Star Wars Galaxies: 44,800 people have been banned or canceled their accounts over the past 3 days?

[warcrow]

Star Wars Galaxies: 44,800 people have been banned or canceled their accounts over the past 3 days?


I heard this from a buddy that plays SWG constantly and I couldnt beleive it. When I started checking it out, I came across some interesting threads. From what I can tell, this looks to be true. I couldnt get a number on how many peeps have left (so the number might be off), but apparently ALOT of people are extremely PISSED OFF! Anyways, from what I can tell, this is what apparently happened:

Turns out there were 2 or 3 people on each server duping credits. Sony figured out how to detect the duping credits process, their transactions, who was involved and when it was all done. So they did a mass ban of everyone with these "dirty" credits. But the problem was they had with the "dirty" credits was that they worked themselves into the general economy and in the whole process, they banned just a ton of people! Apparently there was some 12 year old kid who was a dancer in a bar, someone tipped him 10k in credits, he accepted thinking someone was just being generous, and was banned.

So, all the innocent people that had alternate accounts logged on and started spamming the CSR reps with complaints and so, in turn, they began banning those accounts too. tunred out to be a pretty big protest. Sony is keeping the official fourms clean of chatty threads about this, so there wasnt much info there.

Here are some interesting threads I found pertaining to this:

- SOE trying to quell a massive protest by threatening to shut down a server

- Thread with the official warning message people got when logging in.

- Screenshot of a chat about the protest and bans



CRAZY! :beer:

UPDATE - 8/23


Here is the official statement from SOE:

• - All persons potentially involved in the dupe have been banned or suspended.
  - People who have been banned or suspended are going through the appeals process now. Each case is resolved privately between the customer and customer service. The appeals process will be complete by early next week.
  - Over 75% of the duped credits are being removed from the economy preventing hyper-inflation in the SWG economy.
  - No vendor owners were suspended for purchases made from their vendor with duped credits, only people that had money directly transferred to them were affected.
  - We are committed to maintaining a safe and fair playing environment and exploiting will not be tolerated.

 

[ArmchairAthlete]

Well, if there was no way to tell the dupe credits from the real deal... they just made an enourmous mistake and banned innocent people. The duping itself hurts the game bad enough, but this is just nuts if its true.

So, all the innocent people that had alternate accounts logged on and started spamming the CSR reps with complaints and so, in turn, they began banning those accounts too.

Wow... if that really happened they are shooting themselves in the foot. PR disaster!

Apparently there was some 12 year old kid who was a dancer in a bar

That just doesn't sound right O_O

I'll just wait till WoW when I'm the semester is over (if not later).

 

[Looney]

Second link requires membership, so i couldn't read that. But where's the 44,800 number coming from? Is it official?

Anyways, i've always liked SOE (and Verant before that) because of their strict policies on exploits... i've played way too many games where exploits and bots ruined it because the company didn't care (AO, AC, FFXI to name a few).

So i'm glad they did something about this, even though i don't play SWG anymore.

 

[BlueWeasel]

Yeah, I read this earlier today. I don't know if the number has been confirmed yet, but I saw that 10,000 to 45,000 people have been banned.

That was a pretty stupid move on the part of Verant, considering EQ2 is just around the corner.

 

[Looney]

Originally posted by: BlueWeasel
Yeah, I read this earlier today. I don't know if the number has been confirmed yet, but I saw that 10,000 to 45,000 people have been banned.

That was a pretty stupid move on the part of Verant, considering EQ2 is just around the corner.

Verant? Verant hasn't been around for 4 years.

Reading the message boards, i'm finding more people supporting this move than people actually pissed about it... and i'm sure a lot of those people that are pissed just want something to bitch about.

 

[warcrow]

I hope someone in the forums, that is a SWG player, can weigh in.

 

[BlueWeasel]

Originally posted by: Hardcore

Originally posted by: BlueWeasel
Yeah, I read this earlier today. I don't know if the number has been confirmed yet, but I saw that 10,000 to 45,000 people have been banned.

That was a pretty stupid move on the part of Verant, considering EQ2 is just around the corner.

Verant? Verant hasn't been around for 4 years.

Reading the message boards, i'm finding more people supporting this move than people actually pissed about it... and i'm sure a lot of those people that are pissed just want something to bitch about.

OK, my mistake.

The only MMORPG that I've played was Asheron's Call 1, and I finally got over that addiction about a year ago. I never played EQ. The way I read a quote from one of the other forums, was that Verant was responsible and they were both part of SWG and the upcoming EQ2.

Verant developed the original EQ, right?

<--- is a dumbass.

 

[warcrow]

You're not a dumbass, BW Yes, Verant developed EQ.

 

[everman]

Wow that's crazy. It looks like they're reinstating the banned accounts according to some posts. If they can't distinguish between the real cheaters and the innocent people I guess they got away with it.

 

[manko]

Originally posted by: ArmchairAthlete

Apparently there was some 12 year old kid who was a dancer in a bar

That just doesn't sound right O_O

Yeah, I though the same thing when saw this story. Sony shouldn't allow 12-year-olds in a bar, let alone allow them to be "dancers"? Isn't that illegal?

 

[warcrow]

Originally posted by: manko

Originally posted by: ArmchairAthlete

Apparently there was some 12 year old kid who was a dancer in a bar

That just doesn't sound right O_O

Yeah, I though the same thing when saw this story. Sony shouldn't allow 12-year-olds in a bar, let alone allow them to be "dancers"? Isn't that illegal?

Well, being a "dancer" doesnt mean you strip in SWG. It means you just dance....like the blue girl who danced for Jaba the hut in ROTJ.

 

[Yanagi]

Oh, good. I had a mental disaster there for a sec....

 

[xenocyd3]

it should be illegal... those dances are freeakkkey

 

[manko]

Originally posted by: warcrow

Well, being a "dancer" doesnt mean you strip in SWG. It means you just dance....like the blue girl who danced for Jaba the hut in ROTJ.

Well frankly, Jabba's dancer was pretty risque (especially for a 12-year-old).

 

[zodder]

I played SWG from the begining for about 6 months then quit. Is it a better game now?

 

[InlineFive]

Wow. Hope they get this worked out.

 

[VirtualLarry]

I know several people that are "addicted" to SWG, I'll have to ask them what's up. I do know that they know about, and take advantage of, some of the "grey areas" of game features from time to time, although I don't think that they explicitly cheat.

This sounds like a massive screwup and over-reaction by Sony/SOE. If the game had a legitimate bug, then that bug should be patched. But to then subsequently boot off so many paying customers for taking advantage of a bug that was arguably the developer's fault, then that's just ... crazy. If anything, I would have set up some sort of in-game "investigation", and then take these people to court, put them on trial, in the game itself. Maybe some large-ish class-action sort of criminal trial thing, so as not to take too much time or resources from players and game admins, decide who is guilty, what the punishment should be, etc. Maybe place some sort of "permanent mark" on that player-character's record, in-game, that others could potentially view. Almost like a blacklist sort of mark, maybe, that would impede those player-character's ability to take place in commerce in-game. Something like that, I'm sure that you get the idea. It sounds like those SOE game/server admins really lack imagination about these sorts of things.

PS. I worked on AC1 for some months, years ago. How did you like it, BlueWeasel? I ended up leaving the company before final release, but after playing the pre-release versions, man, if that beta test didn't end after a week, I don't think I ever would have come back to reality. I spend enough time on the internet (these boards, etc.) as it is, I've had to force myself to never touch another MMORPG again, lest I get "lost". Considering how much my friends talk(ed) about UO and now SWG, you would think that they had actually moved there.

Edit: Here's a link, with the "official word" on what Sony has done to the "dupers". Plenty of pages when I Googled for "star wars banned".

 

[BlueWeasel]

Larry:

AC1 was a huge addiction for me. I absolutely loved it, and still do. The gameplay was simple compared to newer MMORPG and gets repetative, but Turbine has done a great job with the monthly updates and content.

What made the game for me was I lucked out and found a great group of people to play with and joined their clan. We were one of the premier clans on the Solclaim server (SC) and there was always a new quest to do, or a large group to go hunting with.

Thank god, I moved to a new apartment that didn't have DSL, and I just stopped playing. I was seriously going thru withdrawals over the game when I moved. I finally got back on broadbrand about 6 months later, but this was about the time that AC2 came out, and the number of people in the clan took a huge drop. Alot of us that remained behind in AC1 joined another great clan, and I played off and on for about 6 months.

Then, the satellite company that I used for broadband went bottoms up, and didn't have access again until cable became available in November of last year. I didn't bother playing AC1 again, because the people weren't there anymore.

I eventually ended up with a level 95, unarmed melee who could cast level 7 spells in Life, Creature, and Item magic with healing, arcane lore and a high melee defense.

AC1 is about to launch its second expansion pack and they are about to open a new server. It's SO tempting to go back, but I know I don't need to.

You know that the game keeps up with the total amount of time that you've played, right? Well, I played the game solid from October 2001 to July 2002 (9 months) and I spent a total of 30 days (720 hours) playing during that time period. That was 1/10th of my life spent playing during those 9 months (almost 3 hours/day average).

Crap, just talking about it makes me want to break out the AC1 installation discs.

 

[Genx87]

Wow talk about a bad business decision. If I paid to play and had to go through this shat just to get reinstated. I would tell them to fly a kite.

 

[beer]

Jesus Christ it's a game.

 

[Childs]

Originally posted by: warcrow

Originally posted by: manko

Originally posted by: ArmchairAthlete

Apparently there was some 12 year old kid who was a dancer in a bar

That just doesn't sound right O_O

Yeah, I though the same thing when saw this story. Sony shouldn't allow 12-year-olds in a bar, let alone allow them to be "dancers"? Isn't that illegal?

Well, being a "dancer" doesnt mean you strip in SWG. It means you just dance....like the blue girl who danced for Jaba the hut in ROTJ.

Why the hell would anyone want to do that? If I'm a 12yo kid I'll be a bounty hunter, or at least, a badass jawa, but being a dancer in a bar and waiting for tips? The whole game should be banned.

 

[DAPUNISHER]

Originally posted by: beer
Jesus Christ it's a game.

Star wars and Star Trek geeks can't tell the difference between fantasy and reality :laugh: I still shake my head in disbelief when I think of how much people pay on e-bay for someone's credit or such from a video game :gift:

 

[PsharkJF]

Lols, that's like Blizzard banning everyone in diablo 2 who used a duped item.
please, unless you LOAD a hack with D2, you have no way of knowing which items are duped.

Yet another reason to never play mmorpgs!

 

[AnitaPeterson]

OK... for someone who never plays these games... WTF is all this supposed to mean? I feel like I'm on another planet or something. Can someone explain what's all the fuss about?

 

[dighn]

Originally posted by: AnitaPeterson
OK... for someone who never plays these games... WTF is all this supposed to mean? I feel like I'm on another planet or something. Can someone explain what's all the fuss about?

duping credits = generating extra cash in the game through some kind of exploit/hack

or that's what i get out of it