Is New World Unfairly Banning 'Innocent' Players as the Official Forums Suggest? | MMORPG.com

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Is New World Unfairly Banning 'Innocent' Players as the Official Forums Suggest? | MMORPG.com

After the latest patch, New World is dealing with a fresh set of exploits. Amazon Game Studios has swiftly reacted to exploiters with bans, but many players say they were unjustified. What's really going on?

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Saruomo

Why is this a surprise to anyone? Cheaters getting perma banned is the right thing to do and is expected from AGS otherwise it would hurt them even more to let cheaters continue playing.

You break the rules, you get punished.

The issues with the game have been focused on illegally creating wealth which has been dealt with according to the TOS.

Unlike WoW’s bugs, exploits and issues which involve both wealth amassing by selling bind on pickup raid gear for gold bought directly from blizz with real money as well as one shot exploits in PvP and raids which are discovered almost weekly by Rextroy alone, leaving one to believe that the underground community of exploiters have a much bigger impact on the game than we know publicly.

For a game with a fair business model, NW is in a great spot currently and only looking to get better with time.

Tokken

Maybe so, but it seems like no surprise that they would mess up again.......... and Ban 'Innocent' Players?

skurk81

It says many players have taken to the forums. Are there even many players in this game?

DigDuggy

It isn't in the games interest to ban innocent players. Does it happen, yes, of course. It happens in all games because things are flagged in the background in anti cheat programs. That and people get reported and these bans go into effect without much research. It's a failure of proper implementation of the ban process and not a thing the companies would want. It would hurt profit...profit good/less profit bad.

Iselin

Yeah, it's like cheaters never take to the forums to claim their ban was unjustified. Pardon me if I don't buy forum claims of wrongful bans just because someone says so.

There may indeed be some mistakes in the mix but it's so routine for cheaters to claim their ban was messed up that it's impossible to say that a few or a lot of wrongful bans happened based on forum posts.

I kind of like it when developers throw their usual "no naming and shaming" policy out the window and give details about the reason for the ban in response to claims of injustice.

I've even seen it happen here when some come to cry about how badly they were treated by devs in another game and a dev has come here to counter and expose the lie.

I'm sure anyone who has been around these forums long enough knows the phrase "Hi. This is delivery." When a gold buyer got banned, came here to whine, and was followed by the developer with excerpts from the chat logs that clearly showed them buying gold.

Scot

Iselin said:

Yeah, it's like cheaters never take to the forums to claim their ban was unjustified. Pardon me if I don't buy forum claims of wrongful bans just because someone says so.

There may indeed be some mistakes in the mix but it's so routine for cheaters to claim their ban was messed up that it's impossible to say that a few or a lot of wrongful bans happened based on forum posts.

I kind of like it when developers throw their usual "no naming and shaming" policy out the window and give details about the reason for the ban in response to claims of injustice.

I've even seen it happen here when some come to cry about how badly they were treated by devs in another game and a dev has come here to counter and expose the lie.

I'm sure anyone who has been around these forums long enough knows the phrase "Hi. This is delivery." When a gold buyer got banned, came here to whine, and was followed by the developer with excerpts from the chat logs that clearly showed them buying gold.

Those were the days.

Do you remember that guy who was banned a few times in different games and each time would do a thread to complain about it, damn I can't remember his name. He did contribute to other threads as well, but I must have seen at least four "Why was I banned threads"!

For me if the coding is as buggy as other posters have said that means never ending duping, which in turn means a small number of innocent players getting the chop every time they crack down. All down to the appeals system really which is what the article was questioning.

Jakik

Qbertq said:

It isn't in the games interest to ban innocent players. Does it happen, yes, of course. It happens in all games because things are flagged in the background in anti cheat programs. That and people get reported and these bans go into effect without much research. It's a failure of proper implementation of the ban process and not a thing the companies would want. It would hurt profit...profit good/less profit bad.

It isn't in the games interest to have exploits that cause them to have to shut down trading... but yet here we are, a year later and I am still seeing reports on them having to do that due to exploits, duping bugs, etc every few months...

theGnade

I remember playing EFT and I used to stack bags into bags, like matryoshkas. Doing this meant that my storage space was much bigger than I should have. And it was considered an bannable exploit. From my perspective what I was doing I saw it as completely normal phenomena. When you are playing games with dog sh#t quality you don't really ask yourself if this is exploit or not. So when you are playing game with quality as bad as New World, I would not be surprised about innocent players getting banned.

In EFT it was especially bad. For many years player exploited things just the way I did and there were far worse exploits. Developers did nothing even tho these things were reported countless times. People were not aware how bad things were because people were not allowed to discuss exploits of the game that is in testing phase, in forums for testing. Until one guys youtube channel got traction and leaks started to spread. And that is when devs started moving their arse.

The_Korrigan

Never try to make a cheater admit he's cheating

Vrika

theGnade said:

I remember playing EFT and I used to stack bags into bags, like matryoshkas. Doing this meant that my storage space was much bigger than I should have. And it was considered an bannable exploit. From my perspective what I was doing I saw it as completely normal phenomena. When you are playing games with dog sh#t quality you don't really ask yourself if this is exploit or not. So when you are playing game with quality as bad as New World, I would not be surprised about innocent players getting banned.

In EFT it was especially bad. For many years player exploited things just the way I did and there were far worse exploits. Developers did nothing even tho these things were reported countless times. People were not aware how bad things were because people were not allowed to discuss exploits of the game that is in testing phase, in forums for testing. Until one guys youtube channel got traction and leaks started to spread. And that is when devs started moving their arse.

That sounds like unfair, especially since there have been some games that allow placing bags inside of bags.

However New World's bug was duping. They might have banned some people who duped accidentally and didn't notice, but there's no way any of the dupers mistakenly thought that the game was supposed to be creating extra stuff out of thin air.

The_Korrigan

Vrika said:

theGnade said:

I remember playing EFT and I used to stack bags into bags, like matryoshkas. Doing this meant that my storage space was much bigger than I should have. And it was considered an bannable exploit. From my perspective what I was doing I saw it as completely normal phenomena. When you are playing games with dog sh#t quality you don't really ask yourself if this is exploit or not. So when you are playing game with quality as bad as New World, I would not be surprised about innocent players getting banned.

In EFT it was especially bad. For many years player exploited things just the way I did and there were far worse exploits. Developers did nothing even tho these things were reported countless times. People were not aware how bad things were because people were not allowed to discuss exploits of the game that is in testing phase, in forums for testing. Until one guys youtube channel got traction and leaks started to spread. And that is when devs started moving their arse.

That sounds like unfair, especially since there have been some games that allow placing bags inside of bags.

However New World's bug was duping. They might have banned some people who duped accidentally and didn't notice, but there's no way any of the dupers mistakenly thought that the game was supposed to be creating extra stuff out of thin air.

I don't think they banned people who accidentally did it once. They banned player who abused it by doing it over and over again. And rightfully so.
If anything, that cleans the community of the game from its worse elements.

Dattelis

I wonder if these are really permanent bans though. I remember when the first massive gold dupe happened, they supposedly banned a lot of people and then walked that back some time latter with some of the people keeping the gold or stuff they bought with it.

Xiaoki

Yeah, just like jails are full of innocent people that did nothing wrong.

user298

Does it really matter? Whether you were banned fairly or unfairly - move on and find another source of entertainment. Even if that game was your job where you earned real life currency (for example you ran a multiboxing bot setup to resell in-game currency, pre-leveled accounts or boosting services) - you can just start anew after changing your payment method and IP address or move onto other popular MMO, without even relocating from your current physical location.

I don't understand why people get so emotionally attached to such irrelevant things as their videogame accounts, in a video games that will all eventually shut down their servers and everything you accumulated in these games on your account will permanently disappear even if you will never get banned.

Vexs3rd

I logged into New World today and I received a pop up message saying I was permanently banned. I have no clue what the reason is besides the the word ''Cheating'' that was included in the message. I have send in 8+ appeals at this point and each one is replied to by the exact same message.

A part of that message is the following.

''We reviewed the information you provided on appeal and have confirmed that the original disciplinary action was merited in your case. We can’t share any further information about our decision, and we won’t reply to further emails about this issue.''

I have send on VOD's of my gameplay, Screenshots and offered to send in logs but I don't know how to gain acces to those yet. I'm not a computer wizard. I have asked them what I can provide to help my case and a bunch of different questions. But not a single one has been answered so far.

I know the newly discovered exploit that was fixed last Friday could have something to do with it. I've seen a very high amount of players on the forums mentioning that they have been banned since the hotfix took place. And none of them seem to get a proper response from AGS with the reason why.

I was wondering what the experience of others may be with appealing to bans for example. So far the support seems very lacking and does not show any type of care and willingness to help.

And from a company as large as Amazon and who strongly pride them self's on helping there customers is extremely shameful.

I'm not the most hardcore player in the game. I spend a very large amount of my time in NW solely focused on trading as I'm a bit of a collector. and I only recently became more active in wars. Maybe if it was the other way around I would not have been banned.

I truly believe something has gone wrong within the game over the past few days. The company I was in had over 10+ people banned and some members we're not banned on there main but they got banned on there mules that they didn't even use for a either short or some a very long amount of time.

Tokken

Vexs3rd said:

I logged into New World today and I received a pop up message saying I was permanently banned. I have no clue what the reason is besides the the word ''Cheating'' that was included in the message. I have send in 8+ appeals at this point and each one is replied to by the exact same message.

A part of that message is the following.

''We reviewed the information you provided on appeal and have confirmed that the original disciplinary action was merited in your case. We can’t share any further information about our decision, and we won’t reply to further emails about this issue.''

I have send on VOD's of my gameplay, Screenshots and offered to send in logs but I don't know how to gain acces to those yet. I'm not a computer wizard. I have asked them what I can provide to help my case and a bunch of different questions. But not a single one has been answered so far.

I know the newly discovered exploit that was fixed last Friday could have something to do with it. I've seen a very high amount of players on the forums mentioning that they have been banned since the hotfix took place. And none of them seem to get a proper response from AGS with the reason why.

I was wondering what the experience of others may be with appealing to bans for example. So far the support seems very lacking and does not show any type of care and willingness to help.

And from a company as large as Amazon and who strongly pride them self's on helping there customers is extremely shameful.

I'm not the most hardcore player in the game. I spend a very large amount of my time in NW solely focused on trading as I'm a bit of a collector. and I only recently became more active in wars. Maybe if it was the other way around I would not have been banned.

I truly believe something has gone wrong within the game over the past few days. The company I was in had over 10+ people banned and some members we're not banned on there main but they got banned on there mules that they didn't even use for a either short or some a very long amount of time.

welcome to the forums.

Quizzical

Vrika said:

They might have banned some people who duped accidentally and didn't notice,

The critical question is, how hard is it to use an exploit accidentally?  Exploits sometimes get discovered when someone does exactly that and then tries to figure out what happened.

Some exploits require doing a lengthy sequence of peculiar things, such that it would be nearly impossible for anyone to do so accidentally.  Others can easily be done accidentally by someone who has no intent of cheating.  Banning people for the latter will inevitably ban a lot of innocent people.

With a duping bug, you can partially determine intent by looking at what got duped.  Someone who duplicates a piece of vendor trash once and sells both copies probably didn't intend to and likely didn't even realize it.  Someone who jumps straight to very valuable items and duplicates them a bunch of times in a row knows that he's cheating.

Kyleran

Vexs3rd said:

I logged into New World today and I received a pop up message saying I was permanently banned. I have no clue what the reason is besides the the word ''Cheating'' that was included in the message. I have send in 8+ appeals at this point and each one is replied to by the exact same message.

A part of that message is the following.

''We reviewed the information you provided on appeal and have confirmed that the original disciplinary action was merited in your case. We can’t share any further information about our decision, and we won’t reply to further emails about this issue.''

I have send on VOD's of my gameplay, Screenshots and offered to send in logs but I don't know how to gain acces to those yet. I'm not a computer wizard. I have asked them what I can provide to help my case and a bunch of different questions. But not a single one has been answered so far.

I know the newly discovered exploit that was fixed last Friday could have something to do with it. I've seen a very high amount of players on the forums mentioning that they have been banned since the hotfix took place. And none of them seem to get a proper response from AGS with the reason why.

I was wondering what the experience of others may be with appealing to bans for example. So far the support seems very lacking and does not show any type of care and willingness to help.

And from a company as large as Amazon and who strongly pride them self's on helping there customers is extremely shameful.

I'm not the most hardcore player in the game. I spend a very large amount of my time in NW solely focused on trading as I'm a bit of a collector. and I only recently became more active in wars. Maybe if it was the other way around I would not have been banned.

I truly believe something has gone wrong within the game over the past few days. The company I was in had over 10+ people banned and some members we're not banned on there main but they got banned on there mules that they didn't even use for a either short or some a very long amount of time.

Yeah, I'm sorry, but this story isn't adding up, the fact 10 others in your company got banned tells me shenanigans was going on in this situation.

It's possible you might even have been tagged by association with scammers which is why I've actually quit guilds when I detected activities against the rules, especially when guild leaders seemed to be willfully looking the other way.

If you are completely innocent then I hope you can find a way to convince AGS to reinstate your account.

Good luck and be sure to keep us updated on how it all turns out.

[Deleted User]

The user and all related content has been deleted.

strawhat0981

If you are an azz you get kicked to the curb...like, subscribe, and hit the bell!!!

Quizzical

Scenario 1:  One player discovers a duping bug.  He duplicates some valuable items and sells them, then buys other items that were created legitimately.  He does a number of transactions to get the duped items thoroughly mixed into the game economy while ending up with a bunch of valuable, legitimate items himself.  Then he sends a bunch of valuable items to his friends and guildies, who think he's just a nice guy who wants to help them out.

Scenario 2:  One player discovers a duping bug and shares it with his guild.  They decide that rather than all using the duping bug, they'll just have one sacrificial account to dupe items for the entire guild.  That one sacrificial account gets sent items to dupe, makes a bunch of trades, and sends back whatever the rest of the guild wants.  That way, they hope that they can all benefit from the duping bug while only one account gets banned.

Who should get banned?  In scenario 2, I think it's obvious that everyone complicit in exploiting the duping bug should be banned, whether or not they used it directly.  In scenario 1, you could make a case for only the guy who did the duping getting banned. 

Game developers can't necessarily tell the difference between scenario 1 and scenario 2.  They can tell that the only practical ways to disgorge people of their ill-gotten gains are to ban the accounts that benefitted or do a full rollback of the server database.  That's true whether or not the people realized that duping was involved.  And a full server rollback is a really catastrophic measure that is only available as a last resort.

So what's an honest gamer to do?  Don't play games that are notorious for duping bugs.

Budd17

You are certainly entitled to your opinion but maybe it is a good time to put yourself in the shoes of others who have been banned. I see some condemn everyone that has been banned even though they also say AGS has developed a poorly constructed game. I do agree if you use a dup, if you bot or hack you deserve to be banned as it impacts the game. That said the lack of information given by AGS and the appeal process is atrocious at best. If you have never gone through it I am glad you have not. To be honest in 25 years of playing MMO's I have never had to appeal anything so I do not have a lot to compare it to so maybe others are really bad as well.

This is how it goes for NW though. You get the ban response when you bring up the game and can no longer log in. The only reason you are given is you 'cheated.' You can no longer post on the official NW forums. If you talk to someone in the live chat they can't help you and direct you to appeal.

The appeal process gives you limited space to appeal and since 'cheated' is a vague term how do you defend yourself or prove your innocent especially with limited characters they give you? They do not tell you that you can post logs as well which your space sending is also limited. There are logs stored on your computer that can help defend you and I was taught that by an admin on the NW forums when I came back from a week ban. They even told me to appeal again with the logs. I never heard from the appeals team on either of those appeals so I never knew why I was banned a week. How can you prevent the behavior if you do not know what you did? I completely understand others know what they did but there are a lot more out there like myself that have no idea. You can believe me or not but it is still a fact that I did not know and not an opinion.

You will get an immediate auto email that they are working on it. Sometimes the email will even tell you something along the lines of 'thank you for playing Lost Ark' when you are appealing to New World. So if you get lucky and they do respond to your appeal you get a canned response like this:


We initiated a new review based on the information you provided on appeal and have reconfirmed our initial decision that the original disciplinary action was merited in your case.

We understand this may not be the result you hoped to receive. However, please understand that we've looked into your case carefully and that any further appeals on this issue will not result in a different outcome.

We hope you can understand why we take violations of our code of conduct seriously as these can be harmful to the overall community and integrity of the
game experience for all.

As these situations can be contentious, we need to reserve the right to determine what constitutes fair play and to take corrective action when we deem necessary, to protect the community at large.

Further correspondence on this matter won't receive a response.

We appreciate your understanding.


Everyone seems to get the same canned response that does not give you any more information. My last appeal with 8 logs and multiple forum posts was denied in 5 minutes. Really is 5 minutes enough time to make a thorough investigation? Did they really take it seriously like they say above? Some people have reported that they need to appeal time after time until they get lucky getting someone who actually does research and determines they were wrongly banned. I also had an influencer tell me to do this as well because they had heard of this same thing happening.

Again I completely agree with some of your points of view that there are people who do something against the TOS and they deserve to be banned. But no one should ever have to guess what they did wrong. Like in my case both the week I was banned and the permanent ban 3 months later I ran into a childish player who was upset that I was either camping a group of resource nodes that they wanted or I beat them to a single resource node. In both cases they had choice words for me and there was a ban reported as I can see it on the logs stored on my computer. One of them I did not even respond to and the second one all I said that is not very mature as they berated me in area chat. I believe it is possible at that point they got friends and/or company mates to report me as well and the next morning the ban was rubber stamped by a poorly trained employee and I am banned. Again that is just a guess because they were certainly not the only two I ever met in the last year.

I respect even those that do not believe me as I probably would have doubted others as well before going through this myself. In the end I just hope you never have to experience what I and unfortunately others have had to go through. Enjoy your evening.

Tokken

Budd17 said:

You are certainly entitled to your opinion but maybe it is a good time to put yourself in the shoes of others who have been banned. I see some condemn everyone that has been banned even though they also say AGS has developed a poorly constructed game. I do agree if you use a dup, if you bot or hack you deserve to be banned as it impacts the game. That said the lack of information given by AGS and the appeal process is atrocious at best. If you have never gone through it I am glad you have not. To be honest in 25 years of playing MMO's I have never had to appeal anything so I do not have a lot to compare it to so maybe others are really bad as well.

This is how it goes for NW though. You get the ban response when you bring up the game and can no longer log in. The only reason you are given is you 'cheated.' You can no longer post on the official NW forums. If you talk to someone in the live chat they can't help you and direct you to appeal.

The appeal process gives you limited space to appeal and since 'cheated' is a vague term how do you defend yourself or prove your innocent especially with limited characters they give you? They do not tell you that you can post logs as well which your space sending is also limited. There are logs stored on your computer that can help defend you and I was taught that by an admin on the NW forums when I came back from a week ban. They even told me to appeal again with the logs. I never heard from the appeals team on either of those appeals so I never knew why I was banned a week. How can you prevent the behavior if you do not know what you did? I completely understand others know what they did but there are a lot more out there like myself that have no idea. You can believe me or not but it is still a fact that I did not know and not an opinion.

You will get an immediate auto email that they are working on it. Sometimes the email will even tell you something along the lines of 'thank you for playing Lost Ark' when you are appealing to New World. So if you get lucky and they do respond to your appeal you get a canned response like this:


We initiated a new review based on the information you provided on appeal and have reconfirmed our initial decision that the original disciplinary action was merited in your case.

We understand this may not be the result you hoped to receive. However, please understand that we've looked into your case carefully and that any further appeals on this issue will not result in a different outcome.

We hope you can understand why we take violations of our code of conduct seriously as these can be harmful to the overall community and integrity of the
game experience for all.

As these situations can be contentious, we need to reserve the right to determine what constitutes fair play and to take corrective action when we deem necessary, to protect the community at large.

Further correspondence on this matter won't receive a response.

We appreciate your understanding.


Everyone seems to get the same canned response that does not give you any more information. My last appeal with 8 logs and multiple forum posts was denied in 5 minutes. Really is 5 minutes enough time to make a thorough investigation? Did they really take it seriously like they say above? Some people have reported that they need to appeal time after time until they get lucky getting someone who actually does research and determines they were wrongly banned. I also had an influencer tell me to do this as well because they had heard of this same thing happening.

Again I completely agree with some of your points of view that there are people who do something against the TOS and they deserve to be banned. But no one should ever have to guess what they did wrong. Like in my case both the week I was banned and the permanent ban 3 months later I ran into a childish player who was upset that I was either camping a group of resource nodes that they wanted or I beat them to a single resource node. In both cases they had choice words for me and there was a ban reported as I can see it on the logs stored on my computer. One of them I did not even respond to and the second one all I said that is not very mature as they berated me in area chat. I believe it is possible at that point they got friends and/or company mates to report me as well and the next morning the ban was rubber stamped by a poorly trained employee and I am banned. Again that is just a guess because they were certainly not the only two I ever met in the last year.

I respect even those that do not believe me as I probably would have doubted others as well before going through this myself. In the end I just hope you never have to experience what I and unfortunately others have had to go through. Enjoy your evening.

welcome to the forums!

strawhat0981

Tokken said:

Budd17 said:

You are certainly entitled to your opinion but maybe it is a good time to put yourself in the shoes of others who have been banned. I see some condemn everyone that has been banned even though they also say AGS has developed a poorly constructed game. I do agree if you use a dup, if you bot or hack you deserve to be banned as it impacts the game. That said the lack of information given by AGS and the appeal process is atrocious at best. If you have never gone through it I am glad you have not. To be honest in 25 years of playing MMO's I have never had to appeal anything so I do not have a lot to compare it to so maybe others are really bad as well.

This is how it goes for NW though. You get the ban response when you bring up the game and can no longer log in. The only reason you are given is you 'cheated.' You can no longer post on the official NW forums. If you talk to someone in the live chat they can't help you and direct you to appeal.

The appeal process gives you limited space to appeal and since 'cheated' is a vague term how do you defend yourself or prove your innocent especially with limited characters they give you? They do not tell you that you can post logs as well which your space sending is also limited. There are logs stored on your computer that can help defend you and I was taught that by an admin on the NW forums when I came back from a week ban. They even told me to appeal again with the logs. I never heard from the appeals team on either of those appeals so I never knew why I was banned a week. How can you prevent the behavior if you do not know what you did? I completely understand others know what they did but there are a lot more out there like myself that have no idea. You can believe me or not but it is still a fact that I did not know and not an opinion.

You will get an immediate auto email that they are working on it. Sometimes the email will even tell you something along the lines of 'thank you for playing Lost Ark' when you are appealing to New World. So if you get lucky and they do respond to your appeal you get a canned response like this:


We initiated a new review based on the information you provided on appeal and have reconfirmed our initial decision that the original disciplinary action was merited in your case.

We understand this may not be the result you hoped to receive. However, please understand that we've looked into your case carefully and that any further appeals on this issue will not result in a different outcome.

We hope you can understand why we take violations of our code of conduct seriously as these can be harmful to the overall community and integrity of the
game experience for all.

As these situations can be contentious, we need to reserve the right to determine what constitutes fair play and to take corrective action when we deem necessary, to protect the community at large.

Further correspondence on this matter won't receive a response.

We appreciate your understanding.


Everyone seems to get the same canned response that does not give you any more information. My last appeal with 8 logs and multiple forum posts was denied in 5 minutes. Really is 5 minutes enough time to make a thorough investigation? Did they really take it seriously like they say above? Some people have reported that they need to appeal time after time until they get lucky getting someone who actually does research and determines they were wrongly banned. I also had an influencer tell me to do this as well because they had heard of this same thing happening.

Again I completely agree with some of your points of view that there are people who do something against the TOS and they deserve to be banned. But no one should ever have to guess what they did wrong. Like in my case both the week I was banned and the permanent ban 3 months later I ran into a childish player who was upset that I was either camping a group of resource nodes that they wanted or I beat them to a single resource node. In both cases they had choice words for me and there was a ban reported as I can see it on the logs stored on my computer. One of them I did not even respond to and the second one all I said that is not very mature as they berated me in area chat. I believe it is possible at that point they got friends and/or company mates to report me as well and the next morning the ban was rubber stamped by a poorly trained employee and I am banned. Again that is just a guess because they were certainly not the only two I ever met in the last year.

I respect even those that do not believe me as I probably would have doubted others as well before going through this myself. In the end I just hope you never have to experience what I and unfortunately others have had to go through. Enjoy your evening.

welcome to the forums!

Thats one hell of a first post!!

Kyleran

Budd17 said:

But no one should ever have to guess what they did wrong. Like in my case both the week I was banned and the permanent ban 3 months later I ran into a childish player who was upset that I was either camping a group of resource nodes that they wanted or I beat them to a single resource node. In both cases they had choice words for me and there was a ban reported as I can see it on the logs stored on my computer. One of them I did not even respond to and the second one all I said that is not very mature as they berated me in area chat. I believe it is possible at that point they got friends and/or company mates to report me as well and the next morning the ban was rubber stamped by a poorly trained employee and I am banned. Again that is just a guess because they were certainly not the only two I ever met in the last year.

See, another weird story, sounds like you were reported for speed hacking which you admit cost you an initial one week ban (what reason did they give you then) since you apparently are getting to resource nodes more quickly than others feel you ought to.

Again, if truly innocent then this really sucks but still I can't help but wonder if you have more of an idea on what the ban is for than you are letting on to.