Can we publish the names of the account bans.

We should cross reference the player account info with the sexual predators national registry and find out which are online and talking with your children who play EQ.

I was being sarcastic, but really it's not a bad idea.

I'm sorry, but if your children are playing an online game without supervision you have another big problem.

It does make a difference to some people.

I can understand why SONY would not want to publish the data. There was that ugly Mystere incident where the clown was apparently harassing players in game and claimed the ban was because of fan fiction he wrote. That is pretty much SOP for liars and cheaters: They consider lying and cheating outside of the games as just another form of meta gaming.

Maybe another good example was early on an EQ guild found out how to dup and proceeded to exploit the game. When they were finally banned they not only claimed it was unfair, but wanted the reward offered for finding bugs!

Thing is, a lot of these clowns interfere with game play of other people. I may be the only one, I prefer not playing in the same game as jerks and cheaters. I haven't run into anyone that could be described as a jerk since I've come back. That being said, the reason I ended up back here was because of having someone use an exploit to kill one of my characters in another game. I turned it in to a GM and was given a fairly ridiculous story and the GM let it slide. I chose not to play there anymore.

I see a reason for it and I see how it loses customers/players when you don't let them know. If someone cheats, exploits, or otherwise harasses you in game, why would you continue playing that game? Masochist? Where do you draw the line? In the extreme, if a pervert is sexually harassing someone in game, is it fair to not tell them Elvis has left the building? To me that would be a sure reason for the victim to quit and never return.

But Elvis can just make a new EQ account, and create a new character with a different name, and nobody would even know. Unless he was dumb enough to get right back to his old antics that caused him to get banned in the first place.

That is the loophole there. Its also why myself, and others in this thread, have stated over and over that announcing anything about anyone would do no good at all. About the only good it would do, is create gossip, LOL.

Not exactly. I ran a web forum for a couple of years and you can pretty much tell when someone is trying to login using a new account. Part of the house keeping is you get the identity of everyone's computer as it identifies itself to the sever. I used to look at logs where people I had banned tried several times a day for months to create new accounts. I would bet diamonds to donuts that SONY has a similar capability.

Even some of the web mail tossers like Yahoo do the same thing. Every time you switch computers or use a new mobile device to login, they tell you they have never seen you login from that device/location before and give you a hard look.

Where it falls down is when they get a new computer or more then one person uses the same computer. SONY would probably have to add something to their TOS saying computers get banned for when little Johnny gets Dads account banned. It also doesn't make sense to spend a lot of CS time policing a free game.

If a person abusing the system is forced to rebuild characters and/or get a new computer to play on, good'nuff. The problem with not doing anything is; there are no incentives to behave. Being told the offending party lost their account lets the victim know they have suffered at least a minor set back. I see this a compromise between doing nothing and maintaining a web page with their credit card numbers and picture. The existing system of announcing bans is OK for everyone but the victims, they deserve a little bit more.

There's ways around all of that, if you know what you're doing, and if you're using a bot to farm items, platinum, whatever to sell for real money, then you're more than willing to work around such measures. Only if the risk is too high, and difficulty too high to avoid the risks, is what stops such behavior. And just monitoring IP address and even Network ID (just need a new network card, so expensive at $15), will only get you so far. It's a good thing to do, and I'm sure they are, as it's simple and inexpensive to do, but isn't a guarantee or even a strong deterrent for those willing to spend a bit of cash and time to get around it. It does help, but does not eliminate the problem. Announcing names to other people, does absolutely nothing, as said, to deter the problem.

If they're banned and stay banned, what did it do? Nothing. If they're banned and work around any measures to detect them again, what did it do? Nothing. Humiliation and such social mechanics are good mechanisms for socially responsible people. For those that hide behind anonymity and have no value of social mechanics, it means and does nothing.

If you want to point the finger as the small population of deviant wanna be gamers, then the simple act of banning them, is usually enough to keep them from trying again. They'll move on to something else they can cheat at without getting caught and with little effort (downloading and using a 3rd party program, as an example). Those are the few that may care about the social implications of being named, but even then, I'd say not. I only care about the name I use, Yther, as it's built up something of a reputation that I'd like to preserve. Most hackers, won't care. And if they do, as said, will take it a sign of honor that they were named.

Yther Ore.

They may have a way of doing it, but they sure arent enforcing it. In fact, they never have enforced it and I doubt that they ever will.

Plenty of people have been banned over the years, and then came back with different accounts and different character names. Guaranteed.

As matter of fact, on my old server, I know of four folks that were banned for various reasons, and then came back to the game soon after, with different character names and of course, different accounts.

I do agree with the last two posts. MMGs could police but they don't for whatever reasons. Let's not forget the original context of the thread. I like drift as much as the next guy but we shouldn't hijack the thread into internet security and anonymity.

My last paragraph in my above post on the topic is the only point relative to the thread and is only an opinion. You are welcome to hold other opinions. Someone gets bullied in your playground, they deserve to hear the bully got tossed out. That it is only an minor inconvenience or cost of doing business to the bully, everyone knows that. I also know people that were banned from various games and eventually it did work. They quit and moved on to other venues.

In this latest example of banned accounts, none of them were accused of harassing other players, from what I heard.

As for those who do get tossed for that, since it is easy in the current state of affairs for them to find a way back, I suggest telling a victim about it would create false hope. I knew a person once who claimed to be a woman being harassed by her ex boyfriend, who was stalking her in game. She did have a female avatar, and there were male avatars who would follow her around a lot, which I did see with my own eyes. It was usually a different avatar each day, for whatever reason i don't know. It would have been nice if he could have been stopped permanently. But I know the OPs suggestion would have done nothing to stop him.

Such circumstances are rare, though. And not what this thread is about. The suggestion here was to name some folks in some sort of "shaming" who took advantage of a bug to get some unwarranted loot. People whose characters are banned, and won't ever be back. I don't see how naming those people would be of any value.

I also don't think it is correct to infer anything about a person's character because they cheated in this game. I have never seen any evidence besides internet gossip to substantiate the idea a person who cheats in a video game will cheat me in real life.

Just to get this straight.

You want to have the bullies' names listed, available for public shaming, thus so you can bully them? The irony is overwhelming.

~Terraa

You need to learn the difference between justice and revenge. They're not the same thing.

What exactly is the justice in posting a list of those who have been suspended/banned? All it can led to people being harassed in game for showing up on a list and it wont matter or not if their name showed up in error or correctly.

This is quite literally the most absurd sentence I've read (this week). There are laws explicitly against this type of behavior for a reason.

~Terraa

1. I did get a stalker banned permanently by telling GM Graf his real name after I got suspended for 'making him an object of ridicule.'
2. IP bans do exist and are used.

You seem to not care about guilt or innocence when you want to punish all accused whether found guilty or not, and if found guilty doubly punish them with permanent banishment. I only see revenge there, not justice. It's the kill em all, let god sort em out type of vengeful mentality. We all like that mentality but realize it's not just and don't promote it in real life, but in movies and fantasies.

Yther Ore.

I assumed they did, just they're easy to get around if you know what you are doing. I don't use proxies or other services that could be used to do this, but many people do, just for anonymity and protection. And like I said with network IDs that are often used to identify individual computers (along with some other things, just network card id is on every card / interface, is unique and easy to determine), you can change simply by changing cards.

Personally, I doubt I'd go so far to bypass such mechanisms, but I don't really care that much. It's a game, and if they want to make it difficult and don't want my payment, I won't give it to them, since I try to follow the rules. If suspended, I would complain and fight about it, but only for so long before I moved on. There are other games and other forms of entertainment.

Yther Ore.

Reporting bans and suspensions and giving the reasons for them does serve a useful purpose.

Most people do not want to group with cheaters, and most guilds do not allow players that cheat to join them. They ask whether or not applicants have been disciplined by SOE, and there is currently no way to verify it. Posting actions taken against players would allow guilds to refuse membership to those players, and allow players to refuse to group with known cheaters.

Yes, it is true that suspended players can change their name to try and hide this, but doing even a minimal amount of research can usually expose someone trying to hide a bad past.
Yes, it is also true that banned players can create new accounts with new characters and names, but the fact that some people continue to break rules does not negate the reasons for making rules in the first place.

No one is suggesting that this will stop all people from cheating and hacking, but even if it reduces the number by a small amount it would be worth it.

As for players harassing other players for actions that have been taken against them, this is already covered by SOE's policy. No one is allowed to harass anyone for any reason. If Player_A starts harassing Player_B because Player_B was suspended for a week, Player_B can, and should, report Player_A for harassment.

As for wrongly accused players appearing on the list, it should be possible to eliminate or at least minimize this from happening by delaying when the lists are posted. If an action is taken against a player in January, but SOE does not post the list for January until say, March, that would allow time for mistaken actions to be reversed and their names to be removed before publication.

If you're banned and coming back under another account and player name, why would that list help? Almost everyone I known personally that only got banned for a few weeks to few months, always seemed legit and honest, and claimed to be, although suspicious of one particular group, never sure that anything was done wrong, and were pretty credible. Then there are the others that I've seen banned but never heard from again. The anonymity of the game prevents such a list from being viable.

Would this steps work if you were the accused? They wouldn't for me, 'cause A: I wouldn't even play the game any more after a reasonable fight to prove my innocence, and 2: if I was guilty, I would just move on without a fight, and C: if I was in it to hack the system to make real money somehow, I would find another way to do it. C: won't happen, and 2: would be very unlikely.

As far as guilds go, get a better recruiter that does better research, talks to more people, and older guilds and references, and someone who is a good judge of character. If a person ingenious enough to do all this hacking and still want to be in a guild, they'll get in one regardless, or start their own. If they care at all about social stigma, they won't behave inappropriately for too long before they build up a bad rep and change their name and possibly server. Seen the name / server change many, many times over the years. I just don't see how it would be effective at all, other than causing alot more problems, unless you're trying to stifle individuality and make everyone conform to your rigid set of beliefs, morals, guidelines.

This is becoming as someone earlier said, side-tracked into an internet policy argument about anonymity. What you really want is to get rid of the anonymity, which I'm all for as well, if done well, where it still protects people's privacy to some extent. Then what you suggest would be a workable and useful solution. The current state, it is not.

Yther Ore.

I personally don't see the benefit to posting the names of characters banned. All I see coming from it is drama and fuel for gossip, there are sewing circles for such activities...

As has been stated many times already, if a player has been permanently banned, posting their name does nothing to deter the person from starting up a new character. Sony has destroyed the identity of the original character, so any social ties went with the character.

Now I suppose you could feed a few gossip monkeys by putting names up of characters who are temporarily banned so that people "know what they are getting into" when they start a group/guild. But I see a real fundamental problem with that as well, because if a character has been officially blacklisted by Sony, what chance does that character have of ever getting into a serious progression guild, or any for that matter? They may as well have just made it a permanent ban in the first place.

Would rather have the resources that would be tied up in creating such a list directed towards something that would improve the game.