10K+ sites infected - SE response - RESTORATION, K?

[Sesar]

It sucks that all this is happening and peoples work is being destroyed all for the sake of some chinese man's wallet expansion pack. It does feel like a loss when you work hard to do something, only to watch it disappear in one day, but the bottom line is, nothing will change until people start accepting the fact that they don't own any of this stuff and the only people that can make money off of these games is the manufacturer, not the player or the chinese gold farmer. Gil is only worth what people will pay for it and if no one wants pay for it, there is no reason to sell it, and no reason to keep hacking people's accounts to get it.

Not quite, the only people making money are the manufacturers and the RMT. (weather that people cashing in for gil and/or professional gilfarmers - both are RMT) It is the average player who is screwed from both ends, the company doesnt care about the data and the CGF are in it purely to make money - so your doublefucked kinda. You will never eliminate RMT, so the profits from that will always come off the back of the creators of the game and the creators will never give you any 100% assurance that your data may not be permanently screwed/fucked over by RMT because they dont want to end up backpeddaling on words.

Cheaters will always exist, RMT will always exist - all the 'average joe' can do is hope that the game creators give them some leeway to better themselves security/customer support-wise and hope that their personal security is enough

Id say the RMT total have made substantial millions in simple gil transactions - the amount of money they are making is worth going to the most drastic of measures to get. Making it seem like the RMT are bummed when accounts get banned is laughable - all it means is that a new plan must be formulated and the product must move faster.

By "can make money" I meant allowed to make money or should be making money. I know RMT can and do make money from these games, but they shouldn't be able to and I don't think anyone would argue that point. The only reason they can is because some people are willing to pay real money for something that only exists in the game. That is the crux; getting those people to realize that nothing in a game is worth spending real money on.

However, I do realize that the chances of that happeneing are slim to none. There are a lot of people in the world with more money than brains.

[Dalmbraast]

SE did it perfect, and is doing exactly what they should be in this situation - helping people out who do fall victim.

I think we need to redefine the word "help" in this case. If "help" means being months behind the current news and months behind in actually getting people their accounts back and helping those who have been hacked more recently sooner than those who have been waiting possibly since LAST YEAR sometime, then yes, they've been "helping". If by "help" we mean giving paying customers attitude while calling in to inquire on account status and/or getting the run around from several different reps who may or may not even know what's going on and who will often refuse to allow you access to a supervisor, who is actually the only person on staff who is allowed to make any changes to your account or has full access to any kind of useful information, then yes, they've been "helping". I suppose I'm a little cynical (along with many other people who are still waiting for accounts, and have been waiting for three months or longer), but it's a little hard to see SE's new policies as "help" when they are entirely reactionary.

They have been trying to come up with a solution, but have failed miserably in it's implementation and scope. There has been nothing "perfect" about what SE has done. Period. I hope this new "news" forces SE's hand to do something more than they have been.

[Lordender]

I think its utterly unacceptable, this should have been steam rolling rather quickly after the intial cause was found on somepage and possibly other sites we didn't know about. I can't even imagine why SE didn't put in some kinda policy to be able to recover accounts/items in the game the day they decided to form the STF and be aggressive against the RMT.

I would agree with the player being responsible for their own PC security but this wasent just some normal joe schmoe hacking accounts, this was a well planned and organized attack on the FFXI playerbase by rmt groups in china. SE fucked up by accusing innocent customers of foul play when they called customer support or contacted a GM ingame.

[Spekkio]

the aforementioned arguments about se's rights to destroy our char data at will don't really enter into this though. for example, i pay my ISP monthly for their services and for that fee my ISP provides me with an interent connection. my ISP serves me something they view worth more than the money i pay them and i pay them money worth less than the service they provide. it's simple commerce. as soon as my ISP dips below the level of service i require (or if they're comcast, they'd start out that way...), i will terminate my agreement with them, thus costing them revenue. as such, it's in their best interests to satisfy me, at least to a point. SE's taken a contrary attitude: pretend the problem doesn't exist and ignore the losses. it's not a question of what they can do, but what they WANT to do and to continue making money they WANT to keep customers who aren't more of a burden than a value.

[Builttolast]

10k is extremely conservative considering during the peak it was closer to 100,000. It was reported back in January I guess it took the mainstream media a couple of months to catch on. It took SE even longer to acknowledge a problem existed.

viewtopic.php?f=2&t=28341

[Howard Roark]

amazing

so after them finally "Oh wait, what? Ohhhhhhhhhh!"-ing theyre CONSIDERING being as good as blizzard and rolling back the accounts

great

i'm just glad i was lucky enough to have been told by a friend years ago to ditch IE, cuz as much as I hate SE customer service, I do enjoy FFXI

[Purrrfect]

I like how SE tells us "not to visit unapproved sites", however I don't think they have yahoo or abc in an "approved web site" list...

Left hand, meet right hand.


tanget: I wonder if there is a way to get email addresses or such of shareholders from the SEC or something? If notifying the sharholders what shitty customer service is what it takes to get things fixed I think we could set up a mailing pretty easy...