RMT, SE response, and the rediculousness of it all.Follow

Many of you remember 2004-2005 final fantasy. It was a much different game back then. An NQ staff was worth about 100-200k apiece and the spell erase was something that WHMs had to save up to get their seer's mitts on. All of you know that the inflation was mainly, and I dare say totally, caused by the rampant RMT activities on the game. When enough was enough, the masses cried out for SE to do something.

That something, was the STF. This great organization broke the back of RMT practically overnight. Within a few months, the amount of RMTs on servers was slim to nil. Needless to say, the STF was one thing that SE did right...mostly. Although there were some complaints, mainly annoyances, most of the time people were either happy with the STF or didn't care cause the RMT were gone.

But the RMT fought back. The RMT figured out that fishing was very profitable if done enmass and could be done automated. So they created HUNDREDS of mules. Faced with the daunting task of banning hundreds of accounts a day with hundreds of reinforcements arriving each day to replace the fallen mules, the STF had a daunting task. I guess a good analogy would be trying to kill every ant in an ant bed using only a ballpeen hammer.

Around this time SE introduced a new monster. The goblin bounty hunter. This shining example of genius at it best, killed off the fishing bots from hundreds, to those 4 or 5 that could fit behind the tree in the dunes. A spot which is now aggroed by the GBH.

But this monster was not without its flaws. At first, this monster was so powerful that the dunes was made an even worse place to level. A feat which was thought to be impossible. So SE lowered its difficulty a little bit, and it can best be described now as an EP that checks as a T to dunes parties. Aggro from this monster is a laughable experience, but it still serves it purpose.

After this, RMT resorted to various other methods of gaining the gil necessary to facilitate all of the gilbuyers. Mainly in the form of stolen accounts. It got so bad that SE actually did something about it. They implemented a way to have your character rolled back to a certain date, and even went ahead an gave us the security token.

Fast forward a few months, and you arive to june 2009. Its starting to be a good summer, school is out, the weather outside is getting hotter and your FFXI linkshell is stepping up its endgame activities. But wait...You are banned. And you are left to wonder why. You never did any RMT activity, you never bought gil, let someone else use your account, and the only thing that even remotely makes you look bad, is your gardening mules. So you check allah, and guess what several others are getting their accounts banned. So you all contact SE enmasse, and eventually they do something about it. You get your account back, and you think everything is hunky dorey. After trying to find out why the whole situation happened in the first place, you find out that RMT were gardening on fully loaded accounts making millions of gil solely off of vendor sales.

When we entered july, we knew that people had been given a raw deal by SE, and many were mad at SE. But on the RMT scale you can kinda see what they were trying to do, just failed horribly at it. So SE changed tac. First, they ban any account that had any shady dealings with a credit card in the past. ...any account. So hundreds of people are forced to create a new account on a prepaid card. Now we run into the problem of RMTs are still around.

At this point, most of the people do not give a sh*t about the RMT problem as it isn't really a problem anymore. Just a minor annoyance. But enough people complained, and SE decided to take action. First, they implemented a system that bans people who have chargebacks on their CC. A popular RMT tactic. Then they decide to take it once step further. They sign on with the services of Mastercard Securecode, and VerifiedbyVisa. While these two services offered are not entirely bad, the sheer lack of support for these services is. ANYONE who pays for FFXI with prepaids, whether legit or not, are basically screwed. Nothing they can do besides getting a real CC or Debit Card. And I bet right now that the SE employee who suggested these two services is sitting in his swivel chair feeling proud of himself because he found a surefire way to eliminate almost all of the remaining RMT in one fell swoop.

But wait here is the problem. Many people do not read the POL news, many people do not read alla, and many people will not be able to play for a while because they are left wondering what happened, why cant I log in, and lets not forget, is my CC bad? SquareEnix, I only have utter contempt for your latest business turn. You have FORCED most of your online players into a state of fear that they will be banned for something they can not control. Sometimes, enough is enough. And sometimes, you can go too far without even going far at all. You have alienated a very large portion of your playerbase, and you have chosen to do it in a way that makes you look like a saint to the business world. This latest move aimed mostly at RMT, has literally made several hundred, if not thousand, people go into a state of absolute fear over your business decisions.

What do you have to say for your actions?

Seemingly what SE has to say for their actions, sadly, is "We can terminate any account we wish to, with or without reason, and without warning, at our sole and absolute discretion."

I lold

Well...I could have use terms like, changed tac, or tried something different, or something less dramatic, but SE even described it as a battle against RMT. Which is rediculous...kinda a theme in this thread. RMT, SE response, and the rediculousness of it all.

As for the accuracy of this, I was there for all of it. The day they changed certain drops from monsters to R/EX, the day they started policing people who actually sold gil, and the day that mass bannings started happening. Its simple. We all know it, most of us have been through it. Besides...you should have realized that this was a general summary of things that happened. It all leads up to the epic B S we have to put up with today because SE can not leave well enough alone.

The worst we had to put up with 5 days ago...was a few RMT tells a day. Now, a very large number of people are actually scared of getting banned over something they have no control over. Somehow...I am reminded of the Salem With hunts. Innocent or guilty, all you need is to be accused.