It's an idiom which refers to areas in Ireland under English occupation during the 15th Century between Dublin and Dundalk.
Referring to something in this manner usually meant something which fell outside the local laws of the English occupied territory which was known at the time as "the pale" from the Latin palus referring in this case to a stake as part of a fence or more generally a boundary.
Thus going beyond the pale was going outside of this area and therefore outside of what was considered acceptable behaviour to English people.
It later went on to become "crossing the line" and other such derivatives.
It's not everyday that I learn something new on these forums, so thanks!
"Participation in PVP-related activities is so low on an hourly, daily, weekly, and monthly basis that we could in fact just completely take it out of STO and it would not impact the overall number of people [who] log in to the game and play in any significant way." -Gozer, Cryptic PvP Dev
....
The only thing that I can think of that sets me apart is that I have quite a lot of items stored in the mail. They were all neatly labelled prior to the temporary deletion a few weeks back, now they are a bloody mess which I've yet to sort through.
Oh well, at least we got an email about it... thats something I suppose. Still losing out on egg hatching time though.
I have many a Email attachments as well, and now I'm twiddling my thumbs waiting for the issue to be resolved... And missing out on Egg hatching, gathering 'favors' to convert into GPL, as well as the Academy 'Lore' daily...
Though being a professional software engineer myself, I do understand that these kind of things happens in big projects all the time....
And we're supposed to believe that the number 110 is false just because a paranoid nobody (that's you by the way) with no evidence to prove that more than 110 are affected says so?
Hmmmm . . .
While you were focusing on the name calling you missed the point... not surprisingly.
All the speculation in this thread is based on information that's unverifiable by us and provided by a company who doesn't have the best track record of disclosing information to its customers. The information may be true or it may be false but speculation is a waste of time. I've spent my day trying to actually track down what the issue is and have been able to rule out a couple of things at least. We'll see what time will reveal.
Just realized I"m not going to be able to pick up the last of the accolades from Risa.
That kind of annoys me.
Yeah I was going to do that as well. I have been putting it off since I have a lot of characters and just have been trying to get favors for them all so hopefully this is fixed by this weekend.
I too had a lot of items that got lost in the mail so more then likely that was the cause of this bug as that seems the most common factor so far for all the people that got this temp ban.
Please tell me you were just teasing me because I've been a little silly in this thread, although I sincerely do appreciate the information. I actually look up phrases like that from time to time out of idle curiosity.
If you weren't teasing me and misunderstood the thrust of my attempt at humor I was interpreting "pale" as a washed out colour and speculating what would be next.
And yes I like mixing British spellings in with my American English. :P
I knew you were teasing, it was clear from your post. I just thought I'd answer the question because I knew the answer.
Besides you may have asked it in jest, but someone may have genuinely wondered what the answer to the question was. :P
However, some background on the situation: we very recently discovered a gameplay bug (not player facing, so you wouldn't have known and it is through no fault of your own) that has been causing stability issues with the Star Trek Online servers. Our investigation shows that less than 110 accounts are affected by this issue, so we have been forced to temporarily suspend access to these accounts while we implement a fix.
I too was hit by whatever this is. I cannot play STO at all because I just get disconnected every 5 minutes. Steam still works perfectly, as does FireFox, and VENT, so obviously STO is the only problem. So what about my account? I have yet to receive any email or info at all as to what is this problem.
Roughly 30 minutes ago I was playing STO as normal, when my connection was abruptly severed to be replaced with the log-in screen and a message in red stating that my account had been BANNED !
I was extremely startled and alarmed by this, as I've been playing STO since its open beta, am a life time subscriber, and have never committed any gaming offence (bannable or otherwise) !
With enormous trepidation and dread, I submitted a query to Support, and exited the log-in screen.
After checking the STO Website for offences that would cause an account to be immediately banned, I noticed that if an account IS banned, the reason for the ban is notified to the account holder by email.
So, upon checking my email I discovered a message from PWE/Cryptic stating that thay have discovered a game-breaking gameplay bug that has been causing stability issues with the STO servers ! And that my account 'is one of the few accounts affected by this issue' and has been temporarily suspended while they try to resolve it.
It could not happen at a worst time ! Although they further state that my account will be automatically credited with the Summer giveaways while suspended, I have a Fleet to run !
Several Fleet events I have organised will now not happen, because I cannot log-in, nor even email the other members to notify them what is happening !
I am/was a regular STO player, with 16 toons, putting in at least 4 hours each evening. The 'bird raising' projects which I was doing daily on these 16 toons to obtain marks will now go to waste, since I suspect they will not fix this problem anytime soon. *sigh !
Anyhoo, out of curiosity; has anyone else been affected with this issue?
N.B. Okay, now I look like a bigger idiot than usual ! While I was typing the above (in a separate thread, I might add) THIS thread was also being created. Now my thread has been moved here, and nearly all of what I typed is now out of context ! Cheers forum moderator !
This is very similar to my issue. I won't be able to deal with the bases (KDF and FED), Reputation missions and my ability to send off the birds missions got cut short completely, and I'm worried I'm going to be stuck with a bunch of birds that I have no use for. I was holding a bunch of them to be sorted later. Of course I also would have liked to have been able to play the game normally and missed out on a NWS run I was hoping to do. I am also a Early Beta Early Lifetimer and freaked out when I got the Banned message after my login. Maybe a different automated message would have been better. I did however look up my account and tickets to see what on earth could possibly be going on, and found that I had 'sent a ticket' about the issue. Of course I didn't, but I guess that's what the automated system says. This concerned me as well because for a moment I thought someone had TRIBBLE my account. As I read the message though, it underlined roughly what Branflakes said. My main irritation is with the Bird event and my ability to get the costume bits lohlunats and such for a final push in that event. I suspect a lot of the other people hit feel the same way. At least it was only a hundred or so players and not larger.
Nothing really happy to say here, other than I hope for the best, and hope the 48 hour timeline that they have was a conservative estimate and I'll be able to get back in my ship again.
Oh no, I just realized that I'm also not going to be able to pick up a couple accolades I needed to round out on my main characters. Well that's pretty annoying too. They definitely need to extend the Risa event I think for stupid stuff like that.
I too was hit by whatever this is. I cannot play STO at all because I just get disconnected every 5 minutes. Steam still works perfectly, as does FireFox, and VENT, so obviously STO is the only problem. So what about my account? I have yet to receive any email or info at all as to what is this problem.
This is completely unrelated to the issue that PWE sent out Emails for. If you were actually one of then less then 110 accounts affected, then you would have seen a 'Account Banned' notice in the Launcher before you got to the Character select menu..
Your problem is most likely ISP related, (especially if your ISP happens to have Verizon in its name...) and if this is the case, then you should look at the Verizon thread in the Tech Support forum...
This is completely unrelated to the issue that PWE sent out Emails for. If you were actually one of then less then 110 accounts affected, then you would have seen a 'Account Banned' notice in the Launcher before you got to the Character select menu..
Your problem is most likely ISP related, (especially if your ISP happens to have Verizon in its name...) and if this is the case, then you should look at the Verizon thread in the Tech Support forum...
The banning message seems to only happen once your system loads up and is about to load your character list. This takes a long time for me since I have the max number of characters I could purchase (I'm an altaholic and collect characters). The message then displays after you are forceably kicked out and back on the sign in screen, not the launcher. Its a minor clarification but just stating what I experienced. I suppose it must have been a serious emergency, to make a bunch of players tense, many of whom it sounds like were lifetimers going way back, and have probably sunk a lot of money into the game. I admit I was temporarily furious when I saw the message, then I checked my account and saw what was going on. Its easy to get furious about these things. My billing information got stolen when Sony was TRIBBLE, and I can remember the annoyance that caused. Along with the shock of an fbi letter telling me about it. So in my instance the first thought was that someone TRIBBLE the account. If anything I hope Cryptic learns from this incident and maybe figures a different message than telling someone they are banned for a glitch in the system. Perhaps something like 'access temporarily shut down due to technical difficulties' would be a better message. It'd certainly stop people from raising their blood pressure unnecessarily.
Yep, part of the 110 as well, while i understand things like this happen, the compensation mentioned might want to include a few days worth of dilithium/marks, the Risa accolades/gear...etc, since the players can't even log in to earn these.
Also affected and I'm in charge of the fleet SB projects. Neverwinter access was not affected so I can still chat with people. I'm going to lose the abilithy to pick up older lockboxes though. Was planning to grab a bunch of cardassian ones for later.
This may be against the rules, but I probably have a Cardy lockbox in my bank you can have.
Dreadnought class. Two times the size, three times the speed. Advanced weaponry. Modified for a minimal crew. Unlike most Federation vessels, it's built solely for combat.
Whatever the compensation for you guys turns out to be there is only one thing that is guaranteed 100%. And that is that at least one of the 110 will whine about it.
Let me get this straight. You are pre-whining and you didn't get banned? (Shaking my head in disbelief.)
And sopwithsnipe, I am one of the 110. I defy you to find a single post where I complained.
Well I can log in to my account now. Too bad I am getting Server Not Responding for the last 5 minutes when I actually try to access one of my characters. Hopefully this is just the mad rush to log in after extended maintenance.
We're very glad to announce that the bug fix is live! The affected accounts have been unlocked and should now be able to log in to Star Trek Online. We are working on something unique for the affected users, which should be available soon. In the mean time, we have granted a small gift to the accounts for their troubles.
Would love to do this but the bloody patcher isn't patching.:mad:
Over an hour now for a 500Mb patch
-Rule of Acquisition #113: Always have sex with the boss.
-I am one of the many victims from the hijacked Caspian Division.
I will not let the childish acts of a criminal ruin this game for me.
-The actions of Cryptic, on the other hand......
For those that did not get the email about the lift, you got the Tuesday and Wednesday freebies plus 500 zen and then whatever other unique goodie they come up with like pwebranflakes mentioned.
We're very glad to announce that the bug fix is live! The affected accounts have been unlocked and should now be able to log in to Star Trek Online. We are working on something unique for the affected users, which should be available soon.
Comments
It's not everyday that I learn something new on these forums, so thanks!
I have many a Email attachments as well, and now I'm twiddling my thumbs waiting for the issue to be resolved... And missing out on Egg hatching, gathering 'favors' to convert into GPL, as well as the Academy 'Lore' daily...
Though being a professional software engineer myself, I do understand that these kind of things happens in big projects all the time....
While you were focusing on the name calling you missed the point... not surprisingly.
All the speculation in this thread is based on information that's unverifiable by us and provided by a company who doesn't have the best track record of disclosing information to its customers. The information may be true or it may be false but speculation is a waste of time. I've spent my day trying to actually track down what the issue is and have been able to rule out a couple of things at least. We'll see what time will reveal.
Yeah I was going to do that as well. I have been putting it off since I have a lot of characters and just have been trying to get favors for them all so hopefully this is fixed by this weekend.
I too had a lot of items that got lost in the mail so more then likely that was the cause of this bug as that seems the most common factor so far for all the people that got this temp ban.
I knew you were teasing, it was clear from your post. I just thought I'd answer the question because I knew the answer.
Besides you may have asked it in jest, but someone may have genuinely wondered what the answer to the question was. :P
My Ship Builds: USS Conqueror, HMS Victorious, HMS Concord, ISS Queen Elizabeth, Black Widow III
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This is very similar to my issue. I won't be able to deal with the bases (KDF and FED), Reputation missions and my ability to send off the birds missions got cut short completely, and I'm worried I'm going to be stuck with a bunch of birds that I have no use for. I was holding a bunch of them to be sorted later. Of course I also would have liked to have been able to play the game normally and missed out on a NWS run I was hoping to do. I am also a Early Beta Early Lifetimer and freaked out when I got the Banned message after my login. Maybe a different automated message would have been better. I did however look up my account and tickets to see what on earth could possibly be going on, and found that I had 'sent a ticket' about the issue. Of course I didn't, but I guess that's what the automated system says. This concerned me as well because for a moment I thought someone had TRIBBLE my account. As I read the message though, it underlined roughly what Branflakes said. My main irritation is with the Bird event and my ability to get the costume bits lohlunats and such for a final push in that event. I suspect a lot of the other people hit feel the same way. At least it was only a hundred or so players and not larger.
Nothing really happy to say here, other than I hope for the best, and hope the 48 hour timeline that they have was a conservative estimate and I'll be able to get back in my ship again.
Oh no, I just realized that I'm also not going to be able to pick up a couple accolades I needed to round out on my main characters. Well that's pretty annoying too. They definitely need to extend the Risa event I think for stupid stuff like that.
This is completely unrelated to the issue that PWE sent out Emails for. If you were actually one of then less then 110 accounts affected, then you would have seen a 'Account Banned' notice in the Launcher before you got to the Character select menu..
Your problem is most likely ISP related, (especially if your ISP happens to have Verizon in its name...) and if this is the case, then you should look at the Verizon thread in the Tech Support forum...
The banning message seems to only happen once your system loads up and is about to load your character list. This takes a long time for me since I have the max number of characters I could purchase (I'm an altaholic and collect characters). The message then displays after you are forceably kicked out and back on the sign in screen, not the launcher. Its a minor clarification but just stating what I experienced. I suppose it must have been a serious emergency, to make a bunch of players tense, many of whom it sounds like were lifetimers going way back, and have probably sunk a lot of money into the game. I admit I was temporarily furious when I saw the message, then I checked my account and saw what was going on. Its easy to get furious about these things. My billing information got stolen when Sony was TRIBBLE, and I can remember the annoyance that caused. Along with the shock of an fbi letter telling me about it. So in my instance the first thought was that someone TRIBBLE the account. If anything I hope Cryptic learns from this incident and maybe figures a different message than telling someone they are banned for a glitch in the system. Perhaps something like 'access temporarily shut down due to technical difficulties' would be a better message. It'd certainly stop people from raising their blood pressure unnecessarily.
I guess I will be waiting to see if I receive an email by patch end...
let's hope 48hrs is accurate.
There is if they need to ban some people, but not if you actually need help with anything
This may be against the rules, but I probably have a Cardy lockbox in my bank you can have.
Dreadnought class. Two times the size, three times the speed. Advanced weaponry. Modified for a minimal crew. Unlike most Federation vessels, it's built solely for combat.
Didn't you read the release notes back when the game went F2P? They nerfed this, and it is now basically useless.
Let me get this straight. You are pre-whining and you didn't get banned? (Shaking my head in disbelief.)
And sopwithsnipe, I am one of the 110. I defy you to find a single post where I complained.
yupp, same here
Also, now that Day 4 of the Summer Giveaway is live, be sure to log in and claim today's free items (Info: http://sto.perfectworld.com/news/?p=960141)!
Lastly, you should be receiving an email with more details from the GM team.
Thank you for your patience and understanding as we worked to resolve the bug, and we'll see you in-game!
Cheers,
Brandon =/\=
Would love to do this but the bloody patcher isn't patching.:mad:
Over an hour now for a 500Mb patch
-Rule of Acquisition #113: Always have sex with the boss.
-I am one of the many victims from the hijacked Caspian Division.
I will not let the childish acts of a criminal ruin this game for me.
-The actions of Cryptic, on the other hand......
Just realized I could claim the Runabout from Day 3 as well
[110 Tribble] maybe? :P
Yep, you pet and then can't play for 2 days on that character.