Unrest in the Garden of Square Enix

The following editorial contains views that are the opinion of the author and not necessarily the views of Allakhazam.com

ZOMG Ceiling Cat It is remarkably difficult to open a discussion about the very subjective subject (heh) that is cheating and exploiting, so I decided that I would utilize the greatest essay introduction ever. If you are enrolled in university at the moment and you ever write an essay, I’d suggest you take the following thesis, change the words to fit your needs, and thusly reap the rewards of creating pure, undistilled academia. No need to thank me. Donations, however...

Ahem. To continue:

For millions (maybe billions) of years, man has pondered the meaning of cheating. But what is cheating? Webster’s dictionary defines cheating as “to practice fraud or trickery” and “to violate rules dishonestly”. An online dictionary further defines cheating as “an annual European species of brome grass widely naturalized in temperate regions”. Taking the above definitions, therefore, we may define cheating as a method of dishonestly violating rules to practice fraud or trickery involving a European species of grass.

Awesome.

European grass aside, this article was written mostly out of wedlock; born from the marriage of Square Enix’s recent bannings and my awkward desire to be ‘hip’ and ‘with it’ in my writing. For those who don’t know, on January 22nd, 2009, SE finally decided to bring divine punishment down upon hundreds of FFXI players who had exploited an in-game glitch to get 3x the loot in specific zones. While this wouldn’t have been so bad if all of the items in question were RA/EX (bind on pickup), a number of the dupable items could be sold (and were) for extravagant amounts of gil, mostly due to their rarity. Thus, not only did this duping trick allow players to get excessive amounts of RA/EX gear quicker than SE intended, but they profited an incredible amount in the process.

What was truly remarkable about this exploit, however, was the fact that it had not been fixed for at least two years after its discovery . That means that people who knew of this were able to keep it ‘on the down low’ for at least a quarter of FFXI’s life. That’s some pretty good ‘down low’ keeping; almost, if one considers it, too good. Nobody, not even SE, could be that blind.

The fact is, if there is anyone an MMO team needs to keep an eye on to prevent unforeseen exploitation, it’s the hardcore endgame community. Say what you will about the resourcefulness of more casual players, the fact is, nobody is more willing to devote their time, money and experience points to learn how to beat something, and then learn how to make it easier by any means necessary. Feel free to argue that it’s up to the player base to remain morally correct in the face of programming errors, but last time I checked, trusting your most ambitious demographic to ignore the opportunity to get ahead is like asking our banks to not crash the stock market.

Players may go ahead and believe that heavy moderation on key forums (not Allakhazam, obviously) was what kept this knowledge from the ears of developers, but if this was truly the case, then the FFXI playerbase has larger things to worry about than who’s getting how much gear. I cannot help but wonder if this is truly indicative of SE’s connection to the FFXI playing community. How can you allow hundreds of endgame guilds to exploit what was clearly a very significant glitch; but only begin to act after two years of exploitation? Perhaps SE is subscribing to a very laissez faire type of management, but that sort of approach will rapidly alienate your community. A video game may be the vision of the developers to create, but it is ultimately the players who play the game and participate in its creation.

This is ultimately what bothers me about the nature of these bannings; while I really don’t agree with how they TALK TO US SE were implemented, I’m still truly puzzled at why SE felt that permanent bans were necessary. In World of Warcraft, when several teams were caught exploiting the arena system to gain large numbers of arena points (and ridiculous amounts of gold from selling points), they stripped those characters of all arena gear and arena points. Prior to these bannings, there were very few, if any at all, documented permanent bans that resulted from careless exploitation of in-game glitches; even if you were caught utilizing third party programs (so you basically created an exploit), players were often slapped with a temporary ban and then left to ‘think about what they did.’ Now we have a case where players took advantage of a glitch they found, and permanent bans are issued. It just feels disproportionate.

In reality, there are only a few reasons why SE would implement such extreme measures:

1.) To compensate for their relative inaction over the course of two years, they decided that the perpetrators had ‘built up punishment,’ so to speak (so if I don’t punch you today, five years from now, I can break your leg).

2.) SE feels that being lied to is the ultimate offence, and this specific kind of dishonesty merits much more punishment than when individuals create custom tailored programs to take advantage of game mechanics.

3.) SE felt that the repercussions of triple drops have severely affected all of FFXI in such drastic ways that permanent bans were a necessary bandage. They will then implement a Mog Bonanza when they feel drop rates are too low.

4.) SE didn’t really know to what extent these individuals benefited, so they lazily banned them to ‘cover all the bases.’

5.) According to some, SE is actually a giant corporate Samurai, and therefore could not stand the dishonour, so they theoretically killed those who dishonoured them.

Or, finally, perhaps it’s this:

6.) Immediately after fixing this problem (and this was a problem they were well aware of, prior to fixing), the community backlash was so massive that SE felt that heavy-handed punishments were key to placating the witch burning community. Never mind that the company took two years to mete out these punishments (and stayed relatively silent on the matter during the time), and never mind that taking such actions were unprecedented; people wanted sacrifices, and so they got them.

I’d say temporarily ban everyone, strip them of all items that pertain to the glitch, reduce them down to 100k gil and then carefully monitor their logs over the next few months to ensure that they don’t suddenly ‘inherit’ 10,000 Alexandrites from a suspiciously named “LSMule” character.  That’s just me.

Either way, SE, you need to take this as a wakeup call if you ever needed one; establish some contacts in top endgame LSes, consult with the player community and show us that you’re not dozing at the wheel when it comes to listening to our needs. A company cannot blithely continue to develop expansions without understanding and working with its player base; otherwise situations like this happen. Part of what makes World of Warcraft so successful is its ability to listen to the needs of its largest player demographic. I’m certainly not saying that you need to spoon feed our players, but I would be much less critical if there was any demonstration of community outreach and if there were any attempts to understand (and alleviate) the problems of the average FFXI player. Otherwise controversial bans like these just feel like you’re panicking when you open the door to your cave and you discover a lynch mob waiting.

Christopher "Pwyff" Tom
Editor
Allakhazam.com

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stupid
# Jan 28 2009 at 5:39 PM Rating: Default
i agree with this post. look at it as if this was real life. you steal something from a store and do it for 2 years then they decide to ban you from the store...the store would be the retards or idiots. if you found something that makes you money quick and no one says anything for 2 years why would you think its bad, or that someone is ever gonna stop you. SE just showed that for 2 years they didnt or couldnt control their own game. temporarily ban em take away all their gear they got from the glitch and straight up take away all their gil, check up on em every month or 2.
Say Hello to my BANSTICK
# Jan 28 2009 at 3:51 PM Rating: Decent
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793 posts
OP makes some good points that I fully agree with:

1) Permanent bannings were excessive for solely this offense. If someone already had a few strikes against them, then maybe.
2) RESTORATIVE JUSTICE (a logical and fair concept) would state that players lost the gear that they used the exploits to obtain.

However, cest la vie. Players should no that S-E governs by use of:

MARTIAL LAW AND EXCESSIVE FORCE

Rather than reason and fairness. Anyone who's ever had a run-in with a GM over a game issue knows this to be true.

That's my 2 gil.

PS: OP! Love your insights. Keep them coming.
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bullsh*t!
# Jan 28 2009 at 3:26 PM Rating: Excellent
Thief's Knife
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15,054 posts
Quote:
1.) To compensate for their relative inaction over the course of two years, they decided that the perpetrators had ‘built up punishment,’ so to speak (so if I don’t punch you today, five years from now, I can break your leg).

2.) SE feels that being lied to is the ultimate offence, and this specific kind of dishonesty merits much more punishment than when individuals create custom tailored programs to take advantage of game mechanics.

3.) SE felt that the repercussions of triple drops have severely affected all of FFXI in such drastic ways that permanent bans were a necessary bandage. They will then implement a Mog Bonanza when they feel drop rates are too low.

4.) SE didn’t really know to what extent these individuals benefited, so they lazily banned them to ‘cover all the bases.’

5.) According to some, SE is actually a giant corporate Samurai, and therefore could not stand the dishonour, so they theoretically killed those who dishonoured them.


Also players on BG bragging about their duping and calling SE "too stupid to find us" with their actual character names/servers listed on the posts in front of the entire FFXI community was basically slapping SE across the face with a glove and throwing it at their feet, daring them to do something about it.

The people who got banned were some of the worst botters, cheaters and scumbags in FFXI even without considering the salvage duping they did and the game will be better off without them.

You can take this horsesh*t and shove it up your *** because we have no sympathy for these people.



Edited, Jan 28th 2009 7:27pm by Lobivopis
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I thought of it first:

http://ffxi.allakhazam.com/forum.html?forum=10&mid=130073657654872218#20
SE phearing massive Mythic Weapon influx?
# Jan 28 2009 at 3:09 PM Rating: Good
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550 posts
Eh, they probably noticed that some people were progressing way too damn quickly with the Mythic Weapon quests and were wondering how they were amassing so many Alexandrites so quickly.

Heck, weren't the players who owned Burtgangs permabanned?
Rubbish.
# Jan 28 2009 at 3:06 PM Rating: Excellent
This article is written in a very biased and unfair manner. The accusations that SE knew about the exploit for two full years before taking action cannot be cited to anything aside from the statements given from the very players that were affected by SE's ban. The inclusion of lolcat pictures only furthers serves to discredit any weight that the author wanted the article to carry.

When I got caught stealing toys when I was a child, I used to make the most extravagant excuses to try to get myself out of trouble. The banned players that claim they reported the exploit are resorting to the same exact thing. Hell, the author is doing it as well by saying that exploiting is acceptable since it took creativity and forward-thinking on the parts of the exploiters. For these players and the author to accuse SE of baiting them into continuous of the exploit by not taking any action for two years is wishful thinking at best, and desperate excuse finding at worst.

What the author doesn't acknowledge is that out of the 500,000 people that play FFXI, less that 1000 were banned. Of that, only 550 were handed permenant bans. SE has already stated that the people handed permenant bans were those who willingly used the exploit to not only get themselves and thier linkshell mates gear, but also used the exploit to earn large sums of gil. There's is also a good possibility that the perma-banned players were also guilty of other infractions, whether they be past blemishes on their account's record or infractions related to the exploit.

In addition, to compare WoW's punitive system with FFXI's is the old apples to oranges analogy. SE is not Blizzard. SE has a zero-tolerance policy when it comes to misbehavior, whereas Blizzard only resorts to slaps on the wrists of those players that break the rules. For those people who are looking for lenient punishments when they break the rules, then by all means, go somewhere that caters to you. I personally feel that expecting people to adhere to rules, and strong punishments for those who break those rules, is a great thing.
Rubbish.
# Jan 28 2009 at 5:17 PM Rating: Decent
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784 posts
Admiral Tzemesce wrote:
This article is written in a very biased and unfair manner. The accusations that SE knew about the exploit for two full years before taking action cannot be cited to anything aside from the statements given from the very players that were affected by SE's ban.


Which is why SE needs to perhaps hire someone on the inside Player based to browse sites like Alla BG Wiki Kill Ifrit and such. If they did not know about it for 2 years it may be showing they are a little detached from the world they created. They have only just recently started listening to some ideas from fan bases, but too little too late. Many have already gone.

IDK if SE does or not, but do they allow for character repeals based on the offense. Yes you say these people may be scumb, but some may have simply been followers or didnt know it was "Sentenceable by Death".

I think If SE really cared they could impliment a "Court" to repeal your Chracter for those who really feel wronged by a Ban. With of course probationary methods.

exp.No Accuasition of Alexadrite, Pulling any Mythic or Salvage gear from player, Putting a Gil cap of 200k...

for the course of 1 year, while being closly monitored. Is it worth SE time? Maybe not, Is it worth a declining Player base, Maybe so.

I agree with Banning because they must maintian consistancey, however they need to implement a means to reaquire accounts. 12.99/mon is 12.99/mon.
Rubbish.
# Jan 28 2009 at 7:22 PM Rating: Excellent
Nihcru wrote:
Admiral Tzemesce wrote:
This article is written in a very biased and unfair manner. The accusations that SE knew about the exploit for two full years before taking action cannot be cited to anything aside from the statements given from the very players that were affected by SE's ban.


Which is why SE needs to perhaps hire someone on the inside Player based to browse sites like Alla BG Wiki Kill Ifrit and such. If they did not know about it for 2 years it may be showing they are a little detached from the world they created. They have only just recently started listening to some ideas from fan bases, but too little too late. Many have already gone.

IDK if SE does or not, but do they allow for character repeals based on the offense. Yes you say these people may be scumb, but some may have simply been followers or didnt know it was "Sentenceable by Death".

I think If SE really cared they could impliment a "Court" to repeal your Chracter for those who really feel wronged by a Ban. With of course probationary methods.

exp.No Accuasition of Alexadrite, Pulling any Mythic or Salvage gear from player, Putting a Gil cap of 200k...

for the course of 1 year, while being closly monitored. Is it worth SE time? Maybe not, Is it worth a declining Player base, Maybe so.

I agree with Banning because they must maintian consistancey, however they need to implement a means to reaquire accounts. 12.99/mon is 12.99/mon.



No, there's no need for a "court". Are you seriously considering that players should be able to appeal their ban before a jury of their peers, with a GM sitting as magistrate and the a public defender for the accused? Seriously?

Listen. When the exploit was made known publicly, it was a shock to a vast majority of the player base. I'm a leader of a 45 member strong endgame shell on Ifrit, and none of us knew about the exploit. Whenever someone posted about the exploit on BG, the admins would immediately delete the post to keep the information from becoming public knowledge. More than likely the same thing happened over on KI. Here on Alla most of the forum posters enjoy a relaxed, laid back play style. Very few of us are hardcore about endgame the way that the banned players were; it was a surprise to most of when we learned about the exploit.

Like I stated in my original post, any claim that SE knew about the exploit is purely anecdotal. To think that SE has been intentionally observing the banned players for the past two years purely for the sake of entrapping them is, for lack of a better term, Smiley: tinfoilhat. There were no innocents banned. Those who lead the runs and actively encouraged using the exploit were perma banned. Those who merely benefited from the exploit were temp banned. It's unfortunate that some of those temp bans might have been people that knew nothing of the exploit, but it's empirically impossible to tell.
Rubbish.
# Jan 29 2009 at 4:30 PM Rating: Decent
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784 posts
Admiral Tzemesce wrote:
Nihcru wrote:
Admiral Tzemesce wrote:
This article is written in a very biased and unfair manner. The accusations that SE knew about the exploit for two full years before taking action cannot be cited to anything aside from the statements given from the very players that were affected by SE's ban.


Which is why SE needs to perhaps hire someone on the inside Player based to browse sites like Alla BG Wiki Kill Ifrit and such. If they did not know about it for 2 years it may be showing they are a little detached from the world they created. They have only just recently started listening to some ideas from fan bases, but too little too late. Many have already gone.

IDK if SE does or not, but do they allow for character repeals based on the offense. Yes you say these people may be scumb, but some may have simply been followers or didnt know it was "Sentenceable by Death".

I think If SE really cared they could impliment a "Court" to repeal your Chracter for those who really feel wronged by a Ban. With of course probationary methods.

exp.No Accuasition of Alexadrite, Pulling any Mythic or Salvage gear from player, Putting a Gil cap of 200k...

for the course of 1 year, while being closly monitored. Is it worth SE time? Maybe not, Is it worth a declining Player base, Maybe so.

I agree with Banning because they must maintian consistancey, however they need to implement a means to reaquire accounts. 12.99/mon is 12.99/mon.


[quote]
No, there's no need for a "court". Are you seriously considering that players should be able to appeal their ban before a jury of their peers, with a GM sitting as magistrate and the a public defender for the accused? Seriously?



No, small claims, your making it a huge thing. no peers, just before an athority figure, hell a receptionist to proccess an order form to be reviewed. anyway. This incident makes sense to ban those guilty of hainessness, but one of my ls buddies lost his fist account for a minor infraction and lost a 65 rng, along with other jobs gil and gear. just kind of a case by case basis imo. But it just hows how SE cares for its community.
Rubbish.
# Jan 29 2009 at 11:48 AM Rating: Good
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532 posts
I'm a leader of a 45 member strong endgame shell on Ifrit, and none of us knew about the exploit. Whenever someone posted about the exploit on BG, the admins would immediately delete the post to keep the information from becoming public knowledge. More than likely the same thing happened over on KI.

This is not true:

This following post was made on 01-28-2008, 04:45PM Minnich of BG

http://www.bluegartrls.com/forum/ffxi...glitch.html

You can find all the info you need about it. This was done a YEAR ago! It is not hidden. Also, many other posts were made after. There may have been some before but I failed to find them on a quick google search.

I don't support or defend anyone. This is just for accuracy.
This article
# Jan 28 2009 at 2:57 PM Rating: Decent
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1,596 posts
Quote:
Immediately after fixing this problem (and this was a problem they were well aware of, prior to fixing), the community backlash was so massive that SE felt that heavy-handed punishments were key to placating the witch burning community.


Yea that pretty much described the Alla community's reaction as well as anything else could.

Personally the period of time they waited on top of the lack of precedence for this severe of a punishment made the massive scale of the permabans(which seem to have been driven my Alexandrite obtained mostly when it comes to salvage)was uncalled for. SE is most likely just butthurt that their rediculously hard to obtain mythics showed up so fast because of this. Let alone the money made by players from the sandworm drops.

But the bannings were not all bad. 99.9% of Phoenix is glad that MercX is dead. >.>
My opinion is this.
# Jan 28 2009 at 2:54 PM Rating: Good
It's not so much the Duping form of misconduct that bothered me, but the fact that most of these people were cheaters for a long time. Exploits of every kind are abused until SE has patched them. But in this case, the guilty players had some sort of "inner elite circle" that kept it quiet enough to avoid SE fixing it. I'm sure all of these people knew it was wrong and eventually SE would patch it so they took advantage until that time. That's why they were banned in my view, to prove that doing the wrong thing won't be tolerated. The players banned supported POS hacking, borderline illegal Windower plugins(I don't mean luggage or TP plug-ins either), Bot claiming, Gardening exploits, and duping.

This issue will never be over. If you dont defend the LM-17 players, you're considered a jealous SE fanboy. If you claim justice was done, you need to get off your high horse. Either way, it's not worth it anymore. Nobody wants to take responsibility that's for certain.
Love > Hate AmIrite?
# Jan 28 2009 at 2:52 PM Rating: Decent
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143 posts
You guys gotta remember FFXI is a love hate relationship. I will say I have HATED! some of the things in FFXI that make me want to stop playing. SE has done some ****** things and some things yeh they took a long time to change. Sometimes their customer service is hard to deal with, the game has limitations and glitches but guess what? We all still come back and find enjoyment in it again. Hell about 2-3 months ago I was so frustrated with FFXI that I stopped playing, but here again I am back and still playing since Fall 2003
Guilds (lol)
# Jan 28 2009 at 2:38 PM Rating: Decent
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1,556 posts
I quit FFXI about a year ago and haven't been back. I have a friend on Garuda who keeps me up to date (whether I want to hear it or not) about business in FFXI. He told me about this and linked me to this particular article today.

I just have one thing to say:

Quote:
That’s some pretty good ‘down low’ keeping; almost, if one considers it, too good. Nobody, not even SE, could be that blind.


You seem a bit new to FFXI (honestly...guilds? really? REALLY?). Maybe you will recall the fact that it took them about 4 years to add commodities to the game like moogles in Selbina and Mhaura, adjusting the mechanics behind HNM monopolization, and other such nonsense that players have always been on their case about.

SE, by nature, is a very slow-to-adapt company. They are not all that connected to their community. In fact, I doubt they really care what the community wants. They have a tendency, as you have seen in the past, to respond to any given problem 3+ years from the problem's original mention. Yes, even exploitative mechanics and bugs take them that long to even be noticed let alone fixed.

Needless to say, their lackluster performance when it comes to community concerns are a big factor that contributes to their loss of players.

After 5 years I finally saw the light and put my foot down. When will you?
To ban or not to ban?
# Jan 28 2009 at 2:30 PM Rating: Good
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1,326 posts
As long as we're sparking discussion...

I don't know how I feel. We're all very well aware of the frustration of not getting the "good drops". We see people running around in godlike gear and we, naturally, want it. The drop rates are so low as to create and maintain an artificial scarcity on the best of the best items. That's the way it should be, though it's aggrivating.

The problem is when this godlike gear becomes the new defacto standard. In other words, "If you don't have this, you're gimp." So, it's a twin drive between the frustration of a low drop rate and the desire to own the best gear that inspires people to cheat in this fashion.

I can understand, and I can sympathize. I can even understand why someone would want to bot or hack to get claims. But I would never do it. Three reasons:
First, I've worked hard to get the barely-adequate gear I have now, and cheating would make all that effort seem like a joke.
Second, getting the gear legitimately feels like a reward. I can't believe cheating to get it would feel anywhere near the same.
Third, and most importantly, I've put too much effort into my character to see her banned because I was too impatient to do things the right way.

So, how do I feel about SE's bannings?

Willfully exploiting a part of the game as it is written shouldn't be a permanent ban, as far as I'm concerned. Mainly because we don't really know what is intentional or not. I don't mean in this specific case (getting tripled drops is obviously not how the game is supposed to work). But in general, how do you know that this innovative technique you discovered isn't how things are supposed to be? A warning and a patch is more than sufficient for someone using an exploit, in most cases, and in my opinion.

However, we don't really know what they uncovered. As far as we know, the original intent might have been equipment removal and temp bans for everyone, but the review they did showed evidence of other misconduct (use of bots, etc). Or maybe this was a third strike for these people. In that case, a permanent ban is fully acceptable. If you bot, you get banned, no questions. You can't claim to have accidentally botted. And if you've been warned once or twice already and kept up the risky behavior, well... you knew what could happen.
"Great Article!"
# Jan 28 2009 at 2:21 PM Rating: Good
I think the self-congratulations (see title) wasn't necessary to lampshade how poorly-written this piece is.

Seriously, if you want to dabble in provocation, you could endeavour to do it well, instead of repeating the same for 4 paragraphs.


The brilliance of the arguments does not pale to the poor style, either.
I loved the "WoW is the benchmark for fair punishment of misdeeds" one.

Wait, that's the only one.

Edited, Jan 28th 2009 5:28pm by NotASock
My thoughts
# Jan 28 2009 at 2:13 PM Rating: Decent
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532 posts
I won't take sides. I think it is a pretty complex situation.

I think SE knew about it for a long time. They did nothing until more of the community reacted to it. Then they decided to do something after the fact. They could of stopped this glitch almost immediately.

It's like you post a speed limit of 35 mph, however, u decide to not put law enforcement to enforce those speed limits. There are more accidents and whatnot on that road. Who's fault is it? Speeders? Yes to a degree but the laws need enforced if you want people to take it seriously. That's were it failed.

If they would have put a group in M.Goal overnight or something, someone might have mentioned it on forums somewhere or maybe a few groups. People will get the idea spread around the community not to do it. Groups will still do it but they will know the consequences right away. This would buy them some time til they had a way to fix it, if that was the real issue.

I feel they dropped the ball. They were not proactive enough.

http://kanican.livejournal.com

The above link talks about some things like AV that were killed in a way 'not intended' like Drk zerg. Even though zerg is an excepted strat on other HNMs like Bahamut and King Vinegaroon.

Personally, I don't really take any sides except my feeling that SE handled it wrong. They really should of been more proactive. I knew about the glitch. I knew they knew about it. I chose to not go that route.

This following post was made on 01-28-2008, 04:45PM Minnich of BG

http://www.bluegartrls.com/forum/ffxi...glitch.html

This was a year ago! It has been mentioned before that they read BG, livejournals, as well as premiere sites like allakhazam and others.

So I have no doubt they knew about it. Also several of the banned claimed to have reported it.

I hope that SE in the future will be more proactive when it comes to glitches and exploits and not allow them to happen.
My thoughts
# Jan 28 2009 at 2:30 PM Rating: Default
I know this happened a bit ago, but been wondering this probably stupid question but,
If this exploit has been going on for the greater part of the past two years, why werent there more than 900 people banned/temp-banned? Does SE only keep a months/couple months/a years/etc worth of logs, and delete em how ever often that they couldnt hit everyone that abused it (or they too lazy to do that?)
Hasen't there been enough editorials on this?
# Jan 28 2009 at 1:50 PM Rating: Good
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4,780 posts
I think it's wrong to assume weither or not SE "Knew" about it in the first place. There is really no proof of any early reports other than peoples 'word' and right now there really is no credit in the endgame department as far as concerning this.

There is also the question of the method these said "Reports" were displayed.

I find it fishy how all these people after the banns occur come out and say "But I reported it and SE ignored it!" AFTER the fact.

It took a matter of days for one person in Faqs to report this and stated he reported it publicly for it to get notice and fixed promptly.

So how do you explain that? What was the difference in method that 'so many others' had reported on in the 'course of two years' that caused the sudden and imediate fix?

I can only guess that SE thought the previous reports were a hoax and that they were few and far between, and I DON'T condone administrators and show hosts abusing their positions to write editorials that depict SE in the worst possible light in this situation.

Regardless of SE's performance, it was those who chose to do the glitch that were in the wrong. Anything else is up to SE to decide how to divy out the punishment. And public hanging of some of the most noted players in the game seems like a very good method of making an example.

Seriously, G4 and other websides have bashed the game and their developers and players enough as is we don't need our own community sites doing the same.

Do you even PLAY FFXI Tamat?

Edited, Jan 28th 2009 4:51pm by Hyrist
Great article!
# Jan 28 2009 at 1:40 PM Rating: Excellent
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1,577 posts
I don't condone the exploits that were abused by the players in question but I also don't approve on how SE handled the punishment. What does everyone else think?
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Great article!
# Jan 30 2009 at 6:26 PM Rating: Excellent
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1,139 posts
It was ridiculous to ban everyone. Temp ban, take their items, but seriously, you're taking friends away from people, and all of the self-righteous idiots are forgetting there are humans behind these characters, and this is a game. All you have to do is remove the benefit earned.

Hell, trust me, there would be just as much emo over losing the Imperial Wootz Ingots lol.
Great article!
# Jan 28 2009 at 6:31 PM Rating: Good
Quote:
The following editorial contains views that are the opinion of the author and not necessarily the views of Allakhazam.com


Then why is not in with the rest of the opinions, on the thread of the official post below and not on the top of the front page again.

Could we just drop this and get back to FFXI already ?

Edited, Jan 28th 2009 9:44pm by sirtebian
Great article!
# Jan 28 2009 at 4:22 PM Rating: Good
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368 posts
After reviewing warning/suspension/banning standards:
http://www.playonline.com/ff11us/rule/manner05.html?pageID=manner
the reaction seems perfectly inline with policy. The argument may be that if anything they turn a blind eye so often that we take it for granted. According to official policy any 72 hour suspension is reviewed and will be banned if deemed a severe offense. Considering how many times this violation was used and how much was gained because of it, I think it is easily a bannable offense when you think of everything else that can get you a 72 hour suspension.
Great article!
# Jan 28 2009 at 2:24 PM Rating: Good
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3,530 posts
"In World of Warcraft, when several teams were caught exploiting the arena system to gain large numbers of arena points (and ridiculous amounts of gold from selling points), they stripped those characters of all arena gear and arena points."

So they got to keep their "ridiculous amounts of gold?" Stripping gear and points is a start, for sure, but unless those characters are completely removed from the game there is really no way to achieve equal, accurate retribution.

To elaborate, the message Blizzard sends to players who willingly cheat with such a punishment is akin to "If you find an exploit, make as much profit from it as you can until you get caught," since, ultimately, those that cheated still came out ahead in that scenario.

It would be the same in FFXI's case: take someone's salvage gear and they still have the gil from ill-begotten Alexandrites, take their gil as well and they could (and likely would) be able to receive more from their Rolanberry mules (or whichever zone mules stand outside of Jeuno in on your respective server), as many people store such Salvage-related items on bazaar mules.

Even the removal of all Salvage-related items and capital from every one of the violator's characters would not necessarily undo the damage done, as the millions made from duplicated Alexandrites could be long-spent on Auction-house gear for any number of other jobs, as in the aforementioned World of Warcraft scenario. Making sure they don't come in to possession of more Alexandrite would not address this problem – the violators have already benefited.

Therefore, since there is no action which could be taken that could both undo the damage as well as allow for a convicted player to continue that wouldn't send the "exploit while you can and still come out ahead" message, SE decided to perma-ban a handful of players - likely with gravity, too, as so few across all servers were punished in this way.

Therefore I think that SE made a difficult decision, but one that is essentially unavoidable when considering just how far-reaching this item duplication offense is. Yes, a permanent ban seems harsh, but there is no other way to respond to a player who violates the ToS in such a manner.
Great article!
# Jan 28 2009 at 10:29 PM Rating: Decent
I wonder out of those 550 ppl, how many of them got upgraded relic weapons? >.>;
Great article!
# Jan 29 2009 at 12:53 AM Rating: Good
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6,424 posts
Ioriyakami wrote:
I wonder out of those 550 ppl, how many of them got upgraded relic weapons? >.>;


Over a 100 relics and at least 2 nyzul weapons were vaporized, according to the BG list. Also, the #1 player, Minidragon, has left the building.

From now on, when I see someone with a relic weapon equipped, I'll be wondering if he used the exploits and somehow danced around the ban wave... it has tainted the epic feel of endgame, that's for sure...
Great article!
# Jan 28 2009 at 5:56 PM Rating: Excellent
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86 posts
The fact that people still don't understand why the bans happened is pretty much testament as to why this situation happened in the first place. People say that the punishments were so severe because SE was sore about how fast people were getting gear, or weapons. Or because they were just sad that people had been dipping into the cookie jar for so long like a big disappointed mommy, and the bans were a knee jerk reaction that SE will somehow regret later. Those people are idiots.

It boils down to this. There was an unintentional bug in certain end game activities that allowed people to dupe items. The act of duping those items is a violation of the ToS and reason enough to roll back some characters, or possibly a mini-ban for the people who abused it. There is no room for theological debate or "Maybe they thought..." or "It's actually someone else's fault for...." Its cheating, get over it. I don't care of your the king of FFXI with 900 days of playtime and a big golden ****.

The story however, doesn't end there. These morons purposely hid this bug from developers sharing it only among equally greedy minded imbeciles who could keep the secret for WELL OVER A YEAR.

So not only have people been gaining an advantage because of an exploit. They KNEW WHAT THEY WERE DOING WAS WRONG. They were ACTIVELY COVERING UP THE BUG TO TAKE ADVANTAGE OF IT AT THEIR LEISURE. They thought they were being smart by lording it over honest players. Thinking that somehow they were above the "law"

Personally I don't think there should have been any temp bans. They should have deleted every perpetrator and everyone who participated in the runs with people who were getting the items. They were all accessories to the cheating and by not filing a report your just as guilty as the people who were collecting the gear.

Just like alot of the "uber" players said on BG. If you didn't know about the bug then you didn't deserve to do salvage, do end game w/e the excuse was. That pretty much sums it up. I guess we peons don't deserve to get our characters banned either. Funny how that works. If you were taking advantage of the bug you were doing it knowingly, and if you still have your character afterwords I'd shut the hell up and count my blessings instead of trying to defend my actions to the people who weren't "smart" enough to exploit in the first place. Good riddance.
Great article!
# Jan 30 2009 at 3:21 AM Rating: Excellent
I am a programmer and I believe a reason SE was so heavy handed in handing out bans for this is people don't realize how potentially serious and "Breaking" duping items can be from not just a game balance point of view but from a technical point of view too.

Now I don't have access to SE codeline but it is not too difficult to make an educated guess that an Item in the game will have some sort of "Code" or unique identifier, now the impact of having 2 or 3 items suddenly with the same unique identifier can have major unforseen circumstances (The funniest and most poetically justified would be if one person turned in their 35 piece to turn it into their salvage piece - in effect deleting it from the game- 2 other peoples was deleted along with it. But I digress).

Now bearing this is mind, you could then see why SE would take this so seriously, it would be worse than using a 3rd party tool or partaking in RMT as you could actually break the game as opposed to making the environment slightly unsavoury.

Also from reports I have read people who were truly "Innnocent" or guilty by proximity were only warned or given a temp ban, I'm guessing some of the perm bans have been on SE's radar for a while.
Great article!
# Jan 30 2009 at 6:30 AM Rating: Decent
Well, being a pretty HC gamer, and spending my time in salvage (at least 4/week) with pick-up party, I never heard about the glitch before ppl were actually ban for it, so for one I can actually somewhat belive SE didnt notice it for a long while (maybe not 2 years but quite long)
I do tend to agree with the OP, strip them of all their Gil, all there salvage piece and mytic weapon if relevant (plus other stuff if they bought it with un-deserved money) and ban them for 1month would be appropriate, not that I feel bad for those guys, cheating is cheating and the ban of any MMO.
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