A word on recent banning.

So, Mythic GM team has finally gone big time against the cheaters. As most of you probably have heard by now that this past Friday (August 1st) they banned (yet to be) undisclosed number of accounts for duping or being in possession of duped items.

I have to applaud this but at the same time I worry about how useful these actions really were. A lot can be said about this matter and believe me, I do have a lot to say. However, I will only ask one question at this time:

Why are there so many people who were banned on only one of their multiple accounts? Copying and pasting someone else's post from U.Hall:

If you folks at EA Mythic just banned a lot of accounts for duping, WHY have you NOT banned ALL of their accounts? There are a number of people on this board complaining about being banned, but still have other accounts to log in with -- and at least two have said they have the same CC info across accounts.

This makes little sense to me too. Maybe someone else can point out a logical reason for this? (One theory is that they are not done with the bans but I am not sure why they would take a staggered approach). To me it is beginning to seem like a case of people in charge of this at Mythic seriously losing the plot. I question how effective they were at taking action against professional cheaters if they missed accounts of "casual cheaters." The fact is that I have seen two known fencers/dupers restocking their vendors on Sunday with more dupes. Then there is this lovely thread on U.Hall where someone is stocking hundreds of barbed kits as recently as yesterday.

Maybe I am completely wrong about this. I HOPE I am completely wrong about this. However, with the kind of communication coming from Mythic can you blame me or other players? The last time there was a major banning, Wilki (the then community coordinator) was right there with us giving us all sorts of information (number of accounts banned, amount of gold deleted, etc.) - It was a major success against cheaters and also in terms of marketing as the news made it to major tech and gaming blogs. Compare it to this time when players were left with over 2 days before they were even told anything. I am not trying to blame any one person as there is no way for me to know what really went on behind the scenes but from a player's perspective the coordination is seriously lacking this time around and somewhere along the lines the ball was dropped.

Will Jeremy/Mythic communicate about this matter to the rest of us who are left scratching our heads?

GM inaction against dupers is mind-blowing!

It has been months, if not longer, since people have been blatantly duping. I know many people have sent quite a few emails to Jeremy with very useful information. It should be possible for the GM's to isolate the people who are responsible for duping/fencing and take action against them by now.

Most of us were probably expecting this to happen before character transfers were opened up again. However, as far as I know, nothing has happened. I am struggling to rationalize this. Maybe they are trying to get to the "big" guys? But going by the past precedents, I doubt that to be the case.

A good friend of mine, named SuzyQ, has been so frustrated with the entire thing that he simply refuses to log in anymore. I suspect this to be the case with few others.

I am guessing they have some constraints that I cannot comprehend being not in their shoes. Yet, it is so hard to not get frustrated. I think the best way for me to avoid frustration is to set a personal deadline (not to be confused with an ultimatum). So, here it is: I will simply quit logging into the game if there is no action forthcoming in the next 14 days. No temper tantrums, no long whiney posts, and definitely no good-byes.

Two more weeks of watching cheaters destroy the game I enjoyed playing for so many years is all I can take. I can fully appreciate the various obstacles EA has to pass through to deal with the ever-adopting cheaters and how hard it probably is to balance resources. But, I personally as just another normal player cannot take more than two additional weeks.

And no, you may not have my stuff!