most terms of service agreements, eula, etc state the company can remove your access to the game without notice at any time, worded this way and that way in legaleese but you're kinda screwed if they decide to ban ya, there's no real recourse most of the time.
If the company terminates the account without a valid contractual reason (eg alleged breech of contract by the user) then they really need to provide full refunds to the user. Otherwise a court will easily invalidate such a contract. This is why when a MMO company bans your account they will send you an email specifying what part of the EULA you have violated.
have you actually read most of the EULA's out there? they're pretty unforgiving and most can be summed up as "if it's that time of the month we can shut you out cuz we're in a bad mood today". I never said it can be for completely no reason, but the reasons can be very very vague that's for sure.
Grouping in Old school mmo's: meeting someone at the bar and chatting, getting to know them before jumping into bed. Current mmo's grouping: tinder. swipe, hookup, hope you don't get herpes, never see them again.
In regards to the OP, I think this is a two way street with the company and the customer. Lets face it, if you are posting a transcript its probably because you feel you are being wronged in some way and aren't receiving the support behind it.
On the other hand, some users would post messages for the purpose of making the company look bad, eventhough their question or problem may be something ridiculous that couldn't be fixed.
Over all though, it seems like a weird rule. If SOE feels their practices are always justified and their service exceptional, then they shouldn't have anything to hide, should they?
They have terms of use for their forum. If you breach them, you get banned. The arguement about not posting on their forums specifically to get banned, it's still posting content in part of the forum elsewhere, so it's still related.
Besides, the whole thing about publicly releasing the matters of a discussion that was made in the context of being private... well, let's just say that the law doesn't look fondly on that when there's nothing in the discussion itself relating to anything against the law.
SOE once banned a player for writing fan fiction on a non-soe website, so this doesn't surprise me to much.
I sort of understand what soe is saying, but at the same time I'm not sure what forum privledges have to do with correspondence between a player and customer service. If someone is banned form the forums does that mean they don't get customer service anymore? If someone posts about their negative experience with soe customer service on a non-soe site, what is the point or reasoning that soe is using to ban them from the soe forums? What problem does that solve?
I bet you no one has even lost their forum privledges for posting about the great experiences they had with soe customer serivce or reposting those PM's. This reads more like a threat than anything else.
most terms of service agreements, eula, etc state the company can remove your access to the game without notice at any time, worded this way and that way in legaleese but you're kinda screwed if they decide to ban ya, there's no real recourse most of the time.
If the company terminates the account without a valid contractual reason (eg alleged breech of contract by the user) then they really need to provide full refunds to the user. Otherwise a court will easily invalidate such a contract. This is why when a MMO company bans your account they will send you an email specifying what part of the EULA you have violated.
have you actually read most of the EULA's out there? they're pretty unforgiving and most can be summed up as "if it's that time of the month we can shut you out cuz we're in a bad mood today". I never said it can be for completely no reason, but the reasons can be very very vague that's for sure.
There are actually multiple aspects to this
-the MMO companies want your money so they will try not to ban an account if they don't have to. If you get banned it is because they feel that you will cost them more money than you bring in as a customer. Thus if someone gets banned, it is generalloy over something that has its own section in the EULA.
-the amount of money involved is very small. Noone is going to mount a serious court actions over $15-20 so it would have to be class action lawsuit of some kind. For that to be certified there would have to be a systematic problem with the company's handling out of bans.
-EULAs are in a tricky legal position as they can be overturned if the company is not careful in their implementation. They are contracts of adhesion which courts tend to scrutinize more than regular cotracts. Software companies have worked out a standard EULA that gives them a lot of power but will still stand up in court, provided they do not abuse that power too much.
In practice the gaming companies can stretch their powers under the EULA a lot since the likenhood of a serious lawsuit is so remote. The theoretical legal implications are serious but the amounts of money are trivial so noone really cares. If the monetary amounts get bigger you will have lawauits over stuff like that. Linden Labs got sued for something that Blizzard or SOE do all the time.
The restraunt analogy that SOE-Brasse gave was right on target.
If a person went to a restraunt and started to be disruptive and badmouthing the restraunt, the owner of the restraunt would most deffinately kick that person out of the restraunt.
If that same person went to another restraunt and started badmouthing the previous restraunt, and the first restraunt found out about it, im pretty sure that the first restraunt would ban that person from ever returning to the first restraunt.
Exactly and I don't have a problem with that.. No different then someone using the excuse, "I only badmouthed you behind your back so that doesn't count".. Sorry, I find out you badmouthed me period.. don't expect a dinner invite
If you are going to mess with the bull , you're going to get the horns
Seriously, have the people of today lost their ability to paraphrase or something? WHY go to the trouble of posting complete transcripts you KNOW SOE has told you not to post and that there would be repercussions if you do when simply paraphrasing what was asked and the reply given would suffice.
SOE isn't hiding anything. They aren't trying to shut up the huddled and disgruntled masses, it's ALL about privacy and the fact that private communications are indeed private. It's the same with conversations in /tells.
And as for the work related comparison.. A guy here in Australia worked for the Liberal party (consider it like the Republicans in the states) made a racial slurred comment about Obama on his Facebook page (something about if he wanted to see a monkey he'd go to the zoo or something as idiotic). He wasn't at work when he made the comment, it was his PERSONAL FB account and it wasn't even a slur against someone in his own country. Guess what though? His Facebook account was banned and he was soon after fired from the Liberal party.
I see nothing different in that scenario than what SOE did. In both instances, the actions taken were justified by the fact that both parties KNEW better than to be an idiot in that way but they did it anyways. They got what they deserved, end of.
You (the OP) also have NO proof the bannings/suspensions are for their game account and not just the forum. You are assuming the worst because it sounds better and puts more coal in the fire. I have never in my life heard of SOE banning a person's playing account for something done via the forums. Never. They have always been handled as two separate entities. Do something wrong in game, get banned/suspended in game. Do something wrong forum related, get banned/suspended from the forums. So, unless you have some proof, IE you know one of these people who got banned/suspended or know someone at SOE willing to confess to this happening, either put up or shut up.
I think it would take a LOT more than posting transcripted correspondence to get SOE to ban a player's entire account, forums and game.
To the OP Just posting it here can get you banned with SoE its a Private Chat not a public one SoE has the right to do anything they want to ban you under there ToS and EULA. I am sick and tired of ppl trying to bring down SoE and etc i have been a customer of theres for 12 years now and never experienced any of the things you guys claim to happen or have happened.
I have called the CS phone once in 12 years for a mistake i made asking them if they would help me it was not a fixable action so i said ok no big deal and hung up. I love when ppl think just cuz your a customer you are always right sure that works in some cases but not in my feild and in 75% of the other feilds out there.
to the person stateing SoE is money hungrey are you that nieve to evan think that just because they got a fluff shop items that actually dont enchance your game at all? i can name a company that dosnt have a cash shop who gets more money for a fluff item and actually a game changing item that made 4 million in 4 days because of it so who is out for more money a company who makes 4 million from a fluff item that actually is gamer changing or a company who sells fluff items that are actually pretty cool and usefull.
We all blame SoE for what happened years ago with the NGE but if you all actually knew what happened then you would not evan come close to blaming SoE because there is other companys involved call me a fanboy call me a loyal fan of a company who is not all about the bottom line and ill glagly accept the praise because i ratrher support SoE then the comany who decided to take other companys to court after they drop a product and another company picks it up and released it and makes alot of money off of it. The same company steals every idea and IP lore from other companies because they cannot get there way. Actiblizzard is by far the worse company to support hell evan the makers of Diablo got screwed over and left to make there own company sure the company went down then a new one came up and released tourchlight . Blizzard lost a lot of developers because they in turn suck as a company. Blizzard can ban my accout for this i dont give a rats rear about it either because i will never buy another plizzard or activision product again. Soe and Smedly you call all thease bad names when the fact is the guy is smarter then mostly all of you and is more focused on producing products that last instead of filling his pockets.
EULA are rarely enforceable in courts since they are not negotiated and are one-sided.
As for SOE banning people in their forums. They can pretty much do that on their forums to their hearts content for any reason they want via written or unwritten rules. Ingame bans could be actionable if they ban you for no reason or outside of the rules since you paid $$$ to access...but your damages will be nil and not worth going to court. What will change all of that will be RMT for ingame items. It is only a matter of time before virtual items will have real world value and will be brought up in the courts to decide. Congress is already looking into how to tax virtual items.
We all blame SoE for what happened years ago with the NGE but if you all actually knew what happened then you would not evan come close to blaming SoE because there is other companys involved call me a fanboy call me a loyal fan of a company who is not all about the bottom line and ill glagly accept the praise because i ratrher support SoE then the comany who decided to take other companys to court after they drop a product and another company picks it up and released it and makes alot of money off of it.
We already know what happened with the NGE due to Jeff Freeman's and Dan Rubenfield's comments. If you have evidence to the contrary please share.
SOE isn't hiding anything. They aren't trying to shut up the huddled and disgruntled masses, it's ALL about privacy and the fact that private communications are indeed private. It's the same with conversations in /tells.
You obviously haven't been on the EQ forums. Private communications are often made public, for a variety of reason. What SoE did wasn't honest, they banned people from a forum without any explanation whatsoever.
The ability to give access to the game but restrict access to a forum which you pay for as a customer, is a nice way to receive money without having to deal with complaints or forum maintenance.
If you don't know what this is about, please refrain from posting, because you're just guessing.
SOE isn't hiding anything. They aren't trying to shut up the huddled and disgruntled masses, it's ALL about privacy and the fact that private communications are indeed private. It's the same with conversations in /tells.
You obviously haven't been on the EQ forums. Private communications are often made public, for a variety of reason. What SoE did wasn't honest, they banned people from a forum without any explanation whatsoever.
The ability to give access to the game but restrict access to a forum which you pay for as a customer, is a nice way to receive money without having to deal with complaints or forum maintenance.
If you don't know what this is about, please refrain from posting, because you're just guessing.
Yes, because SOE ALWAYS give explanations to the populace about the people they ban, don't they? *rolls eyes* Oh, or did you mean the people they banned. Do you know them? Have confirmation from those people that they were banned without being given a reason? Again, put up or shut up.
Come on now, really. You're obviously pretty clueless about how SOE operates. More coal for that fire sounds like. It just sounds soooo good doesn't it? Really sticks the knife in good and deep. A lot of sour grapes if you ask me.
You are NOT paying for the game + forums. You are paying for the game. Period. You do not have a right to the forums, they are a priviledge. Choose to abuse them and lose that priveledge. Sounds pretty cut and dry. No dishonesty there that I can detect.
You are NOT paying for the game + forums. You are paying for the game. Period. You do not have a right to the forums, they are a priviledge. Choose to abuse them and lose that priveledge. Sounds pretty cut and dry. No dishonesty there that I can detect.
You don't know what you're talking about. You can only post on the forum if you have an active subscription, and the money for mods and maintenance is coming directly from the subscription fee. Once you stop paying they take away your forum access. There is an open section if you don't pay.
So you're wrong again, you do pay for forum access. Just stop.
You are NOT paying for the game + forums. You are paying for the game. Period. You do not have a right to the forums, they are a priviledge. Choose to abuse them and lose that priveledge. Sounds pretty cut and dry. No dishonesty there that I can detect.
You don't know what you're talking about. You can only post on the forum if you have an active subscription, and the money for mods and maintenance is coming directly from the subscription fee. Once you stop paying they take away your forum access. There is an open section if you don't pay.
So you're wrong again, you do pay for forum access. Just stop.
WoW.. talk about jumping on someone for all the wrong reasons.. Not sure where that came from.. I think someone owes someone else an appology.. I can only assume you misread her post and jumped the gun..
You are NOT paying for the game + forums. You are paying for the game. Period. You do not have a right to the forums, they are a priviledge. Choose to abuse them and lose that priveledge. Sounds pretty cut and dry. No dishonesty there that I can detect.
You don't know what you're talking about. You can only post on the forum if you have an active subscription, and the money for mods and maintenance is coming directly from the subscription fee. Once you stop paying they take away your forum access. There is an open section if you don't pay.
So you're wrong again, you do pay for forum access. Just stop.
WoW.. talk about jumping on someone for all the wrong reasons.. Not sure where that came from.. I think someone owes someone else an appology.. I can only assume you misread her post and jumped the gun..
SOE's Ever Mutating EULA and TOS is fine for their forums and games but there is no way to have 100% proof that that is the same Exact customer. Thats like Insane.
If they are doing really banning customers for items posted here then I say turn on the proxy servers. Is time for a Masquade!
The question of whether it's in the EULA is moot (meaning, you could argue about whether it would matter but it's a waste of time).
The question of whether the user deserved it, or was warned their behavior could result in a ban is also moot.
Sony owns your account, not you. "Legal repercussions" might exist: They would most likely be limited to one month's subscription fees. So feel free to get a lawyer and sue them for one month's sub fees. Maybe, on a good day, you could get the box price refunded too. (At least as far as the US is concerned, but note: IANAL)
SO forget "legal" recourse. You might have it, but it ain't worth pursuing. The only other recourse you have is a) cancel your account, b) whine about "OMG sony is evil" on a 3rd party forum (like, mmorpg.com for instance) where pretty much everyone already knows "OMG sony is evil", but a good number of us play the games anyway.
I don't mean to pee in your cheerios, yeah it sucks ass and sony sucks ass etc etc etc. But whether something like this ruins your day is up to YOU not us and not Sony. You're a fool if you give Sony the power to make you this angry.
I can also roleplay the tower in a chess game and shout "is that a peasant at the horizon I see? I will smash it I will! Oh damn I broke one of my merlons!". -- maji
Everything was fine on the EQ1's forum until a new community manager from EQ2 came in and wanted to "clean up" the forum, and change categories around. In the process, they have opened, closed, reopened, erased these feedback threads that they themselves started to gather feedback from customers.
I think what they're doing is wrong, and they sort of started this whole thing by changing something that didn't need to be changed.
1. Drive customers away by changing the games they like in the hope that they'll be back after they've vented their frustrations.
2. Drive customers away by banning them from the forums (or game?) when they post private communications.
3. Drive potential customers away by enacting controversial rules which will be made public on other forums.
Whether posting SOE's PM's on third party forums carries ethical implications or not (or is allowed by their rules or not) is besides the point.
People post PMs generally for two reasons:
1. To recognise or praise something - such as good service; prompt resolution of a problem etc. that made the customer happy.
2. To complain at the quality of attention they got as a customer and to show their impotence to reach a fair solution through private means.
Instead of proving the customer's point #2 and banning him / her, they ought to take a closer look at how they communicate with their customers. This implies how they correspond with them, their efficiency and willingness to solve their problems and so on...
And judging by their costumer relations people on the SWG forums and their other sites we all know how that correspondence takes place;.
No one posts PMs if there is nothing there to see: ie, a controversial reply or a surprisingly positive one.
most terms of service agreements, eula, etc state the company can remove your access to the game without notice at any time, worded this way and that way in legaleese but you're kinda screwed if they decide to ban ya, there's no real recourse most of the time.
If the company terminates the account without a valid contractual reason (eg alleged breech of contract by the user) then they really need to provide full refunds to the user. Otherwise a court will easily invalidate such a contract. This is why when a MMO company bans your account they will send you an email specifying what part of the EULA you have violated.
Considering they can update their TOS whenever they feel they want a new justification to ban, I wouldn't be surprised to find it in there.
As for this actual topic, considering how long players have been using correspondence screen-caps as a means to embarrass companies like SOE. It comes as no surprise they would change some rules, adding consequence for using their words against them in the public view.
Like them or hate them, companies have to look out for themselves and their integrity, no matter how little they still retain.
For every minute you are angry , you lose 60 seconds of happiness."-Emerson
The restraunt analogy that SOE-Brasse gave was right on target.
If a person went to a restraunt and started to be disruptive and badmouthing the restraunt, the owner of the restraunt would most deffinately kick that person out of the restraunt.
If that same person went to another restraunt and started badmouthing the previous restraunt, and the first restraunt found out about it, im pretty sure that the first restraunt would ban that person from ever returning to the first restraunt.
Theres a big difference between bad mouthing the restaurant and simply repeating what the waiter said to you.
most terms of service agreements, eula, etc state the company can remove your access to the game without notice at any time, worded this way and that way in legaleese but you're kinda screwed if they decide to ban ya, there's no real recourse most of the time.
If the company terminates the account without a valid contractual reason (eg alleged breech of contract by the user) then they really need to provide full refunds to the user. Otherwise a court will easily invalidate such a contract. This is why when a MMO company bans your account they will send you an email specifying what part of the EULA you have violated.
Considering they can update their TOS whenever they feel they want a new justification to ban, I wouldn't be surprised to find it in there.
As for this actual topic, considering how long players have been using correspondence screen-caps as a means to embarrass companies like SOE. It comes as no surprise they would change some rules, adding consequence for using their words against them in the public view.
Like them or hate them, companies have to look out for themselves and their integrity, no matter how little they still retain.
Interesting use of the word integrity. For one thing, if a person or entity is afraid of people knowing what they said or did they dont have integrity in the first place. And secondly when they start banning people for repeating what they said they lose the illusion that they ever had integrity.
You are NOT paying for the game + forums. You are paying for the game. Period. You do not have a right to the forums, they are a priviledge. Choose to abuse them and lose that priveledge. Sounds pretty cut and dry. No dishonesty there that I can detect.
You don't know what you're talking about. You can only post on the forum if you have an active subscription, and the money for mods and maintenance is coming directly from the subscription fee. Once you stop paying they take away your forum access. There is an open section if you don't pay.
So you're wrong again, you do pay for forum access. Just stop.
I am fairly sure SOE would argue differently. . A company is free to provide extra unpaid services to its customers as an incentive and is free to discontinue it at any time. Forum access is not a core feature of the game and would not have been included on the game box or guaranteed in the EULA/ToS.
That said I am curious how SOE budgets the forum costs. Are they under the Customer Service budget or Public Relations budget?
The notion that a company will ban a player on their forums for what you say on another forum beyond their control is just very strange and feels very controlling.
I can see both sides of the discussion, but it just feels like a stupid policy on the part of soe. Does banning the player from their forums remove their ability to get private messages or emails from customer service?
It is almost like they want their forum policies to be applied to the entire internet.
So, they got so many staff on free, they started monitoring internet forums for this kind of activity?
I don't know how to feel about this. But its both shocking and hilarious.
Its kinda their right to ban people who leaks the CS chat, partly because most people tend to link that GM's words even though both the player and developer knows how clueless the GM's actually are.,
But monitoring other forums? Damn, thats dedication.
Comments
have you actually read most of the EULA's out there? they're pretty unforgiving and most can be summed up as "if it's that time of the month we can shut you out cuz we're in a bad mood today". I never said it can be for completely no reason, but the reasons can be very very vague that's for sure.
In regards to the OP, I think this is a two way street with the company and the customer. Lets face it, if you are posting a transcript its probably because you feel you are being wronged in some way and aren't receiving the support behind it.
On the other hand, some users would post messages for the purpose of making the company look bad, eventhough their question or problem may be something ridiculous that couldn't be fixed.
Over all though, it seems like a weird rule. If SOE feels their practices are always justified and their service exceptional, then they shouldn't have anything to hide, should they?
Looks reasonable to me.
They have terms of use for their forum. If you breach them, you get banned. The arguement about not posting on their forums specifically to get banned, it's still posting content in part of the forum elsewhere, so it's still related.
Besides, the whole thing about publicly releasing the matters of a discussion that was made in the context of being private... well, let's just say that the law doesn't look fondly on that when there's nothing in the discussion itself relating to anything against the law.
SOE once banned a player for writing fan fiction on a non-soe website, so this doesn't surprise me to much.
I sort of understand what soe is saying, but at the same time I'm not sure what forum privledges have to do with correspondence between a player and customer service. If someone is banned form the forums does that mean they don't get customer service anymore? If someone posts about their negative experience with soe customer service on a non-soe site, what is the point or reasoning that soe is using to ban them from the soe forums? What problem does that solve?
I bet you no one has even lost their forum privledges for posting about the great experiences they had with soe customer serivce or reposting those PM's. This reads more like a threat than anything else.
There are actually multiple aspects to this
-the MMO companies want your money so they will try not to ban an account if they don't have to. If you get banned it is because they feel that you will cost them more money than you bring in as a customer. Thus if someone gets banned, it is generalloy over something that has its own section in the EULA.
-the amount of money involved is very small. Noone is going to mount a serious court actions over $15-20 so it would have to be class action lawsuit of some kind. For that to be certified there would have to be a systematic problem with the company's handling out of bans.
-EULAs are in a tricky legal position as they can be overturned if the company is not careful in their implementation. They are contracts of adhesion which courts tend to scrutinize more than regular cotracts. Software companies have worked out a standard EULA that gives them a lot of power but will still stand up in court, provided they do not abuse that power too much.
In practice the gaming companies can stretch their powers under the EULA a lot since the likenhood of a serious lawsuit is so remote. The theoretical legal implications are serious but the amounts of money are trivial so noone really cares. If the monetary amounts get bigger you will have lawauits over stuff like that. Linden Labs got sued for something that Blizzard or SOE do all the time.
Exactly and I don't have a problem with that.. No different then someone using the excuse, "I only badmouthed you behind your back so that doesn't count".. Sorry, I find out you badmouthed me period.. don't expect a dinner invite
If you are going to mess with the bull , you're going to get the horns
Seriously, have the people of today lost their ability to paraphrase or something? WHY go to the trouble of posting complete transcripts you KNOW SOE has told you not to post and that there would be repercussions if you do when simply paraphrasing what was asked and the reply given would suffice.
SOE isn't hiding anything. They aren't trying to shut up the huddled and disgruntled masses, it's ALL about privacy and the fact that private communications are indeed private. It's the same with conversations in /tells.
And as for the work related comparison.. A guy here in Australia worked for the Liberal party (consider it like the Republicans in the states) made a racial slurred comment about Obama on his Facebook page (something about if he wanted to see a monkey he'd go to the zoo or something as idiotic). He wasn't at work when he made the comment, it was his PERSONAL FB account and it wasn't even a slur against someone in his own country. Guess what though? His Facebook account was banned and he was soon after fired from the Liberal party.
I see nothing different in that scenario than what SOE did. In both instances, the actions taken were justified by the fact that both parties KNEW better than to be an idiot in that way but they did it anyways. They got what they deserved, end of.
You (the OP) also have NO proof the bannings/suspensions are for their game account and not just the forum. You are assuming the worst because it sounds better and puts more coal in the fire. I have never in my life heard of SOE banning a person's playing account for something done via the forums. Never. They have always been handled as two separate entities. Do something wrong in game, get banned/suspended in game. Do something wrong forum related, get banned/suspended from the forums. So, unless you have some proof, IE you know one of these people who got banned/suspended or know someone at SOE willing to confess to this happening, either put up or shut up.
I think it would take a LOT more than posting transcripted correspondence to get SOE to ban a player's entire account, forums and game.
To the OP Just posting it here can get you banned with SoE its a Private Chat not a public one SoE has the right to do anything they want to ban you under there ToS and EULA. I am sick and tired of ppl trying to bring down SoE and etc i have been a customer of theres for 12 years now and never experienced any of the things you guys claim to happen or have happened.
I have called the CS phone once in 12 years for a mistake i made asking them if they would help me it was not a fixable action so i said ok no big deal and hung up. I love when ppl think just cuz your a customer you are always right sure that works in some cases but not in my feild and in 75% of the other feilds out there.
to the person stateing SoE is money hungrey are you that nieve to evan think that just because they got a fluff shop items that actually dont enchance your game at all? i can name a company that dosnt have a cash shop who gets more money for a fluff item and actually a game changing item that made 4 million in 4 days because of it so who is out for more money a company who makes 4 million from a fluff item that actually is gamer changing or a company who sells fluff items that are actually pretty cool and usefull.
We all blame SoE for what happened years ago with the NGE but if you all actually knew what happened then you would not evan come close to blaming SoE because there is other companys involved call me a fanboy call me a loyal fan of a company who is not all about the bottom line and ill glagly accept the praise because i ratrher support SoE then the comany who decided to take other companys to court after they drop a product and another company picks it up and released it and makes alot of money off of it. The same company steals every idea and IP lore from other companies because they cannot get there way. Actiblizzard is by far the worse company to support hell evan the makers of Diablo got screwed over and left to make there own company sure the company went down then a new one came up and released tourchlight . Blizzard lost a lot of developers because they in turn suck as a company. Blizzard can ban my accout for this i dont give a rats rear about it either because i will never buy another plizzard or activision product again. Soe and Smedly you call all thease bad names when the fact is the guy is smarter then mostly all of you and is more focused on producing products that last instead of filling his pockets.
EULA are rarely enforceable in courts since they are not negotiated and are one-sided.
As for SOE banning people in their forums. They can pretty much do that on their forums to their hearts content for any reason they want via written or unwritten rules. Ingame bans could be actionable if they ban you for no reason or outside of the rules since you paid $$$ to access...but your damages will be nil and not worth going to court. What will change all of that will be RMT for ingame items. It is only a matter of time before virtual items will have real world value and will be brought up in the courts to decide. Congress is already looking into how to tax virtual items.
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Ten Golden Rules Of Videogame Fanboyism
"SOE has probably united more gamers in hatred than Blizzard has subs"...daelnor
We already know what happened with the NGE due to Jeff Freeman's and Dan Rubenfield's comments. If you have evidence to the contrary please share.
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Ten Golden Rules Of Videogame Fanboyism
"SOE has probably united more gamers in hatred than Blizzard has subs"...daelnor
You obviously haven't been on the EQ forums. Private communications are often made public, for a variety of reason. What SoE did wasn't honest, they banned people from a forum without any explanation whatsoever.
The ability to give access to the game but restrict access to a forum which you pay for as a customer, is a nice way to receive money without having to deal with complaints or forum maintenance.
If you don't know what this is about, please refrain from posting, because you're just guessing.
Yes, because SOE ALWAYS give explanations to the populace about the people they ban, don't they? *rolls eyes* Oh, or did you mean the people they banned. Do you know them? Have confirmation from those people that they were banned without being given a reason? Again, put up or shut up.
Come on now, really. You're obviously pretty clueless about how SOE operates. More coal for that fire sounds like. It just sounds soooo good doesn't it? Really sticks the knife in good and deep. A lot of sour grapes if you ask me.
You are NOT paying for the game + forums. You are paying for the game. Period. You do not have a right to the forums, they are a priviledge. Choose to abuse them and lose that priveledge. Sounds pretty cut and dry. No dishonesty there that I can detect.
You don't know what you're talking about. You can only post on the forum if you have an active subscription, and the money for mods and maintenance is coming directly from the subscription fee. Once you stop paying they take away your forum access. There is an open section if you don't pay.
So you're wrong again, you do pay for forum access. Just stop.
WoW.. talk about jumping on someone for all the wrong reasons.. Not sure where that came from.. I think someone owes someone else an appology.. I can only assume you misread her post and jumped the gun..
have a great day
huh?
SOE's Ever Mutating EULA and TOS is fine for their forums and games but there is no way to have 100% proof that that is the same Exact customer. Thats like Insane.
If they are doing really banning customers for items posted here then I say turn on the proxy servers. Is time for a Masquade!
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The question of whether it's in the EULA is moot (meaning, you could argue about whether it would matter but it's a waste of time).
The question of whether the user deserved it, or was warned their behavior could result in a ban is also moot.
Sony owns your account, not you. "Legal repercussions" might exist: They would most likely be limited to one month's subscription fees. So feel free to get a lawyer and sue them for one month's sub fees. Maybe, on a good day, you could get the box price refunded too. (At least as far as the US is concerned, but note: IANAL)
SO forget "legal" recourse. You might have it, but it ain't worth pursuing. The only other recourse you have is a) cancel your account, b) whine about "OMG sony is evil" on a 3rd party forum (like, mmorpg.com for instance) where pretty much everyone already knows "OMG sony is evil", but a good number of us play the games anyway.
I don't mean to pee in your cheerios, yeah it sucks ass and sony sucks ass etc etc etc. But whether something like this ruins your day is up to YOU not us and not Sony. You're a fool if you give Sony the power to make you this angry.
I can also roleplay the tower in a chess game and shout "is that a peasant at the horizon I see? I will smash it I will! Oh damn I broke one of my merlons!". -- maji
Everything was fine on the EQ1's forum until a new community manager from EQ2 came in and wanted to "clean up" the forum, and change categories around. In the process, they have opened, closed, reopened, erased these feedback threads that they themselves started to gather feedback from customers.
I think what they're doing is wrong, and they sort of started this whole thing by changing something that didn't need to be changed.
EQ1-AC1-DAOC-FFXI-L2-EQ2-WoW-DDO-GW-LoTR-VG-WAR-GW2-ESO
SOE's way to conduct business:
1. Drive customers away by changing the games they like in the hope that they'll be back after they've vented their frustrations.
2. Drive customers away by banning them from the forums (or game?) when they post private communications.
3. Drive potential customers away by enacting controversial rules which will be made public on other forums.
Whether posting SOE's PM's on third party forums carries ethical implications or not (or is allowed by their rules or not) is besides the point.
People post PMs generally for two reasons:
1. To recognise or praise something - such as good service; prompt resolution of a problem etc. that made the customer happy.
2. To complain at the quality of attention they got as a customer and to show their impotence to reach a fair solution through private means.
Instead of proving the customer's point #2 and banning him / her, they ought to take a closer look at how they communicate with their customers. This implies how they correspond with them, their efficiency and willingness to solve their problems and so on...
And judging by their costumer relations people on the SWG forums and their other sites we all know how that correspondence takes place;.
No one posts PMs if there is nothing there to see: ie, a controversial reply or a surprisingly positive one.
Considering they can update their TOS whenever they feel they want a new justification to ban, I wouldn't be surprised to find it in there.
As for this actual topic, considering how long players have been using correspondence screen-caps as a means to embarrass companies like SOE. It comes as no surprise they would change some rules, adding consequence for using their words against them in the public view.
Like them or hate them, companies have to look out for themselves and their integrity, no matter how little they still retain.
For every minute you are angry , you lose 60 seconds of happiness."-Emerson
Theres a big difference between bad mouthing the restaurant and simply repeating what the waiter said to you.
Interesting use of the word integrity. For one thing, if a person or entity is afraid of people knowing what they said or did they dont have integrity in the first place. And secondly when they start banning people for repeating what they said they lose the illusion that they ever had integrity.
I am fairly sure SOE would argue differently.
. A company is free to provide extra unpaid services to its customers as an incentive and is free to discontinue it at any time. Forum access is not a core feature of the game and would not have been included on the game box or guaranteed in the EULA/ToS.
That said I am curious how SOE budgets the forum costs. Are they under the Customer Service budget or Public Relations budget?
The notion that a company will ban a player on their forums for what you say on another forum beyond their control is just very strange and feels very controlling.
I can see both sides of the discussion, but it just feels like a stupid policy on the part of soe. Does banning the player from their forums remove their ability to get private messages or emails from customer service?
It is almost like they want their forum policies to be applied to the entire internet.
So, they got so many staff on free, they started monitoring internet forums for this kind of activity?
I don't know how to feel about this. But its both shocking and hilarious.
Its kinda their right to ban people who leaks the CS chat, partly because most people tend to link that GM's words even though both the player and developer knows how clueless the GM's actually are.,
But monitoring other forums? Damn, thats dedication.