I can completely empathize and sympathize with your situation. I went through the same thing. I'm a paying customer of SOE products for many years and was accused of cheating . I was very upset about it because I am an honest man and complied with all requests of information and nothing was found. Still , the good and honest man gets the axe and misses out on game time. To be very blunt, I got the feeling that the staff really could care less about the customers . That's fine, I don't have to buy the product anymore either.
You know? lol We've seen how their system works, and there's no way they could have witnessed something that wasn't happening. It wasn't just a coincidence that we got banned the same day the laptop got infected with malware from the hacked dcuo-life briefing site. What could they possibly have "witnessed" happening from a malware infection? Nothing, that's what. So, stop defending a system, and people, with made up nonsense. Their system is faulty, and they obviously don't observe players to double check their internal software. I'd like to say more, but they'd just delete it.
Say more please.... It will take a bit to be deleted. At least some will see if that is the case. Or possibly it will not be.
So in fairness to SOE, I guess I should update this. I was able to elevate my case above the GM who has no idea what the heck an Intrusion Detection System is capable or incapable of. The customer relations folks @ SOE are to be applauded for their willingness to admit when a paying customer has been wronged. After speaking with them, my account was within an hour unbanned. The best advice I can give anyone in this situation is be persistent IF AND ONLY IF...you are truly not guilty of actually cheating. Also, to the knuckle heads who claim the GM "ghost" players...lolz all around. In the Information Security world the phrase "chasing ghost" means it's a false-positive, or "nothing to see here". Mepps & Co. please feel free to lock and/or delete this thread....and tell Mephistocrat, to keep practicing his people skills.
Yes, and please tell P7S1 too not to rely on an automatic system alone (I hope someone already did...). Otherwise it might end up being called Prosieban. Players from SOE and P7S1 should be treated equallly when it is about rules and their violations.
Most people will say no. I'm saying yes as I experienced it. Let the baseless hacking accusations begin!
Thanks for sharing miss. I'll go ahead and close this thread now but for those with issues, please continue to use the ticketing system.
You sir should be promoted to head of Customer Service. (and general nice guy) With that type of outlook solving issues would be swift and painless, well at leased for the innocent
LOL, thank you. That's 15+ years working in this medium and several, several more spent playing games talking. I do not envy the job Alex and the rest of the SOE CSRs have to do because it is mostly a thankless, faceless sort of job. When it is done right, nothing is ever heard; when it is done in a way which is, well, not to the customer's liking, it all plays out publicly. My hats go off to you guys if, for anything else, just showing up to work everyday and not becoming a basket-case. It is the main reason I patrol the forums in support of what you guys must have to do every day. Cheers!
Physique, you deserve a bro hug lol. Thanks man, we greatly appreciate players like you and appreciate you helping out on forums everyday. Sean and I have to monitor multiple forums but we try our best to get personal with you guys so you know we aren't robots. Well, Sean is, he's actually a tech genius We appreciate the shout out and are always here for you guys! - Shmalex
Dametria Would you be so kind as to let me know how you got hold of a GM who would actually listen? I'm hitting a brick wall between the lack of link to follow on the email and a support page that returns: Insert browser here has detected that the server is redirecting the request for this address in a way that will never complete. on 3phones, 2 desktops, my laptop and both my i-pad and my galaxy tab. I cant log in or play the game now for fear of a perma ban, I would like to know what programs I have running that they are getting a false positive from I run very little in the background while i game, win-amp, software drivers for mouse and keyboard, Microsoft security essentials, steam and any of the multiple different voice chat programs depending on who I'm playing with. occasionally the odd browser window too but hardly an unusual combo of programs. Needless to say I have never hacked in this or any other game in my life being falsely accused in an MMO by email isn't anywhere near as much fun as kiddies raging on FPS games if one of the customer service guys in the thread want/can look into it the indecent number is 130529-001671. Failing SOE actually giving me a way of contacting them and/or a reasonable explanation as to why I am falsely being accused of hacking I will have no choice but to simply vote with my wallet and find another game. Kind regards DR216
DR216, as much as we want to assist you with your ticket, tech and billing have limited information regarding your suspension/ban in game. You can try updating the current support ticket to see if they can give you more information though. The best thing I can recommend is checking to make sure there isn't a 3rd party program running in the background that can possibly trigger the system.
Glad to see you got your account back, wish pro7 were so helpful, banging my head against a brick wall with them trying to get my account back. Straight perma ban when things as simple as 3rd party programs you wouldn't think of, or even running on a mac can cause a flag... I have no idea what on my system caused the flag, but they won't listen 2 years and hundreds of £'s wasted...
I don't invest too much money into my account, because of this risk of instant permananet ban for no reason. With the current policy I don't believe I am allowed to be a customer of P7S1 for many years, and many others too. It all could be lost tommorrow for no reason! There is no unban of P7S1 I have ever heard of - unlike SOE. It would be really nice of SOE could discuss this with P7S1, because they say, they apply the exact same rules as SOE, but reading in this Account-Forum says something different...why is that so?
This really needs to happen, the disparity in service both companies offer is shocking. I appreciate Pro7 are new to the game, but they really need to look at how they are treating paying customers. It can only hurt the credibility of SOE games in the EU.
New player here, wanting to express concern at the approach taken here. I'm still in the process of getting a feel for this community and the approach of the GMs and other staff in maintaining and moderating it and this thread has me wary of putting any money into the game. There is a serious issue if the template answer to cheating queries is "there is, without a doubt, evidence that indicates to us that you were benefiting from the use of a hack and/or exploit in-game" if some of those, like the example here, result in the suspension being retracted. The fact that escalating the issue resulted in Dametria's account being unbanned frankly makes a liar of Lead GM Mephistocrat. The entire tone of the email sent to Justice just feels wrong to me, too. If that is the email sent to notify people of their suspension including the paragraph starting "Please understand that the system we use to detect hacks and exploits is extremely accurate" reads as a pre-emptive "we're not wrong, we're never wrong, we couldn't possible be more right". And then the issue gets escalated and someone acknowledges "Okay, we were wrong this one time"? Is this typical of player interactions with staff?
My account was banned for "hacking". After many ping-pong posts with support I was given this answer: anything that modifies or even attempts to modify the game in any way would be considered a cheat. This includes but is not limited to modifying game files, communications, or modification of memory values I did use CPU Z in the past to overclock memory. I deleted CPU Z and reloaded safe defaults in BIOS. Don't know if it has anything to do with the red flag SOE system detected but will try anyways when I can access my account again. Will post back if fixed.
