Are you kidding me EA/Bioware?

[Jules]

That would of been pretty shitty if true.

 

[Dumac]

Claim: Banned for being in a high level zone while low level!
Debunk: Bans were for exploiting a PvP zone causing loot containers to instantly respawn.

That isn't a debunked at all

Second, a smaller number of accounts were warned or temporarily suspended for exploiting loot containers on Ilum. To be completely clear, while players may choose to travel to Ilum earlier than the recommended level (40+) and may loot containers if they can get to them, in the cases of those customers that were warned or temporarily suspended, they were systematically and repeatedly looting containers in very high numbers resulting in the game economy becoming unbalanced.

That isn't their fault. It isn't like they were using a third party tool. It is Bioware's fault for making a crappy MMO and not putting deterrents for looting the containers on Ilum.

 

[IndyColtsFan]

Those emails could easily be faked. They prove nothing.

By all means, post links to where these were debunked.

EDIT: Thanks Merad.

 

[gorcorps]

Fuck yes. I wasted 15 minutes of my life that I will never get back.

You're a member of an internet forum... obviously your time doesn't mean much to you

 

[M0oG0oGaiPan]

lol bunch of naggers in this thread

 

[skipsneeky2]

May the ban be with you....

Sorry to hear of your troubles Op you talked me out of buying that game actually thank you

 

[Nintendesert]

That isn't a debunked at all



That isn't their fault. It isn't like they were using a third party tool. It is Bioware's fault for making a crappy MMO and not putting deterrents for looting the containers on Ilum.

It IS their fault. Just because a bug or design oversight occurs in a game doesn't give players permission to exploit it and destroy an entire servers economy. This shit is as old as MMOs and people that do it will still cry and claim the same crap you are and will keep on getting banned. They know what they were doing so if they were banned, good on Bioware.

 

[maniacalpha1-1]

That isn't a debunked at all



That isn't their fault. It isn't like they were using a third party tool. It is Bioware's fault for making a crappy MMO and not putting deterrents for looting the containers on Ilum.

This. To the extent that people might have collaborated with enemies on the other side to flip the zone, OK, but I have a feeling they also got after people who simply looted everything in sight. Do we have any proof that ONLY people who were exploiting zone flipping were banned? And even if they WERE zone flipping...you know what? These are MMO players and they do what the game allows to be done. I call it creative thinking, obviously everyone else who likes seeing creativity banned calls it exploits. The blame lies with the gaming company. Period. If you're not hacking, you shouldn't be held accountable in terms of bans. The gaming company should OF COURSE be able to go into your account and rollback all the gear and credits you obtained through the exploit, provided it is in fact officially declared an exploit, but not ban you or take away any gear or credits earned prior.

Now, maybe the gaming company should be able to ban you if you are a persistent violator who always jumps on exploits they instant they are found, but for an exploit that has only been recently discovered and it's someone's first offense, a ban is absolutely overkill and unfairly places stress on players to decide whether something is legit.

Hell, with the way you hear about bans in other MMOs for using mob pathing to help kill mobs, I'm half afraid to take cover behind walls to avoid NPC shots, even though the "cover system" in which you can be shielded from fire by solid objects is one of the things they tout about the game.
Also:

Claim: Banned for swearing in tells!
Debunk: TOR Community manager sez, we don't care what you say in tells, party or guild chat UNLESS SOMEONE REPORTS YOU.

OK, so they don't proactively crawl textlogs to ban people for language. But hey, I happen not to like one of my guildmates or whatever...so I'll just report him for language! Someone could say "OMG that encounter is fucked up, they should fix it" and BAM, reported, and you DID say "fucked" after all, so there's a mark against your account right there.

 

[Dumac]

It IS their fault. Just because a bug or design oversight occurs in a game doesn't give players permission to exploit it and destroy an entire servers economy. This shit is as old as MMOs and people that do it will still cry and claim the same crap you are and will keep on getting banned. They know what they were doing so if they were banned, good on Bioware.

Tell this to competitive smash players. Tell them that they should stop wavedashing because it is an 'exploit'.

In any multiplayer game, exploits that are found will be used. It is the developers fault for having these exploits. The duty of the player is just to play to the best of their ability, not to worry about Bioware's crappy development.

It wasn't even a bug. It was just not being used as the developers intended.

EDIT: What i think is worse than any customer support shenanigans is the actions of Bioware fanboys on the forums. Jeez...they'll excuse Bioware for anything (whether it is true or false).

 

[Nintendesert]

I'm gonna go tell it to competitive Pokemon players instead. :\



"In any multiplayer game, exploits that are found will be used."


And in MMOs you get banned. On private servers you get banned in BF3. Cheat and get caught you're gone.



"
EDIT: What i think is worse than any customer support shenanigans is the actions of Bioware fanboys on the forums. Jeez...they'll excuse Bioware for anything (whether it is true or false)."



Or all the haters that were quick to jump on the bandwagon here and in other places attacking Bioware even though they were all false and debunked. GG for bias. :thumbsdown:

 

[Dumac]

I'm gonna go tell it to competitive Pokemon players instead. :\

I don't get this

And in MMOs you get banned. On private servers you get banned in BF3. Cheat and get caught you're gone.

But it isn't cheating. Did people get banned in counterstrike for quick-swapping the awp to cut down reload time? No? BUT ITS CHEATING!!!!

No its not lol

Cheating would be using a bot of some sort, of third party tool. Exploits aren't cheating, and is the fault of the developers.

Or all the haters that were quick to jump on the bandwagon here and in other places attacking Bioware even though they were all false and debunked. GG for bias. :thumbsdown:

You are missing the point. Rather than the bioware fans saying "oh maybe this is false", a lot of them would SUPPORT the actions assuming they were true. A bunch of players said that you deserved to be banned for playing the AH (which is nonsense), or that you deserve to be banned for cursing with your friends in tells.

 

[maniacalpha1-1]

I'm gonna go tell it to competitive Pokemon players instead. :\



"In any multiplayer game, exploits that are found will be used."


And in MMOs you get banned. On private servers you get banned in BF3. Cheat and get caught you're gone.



"
EDIT: What i think is worse than any customer support shenanigans is the actions of Bioware fanboys on the forums. Jeez...they'll excuse Bioware for anything (whether it is true or false)."



Or all the haters that were quick to jump on the bandwagon here and in other places attacking Bioware even though they were all false and debunked. GG for bias. :thumbsdown:

Since you mention BF3, what about that MAV riding that you can use to get on top of buildings that weren't otherwise intended to be reachable? I haven't played or followed BF3 in 2 weeks but last I knew they were not doing anything about that. Has that changed? If not, that's an unintended thing that results in MAJOR game changes(don't tell me that squads full of SOFLAM snipers and javelin engineers up on top of buildings that weren't supposed to be reachable doesn't have a major impact). Is that cheating?

 

[you2]

This is extremely amaturish of them. As someone who has implemented; and administored several diku muds - I've frequently have seen or disicplined lower level admins who take the approach that a sloppy implementation justifies punishing players for "abuse of game mechanics/area design".

You expect that from immature clowns in a free system; but a paid system should (a) have better designed areas and (b) better admins that understand they are dealing with internal definiciens not abusive players.

It does actually take a bit of effort to design areas well; but that's what folks are paying for - well designed mechanics and areas.

That isn't a debunked at all



That isn't their fault. It isn't like they were using a third party tool. It is Bioware's fault for making a crappy MMO and not putting deterrents for looting the containers on Ilum.

Alright, despite my better judgement, I'll play along.

Claim: Banned for swearing in tells!
Debunk: TOR Community manager sez, we don't care what you say in tells, party or guild chat UNLESS SOMEONE REPORTS YOU.

Claim: Banned for being in a high level zone while low level!
Debunk: Bans were for exploiting a PvP zone causing loot containers to instantly respawn.

Claim: Banned for using the AH too much!
Debunk: Poster (notafanboy on TOR forums) was called out as a troll by moderators who confirmed he was lying about his status. Seriously? This one was a blatantly bad photoshop.

Claim: OMG they banned me and held my credit card hostage!
Debunk: This is really the most laughable one. Guess how you delete your credit card from the game? By clicking the "Show your payment history" button CLEARLY VISIBLE IN THE PICTURE.

You guys are pretty sad if you fell for those.

 

[Maximilian]

Typical poor show from EA, i expect no less :thumbsdown:

 

[thespyder]

I guess I am not seeing the issue here. One was banned due to foul language. And although you are free to use foul language IRL as much as you want, NOT ON THEIR SERVER. You agree to the terms of service. If they say "No foul language" and you agree to it, more fool you for using such language. It would be the same as asking someone to leave a library for talking out loud.

Second is a little bit weird, but again. it is their game and server. If you are acting in a manner that is contrary to their intended use, they are well within their rights to ban you. I wouldn't be happy if it happened to me, but it looks like the activity was consistent with scamming the game. And I am pretty sure that the email was worded in such a way as to be consistent with legal terms, and not showing the enter picture. If they weren't up to something, a call to Customer Service would probably resolve the issue. If they WERE up to something, complaining publicly and crying foul was probably their only recourse.

More or less the same with the third.

And the fourth, if the person was banned for legitimate reasons, I am SURE that EA/Bioware are not intending to continue to bill him for services no longer provided (if for no other reason than they can get sued for that). And just because he couldn't "Automatically" discontinue billing, doesn't mean he has no recourse (like a call to Customer Service, a letter to the company, probably something on their website, etc...). He is making a larger issue of it than is necessary.

Now I am not saying that E(vil)A(lliance) isn't on the whole "Evil", but I don't see the OMG conclusive evidence in these links.

 

[Nintendesert]

Since you mention BF3, what about that MAV riding that you can use to get on top of buildings that weren't otherwise intended to be reachable? I haven't played or followed BF3 in 2 weeks but last I knew they were not doing anything about that. Has that changed? If not, that's an unintended thing that results in MAJOR game changes(don't tell me that squads full of SOFLAM snipers and javelin engineers up on top of buildings that weren't supposed to be reachable doesn't have a major impact). Is that cheating?

Yes, in a lot of servers you'll see admin spam about mav riding. You do it and they ban you.

 

[maniacalpha1-1]

I guess I am not seeing the issue here. One was banned due to foul language. And although you are free to use foul language IRL as much as you want, NOT ON THEIR SERVER. You agree to the terms of service. If they say "No foul language" and you agree to it, more fool you for using such language. It would be the same as asking someone to leave a library for talking out loud.

If you're talking legally, yea well, OK, can't really argue that, can we? Except in certain cases where the contract is contrary to an existing law.

But if we're talking right and wrong, fair and unfair, you don't have a choice but to agree to the terms of service. You can't negotiate that contract with them. The fact that something is in a contract doesn't make it right, especially when these are contracts of adhesion where you either accept or can't play. The contractual terms may legally protect them from legal action for banning you for certain things but that doesn't justify their policies when we are talking about moral right and wrong instead of legal.

 

[Nintendesert]

Also you know what isn't false and hasn't been debunked? That the game is not good, and people are quickly becoming disinterested.

That has nothing to do with the topic at hand. That's just your bias coming through again.

 

[Barfo]

Pretty much all of those have been debunked.

Nice try, EA rep.

 

[maniacalpha1-1]

Yes, in a lot of servers you'll see admin spam about mav riding. You do it and they ban you.

And what if DICE decides to leave it in? Then, at least in my opinion, it becomes the servers who ban for it that are in the wrong. But that's a separate issue, DICE rarely takes action against servers who ban contrary to their ranked server ROE even if a violation is clear.

The point is, so apparently you think it's cheating. If DICE announced today that they were leaving it in, are you going to change your mind just because the gaming company decided it wasn't a cheat? Or if you didn't think it was a cheat and then DICE removed it, would you suddenly say "oh, that was cheating I guess"?

No; for as long as the game allows something to be done, doing it isn't cheating. The point is, how do you expect PLAYERS to decide that something is an exploit and voluntarily not use it when you have an example like this of something clearly unintended but that may end up accepted anyway by the gaming company? Again, I recognize that the gaming company failures in quality control create messes that need to be cleaned up but they need to clean it up without using bans as the first line of attack.

Although in BF3's case, that's not even a problem. Everyone can do it and they should have had ladders/stairs/grappling hooks to those places anyway. And also, spawn beacons, since they cause you to parachute in, can be used in the exact same way. Why ban for MAV riding when beacons can do the same thing? Except on Karkand, that is, it's the only map where beacons don't parachute you in.

 

[Nintendesert]

And what if DICE decides to leave it in? Then, at least in my opinion, it becomes the servers who ban for it that are in the wrong. But that's a separate issue, DICE rarely takes action against servers who ban contrary to their ranked server ROE even if a violation is clear.

The point is, so apparently you think it's cheating. If DICE announced today that they were leaving it in, are you going to change your mind just because the gaming company decided it wasn't a cheat? Or if you didn't think it was a cheat and then DICE removed it, would you suddenly say "oh, that was cheating I guess"?

No; for as long as the game allows something to be done, doing it isn't cheating. The point is, how do you expect PLAYERS to decide that something is an exploit and voluntarily not use it when you have an example like this of something clearly unintended but that may end up accepted anyway by the gaming company? Again, I recognize that the gaming company failures in quality control create messes that need to be cleaned up but they need to clean it up without using bans as the first line of attack.

Let's pull this back to the topic at hand. TOR. EA banned players for what is essentially MAV riding. That's their position, any theoretical position about DICE is inconsequential.

 

[RiDE]

Why do people keep playing a game they hate? lmfao

 

[maniacalpha1-1]

Let's pull this back to the topic at hand. TOR. EA banned players for what is essentially MAV riding. That's their position, any theoretical position about DICE is inconsequential.

I assume we're specifically referring to the Ilum thing. As far as that goes, the implication of their public response was that they banned some gold farmers for one thing and warned/suspended some other players for something else, but both related to Ilum. Presumably the gold farmers were the ones exploit-flipping the zone...but they weren't very clear about the others - it's possible that the other people who were warned were simply doing what MMO players do - they see lootable crates, they loot them until there are none left.


But even if we look beyond Ilum, it's a matter of right and wrong. They have indeed shown that they will ban for using things that they themselves put in the game. Obviously EA's got their legal bases coveredwith their terms of service(so far as we know, I doubt that it's been tested in court), but it's wrong to place responsibility on players to determine that something is unintended. I mean, seriously...people are generally held to be so clueless that you have to put written warnings on McDonald's coffee cups saying that the coffee is hot...why would it be fair to force McDonalds to do that, but let EA/Bioware just include a vague blurb in their TOS(which no one reads because it's a FORCED contract of adhesion that you can't negotiate) about "exploits" and let them use that as a catch-all to ban anyone they want?

And to be clear, I'm NOT saying that they should just let the economy get massacred by exploits, but instead that they should only be banning persistent violators, and until someone meets the criteria of persistent violator, they should just use rollbacks to prevent economy damage.

And on the topic of language, even if First Amendment protections don't apply to private servers,if we think about right and wrong, banning people for using incidental foul language is wrong, too. Now, what I mean by incidental foul language is, if you are always saying "OMG that fucking mob killed me over and fucking over", that's incidental cursing. If people can't handle that they need to leave their filter on. Now, direct harassment, cursing AT people, for example "OMG you fucking ass hole you KSed my mob", yes, yes, the gaming company needs to protect people from that.

 

[Nintendesert]

I assume we're specifically referring to the Ilum thing. As far as that goes, the implication of their public response was that they banned some gold farmers for one thing and warned/suspended some other players for something else, but both related to Ilum. Presumably the gold farmers were the ones exploit-flipping the zone...but they weren't very clear about the others - it's possible that the other people who were warned were simply doing what MMO players do - they see lootable crates, they loot them until there are none left.


But even if we look beyond Ilum, it's a matter of right and wrong. They have indeed shown that they will ban for using things that they themselves put in the game. Obviously EA's got their legal bases coveredwith their terms of service(so far as we know, I doubt that it's been tested in court), but it's wrong to place responsibility on players to determine that something is unintended. I mean, seriously...people are generally held to be so clueless that you have to put written warnings on McDonald's coffee cups saying that the coffee is hot...why would it be fair to force McDonalds to do that, but let EA/Bioware just include a vague blurb in their TOS(which no one reads because it's a FORCED contract of adhesion that you can't negotiate) about "exploits" and let them use that as a catch-all to ban anyone they want?

And to be clear, I'm NOT saying that they should just let the economy get massacred by exploits, but instead that they should only be banning persistent violators, and until someone meets the criteria of persistent violator, they should just use rollbacks to prevent economy damage.

And on the topic of language, even if First Amendment protections don't apply to private servers,if we think about right and wrong, banning people for using incidental foul language is wrong, too. Now, what I mean by incidental foul language is, if you are always saying "OMG that fucking mob killed me over and fucking over", that's incidental cursing. If people can't handle that they need to leave their filter on. Now, direct harassment, cursing AT people, for example "OMG you fucking ass hole you KSed my mob", yes, yes, the gaming company needs to protect people from that.

I'm very sure it was in response to the exploiting in Ilum and not just players accidentally wandering into an area they shouldn't be in.

As for the rest of their responses to issues, it's their game and policy and regardless of the legalities of the TOS the right for a business to refuse service has been around for quite a long time. We are after all simply paying for a service and the rules of no shirt, no shoes, no service still apply.

Now, I'm not saying they are morally right in all the instances. They are after all owned by one of the bigger douche companies around now. But at least we know they aren't as bad as Activision.

 

[Gibsons]

Claim: Banned for using the AH too much!
Debunk: Poster (notafanboy on TOR forums) was called out as a troll by moderators who confirmed he was lying about his status. Seriously? This one was a blatantly bad photoshop..

I was wondering about that one. A "permeate ban?"