Huge example of failcom

Scrump

So this wednesday i hop on vent.  Find out the servers arent down.  Thats fine, i don't mind them waiting to put out the patch to make sure it will work.



So I log in and start playing.  Having a good time, then one of my buddies logs on to Vent.  He says "WTF, it won't let me log in.  It says my account is banned(13)."  So he sends an email to funcom asking whats up. He gets...

(keep in mind this is a highly active guild member and a valuable member of our guild.  If someone died he would be the last to get blamed.)

===================

Hello,



Thank you for emailing Age of Conan support. In order to maintain the

integrity of our in-game economy we here at Funcom have taken a strong

stance against unauthorized gold transactions. We do not condone the

selling of in-game gold or in-game services for real life money. Your

account has been investigated and found in association with this

unauthorized gold trade and as such your account has been permanently

closed.



Due to the serious nature of this violation your account will not be

considered for reopening and this decision cannot be appealed.



===================



ROFL he then admits that he had sent a joke mail to one of our other guild mates when they asked to borrow a couple gold.  He sent a phony gold farm mail with the 2 gold to one of our guild mates.  and pow Perma ban!



then today he gets.



===================



Hello again,



Just wanted to drop you a note and let you know that I am still looking

into this. It will be Monday however, before you hear back from me on

the final ruling.



My apologies for any inconvenience. If your account is reopened, you

will be given days in compensation for your lost time.



===================



So now he has to wait 5 days to get his account back.

If this doesn't give us enough reason to not have any faith in the devs i don't know what does.  This is easily enough to kill someones love for the game.  WTG

 

If they would have done any amount of research they would have found he is completely innocent.

Locklain

I see nothing wrong with this.  It tells me that FunCom is taking a stance against unauthorized transactions.  It will also make your friend think a little more before he acts.

Scrump

They did no research at all! And the fact that they are taking 5 days to fix it is retarded, they never even sent him an email saying he was banned!

tvalentine

Originally posted by Scrump


They did no research at all! And the fact that they are taking 5 days to fix it is retarded, they never even sent him an email saying he was banned!

 

why should they do research? How many people "Fake" a gold farming mail and send it?

xaviondk

You dont point a gun at a police officer for fun either, do you?

 

The morale: Dont joke about something that you know is wrong. It WILL turn out ugly.

Locklain

Originally posted by xaviondk


You dont point a gun at a police officer for fun either, do you?
 
The morale: Dont joke about something that you know is wrong. It WILL turn out ugly.

Exactly, mess with the bull and you will get the horns.

cronar

The op situation is akin to making bomb jokes in an airport. They might sound funny coming out of your gaping mouth, but let's see your reaction when your being tackled and taken to the interogation room.

 

 

Demeel

Originally posted by tvalentine

Originally posted by Scrump


They did no research at all! And the fact that they are taking 5 days to fix it is retarded, they never even sent him an email saying he was banned!

 

why should they do research? How many people "Fake" a gold farming mail and send it?

 

 

Well how many gold farmers send the you mail with the free gold?   Sounds like they just glanced at the mail and just made a quick judgement...     Customer Service bad Funcom

jinxit

Wait a sec, how did they get ahold of the email he sent with the 2 gold in the first place?

Are they monitoring mail?

LethalBurst

Meh, serves him right for making a joke Gold seller mail. I'm glad Funcom is not fucking around with the gold selling shit, and you should be glad too. Your friend is very luck that his ban is even getting reviewed.

Demeel

well if its a joke or not           No gold farmer is gonna give you free gold so common sense should of kicked in when the gold was with the mail.

 

Funcom strikes again!

tvalentine

Originally posted by Demeel

Originally posted by tvalentine

Originally posted by Scrump


They did no research at all! And the fact that they are taking 5 days to fix it is retarded, they never even sent him an email saying he was banned!

 

why should they do research? How many people "Fake" a gold farming mail and send it?

 

 

Well how many gold farmers send the you mail with the free gold?   Sounds like they just glanced at the mail and just made a quick judgement...     Customer Service bad Funcom

wtf, how can funcom know that the person sent it without payment or if he sent it with payment. Lol wow you fail at trolling, and thats one of the easiest things on a forum you can do.

 

tvalentine

Originally posted by jinxit


Wait a sec, how did they get ahold of the email he sent with the 2 gold in the first place?
Are they monitoring mail?

 

ill bet 100$ they have a database that checks all the mail that gets sent, and it flags mail that uses certain words.

Distopia

Originally posted by jinxit


Wait a sec, how did they get ahold of the email he sent with the 2 gold in the first place?
Are they monitoring mail?

 

Considering gold selling mail at the time i was playing was rampant, I'd guess they are .

 

I never know where to side on these issues,On one hand anyone banned for a reason they aren't guilty of is a bad move.

Yet on the other, how do I even know the guy wasn't guilty as charged ? I can't trust the OP to have an unbiased opinion of the accused, they are guildies .So I will just say I hope if he's innocent , He's cleared of all charges.

Scrump

well the fact that he contacted them about it in complete proper english and he even used big words.  They still are taking 5 days to take care of it.  Gold farmers just buy new accounts.

kazson

i wouldnt cry about it...yeah it might take 5 days but they said they would give you free 5 days playing time...

i can tell you for a FACT Blizzard doesnt do this...lol yes my account has been semi-banned in WoW quite a few times across a few accounts :0

xtravert

I wouldn't be surprised if every in-game mail sent is stored in a database table somewhere and searched for matching strings.  I'd recommend always being careful with in-game communications in order to limit these kinds of incidents.

Stellos

Their heart is in the right place.  Let's admit that their investigators aren't real investigators and they aren't going to be good at the job necessarily.  Atleast Funcom has a hard stance against cheating.  Not a fan of AoC, but I think Funcom is atleast doing things correctly.

Souldrainer

Two wrongs don't make a right.

The guy who sent the mail should have not done that prank.  It was stupid and overboard.  However, I am not entirely sure I trust the "Our guild trusts this guy" thing as a persuasive argument to trust him.  Whether he bought the gold or not is really not as important as his being a moron and getting himself banned though.

As for Funcom, they failed.  The account should have received a full review, and they should have sent off an email.  Even so, MMOs need to have people working through the weekends.  In fact, if you are making an MMO, Monday and Tuesday should be your days off, (and by days off, I mean skeleton crew days) because Wed-Sunday everybody is going to need your support.

OP's friend or Funcom, which one has epically failed here? 

Answer:  Both.

Auraius

Heh, and this is precisely why I personally have not made a big fuss over it. I am the one who got banned by the way, but Im also a pretty easy going person. The fact of the matter is they more than likely have a program set up to parse their in game mail database for user defined keywords, and for whatever reason the ones I jokingly used in my message to my friend set off a red flag in their system, causing me to get banned about two weeks after the mail was sent.

By the way, I dont even know 100 percent the reason I was associated with a gold farmer/spamer, because the GM himself was very unspecific about the details. Its the only thing I could think of that had happened in recent times that might of resulted in some sort of red flag. At the time had I actually thought about it, I wouldnt put what I did in the message. Since looking back on it now they obviously *are* using a program to parse everyones mail, every day, theres no way a program could decide on a case by case basis like this if a person actually is a gold farmer or they arent. And if they didnt use the program, well there would be a hell of alot more spam going around. Damned if you do, damned if you dont. And I cant get angry for getting banned by a program.

What I didnt personally care for was the immediate response I got back from their support staff reguarding the issue, how they claimed they would not even LOOK at the matter. Guilty before proven innocent and no appeal? Despite the fact it was a case where something was obviously taken out of context, had they even passingly investigated the issue and looked at any of the logs that would of known that BEFORE it ever came down to a banning. But again, it becomes painfully obvious that a person never actually looked at the issue, it was all handled by a program. Not before that message on the life of my account, or after that mail was sent had I ever sent another message like that- it was a one time affair ment as a joke because both me and my friend had recieved around 10 spam mail messages each from the same person earlier that morning. Everything they need to see which will prove Im innocent will be in the logs so Im not even going to sweat it, I just wish they couldve done it a little faster.

You also cant really compare this event to "pointing a gun at a police officer for fun" either or something silly along those lines, because personally I wouldnt do something like that but I *would* send a sarcastic PRIVATE e-mail lamenting the state of the games handling of the gold farmers and also poking a little fun at my friend, but dont worry I can appreciate the irony of being banned two weeks later for that one heh.

Oh, and with all that said:

Remember kids dont do drugs, stay in school and for the love of god whatever you do- dont send mock messages making fun of gold farmers to guild mates!

Tuck2000

Originally posted by jinxit


Wait a sec, how did they get ahold of the email he sent with the 2 gold in the first place?
Are they monitoring mail?

 

Mmmm yeah no game has secure email I imagine they have scripts running all the time to flag acounts. 

Scrump

who would think Funcom is filtering in game mail?! He knew the guy on the other end wouldn't report him!

Terranah

Basically it is not wise to be a gold farmer or pretend to be one if you value your account.  That's what I take away from this.

 

Distopia

Originally posted by Auraius


Heh, and this is precisely why I personally have not made a big fuss over it. I am the one who got banned by the way, but Im also a pretty easy going person. The fact of the matter is they more than likely have a program set up to parse their in game mail database for user defined keywords, and for whatever reason the ones I jokingly used in my message to my friend set off a red flag in their system, causing me to get banned about two weeks after the mail was sent.
By the way, I dont even know 100 percent the reason I was associated with a gold farmer/spamer, because the GM himself was very unspecific about the details. Its the only thing I could think of that had happened in recent times that might of resulted in some sort of red flag. At the time had I actually thought about it, I wouldnt put what I did in the message. Since looking back on it now they obviously *are* using a program to parse everyones mail, every day, theres no way a program could decide on a case by case basis like this if a person actually is a gold farmer or they arent. And if they didnt use the program, well there would be a hell of alot more spam going around. Damned if you do, damned if you dont. And I cant get angry for getting banned by a program.
What I didnt personally care for was the immediate response I got back from their support staff reguarding the issue, how they claimed they would not even LOOK at the matter. Guilty before proven innocent and no appeal? Despite the fact it was a case where something was obviously taken out of context, had they even passingly investigated the issue and looked at any of the logs that would of known that BEFORE it ever came down to a banning. But again, it becomes painfully obvious that a person never actually looked at the issue, it was all handled by a program. Not before that message on the life of my account, or after that mail was sent had I ever sent another message like that- it was a one time affair ment as a joke because both me and my friend had recieved around 10 spam mail messages each from the same person earlier that morning. Everything they need to see which will prove Im innocent will be in the logs so Im not even going to sweat it, I just wish they couldve done it a little faster.
You also cant really compare this event to "pointing a gun at a police officer for fun" either or something silly along those lines, because personally I wouldnt do something like that but I *would* send a sarcastic PRIVATE e-mail lamenting the state of the games handling of the gold farmers and also poking a little fun at my friend, but dont worry I can appreciate the irony of being banned two weeks later for that one heh.
Oh, and with all that said:
Remember kids dont do drugs, stay in school and for the love of god whatever you do- dont send mock messages making fun of gold farmers to guild mates!

You haven't by chance been in grey areas killing/looting have you ? I remember hearing they view this as an exploit and will ban for it ( just  offering up another possibility) .Now that I've heard you're own take on the situation , I have no choice but to believe you were falsely accused ,I hope the outcome is in your favor, Good luck or break a leg what ever suits this situation .

RespyShunt

Originally posted by Locklain


I see nothing wrong with this.  It tells me that FunCom is taking a stance against unauthorized transactions.  It will also make your friend think a little more before he acts.

 

unauthorized transactions?  what classifies the trade as unauthorized transactions.  They can look at his account info and see that he lives in California or Maine, and not Beijing, China.  They can notice that the ammount of gold he sent to his buddy was probably about 2g, which is too small for a gold farmer to send.  Who buys 2g from farm websites?

Shohadaku

The gold spam was totally out of hand when i was playing AOC.

Don't blame them for taking quick harsh action as this NEEDS to be done. Blame the jokester for being a fool and sending that fake gold spam.

If you point a real looking fake gun at a cop my bet is you'll get shot.

He would be lucky to get his account back. Hopefully he learned from this and won't pull a prank like that again.