“No one will talk to me. If someone would have an actual conversation with me, asking what programs I’ve used, what happened to me in game, getting details about what I have been doing, then maybe we could clear this up. I refuse to be treated unfairly and then get form letter after form letter telling me that I’m wrong without any actual discourse with your company.”
Bio Break
This sounds like the same negligent anti-customer service employed for Mythic’s games.
Quite on the contrary, i have some insight into Mythics proceedings on cheating. (My info is over a year old, since the GM i have contact with is not there any more, but i remember his complains during his active time. ) WAR had quite bad logs, and to ban a player several GMs and teamlead had to witness (that means, actively observing the activity in game) a cheat to ban a player.
This is more strict than some other games i’ve been involved with, so the Mythic-bashing is merely amusing for me.
Next to that, the blog this quote comes from, and the quote itself, are highly amusing for me. The whole point of the blog reads to me as: “I was caught red handed, but if i lie around enough and claim i was accused falsely, i might keep my face in front of some of my friends. ” Additionally, this one is even more amusing than most of these activities, as it also holds the “please tell me, which of my cheating programs you detected, so i can disable this one and continue cheating with the rest” passage. Of course, BW won’t give info on which cheats they detected. For one, if the info on the cheat leaks, more cheating will happen and GMs, who supposedly should help players with problems, will be more busy processing cheating issues. Additionally, handing out info on what cheats they detected at the same time is info on which cheats they are currently unable to detect, thus clearing the way for more cheats. All in all, not a smart move.
I am sorry, but compared to other companies, Mythic installed bans quite late and only when overwhelming evidence of cheating / exploiting was present. This attitude was even reinforced when merged with Bioware, and now TOR already has an issue with the customer base, so they definitely didn’t make banning easier for the GMs, more likely regulations became even more restrictive. If the author of that blog is a friend of yours, keep smiling, tell him that you believe him and let it be. In any other case, take the look from the outside, consider that BW really dislikes banning customers (and thus reducing already suffering player numbers and income) unless there’s an absolute reason for it and you can easily conclude what actually happened.
I actually do believe Ambermist’s story. She writes nice, loving stories of her experiences in game. If you’re just enjoying your game and you suddenly get banned without getting told why, I can certainly understand how that upsets you. There’s no clear indication that she has made this all up, why would she? If you’re banned because of exploiting, it’s not something you’d likely post about. The only reason I can think of is to cause stir and get lots of attention, but her past posts aren’t like that at all. I see no indications at all that her story isn’t true and the more indications that it, in fact, is true. So lets not assume that everyone is an asshole and makes up stories to get attention on the internet.
Regardless of what exactly happened and whether you believe it or not, this story shows that there is a loophole: if players do get banned without knowing what they have done wrong, how will they know what to do in order to prevent it? If they cannot be told the exact details of what was done (which I can understand), then at least some general hint should be provided (e.g. third-party software was used to do .. (this type) of action). In my opinion, honest players shouldn’t be punished for the crimes of dishonest people. That way, no nice people will be left over to play the game together with!
It’s always ‘amusing’ to me when the condesending “I’ve got a friend who does X” guy pipes in like an expert. A very plausible solution is that software doesn’t always work as intended. Oh, look:
http://battlechicken.wordpress.com/2012/06/21/swtor-my-unexplained-ban-the-resolution/
At the same time, the “software error” is one of the default exits when things get stirred up too much and somebody higher up decides that negative PR gets too much. If BW, unlike Mythic, indeed relies that much on software detection alone, the given “emergency exit” is true, but that’d be different from any proper proceeding and it would surprise me very much, if the “check a second and third time” always was only a look at the same detection result.
The same kind of stunt happened several times aready, one of the most amusing ones in another game was a guy who was banned for speedhacking. In his defense, he posted all the mails the GMs sent him, and claimed that the GMs must be wrong, because none of his friends ever saw him running too fast or flying around. Interestingly enough, none of the GMs ever even mentioned a hack of him flying around. Despite hin thus obviously revealed capabilities of his cheat, which the GMs didn’t even notice at that time, and despite 4 GMs having witnessed the exploit, his persistant activities in blogs and forums, claiming that he was innocent, got him unbanished and rewarded with free game time.
So, in the unlikely case that BW really does that bad and only relies on their checking software: cons to Battle Chicken for success. In the more likely case that somebody higher up decided that one cheater is not as bad as the ongoing PR fiasco: Congrats to BW! Another game in the “cheating rewarded” cathegory.