*Sighs* If I were in EA's shoes.

[Al Thorin]

So, I've spent the last.. oh, 3-4 years thinking about cheating.

I think I've figured out why we're never given any answers.

'We're sorry, but we cannot take a iron fist approach to cheating at this time, the potential fall out could very well cause UO's death due to a sudden drop in profits, quite possibly take it right into the red. Due to UO's age, and lack of marketing sparkle, short term effects could very well cause the cancelation of UO.

This would not be our choice, but unless we can bring UO closer to todays standards, we don't believe a quarterly statment showing a substantial drop in subscriptions and profits would be tolerated on a corporate level.

Thus we are left trying to address very specific portions of cheating, which could be considered almost impossible to effectivly counter while permiting other types of cheating.

The result could very well be a slow, painfull fall into oblivion, but we're limited to the corporate mindset. If the slow, plainfull death generates more cash flow than a risky attempt and a quick death, slow and painfull it is.'


It's really the only possible reason I can justify such silence with.

How can I think that there is such a high risk in pulling out the ban hammer?
700+ logins -today- alone. 110 in the last hour, and over 30,000 registered users.
Even if that was the extent, @200,000 subcribers (I'm trying to be optimistic here), that's still 15%. A -solid- 15% that comes right off the top, there is no expense reduction. That doesn't even take into account friends, broken social circles, opps's, or any number of other 'possible' fallouts.

Yes, I believe that ultimatly, it would be a short term loss, and could be recovered from, but I don't think a corporate entity would give it the chance.

30k banned acounts in a single quarter would be $1 Million. I honeslty doubt UO -makes- 1 million in a quarter.

 

[Babble]

I am a registered user and only used it for skilltraining and rarely.

*eyes detect hidden that should be raised*

So a few thousand users I guess really use it regularly and if they could detect and ban them a few thousand (heck even a few hundred of the worst ones) would be more than enough to send a message.

 

[Al Thorin]

... how do they find those few thousand? Many of those few thousand profit from cheating, getting banned is not a deterant unless they do not have time to recuperate.

So, in the time it takes to filter through even 50k users, to find the 1k that's bad, your gonna leave yourself open due to time constraints.

Sorry, but unless you can chase them off, then ban them repeatidly 2-3 days after they come back, they're not going to stay away. If all your time is spent placing 'ranks' on the cheaters, you cant do it.

Unless you simply banned anyone making any money.

There's a reason I claimed that finding and resolving very specific areas of cheating is going to be dang near impossible without addressing it as a whole.

 

[Guest]

<blockquote><hr>

... how do they find those few thousand? Many of those few thousand profit from cheating, getting banned is not a deterant unless they do not have time to recuperate.

So, in the time it takes to filter through even 50k users, to find the 1k that's bad, your gonna leave yourself open due to time constraints.

Sorry, but unless you can chase them off, then ban them repeatidly 2-3 days after they come back, they're not going to stay away. If all your time is spent placing 'ranks' on the cheaters, you cant do it.

Unless you simply banned anyone making any money.

There's a reason I claimed that finding and resolving very specific areas of cheating is going to be dang near impossible without addressing it as a whole.

[/ QUOTE ]

That is why there should have been zero tolerance policy and maintained. The only way to do this now is to pick a shard and go all out to stop cheating on it. No announcement no advance notice--watch for 2-3 weeks and then bring out the ban hammer. Monitor the IP's-credit cards and everything else from the banned accounts. Show ZERO Tolerance. Then after doing that do another shard--by the time the second shard is done word will have gotten out and alot of cheating will have stopped making it easier to do additional shards.

Make all bannings PUBLIC. Report the numbers. Close houses and delete the items. No notice.

 

[Guest]

I am sure you read other guilds forums. Like the boards where one talkes about the script his friend made to train resist. Or the ones that talk about other hacks and cheats.

Just how long do you think it will take for people to infiltrate those guilds if they tried?

I infiltrated most of the guilds on LS to learn the things I have learned. Noone knew it was me or one of my spies. If I can do it I am certain EA can.

 

[Al Thorin]

Actually, tackling it by shard would probably have a good result, but after the 2nd or 3rd shard, I think it would have to be all out.

Course they could infiltrate. But since they cannot confirm anything not in their control, it would be pointless and lead to people pretending to be others just to get them banned. It would happened too, just look at harasment page bans.
I could very easily create a Dennar username on our boards, have it post all over the public forums, even with screenshots of your house. No, that's a bad idea from the start.


No, guilt should be assesed in game.

 

[twoburntfouryou]

Is AFK bank sitting in Luna against the rules to??? Most are AFK which I thought that being AFK anywhere in the game was wrong?

 

[Amren]

Why should they waste time and money on cheat detection, when they could , you know , fix the damn issues. Just because they know someone is cheating is not enough, because chances are, 1000s of other know the same methods. It's obviously not private knowledge. It's not like these people could not just start guest accounts soon as they are banned.

 

[Sevin0oo0]

Most are AFK which I thought that being AFK anywhere in the game was wrong?

Depends on if the character is doing anything, like working a skill, making stuff, animating, scripting, etc.We've been told this before. If the toon is inactive, yes, you can go afk to your heart's content.

 

[Xora]

Al Thorin-

You've thoroughly outlined the risks of cracking down on cheating as visible from our side of things. EA should have a lot more info on it from prior times. Don't forget they've banned entire guilds and executed cluster IP bans that have taken hundreds of accounts in a single ban wave. They have sufficient information to predict the fall out of taking action.

That said, we reach the part I don't follow. What reward is there for taking the risk? I'm genuinely asking as I don't play (I'm one of those guys lurking in hopes of a classic server.). My understanding of game mechanics at the moment is player interaction is limited to chatting, trading, and consensual encounters. Cheaters are impossible to eliminate and are a frustrating entity in every game. However, other than the standard frustration factor what is to gain by eliminating them? As an outsider looking in I can only see an inflated economy and annoyance at people getting XXX (fill in whatever item/skill/etc is hot at the moment) quickly with less effort. None of that really inhibits anyone playing the game as they choose.

So, what am I missing? At best, cheating is heavily reduced for a couple months and the player base applauds the effort. Then something new comes out and outrage starts again. Where's the pay off? How does that translate into income? What could be gained valuable enough to risk fracturing the remaining community structure on servers?

 

[Sevin0oo0]

Further, Imo, from reading other boards, I think they're going after pvp'rs first.

 

[Fayled Dhreams]

*ahem*

Actually ...
As a >20month< old post (*snicker*)

It DOES READ as "current status" of events ...

 

[Petra Fyde]

Thread necromancy is not an encouraged pastime.