of items/gold and the UO world will be alot better, stop the supply of oxygen and the fire will go out.

artwork is a very strange place when it comes to law's.
you can't take a picture/image of a blade of grass and sue someone else for taking the same picture. but yet every picture/image you take with your camera is considered 'art'.


then again i am not a lawer, i hire them when needed, so not sure 100%.

seems these people being banned and saying they where wronged, or it was a mistake should elist the help of a good attorney.
obviously it is enough to make you come here and cry, why not do something about it that might actually do something ?? oh wait, your banned and now can't sell your crap for cash so now you can't afford one. lol

 

[Nails Warstein]

It is a very valid and disturbing question. It discredits EA and makes me wonder just how effective they were at banning the big cheaters who would have dozens of accounts. But, I would not hold my breath on getting any type of response as usual.

Nothing against Jeremy but I miss the amount of information we used to get when Wilki was doing the same job. For instance, we were given a very nice breakdown of number of accounts banned, gold deleted, etc. by Wilki. Everything seemed to be much better coordinated. I don't know whose fault it is or where the lines of communications are being broken but the quality of information that we get has definitely deteriorated. This brings up another question: Is this because Jeremy is not located on site? Of course I don't expect a response to this either.

Compared to Wilki, I think Jeremy is unfortunately on the low rung of the totem pole, and gets very little information from EA that she is even allowed to share. She is most likely on a "need to know basis" and EA probably determined she doesn't need to know anything that we as a community would care about. Otherwise they wouldn't pay to send them all over the country with "little to no information" on Stygian Abyss.

 

[Arabella]

this stance on total silance is definitly not working, not when you have at least 1/2 the game population to scared to do anything because they do not know what they can do anymore.

You got that right, people are terribly upset over this. I have a total 8 accts that myself and family members play on, I was scared everything I logged in to a different acct. to check on them. I can't imagine the heartbreak of finding out that one of your accts were banned for just buying something.

 

[Xalan Dementia]

mmmbeer, i mean drinkbeerallday, if you hate this game so much then leave the forums. nearly every post by you is bashing ea/devs. Its simple, they cant fix a dupe bug that hasnt been created. everytime they add somethin or change something in game it has the chance of a bug/exploit side affect. So if you really want no more bugs then you will have no new content. Common sense.

 

[Lady_Mina]

Sorry but about the 'lock your door' story.

In this case it's EA who forgot to lock their door...and dupers are stealing their stuff out of their house and selling it on the marcket.

How is the buyer suposed to know he's buying a stolen tv?

And i don't think the police will put that person into jail for life for buying a stolen tv...they will rather look for the person selling the stolen goods and lock him up.

 

[Aboo]

you broke a stupid rule, fine you get banned. that is the punishment. it is not like you beat your kids like radial filth

I agree that is the punishment for breaking a rule, stupid or not you (figuratively not necessarily YOU) agreed to it when you decided to play.

As for beating your kid, I'm old school, I believe a spanking sometimes is good. Consequently I raised 4 wonderful children who even when young and I took them into stores I would have strangers stop me just to tell me how wonderfully behaved my children were. Why? Because Mom didn't threaten a spanking if I didn't intend to carry through on it and I didn't wait until they got to the car. They got it there in the store in front of everyone. However, a swat on the bottom is a far cry from a beating. If my grandson cheated in UO or any game he played, I don't believe I would spank him for it, but he would lose his computer priviledges for a very long time and the fact that I wouldn't trust him would be devastating to him.

I also think that if more parents would take the approach that they are their children's PARENT and NOT their FRIEND we might have more well behaved children.

 

[Connor_Graham]

I've explained this 100 times. If you ban/bust people they will be back and they will be back even stronger. The idea is to have Dev's/QA not allow these game breaking bugs in the first place.

Never forget that the full responsibility and blame for this lies solely on the Dev's / Jeremy / QA Team. They are at fault. It is sad they won't admit it, but whatever. It is still true.

And of course human error, and the fact that it's unavoidable in computer coding, has no part to play in it right?

 

[MYUO]

I don't understand why you guys make this matter more complicated than it is.

The simple logic is: the dev banned all the accounts of the dupers. As for the "traders" who were trying to profit from the mass dupe, their main accounts and/or the accounts holding the duped items were banned. This is the approperite punishment IMO.

 

[RaDian FlGith]

Ever think that the reason only the account with the bad items was banned, and not the others with the same details, was because they were being easy on her because it was likely that it was through purchasing duped rares that she wound up on the list?

Well, if that's the case, then it's absolutely ridiculous, and if, as some are saying, they really did just do a dragnet of people with these duped items in possession -- which means that some of them could have legitimately been purchased (and honestly, I don't know the criteria for the ban -- none of us do), then there's a fundamental flaw with how they've performed it.

There can't be two ways on the banning issue. You can't just do a wide sweeping ban and not take all accounts, and you can't just say, "Well, we'll go easy on this group and only ban one of their accounts..." Because that presumes that everyone caught that they're "going easy" on has multiple accounts. It also says that they're unsure of why they're banning people in the first place.

A ban is a ban. A ban means, "You are no longer allowed to play this game." In the past, that meant, "You are no longer allowed to play this game, and we no longer desire your money, ALL of your accounts are gone."

Whatever THIS situation is, it's wrong, and if mistakes have been made, then it's being handled wrong.

And I have to admit, reading Trev's post, I'm starting to think there may be something SERIOUSLY wrong on the EA Mythic end of things, because, yeah, this ban with people still able to play DOES seem to mean that they aren't looking at anything other than whatever met the automated ban criteria they used. I question whether a human even looked at the ban results before executing them.

 

[Smokey of LS]

yea i find it funny the people that say its 100% ea fault... but the devs as far as they know thier codes are good, so until they hear or find out about the bad code... "dupes" exploits bugs or whatever its there job to fix that... unfortunately for you dupers... there are rules and regulations to this game that must be followd.... so if you decided to exploit these bugs the devs havent found yet... your at fault and know better than to do it... and if you decide to... hmm guess it could be your A$$ in the bag.... players fault 100%

 

[Plucky Duck]

Here's the other aspect the real arsehat dupers cheaters know exactly how to make there punishment from cheating minimal. Bye using newbie accounts and bye extracting there goods and items to there mains frequently and bye using Gift Card time codes or bye using gift Card CCs tied to them so there main accounts are not tied to the same CC info and bye using a secondary comp or a false IP so it again is not tied to there mains and using false names when putting in there CC info.

All this would do is punish the ignorant idiot whom either bye not being informed violated the ROC (and no ignorance is not an excuse so there banning are a good lesson for them to be better informed) bye buying to many duped items or saying or discussing something in game there not supposed to.

So again I think them having there offending account they didn't follow the rules with is punishment enough because most of those that are the real hardcore blatant cheaters know how to cheat and know how to get around getting all there accounts banned. I think most adults and ignorantly get an account banned after reflection of there stupid will take there lumps and accept it and become better informed and stay abut if you were to take away all there accounts they wouldn't bother and all the while if they saw the cheaters still thriving no way they would even attempt to continue playing.
With most of the player base agreeing all cheating will never be stopped the Dev's are trying at least and we should look at it that way instead of looking and every negative nuance to everything they do involving uo. Also most of us would agree uo has limited numbers and we need to keep as many players as we can and we cant stop the cheating or completely get rid of the cheaters so we shouldn't try and flush a honest player that just did something polarizing stupid as allot of players are claiming happened with this recent set of bannings.

 

[Trebr Drab]

Having watched this game since beta days, I always thought it was strange how old bugs return for exploitation, how banned accounts get turned back on, how old lessons seem to get ignored (like the recent event's looting), and how there are always numerous strangeness to their behaviors (such as this).

On top of it all, with AoS they've gone to a system that's tailored for RMT, which leads to cheats, by placing the most valuable and sought after items in predictable places and with predictable behaviors.
And then, just for more pudding, they added the ability to Mod the game with KR.
They've done just about everything wrong.

 

[Demonous]

Okay, I'm going to open the Pandora's box that most people just banned don't want opened, but honestly, I want an answer...

If you folks at EA Mythic just banned a lot of accounts for duping, WHY have you NOT banned ALL of their accounts? There are a number of people on this board complaining about being banned, but still have other accounts to log in with -- and at least two have said they have the same CC info across accounts.

If you're going to ban, I expect that you're going to ban properly and completely, because if these people ARE dupers or trading in dupes, I don't want them playing on ANY account, and if you're not going to ban ALL of their accounts, then what's the point of banning just one?

EA is supposed to IP ban people when they do something serious like duping, apparently they don't know how to

 

[RaDian FlGith]

kinda violent are we ?
you know you can go to jail, get put on the registry thingie, and loose your kid for doing that ?

Kinda an exaggeration. But yeah, the kid would get a spanking. And no, as of yet in this state, they don't jail for spankings. Not that I'm going to get back into this discussion, but to clarify that it's an exaggeration.

and how would you ( not person i am quoting) prove who was playing what account ?
are you going to sit with a cam corder filming your every UO moment just for proof you didn't do something ?
even that isn't good enough either being as all footage can be manipulated,photos edited,messages edited.. etc..

(Understanding this wasn't directed at me...) That's the very problem with the situation. The presumption (and fact) is that the person paying for the account owns the account. I suppose we can use another bad analogy, but at least they correlate... It would be like taking a gun away from someone involved in a shooting crime, but saying, "Well, that's the gun you shot with, so we're taking that one... it's okay for you to keep the rest of your arsenal."

 

[Connor_Graham]

I think part of EA's goal was not only to ban the dupers themselves, but also some of the people that were supporting them by buying the things they were selling in order to send a message to the players that the copout of "how am I supposed to know it's a duped item" wasn't going to fly any more. From the reactions here on Stratics it looks like it's worked. I don't think the dupers are going to have much demand for their low priced high end stuff for quite a while. The people that only had a single account banned & deleted were probably left with the remainder of their accounts so they could continue to play if they so chose, but still got their slap on the wrist for buying & posessing duped items.

 

[RaDian FlGith]

no, not buyer beware.

players who did not cheat should not be banned. period.

This is the only thing you've said thus far that I agree with you on. People who did not cheat should not be banned, and if they're going to allow dupers to sell things in-game, and there's no way (save having some sort of clairvoyance as to what certain items *should* cost before you buy them) that you can tell a duped item from a non-duped item, then they should NOT just go around banning people for having bought something.

These concepts are not exclusive of each other though. I'm not saying they could not have wrongly banned someone.

I simply believe that they should follow through on the previous policy of banning ALL accounts associated with a user, because otherwise, they're basically saying, "It's okay that you duped. We'll still take your money on these other accounts."

 

[Landicine]

There will always be cheaters. It is not their fault. They are merely exploiters. That is not even a IRL crime. The real criminals here are EA. They promise a specific product, then fail to produce it.

I love how Jeremy tries to turn it around and make the players seem like criminals. EA is the real criminal here for providing us with a faulty product.

Ralph Nader gave you seat belts. I will give you a bug free game.

Programming completely bug-free software that always works as intended is not easy. Heck, with a certain level of complexity (operating systems, large networked games, etc.), it isn't practical. Turn off the UO servers for 10 years and have a QA and programming team go at it for that decade, and there would still be bugs. This current dupe bug may be related, but it isn't the same exact dupe bug of a decade ago. Find me an MMO that hasn't ever patched a bug. Find me a MMO that is completely bug free.

I may be a big hippy dippy liberal in real life, but even I won't pass the buck on cheaters. There are rules in this game. There are TOS and Rules of Conduct that all of us agreed to. Those who cheat are responsible for their actions. They chose. However, they are not always punished for their actions, and sometimes it is possible that a few innocent people got caught in the crossfire.

 

[Atlantian]

Why is that there are only certain subjects that are "cleaned up" and not others? Reads like politics to me.

 

[RaDian FlGith]

EA is supposed to IP ban people when they do something serious like duping, apparently they don't know how to

Not to put too fine a point on it, but IP banning is a useless practice. No one uses it these days except to block out huge blocks of IP addresses -- say, for instance, you know you're being hacked from the Netherlands, you don't care if you lose any Netherlandish customers, so you blow away huge blocks of Netherland-based IP addresses. That solves certain problems.

But IP banning, in and of itself, is a useless procedure that assumes many things:

1) That the user you're banning is on a static IP...
2) If the user is on a dynamic IP, you have no other users in that range of IPs...
3) That the user will not go out of his/her way to use another IP address to access your server...

Unfortunately, these assumptions all tend to be false, particularly in the case of dupers and exploiters.

 

[RaDian FlGith]

Why is that there are only certain subjects that are "cleaned up" and not others? Reads like politics to me.

Long story short, I know why the thread was "cleaned up," and there was an extremely good reason for it, not the least of which was that it had gone way off topic.

Suffice to say, it's not worth talking about in public for further derailment, but I certainly support the cleaning up that took place.

 

[Atlantian]

I understand that but why this subject and not others that stray off subject? Like I said, sounds like politics. Just would like a legit answer.

 

[Kazar]

You know I would like to hear that answer.

 

[Lord Kynd]

I agree with this.

My account is on the same visa info as my bf's account , as my mom's account and as my stepdad's account...

We all have only ONE account..

So why would the other one have to pay if someone else is banned?

These days it's quite hard not to get banned...people are in possession of duped goods and simply don't know it till they're banned.

It's the 15 day trail accounts doing the duping...
I think a fix would work better then banning half the UO population that is left...with a ratio of 100 innocent to 1 guilty...

you all share one account ..
ok and each person has access to the other person stuff.

enough said.

 

[Radun]

she means they each have their own account, but they're all paid by the same credit card.

 

[love2winalot]

Fact: EA has No policy that says they will bann multiple accounts of the same person. You can hack/exploit/curse someone out, ect, on account A. Get perma banned. Complain about it, and then even admit it. Later say you lost your password for account B, after account A was perma banned, AND THEY WILL GIVE YOU YOUR LOST PASSWORD.

My Son got our old main account perma banned back in 1999, and i did the above, and not only did they give me my password for my other old account, they even gave a new password for the one that was perma banned, hehehe

ps: He got caught in a PK trap, and was cursed out by them. He later was unable to just forget about it, and logged back in and cursed them out with slang/racial insults, and they called a GM on him=banned.

 

[Radun]

they don't have a policy saying that they will, but they have a policy saying they can.

duping/fencing is an example of an offense that warrants the banning of multiple accounts.

it's a little disturbing that the dupers dummy accounts got banned, but their mains are still active.

 

[RaDian FlGith]

Fact: EA has No policy that says they will bann multiple accounts of the same person. You can hack/exploit/curse someone out, ect, on account A. Get perma banned. Complain about it, and then even admit it. Later say you lost your password for account B, after account A was perma banned, AND THEY WILL GIVE YOU YOUR LOST PASSWORD.

My Son got our old main account perma banned back in 1999, and i did the above, and not only did they give me my password for my other old account, they even gave a new password for the one that was perma banned, hehehe

So because EA has a lousy system, basically this is a moot point?

I continue to lose faith in EA if what you described above is true.

 

[Plucky Duck]

I will say it again. The hackers and cheaters and dupers know all the tricks from hidding ones IP to using gift Visa cards they can refill and using false infor and false email addys to make sure there loss if they do get caught is minimal. They even they take most of there gold off there vendors daily.

It has always been this way and EAs banning even the uniformed and first time offenders (I do not under any circumstances think ignorance on any level is an excuse and I do think that even though it was harsh those banned learned a lesson I hope non of them will forget if it was a case of ignorance in there bannings).

Nothing is going to change that.

 

[love2winalot]

It is true. Even though they gave me a new password, the old account is still, and always will be perma banned. This was for cursing. Stupid son, hehehe. I gave them all my current account info, that we have been good boys for 9 years since then, and could they un bann the old account. they said NO.

As long as they use temp accounts, or even other accounts, other than their main, and have vendors at OTHER peoples houses, and use different billing methods, it is impossible to stop them under the current system of things.

 

[Ailish]

It has always been this way and EAs banning even the uniformed and first time offenders (I do not under any circumstances think ignorance on any level is an excuse and I do think that even though it was harsh those banned learned a lesson I hope non of them will forget if it was a case of ignorance in there bannings).

Nothing is going to change that.

THe problem with this particular sentiment is that people are even ignorant of what they are ignorant of! Until shard transfer's got shut off, there was no whisper of hammers and such being banned. UNLESS YOU USED A SITE DEEMED BY EA TO BE ILLEGAL (thus breaking the TOS!!!) YOU HAD NO WAY TO KNOW HOW MANY THERE WERE OUT THERE!

Further, EA has not said to us, there is duped gold out there, be wary if you chose to buy gold. And DO NOT give me the line that all gold sellers are dupers and cheaters. You can rake in MILS in a couple days just by cleaning up after champs and harrowers. Hell, in the last 3 days I have pulled 4 high end 120 scrolls at spawns - Swords, Bushido, Tactics and Eval Int. Not knowing if there is duped gold out there or not, should I just keep these scrolls that are useless to me?? GET REAL.

You DO NOT put someone in jail just for having counterfeit money ... even if it is a goodly sum, unless you are sure they are the counterfeiters or knew about it! You do not say to someone "You sold a car for $1000 and took cash, so now you are going to jail."

Remember folks, that E-mail that EA sent saying "multitudes of illegal items" was a FORM E-MAIL, they sent the SAME THING (misspellings and all!) to EVERY SINGLE PERSON they banned. NONE of us know, beyond runics, what was duped. WHY? Because, even tho they have fixed the dupe, EA WONT TELL US!

Given all that information, NO, I dont think they should IP ban these people. Not until/unless they PROVE that each person was actually responsible for duping.

Oh, and if you are interested, I know for a fact that the actual dupers knew TWO WEEKS before this banning that they were under investigation. One of them told me as much 3 weeks ago.