AFK Checks

I mean if they really do think you're AFK - why are they hiding? If you aren't there to respond to their /say, how are you going to be there to respond to their physical presence?

I can totally understand being "GM Invis" when you're investigating something - like you suspect somebody is exploiting the geometry of a zone and you want to see it first hand before taking action. But if you believe somebody to be AFK - why hide?

No clue man but they do it. Show up invis. Do a quick /say. Then kick you out of the game. What gets me is that the people who are obviously cheating can get away with it.

I think the biggest supposed benefit of Rizlona and Aradune (having GMs) has now become the greatest disadvantage of those servers. People can grief other players by petitioning. Let's say I hated Machen, I could target him by reporting his toons whenever I see them afk.

That's exactly what I think is going on here. The camps in The Deep are heavily contested - often times when looking to form one up with the guild or friends we'll have our enchanters, wizards, and other chars ready to go - but no camp open to take. Generally we aren't going to just push somebody else out but it does happen and isn't against the rules. Personally if you move in on my camp and out-dps me for it and take it - fine - take it.

What seems to be happening is people want a camp - so they petition and say "AFK GAMEPLAY!" and then they just wait a few minutes or maybe an hour or two for a GM to show up and kick everyone out. Boom - you just secured yourself a camp with minimal effort and without having to DPS race anything.

When I got suspended yesterday morning on my secondary account - guess what - a boxer group showed up immediately. Are they the ones that reported my group? Possibly.

What server man?

Aradune. Sorry I didn't mention it earlier a lot of people are here complaining from Rizlona.

You would be okay with being suspended for sitting in the Nexus? why in the world would that in ANY WAY be okay?

It seems like if you get a group of 5 or 6 people petitioning you, you just get suspended automatically and then you have to try and defend yourself to get it reversed.

To the people saying how easy it is to respond to say ...etc No its really not, I don't even read say 99% of the time when I am playing just 1 toon let alone when I play 2. I have say and general ...etc all filtered to a window about 2 inches big on my screen. If you want to talk to me a send a tell. I shouldn't have to be worried about getting suspended because I don't read a highly spammed and easily overlooked channel in a game.

The GM presence on the new TLP servers doesnt seem to benefit the average person it seems highly abused and very player petition driven. Couple that with the real issues such as Arch Lich not spawning in DZs cant be addressed by these GMs but your group can get suspended because someone wants your camp? Give me a break, I'm busy pulling and trying not to die while healing, I am sorry I dont read say on both of my computers constantly. The abuse of the petition system is just getting out of hand on this server.

Two ways to take what he said. He would probably be fine with being suspended, or he would have probably been fine and not been suspended. I took it to mean if he were in the nexus, he would have been fine instead of being suspended, as they don't care about afk in the nexus.

You need to realize dude that the people who wanted GMs are the types of people who cry on the forums that nobody will group with them. They think it is because of boxing, when it is more likely that it is because they are annoying. These same people see the GMs not as a way to prevent cheating, but to force people to play the way they want everyone to play. These sad individuals would be better off to just all link up on discord and play together, but then they would have to realize that boxers aren't the problem, they are.

No. I’m saying if I were in the nexus they wouldn’t have suspended me.

ah don't count on it

Well I got another boilerplate response stating 'we're sure we've taken the right action,' along with, 'we don't elaborate on how we detect you're afk.'

In short - they probably didn't say anything in /say or /tell [my log doesn't indicate that they did, and I was sitting at the computer chatting and didn't see it] and used some other means to detect I was 'afk'. What that could be I don't know.

I've requested escalation which I'm sure I won't get.

It's worth noting that at no point have I asked for my suspension to be reversed but just some assistance in understanding:

1. What I did wrong.
2. How to avoid this issue in the future.

I must clearly not be understanding the rules properly otherwise I wouldn't be suspended twice in under a month for the same issue. I asked for assistance the first time around in understanding what I did wrong and got nothing, and I have asked this time and once again have gotten nothing.

I've been playing this game since 1999 and have received no warnings or suspensions at all during the first 8 years I played or any during the first 7 months I've been on this Aradune TLP. Suddenly in February I'm suspended twice in the same month for the same issue - when I really don't understand what I've done wrong.

Falling asleep at the computer is certainly not an ideal thing to do but I'm human. I probably play this game too much and to be honest shouldn't put myself in a situation where I could accidentally fall asleep at the computer - I get that. My largest issue with that suspension was that I was knocked offline without any apparent contact from a GM. Nothing in the logs that I could find that said I had received and ignored a say or a tell.

This second suspension - I was actively playing the game, conversing, etc. I wasn't AFK. I wasn't cheating. I wasn't doing anything to my knowledge that is a violation of the rules and here I am suspended again without explanation.

I've already put in a ticket asking what the process is for cancellation and what refunds I could expect. Assuming that I do go through with that process I'll be canceling 5 accounts - 3 of which are my kids' and I'm sure they'll be disappointed. I'd rather them play a game where they aren't at risk of being randomly suspended without justification or recourse. My kids are 6, 8, and 11 and are even more likely to miss a /tell than I am a /say.

This isn't to flex that I have a lot of accounts or that they'll be losing a lot of money or anything of the sort - they surely won't even notice my missing revenue. It's just sad honestly - that the game is so poorly supported that rampant cheating happens blatantly every day without action being taken and then legitimate non-cheating players are knocked offline without explanation or justification.

Oh well. I loved the game back in the early 2000's and I enjoyed most of the game up until this point. If I weren't paying for it I wouldn't be bothered by it at all but I'm not going to pay for a service where I am not, as an end-user of the service, provided support or assistance in understanding the rules and where I've apparently inadvertently broken them.

Maybe you have never tried contacting DarkPaw outside of the restrictions of the customer support ticket. Sony Online Entertainment threw that ability Right Out The Window. There is no Phone Number, There is No Address . . . There is Nothing other than submitting complaints suggestions and what not via killing the millions of electrons we play this game with. There is No accountability, Only beaurocratic Insulation, and the GMs KNOW THIS. There is NOTHING you can do to change their non-accountability.

I 100% agree. TLP after TLP has this problem. They hit the GoD+ eras and aren't tanks because guilds don't want antisocial whiners in that position, and they can't group with tanks because of what you said, and the content NEEDS tanks to progress, and so they burn out and quit and blame the game content and boxers for all their problems. They'll never clue in that maybe it's just them. The people who actually form groups easily and play well with others and have respect will progress just fine while the server trash rerolls onto the next TLP thinking gates of discord and evil boxers did them dirty.

What really gets me is the petition happy blame everyone call a GM for everything crowd typically post lists of requests/demands that are basically the omens of war expansion release notes. But they won't actually PLAY omens of war. They'd have non-bottlenecked epics (2.0s) with instanced raid content and everything, but, they won't play it. They'll tell you it's because muramite lore is stupid but it's not, it's what you said, it's because they can't hang in a post-LDON environment where antisocial bads get left out.

You’re assigning way more importance to the CS reps than you should. These people are paid so very little and constantly face staffing cuts amidst an onslaught of customer tickets. There’s no bureaucratic insulation. They’re just undertrained, understaffed, and overworked and are just trying to hit their ticket count for the day.

An average of around 300 tickets per day over the last 8 months or so.

That’s certainly not an insurmountable number of tickets. We handle as much where I work with 1 to 2 people on shift at any given time. We provide IT services and most tickets require some effort.

That said those that reap the profits are so far removed from those answering petitions you’ll never reach them.

Of course they are human and fallible, underpaid and overworked. These are givens you can't discount.

In an ideal world (which this isn't), they are mainly concerned with you gaining benefit while not 'playing'.

This is often expressed as AFK, but you can be behind the keyboard talking to someone and still fit into that category.

Were you grouped? And something happened totally without your knowledge?

-Did a group member's pet kill a grey mob while you were talking? Earning you a single copper in group split (and you have the 'ching' sound turned down)?

-Earned xp while chatting?

They don't have to send a say to monitor a player and see that they are:
1stationary in a zone
2out of combat
3benefitting in some way

To the overworked, undertrained and underpaid umpire, three strikes and you're out.

That's not the standard they have expressed. The standard has been, "At the Keyboard." Specifically on Rizlona, the word "unattended." Your character is not unattended if you are at the keyboard chatting with people.

NO ONE understands everything that is happening for their benefit at all times. In a raid, at any given time, I have an enchanter buffing my raid members without my knowledge. I have pullers pulling trash that I can't see, for my raid to kill. I have healers discussing and setting up their heal strategy in their own channel. Often, I have officers bidding off loot and awarding it to people at times when I am too busy doing other things to even notice. Sometimes they are even giving me items at times that I don't realize because I am busy playing and focused on other things.

None of this is illegal, and nor is a group member killing a grey mob out of your line of site without your knowledge and sharing the split. It's a normal part of being in a group.

Sometimes the greatest way to benefit the group is to do nothing. Maybe the guy that you are responding to is a caster and was medding up between big pulls, and chatting with people while medding. That is not illegal in any way.

Let's not make this more complciated than it is.

Agree.

Just saying GMs may likely be taking a very liberal understanding of 'cheating', based not on what's right, but based on their being uninformed and inexperienced with all of EQ.

No he got caught using cheating software and they suspended all his accounts that have the same billing info. Either that or he is just lying. "cheating" wouldn't be the response for an Unattended gameplay violation.