Can we publish the names of the account bans.

There is a stigma attached to cheating, and there should be, but right now it is much harder to know who is actually doing it. Social pressures and societal norms usually do more to prevent rule breaking than the punishments themselves, but it requires that people actually know who is doing it.

Guilds will still take people. Guilds already take in people who have had trouble in the past. The fact that SOE suspended Player_A for saying in a public channel is not going to keep most guilds from inviting them. The fact that SOE suspended Player_A for abusing a mechanic back in 2008, but there has been no further trouble since then, will probably not stop that many guilds either. The seriousness of the infraction will determine the reaction to it.

Keep in mind that cheating can have repercussions for more than just the person as well. Innocent people were caught up in the recent bannings because 1 person in the group <did something bad> and everyone in their whole group was punished because they all benefited from it. It only takes 1 or 2 bad people to bring down the reputation of a guild as well.

You have been justifiably/wrongfully accused of hacking! Get em!

Basically it turns into a witch hunt, justified or not.

If they get caught for hacking ban em, however if they have the will and know how, they'll easily get around it by changing accounts, IP addresses, etc. Posting their accounts names will accomplish 4/5ths of f-all.

I agree with Gragas that those resources could be used someplace else, like actually investigating people that have been accused so that they can be banned or proven innocent.

It's our duty as players to report "suspicious" activities, not act on them.

Vigilance is good. Vigilantism (as in taking the law into ones own hands) is not.

Yther Ore.

I think you need to learn the difference between justice and revenge. Justice is being banned or doing time for breaking the law. Revenge is being publicly crucified.

What I'd like to see is them post how many banned accounts every month on a month delay. Say a group of people were banned in March, then in May give a count and announce to the server they were on. No names, or reason, just a number. Reason for the 1 month delay is so that any accidental bans/suspensions can be reversed 30 days if further investigation clears their name.

Vox MOTD: May Announcement: 4 accounts banned in the month of March on Vox.

May not do anything as far as deter cheating, but it may make some players feel better.

Free Bobby the Warrior! No Justice No Peace!

IMO sony should start publishing the home addresses of the people that hack in EQ, their social security number, their credit card number and the school class schedule of their kids if they have them.

That will teach em.

LOL I could care less about names but I'm kind of curious now. What was the ban thing all about anyway? Spill the beans.

Even more ironic is you misread my post, getting the point completely wrong, and two people gave it a thumbs up! I would call it underwhelming.

NO, try reading it slowly. The person that gets bullied should be told the resolution of the complaint. I even stated that it was a compromise between publishing names and telling the offended party nothing. No where in my post did I say anything about the decision being made available to the general public.

Posting names seems a bit harsh.

Maybe it should just be a new tab on the achievement window for "Troublemaker". Could have achievements for specific exploits like "hail spammer", "trainer", "CoHer that looked alot like a warp"

This has two advantages. People that are that interested in who is a villan can just run around comparing everyone's achievements and call out "ah-ha!" when they find someone. Also, it will sent the OCD crowd nuts as they try to decide if they get some of those "achievements" for completeness ...

You are trying to get me in trouble ><

You, sir. Are a bad man.

A drunk man was sitting at a counter drinking a beer, and he kept rambling to himself. At one point he shouted in a loud voice, I've built many bridges in my day.. many of them, do they call me Ivan the bridge builder? No! Then he went back to sobbing in his drink. He then burst out again later, I used to build homes, house after house after house.. do they call me Ivan the House Builder? No! A few hours later, as the bartender is thinking he is surely about to pass out, he yells out but you sleep with one goat!

You see the problem is you publish this list, and it won't matter if you were guilty or innocent.. the person will be labeled a hacker by all competent players for the rest of their EQ time.

I understood your point, I disagree, you don't have to like it.

The direct quote from your earlier response.
"

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"

That wasn't directly from any of my quotes. I understood what was said. If you copy what TERRAA said a few more times, it still won't change anything.

You think the "offended" have a right to know what happened, you most certainly do not. I was sexually harassed for over a year so severely that I had them calling my house when I never gave them my number. I still don't feel I have a right to know what they did, just that they handled it.

Just because someone only tells you doesn't mean it isn't now public. Maybe we should make it like settlements. If you get told what happened to the offender and they find out you leaked it to anyone else, you get perma banned.

You have the right to not know too.


You were one of the people who hit the 'like' but after Terraa took my message out of context to the opposite extreme of what I actually said. The inappropriate likes was pointed out in my followup post about the misquote. What were you liking there, the misquote or Terraa's hyperbole about something I never said?

It is a problem when someone takes what you post out of context, then someone agrees with them. I haven't seen an example like this since "the Germans bombed Pearl Harbor."<sic>

The SOP for any CS is to tell the person the resolution. i.e. if your account gets hijacked, game stopping bug, broken quests, et cetera. The one exception is when report someone doing something inappropriate or SONY finds someone using an exploit. No big secret here but the offended party already knows at least the character name of the person. These names were routinely put out in public, just not officially.

Official response from SONY would be good in several circumstances where resolution was necessary. For instance, someone falsely posts 'That character Fluid is a kill stealer' I could respond 'Show the logs or CS response.' Likewise if my character actually was kill stealing and someone made the email from CS public it would be inappropriate. Time honored tradition is private emails are not to be made public w/o cause. I could see someone using them if the third party denied any wrong doing though. It would be best if there was a system to get permission first before doing this. Once again, this is a free game and I can't see much happening in the way of this level of support. I'm just glad they maintain the servers.

Probably 70% of bans are over erroneous nonsense and the person banned did nothing wrong. Still, people will only see that so and so got banned and that negative blip will stick with them as opposed to the subsequent positive CS action where it turned out to be a glitch in the BanHammer-O-Matic2000 script and the banned player had their account restored to full game access.Maybe even with an apology but.....probably not.
It makes the player look bad and it makes SoE look bad since it could reveal that their software for sniffing out cheating is flawed so everything stays on the DL. They don't want to chase away any more business.

97.43% of statistics are made up on the spot.

If you say 'probably" as a preamble then it is open for conjecture. Some advice to you is never visit Washington DC if made up statics bother you. I can only base my "made up statics" on all the times guild mates have been banned randomly by the script and my own banning fiasco for having a Chinese IP address. I was living in China at the time so I guess they thought I was a plat farmer. Racial profiling is fun! It all got cleared up, but it took a few expensive long distance phone calls at odd hours just to clear up my good name. The people who got banned unjustly that I know of were the types who would not even know how to cheat and have no incentive to even if they did know. The more sketchy players tend to not get banned because they know how to not get caught. Either way, posting a list of those that got banned is throwing a big flammable bucket of high octane stupidity on the raging fire of idiocy.