1400 Accounts suspended/terminated

[Machazareel]

This is just a publicity stunt to boost their image in the eyes of the JPs and NAs. I mean, to be honest, if you were really so determined to get rid of the 3PPs, just terminate everyone who has a 3PP, rather than go little by little. People may think that SE will coming to get you eventually and may lead to you uninstalling your tools, but Windower is too great of a tool to pass up. Even for your account, in most cases...

P.S. I do not have a Windower. I do use Fraps. :D

Indeed, Windower is made of awesome. I'd rather be banned than give it up tbh.

[Unklemonkey]

Lol, again? SE is going to ban their whole player base pretty soon. But the gilsellers will still be going crazy in there.

[shukuffxi]

Probably a bit too early to be sure of anything, but I just searched for about 50 of Carbuncle's RMTs, and found almost none. The T*nking group wasn't on, there were 0 RMT in sky, the new Dou**** group wasn't on, and 20-30 random RMT from the list in the Carbuncle forums on KI were just suddenly not on. I don't recognize a single name of the people in sky as RMT (though there are alot of JP up there at this hour doing gods or whatever, but afaik, none of them were known RMT).

The ones most notably gone where the sky RMT. The few I did find were the ones that don't do sky as far as I know. (SSG RMT were in full force, and a few running around Fei Yin)

[Blinkwise]

lol SE are like shitty magicians.

Its like this

SE: "what do you as a community want?"

Community: "BAN THOSE GILSELLERS FOR THE LOVE OF GOD"

SE: "Look over there!"

Community: "Huh what, wait, dont distract us"

SE: "umm.....we banned 1,400 accounts for fleeing! thats 1,400 less thfs that are LFP! go raise thf while their in demand!"

Community: "What uh, wtf are you talking about im confused here"

SE: "Isnt that what u wanted?"

Community: "uh no, i dont think, uh, maybe next update i guess"

[Khalil]

Probably a bit too early to be sure of anything, but I just searched for about 50 of Carbuncle's RMTs, and found almost none. The T*nking group wasn't on, there were 0 RMT in sky, the new Dou**** group wasn't on, and 20-30 random RMT from the list in the Carbuncle forums on KI were just suddenly not on. I don't recognize a single name of the people in sky as RMT (though there are alot of JP up there at this hour doing gods or whatever, but afaik, none of them were known RMT).

The ones most notably gone where the sky RMT. The few I did find were the ones that don't do sky as far as I know. (SSG RMT were in full force, and a few running around Fei Yin)

I doubt it. They probably just suspended their accounts, or even better, they're prolly catching on their 2 hours a week napping.

[Aodh]

I always read these as "Hundreds of people were caught using [any harmless 3rd party program like windower], which wasn't an official release and contained a keylogger."

People get so addicted to the windower that they can't play for 5 days until it's patched after an update, and they grab ones that have worms/virus's/keyloggers and they get screwed "for just using windower".

[Kyreth]

This is just a publicity stunt to boost their image in the eyes of the JPs and NAs. I mean, to be honest, if you were really so determined to get rid of the 3PPs, just terminate everyone who has a 3PP, rather than go little by little. People may think that SE will coming to get you eventually and may lead to you uninstalling your tools, but Windower is too great of a tool to pass up. Even for your account, in most cases...

P.S. I do not have a Windower. I do use Fraps. :D

Or just do a cleanup at the end of every month from now on.

Flag the accounts you're sure on, nuke them on the 29th-30th, repeat monthly. Eventually, you have far less people to look through and get the numbers down to a managable level. They keep doing it, then it's more than a publicity stunt. It's cleaning up the game.

Though again, I don't think they're going after Windower users. I bet they had plenty of idiots to nail after the whole "It's not MrArgus but a keylogger" scam thing, anyway. Heck, there are certainly GM's who are actually quite cool about people using Windower.

[Blinkwise]

lol i love when they say shit like

We would like to take this time to remind our players that the use of any third-party tools will not only destroy the in-game balance, but will also encourage RMT (real money trading) activities. We will continue to take strict actions against those individuals that we have confirmed to have used such tools.

Its like, everytime joecheater runs faster, a RMT is born out of the sin of cheating.

I just wanna get like a big foam bat and go to SE and hit them all over the head, dont wanna hurt them, but it should be just enough to knock what little brains they have out of their head

[Aelfinn]

Or just do a cleanup at the end of every month from now on.

Flag the accounts you're sure on, nuke them on the 29th-30th, repeat monthly. Eventually, you have far less people to look through and get the numbers down to a managable level. They keep doing it, then it's more than a publicity stunt. It's cleaning up the game.

i so hope this is actually what they're doing... would actually be a rather large step in the right direction...

[Blinkwise]

id have to lean towards it still being a publicity stunt if they wait till the end of the month to ban the guys. Theres no other point in waiting to ban the suckers other then being able to put up a paper on the fridge (ie http://www.playonline.com) that says "look mom we got us some cheaters dun banned"

[Norelco]

The GS'ers will just start over and be back there in 2-3 weeks. Either that, or they'll move their lowered ranked bitches who hang out in SSG and elsewhere into Sky.

[Aodh]

Or just do a cleanup at the end of every month from now on.

Flag the accounts you're sure on, nuke them on the 29th-30th, repeat monthly. Eventually, you have far less people to look through and get the numbers down to a managable level. They keep doing it, then it's more than a publicity stunt. It's cleaning up the game.

i so hope this is actually what they're doing... would actually be a rather large step in the right direction...

This would be a better approach than having to deal with trying to refund people for 1/2 a month of service if they were to terminate an account on the 15th.

[GRT]

they are slowly flushing people out so they could recycle the empty servers to be used on the upcoming FFXI-2

[Blinkwise]

ah good point aodh, that would make sense to wait till the end of the month then.

Hmm just logged on and im not banned! good thing i didnt use a hermes this month or i woulda been done for.

On another note what gets me is they dont ban all those mages from ls's that kill tiamat. I could swear those hackers are moving 10-15% faster then everyone else

[Xavier]

Something is better than nothing. At least they seem to be trying. Sooner or later the gilsellers will get smarter about it, and stop leveling up as rank 1 people in a party of 15 people w/ no subjobs to 30.

Seriously. I was in Gusgen lvling a job w/ Nikkei and an alliance of rank 1, lv 30, no subjob people asked for our help getting them the magicked skull. As soon as they evolve and learn to pick actual names for their chars and don't travel in groups of 15, Square probably won't even classify them as a problem anymore.

[Aodh]

ah good point aodh, that would make sense to wait till the end of the month then.

Hmm just logged on and im not banned! good thing i didnt use a hermes this month or i woulda been done for.

On another note what gets me is they dont ban all those mages from ls's that kill tiamat. I could swear those hackers are moving 10-15% faster then everyone else

Only 12%. Same speed as the RMT that kill Simmy or those bastards that kill Kirin.

[Kyreth]

lol i love when they say shit like

We would like to take this time to remind our players that the use of any third-party tools will not only destroy the in-game balance, but will also encourage RMT (real money trading) activities. We will continue to take strict actions against those individuals that we have confirmed to have used such tools.

Its like, everytime joecheater runs faster, a RMT is born out of the sin of cheating.

I just wanna get like a big foam bat and go to SE and hit them all over the head, dont wanna hurt them, but it should be just enough to knock what little brains they have out of their head

I have a few decent boffer weapons for that.

I think it's actually a line of thought that runs like this- the more people using a cheat program, the better that program is refined. The better the cheat programs, the easier it is for RMT's to fuck with our lives since we know that if it was a matter of player skill alone, we the real players would generally beat the crap out of your average Gilseller trained monkey crew at anything worth mentioning.

The more refined the hacks get, the better tools RMT's have for doing what makes us miserable. They're not talking about Windower-ish stuff.

[GRT]

they probably give as much profit when they buy new game/key codes :D

no lost of profit and polishing up their PR? good deal!

[Kyreth]

Why banstick RMT when they probably give 30-40% of total "profit" from all their accounts when they can do it to legit players instead who won't keep coming back?~

Because watching RMT's having to buy copy after copy of the game is happy fun time at S-E? RMT's are parasites. As long as they smell Gil they can sell, they'll keep crawling back on even if there's a GM there waiting with a banstick set to "obliterate".

Besides, anyone with a brain clues into the fact that if the RMT's completely choke the game, it'll nuke the real player population and the S-E employees are out of a job- and of course, the RMT'ers sure as heck won't stay if they don't have players to leech off of. So it's in S-E's best interest to keep clearing out the weeds (RMT growth) before they cover everything and choke out the actual gamers.

Though I do wonder if the only permament solution would involve systemic use of computer viruses, arson and high explosives on companies like IGE. Too bad that's illegal, eh?

[Aodh]

they probably give as much profit when they buy new game/key codes :D

no lost of profit and polishing up their PR? good deal!

Well, they did just announce the XB360 FFXI is only $29.99 now! So if you get banned, go buy a XB360 and a brand new copy of FFXI!