Regarding Malicious Third-Party Programs used in FINAL FANTASY XI (12/24/2009)

[pchan]

Not necessary to bump this thread but I might as well.

I will outright claim that endgame on some servers went to shit after the bans. No reason for anyone to argue against this, as it's rather true. I do wholeheartedly believe that there are servers where there was virtually no change. But you guys who are on those servers should feel glad, and show a little sympathy or understanding.

Supermarioland was killed when the hammer hit. RIP to many of the best, oldest, and most influential players that Asura had. The first groups to do dynamis sponsorship, some of the first Odin kills in the game, the first people to reach Sea and kill jailers on the server. And friendly at that, not your "evil cheater" types. Remedy, arguably the best HNM shell at the time.. I remember talking to remedy folks and hearing "Well, every single one of our relics got banned, so we're pretty much done." Neither of these LS's lasted even a week after the hammer.

I remember talking on the phone to an old LS mate after the hammer, and him confirming every single person in his salvage group was axed, save one. Only one of several examples of this. I would say between 20-30 people I had regular contact with in the game, either friends or on a friendly level, were perma banned. My "people online" friend's list was maybe chopped in half. And this started a domino trend where several others quit to join their banned friends in WoW.

I could have been banned too. I had no interest in salvage duping, but was part of several runs where I knew what was going on and had no complaints. I know that people were banned over this much alone. I really don't think I would have deserved a ban. Yet so many people paint all this in black and white. "Cheaters, "dupers," oh please.. Get over yourselves. The finger you want to point is at SE. For not fixing the problem when it was reported. For not warning players of the gravity prior to the banning. For not being more reasonable about the punishment. Many of the people that are not sympethic towards the salvage dupees were people that didn't know about the trick, or didn't do salvage.

It's the same thing with botting. Point the finger at SE, not the players. The HNM system is incredibly poorly designed. If people want the endgame gear, and want to bot for it, they know the risk. Fair enough. But don't delude yourself into thinking that that they're evil for wanting nice gear, and not wanting to spend 3-9 hours a day standing in a zone, only to see a mob pop purple 90% of the time. What are you gonna do when the NASA-style packet bot LS of 20-30 server transfer reject scumbags takes your camps by storm? So your entire LS doesn't bot, congratulations on your sainthood, enjoy your 10% claim rate. You can complain all you want, but that other LS frankly does not care. Whether you purchase a $10 app or not, camps will be rampant with botting. Save your moral discerning ability for more important applications.

I don't blame SE for wanting to ban cheaters. Though it probably won't happen, another indiscriminate hard-ban will add another knife into the back of the XI as they continue to suck the life out of the game and their own profits with poor customer service, poor quality assurance, poor content updates, and poor oversight.

Congratulations to those servers who were unharmed by the salvage bans. But you have to admit to yourselves, even if it was only 1/3 of the the servers that had their endgame shattered by the bans, you can't possibly consider that to be of no concern. The fact remains that a high number of players within the game were affected. Anything that affects a "high number of players" is of concern to the community and should be of concern to SE.

I believe your impression is based on the types of LS you were in.

I personnally have never been in an HnM LS, I did most everything else in endgame : sea, sky, limbus, dynamis, znm, salvage, nyzul, assault, einherjar and I probably forgot some. My salvage group was done with people I knew from dynamis. Nobody did HNMs style events. Noone had ever heard of the dupe trick. The bans didn't affect any of my endgame linkshells. At one point I thought my Einherjar linkshell would break because we had a fuckton of full sets. Turns out nobody was banned. Sea/sky/dynamis etc weren't affected either.

That's whty I think only trash players got banned. Yes the people you knew were probably good at the game but wtf did they cheat ? From what I see only people linked to HnMs shell got hit, because they met other cheaters and learned the trick this way. If a HnM linkshell disappears, does this affect the "end game" on a server ? Nope. Doing all your events within one shell is necessarey a waste of your time. You can't expect everyone to have the same interests in all the events of the game. So basically what I'm trying to say is when a LS collapses because salvage bans hit it, this shell disappears. 90% of the salvage teams remain and continue to get gear. Dynamis LSs that are not based on a hnm LS remain, and I believe this represents most of the LSs. Same for einherjars LSs. Mine was one of the first to kill odin on the server and 1 year after the bans we're still there. I believe most of the einherjar LSs are are independent from an HnM Ls too. Same goes for pretty much all other endgame events I think. A few cheaters banned cannot affect endgame beside precisely HnMs. Even though this is an online game, the achievements of the persons next to you has no effect on the server globally, and even less on the endgame community server wide. Getting rid of cheaters can only be a good thing.

[ronin sparthos]

Salvage bans, the right way : Announcement right after exploit report was reviewed and confirmed "It has come to our attention that an exploit exists within the event of Salvage, and possibly others whereby items can be duplicated. A fix is in development and an investigation is underway to locate violators of blahblah rule quote. Players are urged to discontinue using this exploit or suffer the appropriate actions"

Result : use after announcement = banhammer without remorse. Usage before is on a case by case (and much smaller) weed out the instigators and the followers.

cloak and daggers shit that SE pulled was not the right way. How else can players know its not "working as intended"

So basically you wanted SE to say publicly:

"Stop cheating guys, please stop. Guys we're starting bans in 2 weeks, discontinue the duping or else we'll have to ban you."

Duping is duping and some groups profiteered the hell out of it and that is why the bans were swift and brutal. It isn't like this was something ambiguous... it was an outright exploit of the game and would have set a dangerous precedent had SE not done something to those abusing the system. They already showed in the past that duping/npc exploits lead directly to a ban so it isn't like this was anything new. (scrollduping, tavnazia npcs, muffin/sushi npcing)

SE is responsible for alot of shit (hi2u shitty customer service, lazy programming, half-truths etc) but the bans were almost completely justifiable. Morals may be checked at the door at king camps but there still exists a line not meant be to crossed and hey, the dupers crossed it.

The only people who were innocent were those ignorant to what their LSmates were doing (and those banned when they were in pug groups using it) and in that case shouldn't they be pissed at their buddies for fucking them over or does peer pressure excuse any accountability? I was made aware of the duping through an accident in a Salvage run but never knew how to replicate it and that was that. If someone went out of their way to find out more about the duping or kept it under wraps to keep it going then they deserved a ban... man up to it at the least and admit a fault.

Common sense dictates that SE didn't want players to dupe drops, how is that so hard to grasp? People (for the most part) had a choice and went ahead anyway and did it.

Id use one of those oh so delicious analogies but we all know how those go.

[Hanyoko]

Common sense if you've played video games, let alone MMORPGs for more than a year of your life. Duping = Not working as intended.

Though Salvage does have a legit way of duping cells via the socket. I understand that duping is wrong; but given that the ease of accomplishing the dupes in salvage I can understand how it can be "a neat trick".

Nevermind the fact that you CAN STILL DO IT. Or at least several reports that appeared "after the fix" indicated it still worked.

SE knows what the game SHOULD do, players find what the game IS doing. The two often don't match, but nothing happens about it.

I was in a very successful salvage shell that never knew of or did the duping. I do view it as wrong and feel the bannings were appropriate; i just dont like how SE handled the situation in the public eye.


@ronin
Yes, maybe i expect too much from a software developer that charges a montly subscription fee to make notices about bugs, then resolve them in a timely manner.

Antivirus vendors, Firewall vendors, OS vendors, etc etc. When a software breaking item happens, it gets announced (either pubically or via subscribed member messages/emails) then gets fixed.


I was in a very successful salvage shell at the time, if anyone in the group knew about or how to do it we never even attempted. I do agree that duping is wrong, and that the bannings were valid. I do not agree with how they delt with the issue. The public notices (or lack of) and the seemingly random judgments on who got hit.

[AoshiZ]

I've been wondering how long SE knew about what they knew, and when they decided to do something about it. I mean, can the principle of estoppel by silence be applicable in this situation? I think it does.

Is it hard to believe that the salvage trick could be easily believed to be working as intended? I'm not an attorney and I don't want to be one. I think it's important to understand the law to know what rights one does/doesn't have. In this case even though SE has the right to ban people for salvage exploits, they would be estopped from doing so because their silence (and failure to act) caused players to make decisions based on SE's silence, which caused them to commit actions to their detriment (getting banned). Of course it isn't going to be estopped unless someone takes SE to court.

The same can be said of third party programs. I have been told by SE customer support that running a firewall/antivirus programs while playing FFXI was against the EULA and I must disable them to play. I can't see how that is a reasonable expectation. I just looked in the PlayOnline and FFXI agreements and I don't see any prohibition of 3rd party programs. The use of cheat codes or cheat devices is prohibited but there is a failure to define the extent of what a cheat code/device is. I am looking at http://support.na.square-enix.com/rule.php?id=20&la=1 and I've looked up the rules and policies and checked out the EULA's for POL and FFXI and I don't find any mention of a prohibition of bots or windower or any sort of third party program. Perhaps I just missed it and need to have it pointed out to me.

You have made it clear you are not an attorney. Therefore, i suggest you not give attorney like advice or suggest that things would be different if brought to court. Unfortunately, SE can terminate your account for any reason it wants based on the fact that it provides a service with which you have agreed to the following:

"3.2 Termination.
(a) Your PlayOnline user account and any rights you may have under this Agreement (including those you may have under any other agreement related to your use of PlayOnline) will immediately and automatically terminate upon your breach of any provision of this Agreement, including (without limitation) your violation of any Rule.
(b) You may terminate this Agreement at any time by canceling your PlayOnline user account and by ceasing all use of PlayOnline and all related services. If your PlayOnline user account is terminated by SEI for any reason, you will not be able to reactivate the terminated user account again.
(c) SEI reserves the right to terminate PlayOnline Service in whole or in part for any reason with or without prior notice.
(d) SEI MAY SUSPEND, TERMINATE, MODIFY, OR DELETE ANY PLAYONLINE ACCOUNT AT ANY TIME, WITH ANY REASON OR NO REASON, WITH OR WITHOUT NOTICE.
"

Your statement of SE failing to further define "(i) Use of any cheat codes or cheat devices;"
is a poor argument at best. If we followed that logic then contracts like this would serve very little meaning because NOTHING can be defined so clearly and concisely to avoid people trying to find loopholes in wording (similar to how you did above). On the contrary, its most likely left as a vague and general statement on purpose to have a wide breadth of coverage.

Maybe someone with actual authority (a real attorney) can make comments and show us referential cases we can compare with so that we can get a better grasp of where we stand and make intelligent decisions for ourselves.

[Lovex]

I believe your impression is based on the types of LS you were in.

I personnally have never been in an HnM LS, I did most everything else in endgame : sea, sky, limbus, dynamis, znm, salvage, nyzul, assault, einherjar and I probably forgot some. My salvage group was done with people I knew from dynamis. Nobody did HNMs style events. Noone had ever heard of the dupe trick. The bans didn't affect any of my endgame linkshells. At one point I thought my Einherjar linkshell would break because we had a fuckton of full sets. Turns out nobody was banned. Sea/sky/dynamis etc weren't affected either.

That's whty I think only trash players got banned. Yes the people you knew were probably good at the game but wtf did they cheat ? From what I see only people linked to HnMs shell got hit, because they met other cheaters and learned the trick this way. If a HnM linkshell disappears, does this affect the "end game" on a server ? Nope. Doing all your events within one shell is necessarey a waste of your time. You can't expect everyone to have the same interests in all the events of the game. So basically what I'm trying to say is when a LS collapses because salvage bans hit it, this shell disappears. 90% of the salvage teams remain and continue to get gear. Dynamis LSs that are not based on a hnm LS remain, and I believe this represents most of the LSs. Same for einherjars LSs. Mine was one of the first to kill odin on the server and 1 year after the bans we're still there. I believe most of the einherjar LSs are are independent from an HnM Ls too. Same goes for pretty much all other endgame events I think. A few cheaters banned cannot affect endgame beside precisely HnMs. Even though this is an online game, the achievements of the persons next to you has no effect on the server globally, and even less on the endgame community server wide. Getting rid of cheaters can only be a good thing.

^This. Although.. some of if sounds a bit off.

Only cheaters got banned and Im with Akasannyi on everything else.

A bunch of cheaters getting banned doesn't effect FFXI. if anything, made it better.

Less populated? Yes. But everything is still the same. People saying anything else
were probably personally linked and therefor affected by someone they knew
being gone.

Such a person being banned can have an effect on a group of people. Especially
if they were a leader-type. Not to mention alot of groups had multiple people
getting banned of course. Not just leaders.

Don't mistake that with endgame though. Your friends/shell got fucked.

The rest of us are still enjoying the game.

[Tagus]

Maybe this public notice regarding botting is SE's attempt to improve their pre-ban standard operating procedure, and we'll be looking at another January bloodbath.

[Eanae]

Salvage bans were perfectly justifiable. You exploited knowingly. End of story. I do think they should have been more thorough with their investigation because a few people who should have slid by with 3 days got perma'd. But all in all, they did the right thing.

PS: Before anyone brings it up, if there are botting bans, I think most botters I know know what they are doing wrong and would accept the consequences without crying like babies like the salvage bans. Sure they'd be a bit pissed, but hey, breaking the rules etc.

[Bugpop]

You have made it clear you are not an attorney. Therefore, i suggest you not give attorney like advice or suggest that things would be different if brought to court. Unfortunately, SE can terminate your account for any reason it wants based on the fact that it provides a service with which you have agreed to the following:

"3.2 Termination.
(a) Your PlayOnline user account and any rights you may have under this Agreement (including those you may have under any other agreement related to your use of PlayOnline) will immediately and automatically terminate upon your breach of any provision of this Agreement, including (without limitation) your violation of any Rule.
(b) You may terminate this Agreement at any time by canceling your PlayOnline user account and by ceasing all use of PlayOnline and all related services. If your PlayOnline user account is terminated by SEI for any reason, you will not be able to reactivate the terminated user account again.
(c) SEI reserves the right to terminate PlayOnline Service in whole or in part for any reason with or without prior notice.
(d) SEI MAY SUSPEND, TERMINATE, MODIFY, OR DELETE ANY PLAYONLINE ACCOUNT AT ANY TIME, WITH ANY REASON OR NO REASON, WITH OR WITHOUT NOTICE.
"

Your statement of SE failing to further define "(i) Use of any cheat codes or cheat devices;"
is a poor argument at best. If we followed that logic then contracts like this would serve very little meaning because NOTHING can be defined so clearly and concisely to avoid people trying to find loopholes in wording (similar to how you did above). On the contrary, its most likely left as a vague and general statement on purpose to have a wide breadth of coverage.

Maybe someone with actual authority (a real attorney) can make comments and show us referential cases we can compare with so that we can get a better grasp of where we stand and make intelligent decisions for ourselves.

I disagree that attorneys are the only people that can be familiar with the law and are the only people qualified to comment on it. As citizens we are allowed to be familiar with the law and have the ability to know what rights we have with regards to civil and criminal law. I see no problem discussing these rights on an online forum.

The bit about terminating accounts for any or no reason. What does that mean? If SE causes players to believe that they won't be terminated for their actions, SE is estopped from exercising their right to terminate those accounts for those actions. You might argue that SE can ban those accounts for no reason. You're right but should SE change the reason for terminating them from "because of their actions" to "no reason" they are estopped from doing so as well. Individuals who committed certain actions were flagged to be banned for no reason. Because the individuals were flagged based on their actions, SE is estopped from claiming they are [terminating] the accounts for no reason.

This isn't a loophole. The principle of estoppel is sound legal doctrine.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Estoppel
http://dictionary.law.com/Default.aspx?selected=665

They are specific enough to include "Cheat codes and/or devices." You can't confuse a cheat code with a program, and a device is a physical thing.

[NynJa]

Yet so many people paint all this in black and white. "Cheaters, "dupers," oh please.. Get over yourselves. The finger you want to point is at SE. For not fixing the problem when it was reported. For not warning players of the gravity prior to the banning. For not being more reasonable about the punishment. Many of the people that are not sympethic towards the salvage dupees were people that didn't know about the trick, or didn't do salvage.

I'm sorry, but first of all, Wafik had his shit coming when he kept going out of his way to hide threads taking reference to the dupe. He knew full well that SE does read these boards, and wanted to keep the dupe his pretty little secret. I don't believe the stories that SE knew about the glitch, because lets face it, less problematic things have been rectified immediately. To try to convince me that SE let something that grave slide for over a year without doing anything? No, I dont buy it.

Secondly, I remember this quote very very well from that fateful day, not when the bans were handed out, but when the dupe trick was patched:
"oh well, atleast I personally made well over 70M before it was fixed", and ironically they were from Asura as well. Really? Using an exploit to make over 70m YOURSELF isnt worthy of a swift kick out of the game? I think it deserves it.

I'm sorry you play on Asura, the server that bred all the RMT, that housed morons that TAUGHT RMT how to properly do things, but most servers werent hit. The players that were hit were the pompous losers like Wop and Wafik who thought their shit dont stank. Look at me, my server houses some of the more notorious players: Sirlancelot, Dioma/Xerxes (yes they're the same person), yours truly...our server didn't change one bit.

Mileage varies, your server was pretty shitty to begin with, no offence.

[Phraust]

Not necessary to bump this thread but I might as well.

I will outright claim that endgame on some servers went to shit after the bans. No reason for anyone to argue against this, as it's rather true. I do wholeheartedly believe that there are servers where there was virtually no change. But you guys who are on those servers should feel glad, and show a little sympathy or understanding.

Show sympathy for what? That your cheaters knowingly took a risk and they got what was coming to them? Every risk has consequences, you can't cry foul when you partake in a risky situation and lose. It's like a gambler getting mad at the dealer when they lose, or more closely a gambler playing with counterfeit money getting mad when the cops throw him in jail.

Supermarioland was killed when the hammer hit. RIP to many of the best, oldest, and most influential players that Asura had. The first groups to do dynamis sponsorship, some of the first Odin kills in the game, the first people to reach Sea and kill jailers on the server. And friendly at that, not your "evil cheater" types. Remedy, arguably the best HNM shell at the time.. I remember talking to remedy folks and hearing "Well, every single one of our relics got banned, so we're pretty much done." Neither of these LS's lasted even a week after the hammer.

This is classic denile. If I were the "remaining" members of that shell I'd be pissed. These are people that let you down. They cheated, through their actions not only did they destroy their own characters, they let everyone that counted on them down, and in some extreme cases the got banned with linkshell banks and/or borrowed gear. These people weren't "heroes" they were the Berney Madoffs... They weren't "rich" by getting things legitimately or working hard, they cheated; their accomplishments were the equivalent of entering in a game genie code... Your "heroes" were playing on "Easy Mode".

I remember talking on the phone to an old LS mate after the hammer, and him confirming every single person in his salvage group was axed, save one. Only one of several examples of this. I would say between 20-30 people I had regular contact with in the game, either friends or on a friendly level, were perma banned. My "people online" friend's list was maybe chopped in half. And this started a domino trend where several others quit to join their banned friends in WoW.

I could have been banned too. I had no interest in salvage duping, but was part of several runs where I knew what was going on and had no complaints. I know that people were banned over this much alone. I really don't think I would have deserved a ban. Yet so many people paint all this in black and white. "Cheaters, "dupers," oh please.. Get over yourselves. The finger you want to point is at SE. For not fixing the problem when it was reported. For not warning players of the gravity prior to the banning. For not being more reasonable about the punishment. Many of the people that are not sympethic towards the salvage dupees were people that didn't know about the trick, or didn't do salvage.

It's the same thing with botting. Point the finger at SE, not the players. The HNM system is incredibly poorly designed. If people want the endgame gear, and want to bot for it, they know the risk. Fair enough. But don't delude yourself into thinking that that they're evil for wanting nice gear, and not wanting to spend 3-9 hours a day standing in a zone, only to see a mob pop purple 90% of the time. What are you gonna do when the NASA-style packet bot LS of 20-30 server transfer reject scumbags takes your camps by storm? So your entire LS doesn't bot, congratulations on your sainthood, enjoy your 10% claim rate. You can complain all you want, but that other LS frankly does not care. Whether you purchase a $10 app or not, camps will be rampant with botting. Save your moral discerning ability for more important applications.

The only reason people are so laissez-faire about this is the Robin Hood mentality, which is expressed perfectly above: "SE's to blame". In regards to the slavage bans, in the same breath you say "SE was wrong to ban people" you say "SE didn't do anything". Sorry but you need to re-think that. To me, banning cheaters IS doing something about it. And if you think I am "not getting it", and that it was reported and never fixed... Come the fuck on, you don't take peoples' mail or steal their newspapers of their driveways because they "Didn't take it inside or lock it up" and that is a good example of "Reasonable Expectations" you don't steal peoples' mail because it's wrong. You don't dupe gear because it's wrong. You don't bot because it's wrong. etc etc etc... Unfortunately the only way to really enforce rules is to punish people for breaking them and hope they make a big enough example acting as a deterrent to those thinking of breaking them.

To the botting specifically... What do you do when a NASA equipped LS shows up and pisses in your milk? Report them and look forward to announcements like the one this thread was started by. The whole "Everyone Cheats So Should I" attitude is a delusion. First off, even if everyone doesn't cheat, you're not going to get claim 100% of the time. And no, none of the nay-sayers such as myself are saying these people are evil, we're saying they're idiots. As stated in my first paragraph here, you can't just "Take a Risk" and not understand there are consequences. "Risk" infers there's a specific situation with two or more outcomes, where one of which is unfavorable. And crying foul when you get dealt the unfavorable outcome is just idiotic. It's just as idiotic as bragging about your accomplishments when most of said accomplishments trace back directly or indirectly to blatant cheating. Sold drops off a bot claimed Nidhogg to fund your Mithic? You didn't earn it. Go on a slavage run and get gear at 3x the rate you normally would whilst having their abilities get unlocked 3x as fast? Can you honestly say they have "Skill" or that they are "The best players" when the majority of the time they were playing on easy mode?

To use your words: Don't delude yourself into thinking they're good for wanting nice gear, and botting to save themselves THEIR TIME. Because they save THEIR TIME at the expense of everyone else's. They're not better, their time isn't more important. If another linkshell wants to come in and bot the fuck out of something... You gotta ask yourself, deep down, "Am I a cheater too?". Is that how you were raised? Are you willing to sacrifice your own integrity for a few digital shinies? I mean not to pull the real life card here, in the end, when you turn off the game, you're still a lying, cheating, duping, subversive person. Just like "The other guy"... You ARE "The other guy".

HNM System is broken? There's so much alternative gear and means to acquire HNM gear nowadays, botting just seems dumb as fuck on principal. D.Ring, Ridill(Which everyone hates now), and V.Belt? Really? I mean you got people fucking stupid enough to not only risk their characters and their integrity for three items basically, but they're willing to pay thousands of dollars to do it? And you STILL think "You're the good guys, fighting the good fight." Seriously, you're so delusional.

The game isn't that hard, in fact it's really fun. You really don't need to cheat to enjoy it. In fact the majority of the people that play would agree. Personally I enjoy the challenge of playing events like slavage as designed.

I don't blame SE for wanting to ban cheaters. Though it probably won't happen, another indiscriminate hard-ban will add another knife into the back of the XI as they continue to suck the life out of the game and their own profits with poor customer service, poor quality assurance, poor content updates, and poor oversight.

The latter part of that I agree with I lost more friends to the stupid credit card "3D Secure" than I did to the slavage bannings. But saying banning cheaters is a knife in the back is a little much. If anything, it's the knife digging that gigantic tumor out of the back of XI, and XIV.

Congratulations to those servers who were unharmed by the salvage bans. But you have to admit to yourselves, even if it was only 1/3 of the the servers that had their endgame shattered by the bans, you can't possibly consider that to be of no concern. The fact remains that a high number of players within the game were affected. Anything that affects a "high number of players" is of concern to the community and should be of concern to SE.

It is a concern to the community. It's just a lot of people, albeit an extremely vocal minority think banning well equipped monopolistic botting players is a bad thing. We, the legitimate playerbase, may be the minority on /bg/ we are not the minority in game. When cheaters, dupers, etc are banned, it DOES indeed affect us. It makes us happy, we get to see "Those guys" get what they deserve. And yest, to a lesser degree it's kinda nice seeing linkshells fall apart after. Do you know why? I'll let you in on a secret: If you were good to begin with, you would still be able to survive with your cheaters removed. But since you can't, well, I guess you just weren't as good as you thought you were huh?

[Sev]

if they ban botters guess what they will not get even remotely half the botting population and those who remain will still bot.

[NynJa]

if they ban botters guess what they will not get even remotely half the botting population and those who remain will still bot.

^- This

There are smart botters (use programs like a tool: spellcast, apradar, etc) and there are stupid ones (fishbot, claimbot, afk stuff, POS around).

[Tagus]

That sounds more like wishful thinking to me. I mean, hell... after the salvage bans the dupe was supposedly still available for a long time, but nobody seemed willing to try it and risk their characters. Not to mention the fact that people are gradually starting to realize that it just isn't worth it to bot anymore in an aging MMO (if they weren't already smart enough to realize this from the beginning).... I'd be willing to bet that if your customers start getting banned, you're gonna be out of business.

[AoshiZ]

I disagree that attorneys are the only people that can be familiar with the law and are the only people qualified to comment on it. As citizens we are allowed to be familiar with the law and have the ability to know what rights we have with regards to civil and criminal law. I see no problem discussing these rights on an online forum.

The bit about terminating accounts for any or no reason. What does that mean? If SE causes players to believe that they won't be terminated for their actions, SE is estopped from exercising their right to terminate those accounts for those actions. You might argue that SE can ban those accounts for no reason. You're right but should SE change the reason for terminating them from "because of their actions" to "no reason" they are estopped from doing so as well. Individuals who committed certain actions were flagged to be banned for no reason. Because the individuals were flagged based on their actions, SE is estopped from claiming they are [terminating] the accounts for no reason.

This isn't a loophole. The principle of estoppel is sound legal doctrine.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Estoppel
http://dictionary.law.com/Default.aspx?selected=665

They are specific enough to include "Cheat codes and/or devices." You can't confuse a cheat code with a program, and a device is a physical thing.

Of course you can comment whatever you like as a person. You just cannot stress that any litigation would go one way or another based off of your experience since you have none. Your familiarity with the law goes as far as your ability to interpret it. Unfortunately, since you haven't provided any public cases for me to reference similar outcomes, I can only take your advice for the face value of someone that doesn't really know what he is talking about.

Furthermore, you saw the quote i had posted and pulled the worst piece of information as to why they were to ban people as "No reason". Maybe i should have bolded to emphasize that it says in the agreement "ANY REASON".

Because of the "Any Reason" the following does not really matter. However, you went out of your way to state the following :

"They are specific enough to include "Cheat codes and/or devices." You can't confuse a cheat code with a program, and a device is a physical thing."

I'm sorry but device being a physical thing is your interpretation and play on semantics and wording. I'm assuming an intelligent judge and a jury of our peers would be able to make an assessment that device has various meanings. One of which is "a mechanism designed to serve a special purpose or perform a special function". So yes that would most likely include software.

[AoshiZ]

@BugPop

I'm sorry if it sounds like I'm attacking you directly. I am not intending it to be this way. I am just trying to stress that your statements of people not violating the terms of service using third party applications are unfounded. The statements about whether SE could rightfully retract their service legally is something I also have no experience with and it could possibly go either way.

The main reason I argue my point is because things you say about cheat codes or devices could give people a false sense of security. Based off of the arguments you have made so far, I would say that SE and their legal team have made sure that they are covered in the third party software aspect. Otherwise, wouldn't they have altered their terms of service which is allowed to be updated at any time?

[Shamaya]

I was running a ~10-person social shell at the time, Pchan.

Anyway, got shit to do, maybe I'll look at this thread again later.

[Titanss]

Wow that Aks chick has been getting fucking owned bad here lately. First they murdered her in that spam thread and now her ls that she acts like is the end all of everything thing, the best fucking ls ever, she is so fucking awesome to be a part off.. its own ls leader says she is the worst player ever in a msn convo .. good thing you took a break from ffxi, might wanna think the same about BG forums

[Lovex]

Wow that Aks chick has been getting fucking owned bad here lately.

I did find this qoute alone kinda funny. Even though I don't agree.

I like her. I mean, she's right for the most part.

What has she said that isn't for the most part accurate? Excellence aside.

Endgame didn't goto shit. People are just butt hurt mad their friends got banned.

Life goes on. Game goes on. Get over it.

Yes the bans were harsh but it didnt effect anything endgame.

It hurt specific groups yes. Not the aspect of endgame or endgame as a whole though.

[stewie]

http://i49.tinypic.com/iw22dg.jpg

[BerenTebogo]

Oh Sweden