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Banned!
chuckwi11
Member Posts: 3
I'll admit that I probably deserve to be banned. In fact some of you may flame me for what I am about to say... I was recently banned form DDO for a "Rules of Conduct" violation. Not temproarily banned, PERMANENTLY banned! Fortunately it was before BOTH of my account (two accounts not charaters) rebilled for the month so the damage was minimal fiscally.
What did I do? I bought platinum from an offline vendor. In my defense (if I can attempt to defend myself) the subject website used DDO logos and even advertised ingame. Turbine openly admitted that they had a problem but I should have verified affiliation by contacting a GM ingame. Have any of you ever tried to get a DM/GM response ingame??? The violation was clearly spelled out in the EULA which I (like so many others) scrolled through and agreed to without paying much attention to the content. It was deemed so severe in nature that they were unwilling to discuss the issue although they did end the email with "thanks" from the DDO Support Team.
Am I bitter, not at all. However I will point out a few things. The main reason I sought to subsidize my characters was a definite imbalance in the cost/repair/loot tables. Granted they comply with 3.5 rules but in the online environment you can't have fun if you are broke and dead. The only way to "enjoy" the game is to rush through and reach the highest level quests with the highest level characters thereby "finishing" the game. From my perspective there is a balance issue that doesn't quite match.
Customer support is arrogant and draconian in dealing with issues and people. The forums are in constant turmoil filled with negativity and condesending reposnses from support staff. The fan base grows increasingly disatisfied with ongoing downtime (at least weekly for 5+ hours), an ingame bug reporting system that is unresponsive, and general Turbine insolance. This in and unto itself will be the downfall of this game.
The game itself is a work in progress. It appears more as a long term beta with little to no insight into development... kind of reminds me of Zipper Entertainment in the Sony PS2 world. I fear that they will lose their paying fan base before they remedy the things that are driving people away. As far as I go, I now have many available hours to find other things to do... can anyone suggest a good online MMORPG? 
Comments
I'm having trouble wrapping my brain around the reason you have to buy plat out of game. If there is one thing about the DDO economy, it's the fact that plat is absolutely worthless. I have 2 level 10 characters and several under level 5 and every one of them have more plat than they will ever spend. It's really easy to get alot of coin in game.
As far as the ban goes, I guess they have it pretty well spelled out in the EULA and in the forums.
And as for another mmo out there, It's pretty much a waiting game right now. Age of Conan, Vanguard, Warhammer and perhaps Archlord are on the radar for me.
I think my big reason ofr buying was that I am a casual player... didn't have time to invest in players hours on end and didn't realize the value of guilds until recently. My first toon a wizard dies alot until I oculd afford back up wands... same with my cleric. I tried a rogue that did pretty well until level 5-6 and needed some type or magical armor to make it in the higher level dungeons. When you pull scrolls, masterwork items and docents and are trying to battle CR5-9 oozes to make level and loot things don't last long.
I'd be interested in hearing your formula for winning characters and gaining the endless piles of loot... for some reason it just wasn't happening for me. Broke and dead made the game very tedious... however having some coin in my pocket to buy healing spells and wands and the excrutiatingly high priced items that vendors offered made it bearable. Maybe had I endeared a guild earlier I would have made out better and not been tempted by quick fortune.
Guilds do help. there is no question, but I started with a cleric and didn't join a guild untill I was around cr8 or so. The quest by themselves provided plenty of income. I basically picked up every collectable and turned it and sold it in return. By the time I was cr3 I had more plat than I could spend. Admittedly I did not spend any on wands or potions at the time, but frankly never needed them at that level. I was never worried about having uber armor or weapons either, I used +1 at lower levels and moved up with equipment as I looted it.
I don't know, but as far as I can tell there hasn't been an outcry from the community about the scarcity or laque of platinum. It is a total barter community, plat means little. If you want an uber item go quest for an item you dont need to trade it for one you do, that's basically it.
No one is forcing you to rush through the game. Even if you do rush, you should be picking up plenty of items to sell/trade.
I got my wizard up to level 9.5, had more wands than I knew what to do with, and the most expensive thing I bought was spells. I did buy a few potions now and again, buy when I quit the game I was loaded with cash.
Really, I'm confused why you had to spend money to buy money. Doesn't make sense to me, but then, my intelligence is only 17.
Chuck, were you trying to solo most of the time? It kind of sounds like you were, and that would help explain why you were dead and broke a lot.
For any of the characters I played, once they hit around level six, suddenly their bank accounts were all fairly large just from regular play. The main mid-level characters who are broke are probably healbot clerics who haven't yet realized they're wasting their time and money by using wands on PUGs. The next characters who might be broke are the high-level characters who only want to run the dragon raid or other similar painful-in-the-pocketbook quest over and over.
Since the game previously didn't give you much inventory room, my characters basically never collected any of the collectibles. My money was all from simply doing the quests, selling extra items, and avoiding buying much from the expensive vendors because I'd wind up finding similar items anyway.
If you thought the game is only fun by suffering through ten levels to get to ten and only then start to have fun, I'm not sure what to say. Level 10 is pretty much the end of the line unless you enjoy re-running quests over and over and over. ...which isn't to say that can't be fun because some quests are still damn fun even the tenth time. (Stormcleave, for instance.) It also can be fun to do things like duo or trio lower-level quests while naked with no armor. DDO quests put quests in most other games to shame, and people who rush through them just to get to tenth are shortchanging their experience.
I give Turbine credit for allowing a lot of "game-bashing" posts on their forums. They do tend to allow a good bit of freedom of speech there as long as you're civil while saying it. Meanwhile, seems like people on the WoW forums get banned just for looking at Blizzard wrong. I can't believe you got *permanently* banned from the game, though. That just seems wrong, particularly after Turbine apparently did absolutely nothing to the people who took advantage of the one-turns-into-50 weapon bug during the Module 2 update. Banning you for life sounds pretty excessive.
Having mountains of gold doesn't provide much benefit in DDO anyway because anyone around long enough to have things worth selling for big bucks also by that time have little need for extra gold. *shrug*
Yes, you did. Good.
Now if you didn't intend to violate the rules, they should give you another chance, but that makes me respect them for doing so.
I'll start my own SWG... with Black Jack... and Hookers!!!
In fact, forget the SWG!!!!
Yes, you did. Good.
Now if you didn't intend to violate the rules, they should give you another chance, but that makes me respect them for doing so.
Being that the population size in this game is dwindling, I can not imagine they will keep him from the game. From what i gather, it is falling fast. I'm suprised the out right banned. I'd think the would contact you, talk about what they found and give you options on getting everything legit.
-W.
I've bought in game currency before. It was for Lineage 2. I played to level 20 in the open beta, and right before launch gave everything away (thinking I was not going to subscribe). Well two days later I realized I wanted to subscribe so I did. My level 20 was butt naked with absolutely no armor (as I had left him). I was woefully under equipped. I didn't even have the stuff a brand new character starts off with. So I did it. I bought like 4 million adena for 120 bucks. I wasn't really worried that I would get "caught" I was more worried I would get ganked and lose the bad ass staff I purchased for what would have been the equivalent of 80 real life dollars.
I understand totally the debate on whether or not in game currency should be sold for real money. I know it can really screw up the economies of many games. For me, it was buy some adena and get some decent loot for my naked character or not play the game at all (had no desire to start over from scratch).