Mass banning going on??!!

pandora1x

5 of my friends just got hammered out of the blue. I even had a handle of mine that I never use get banned as well.

Is Cryptic reducing its own players on purpose so they can shut the game down or what? What's going on?

Hilarious to say the least...


EDIT: A banned person can't even contact support because it prevents the banned person from even logging in... because the person is banned. Facepalm.

icyphish

Hmm... haven't heard anything like this... best thing is probably to email support to find out more...

adel113

support isnt even frigging working wth is this??? all my ad and chars are now lost thanks cryptic

theycallmetomu

I vaguely recall reading in the ToS that accounts are supposed to be 1/person. Cryptic has turned a blind eye to this forever because it's too difficult to police. I'd suspect they're trying to go after people with multiple accounts that trade AD back and forth between each other, in order to stop people from effectively having free character slots.

There was a blog post about a german player allegedly being banned for allegedly having 50 toons that he ran leadership on.

adel113

theycallmetomu wrote: »

I vaguely recall reading in the ToS that accounts are supposed to be 1/person. Cryptic has turned a blind eye to this forever because it's too difficult to police. I'd suspect they're trying to go after people with multiple accounts that trade AD back and forth between each other, in order to stop people from effectively having free character slots.

There was a blog post about a german player allegedly being banned for allegedly having 50 toons that he ran leadership on.

wow... your post just created a spark in my head.

just this morning i was transferring AD between handles. I transferred over 3M AD to one handle... is taht why i was <font color="orange">HAMSTER</font> banned??? seriously ?!?!

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rollingonit

That could be. I do the same between my 2 accounts, and I once contacted support, and asked here on the forum; they said multiple accounts was fine. I can only imagine large transfers and like over 25+ accounts would trigger something like that.

flyingleon

As I know 1 person should only have 1 handle. I can hardly believe a handle you never use get banned. Do you use the same email aacount? I mean how come they can find this out.

adel113

rollingonit wrote: »

That could be. I do the same between my 2 accounts, and I once contacted support, and asked here on the forum; they said multiple accounts was fine. I can only imagine large transfers and like over 25+ accounts would trigger something like that.

i only have 5 handles (i have these because i didnt buy char slots and didnt realize their importance before).

i used the 4 other handles to transfer AD to my main handle, i put some random potion for sale for about 550K+ from my main. And my other 4 handle alts purchased that.. and the AD went to my main.

are they assuming im doing some black market bs or botting? wth...

charononus

adel113 wrote: »

rollingonit wrote: »

That could be. I do the same between my 2 accounts, and I once contacted support, and asked here on the forum; they said multiple accounts was fine. I can only imagine large transfers and like over 25+ accounts would trigger something like that.

i only have 5 handles (i have these because i didnt buy char slots and didnt realize their importance before).

i used the 4 other handles to transfer AD to my main handle, i put some random potion for sale for about 550K+ from my main. And my other 4 handle alts purchased that.. and the AD went to my main.

are they assuming im doing some black market bs or botting? wth...

Pretty sure that's what ad sellers do. Sounds like a rmt ban wave.

flyingleon

adel113 wrote: »

rollingonit wrote: »

That could be. I do the same between my 2 accounts, and I once contacted support, and asked here on the forum; they said multiple accounts was fine. I can only imagine large transfers and like over 25+ accounts would trigger something like that.

i only have 5 handles (i have these because i didnt buy char slots and didnt realize their importance before).

i used the 4 other handles to transfer AD to my main handle, i put some random potion for sale for about 550K+ from my main. And my other 4 handle alts purchased that.. and the AD went to my main.

are they assuming im doing some black market bs or botting? wth...

Well, isn't this suspicious at least? But I do hope a cryptic stuff tell us if we are allowed to have multiple account.

adel113

flyingleon wrote: »

Well, isn't this suspicious at least? But I do hope a cryptic stuff tell us if we are allowed to have multiple account.

how is it suspicious if the other 4 accounts are MINE?!? ( i can easily verify each and every single one)

was i mistaken for a black market bot??? thats so unfair...

theycallmetomu

While multiple accounts are "fine" I don't think they're intending to let you use multiple accounts to get around character slot limits. Selling an item for an outrageous price is precisely the kind of market manipulation they want to crack down on. There's a reason you can't just directly send AD between accounts after all.

But, again, this is wild speculation on my part. Ask support why your account was banned. But I'm just saying that, if the TOS say that accounts are limited 1/customer, then if they say "yeah, we banned you for transferring AD between accounts" then you don't have a lot of ground to stand on.

It woulda been nice if they'd issued some kind of warning to the community about such a change in policy ahead of time though.

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theycallmetomu

Right, but the article states that he transferred AD between accounts, which suggests that that's what the problem was.

But, again, this is all nothing but speculation. Let's avoid freaking out just because I'm spreading conspiracy theories.

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greenkrickett

adel113 wrote: »

support isnt even frigging working wth is this??? all my ad and chars are now lost thanks cryptic

Don't cheat or exploit and you wont get banned.....

theycallmetomu

As long as you have 50 characters on one account, you're fine.

If, however, you had 25 accounts (for instance), then you may well be in violation of the TOS. If they determine that excessive usage of leadership on multiple accounts is causing you to have too much AD, causing you to have an undue influence on the economy, well, they could take action.

charononus

magenubbie wrote: »

morenthar wrote: »

As for that unconfirmed case of the German player, running leadership on 50 characters, on a single account, would not be the reason the person got banned.

Exactly. if they banned that guy for having 50 characters just for leadership, they'd also have to ban half the AD hoarders/AH watchers in this game who've been doing the same thing for the last 2 years. And believe me, if they did that it would raise a howl Tiamat can hear down in the nine hells and would possibly deafen the great Ao himself.

I think he had them on one account from what I read, but I don't believe him that he never used a script to automate it. I just don't buy it. 15 is enough of a pain for me that I can't imagine doing more in a legit manner.

kreatyve

charononus wrote: »

magenubbie wrote: »

morenthar wrote: »

As for that unconfirmed case of the German player, running leadership on 50 characters, on a single account, would not be the reason the person got banned.

Exactly. if they banned that guy for having 50 characters just for leadership, they'd also have to ban half the AD hoarders/AH watchers in this game who've been doing the same thing for the last 2 years. And believe me, if they did that it would raise a howl Tiamat can hear down in the nine hells and would possibly deafen the great Ao himself.

I think he had them on one account from what I read, but I don't believe him that he never used a script to automate it. I just don't buy it. 15 is enough of a pain for me that I can't imagine doing more in a legit manner.

I agree. I have 15 that I'm doing leadership on too. It's enough of a pain that I only do my professions once a day, and half the time I forget to set new tasks on one or 2 characters cause I get distracted.

theycallmetomu

As part of the specific fair use policy violation, the guy was allegedly banned for transferring the AD to another account. Using multiple accounts to get AD and transferring them back and forth is a violation of the principle of 1 account per person, so I believe that was their deciding factor.

thundrax1974

I can cofirm the ban of a german player, who was doing Leadership on 50 Toons. Officially he got banned for faming/botting, and, well, he didn't use a bot. The whole german community knows this guy, he has much time due his bad healthy status. So he found a very efficient way to do Leadership, simply by using the normal system without exploits or anything else.

Well, german community is now very unsure about what is allowed or not. Due this case we got informed about another ban from one guy, who only had 9 toons but over 20 Millions of AD and also got banned.

Another reason for the 50 toon guy to get banned was violating the "fair use policy". Currently we really do not know what is allowed or not (except for buying characterslots and anything else for real money, but not how to use them...).

Furthermore the whole german community now is very uncertain of investing real money into their accounts until an official statement is given. So, is it really legal do buy all Characterslots and doing Leadership or not?

gogu79

i was banned in mod 5 too with no reason and was playng wit only 2 char 1 lvl 60 and 1 lvl 30+
after 1 month to exchange mail from both areas me and criptyc support they unbann my account and i dont know until this day why they banned i told him why im banned ? show me what i do wrong? and nothing no reason its good reason to ban sometime )

theycallmetomu

I think the moral of the story is, keep yourself to one account. It's not what they'll ban you for, but they'll use it as an excuse if they want to ban you for reasons like" you have too much impact on the economy."

Misery

Afaik, we are only allowed to have 2 account per 1 person max so that must be a reason people got banned
As for leadership toons on 1 account, i have 52, running leadership tasks for a month already and never got banned or warning or anything. That's what we have our character slots for right?

kreatyve wrote: »

charononus wrote: »

magenubbie wrote: »

morenthar wrote: »

As for that unconfirmed case of the German player, running leadership on 50 characters, on a single account, would not be the reason the person got banned.

Exactly. if they banned that guy for having 50 characters just for leadership, they'd also have to ban half the AD hoarders/AH watchers in this game who've been doing the same thing for the last 2 years. And believe me, if they did that it would raise a howl Tiamat can hear down in the nine hells and would possibly deafen the great Ao himself.

I think he had them on one account from what I read, but I don't believe him that he never used a script to automate it. I just don't buy it. 15 is enough of a pain for me that I can't imagine doing more in a legit manner.

I agree. I have 15 that I'm doing leadership on too. It's enough of a pain that I only do my professions once a day, and half the time I forget to set new tasks on one or 2 characters cause I get distracted.

It's ok once you find out the profits you get from it and if you really want to max your character. I do agree it's soul draining sometime though...makes me very annoyed thinking of that I need to do that routine each time I log in. ;(

henry404

You folks should read the ToS instead of speculating about them. There is no specific statement about the number of accounts one person can have and that view is supported by various posts on the forums from mods. If there is banning happening then it is not based on the number of accounts but rather on the way those accounts are being used. If you are selling a low value item to an alt account for zillions of AD then you *are* stepping over the line ihmo. Transferring AD between toons on the same account via the ZAX is absolutely fine.

The German chap may or may not be being truthful about his actions. Maybe he is legit but got caught in the collateral damage of a bot sweep. Maybe he had found a way to automate those 50 alts.

wentris

The mass ban is going on for over a week by now. Do not do anything that could possibly be read as buying anything from botters/ad sellers - transferring big amounts of AD between accounts is almost guaranteed way to get banned, but also simple things, like lending your guild mate your Pure Terror, because you don't need it right now is dangerous. Also, creating multiple accounts to generate AD and bypassing the Zen cost of unlocking new slots is an exploit of game mechanic. Im pretty sure I saw some official statement that we're allowed to have 2 accounts/person, but it was long time ago (old forums) and I wont find it now.

regenerde

It's better to just have one account, buy character slots when those are on sale or when you have a discount coupon for them, and manage your Leadership characters ingame one after the other.

And i doubt that you will get banned for having 50 characters running Leadership, as long as you manage them without any bots/scripts ingame.

But i do see more and more "regular" (decent equipment, normal names, even in good guilds...) players using bots to farm mob groups right in the open...

m1957flax

The german player had just one account with about 50 chars. He had a very efficient way of farming AD with leadership on a cast of about 40 supporting chars and about 8 main chars which had completed anything in the game (all classes done). He put money in the game.
The efficient method was to collect rewards on gateway during loading times. According his description he needed about 30 seconds per char to get them going. He made a video of it to prove it (which I have not seen, but there have been other players commenting on his "clever" way to optimize time).

At first they told him about fair use and sometimes later they hinted on "other" transgressions. To me it is <font color="orange">HAMSTER</font>. If he broke the rules, there is no need to ever talk about "fair use". And "fair use" is a rubber argument. Nothing to hold yourself on anyway.

If a company collects real money and sells 50+ character slots and if their is no rule or build-in limit and you use the legal game mechanics to get AD, their is nothing wrong. If said company gets second thoughts about the AD amounts generated, they should implement limits on it. But they should never continue selling char slots. If you sell items you are not allowed to use, then the seller is playing tricks on you. You will never buy with that seller again.

By the time the german player was banned he had about 16 million AD on several toons on his account. If you take just one look at the auction house in the game, you will see that this amounts to almost nothing. I remember seeing single green items you NEED for the black ice profession to run at 800k+ AD.

For me it is simple. The company should make rules and stick to that. And to do that make your rules hardwire into your programs. Don't BS me with "fair use" because it is unfair. And if you want your players to follow the rules make them known.

Remember some exploiters from the "catastrophe" got timed bans, while players who play by the rules (as they know them) get permanent bans, some hilarious explanations and just because the company had some second thoughts about earning ADs in a way that was implemented but never thought of that way.

Again don't make money on game features if you don't want players to use them as intended.

At the same time they said on the german forums that several accounts are not a problem. They saw problems only if you use several accounts to feed a main account. And I see a problem there too. It raises questions and suspicions about gold sellers. So it is not wise to do that. But the german player never did that.

Although you can never be sure about a people's actions, there are some facts squishy on that one. He posted his ways on the forums so he must have been sure to be on a legal route. That was before he got banned. And the official comments started with the "fair use" statement. Again, if he broke some rules that statement would have been useless. To me that raises questions. If he broke the rules, they would have seen able to say "he broke the rules" and there would have been no argument about that.

If they sell 50+ char slots and we cannot use them, they cannot say it, because they would cheat us, if they would continue selling those slots. And that is exactly what some posters on the german forum are afraid of.
Unwritten laws must be written or we cannot follow them.

charononus

m1957flax wrote: »

Although you can never be sure about a people's actions, there are some facts squishy on that one. He posted his ways on the forums so he must have been sure to be on a legal route. That was before he got banned. And the official comments started with the "fair use" statement. Again, if he broke some rules that statement would have been useless. To me that raises questions. If he broke the rules, they would have seen able to say "he broke the rules" and there would have been no argument about that.

The thing I keep wondering is if "fair use" is a translation error. Fair use pertains to the use of copyrighted materials as pertains to criticism of said material among other things. If this is not a translation error it makes me think that they are saying he did something totally different than what everyone here is talking about.

Also as far as people posting methods for things while actually exploiting, well I've seen that happen. I'd give examples but I don't think that's allowed. I'm actually pretty close to the line just saying that.

m1957flax

charononus wrote: »

..."fair use" ...

That term is a direct quote from the official (german community manager) and he continued to explain that it pertains to doing things, that were not intended to be done. If I remember the catastrophe, that was an exploit that was easy to see (it happened while I slept, so I never got to look at it from close up, but I read the forums at that time - you could see the mistake, if you were not stupid or blind). I read the guys explanation carefully and it was clear to see, that he thought he was on a legal route. He even questioned in the forums, if that was legal, because he heard some rumours. He offered to not do whatever was thought to be offending, but he never got a chance. He mentioned clearly that he only used available game mechanics (no bots and setting up leadership on the gateway had been taken out of the game already).

Again if you purchase game additions and you use them according the way you can use it, it is not wrong. Sometimes you might not know if something is an exploit, but than you can easily tell the gamer to keep away while the programmers shut down the exploit. I believe that he thought to be doing it legally and he bought the means to do it from the official shop.
"Fair use" was understood as an argument to tell the german community, that using game mechanics excessively was considered to be wrong. And that is what I call a "rubber argument". As nobody is told the limits, it's a catch all and nothing phrase. Not satisfactory. Not at all if it could result in banning players.

And to me that "fair use" argument is used out of it's real meaning.