13k accounts banned (1/24)

[SamanosukeShiva]

monopolizing instances areas? rmts were spamming dynamis or something?

[Raineer]

Been awhile since I've been around to see one of the banning announcements. I like how exact the numbers are and how the specific violations are mentioned. It actually puts a little faith back into SE that they are at least trying.

Using cheats to automatically repeat a particular action

Seemed to be the highest number...hopefully all fishbotters :D

[Tajin]

Needs more names and less ZOMG 13k ACCOUNTS Y0. But that's just me.

[ronin sparthos]

monopolizing instances areas? rmts were spamming dynamis or something?

Probably that or KS99 spams.

[Rowe]

13k across all servers is about 405 per server. I hardly ever do an /sea all anymore but I remember back in the day there would be about 2,500 people on at any given time.

[sleekmotorwurkz]

There is no twenty-fourth month

"Twenty fourth day of the first month" sounds a lot better than "The first months twenty fourth day"

Idunno about you but when someone asks what day something is, I would most likely say "January 24" not "The 24th of January" :ashira:

[setzor]

13k across all servers is about 405 per server. I hardly ever do an /sea all anymore but I remember back in the day there would be about 2,500 people on at any given time.

On ifrit "back in teh day" you could "/sea all" and get 5000+ results. back in the day = 2-3 years ago... lately it never seems to top 3000-3500 during NA or JP primetime.

[riddaraan]

13k across all servers is about 405 per server. I hardly ever do an /sea all anymore but I remember back in the day there would be about 2,500 people on at any given time.

On ifrit "back in teh day" you could "/sea all" and get 5000+ results. back in the day = 2-3 years ago... lately it never seems to top 3000-3500 during NA or JP primetime.

If you like it that way, don't come to Odin.

[Intense]

SE reminds me of those people who say theyve been playing FFXI for 7~ years now.

[Lampoon]

I do remember them mentioning in one of the STF reports that they would be taking action on gil buyers, too.

God, I hope so.

[ringthree]

SE reminds me of those people who say theyve been playing FFXI for 7~ years now.

Do you think they are lying about the number of accounts banned? Just curious.

[Kyreth]

13k across all servers is about 405 per server. I hardly ever do an /sea all anymore but I remember back in the day there would be about 2,500 people on at any given time.

On ifrit "back in teh day" you could "/sea all" and get 5000+ results. back in the day = 2-3 years ago... lately it never seems to top 3000-3500 during NA or JP primetime.

That's what happens when you banstick 100s of fishbotters, RMT farm teams, etc...plus a bit of server decay (game's getting older, it's gonna happen).

[Kyreth]

SE reminds me of those people who say theyve been playing FFXI for 7~ years now.

Do you think they are lying about the number of accounts banned? Just curious.

Nope. And surprisingly, the amount of Gil seems to have gone down a bit in being removed- I'm guessing they don't count suspended accounts towards those numbers, and I'm curious how much a restoration is going to swing the server economics in the short term.

[Shuvo]

It's bullshit, their's no way they'd ban so many. ~430 accounts per server when theirs 2-3k accounts online at any given time... no way. They probably mean 13,000 characters, where each RMT account has the max number of characters allowed (16?), and just misworded it to look better.

[nednerb]

tbh I'm surprised SE hasn't started merging servers together yet.
does anybody know a website that produces sales figures for video games?
I'd love to see how many new players FFXI gets each month/year.

[Mytiwar]

All I care aboot is rmt and bots and god, they've taken care of rmt all right.

But since it's scaled on a 2 months period most banned are probably back by now?

[Intense]

SE reminds me of those people who say theyve been playing FFXI for 7~ years now.

Do you think they are lying about the number of accounts banned? Just curious.

I think theyre exaggerating (with obviously no solid proof to back my thoughts up). Its like those DA administrations who say theyre tough on crime and fabricate charges on a person to prove it.

[Markus]

10,920 PlayOnline accounts were terminated while around 2,350 accounts were temporarily suspended.

Intense wrote:
SE reminds me of those people who say theyve been playing FFXI for 7~ years now.


Do you think they are lying about the number of accounts banned? Just curious.

I think theyre exaggerating (with obviously no solid proof to back my thoughts up). Its like those DA administrations who say theyre tough on crime and fabricate charges on a person to prove it.

We know RMT are stealing accounts, and with the account information they have access to all characters / mules / whatnot. Now the first order of business is to remove anything of value from the account, and freeing up the maximum amount of storage possible by dropping rare/ex items. Now you are introducing a lot of new supply into the market for higher level goods, so the rate of sale will be slowed as more and more items come onto the auction house. Because of the limits on the auction house, odds are they will list items for sale on the stolen accounts for a period of 2-3 weeks (that sound about right to sell off everything?)

We know SE’s team is slow on reacting to banning accounts (players can now freeze accounts, but that is pretty new) and the process of selling off items is also pretty slow, so for that period of time (2-3 weeks) the RMT has unlimited access to what amounts to a free account.

Now let’s say you run a RMT shop, it takes you 3 months at $50 per character in costs to hit Lvl 75. (Salary, Monthly Fee’s, Software). If you act too oblivious with your account you will get banned, so naturally farming will be slow and steady.

However now you have, because of the hacked data, a nearly unlimited supply of lvl 75 accounts that cost you nothing. If I was a RMT I would farm the hell out of the account, use every hack and crack I could find, and milk it knowing it’s going to get frozen, or locked in a month. If it gets banned you move on to the next one.

So the abnormally large numbers this month are explained by the less then graceful exploits of stolen accounts for RMT tasks.

Just my 2 cents

-Markus

[Zak]

Now let’s say you run a RMT shop, it takes you 3 months at $50 per character in costs to hit Lvl 75. (Salary, Monthly Fee’s, Software). If you act too oblivious with your account you will get banned, so naturally farming will be slow and steady.
However now you have, because of the hacked data, a nearly unlimited supply of lvl 75 accounts that cost you nothing. If I was a RMT I would farm the hell out of the account, use every hack and crack I could find, and milk it knowing it’s going to get frozen, or locked in a month. If it gets banned you move on to the next one.
So the abnormally large numbers this month are explained by the less then graceful exploits of stolen accounts for RMT tasks.

That's what i believe too. And it also shows that most of their old methods to accumulate Gil are not very profitable anymore.

[ringthree]

SE reminds me of those people who say theyve been playing FFXI for 7~ years now.

Do you think they are lying about the number of accounts banned? Just curious.

I think theyre exaggerating (with obviously no solid proof to back my thoughts up). Its like those DA administrations who say theyre tough on crime and fabricate charges on a person to prove it.

So without evidence you admit this is just your hunch? And I am curious what you believe their motivation to exaggerate would be? What do you believe is there incentive to start exaggerating now, instead of at any point prior to this?

Ultimately, I believe statements like these are a kin to the old statements that SE was working with the gilsellers, and other conspiracy theories that were derived because angry players were looking for explanations to issues in the game that they wanted resolved, but were not being addressed.

The developers are not evil, liars or out to get us. Often times they are oblivious to the concerns of the players, and sometimes they want us to play the game their specific way, but I do believe they want the players to be happy playing the game that they create, while understanding that not everything they do will make everyone happy.

BTW, fabricating charges against anyone is highly illegal, and though fabricating the amount of accounts banned wouldn't be illegal, the consequences of fabricating or exaggerating would far outweigh the benefit of such fabrication. Occam's razor applies here.