All offenders are equal, but some are more equal than others?

[Spider-Dan]

Disclaimer: This post is not about whether the people who got banned deserved it, or duping/economy/morals/blahblah etc.; in fact, it's only tangentially related to the Salvage issue. This post is about how (and to whom) punishment was (and is) applied.

So far, I've read of at least two people (Wafik and Corwen) who got perm'd with (purportedly) no prior marks on their account. According to Corwen's LJ, he has 4-boxed other accounts for this exploit, yet only his account was hit with a perm (again, first offense) while the other accounts he controlled (and other players in his LS) were hit with temps. (insert standard disclaimer about "but what if he is lying about evrythings???")

This raises the question of whether or not Squenix specifically decided punishment based on who the player was, rather than what they had done. This is an extremely disturbing possibility; the idea that your punishment is determined not on by you have done, but who you are should be pretty frightening to any first-world citizen.

P.S. There may be some who feel compelled to point out that it's Squenix's game and they can do whatever the hell they want, whenever the hell they want. That's true, but essentially beside the point; Squenix still wants to present the appearance of fairness, if only from a PR standpoint. If the media were to run the story that Squenix determines punishments based on who has the most to lose... I don't think that would play very well.

[Neosutra]

Awesome thread.

[Kipling]

Orz.

[aurik]

Stanislav is not banned.

Myth busted.

[Guitarman]

I can debunk your arguement in 4 words: Stan was never hit. He's well known enough (for obvious reasons) and only got a letter. My bet is just random SE stupidity and flipping a coin on each case.

Edit: Damn you Aurik! Beaten by 1 second!

[Charismatic]

Stanislav is not banned.

Myth busted.

Post works much better this way, don't change it again.

[Sonomaa]

my theory is that they had a bunch of people doing this, some were nice and understand salvage (people who actually play the game). Others were assholes and dont play the game at all (banned perma)

[Spider-Dan]

My bet is just random SE stupidity and flipping a coin on each case.

This is almost, but not quite, worse.

There is a basic presumption of some logic being used in dealing out punishments. Arbitrary punishment is slightly better than player-discrimination-based punishment, but it's still incredibly bad.

When two people do the same thing and receive drastically different punishment, something is not right.

[Vodou]

We don't know exactly what their process was, so it's presumptuous to think we know how punishment was meted out.

The only facts we know are:

1) afaik from the threads no one was banned one way or the other without actually having been involved, however tangentially to the dupe process (i.e., no one was banned who had never done salvage while the dupe method was being used)

2) some were banned allegedly for doing less than some who were not banned

3) the list of people who were perma banned are disproportionately composed of people who had relics / mythics / drings / AV gear / completed salvage sets / land king gear

If from #3, you are to deduce anything (without other facts) it's that either:

A) SE chose them because they had lots of stuff, or

B) They are disproportionately on the list because they share the same personality trait or behavior that enabled / caused / predicted a decision to use this method in the same way it predicted them getting relics / mythics / drings / AV gear / completed salvage sets / land king gear, or

C) its a complete coincidence

[Gwynplaine]

Without having full knowledge of the evidence the Square employees actually used to judge their conclusion you can only speculate as to how consistent or not they were. As a company of real people obviously there must have been at least some screw-ups or inconsistencies. Making a statement to the effect that Square singled out more high profile people to serve as an example is just baseless speculation. There's no point even discussing it further because there's no way to find out.

[Sorantia]

Should also worth mentioning that pretty most of the people that got perma-banned in phoenix are well known cheaters or abusers. It just seems to indicate that they banned people based on how much they abused the exploits.

[The Blackrose]

I can debunk your arguement in 4 words: Stan was never hit. He's well known enough (for obvious reasons) and only got a letter. My bet is just random SE stupidity and flipping a coin on each case.

Nah, it's not a coin. It's a dartboard, with 3 different darts used.

[Spider-Dan]

If from #3, you are to deduce anything (without other facts) it's that either:

A) SE chose them because they had lots of stuff, or

B) They are disproportionately on the list because they share the same personality trait or behavior that enabled / caused / predicted a decision to use this method in the same way it predicted them getting relics / mythics / drings / AV gear / completed salvage sets / land king gear, or

C) its a complete coincidence

Here's the thing: unless these people are lying, they had zero marks on their account. So the issue of an "established trend" doesn't apply, since the trend started (and ended) at this incident.

That is, unless Squenix was digging for other stuff while they were in the logs, in which case all bets are off. "You remember when you cybered in /tell back in August 2004? Yeah, that's a TOS violation, bye-bye now."

[Thistle]

This is an extremely disturbing possibility; the idea that your punishment is determined not on by you have done, but who you are should be pretty frightening to any first-world citizen.

Except it's a game owned by a company, not a country of any sort? If SE officials woke up one morning and decided to ban every player whose name started with T, it's within their rights.

I'm really not sure where this idea that you're owed rights on a for-profit game came from. You pay your $15 a month, SE allows you to log onto their servers. If they change their minds, for whatever reason, that's 100% their right.

Don't like it? WoW is thataway.

[Izzy]

Nah, it's not a coin. It's a dartboard, with 3 different darts used.

http://img407.imageshack.us/img407/6...rtboardql0.png

[Yugl]

my theory is that they had a bunch of people doing this, some were nice and understand salvage (people who actually play the game). Others were assholes and dont play the game at all (banned perma)

This is my guess too. Considering how many logs they went through and the amount of time it took them, it seems obvious that the investigation wasn't done by a single person. While each member checking the logs may have been given specific instructions on how to handle the situation, there may have been room for interpretation.

[brisk]

What the little ring outside the center suppose to be?

[Croaker]

B) They are disproportionately on the list because they share the same personality trait or behavior that enabled / caused / predicted a decision to use this method in the same way it predicted them getting relics / mythics / drings / AV gear / completed salvage sets / land king gear, or

My linkshell learned about this exploit very late when it was openly posted here on BG.

We had a chance to try it out a few times before they applied the patch. This resulted in 6/18 of our members getting a temp ban. All of those 6 were people who either received gear or alexandrite as a result of the exploit.

If this holds true for other linkshells, then your theory would be true. Those people who tend to be on the top of gear lists for whatever reason, would likely have been the recipients of the exploit drops and be subject to the bans.

[Cylo]

How about they banned the party leaders, and temp banned the people who joined the party who duped. Is that feasible?

[Izzy]

What the little ring outside the center suppose to be?

I guess that could be the people who duped but didn't get caught at all lol.