Kotaku: Hundreds Of Players Banned In Final Fantasy XI

[Cow_k]

And yet no one in BG got banned for using it. How strange.

Actually, you did have at least one Mod banned because of this.

Though in all seriousness, I do think there should be some sort of explanation as to why some exploits and bugs are acceptable to be discussed while some aren't. What's considered an exploit to bg? What about threads like when it was discovered how to get unlimited salvage permits? That wasn't deleted just as one example. Or threads about how to enter salvage with less than 6 etc. etc.

[Kaeko]

In response to Sept, my post was stating an opinion that what is posted on BG leads to a very rapid branching off to various other websites, which leads to fixes. If you reread my post, I never placed any blame, obligation, nor suggestion as to what BG should or shouldn't have. In fact, I actually tried to word it to not sound like it. It was simply a take on various events that have occurred in the past related to this forum which I found interesting.

In my personal opinion, you don't owe anyone anything and similar to how I say SE's game, SE's rules, this is BG's forums and it's BG's rules. Throughout this entire ordeal or event, I don't think I've ever placed blame on anyone but the LM-17/11s. If anything, it was a props for being this popular, not a BG should play online morality police.

[Darwinion]

A similar incident happened a while back with Taj and the force Disconnect bug. He found a bug in the software code that allowed him to enter in a string of text that would cause nearby players to disconnect. If I remember correctly, he sent a few GM calls about it but they did nothing (didn't believe him?) Since nothing was done, he decided to make it public and started to Disconnect random areas (Remember the screenshot of all the Fish botters in Batallia all with the Red Disconnect dot?) It became main stream and SE did a late night emergency patch to fix it.

He made his knowledge of the glitch public, and displayed what could be done. But that knowledge was never shared with other people. It never became mainstream as far as I can remember. "Mainstream" to me means that a significant chunk of the player base knows exactly what to do. He displayed what could be done to a GM and even wanted the GM to show himself so he could DC him... but the GM refused. He even told SE themselves how to fix the problem iirc.

Anyway, I digress.

[Septimus]

Actually, you did have at least one Mod banned because of this.

Though in all seriousness, I do think there should be some sort of explanation as to why some exploits and bugs are acceptable to be discussed while some aren't. What's considered an exploit to bg? What about threads like when it was discovered how to get unlimited salvage permits? That wasn't deleted just as one example. Or threads about how to enter salvage with less than 6 etc. etc.

Go here. Note, only one person is greyed out because he stopped playing months ago. No on in BG was banned for this. BG is a linkshell, these are the linkshell's forums- I can't speak for the people who visit the forums, but no member of our linkshell was banned for this.

As for why somethings are deleted and others are not, that isn't for one person to decide. As per your examples, the unlimited salvage permits was an obvious bug that was obviously going to get fixed. (And didn't it require you to have the Assault Points to get more permits? So no one was really hurt, since you were limited by the number of points that you had.) The less than 6 people to enter a Salvage zone doesn't hurt anyone either, unlike Nyzul, there are no lines to get into Salvage areas and if you couldn't make it with less people you only hurt yourself. (These examples, of course, are my own opinion and may not be shared by the admins or other mods.) Duping on the other hand was wildly inappropriate and we knew that there would be a shitstorm if that got out since people would say that we are condoning it by letting people know about it.

In response to Sept, my post was stating an opinion that what is posted on BG leads to a very rapid branching off to various other websites, which leads to fixes. If you reread my post, I never placed any blame, obligation, nor suggestion as to what BG should or shouldn't have. In fact, I actually tried to word it to not sound like it. It was simply a take on various events that have occurred in the past related to this forum which I found interesting.

In my personal opinion, you don't owe anyone anything and similar to how I say SE's game, SE's rules, this is BG's forums and it's BG's rules. Throughout this entire ordeal or event, I don't think I've ever placed blame on anyone but the LM-17/11s. If anything, it was a props for being this popular, not a BG should play online morality police.

Well, good, because I was thinking about making a "Team Bluegartr: World Police" picture. (It might have to be made anyway.) My tirade about the blame thing really wasn't directed at you, just the general undertone in a lot of posts of people who are blaming us for "covering up" the whole thing. Sadly, you got the brunt of it, which isn't really fair, and for that I am sorry.

But really I wanted to impress the situation that we are in as a forum and as a linkshell. Square's lawyers love to call up Sonomaa and threaten him about things that people who aren't even members of our linkshell (and some who don't even play the game anymore) post on our forums. Not to mention the critisism that we get from people for "covering up" or not "covering up" things. Yes, things do (sometimes) get fixed from BG shitstorms (not Absoulte Virtue); I don't give a crap about "big companies run like this", anyone with a mote of common sense who had this reported to them in a GM call should have flagged this to go up the chain the second they heard it and the people up the chain should have acted on it. No matter what people can say about how we handled it, the true failure in this situation lies squarely in the lap of Square-Enix for letting the situation go on for more than a week after it was reported to them. This isn't 100% directed at you, but at the whole thread of Square apologists.

[Devek]

Square's lawyers love to call up Sonomaa and threaten him about things that people who aren't even members of our linkshell (and some who don't even play the game anymore) post on our forums.

I pray to God that Sonomaa used one of these opportunities to say, "But you must stop his regen!"

[The Blackrose]

I pray to God that Sonomaa used one of these opportunities to say, "But you must stop his regen!"

I would have played "Sorry, can't do it. PS2 limitations" myself.

[ringthree]

The people like myself who reported this glitch a long ass time ago? "Wait wut!? People knew about the glitch and didn't exploit it!?" I'm sure its a difficult concept to understand for some but I assure you it's true. Again, some of you seem to adamantly defend SE's failure to take any responsibility for its piss-poor management of the situation simply out of spite rather then logic.

The really funny irony to me is that for all the people that say we shouldn't praise SE, they for some reason assume that SE is omniscient and omnipotent. Reporting a glitch doesn't mean anything if SE can't recreate the situation, can't deal with the programming for it, or doesn't even have the plain old time to deal with it.

Think about it. When did SE finally act on the problem? Was it when only a few people were using it and it was being relatively well hidden? Or was it when it finally got out and everyone started using it? Even if it is a major glitch, if not very many people are using it, it is harder to track and it is harder to deal with because it is harder to find instances of it occurring. Once the information became more and more available, SE had more and more situations to observe and the problem became much larger.

When you get older, you may buy a new car, and if you have something wrong with it, and take it to the dealership to get it fixed under warranty, you may find that they return it to you without doing anything claiming they were unable to reproduce the problem. It may be glaring to you, but no matter how much you complain, if they can't find something to fix, then they aren't going to fix it. This does not mean that they are incompetent, or incapable of fixing the problem, it just means that in the time they had to deal with the problem they couldn't find anything wrong.

I think some people here are in for a big surprise once they reach the real world.

In the end, the people that are making excuses and blaming SE for everything that happened are the ones that are giving SE far too much credit. I believe that SE is completely fallible, a business run and operated by human beings. They miss things, they make bad decisions, they definitely aren't perfect. But they do have rules that govern those situations, and you are playing their game.

It was a glitch, glitches happen all the time. Taking advantage of the glitch is against the rules.

Reporting it doesn't change that fact.

SE not fixing it doesn't change that fact.

SE being selective in the enforcement of the rules doesn't change that fact (I actually believe the rules were probably enforced more uniformly than some people are letting on, but it wasn't perfect).

In the end, people were banned for cheating. End of discussion. Every other caveat is just an excuse.

[Day]

The really funny irony to me is that for all the people that say we shouldn't praise SE, they for some reason assume that SE is omniscient and omnipotent. Reporting a glitch doesn't mean anything if SE can't recreate the situation, can't deal with the programming for it, or doesn't even have the plain old time to deal with it.

When you get older, you may buy a new car, and if you have something wrong with it, and take it to the dealership to get it fixed under warranty, you may find that they return it to you without doing anything claiming they were unable to reproduce the problem. It may be glaring to you, but no matter how much you complain, if they can't find something to fix, then they aren't going to fix it. This does not mean that they are incompetent, or incapable of fixing the problem, it just means that in the time they had to deal with the problem they couldn't find anything wrong.

I think some people here are in for a big surprise once they reach the real world.

In the end, the people that are making excuses and blaming SE for everything that happened are the ones that are giving SE far too much credit. I believe that SE is completely fallible, a business run and operated by human beings. They miss things, they make bad decisions, they definitely aren't perfect. But they do have rules that govern those situations, and you are playing their game.

It was a glitch, glitches happen all the time. Taking advantage of the glitch is against the rules.

Reporting it doesn't change that fact.

SE not fixing it doesn't change that fact.

SE being selective in the enforcement of the rules doesn't change that fact (I actually believe the rules were probably enforced more uniformly than some people are letting on, but it wasn't perfect).

In the end, people were banned for cheating. End of discussion. Every other caveat is just an excuse.

Should have just been the only post ever on the whole issue.

[ringthree]

Go here. Note, only one person is greyed out because he stopped playing months ago. No on in BG was banned for this. BG is a linkshell, these are the linkshell's forums- I can't speak for the people who visit the forums, but no member of our linkshell was banned for this.

As for why somethings are deleted and others are not, that isn't for one person to decide. As per your examples, the unlimited salvage permits was an obvious bug that was obviously going to get fixed. (And didn't it require you to have the Assault Points to get more permits? So no one was really hurt, since you were limited by the number of points that you had.) The less than 6 people to enter a Salvage zone doesn't hurt anyone either, unlike Nyzul, there are no lines to get into Salvage areas and if you couldn't make it with less people you only hurt yourself. (These examples, of course, are my own opinion and may not be shared by the admins or other mods.) Duping on the other hand was wildly inappropriate and we knew that there would be a shitstorm if that got out since people would say that we are condoning it by letting people know about it.

I think that he was referring to Wafik deleting the duping information, through his own admission, to keep the information hidden for those that already had access to the information, not to keep the glitch from being used by anyone (as it already was by Wafik for duping). It is important to be clear on this point because I think that puts the situation well outside of "condoning".

I like Wafik and, excluding my spaz out at him on his blog because of his attempt to blame SE for a problem that was in my opinion his responsibility, I wish that this had never happened to him or anyone else. I wish the stupid glitch had never existed...

That being said, I think Wafik's decision to remove the glitch information was not well thought out, and although it met the letter of the law of BG's rules about not posting glitches, I don't think his action in that case met the spirit of the law. We all make bad decisions from time to time, but kind of like how there is a debate about releasing information about computer viruses, exploits and backdoors, I think that in this case removing the information did more harm than good.

[Correction]

This just in: Ringthree can read wafik's mind.

Or something.

[ringthree]

This just in: Ringthree can read wafik's mind.

Or something.

No, I can't. That's why I said "by Wafik's own admission."

[Antithesis]

Mistakes are one thing. Constant failures are another.

[Xno Kappa]

The really funny irony to me is that for all the people that say we shouldn't praise SE, they for some reason assume that SE is omniscient and omnipotent. Reporting a glitch doesn't mean anything if SE can't recreate the situation, can't deal with the programming for it, or doesn't even have the plain old time to deal with it.

Think about it. When did SE finally act on the problem? Was it when only a few people were using it and it was being relatively well hidden? Or was it when it finally got out and everyone started using it? Even if it is a major glitch, if not very many people are using it, it is harder to track and it is harder to deal with because it is harder to find instances of it occurring. Once the information became more and more available, SE had more and more situations to observe and the problem became much larger.

When you get older, you may buy a new car, and if you have something wrong with it, and take it to the dealership to get it fixed under warranty, you may find that they return it to you without doing anything claiming they were unable to reproduce the problem. It may be glaring to you, but no matter how much you complain, if they can't find something to fix, then they aren't going to fix it. This does not mean that they are incompetent, or incapable of fixing the problem, it just means that in the time they had to deal with the problem they couldn't find anything wrong.

I think some people here are in for a big surprise once they reach the real world.

In the end, the people that are making excuses and blaming SE for everything that happened are the ones that are giving SE far too much credit. I believe that SE is completely fallible, a business run and operated by human beings. They miss things, they make bad decisions, they definitely aren't perfect. But they do have rules that govern those situations, and you are playing their game.

It was a glitch, glitches happen all the time. Taking advantage of the glitch is against the rules.

Reporting it doesn't change that fact.

SE not fixing it doesn't change that fact.

SE being selective in the enforcement of the rules doesn't change that fact (I actually believe the rules were probably enforced more uniformly than some people are letting on, but it wasn't perfect).

In the end, people were banned for cheating. End of discussion. Every other caveat is just an excuse.

What kind of psuedo-"listen here youngin" nonsense are you talking about? How is the situation even remotely close to a car? I'm sure the majority of us on this forum are grown adults so please spare us any irl-comparing rhetorical bullshit. If I tell you verbatim step-by-step how to recreate the glitch, how is it not possible to address the manner or at the very least raise awareness to deter any further use? It's not me giving SE too much credit but rather you over-estimating the simplicity of said glitch. This is the same company that took their sweet ass time in making such a simple adjustment in sky via Ullikummi.

I completely agree there should have been punishment. My one and only argument all this time is the negligence of SE to address the manner in a timely fashion until it involved hundreds of players who obviously had friends to hate see them go. To say SE were oblivious to the exploit is naive at best.

[Acturus]

I completely agree there should have been punishment. My one and only argument all this time is the negligence of SE to address the manner in a timely fashion until it involved hundreds of players who obviously had friends to hate see them go. To say SE were oblivious to the exploit is naive at best.

Um, welcome to the world of business?

Until there is a significant material impact, the cost of addressing a problem does not outweight the benefit of addressing that problem.

I find it very plausible that SE "neglected" to address this in a "timely fashion" UNTIL it involved "hundreds of players", because those "hundreds of players" finally tipped the scales.

Because as we've all seen, the Dev. Team has limited resources, and the duping exploits of a handful of players most likely fell in their "oh, we'll get to it later" category of tasks, right next to "WotG Content" and "Summoner Avatars".

[Kenji]

Whether the community as a whole openly discussed the exploit or not is irrelevant. We're not their beta testers, plain and simple. Bottom-line is that it's ridiculous to think SE wasn't informed on the glitch in the slightest. I think some of you just fail to realize how LONG ago people found this glitch before SE adjusted it in November. It's asinine to say SE has no responsibility in the failure of monitoring its own game, let alone reports to its GMs.

Okay, Smart Guy. You make your own MMO. And be sure to program it without any bugs or exploits. Make your code 100% perfect.

I bet you anything that you can't.

Any real software developer knows bugs *will* crop up. No matter how many times you go through the code, and no matter how many other people you have look at it. Another bug *will* pop up despite your best efforts.

And I will agree with Kaeko, and disagree with Septimus. You *do* have a responsibility. It's right there, in the TOS that many people have brought up time and time again: The responsibility to report exploits and bugs.

And goddamn, use some good personal judgment. If the damn thing is severe like exploiting or duping, and a single GM call or two is not getting it resolved in a timely manner, then yes, post it on your forums and cause a shitstorm. How many people's accounts would still be here, if only widespread knowledge of this bug had been known? I wouldn't want the loss of accounts to be on my conscience.

I swear, everyone wants to blame everybody but themselves. "It wasn't my fault" "I didn't do anything, don't blame me!" "I was just following orders!" Of course, I know it's human nature to not want to take blame, so in a sense, I don't blame people for this.

Here's something else that someone said once: "All it takes for evil to triumph over good, is for good men to do nothing."

And Sept, you will never be damned if you do. I wouldn't use that argument as an excuse to avoid doing something. As someone mentioned, the Magic Mortar exploit/bug was pasted all over these forums. The mods didn't do shit to squash that exploit. And don't tell me that you weren't sure if it was an exploit; we all know you don't do that kind of damage, unless you're damn lucky with a Relic bow/gun (triple proc barrage). The mods are just as arbitrary in enforcing their rules as people claim SE was in the bannings.

Hell, I'll make it easy for you and put money where my mouth is. *I'll* take responsibility. The next exploit/dupe/cheat/bug/whatever, let me know. I'll post it all over the net and make tons of GM calls until it's fixed. You can post it here and say "Well, blame Kenji; he told us to put it here." Note, that this also depends on severity. I won't post all over because beetles have a reversed right foot.

If you don't want to post it or have it associated with you, just PM me with the details.

Shit people. Kaeko manned up and took responsibility. Animusprime did. Neosutra did. A number of other people did. It is fuckin' hard to do at first, I'll give you that. but the right thing to do, is rarely the easy thing.

/soapbox

[Tagus]

Shit people. Kaeko manned up and took responsibility. Animusprime did. Neosutra did. A number of other people did. It is fuckin' hard to do at first, I'll give you that. but the right thing to do, is rarely the easy thing.

/soapbox

I think what Neo did was change his sig to compare his ban lifting to Jesus Christ's ressurection, but apples and oranges. Right?

[Max™]

Well, bad coding was what started it all, but I was actually talking about the fact that they took a year to fix the problem. That was their real mistake. Bugs and glitches happen. Leaving them around for people to take advantage of, then after a year of letting them use it, banning them for it, shouldn't happen. And if it does, it's kind of hypocritical to treat it like such a serious matter, when it took them so long to get around to it. :/


Anyway, I thought this was a good article relating to this topic.
http://petfoodalpha.com/2659/square-...ality-police/2

I thought that was a hilarious article, especially if it's the Chinchilla I knew.

[Neosutra]

I think what Neo did was change his sig to compare his ban lifting to Jesus Christ's ressurection, but apples and oranges. Right?

Me coming back to the game isnt the same as a metaphysical transcendance of a religious diety from mortality into god and thereby changing the dogma of an entire species of monkeys? I dont see the difference...

And I believe the orginial comment was differentiating people that accepted what they did (while they may have disagreed with the lvl of punishment in some cases), and those who were simply aghast that they could be touched.

[Kenji]

I think what Neo did was change his sig to compare his ban lifting to Jesus Christ's ressurection, but apples and oranges. Right?

As Neo said, it was about saying, "Hey, I did this, and I hold some blame here. I accept the consequences." I don't like Neo much, but I do respect him for doing this. He could have been like a bunch of other people and say: "It's mostly SE's fault! Shitty code and they didn't stop it earlier (even though the knowledge was covered up), and their arbitrary temp and perma bannings make it all unfair!"

It's all about taking responsibility for one's actions. The next step is to take responsibility for one's lack of action in the face of something that obviously needs action taken.

[Tagus]

"Me coming back to the game isnt the same as a metaphysical transcendance of a religious diety from mortality into god and thereby changing the dogma of an entire species of monkeys? I dont see the difference..."

I lol'd in real life. Well played.