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Is it justified fear though? From what I've seen, it's not like they've banned thousands of players without a good reason. They have banned some, yes, but we're not talking about a huge number of players here. It seems the chance of Me getting banned is the same as winning the first prize in the bonanza.. Not much to worry about there, really.
Actually it was several thousand accounts that got banned starting with the May bannings (think it was ~5,000 accounts that got banned in May, maybe more.). The grand majority of people got their accounts back with the May wave of bannings (the charge back ban) because all you had to do was phone in your credit card info and they gave your account back. In June (the irregular activities ban) just as many accounts got banned as well (about 7,000 the rep told me), and it was estimated about 2,000-3,000 were regular players like me that got banned with the "irregular activities but we can't tell you what they were" that have not got their account back from that ban. Customer service said that ban was the hardest to get around, period, and it is the one they gave the fewest details about, which is pretty much none just the standard "irregular activities" line and that is literally all they will tell you. Then again in July (the RMT bans) several thousand more accounts got banned for "RMT" activities and yet a couple thousand of those were legitimate players, which not all of got their accounts back.
So yeah, we kind of are talking about a huge number of players here. It's estimated about 3,000-4,000 (or possibly more that was just the figure I got from a GM back in June) legitimate players lost their accounts and the majority of them have not got them back. They banned something like almost 20,000 accounts in the last 3 months, but still 3,000-4,000 is kind of a lot if you ask me. That's a minimum of $52,000 less revenue SE will be pulling in per month because of the bans (just counting the "legitimate" players alone, if you total all 20,000 or so accounts that's almost $250,000 less per month they're making now), and that is assuming each account only had 1 character on it. But as we all know a lot of people had more than 1 character on their account, and there could be more than 3,000-4,000 of those ~20,000 accounts that got banned that are also legit players that have not stepped forward, so that figure of SE's monthly revenue loss is probably significantly north of ~$52,000. It doesn't seem like much but that adds up quick, especially in a recession. And 3,000-4,000 (at least that we know of) legitimate players that got arbitrarily banned is no small number either.
Edited to make the post easier to read, less run ons, etc... I think lol.
Edited, Jul 26th 2009 8:04am by Phallucy