FFXI Reasonable Doubt

[ringthree]

Out of curiousity....
If the thread remained here, then spread to alla, do you think they would shut alla down? Or would they just fix it faster? And as far as I know (i dont run a server, but it would make common sense) they would tell you "take it down or we will pursue further action" just like they did with the gm handbook and stuff like that. It was taken down to keep it a secret, pure and simple.

I like Septimus very much, I think he is one of the most reasonable and thoughtful people from BG.

That being said, I agree with you. The constant denial of at least some culpability because of the intention of removing those posts is just strange at this point.

Sept, the posts were removed because the people that removed them wanted the information hidden, not because you were afraid of legal action, or because of any other technicality.

BG is not to blame for people duping, and they are not to blame for the way that SE handled the situation. No one is saying that at all.

I don't know why it is so hard to say that some people made a poor judgment call by deleting the threads about duping. No one is asking for punishment, just the acknowledgment that if something happens like this again in the future it might be handled differently.

You can't defend intention with the letter of the law ultimately, especially when the person deleting the thread full admits to doing so to keep it hidden.

Admitting a mistake is not a bad thing. It just seems odd to me that after all this time someone hasn't at least said they could have handled it better instead of this constant string of denial of any culpability.

[Vodou]

I like Septimus very much, I think he is one of the most reasonable and thoughtful people from BG.

That being said, I agree with you. The constant denial of at least some culpability because of the intention of removing those posts is just strange at this point.

Sept, the posts were removed because the people that removed them wanted the information hidden, not because you were afraid of legal action, or because of any other technicality.

BG is not to blame for people duping, and they are not to blame for the way that SE handled the situation. No one is saying that at all.

I don't know why it is so hard to say that some people made a poor judgment call by deleting the threads about duping. No one is asking for punishment, just the acknowledgment that if something happens like this again in the future it might be handled differently.

You can't defend intention with the letter of the law ultimately, especially when the person deleting the thread full admits to doing so to keep it hidden.

Admitting a mistake is not a bad thing. It just seems odd to me that after all this time someone hasn't at least said they could have handled it better instead of this constant string of denial of any culpability.

Ring, could not agree with you more.

If EVERYONE does exactly the same thing the next time, what result can we expect? If people who have the option to do something differently will not step up, then what is the point?

GDI, next time PM ring or me or Orson or Piko or VZX or Creamsoda or 20 other people (Forgive me all of you, I am just making a point and your names among others come to mind). In fact PM all of us. We'll (or at least I'll) post enough emails to SE to get their attention. Or ask SE for the private emails of 5 people at SE that would care and you sent the post to them.

Why would this not be better?

[Katarzyna]

If BG left the posts up and out in the open, there would be people bitching that BG condones duping.

Damned if you do, damned if you don't.

[Rya]

If BG left the posts up and out in the open, there would be people bitching that BG condones duping.

Damned if you do, damned if you don't.

Or the Admins could simply modify the post to remove the specific information around the procedure, yes people would whine about them keeping the information to themselves but the bug would still get full publicity, f you look through the thread that announced the Maintenance on Salvage zones you'll see that a lot of people were still unwilling to share the information even after it was fixed.

The question is : Should BG Admins be responsible for sensoring/Publisising this information? If they are willing to delete posts that outline how to dupe/exploit or even posts that mention a major exploit like the Salvage thing, should they then be informing people that these issues exist without giving out specific information and informing SE?

If an individual then descides to look on other sites to find out what the procedure is then thats their perogative.

[Katarzyna]

The question is : Should BG Admins be responsible for sensoring/Publisising this information? If they are willing to delete posts that outline how to dupe/exploit or even posts that mention a major exploit like the Salvage thing, should they then be informing people that these issues exist without giving out specific information and informing SE?

No. The responsibility of informing people belongs to SE. And SE was informed of the duping. They chose to do nothing.

[ringthree]

No. The responsibility of informing people belongs to SE. And SE was informed of the duping. They chose to do nothing.

Actually, they didn't choose to do nothing. The facts of the situation belie the fact that you really have no idea what SE did and did not know or how they went about the solving the situation.

At no point am I saying that BG did anything wrong except that they probably shouldn't have deleted a thread about the dupe because the person that deleted it wanted to hide it for themselves.

It was just a bad judgment call, that's all. In the end, doing something differently probably could have helped out a lot of people. But that is all conjecture. All I hope is that there is some realization that if something like this happens again, that it would be handled differently. This would be better than the false hope that complete denial of culpability means something to the people reading this.

In the end, BG is not responsible for anything and will not be punished for anything, so there is no need to keep up this wall of denial now.

Hell, I could have done more. I didn't report it when I heard about it, the thought crossed my mind to use it, as it would for any rational person. In my defense I found out about it less than 48 hours before it was removed. Even I have some culpability.

[EternalSnow]

SAILOR SCOUTS WHO ARE MEN

Yes LOL XD

[Katarzyna]

Actually, they didn't choose to do nothing. The facts of the situation belie the fact that you really have no idea what SE did and did not know or how they went about the solving the situation.

At no point am I saying that BG did anything wrong except that they probably shouldn't have deleted a thread about the dupe because the person that deleted it wanted to hide it for themselves.

It was just a bad judgment call, that's all. In the end, doing something differently probably could have helped out a lot of people. But that is all conjecture. All I hope is that there is some realization that if something like this happens again, that it would be handled differently. This would be better than the false hope that complete denial of culpability means something to the people reading this.

In the end, BG is not responsible for anything and will not be punished for anything, so there is no need to keep up this wall of denial now.

Hell, I could have done more. I didn't report it when I heard about it, the thought crossed my mind to use it. In my defense I found out about it less than 48 hours before it was removed. Even I have some culpability.

SE perma-banned 550 accounts over a year after the fact. Lesser bugs have been reported and fixed in a hell of a lot less time. I was going to edit my post and say "up until January 09" but I figured people were smart enough to read between the lines. Guess not.

If BG left whatever posts made about it up, edited or not, the whole community would look down upon the website as condoning duping. The fact that someone deleted it because "they wanted it to remain a secret" is irrelevant because it would've gotten deleted for another reason anyway. Anyone who posts directions on how to exploit the game on a website, the website is automatically condoned as supporting it. Zam was looked down upon when they were bought out by a company that was related to RMT. It's bad PR, no matter which way you look at it.

[ringthree]

SE perma-banned 550 accounts over a year after the fact. Lesser bugs have been reported and fixed in a hell of a lot less time. I was going to edit my post and say "up until January 09" but I figured people were smart enough to read between the lines. Guess not.

If BG left whatever posts made about it up, edited or not, the whole community would look down upon the website as condoning duping. The fact that someone deleted it because "they wanted it to remain a secret" is irrelevant because it would've gotten deleted for another reason anyway. Anyone who posts directions on how to exploit the game on a website, the website is automatically condoned as supporting it. Zam was looked down upon when they were bought out by a company that was related to RMT. It's bad PR, no matter which way you look at it.

No, you are operating on a baseless assumption. You think that because some people knew about it for a long time then SE must have known about it for a long time.

I have already gone over this several times but there is little evidence to support this notion.

1. From the time that the dupe became widespread knowledge to the time of the fix and then the bans was relatively short. I knew about the dupe about 48 hours before it was removed, then the bans came about a month later.

2. Signal to noise ratio. My assumption is that SE gets a lot of things from their online suggestion box, and the amount of crap compared to the amount of useful information is likely very unbalanced. So even if there were random reports of the dupe it doesn't mean that it got through, and even if it got through, if they didn't include some way for SE to figure what it was or how it works so they could fix it then it is still useless information.

I guess defending SE makes me some kind of apologist. I just thinking beating up on a face-less, evil corporation is relatively stupid. They are just people, and they work like most of the adults here. They have lots of priorities, and even if there is a big problem, if it is not presented to them properly or they don't know the extent of the problem the day to day work of any of those people is be far more important than trying to fix a nebulous and 99% of the time irrelevant problem.

There are far better things to beat up SE about. Lack of communication, lack of information about in-game statistics, lack of information about a huge number of useless pieces of gear, lack of information about development, direction of the game, etc. Lack of new end-game content, lack of new middle-level content, lack of any kind of sense about world destroying bosses, lack of any kind of sense for how to put stats on gear. Constant painting themselves into a corner because of gear stats vs. mob stats.

Those are real legitimate complaints. Whining because SE didn't ban people at the pace that you wanted them to be banned? Give me a break. If you don't want to be banned then don't cheat. If you cheat, except the fact that you have a good chance of being banned. Don't complain after the fact.

The nebulous entity "BG" could have done many things differently. "They" could have said "Hey, there is a dupe, we are taking out the details so more people don't do it, but it's out there and SE needs to do something about it." "They" could have flooded SE with bug reports. "They" could have left the details up and told everyone to flood SE with bug reports.

In the end, "BG" is not at fault for the glitch, and they should not be punished for anything. They even have a lot less blame than far more people that got banned and other actions taken against them. But it is down right re-damn-diculous to suggest that deleting a post to hide the dupe is irrelevant to the discussion when "BG" is saying they did nothing wrong.

How does the PR look when you delete threads to hide the fact that you are duping? Not too many ways to spin that really.

BG is a great place, run by great people. But even great people make bad decisions from time to time. Just own up to them and move on. That's all I am saying.

Sorry for the wall of text.

[Katarzyna]

Incoming wall of text.

You seem to be under the assumption I'm banned. I'm not. Search for my name on the Cerberus server on ah.com. You'll see I'm not banned. You may see a break in my AH activity, but that's because of issues with my ISP, nothing more.

I've been playing since PC launch with breaks in between. I've played other MMOs. I've watched MMOs hit pinnacle then crash a burn. Fact of the matter is, this game is extremely poorly run. I could go on and on as to why, but there's plenty of posts in the Standard Discussion, which I've already added my opinion on. This thread is about a stupid petition because some idiot got his friend banned, and it spiraled into placing blame on BG because they deleted threads that made the dupe public.

In all your preaching, the only time you owned up to it is in post #166. It took you that long to admit even you did nothing about it, and you expect BG to just cower and say "Ok, you're right. We deleted posts that should've have been deleted. We're sorry." You yourself found the glitch, and didn't even report it to SE. 48 hours or a year ago, it doesn't matter. You didn't even own up to your personal responsibility, and we're on page 6 of this thread.

As far as your PR comment in rebuttal to mine, it's exactly what I said before: Damned if you do, damned if you don't. Whatever decision was made, people would find a reason to bitch about it.

Don't get me wrong, the people who exploited this dupe for their own benefits got what they deserved. But the fact that the blame is slowly being shifted off those people and onto this website is absurd. "Maybe if you didn't delete the posts, SE would've fixed it faster and so many people wouldn't have gotten banned." That's utterly ridiculous.

We all have "been around the block" and know this game is a "dog eat dog" world. Because drop rates are so piss poor terrible, there are plenty of people willing to step over their own mothers to get that piece of uber equipment. There are a lot of honest players, yes, but for every honest player who doesn't bot, hack or participate in RMT, there's a player who does do those things. Let's say hypothetically BG did leave the threads up. Let's say everything was out in the open. SE reads these forums, but I'm also willing to bet RMT do too. BG is THE site to go to get up-to-the-minute info on this game (in English). What kind of ramifications would that have on the economy? Cue in 2004, when RMT and exploiters ruled FFXI. But, it's just a small example, probably exaggerated, but it very well could happen.

[ringthree]

I didn't delete any threads on BG to hide the dupe so I could continue to use it. I was still mulling over the situation when it was removed by SE. Could I have done more? Of course. Does it have anything to do at all with the issue at hand? No, nothing at all.

I don't expect "BG" to do anything, I just don't get why they don't.

Everything else you said is just a repeat or rehash of things that have already been answered.

[Silenka]

It's funny how SE seems to cares less about their game than what's being posted on a website that not even half the FFXI playerbase even reads.

[Kenji]

People love to arm-chair quarterback, but you aren't the ones who get the angry, threatening phone calls from Square's lawyers, Sonomaa does though. Do they ask nicely to remove things? Hell no. How many times does this bear repeating before people finally understand that they have done this several times in the past and it is a headache that we would rather not deal with?

And yet, following the incident, someone posted about the sandworm duping still working, and Sonomaa left it up. Apparently, BG is willing to deal with it. Received any calls or letters from SE?

I'm gonna go out on a limb and say no.

[Gaea]

And yet, following the incident, someone posted about the sandworm duping still working, and Sonomaa left it up. Apparently, BG is willing to deal with it. Received any calls or letters from SE?

I'm gonna go out on a limb and say no.

Sandworm duping still works because STF Unit is running out of people to ban. In a few months there will be a retroactive mass ban on people exploiting Sandworm. This is what you guys get for complaining about RMT. Now, you have a very bored group of people with a lot of power.

[Aevyze]

Ahhh Gaea you are my favorite.

[Xno Kappa]

And yet, following the incident, someone posted about the sandworm duping still working, and Sonomaa left it up. Apparently, BG is willing to deal with it. Received any calls or letters from SE?

I'm gonna go out on a limb and say no.

Again, what the hell is the whole point of this argument? You and ringthree are fucking going in circles here on crap that's irrelevant to the issues. BG IS NOT THE FUCKING STF FOR FFXI yet you two insist on inferring some kind of responsibility for the duping exploit on an UNOFFICIAL forum for the failure of properly addressing SE.

Square Enix, who have provided their own means on reporting in-game issues for Final Fantasy XI.

Square Enix, who have hired Game Masters to report up the latter for these kinds of issues.

Square Enix, whose created their own Special Task Force so that such issues would never be abused and exploited.

Bottom-line, it was reported, nothing was done. What BG, a non-premier site, did or did not do is irrelevant.

On the contrary to you and your buddy ringthree's belief, the fucking thread for the Sandworm dupe is still up and guess what? SE has done completely nothing to address it. It's been reported through the proper channels and guess what? SE has still done completely nothing to address it. Do you see a pattern here? Are you still willing to bet on SE's ignorance about what's going on?

[yuriku]

Actually a petition is a great place to start for a class action lawsuit. SE has handled this issue so poorly. You guys should def stick it to them, I'm sure with the thousands of people in an uproar over this, it would be cake to find a firm who love to pick this uo

There are 4 requirements to proceed with a class action.
1. Numerosity - enough plaintiffs to make class action an efficeint way to handle the claim.

2. Commonality - common issues of fact and law for each claimant

3. Adequacy of Class Rep - the person who is the class representatitve needs to have claims that are the same as the class members and that they are capable of serving as the representative.

4. Adequqcy of Counsel - that the law firm representing the class has sufficient skill and resources to represent the class.


A certified class action suit is one brought on behalf of a large group of people as plaintiffs who have suffered some similar harm from the same actions of the defendant or defendantsA certified class action suit is one brought on behalf of a large group of people as plaintiffs who have suffered some similar harm from the same actions of the defendant or defendants

[Kenji]

Again, what the hell is the whole point of this argument? You and ringthree are fucking going in circles here on crap that's irrelevant to the issues. BG IS NOT THE FUCKING STF FOR FFXI yet you two insist on inferring some kind of responsibility for the duping exploit on an UNOFFICIAL forum for the failure of properly addressing SE.

Let me try to clarify things for you. We DO NOT think BG is the STF. We DO NOT think BG are police. This line keeps getting trotted out as a lovely straw man, probably because it's so satisfying to knock down.

Policing implies taking action. We are suggesting that *no* action be taken for a post. Ie, when someone posts, don't take action and let it play out. If BG were really taking potential threats seriously, they'd heavily moderate flames, lest someone sue BG for libel or defamation. That's a legal risk, too, right?

And indeed, no action against BG will be taken from SE, for leaving a glitch/exploit thread up. If you still can't figure out why, after all this time, then nothing will convince you. Your mind is closed.

On the contrary to you and your buddy ringthree's belief, the fucking thread for the Sandworm dupe is still up and guess what? SE has done completely nothing to address it. It's been reported through the proper channels and guess what? SE has still done completely nothing to address it. Do you see a pattern here? Are you still willing to bet on SE's ignorance about what's going on?

And yet, there's been no confirmation of this, and no screenshots. It takes time to find the exact cause of a bug. You have to know exactly how to replicate it, and even then, finding out where the code went wrong can be tricky. At this point, SE may have thought they fixed it, and are trying to figure out if, A: The dupe is still real, and B: how to fix this kind of thing for good. Then you allow for QA and the process.

Understanding the process behind software, can help explain a great many things.

And again, there are enough things to hold SE accountable to. We choose to focus on those.

[Vodou]

I sent Jhun's post to STF that described the event clearly. Anyone who is concerned can do the same. It's pretty easy to do and takes only a minute.

I'm guessing I'll just keep sending them every few days until there is some sort of maintenance of they tell me to stop.

[Nuiness]

To the people that are flaming and saying to lock the thread or that the dupers deserved to get banned:

Thank you for being so predictable. It feels good to be right.

Anyway, the purpose of this post was to sign a petition, not discredit it. Ugly useless people.