Warning to Players SE is STILL Banning!Follow

If you're on DSL you have a dynamic IP and it's basically impossible to know who has what IP unless they subpoena the ISP for that information. Unless your ISP provides accurate WHIOS information on residential IPs, and none of them do that I have seen.

What worries me is if SE has started using WHOIS to try to figure out which IP belongs to who. Most US ISPs do not provide WHOIS information on residential customers (I have heard that in japan ISPs are required to provide this information by law)

So if SE is trying to identify IPs this way they are going to come up with huge numbers of players with identical "dummy" street addresses. Which would look exactly like an RMT operation.


Edited, Jul 27th 2009 9:51am by Lobivopis

If you are behind a DSL or cable modem then that is your IP, not your computer's network card.

Edited, Jul 27th 2009 10:13am by Lobivopis

I think it is useful, even though our cries of innocence cannot be proven in the traditional forum manner.

I would hope that as a result of this, pop items, ls gil, and loaned items can be kept just a little bit safer. Anyone who is currently banned but has other accounts, or players that know they have had Credit Card issues in the past, may change their storage methods based on this information.

I understand this thread did not help you, but you are also not helping anyone by making it longer without helping.

To the person that said there are not factual claims:

#1) Square Enix Play Online Information Center has admitted to a mass banning and the mistake of banning innocent players if you do some research you'll find it in the threads where we've posted chat of employees with us the customers.

#2) Square Enix has recently banned more accounts out of the blue, calling people RMTs when they have in fact never RMT'ed EVER. I have never, and I swear on my mom's life I haven't EVER RMT'ed in FFXI and hence I would make this big of a stink fest. My main characters are NOT banned, My other mules are NOT banned, the ONE account that had Credit Card troubles after I lost my card and replaced it with new billing info was banned for RMT Activities with the extended explanation that more then one person had access to my account. I have a security token on it. End of Story, the TOS does not say I can't have 4 ISPs, I work for a security firm.

#3) Square Enix has continued to ban people with the same patterns to my understanding last Friday. Unless everyone in this thread is lieing, which I can't figure out why you would come out and stick your head out to have it chopped off if you were RMTing, quite a few people have come out to speak out about it. I have threads going on on BlueGartr and FFXIAH forums, Not to mention 1 JP BBS and my internal linkshell forum and the same pattern is occuring to players on other forums also.

#4) Further chats with POL Information Center has resulted in employees slipping that mass bannings are going to continue to occur.

This thread was created to keep all of you informed on what we know, hoping that you will also join us and tell us what you know should you find more info that what we already know.

A member of a famous fishing shell has stated that he once thought he was quitting for good so he passed out all his items to his ls members, and closed his account to find it LM-17'ed. It took him 6 months to get his mule account back. Things like this is just flat out discouraging...

What kind of "factual support" do you need? An affidavit - stamped with a Notary Seal - with names, address, SSNs, birthdays, and written/signed documents stating this happened to every person that claims it? Will only multiple statements from ex-SE employees backing this claim quench your absurd requirements for proof?

Get real. There have been dozens of people claiming these innocent bannings on these forums - including long-time posters (I believe Vawn had his second account hit with the ban on updating two CC accounts at once). When multiple people report the same thing - unless there is a conspiracy which I highly doubt - all signs point to there is something amiss.

Remember two years ago when people said they had their account stolen - and they never used a 3rd party program - and everyone on this forum called them liars, and told them to stop using 3rd party programs? Turns out they were right (at least a sizeable portion of them). Sure, a random person here and there making this claim may be brushed off, but the sheer volume of people claiming this has happened to them gives credibility to the story.

Simply put, truth itself - or proof in this case - is highly subjective to each individual's perception of truth/proof. And based on the large volume of testimonies given, its my opinion that there is an acceptable level of factual support provided to call this a truth.


Edited, Jul 27th 2009 1:02pm by ManifestOfKujata

The problem, Acturus, is that you are the guy who likes to play the "logical fallacy" card. You simply post this:



Which implies there is no (absolutely no) factual support to justify the multiple claims. Then you say this:



From your point in the above post, it seems you had a problem with ONE point he made - that SE may be doing this to push people to FFIV - which may be a valid point of you to make, but when you say "I always appreciate warning threads that have no factual support to justify the claims" you imply there are no factual claims in the post. Isnt shooting down an entire argument based on one weak point a strawman fallacy? It sure is. And you are the guy who usually calls people on that.

The fact of the matter is this:
*many people have been banned for unjust reasons.
*when they make a phone call to correct the situation, the vast majority of the accounts have not been restored.

Since SE is not correcting the issue - at this particular point in time - this *is* SE's policy. It may be changed in the future, true, but for right now this is the reality; this is the policy that if you get banned for some dumb reason you wont be getting your account back.

Another fun item to be mentioned is that SE doesnt change / make a fix unless they get SEVERAL HUNDRED complaints - and sometimes even then its not enough.

The statement you made is counter-productive because if a SE rep comes here and sees you post that (LOL I know, SE reps seeing what people are saying) - particularly if its from soneone who posts as much as you do - they can claim that everything is OK based off a "customer who frequently reports on our product."

Trust me- I work for one of the largest companies in the US. This tactic is used every day to support a whole bunch of nonsensical policies: pick out one good statement and herald that as the majority.

Edited, Jul 27th 2009 2:55pm by ManifestOfKujata

To anyone thinking SE wants to kill off FFXI by pissing off its customers so they will move to FFXIV I must say they are complete retards, SE knows very well anyone annoyed or angry at them enough to quit FFXI would never go to FFXIV. First of all, who is going to guarantee you won't get treated the same way? SE will still operate FFXIV. And second, once the players are angry enough at SE they would avoid any of their games because only happy customers go back for more business. I assume SE knows this already, of course, it is SE we are talking about. They think they are immune to bad press and bad reputation from business mistakes after all.

And yet the people who have called have not got their accounts re-instated. That is the big problem. Yeah, RMT won't care if they get banned they just keep using trial accounts or cracked keys. They obviously won't call in for their account. Keeping that in mind, the legit players that do call in to SE still don't get their accounts back. Sure automated process I understand. But then when a legit player calls in they need to get someone to look in to the account instead of hiding behind the automated ban and telling you that you aren't allowed to know why you are banned, just that some faulty program picked up some kind of flag and arbitrarily banned you. Obviously smart people would know RMT won't call in to get their account restored, half of them probably don't even speak English. So then why does SE not understand this and work with the person?

That's great until you get banned for no reason that you can identify, and you wonder why you paid SE hundreds or even thousands of dollars to play their game, only to have it all taken away without warning or reason given.

Yes, we all want RMT to be curtailed, but SE's methods are so shoddy that it almost comes across as being passive-aggressive. "Oh, we're not doing enough about RMT? How about THIS?"

Basically, they looked at what it would cost to have people investigate RMT activity, decided it would be way too expensive, and so they made an automated tool and a rigid no appeals process.

What S-E is doing is like having some statistician look at crime patterns, find that certain neighborhoods are worse than others, and just round up and arrest any one found hanging out in those neighborhoods. "Hey, we got all the crooks, right?" The problem is they're not really getting the crooks. The crooks will just create new accounts. Legitimate players who have invested thousands of hours are NOT coming back when their accounts are banned.

S-E has managed to do the impossible by creating a system that will slowly select out all of the players who make gil legitimately for their own use, while keeping the players who buy gil and the companies that supply them. And of course because S-E "customer support" is a bureaucracy designed to remove all concept of accountability from S-E, no one will ever get a satisfactory experience.

Want to know why WoW has 10 million+ players and FFXI has a few hundred thousand at most? It's not the game, it's the company behind the game.

Here's a true story:

I got hacked in WoW. I was dumb, used Internet Explorer and got keylogged via an exploit via a flash advertisement, ironically one that was embedded in a trusted fan site for WoW.

Before I even knew I'd been hacked, I received an email from WoW customer support. "We noticed suspicious activity on your account, and we've temporarily suspended the account pending an investigation."

The rest of the email told me how to get in touch with support via email, all the steps I could expect to go through, and a very rough time line of how long I could expect everything to take. I logged onto my account after running the recommended virus and malware checks, and resetting my password via an automated system. I never needed to speak with a CS rep or provide 17 forms of ID to verify that I am who I said I was.

Within six hours, on a Sunday, my account had been cleared and the majority of the items that the hackers had sold, as well all of the gold, was restored. Within 72 hours, any remaining items were restored. I was never charged for anything, was never told that I was the problem, and if I had been out of town for the week, the entire process would have happened virtually before I even knew that I had been hacked.

Shortly after, I purchased the Blizzard Authenticator token for five dollars. Not only do I feel highly secure about my account, but I know that if my account ever were involved in suspicious activities, it would be investigated by competent and sympathetic support personnel, and suspended only as long as it took to identify and correct the issue(s), which would be identified to me specifically in game or via email as I desired.


THIS is why I have three WoW accounts active and one inactive FFXI account. The game isn't appreciably better at the core, and in fact I prefer MANY of the features of FFXI to WoW. But why the hell should I pay any one 15 bucks a month when it can and will be taken away without warning or recourse, when there is another business which will do back flips to keep me happy and secure?

Edited, Jul 27th 2009 7:03pm by KarlHungis

Hiya Pikko always love your posts. :)

Not sure about burning Kellinda at the stake, I didn't really come back to this forum until I saw a pattern on many forums about this subject, and this forum seem to have more outspoken people then others, so I chose to post here.

The facts were just the ones that happened, and POL Information Center has confirmed with me. Mass banning - confirmed by rep, chargeback banning - confirmed by rep, gardening - confirmed by rep, and a 2ndary tool confirmed by rep, but the rep also stated they are kept in the dark about the whole procedure of banning.

I ended up giving some friends a call at Square Enix and they say that the only other thing we can do is fax and confirm our accounts, with a statement notarized in order for them to take us more seriously. Not sure how this works, but I haven't done it.

I feel like I'm beating a dead horse now. I just really hope we all get our accounts back. I'm cancelling the remaining 26 content ids of mine until this is resolved. It's unfortunate that this has brought a screeching halt to my linkshell and another friends shell out of the blue. Although all my main chars are safe, I'm having a hard time stomaching 150M worth of crafting materials, salvage items for upggrading gear, pop items for those that needed sky items thats never had help from other shells, limbus coins for newcomers and veteran members that would like upgrades from sagheera, dynamis currency for relic horn upgrade, and more...

I would like to hear both sides of the story, and what people are thinking, but calling me a "white knight" is uncalled for.

This topic is called "Warning to Players SE is Still banning" because when I posted this, 2 more friends arbitraily were banned out of the blue doing absolutely nothing... in fact they were poor as hell, the first topic of this thread was a bunch of things players have experienced in regards to their ban. This was never meant to be some "bible" of SE. Why people twist our words is beyond me. To top it off then you have people jumping supporting those that twist our words. I understand its Monday and people are quite jumpy today. I have one goal and one goal only, to give SE a chance to respond to these bans. Otherwise, I'm leaving the game like everyone else is. Don't care if FF14 is coming out, or who wants or doesn't want to play, it really isn't my business.

The things I refer to as fact, are factual in the sense people have experienced them.

I hold alot of sentimental value to this game, like yourself Pikko Pots, your screenshots, quotes of the day, friends I've met in the game, halirious posts, and other things like changing to level 1 and drinking venom potions in Jeuno... Best not do that anymore you might get banned lol. It's hard for me to be labelled an RMT when I fought them for so long. If they just look at the logs, I would be exonerated.

Edited, Jul 27th 2009 7:33pm by GummybearOdin

Of course. Person of Authority = Wrong. A veritable nobody = FACT.

Edited, Jul 28th 2009 1:27am by Lobivopis