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[Defenestration]

You forget that admitting to using auctioneer in WoW is still to this day a bannable offense?

I used Auctioneer for the entire time I played WoW starting from when it first existed. I don't recall any conversation about it being exploitable during my very long career in the game, especially since the base AH UI has all the functionality of Auctioneer now except for how it parses item prices in the long term into a database. And I don't see how they could object to that when Recount is a thing. And if it actually was something they were concerned with it would have been very easy to stop it from gathering data from the AH to add to it's database. What Blizzard has done over the years when a mod comes out that they don't agree with is they just break it on a fundamental level, and keep breaking it. See Decursive, that mod that let you draw indicators to be rendered in the game world over the ground, Carbonite, etc. And Auctioneer has been around since vanilla and is one of the more popular mods and one they've taken inspiration from to improve the base UI, so I'm going to have to call bullshit on this.

And I have personally been warned in WoW numerous times for my language, despite the fact that I never swear AT people, just in conversation, and that seems like all they're doing for offensive names and swearing so far(warning people).

WoW GMs only warn people over racial slurs and clear attempts to bypass the language filter, and only in public channels.

[TA]

I think that in TA's hypothetical "I got banned because I sent stuff to my alt" situation the big question is what constitutes "adequate in-Game consideration". I think having a level awesome character quite plainly would, as you have put in the time to grind out the levels on someone else already.

The problem we seem to be having here is a disconnect form what people are actually being banned for and what people could hypothetically be banned for. Now I'm not saying that I agree with EA or even think these 'hypothetical' situations are stuff that they wouldn't ban you for, they are EA after all, I'm just saying that its pretty par for the course as far as MMOs are concerned.

You forget that admitting to using auctioneer in WoW is still to this day a bannable offense?

And I have personally been warned in WoW numerous times for my language, despite the fact that I never swear AT people, just in conversation, and that seems like all they're doing for offensive names and swearing so far(warning people). Unlike in, say, World of Tanks, where an offensive name can have you banned until you put in a support ticket to have it changed.

As I already stated, the dude that was banned from the first link was apparently gaming the system by using friends on the opposing faction to cheat PVP. I don't see how anyone could argue that something like that shouldn't be a bannable offense.

People are being banned for something as simple as buying low-priced things on the auction house to resell them at higher prices.

[Bongo Bill]

Rock Paper Shotgun reports.

[Shinra]

You forget that admitting to using auctioneer in WoW is still to this day a bannable offense?

No Google results for WoW auctioneer ban, nothing in Auctioneer's FAQ....

Nobody has ever been banned for using auctioneer (ever) and Blizzard has deliberately added APIs for the use of Auctioneer and similair addons by the request of developers of these addons.

So Joxam is full of shit.

[Shinra]

The problem we seem to be having here is a disconnect form what people are actually being banned for and what people could hypothetically be banned for. Now I'm not saying that I agree with EA or even think these 'hypothetical' situations are stuff that they wouldn't ban you for, they are EA after all, I'm just saying that its pretty par for the course as far as MMOs are concerned.

Par for the course in successful MMOs isn't to ban people for minor exploitation, it's to fix game imbalance as soon as possible. If they noticed an exploitable glitch that made high level loot much easier to obtain, they should have immediately hotfixed it. Blizzard gets most of their hotfixes out within 12 hours of a glitch going live. Most of the time, nobody gets banned. We see a handful of high profile bannings in WoW each year, and that's it. SWTOR has been out for less than 30 days and we are seeing people getting banned for buying shit off the auctionhouse and relisting it, or sending items to their alts. This is absolutely fucking absurd. You are just being a fanatical apologist for horrifyingly bad administration.

[Defenestration]

Rock Paper Shotgun reports.

Interesting. So it actually wasn't a PVP exploit, but similar to the situation I figured. Do it once while underleveled and that's okay, but heaven forbid you keep going if you find it to be a good revenue stream. Is the amount of credits you have really a balance issue? Why are they trying to keep the amount of money people have at specific levels balanced? How is Bioware *so stupid*?

[Brentai]

And hell, the game lets you play as a smuggler!

Someone already commented in this thread that the moderation was akin to Imperial law.  I like to think that this whole thing is some sort of brilliant metagame - it's one thing to be told you're defying authority by killing seex snow troopah, and another to actually evade an outwit an oppressively powerful legal system to make a fortune for yourself through cleverness and daring.

[Defenestration]

I don't think the Empire killed people for having too much money though.

[Joxam]

Fanatical? I made one post!

[Büge]

 

Further infractions may result in a temporary or permeate ban.

 

[Smiler]

 

Further infractions may result in a temporary or permeate ban.

 

per·me·ate
Verb:      Spread throughout (something); pervade

Perhaps they will ban people at random if that person continues selling things.

[PhoenixUltima]

This is part of why I don't play MMOs (the other parts are stupid players and amounts of grinding beyond even my high tolerance). I don't get why everyone's focusing on EA as being the big evil company that abuses power - pretty much every MMO I've played or read about has had some issue with abuse of moderator powers. Like, anyone remember Angelic Ragnarok Online? How the mods would punish some players for small-time random bullshit one moment and give overpowered stuff to their friends the next? How about FFXI where they kept tweaking their precious unkillable final optional boss and punishing people for coming up with legitimate in-game ways to kill it? Any number of times where SOE overreacted to shit across their various MMOs? And that's just the shit that I, as someone who doesn't touch MMOs or read too much news about them, can come up with off the top of my head. This isn't a case of one particular company deciding they can be as big a group of shitheads as they please. This is just what MMO moderators do.

Now, I admit I don't know much about MMOs in general, and I'm sure there's some exceptions (I don't recall hearing any horror stories about WoW, for instance). But from where I'm sitting it looks an awful lot like MMO moderation is just another example of "absolute power corrupts absolutely".

[Doom]

This is just what MMO moderators do.

No. WoW has been out too long for this to be tolerated. If this issue offends you, speak with your wallets and don't support EA/Bioware. Speak with your words and tell others to do the same.

If we're just gonna use WoW as the standard, EA is miles above WoW as far as bad customer service goes. There have been numerous reports from WoW GMs that if you step a finger out of line at power abuse, you're put on "Final Warning" or just flat out fired. All of the GMs are largely impersonal and tend to have good standards, aside from if you're fishing for strictly optional stuff like winning loot from a goofy ass contested roll(we accidentally disenchanted this item because we're crazy) or trying to get a name removed from a dead level 11 alt on your server, and even that's just bugging the GMs until you get one that feels good enough to tweak the rules very slightly.

But yeah, don't confuse Angel RO(a private server? Dude) or what's happening now(FULL SYSTEMATIC INSANE CORRUPTION) as the standard, or what should be the standard. Those dudes shouldn't put an auction house in their game if they aren't ready for nerds to be nerds.

Standard disclaimer that I'm a young-in who didn't play Everquest or Ultima Online or anything, but my point still stands. We now have a seven-year standard of service in WoW and considering every other MMO is desperately trying to claw market share away from them, it's perfectly fine to punish them for being dramatically worse. I don't expect every new MMO to be WoW(nor do I want them to be) but if they can't even handle customer service, like what's happening now, that's disgusting.

If I want to zone out and mine/herb for 3 hours while watching a DVD Box Set of a TV series, nobody will bat an eye. If I want to play the Auction House at the full exclusion of the rest of the game, nobody will bat an eye. If I want my 85 friend to RP-walk through every instance in the game while I follow him and loot everything that dies, nobody will bat an eye. If EA would punish me for any of these things, they've fucked up and they don't get to claim that "This is MMOs, get used to it."

[Pacobird]

Standard disclaimer that I'm a young-in who didn't play Everquest or Ultima Online or anything, but my point still stands.

Worth noting that I have dropped f-bombs no less than three times in direct communications with community moderators of FFXI's forums and have not been banned.

Of course, I know a guy whose sig was a mithra with a pearl necklace and it took them two weeks to take that down, so maybe not the best example?

[Shinra]

why would they take down someone's signature if she was just wearing jewel-

[Classic]

I won't know how damning the image was unless it is also circulated on these boards P.

[Brentai]

It's funny because I know exactly who the FFXI mods are, and how they'd probably react to seeing that.

As far as WoW goes, it's been said before that WoW's success isn't based on any tangible quality so much as the fact that Blizzard has very carefully avoided any crippling administrative fuckups like this.  In the extraordinarily hard to manage world of MMOs, that puts them on top.

[Thad]

Oh hey look at that EA's customer support and moderation hasn't changed at all in the last month.

After they banned some dude for something someone else did I don't get why anyone would be surprised that TOR would have the exact same clowns running things.

This is the problem as much as anything: this isn't the first time this has happened.

It isn't the SECOND time this has happened.

EA's been locking people out of their legally-purchased games based on forum bans for a solid year now.

[Pacobird]

I won't know how damning the image was unless it is also circulated on these boards P.

Somebody had a screencap for posterity on bluegartr; looked for it a few minutes after posting but couldn't find it.

I'll look a bit more tonight if I get a chance.  It was pretty funny, especially since the forums had been up for about 36 hours and there weren't that many thread pages you could view WITHOUT moneyshot mithra getting loaded into your browser history.

[TA]

Let's Play: SWTOR Mako Romance