Mabar Ban Problems

[Tolero]

Last night, some DDO players received erroneous temporary suspensions or warnings regarding an exploit. Due to a technical issue in our exploit suspension process some players participating in the Mabar festival event were incorrectly notified of a rules violation. Any accounts that were temporarily banned as a result of this issue will have their account access restored and will be credited 100 Turbine Points. Any accounts that received warnings will have those warnings removed from their record.

This error was an isolated incident and should have no further impact for any DDO players. As always, we welcome player feedback on all aspects of DDO and continually seek to improve the quality of the service we provide to players.

We sincerely apologize for any inconvenience or confusion and thank you for your patience while we worked to resolve the issue.

[ZombieKenny2]

100TP? Really?

[Aeolwind]

Awesome! Thanks!!

[Loromir]

There is your long awaited appology. Turbine is fessing up and doing the right thing, like I knew they would. Too many people wanting their pound of flesh, not willing to just wait and let Turbine fix the problem.

Mistakes happen, lets get on to some happy gaming.

Good Job Turbine.

[Psyker]

Thank you for the info!

[rest]

How about those of us who weren't banned, but had no one to group with last night due to everyone getting banned? Do we get 100 points too?

[J1NG]

Whoooo!!!

See guys? Turbine response. A PROPER response too.

Hope to see most if not all of everyone back into the game soon. :)

J1NG

[darthtidgit]

can we have our characters put on the right subs while you are at it :P
http://img576.imageshack.us/img576/4070/dagona.jpg

[knightgf]

Well, at least you came clean and admitted your mistakes. But a quick question just to verify things:

If you were banned on accident, would the offense be wiped from your account in addition to the TP compensation?

Edit: And yes, I will have no doubt that I will be attending the Mabar event again if it was just a 'technical' problem with the ban system. Hopefully it doesn't happen again, and hopefully no bugs or exploits emerge from the event. By the way, just a yes/no question(No need to go into detail), was there REALLY an exploit in the Mabar event or was it just a overreaction by the technical system?

[smatt]

So how many days will it take the wrongly accused/sanctioned to get their accounts reactivated?

[dogpig00]

November 10th, 2010

Faced with internal pressure of cutting IT cost and overwhelmed game servers, Turbine Inc. came up with another innovative method to increase their profit margin and reduce server loads at the same time.

This time, through an "live event" with promising in-game rewards, Turbine was able to gather information on which account was most active during the event, and thus contributing to the most server loads. Combined with information regarding the account's financial transaction history, Turbine was able to "eliminate" accounts with least contribution to Turbine's revenue and most contribution to game server's load.

The elimination of these accounts will no doubt greatly reduce the lag in game and make no significant reduction in Turbine's revenue. This is a quite innovative approach and should be studied within the Micro-Transaction MMO industry.

Of course, as with all software bugs, gathering of these account may introduce unintended effects. Some very small amount of accounts which were actually actively contributing to Turbine's revenue were also marked for elimination. Turbine will surely be able to identify these very isolated incidents and compensate individually.

In Turbine's view, the most profitable accounts are players who are new, and is willing to spend the equivalent of $3 to get through a 15-minute quest via the purchase of consumable such as spirit cakes, potions, hirelings, anti-beholder crystal, etc. Turbine will no doubt continue to increase the player base of this high profit margin category.

Through this event, it can be seen Turbine's DDO is wildly popular. We highly encourage new players to try this GREAT game.

[madmaxhunter]

Dang! I wasn't banned or warned! Darn the luck!!

[grodon9999]

Toss is another week of 25% XP and people will even be thankful :)

[rest]

November 10th, 2010

Faced with internal pressure of cutting IT cost and overwhelmed game servers, Turbine Inc. came up with another innovative method to increase their profit margin and reduce server loads at the same time.

This time, through an "live event" with promising in-game rewards, Turbine was able to gather information on which account was most active during the event, and thus contributing to the most server loads. Combined with information regarding the account's financial transaction history, Turbine was able to "eliminate" accounts with least contribution to Turbine's revenue and most contribution to game server's load.

The elimination of these accounts will no doubt greatly reduce the lag in game and make no significant reduction in Turbine's revenue. This is a quite innovative approach and should be studied within the Micro-Transaction MMO industry.

Of course, as with all software bugs, gathering of these account may introduce unintended effects. Some very small amount of accounts which were actually actively contributing to Turbine's revenue were also marked for elimination. Turbine will surely be able to identify these very isolated incidents and compensate individually.

In Turbine's view, the most profitable accounts are players who are new, and is willing to spend the equivalent of $3 to get through a 15-minute quest via the purchase of consumable such as spirit cakes, potions, hirelings, anti-beholder crystal, etc. Turbine will no doubt continue to increase the player base of this high profit margin category.

Through this event, it can be seen Turbine's DDO is wildly popular. We highly encourage new players to try this GREAT game.


Amazing. My hat is off to you, good sir.

[siiis909]

Last night, some DDO players received erroneous temporary suspensions or warnings regarding an exploit. Due to a technical issue in our exploit suspension process some players participating in the Mabar festival event were incorrectly notified of a rules violation. Any accounts that were temporarily banned as a result of this issue will have their account access restored and will be credited 100 Turbine Points. Any accounts that received warnings will have those warnings removed from their record.

This error was an isolated incident and should have no further impact for any DDO players. As always, we welcome player feedback on all aspects of DDO and continually seek to improve the quality of the service we provide to players.

We sincerely apologize for any inconvenience or confusion and thank you for your patience while we worked to resolve the issue.



What was the exploit btw?.

[KOSGaia]

Please post a timeframe for restoring account access. Unfortunately I've been fuming all day and afternoon and is in no mood to play. But anytime is a good time to remove an erroneous ban or warning...

[darthtidgit]

i'm a grandmother too i played WoW but iplayed DDO first and SWG before that

[Brynjolf]

Any accounts that received warnings will have those warnings removed from their record.


Will these people be notified of the removal in any way? Or are all of the warnings in error and this is the notification?

Thank you for addressing the issue, Tolero. :cool:

[airbornerangers]

not sure who to talk to, but my account says it has been banned!!!!!!!
where/when will i find out why? is it from this event that i barely participated in?
who do i talk to to find out ?????????
thanks in advance

[ddo4u]

Bravo!

[Tolero]

I should also note that if you contacted the support team on someone else's behalf, they will be unable to respond, as they are only able to assist the person affected directly. Encourage friends/guildmates to ensure that their contact information on their account is up to date for communications and updates.

[Raiderone000]

I gotta say this whole incident has spoiled my fun in DDO.
And shattered my confidence in Turbine.

No 100 DDO points is gonna clear the slate.

[thwart]

Dang! I wasn't banned or warned! Darn the luck!!

lol ... this is what I was thinking!

[ArkoHighStar]

not sure who to talk to, but my account says it has been banned!!!!!!!
where/when will i find out why? is it from this event that i barely participated in?
who do i talk to to find out ?????????
thanks in advance

you would have gotten an email describing(Vaguely) what you were banned for, if it says it was in association with the Mabar event, you should be covered by the above notification.

[tarathein]

Any chance of finding out which accounts were affected?? Maybe an apology over email so i know i havent got a ban hanging over my head. 100TP's is barely noticeable on my account as i wasnt sure of my total before.

Would want to know if i was 1 of the people affected as it just says 'some players participating in the Mabar festival event were incorrectly notified of a rules violation'. So are you saying that some people will still have warnings & be banned???

[Memnir]

I still have no faith in going into the Event again, should it be brought back. This was just too colossal an error. Like many things with the Mabar event... it was an error that simply should have never happened.


I also think that 100 points is a bit anemic of a mea culpa - but I wasn't banned, so what do I know? This glaring error has shaken, or re-shaken, a lot of faith in Turbine amongst the player base, and being erroneously banned is one hell of an inconvenience.


Shame on you, Turbine. All the way around.

[Sohryu]

Time frame for reinstatement? Does sending an email through in-game support help your case any?

[Jesenne]

If you were banned on accident, would the offense be wiped from your account in addition to the TP compensation?
Yes.

[LittleM]

Well, I can't say thanks for solving this issue. All I can say is finally, as this should never happen in the first place. I do appreciate that the Turbine has come clean on it.

[harold2560]

APOLOGY?

LMFAO this is not an apology its and insult! and 100tp is a slap in the face.

They screwed up really bad. I didnt get banned but i had NO ONE to play with last night because of this major FUBAR.

[ArkoHighStar]

Have accounts already been turned back on, or does TUrbine have a timeframe for access to be regranted.

[Coldin]

That makes sense, and I was thinking it had to be some kind of error. I'm glad you guys got it fixed, and I sincerely hope something like this doesn't happen again.

[dogpig00]

Yes.

Are you sure?

[Qzipoun]

100 TP and a lame post? I wasn't even banned and I find that offensive...

You guys screwed up big time and tried to cover it up. You don't get to walk away unharmed just by giving out 100TP...

[Eladiun]

I assume if one received a warning they will receive a letter notifying them that you are no longer calling them a cheater. Not that I'm bitter or anything....

[Anthios888]

I appreciate the sincerity and honesty (finally) of admitting this mistake. However, 100 TP seems like it hardly covers the 14 hours of paid subscription (plus however long it takes for accounts to be reinstated). The cash value of lost game time is not far off. It's not so much that people deserve more, but that it does feel very 'token' considering the emotional distress and the stigma of cheating. Even extending subscriptions by a few days seems more appropriate.

[Issip]

Still no access, subscription canceled.

Been playing since pre-order and I've seen and refused to participate in some egregious exploits. After all that this is very insulting.

Good luck Turbine.

[Cauthey]

Last night, some DDO players received erroneous temporary suspensions or warnings regarding an exploit. Due to a technical issue in our exploit suspension process some players participating in the Mabar festival event were incorrectly notified of a rules violation. Any accounts that were temporarily banned as a result of this issue will have their account access restored and will be credited 100 Turbine Points. Any accounts that received warnings will have those warnings removed from their record.

This error was an isolated incident and should have no further impact for any DDO players. As always, we welcome player feedback on all aspects of DDO and continually seek to improve the quality of the service we provide to players.

We sincerely apologize for any inconvenience or confusion and thank you for your patience while we worked to resolve the issue.


I gotta say this whole incident has spoiled my fun in DDO.
And shattered my confidence in Turbine.

No 100 DDO points is gonna clear the slate.

What of those that have cancelled their VIP accounts? You've lost a tremendous amount of face today (and likely a good bit of revenue) - there is something to be said for swift communications. :(

I hope there will still be some players to PUG with when I get a chance to play again. :(

[Lorien_the_First_One]

Last night, some DDO players received erroneous temporary suspensions or warnings regarding an exploit. Due to a technical issue in our exploit suspension process some players participating in the Mabar festival event were incorrectly notified of a rules violation. Any accounts that were temporarily banned as a result of this issue will have their account access restored and will be credited 100 Turbine Points. Any accounts that received warnings will have those warnings removed from their record.

This error was an isolated incident and should have no further impact for any DDO players. As always, we welcome player feedback on all aspects of DDO and continually seek to improve the quality of the service we provide to players.

We sincerely apologize for any inconvenience or confusion and thank you for your patience while we worked to resolve the issue.

I assume for VIPs you will also be extending their memberships by one day since you unjustly suspended people and they missed part of their paid membership as a result?

Very interesting btw that you have an auto-ban system. Nasty.

[locus]

Yes.
Hey, it's a fairly reliable GM I've seen on the LOTRO server I play on. This probably is a good sign. It means all the Lotro support people rushed over here >.>

Ok, now how about a full set of ingredients for a Greensteel item, instead of 100TP? That would go over way better, I feel. *nods sagely*

[Garth_of_Sarlona]

Thanks for the response Turbine. My faith in you is restored.

Garth (is BACK!!!!)

[Tolero]

If you were banned on accident, would the offense be wiped from your account in addition to the TP compensation?

Yes the discipline will be expunged from their records.

[Graebeerd]

100 TP and a lame post? I wasn't even banned and I find that offensive...



^^THIS

not cool turbine, not cool

[k1ngp1n]

Yes the discipline will be expunged from their records.

Will we be notified if this occurs, or will we be left in limbo?

[dogpig00]

Yes the discipline will be expunged from their records.

FYI - You can never be sure what your REAL record is

[knightgf]

100 TP and a lame post? I wasn't even banned and I find that offensive...

You guys screwed up big time and tried to cover it up. You don't get to walk away unharmed just by giving out 100TP...

Well, on the bright side, your weren't banned at all. Yeah, sure, Turbine's mistakes will draw fire, but things could be a lot worse for many of us...what if it was a real exploit and all the mass bannings were genuine?

100 TP might not be much, but it adds up. Trust me.

[rest]

Yes the discipline will be expunged from their records.

..and added to the record of whoever set these shenanigans in motion right?

[Tolero]

So how many days will it take the wrongly accused/sanctioned to get their accounts reactivated?

These should be getting lifted today (if not already, some may have already received their notification... be sure to check junk mail boxes).

[~Cereals_Alt]

Umm .... Yea if I had been banned 100TP definitely would not fix it. I didn't get a warning or a ban and have been considering moving on to another game, just because I am disgusted by the way people have been treated. Insulting so many players integrity and then trying to compensate with a little more than $1.62 worth of Turbine points is not going to keep people around. IMO

[Cauthey]

I still have no faith in going into the Event again, should it be brought back. This was just too colossal an error. Like many things with the Mabar event... it was an error that simply should have never happened.


I also think that 100 points is a bit anemic of a mea culpa - but I wasn't banned, so what do I know? This glaring error has shaken, or re-shaken, a lot of faith in Turbine amongst the player base, and being erroneously banned is one hell of an inconvenience.


Shame on you, Turbine. All the way around.

Here, here! I very desperately would like to have some of the Mabar Event items for a new toon that I have rolled recently. However, I am worried about attending the event again after this.

Will Turbine PLEASE give us some hints as to what the exploit was so that we do not even ACCIDENTALLY COME CLOSE to tripping on it again?! :(

[Dark-Star]

I appreciate the sincerity and honesty (finally) of admitting this mistake. However, 100 TP seems like it hardly covers the 14 hours of paid subscription (plus however long it takes for accounts to be reinstated). The cash value of lost game time is not far off. It's not so much that people deserve more, but that it does feel very 'token' considering the emotional distress and the stigma of cheating. Even extending subscriptions by a few days seems more appropriate.

I couldn't agree more.

You took real money from people by your admitted mistake. You need to compensate those affected with real money, not a trivial amount of virtual points.

[tarathein]

Last night, SOME DDO players received erroneous temporary suspensions or warnings regarding an exploit. Due to a technical issue in our exploit suspension process SOME players participating in the Mabar festival event were incorrectly notified of a rules violation. Any accounts that were temporarily banned as a result of this issue will have their account access restored and will be credited 100 Turbine Points. Any accounts that received warnings will have those warnings removed from their record.

This error was an isolated incident and should have no further impact for any DDO players. As always, we welcome player feedback on all aspects of DDO and continually seek to improve the quality of the service we provide to players.

We sincerely apologize for any inconvenience or confusion and thank you for your patience while we worked to resolve the issue.

Any1 notice the key word here. SOME players. Are we to assume that not all players will get unbanned, unwarned???

[Raiderone000]

I appreciate the sincerity and honesty (finally) of admitting this mistake. However, 100 TP seems like it hardly covers the 14 hours of paid subscription (plus however long it takes for accounts to be reinstated). The cash value of lost game time is not far off. It's not so much that people deserve more, but that it does feel very 'token' considering the emotional distress and the stigma of cheating. Even extending subscriptions by a few days seems more appropriate.

Exactly. Stigma of being called a cheater is hard to swallow.

Bad time to come out with a DDO Point Bargain email. Not gonna happen.

They will feel the pinch from me. No more DDO Points bought on my free account!
CC Information removed.

[Fourfingers]

Last night, some DDO players received erroneous temporary suspensions or warnings regarding an exploit. Due to a technical issue in our exploit suspension process some players participating in the Mabar festival event were incorrectly notified of a rules violation. Any accounts that were temporarily banned as a result of this issue will have their account access restored and will be credited 100 Turbine Points. Any accounts that received warnings will have those warnings removed from their record.

This error was an isolated incident and should have no further impact for any DDO players. As always, we welcome player feedback on all aspects of DDO and continually seek to improve the quality of the service we provide to players.

We sincerely apologize for any inconvenience or confusion and thank you for your patience while we worked to resolve the issue.

Thanks.

Can you give an ETA for the account access restoration?

nm, I see this has been answered already in this thread.


These should be getting lifted today (if not already, some may have already received their notification... be sure to check junk mail boxes).

http://ddo.jeffsjeep.com/images/285262.png

[rest]

Very interesting btw that you have an auto-ban system. Nasty.

This makes me think that anyone who has ever been banned should be reinstated. If real live people don't make the bans happen, who know's WHAT kind of ridiculous stuff goes on.

[Ranmaru2]

So was this all on your end with an incorrect mark as to what "is" and "isn't" an exploit, or was this something that was fixed in today's patch and that we won't need to worry about anymore?

[dogpig00]

NOT HAPPY. My new thread was deleted again.

[Solacetine]

My account was banned last night and i am able to log in again. Still a little peeved about it and i have a right to be. One thing you shouldn't do is delete everything to do with it, even if you don't know what is going on.

[Brynjolf]

These should be getting lifted today (if not already, some may have already received their notification... be sure to check junk mail boxes).

Will we also receive notification if we are "unwarned"?

[locus]

Any1 notice the key word here. SOME players. Are we to assume that not all players will get unbanned, unwarned???

I assume there was a legit exploit somewhere, but they banned everyone tossed into a random dragon raid with the people, which is kind of ???, so yeah I'd expect all players to not be unbanned.

[dejafu]

Honest question: what do people think would be a reasonable compensation? Emphasis on "reasonable" please!

100 TP really is underwhelming, but I'm curious what most people would consider a more appropriate response.

[Pfold]

Very interesting btw that you have an auto-ban system. Nasty.

Yeah, it was coded by the same folks that brought us the Mabar event.

[Tirkan]

Personally, I could care less about the Turbine points.

I would rather have a personally written 'my bad' sent to my email account or forum account, telling me what happened, why it happened, and how Turbine is going to guarantee it will not happen again.

[Stormanne]

100 TP and a lame post? I wasn't even banned and I find that offensive...

You guys screwed up big time and tried to cover it up. You don't get to walk away unharmed just by giving out 100TP...

This ^

You're going to have to do better than that to make up for the BS that was perpetrated in trying to cover up your mistake. And guess what? You're going to be doing it on a much larger stage than just the DDO forums. TenTonHammer and Massively have active threads and Massively has an article about the bans and the post deletions that were questioning what was going on.

And just think, this could have all been avoided with a single post along the lines of "There is something wrong with one of our systems. We don't know what it is and we don't know what it's doing, but it's not acting the way it's supposed to. Please be patient and we'll get this sorted out ASAP." Instead, justifiably upset players had their threads deleted and posting privileges reduced (in a couple of cases).

[Eladiun]

Yeah, it was coded by the same folks that brought us the Mabar event.

and MYDDO

[cpito]

So how many days will it take the wrongly accused/sanctioned to get their accounts reactivated?

Sorry Smattasaur but it looks like only about 15 minutes! I know you were hoping for more peace and quiet but oh well, we'll be back on today to annoy the snot out of you some more!

Thank you very much Turbine for the response.

[Nigglor]

100 TP and a lame post? I wasn't even banned and I find that offensive...


This ^^. I'm insulted and I didn't even really participate in the event, much less spend hours and hours and hours of farming motes, waiting for vampires, waiting for liches, waiting for the dragon, only to be called a cheater and expelled from the game.

[FuzzyDuck81]

...and they all lived happily ever after, hooray!

...but i still dont have my EU toons yet.. boo :(

[HAL]

Last night, some DDO players received erroneous temporary suspensions or warnings regarding an exploit. Due to a technical issue in our exploit suspension process some players participating in the Mabar festival event were incorrectly notified of a rules violation. Any accounts that were temporarily banned as a result of this issue will have their account access restored and will be credited 100 Turbine Points. Any accounts that received warnings will have those warnings removed from their record.

You know, last night and today, several people stated that they thought this was the result of some kind of automated computer error and was all a terrible mistake. I thought these people were bonkers because surely no company would create a computer program that could ban a person's account on its own volition. That would be the height of stupidity. Sure, a program to flag accounts to be reviewed by a person who could then ban if necessary. But letting a computer, which cannot distinguish between an error and purposeful cheating, ban someone's account? No, I said, no company would be idiotic enough to do that!

To everyone patting Turbine on the back for their nice apology and the 100 TP, are you serious?!

[Pfold]

and MYDDO

Touche

[Ranmaru2]

Honest question: what do people think would be a reasonable compensation? Emphasis on "reasonable" please!

State of the Game Address from Eladrin with official guaranteed plans on all remaining PrE enhancement lines

[PNellesen]

Thanks for the response. I wasn't banned, but did get a warning. Glad to know it WAS, as expected, a mistake.

[Tolero]

Any chance of finding out which accounts were affected?? Maybe an apology over email so i know i havent got a ban hanging over my head. 100TP's is barely noticeable on my account as i wasnt sure of my total before.

Would want to know if i was 1 of the people affected as it just says 'some players participating in the Mabar festival event were incorrectly notified of a rules violation'. So are you saying that some people will still have warnings & be banned???

Less than a percent of users were impacted by the issue, but we will be contacting all of the impacted accounts. Note that if your contact info in your account is incorrect that you may not receive the email, but the lifting of the suspension will still happen.

[CR-Shadowborn]

Well i got the warning and i was not happy about it but Turbine has admitted a mistake was made and apologised for it.
That is as much as i would ask anyone who made a mistake and i know that 100 points to a player who got banned isn't much but it seems to be more than many expected.

[stoolcannon]

Last night, some DDO players received erroneous temporary suspensions or warnings regarding an exploit. Due to a technical issue in our exploit suspension process some players participating in the Mabar festival event were incorrectly notified of a rules violation. Any accounts that were temporarily banned as a result of this issue will have their account access restored and will be credited 100 Turbine Points. Any accounts that received warnings will have those warnings removed from their record.

This error was an isolated incident and should have no further impact for any DDO players. As always, we welcome player feedback on all aspects of DDO and continually seek to improve the quality of the service we provide to players.

We sincerely apologize for any inconvenience or confusion and thank you for your patience while we worked to resolve the issue.

Thanks!

Can I get 100 TP compensation for this wall of text I wrote while this thread got posted?

*Note: GJ taking my advice in advance. :P


--------

Dear Turbine,

Some background: I've spent the past 13 years working for various Fortune 100 companies including some of the most high profile technology and software companies in the world. I've got a wealth of experience dealing with PR and I've seen many times just how badly a poor customer satisfaction rating can impact a company's bottom line.

You have a golden opportunity to prevent that from happening to you or at the very least dampen the blow. Mistakes happen, and you've clearly made one but most people are reasonable and forgiving enough to let it go as long as they are communicated to quickly and clearly. It's time to get out in front of this issue before it snowballs and you lose hundreds of paying subscribers if not more.

Here's my advice. RELEASE A STATEMENT! Even a short, succinct statement indicating that you are conducting further investigations and will prepare a formal response shortly. It will go a long way towards buying you some time to determine just how you managed to dig a hole this deep and come up with a formal plan to address it. A single forum post from Tolero saying "We hear you, we are looking into it, please give us a bit of time to respond" would be enough to prevent me from hastily canceling my subscription.

I personally have about 3000 TP at the moment and will begin using those to buy my favorite packs this evening whereupon I plan to cancel my VIP subscription.

I won't be quitting the game as I enjoy the gameplay and most especially enjoy playing with my friends and my guild but I'm having a hard time justifying laying out $15 per month to a company that accuses me of being a cheater when I did absolutely nothing wrong and bans many other people for the same 'offense'.

If you take this opportunity to make some sort of formal response, even if it's something so slight as to say "we are conducting further investigations and preparing a more thorough response" then I won't pull the trigger until I've given you a chance to reply. However, should you choose to ignore the opportunity to provide the community with some sort of assurance that your paying customers actually mean something to you then I will be left with no choice but to discontinue my minimal financing of your future endeavors.

I may be just one person but I've spent $150 on points in the past 3 months on top of being a VIP and I know for a fact that a game with as small of a player base as DDO cannot afford to lose even one loyal customer.

Overall though I am not particularly surprised by this turn of events. While you do offer a fantastic gameplay experience you have one of the worst customer service records (with me) in recent memory.

1. I have not received my bonus points for being a VIP since the first month I subscribed 5-6 months ago. After 3 unanswered emails to support I finally contacted the better Business Bureau. My claim was responded to within 24 hours and I received my points. I should not have to resort to using a 3rd party to motivate you to meet your commitments. Most especially given how you respond to my supposed violations of my own commitment to the EULA.

2. The majority of my in game tickets have either taken so long to get a response that I had already moved on or simply been rejected. There have been a few shining moments and I thank those DM's for their effort but for the most part I and utterly dissatisfied. My favorite was when I turned in 3 medium dragonshards with my bank toon to get a mem trinket (and received no warning that it was BTC) and was told by the DM that I should make sure I read the descriptions to be certain I understand the consequences of my actions. I will say outright that I am a fantastic reader and can maintain a good 6-700 wpm pace while still retaining the majority of what I read but I struggle mightily with reading things that don't actually exist.

3. Premium accounts cannot enter help tickets. I'm not sure how restricting a paying customer from entering help tickets is benefiting anyone.

4. This Mabar fiasco. Hundreds (thousands?) of people accused of cheating with nary a clue as to what they may have done wrong with who knows how many banned from the game. No warning, no explanation, just one and done. I know at least 10 in my guild who were banned.

Please Turbine, take this obstacle and turn it into an opportunity to provide me and the other loyal customers with some assurance that we actually matter. I know my money matters, you want it and you need it. But I'd like to know that you have some sort of motivation to keep the player base happy.

Yours truly,

Loyal Customer (pending)

[grodon9999]

Honest question: what do people think would be a reasonable compensation? Emphasis on "reasonable" please!

100 TP really is underwhelming, but I'm curious what most people would consider a more appropriate response.

100 TP to those of us who got our honor and integrity insulted with the warning.

500 TP for those who were erroneously banned.

[Jawny_Carcinogen]

I personally think that at least giving us enough points to buy a pack is reasonable, as it looks like quite a few of us won't be paying for VIP anymore...

As someone who was banned and treated not only like a criminal, but a criminal in a third world country, 100tp as a compensation is pretty laughable. That doesn't even cover the number of points i spent on the event that got me the ban to begin with

[Tinead]

You know, last night and today, several people stated that they thought this was the result of some kind of automated computer error and was all a terrible mistake. I thought these people were bonkers because surely no company would create a computer program that could ban a person's account on its own volition. That would be the height of stupidity. Sure, a program to flag accounts to be reviewed by a person who could then ban if necessary. But letting a computer, which cannot distinguish between an error and purposeful cheating, ban someone's account? No, I said, no company would be idiotic enough to do that!

To everyone patting Turbine on the back for their nice apology and the 100 TP, are you serious?!

+1 Rep ;)

[dejafu]

State of the Game Address from Eladrin with official guaranteed plans on all remaining PrE enhancement lines

Addendum: What would people find reasonable AND relevant ;)

[EatSmart]

Whilst I am obviously angry that this happened in the first place, I appreciate the rapid (by MMO standards) resolution to this.

[Veileira]

I appreciate the sincerity and honesty (finally) of admitting this mistake. However, 100 TP seems like it hardly covers the 14 hours of paid subscription (plus however long it takes for accounts to be reinstated). The cash value of lost game time is not far off. It's not so much that people deserve more, but that it does feel very 'token' considering the emotional distress and the stigma of cheating. Even extending subscriptions by a few days seems more appropriate.

Agreed. I may be free to play and was not banned or even warned, but to see people with VIP banned and only receive a token 100 points instead of extra days on their subscription to make up for the ones they lost through an error on Turbine's part, seems very cheap to me.

I'm just thankful to see some communication on this, was researching other games and crying because I had completely lost confidence in Turbine to the point I didn't want to play DDO anymore. It's my favorite game. I was emotionally distressed and it didn't even happen to me!

[smatt]

Don't bother calling the Account Management line.... Just talked to a guildie who got off the phone with them about a 1/2 hour ago, and now a few others have posted the same on our guild site . The person on the other end rudely said there's nothing they can do send an e-mail and hung up.

It's apparent that there was something going on and SOME people were doing it intentionally. It looks like the way they tracked it is cause for the error. So the people that did get sanctioned in error can again thank the people who were actually exploiting intentionally. IMO, a better way to track that behavior should be implemented and those found to be the REAL culprits should get more than 7 days. They should at the very least lose ALL Mabar equipment on the their entire account, and get a 60 day suspension.

[stoolcannon]

You know, last night and today, several people stated that they thought this was the result of some kind of automated computer error and was all a terrible mistake. I thought these people were bonkers because surely no company would create a computer program that could ban a person's account on its own volition. That would be the height of stupidity. Sure, a program to flag accounts to be reviewed by a person who could then ban if necessary. But letting a computer, which cannot distinguish between an error and purposeful cheating, ban someone's account? No, I said, no company would be idiotic enough to do that!

To everyone patting Turbine on the back for their nice apology and the 100 TP, are you serious?!

HAL does make a good point about automated banning and considering he is an automated program that likes to BAN astronauts from his ship he has perspective on this issue.

I am still happy to see an apology from Turbine and they have retained me as a customer with their response.

[HouseAtreides]

This is what you tell your community after banning/warning the vast majority?

How about next time you at least say something to the effect of "I will look into it" instead of playing forums eradicator for hours and hours without saying ONE SINGLE THING about it being an accident?

How about removing the points and bans from peoples forums accounts who got them for mentioning YOUR SCREW UP? Because without them speaking out against the rules I am pretty sure this would not have gotten the attention it did. Or the attention of major MMO websites, and let's be honest, the articles popping up all over about Turbines unreal lack of customer service is the ONLY reason this is being fixed. Every other time you folks have made a mistake we have pretty much been told to go pound sand.


100turbine points? SHOVE EM!

[dogpig00]

You know, last night and today, several people stated that they thought this was the result of some kind of automated computer error and was all a terrible mistake. I thought these people were bonkers because surely no company would create a computer program that could ban a person's account on its own volition. That would be the height of stupidity. Sure, a program to flag accounts to be reviewed by a person who could then ban if necessary. But letting a computer, which cannot distinguish between an error and purposeful cheating, ban someone's account? No, I said, no company would be idiotic enough to do that!

To everyone patting Turbine on the back for their nice apology and the 100 TP, are you serious?!

Deleting threads are not done by computer program. If Turbine had been deleting threads constantly, we won't even know how many people is affected.

Besides, new threads regarding to bannings are still being deleted right now.

[Lorien_the_First_One]

Addendum: What would people find reasonable AND relevant ;)

xp weekend? :p


Seriously though... VIPs suspended should get a one day extention (its only worth worth pennies, its however reasonable under contract law). For the others, the 100 TP is probably fine.

They should also publically commit not to use that auto-suspension system again. Clearly human intervention is requrired and their tool is faulty.

[maddmatt70]

Less than a percent of users were impacted by the issue, but we will be contacting all of the impacted accounts. Note that if your contact info in your account is incorrect that you may not receive the email, but the lifting of the suspension will still happen.

At least 5 of my 13 guildies were impacted so I question your percent of user statistic.

[BFD20001]

100TP? Are you ****ing joking?!?!?

First you ban us, then you cover it up and finally after admiting you ****ed the dog AGAIN, the compensation is 100TP? Really?

And this is ONLY if you were actually banned?!?!?

Pathetic.

[MLM_Bob_o]

I just wanted to say thanks turbine. A problem popping up and being fixed in less than 24hrs, I do consider that good service. As I only got a warning I feel for those who were banned and have yet to recieve their accounts back. I do wish anyone who recieved the warning or ban got the 100tp as I spent no time gaming last night, but most of the night surfing forums for an answer. Thanks for the quick fix. :)

[airbornerangers]

my account is now unbanned, but i must say that it was a speedy fix, i gathered maybe 100 of the mote thingies, got a cloak made that a guildie gave me the stuff to make and was banned for an exploit!!!!!!!!!!!
100 tp is sure gonna take the sting out of that for me, not!
how your system works is way out of whack that it automatically bans and account is very wrong!
i feel a rant is coming but right now i am just a little bit angry to make sense, but i will say, if you ask any of my guildies, friends that i have made and played with, i am a very quiet,nice, and very giving in game as i like to be in real life. but this fiasco has definitely left a after taste in my mouth and i would like to thank you honesty in solving my problem in a timely manner................................

[Yshkabibble]

Well:

1 hour of trying to figure out what the heck happened + 1 hour on hold with customer service (I gave up then) + extreme dissatisfaction and frustration with Turbine and their customer service and communication or lack thereof = 100 Turbine Points.


Gee, thanks.

[smatt]

Sorry Smattasaur but it looks like only about 15 minutes! I know you were hoping for more peace and quiet but oh well, we'll be back on today to annoy the snot out of you some more!

Thank you very much Turbine for the response.


LOL, I'm not even logged in at the moment. :D

Hey at least they got on it... That being said the REALculprits should be whacked just for causing the rest of the players all this. They KNEW exactly what they were doing... :cool:

[stoolcannon]

At least 5 of my 13 guildies were impacted so I question your percent of user statistic.

Yeah I've got to agree here. I had 10 in my guild alone. We do not have 1000 members, or even 100.

[J1NG]

What I think is the best actual compenstation from Turbine? A "reasonable" one too? Besides the 100 TP?

Forget content. For one update. Forget it. Bugs also.

Build us a PROPER exploit detection team/system. That has secondary checks on it. And then a human check.

I know this will make me satisfied as compensation from Turbine.

J1NG

[Memnir]

They should also publically commit not to use that auto-suspension system again. Clearly human intervention is requrired and their tool is faulty.Agreed.

[BobM]

Thank you

The 100TP don't mean much but the explanation and apology does. I checked and the banned message is gone from my account information already.

If there really was an elicit act, could we at least be told what we were not suppose to be doing? I can't think of anything I did that could be considered an exploit.

[stoolcannon]

Well:

1 hour of trying to figure out what the heck happened + 1 hour on hold with customer service (I gave up then) + extreme dissatisfaction and frustration with Turbine and their customer service and communication or lack thereof = 100 Turbine Points.


Gee, thanks.

What? I'm sure you can't possibly earn more than 50 cents per hour so 1 dollar worth of TP is the perfect response.

Oh wait, it's not 1970 so maybe you do earn more than a dollar per hour.

[k1ngp1n]

At least 5 of my 13 guildies were impacted so I question your percent of user statistic.

Unless they're counting all accounts ever made, that number is really suspect.

[Rallie]

Honest question: what do people think would be a reasonable compensation? Emphasis on "reasonable" please!

100 TP really is underwhelming, but I'm curious what most people would consider a more appropriate response.

100 TP is almost more insulting than if they had offered nothing at all. It's offensive enough to be falsely accused, convicted, and punished for doing something wrong, but $.70 or so worth of virtual points isn't going to help.

Honestly, I don't care if any 'compensation' came in the form of TP. I'd be happy with a detailed explanation of how this happened, a sincere apology, and an assurance that whatever went wrong will be avoided next time. OTOH, some kind of compensation is a nice gesture. My suggestion? How about everyone affected gets a free unique item, like the founders hats, or the various scepters etc that they've given out in the past? I'd go with a bludgeoning weapon. We could call it the Ban Hammer. :)

[Chai]

100 TP and a lame post? I wasn't even banned and I find that offensive...

You guys screwed up big time and tried to cover it up. You don't get to walk away unharmed just by giving out 100TP...


100 TP is almost more insulting than if they had offered nothing at all. It's offensive enough to be falsely accused, convicted, and punished for doing something wrong, but $.70 or so worth of virtual points isn't going to help.

There is no cover up. A statement that they messed up and what they are doing to resolve it is hardly a cover up.

Youre soooo offended, yet youre still here logging in daily. Go figure. People who are REALLY offended by this kind of thing are already figuring out what they are going to do with all this spare time they now have due to not wanting to play DDO anymore. The rest of the moaners are crying wolf, and will continue to log in to enjoy their DDO experience afterward.

I think theres alot of crying wolf for them to admit they screwed up, and now more crying wolf when they admit it. So whats this "walking away without harm" you speak of? What do you feel is an acceptable solution? I want to hear what players who dont think 100 TP is acceptable for a few hours vacation think is an acceptable payback for this kind of error.


They should also publically commit not to use that auto-suspension system again. Clearly human intervention is requrired and their tool is faulty.

This is the best thing I have read so far in the entire Mabar event ban hammer debacle of 2010. Auto-suspension and auto-notification fails in MMOs.

[Freeman]

I was not banned, but in my opinion, compensation is not the correct approach. I would expect two things. First, a sincere apology, which I think the post qualifies as. Second, I would like to know how their process broke down and led to this, and what steps they are taking to prevent it from happening again. I don't need to know details about any exploit. I would like assurances that this mistake will not happen again.

[Anthios888]

Less than a percent of users were impacted by the issue, but we will be contacting all of the impacted accounts. Note that if your contact info in your account is incorrect that you may not receive the email, but the lifting of the suspension will still happen.

I know that <1% seems small, but that is a huge number of players to be affected for an event that only a portion participated in to begin with. DDO boasted 1 million new players since free to play (http://www.massiveonlinegamer.com/news/announcements/488-ddo-boasts-one-million-f2p-players), not to mention paid subscribers. Are we are really talking about tens of thousands of people?

[rest]

Less than a percent of users were impacted by the issue

We can't trust your automated ban system. How can we trust your math?

[Andora]

You made two mistakes yesterday. The first was the bans and mass emails with warnings. The second was to delete a thread that was asking what was going on. So much anger could have been avoided if you had only said that you where going to check into the event and then locked the thread. That would have been all it took. When it looks like a cover up folks start looking for pitch forks and torches. Learn from this.

Still mad. You hurt my husband bad. As his care provider and wife of 35 years, I have a black pit of rage and hate right now that is going to take some time to get over. Get someone higher up the food chain to come on and say THEY are sorry about the mistake.

[Cyr]

Don't worry guys Turbine's autoban system just had a little hick up. This could never happen again.

Turbine clearly was upfront about this from the start, didn't delete threads about it, hand out infractions, gave a clear reason for accounts being bannned, or do anything else that showed anything but a transparent and forthright dedication to doing the right thing for their customers.

Also it is very apparent that now that Turbine has realized there was a mistake in their autobanning coding that only those guilty exploiters who knew exactly what they were doing will remain banned. Of course these players know exactly what they did and any exploits concerning the Mabar event were obviously exploits and impossible to have happen accidental. The obvious nature of the exploits of course makes any details about the actual nature of the exploit completely unneeded. It is also apparent that any exploits that involve disconnects are impossible to have occur unless you intentionally disconnect from the game as DDO is coded with such amazing skill that the game can never crash, creates electrical power to run your system if your power fails, and generates its own uninterpretable internet connection to Turbine's state of the art servers.

[grodon9999]

Yeah I've got to agree here. I had 10 in my guild alone. We do not have 1000 members, or even 100.

We have 50-60 active members, about 10 got banned and many more warned.

[Eladiun]

There is no cover up. A statement that they messed up and what they are doing to resolve it is hardly a cover up.

Youre soooo offended, yet youre still here logging in daily. Go figure. People who are REALLY offended by this kind of thing are already figuring out what they are going to do with all this spare time they now have due to not wanting to play DDO anymore. The rest of the moaners are crying wolf, and will continue to log in to enjoy their DDO experience afterward.

I think theres alot of crying wolf for them to admit they screwed up, and now more crying wolf when they admit it. So whats this "walking away without harm" you speak of? What do you feel is an acceptable solution? I want to hear what players who dont think 100 TP is acceptable for a few hours vacation think is an acceptable payback for this kind of error.


Didn't I see a post from you earlier stating that everyone who said they were wrongly banned was lying? Isn't being wrong once a day enough for you?

[DaggomaticDwarf]

NO company likes bad press.
http://www.massively.com/2010/11/10/ddo-endless-night-or-endless-bannings/

[Ovrad]

Looks like I'm unbanned now.

Thanks for this message. However, a simple "Something might have gone awry, we're looking into it, thanks for your patience and understanding" earlier would've have been a lot better...

[~Cereals_Alt]

I would love to see a list of all of the things you can buy from the DDO store for 100 Turbine points. I know one thing you can buy a spectral key tomorrow and see if you can get yourself banned twice in a month. That would be EPIC! (NOT!!)

[locus]

Didn't I see a post from you earlier stating that everyone who said they were wrongly banned was lying? Isn't being wrong once a day enough for you?

No, you didn't imagine that post. It would be good for people with feet in their mouths to stop typing for a while ;)

[stoolcannon]

There is no cover up. A statement that they messed up and what they are doing to resolve it is hardly a cover up.

Youre soooo offended, yet youre still here logging in daily. Go figure. People who are REALLY offended by this kind of thing are already figuring out what they are going to do with all this spare time they now have due to not wanting to play DDO anymore. The rest of the moaners are crying wolf, and will continue to log in to enjoy their DDO experience afterward.

I think theres alot of crying wolf for them to admit they screwed up, and now more crying wolf when they admit it. So whats this "walking away without harm" you speak of? What do you feel is an acceptable solution? I want to hear what players who dont think 100 TP is acceptable for a few hours vacation think is an acceptable payback for this kind of error.

If this had truly been a mistake with 100's of accounts being banned with no warning or provocation then they would have released a statement last night within the hour instead of deleting everyone's threads on the subject.

Trust me, pagers were going off (ok we know no one has had a pager since 1999 but the concept is appropriate). I think this was done by design, they got a much larger number of people than expected, created a huge uproar and then chose to carefully craft a response saying it was an error.

So yes, they admitted they screwed up but I don't believe they are being genuine with what the screwup was. I don't believe for a minute this was a pure coding error.

[Eschelon]

Honest question: what do people think would be a reasonable compensation? Emphasis on "reasonable" please!

100 TP really is underwhelming, but I'm curious what most people would consider a more appropriate response.

An updated and fair policy in regards to banning accounts would do more than any turbine points for me. As of right now I really don't like the idea of being banned with no explanation. This fiasco just highlighted a failed policy.

[shagath]

Thank you for correcting this. All hope is not lost. :)

[ZombieKenny2]

Less than one percent of active accounts, or less than one percent of accounts. I bet its a wildly different number there.

[rest]

I know that <1% seems small, but that is a huge number of players to be affected for an event that only a portion participated in to begin with. DDO boasted 1 million new players since free to play (http://www.massiveonlinegamer.com/news/announcements/488-ddo-boasts-one-million-f2p-players), not to mention paid subscribers. Are we are really talking about tens of thousands of people?

1% of a million players is certainly not small potatoes. And that's just NEW players since f2p.

[k1ngp1n]

I don't believe for a minute this was a pure coding error.

Neither do I. Been exposed to corporate culture for far too long to believe it for an instant.

[Sphinx111]

Dear Turbine,

As somebody who works in a customer facing role for the world's largest IT organisation, providing a service not too dissimilar to what you provide us, I find your dealing with this matter completely unprofessional.

You've clearly done no quality checks to ensure the system you use to allocate bans is correct, and furthermore, you've written basically (if the figures of 'less than 1% of the population' are correct) at least 10,000 banning or warning emails (based from the fact that you yourselves discussed at the back end of last year how DDO had now hit over 1,000,000 accounts) - that's right, 1% may not sound like much with your spin, but in actuality, it's a lot.

There's clearly a tendency on your behalf to completely discredit the intelligence of the average DDO gamer, a large proportion of which are probably more intelligent than the idiots that are responsible for providing the systems that mistakedly banned a large number of my non-exploiting guildies in the initial case. DDO is a service that is paid for by money, and as such, the fact that you do not take this seriously (100 turbine points equates to what, around $2 compensation?) says that we cannot take you seriously.

I find your behaviour to the DDO population not only insulting, but unprofessional, and your public response in nothing short of laughable. Personally, if I ever sent such an email to a client regarding their misuse of one of the systems we provide them mistakedly, I would get reprimanded, and it is likely the client would withdraw their support for the service my organisation was providing.

Regards,
An unhappy gamer

(P.S. Let's see how long it takes for this post to get 'censorted')

[Memnir]

We can't trust your automated ban system. How can we trust your math?Simple!
It's an automated tool that has a 100% accuracy-rate in going through the.... oh, wait. Never mind.

[stoolcannon]

We have 50-60 active members, about 10 got banned and many more warned.

Yes I know because I'm in your guild. (dingal) :)

[Gratch]

Woot... unbanned and able to post again.

100TP is a bit underwhelming but w/e. I mean in real life if the police came to Tolero's house grabbed her and stuck her in jail for a night... only to realize they weren't actually looking for her. They'd mostly just apologize, return her back to her house in the morning with more apologies... ask her not to sue... but they wouldn't give her a reward... well unless she helped them catch the real dopplegangerTolero and return the jewels to the jewelry store who was actually offering the reward. NM... the jewelry store wouldn't offer a reward or really care about said jewels... insurance covers all that and I bet dopplegangerTolero was an insider from the jewelry store!

Hmmm... maybe I'm not quite ready for the forums yet.

[Raiderone]

I've always been very cautious about not exploiting something. Not that i know any given exploit.

This just makes me even more worried that such and such thing might be an exploit.

This whole thing leaves a really bad feeling in my stomach.

I think it's time DDO explains exploiting better.

[Sirea]

While the apology is nice, Turbine can take their 100TP and well, you know...

[KingKoz]

I got up this morning (11/10/2010 to a WARNING email from Turbine regarding the Mabar Endless nights Festival in which I participated 3 or 4 times stating I participated in an exploit. I was there the first night but had to leave a couple hours into the festival and came back just as Turbine was closing the event down due to a bug. A couple times in the middle of the week and finally on the last night. I used NO EXPLOIT and have no clue what the exploit is that I am supposed to have used. Now I read on the forums that the sending of these notices were in error and Turbine is offerring 100TP's to those that reveived these notices. I too feel insulted by this 'accidental' warning and although the TP's are nice, an email with an apology or retraction of the warning notice from my account would be better. Don't get me wrong....I will still take the TP's, but I would also like an apology via email. (I know this probably will not happen) Not an inpersonal apology offerred in the Forums. I don't normally read the forums, except when there are issues.

Waiting for a retraction of the warning from my account and the 100TP's as promised

Koz

[tihocan]

Thanks for the apology.
I'm not sure how I feel about all this. I still have a hard time believing you started issuing mass bans at peak time and it took you 12+ hours to acknowledge the mistake. It hints at some serious internal issues I'm hoping will be promptly resolved.
100 TP's are kind of a joke but I didn't really expect anything, so why not.. I would have just appreciated a faster reaction from the dev team.

[Merian]

Less than a percent of users were impacted by the issue...

if you want to say that like it's a small number, then shouldn't a "real" person do the banning?

[Rauven]

I still have no faith in going into the Event again, should it be brought back. This was just too colossal an error. Like many things with the Mabar event... it was an error that simply should have never happened.


I also think that 100 points is a bit anemic of a mea culpa - but I wasn't banned, so what do I know? This glaring error has shaken, or re-shaken, a lot of faith in Turbine amongst the player base, and being erroneously banned is one hell of an inconvenience.


Shame on you, Turbine. All the way around.

Well said Memnir. Furthermore I think this event has brought to light a very serious problem with DDO and Turbine. Specifically their "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy in regards to "exploits". Put simply, if Turbine had a clear, transparent policy of reporting on known exploits (ie events or actions that they consider exploitation, or taking advantage, of a bug/flaw/unintended effect/ability, etc) Players would have no excuse when they receive a warning, infraction, suspension or ban. So long as Turbine refuses to acknowledge that something is an "exploit", continues to obfuscate, hide and censor any information in relation to a possible "exploit" the possibility of a repeat of the "Maban" event remains. Turbine needs to implement a system that documents known exploits and reports them to the Player base in a fashion that is more easily accessible than searching through bug reports. This system needs to clearly identify whether an action is punishable or not. Until then we all remain under the shadow of the ominous Sword of Maban.

[stoolcannon]

Neither do I. Been exposed to corporate culture for far too long to believe it for an instant.

Yep. I've been in the corporate world for a long time and I know the game well. I am a master of using smoke and mirrors tactics as it's a requirement for corporate survival. Sometimes your only option is to polish a turd but this turd isn't gonna polish.

[ryingar]

Im not happy about what happened, but I do like that they responded to it within a reasonable amount of time. Thank you for that bit.

Though I still think T was out on a hot date last night and was upset about having to break off from that to put out the fires. Only a few of which I helped to fan, mind you. Only a few and funny ones. I still want my "where do threads go when they die" thread to flourish. That one was moving in a very deciededly humorus direction, before it weighted down with the bloated corpses of dead threads.

Cheers, heading back down to the bar.

[Eladiun]

An updated and fair policy in regards to banning accounts would do more than any turbine points for me. As of right now I really don't like the idea of being banned with no explanation. This fiasco just highlighted a failed policy.


I agree with this. A clear and update policy with an expedited appeals process.

[wildemage]

We should not be surprised.

[D'arc_Tangent]

Thanks for restoring my account, Turbine type dudes.

[Hot_Water]

I mainly solo, keep to myself and don't bother any one if I can help it.
So yes I would like to know exactly what it was, that I was suppost to have done!
What was this exploit that I supposably did to incure this warning posted on my permenant file?

[MyfSeran]

I'm one of those 'affected' players, and let me tell you, 100 TP is like being accused of cheating on my husband, him having proof that I didn't and then him saying 'Oh, my bad.' and handing me a regular sized Hershey bar for an apology. I'm lucky that when I was disconnected all I was doing was shuffling inventory from one toon to the next, rather than say....in the Shroud crafting on my Greensteel. What kinda girl do they think I am, to be bought off so quickly and so cheeply??

It's been actually a huge inconveince, I'm now off sync with my guild for raiding, since we had one planned for last night. I got none of the loot I needed, none of the ingredients I needed, none of the plat I needed and none of the favour to go towards the Great Heart of Wood I need. And I didn't get to finish my Longsword, as had been planned last night.

500 TP would be closer to soothing my frustration, 1000 would end it. 1000 and a product key to give to a friend so that they can go VIP for a month and experience the game as well and make me happy enough with Turbine to actually give it to someone.

Just my two cents....
MyfSeran

[Humongus]

Just a quick note -

I did in fact spend 30 mins on hold then a brisk 10 minutes with account management. I will confirm what others have posted, it's a in-game support issue and Account Management won't be able to help.

I received a 3 day account suspension and (unfortunately) was booted from the game right at the end of Chains of Flame (ugh) right before we completed.

As of this moment, I am restored (don't know about the 100 turbine points yet) and able to access the game.

I personally find comedy in this (as in, what a total collosal screw up - can you imagine if a network provider shut down a geography during, for example, Monday Night Footbal) and it secretly makes me happy that in an 18 year technology career, I have so far (knock on wood) not been responsible for anything like this :).

Considering how annoyed I was for this, I actually applaud Turbine for fixing this so quickly. For those of you who were banned like me, have hope, you will probably be back up soon if not already.

[k1ngp1n]

this turd isn't gonna polish.

Yep... still a little too wet and mushy. And the stench!!!!!!!

[gott_ist_tot]

100TP is a small refund for 16 hours downtime and stigma of a cheater. The latter still being stuck to peeps with warnings and no refund, although I'd rather have no refund than... this.

[Rickpa]

As an interesting aside, did anyone notice that the e-mail said:


Your Dungeons & Dragons Online: Stormreach account has been suspended as a result of a confirmed Player Code of Conduct violation.

I think someone needs to update that bit of text. :rolleyes:

[TheDearLeader]

I golfclap to this.

/golfclap

Good to hear.

[stoolcannon]

I'm one of those 'affected' players, and let me tell you, 100 TP is like being accused of cheating on my husband, him having proof that I didn't and then him saying 'Oh, my bad.' and handing me a regular sized Hershey bar for an apology. I'm lucky that when I was disconnected all I was doing was shuffling inventory from one toon to the next, rather than say....in the Shroud crafting on my Greensteel. What kinda girl do they think I am, to be bought off so quickly and so cheeply??

It's been actually a huge inconveince, I'm now off sync with my guild for raiding, since we had one planned for last night. I got none of the loot I needed, none of the ingredients I needed, none of the plat I needed and none of the favour to go towards the Great Heart of Wood I need. And I didn't get to finish my Longsword, as had been planned last night.

500 TP would be closer to soothing my frustration, 1000 would end it. 1000 and a product key to give to a friend so that they can go VIP for a month and experience the game as well and make me happy enough with Turbine to actually give it to someone.

Just my two cents....
MyfSeran

I'm not quite sure going right to "cheating on your husband" is an appropriate comparison but the relative responses are about right in comparison :)

[k1ngp1n]

As an interesting aside, did anyone notice that the e-mail said:



I think someone needs to update that bit of text. :rolleyes:

Mine said Eberron Unlimited.

[Chai]

Didn't I see a post from you earlier stating that everyone who said they were wrongly banned was lying? Isn't being wrong once a day enough for you?

Im not that absolute. What I stated was the people who get banned for offenses know what they did, even if they were not literally informed what they were banned for, including screenshots, FRAPs, and 8 years of college education posed as legal credentials to prove every single statement made.

There were still people disciplined for this, even if it is not the total number of accounts affected by the ban. How many other times have we seen mass discipline with people moaning they didnt know why it happened, when they sure as heck did know? I can name quite a few, but we cant discuss specific exploits. One major MOD was even delayed right around the time of one of these occurrences, just to make sure 100s of people wouldnt miss out on the launch.

Inaccurate number of accounts being banned has nothing to do with the people who actually did something wrong not knowing what they did. If they are intelligent enough to build a decent DnD character, they likely have the common sense to understand when they are crossing this kind of line.

Sucks that people were wrongly banned. What are we going to do about it? Again I ask the question - what do you feel is reasonable payback for something like that?

[Thargnar]

Honest question: what do people think would be a reasonable compensation? Emphasis on "reasonable" please!

100 TP really is underwhelming, but I'm curious what most people would consider a more appropriate response.

At least 250 to 500, 1000 might be a bit much for them to swallow, but would go a lot further toward really saying sorry and mollifying people. 100 isn't even enough for a silly hat, it does feel insulting.

[~Cereals_Alt]

Players who got falsely accused and banned are getting less turbine points than those of us who got this email from the preview event:

This email was sent to advise you that 200 Turbine points have been added to your DDO subscription on the account “Censored”. These points were granted as compensation because you may have lost or been unable to fully utilize 4 Ethereal Key(s) during the October 20th Preview of the Endless Night Mabar Festival.

[fuzzy1guy]

A screwup this monumental.. And THIS is really the official response turbine?

I'm just stunned.


Have you no shame at all?

[madmaxhunter]

What I think is the best actual compenstation from Turbine? A "reasonable" one too? Besides the 100 TP?

Forget content. For one update. Forget it. Bugs also.

Build us a PROPER exploit detection team/system. That has secondary checks on it. And then a human check.

I know this will make me satisfied as compensation from Turbine.

J1NG

Agreed, and, as a parent, how about a bit of "positive" reinforcement? If a player encounters a bug, and turns it in, give them a "bounty" for finding it. The best way to find the issues. At that point there would be NO reason for bans. There are too many people who would want the TPs.

[Tholar]

Time for an unpopular post.

I will start off by saying first, I am not a Turbine fanboy. I enjoy playing DDO, but think their customer support needs some work. OK, it needs a lot of work.

With that in mind, get over it. Turbine admitted a mistake, and is fixing the problem. 100TP is a joke, but it could have easily been 0.

Seriously, what do you want?

They apologized, they offered some small payment. Do they need to give you a FEMA trailer as well?

[patang01]

We had at least one person banned from our guild and I found out about it when he left a message in our multigame clan forum.

I was never affected and have avoided to voice my opinion until there was some kind of response. I do appreciate to finally get some information on this but I hope this serves as a reminder that some information, early on - even if it's only to tell everyone that you're looking into it will avoid a lot of grief. I really can't see anything good about losing long paying customer due to a technical issue that could've been smoothed over by a couple of reassuring sentences.

As for the 100 points - I'm sure people appreciate a small compensation for their trouble but I really don't see that insignificant gesture go over very well. I would have suggested like 5x guild renown or 5x xp-pots for the trouble - something to make up for lost time playing and lost time with guilds.

Just my 2 cents.

[EatSmart]

Players who got falsely accused and banned are getting less turbine points than those of us who got this email from the preview event:

This email was sent to advise you that 200 Turbine points have been added to your DDO subscription on the account “Censored”. These points were granted as compensation because you may have lost or been unable to fully utilize 4 Ethereal Key(s) during the October 20th Preview of the Endless Night Mabar Festival.

That was 50 per key lost, ie the cost of paying from the item from the store.

[SlightlyBent]

Less than a percent of users were impacted by the issue, but we will be contacting all of the impacted accounts. Note that if your contact info in your account is incorrect that you may not receive the email, but the lifting of the suspension will still happen.

Ill buy less than 1% of historic DDO accounts (every account ever made)

I wont buy less than 1% of players who participated in the Mabar event- you know those classes of your code that the detection error actually stems from.

But sure, distort the situation, its not like we have any rights on this autocratic forum anyway!

[The-Last-Wolf]

Evening All,

I wasn't going to post here but I felt I had to after reading some of the negative responses.

It is extremely unfortunate that this issue occured, and I have great sympathy for anyone affected by it. Those people who (I believe) were kicked mid quest and then unable to relog were obviously the worst effected, but even those who were merely warned for "cheating" are also affected, as no one likes to be accused of unwarranted acts.

However, that said we should as a community also deal with the facts as they stand.

The issue I believe occured out of standard hours for Turbine employees.
It has/is being resolved in under 24 hours
Turbine responded that they were investigating the issue (the incorrect warning/bannings)
Turbine has now responded with an explanation and apology
Turbine has offered compensation to the affected users.
DDO is still just a form of entertainment, not a life effecting thing.

For anyone who thinks the Turbine people are not kicking themselves hard for this, well, trust me I am sure they are. I don't know any of them personally, but having worked in a similar business, I can empathise with them.

So how about as a community we take a step back, digest the facts, and realise that whilst it is bad this issue occured, kicking people when they are down is a nasty horrible thing to do. People have had their rants, overreactions, calm complaints etc. The situation has been resolved in a timely manner.

Those are my thoughts, please note I am not defending anyone, merely empathising with all sides here and calling for calm rational discussion.

Regards
Wolf

[Thrudh]

What of those that have cancelled their VIP accounts?

They should have waited 24 hours before making a rash move.

They are probably still happy with cancelling, or if they wish they hadn't now, they learned a valuable lesson (i.e. don't over-react - give a business SOME time to react to your complaint).

[J1NG]

Agreed, and, as a parent, how about a bit of "positive" reinforcement? If a player encounters a bug, and turns it in, give them a "bounty" for finding it. The best way to find the issues. At that point there would be NO reason for bans. There are too many people who would want the TPs.

Er, no. Please no. No on the positive reinforcement...

I would end up owning half of turbine then with the amount of bugs I find... :p ;)

J1NG

[augie]

Hooray. That makes it totally worth being booted in the middle of an epic raid and handed a 3-day ban for doing nothing.

I can't wait to spend all those TP's on some brand new lavender hair dye or maybe a couple gold seal hirelings.

[stoolcannon]

Im not that absolute. What I stated was the people who get banned for offenses know what they did, even if they were not literally informed what they were banned for, including screenshots, FRAPs, and 8 years of college education posed as legal credentials to prove every single statement made.

There were still people disciplined for this, even if it is not the total number of accounts affected by the ban. How many other times have we seen mass discipline with people moaning they didnt know why it happened, when they sure as heck did know? I can name quite a few, but we cant discuss specific exploits. One major MOD was even delayed right around the time of one of these occurrences, just to make sure 100s of people wouldnt miss out on the launch.

Inaccurate number of accounts being banned has nothing to do with the people who actually did something wrong not knowing what they did. If they are intelligent enough to build a decent DnD character, they likely have the common sense to understand when they are crossing this kind of line.

Sucks that people were wrongly banned. What are we going to do about it? Again I ask the question - what do you feel is reasonable payback for something like that?

Did you eat a lot of paint chips as a child?

[Qzipoun]

There is no cover up. A statement that they messed up and what they are doing to resolve it is hardly a cover up.

Youre soooo offended, yet youre still here logging in daily. Go figure. People who are REALLY offended by this kind of thing are already figuring out what they are going to do with all this spare time they now have due to not wanting to play DDO anymore. The rest of the moaners are crying wolf, and will continue to log in to enjoy their DDO experience afterward.

I think theres alot of crying wolf for them to admit they screwed up, and now more crying wolf when they admit it. So whats this "walking away without harm" you speak of? What do you feel is an acceptable solution? I want to hear what players who dont think 100 TP is acceptable for a few hours vacation think is an acceptable payback for this kind of error.

No cover up? The 8 page thread I have saved on my desktop begs to differ. There is a HUGE difference between some technical/human error that leads to some unfortunate event and Tubine coming out and saying 'oops here's 100TP" and what happened here.

Just think back at what happened here for a little context:

Turbine created a live event to celebrate halloween, it had its ups and downs but overall those who liked it had fun. This was weeks ago, people have since moved on. Suddenly, these people are getting emails calling them exploiters ( let's face it, that's exactly what the email said). This email gave absolutely no reason an hve many people a direct ban. Think about it, a ban is the ultimate punishment in an MMO, Turbine's customers were told to their face that they are cheaters and don't deserve to be able to play.

Again, errors happen, if right after these emails went out someone made a post saying 'oopsie', it wouldn't be bad, but nooo! Someone made a legitimate thread about the issue and there were a full 8 pages dedicated to trying to figure out what happened. There was no sharing of exploits, namecalling, flaming or trolling (not any more than your average thread) then all of a sudden HULK-SMASH!!!!!!!!! The thread disappears with no explanation and Tolero starts making posts vanish righ and left (many VERY legitimate ones) and here only posts are very rude saying something along the lines of "I told you before don't make me say it again, shut up".

As I said, I have the whole original thread saved, there's nothing wrong with it. Any competent team would have made a post satin "interesting, I personally don't know but will look into it, please keep discussion civil". Deleting a thread with no explanation IS NOT THE WAY TO GO!

You've now insulted your players, then forced them to shut up with no explanation, that's taking a bad situation ad driving it off a cliff. Go to tentonhammer or massively, there are forum threads already created and people who don't even play DDO now know about Turbine's fubar.

The appropriate response SHOULD have been a post in the original thread. Given that hulk-smash was the approach taken, the OP in this thread should have been very different. Turbine needs to come out and say they screwed up big time not that there was a glitch. 100TP is irrelevant, any TP is irrelevant because all that says is we will insult you, ban you, make you shut up and all we have to do is grow 100TP at you and all is fine, all is not fine

I don't read the OP as an apology, I read it as an explanation... There should be a game-wide bonus of some sort, Turbine needs to admit they dropped the ball and try to side with it's players, turn this ridiculous event into something fun for players

As I see it now, it doesn't look like they give a shut about us

Thumbs getting tired, puting phone down... :P

[stoolcannon]

Hooray. That makes it totally worth being booted in the middle of an epic raid and handed a 3-day ban for doing nothing.

I can't wait to spend all those TP's on some brand new lavender hair dye or maybe a couple gold seal hirelings.

Better get those hirelings on sale, a level 20 favored soul is 75pts.

[Eladiun]

Sucks that people were wrongly banned. What are we going to do about it? Again I ask the question - what do you feel is reasonable payback for something like that?


For me an apology email and the hundred TP are a nice start. Reworking their entire policty on exploits, account suspensions, and appeals would be an acceptable payback. Right now what do we have? A 3 year old thread written by Quarion/KK...that's pretty much it.

Not doing this sort of thing in the middle of the evening when the lights are out a Turbine would be another.

[DallasXXIII]

Yay at least I can post again though have not tried logging in to the game.

But this has definitely brought to light a serious flaw. Turbine is running a form of script or program that is capable of performing bans with out any oversight or human impute.

How about instead of 100 free TP Turbine removes this program or script and publicly states that it has. That is what would sooth me over this matter. Even if they offered 1000 TP I would personaly rather see this solution.

[Chai]

Time for an unpopular post.

I will start off by saying first, I am not a Turbine fanboy. I enjoy playing DDO, but think their customer support needs some work. OK, it needs a lot of work.

With that in mind, get over it. Turbine admitted a mistake, and is fixing the problem. 100TP is a joke, but it could have easily been 0.

Seriously, what do you want?

They apologized, they offered some small payment. Do they need to give you a FEMA trailer as well?

I agree. Like I stated before - the people who are REALLY offended by something like this happening are currently figuring out what they are going to do with all their spare time they now have due to not playing DDO.

But as they say...pixelated crack sells itself. Cant rat out the dealer and then light up right afterward, eh?

[MrkGrismer]

Probably a better form of compensation would be two 6-hour +25% experience bonus elixers (since for some I believe the ban might have been as much as 12 hours).

This from a player that was unaffected and won't be receiving anything (a buck tho? c'mon!)

[Tolero]

Still reading, but did want to clarify: there was an exploit in the summoning chamber, but it has been fixed with today's patch. We are also reviewing our exploit suspension process in detail. Thanks for your patience and very sorry for the inconvenience!

[jjmancoue]

HAL does make a good point about automated banning and considering he is an automated program that likes to BAN astronauts from his ship he has perspective on this issue.

I am still happy to see an apology from Turbine and they have retained me as a customer with their response.

But HAL had divine influence. Seriously though, the automated system needs some serious tweaking. Through poor implementation/development, Turbine has automatically estranged a group of players with their automated response to false positives.

Hate to see the innocent leave the game. None of my roomies got the warnings or bans. However, we all arrived to the conclusion that it is safest to not participate in any events like the Mabar one.

[augie]

Better get those hirelings on sale, a level 20 favored soul is 75pts.
Dang...

[k1ngp1n]

Still reading, but did want to clarify: there was an exploit in the summoning chamber, but it has been fixed with today's patch. We are also reviewing our exploit suspension process in detail. Thanks for your patience and very sorry for the inconvenience!

What is the timeframe on finding out if our warnings will be expunged? I don't want to start spamming your account people if that hasn't been handled yet.

[fabhpk]

Honestly, I think the response took too long as they were much quicker to delete the posts regarding the issue...

Still at least we got a response, though I would really like to receive a "sorry, you´re not a cheater" email.


And I hope some heads are rolling right now on Tunbine.

[Vengeance777]

I'm going to play it safe and just avoid all special events from now on.

Will those of us that got a warning notice but no ban be receiving an email clearing us? Would like to have confirmation that my accounts record has been cleared.

[stoolcannon]

Still reading, but did want to clarify: there was an exploit in the summoning chamber, but it has been fixed with today's patch. We are also reviewing our exploit suspension process in detail. Thanks for your patience and very sorry for the inconvenience!

Instead of giving people you banned 100 TP you should consider a double XP weekend or something.

100 TP is literally an insult. You can't even buy a rez cake with 100tp.

Seriously, Tolero, that's just awful.

[SirShen]

Thank you for the apologize and the points but this mistake has really soured the way i see DDO now. I still might take 3 days from the game anyway.

[Zombiekenny]

Still reading, but did want to clarify: there was an exploit in the summoning chamber, but it has been fixed with today's patch. We are also reviewing our exploit suspension process in detail. Thanks for your patience and very sorry for the inconvenience!

So, any chance the 100 TP will be bumped up to a somewhat more appropriate amount for being accused of cheating, spending 16 hours banned, and at least in my case an hour on the phone trying to get it sorted out before you guys finally posted this?

[camgib]

But HAL had divine influence. Seriously though, the automated system needs some serious tweaking. Through poor implementation/development, Turbine has automatically estranged a group of players with their automated response to false positives.

Hate to see the innocent leave the game. None of my roomies got the warnings or bans. However, we all arrived to the conclusion that it is safest to not participate in any events like the Mabar one.


I won't be participating any any "event" like this in the future. If they can make one mistake like this, then they can make others. I don't like being called a cheat.

[SlightlyBent]

They should have waited 24 hours before making a rash move.

They are probably still happy with cancelling, or if they wish they hadn't now, they learned a valuable lesson (i.e. don't over-react - give a business SOME time to react to your complaint).

Subscriptions can be renewed at any time.

I canceled both accounts I pay for as soon as I found out about the situation.

I may or may not choose to resume them later.

But when a company slaps me in the face you can bet the first thing im going to do is take my money back.

If you think Turbine managers didn't come to the office and see "Oh ****, we have lost 3% of our active subscriptions in 12 hours.... We need to do something about this urgenty" you are wrong.

[stoolcannon]

Honestly, I think the response took too long as they were much quicker to delete the posts regarding the issue...
.

EXACTLY!

If they can delete the threads after hours then they can say "Give us a minute to sort it out" after hours.

ONE post from Tolero would have calmed the storm.

[Thrudh]

As someone who was banned and treated not only like a criminal, but a criminal in a third world country

Heh, really?? Not being able to play a video game for one night equals "being treated like a criminal in a third world country"???

LOL...

You people take a game WAY too seriously...

I didn't get banned or warned, but if I had... I would have sent in my support request, and played something else for a couple of days...

It's amazing how worked up you all get over a GAME.... Get some perspective, please...

[Thrudh]

This is what you tell your community after banning/warning the vast majority?

less than 1%

[SlightlyBent]

less than 1%

Iraq has WMD.

[AmberV]

Thanks Turbine for the apology and speedy response to the issue.

[Tirkan]

Heh, really?? Not being able to play a video game for one night equals "being treated like a criminal in a third world country"???

LOL...

You people take a game WAY too seriously...

I didn't get banned or warned, but if I had... I would have sent in my support request, and played something else for a couple of days...

It's amazing how worked up you all get over a GAME.... Get some perspective, please...

However overstated it was, he is technically correct.

Guilty until proven innocent. Oh, and no, you don't get to know what you were doing that was illegal, we're just going to arrest/ban you.

[Sirea]

Heh, really?? Not being able to play a video game for one night equals "being treated like a criminal in a third world country"???

LOL...

You people take a game WAY too seriously...

I didn't get banned or warned, but if I had... I would have sent in my support request, and played something else for a couple of days...

It's amazing how worked up you all get over a GAME.... Get some perspective, please...

Well aren't you the perfect little fanboi as usual? Mom, can I keep him?!

[Eladiun]

Heh, really?? Not being able to play a video game for one night equals "being treated like a criminal in a third world country"???

LOL...

You people take a game WAY too seriously...

I didn't get banned or warned, but if I had... I would have sent in my support request, and played something else for a couple of days...

It's amazing how worked up you all get over a GAME.... Get some perspective, please...


You are a cheater.

Edit: Making a point. This is what everyone who got banned or warned was called by Turbine.

[Zombiekenny]

less than 1%

Less than 1% is significantly more than 1% of people who actually currently play.

[stoolcannon]

Heh, really?? Not being able to play a video game for one night equals "being treated like a criminal in a third world country"???

LOL...

You people take a game WAY too seriously...

I didn't get banned or warned, but if I had... I would have sent in my support request, and played something else for a couple of days...

It's amazing how worked up you all get over a GAME.... Get some perspective, please...

You might consider some perspective as well. I personally didn't get irritated by anything to do with "the game" but rather the fact that my integrity was questioned when I didn't do anything wrong. Some people abide by a set of principles and take them seriously.

The game doesn't mean squat in the grand scheme of my life but I don't like being called a cheater whether I'm playing skee-ball at chuck-e-cheese or the stock market.

I take being honest seriously.

[Dex]

i'm a grandmother too i played WoW but iplayed DDO first and SWG before that

You are a glutton for punishment too eh?

[Nouda_EU]

Ill buy less than 1% of historic DDO accounts (every account ever made)

I wont buy less than 1% of players who participated in the Mabar event- you know those classes of your code that the detection error actually stems from.

But sure, distort the situation, its not like we have any rights on this autocratic forum anyway!

There are three types of lies - lies, **** lies, and statistics.

[Qyre_DeHon]

Will these people be notified of the removal in any way? Or are all of the warnings in error and this is the notification?

Thank you for addressing the issue, Tolero. :cool:

/signed

There should be another set emails to every affected person, stating the same. Not just a forum post, as there's a LOT of players who probably won't even bother to come here and read once they get that email.

Again, thanks for finally correcting the situation AND apologizing. It does mean something.

I still can't believe that your enforcement of exploits is an automated one though. That just shocks me. :eek: One would think that something significant enough to be banned/warned would be handled by a human being who's reviewing logs or auto-notices sent by "suspected exploiters".

[Aussielegend]

OK i get home from work (offline for about an hour to get home take a shower) and i see everything is resolved and its all fine and turbine are throwing coins at people saying go away go away leave me alone.

100 tp? pass wont be using the store its how i ended up in this state in the first place i attended and spent tp in the event even purchased points for it in advance never again.

reminds me of a movie qoute
SIR! the peasents are revolting!
response They sure are!

[HernandoCortez]

Last night, some DDO players received erroneous temporary suspensions or warnings regarding an exploit. Due to a technical issue in our exploit suspension process some players participating in the Mabar festival event were incorrectly notified of a rules violation. Any accounts that were temporarily banned as a result of this issue will have their account access restored and will be credited 100 Turbine Points. Any accounts that received warnings will have those warnings removed from their record.

This error was an isolated incident and should have no further impact for any DDO players. As always, we welcome player feedback on all aspects of DDO and continually seek to improve the quality of the service we provide to players.

We sincerely apologize for any inconvenience or confusion and thank you for your patience while we worked to resolve the issue.


It says "warnings removed from their record" at the beginning. Will the 3 day ban be removed from the record as well? 100 TP is a lame apology IMO but to get an answer from Turbine is priceless. I've spent half an hour on an international call in order to get told the account support couldn't do anything about it and it was an in-game support issue and that I should check the general forum.

I'm still afraid of spending more money on this game because I don't see any results of ban appeals yet. I wonder if a moody GM and one wrong tell wouldn't be enough to get a perma-ban.

[Barrelhouse]

Too little, too late.

Very poorly handled, despicable communication and cover up.

I cancelled my two VIP accounts last night.

Added: Wanted to add a big thanks to the great community here, I wish you all the best!

[stoolcannon]

There are three types of lies - lies, **** lies, and statistics.

I love that quite. It's sometimes credited to Mark Twain but it's questionable as to whether or not he was truly the originator. In any event, it's a code I live by since I am in the business intelligence field.

[Thrudh]

Turbine clearly was upfront about this from the start, didn't delete threads about it, hand out infractions, gave a clear reason for accounts being bannned, or do anything else that showed anything but a transparent and forthright dedication to doing the right thing for their customers.

It was overnight, no one was up at 3 am to see what had gone wrong... They checked it first thing in the morning and fixed it...

People who got infractions were warned repeatedly to quit posting about disciplinary actions... yet they continued.

The problem was solved fairly quickly in only a few business hours.

Did they screw up? Yes...
Could it have been handled better? Yes...
Should they have an auto-ban system? Probably not.

Is this really the end of world that so many are making it out to be? No...
Could you all have been just a LITTLE patient? Obviously not.

[ArkoHighStar]

/signed

There should be another set emails to every affected person, stating the same. Not just a forum post, as there's a LOT of players who probably won't even bother to come here and read once they get that email.

Again, thanks for finally correcting the situation AND apologizing. It does mean something.

I still can't believe that your enforcement of exploits is an automated one though. That just shocks me. :eek: One would think that something significant enough to be banned/warned would be handled by a human being who's reviewing logs or auto-notices sent by "suspected exploiters".

they have stated emails will go out to players

[Tolero]

...There should be another set emails to every affected person, stating the same. Not just a forum post, as there's a LOT of players who probably won't even bother to come here and read once they get that email...

Indeed! Emails are being sent directly to those players, should be arriving very soon. In some cases some folks may find that their account is reactivated even though they didn't yet get the email.

[stoolcannon]

It was overnight, no one was up at 3 am to see what had gone wrong... They checked it first thing in the morning and fixed it...

People who got infractions were warned repeatedly to quit posting about disciplinary actions... yet they continued.

The problem was solved fairly quickly in only a few business hours.

Did they screw up? Yes...
Could it have been handled better? Yes...
Should they have an auto-ban system? Probably not.

Is this really the end of world that so many are making it out to be? No...
Could you all have been just a LITTLE patient? Obviously not.

I'm not sure where you live but it's almost noon Pacific time. It's not the first thing in the morning.

[Siftrant]

Still reading, but did want to clarify: there was an exploit in the summoning chamber, but it has been fixed with today's patch. We are also reviewing our exploit suspension process in detail. Thanks for your patience and very sorry for the inconvenience!

Here are a few hints:

(1) You don't automate a process until you know the process is good.
(2) Once you automate it, you let it do it's thing early in the business day when your best and maximum staff is available to fix the errors that will (100%) become apparent once it is automated
(3) Only after the automated process has proven to be stable and have a very low error/false positive rate do you think about running it 15 minutes --after-- you dismiss your support staff. If it is a process which potentially ticks off thousands of paying users and prevents them from accessing the services they have already paid for -- you think really, really, really hard about whether you need to move out of that early morning slot.

If you need someone in software development management who understand these kinds of things -- feel free to contact me.

[Eschelon]

Still reading, but did want to clarify: there was an exploit in the summoning chamber, but it has been fixed with today's patch. We are also reviewing our exploit suspension process in detail. Thanks for your patience and very sorry for the inconvenience!

And now I would like to say thank you. I am not happy this happened but as long as a review is coming to policy I am happy

[Thrudh]

Thanks for the apology.
I'm not sure how I feel about all this. I still have a hard time believing you started issuing mass bans at peak time and it took you 12+ hours to acknowledge the mistake. It hints at some serious internal issues I'm hoping will be promptly resolved.
100 TP's are kind of a joke but I didn't really expect anything, so why not.. I would have just appreciated a faster reaction from the dev team.

The real problem was kicking off that program at night... 12 hours sounds like a long time, but when you're including midnight to 8 am, it's really not a bad reaction time... This isn't a 24-hour/day company.

They shouldn't even have a auto-ban system.... and if they need one to handle the load, it should be run at 8:00 in the morning, so they can fix any problems while people are still in the office.

[SlightlyBent]

It was overnight, no one was up at 3 am to see what had gone wrong... They checked it first thing in the morning and fixed it...

People who got infractions were warned repeatedly to quit posting about disciplinary actions... yet they continued.

The problem was solved fairly quickly in only a few business hours.

Did they screw up? Yes...
Could it have been handled better? Yes...
Should they have an auto-ban system? Probably not.

Is this really the end of world that so many are making it out to be? No...
Could you all have been just a LITTLE patient? Obviously not.

I dont mean to get too conspiracy theorist up in this thread but....

The bannings occured right about the time they would be closing up shop. The issuance of a ban was an automated process. (3 of 12 people in my ToD raid went offline at the same time).

Quite likely some script run at turbine generated a list of account names that had technically violated some game log check.

This list of names was queued into a table of names to be banned pending an administrative review.

Some script that cleans up the user database everynight submitted the contents of the queue for commit.

voila; Turbine accidentally bans thousands of players right about the time their support is closing up for the day.

[grodon9999]

It was overnight, no one was up at 3 am to see what had gone wrong... They checked it first thing in the morning and fixed it...

People who got infractions were warned repeatedly to quit posting about disciplinary actions... yet they continued.

The problem was solved fairly quickly in only a few business hours.

Did they screw up? Yes...
Could it have been handled better? Yes...
Should they have an auto-ban system? Probably not.

Is this really the end of world that so many are making it out to be? No...
Could you all have been just a LITTLE patient? Obviously not.

One account has very little meaning to a game as large as DDO. Our only real recourse to a grievance is to leave which doesn't affect them that much.

Stirring up a big sh!t-storm of nerd-rage gets the message across. If people hadn't flipped out I doubt Turbine would have done anything about this.

[stoolcannon]

One account has very little meaning to a game as large as DDO. Our only real recourse to a grievance is to leave which doesn't affect them that much.

Stirring up a big sh!t-storm of nerd-rage gets the message across. If people hadn't flipped out I doubt Turbine would have done anything about this.

100% correct.

[tihocan]

The real problem was kicking off that program at night... 12 hours sounds like a long time, but when you're including midnight to 8 am, it's really not a bad reaction time... This isn't a 24-hour/day company.

They shouldn't even have a auto-ban system.... and if they need one to handle the load, it should be run at 8:00 in the morning, so they can fix any problems while people are still in the office.
Oh, I totally agree with this.

[riggler]

If you think about it, 100 TP equals 20% of the monthly allotment of TP for a VIP account...a VIP gets 500 TP/month or ~16.67 TP/day or ~1.39 TP/hour...as such, 100 TP is equivalent to ~6 days or rather ~72 hours worth of VIP TP...or in monetary terms ($15 * 20%) $3 worth of VIP TP...

Just saying...a little bit of perspective goes a long way...

Da Riggler....

[Vallin]

Less than a percent of users were impacted by the issue, but we will be contacting all of the impacted accounts. Note that if your contact info in your account is incorrect that you may not receive the email, but the lifting of the suspension will still happen.

Out of curiosity, is the metric of 'less than a percent' within six sigma range? Should we have such faith?

Whatever the 'less than a percent' amount is, I am honestly amazed at the vocal proficiency of such a reportedly small number of people. That is impressive that so few people could raise such a fuss.

Or should we ask 'less than a percent' of WHAT users? Are you parsing?

I don't mean to doubt this claim of 'less than a percent' but - well - I guess I do mean to doubt it.

Vallin.

[stoolcannon]

The real problem was kicking off that program at night... 12 hours sounds like a long time, but when you're including midnight to 8 am, it's really not a bad reaction time... This isn't a 24-hour/day company.

They shouldn't even have a auto-ban system.... and if they need one to handle the load, it should be run at 8:00 in the morning, so they can fix any problems while people are still in the office.

The FIRST problem was starting it at the end of their business day.

The SECOND problem was deleting threads instead of posting a response. The latter takes less energy and effort and blunts the pending nerdsplosion.

You're correct, an autoban system is the pinnacle of stupidity. I have scaled mount stupidity a number of times myself and sure enough there is a flag at the top reading "autoban was here".

[Qzipoun]

The real problem was kicking off that program at night... 12 hours sounds like a long time, but when you're including midnight to 8 am, it's really not a bad reaction time... This isn't a 24-hour/day company.

They shouldn't even have a auto-ban system.... and if they need one to handle the load, it should be run at 8:00 in the morning, so they can fix any problems while people are still in the office.

You're forgetting the part where threads mentioning the issue were VERY quickly made to vanish. ThIs didn't happen in the middle of the night there were threads with a total of dozens of pages, all mysteriously vanished. And it by no means is the morning, Turbine is in MA, this is early afternoon at best...

[Ciaran]

Last night, some DDO players received erroneous temporary suspensions or warnings regarding an exploit. Due to a technical issue in our exploit suspension process some players participating in the Mabar festival event were incorrectly notified of a rules violation. Any accounts that were temporarily banned as a result of this issue will have their account access restored and will be credited 100 Turbine Points. Any accounts that received warnings will have those warnings removed from their record.

This error was an isolated incident and should have no further impact for any DDO players. As always, we welcome player feedback on all aspects of DDO and continually seek to improve the quality of the service we provide to players.

We sincerely apologize for any inconvenience or confusion and thank you for your patience while we worked to resolve the issue.

Turbine,

I wasn’t banned or even warned. I participated in the Mabar event, ran the Spectral Dragon enough times to upgrade the cloak to 16 and the robe to 12 or 14.

That this was resolved in less than 24 hours is good. By MMO standards that’s a pretty quick turn-around. I appreciate the explanation of what occurred and the quick resolution.

However, I am BEYOND appalled that you have an automated exploit suspension process that isn’t checked by a human to make important distinctions. Being that these systems are set up by humans it only makes sense to have humans checking them. Something like banning people for cheating should NEVER be left to some program, no matter how complex the decision matrix may be. There’s too much grey area and too much stigma associated with being accused of cheating and banning for this to be an acceptable practice. As for the exploit suspension process, well, garbage in, garbage out.

Your exploit suspension process is broken, severely, and has cost you reputation with your customers and will likely cost you revenue. If this is the best you can do, I suggest you hire some consultants to analyze your existing processes and suggest improvements, clearly it is needed. You actually put this garbage process in the developers sprint?

100 TP is insufficient for those whose integrity was impugned by receiving warnings, to say nothing of how insufficient it is for those banned for several hours. You need to take further steps to make this right with your customers. It isn’t so much the amount of time people were banned for, but rather the emotional distress caused by this. You not only inconvenienced your players, but you inferred they were cheats. I don’t know what that answer is, the onus is on YOU to come up with that. Just understand 100 TP is insufficient and many people would like a public statement reporting that you will not use this “auto-ban” process again and you will seek other processes to handle dealing with exploits going forward.

I do not think there was necessarily a cover-up attempt and that your employees were doing their jobs in moderating the forums as per the rules regarding posting about disciplinary actions. However, I think in this case since the so-called disciplinary actions were the effect of a serious glitch on your part you owe an apology as well as the immediate rescinding of forum bans/infraction points to those who had posting rights suspended and/or infractions handed out for discussing this issue on the forums.

[grodon9999]

You're correct, an autoban system is the pinnacle of stupidity.

Nah, I'm sure Turbine is capable of even grander stupidity!

[Raiderone]

Still reading, but did want to clarify: there was an exploit in the summoning chamber, but it has been fixed with today's patch. We are also reviewing our exploit suspension process in detail. Thanks for your patience and very sorry for the inconvenience!

Thank you for some clarification. Cause the whole thing makes you question yourself,
was this an exploit or was this an exploit.

SInce yesterday probably a list 10 things people were questioning might've been an exploit. 2nd guessing themselves wondering if they've done anything wrong.

I know of all my times in Summoning Chamber, I manned the switch once
and someone else came up and took over for me.

I doubt I'll play the event again. I reluctantly complete events anyway.
this past risia games was my 1st....

hate events, now hate them even more.

[stoolcannon]

Nah, I'm sure Turbine is capable of even grander stupidity!

If not they need to hire me because I can help them ascend to the loftiest of heights.

[stainer]

How does an autoban thingy start working several days after an event? Could this autoban thingy ban me for something I did on a new character in Korthos several weeks after it happened? There was no autoban thingy. Autoban thingies dont send out emails talking about investigations.

The cake is a lie.

[Zenako]

Stats and numbers....

less than 1% of the player base....

Okay dokey... I would guess that less than 50% even ventured into the Graveyard to start with. That those who did only for short times, were very unlikely to have been caught in the snares of the data sweeps.

That amoung the forum posting population, what we collectively represent the hard core players (who spent 20+ hours each or more in graveyard) and as such were all that more likely to get sweep up in any broad scan of activity.

So while the <1% number is probably right, it also does not fairly characterize the percentage of players who heavily engaged in the event that got dinged and hammered. Hard core active gamers are also the ones most likely to have all sorts of tricks they try to beat quests, and it was likely among those tricks that triggered the "bad mojo".

So just like the percentage of players who TR seems high on the Forums, I would guess the percentage of players who TR over the entire player base is a LOT smaller number.

[SlightlyBent]

If you think about it, 100 TP equals 20% of the monthly allotment of TP for a VIP account...a VIP gets 500 TP/month or ~16.67 TP/day or ~1.39 TP/hour...as such, 100 TP is equivalent to ~6 days or rather ~72 hours worth of VIP TP...or in monetary terms ($15 * 20%) $3 worth of VIP TP...

Just saying...a little bit of perspective goes a long way...

Da Riggler....

Or not very far when it is completely incorrect.

You just evaluated VIP accounts to be worth a mere 500 points per 15 dollars.

If people were purchasing VIP accounts strictly for TP they wouldn't go the VIP route as its an awful conversion ratio compared to flat sums conversion.

A minimum of 24 hours of paid time should be credited to all P2P accounts. The ban occured just after the peak of prime time, a time slot that for many users is the only time they have available to play.

When a company messes up like this if it really wants to earn some respect back it provides refunds according to the worst scenario not the best scenario.

[k1ngp1n]

Out of curiosity, is the metric of 'less than a percent' within six sigma range?

Six sigma is 34 failures per ten million. Ima say its not.

[fabhpk]

You are a cheater.

Edit: Making a point. This is what everyone who got banned or warned was called by Turbine.


That´s the point. Yes, it is only a game.

But...

It sucks to be called a cheater by email 10 am in the morning. And for a service I pay for.

[stoolcannon]

I will say one thing:

I WILL continue to participate in events. Some of the loot out of the mabar even was good enough for me to take this e-quivalent to a Cleveland Steamer with a somewhat subdued smile on my face.

[Sarnind]

only 100 tp? bha, disgusted, i have lost one entire day!

[Dex]

The real problem was kicking off that program at night... 12 hours sounds like a long time, but when you're including midnight to 8 am, it's really not a bad reaction time... This isn't a 24-hour/day company.

They shouldn't even have a auto-ban system.... and if they need one to handle the load, it should be run at 8:00 in the morning, so they can fix any problems while people are still in the office.

Dude, or otherwise, quit being an apologist. From your perspective it may not have happened at an inconvenient time, but we were in the middle of a guild raid, and lost 5 members, just like that! No warning, no nothing, poof!

The game runs 24x7 regardless, we pay for such, we have a right to expect service for pay. Doing things the way they did punished even those not banned.

[Thrudh]

You might consider some perspective as well. I personally didn't get irritated by anything to do with "the game" but rather the fact that my integrity was questioned when I didn't do anything wrong. Some people abide by a set of principles and take them seriously.

You seriously care if a game company questions your "integrity"?

Turbine screwed up big-time, yes...

But it's just a game...


The game doesn't mean squat in the grand scheme of my life but I don't like being called a cheater whether I'm playing skee-ball at chuck-e-cheese or the stock market.

But it was obviously a mass-mailer... If you knew you didn't cheat, you knew it was a mistake... You threw a tantrum over a IT error, and you gave the company very little time to respond...

I'm sorry no one was up at 3:00 am who knew anything about the problem...

Yes, whoever was deleting threads (correctly), maybe should have called and woken up a big dog... That's a tough call to make.

[HernandoCortez]

It was overnight, no one was up at 3 am to see what had gone wrong... They checked it first thing in the morning and fixed it...

People who got infractions were warned repeatedly to quit posting about disciplinary actions... yet they continued.

The problem was solved fairly quickly in only a few business hours.

Did they screw up? Yes...
Could it have been handled better? Yes...
Should they have an auto-ban system? Probably not.

Is this really the end of world that so many are making it out to be? No...
Could you all have been just a LITTLE patient? Obviously not.



If people were not patient with Turbine and rage-quit the game, canceled their subscriptions or whatever I bet thats for a reason. This banning system and that never ending track of offense surely should be revised. Racism, constant swearing and things like that should be passible of warnings, not bans that could lead to perma-bans. Everyone can have a bad day so they staff can. But I never got an answer from my first ban appeal. I hope Turbine can learn from this mistake and improve A LOT their customer support.

*EDIT* Well racism should always lead to perma-ban, my bad.

[stoolcannon]

That´s the point. Yes, it is only a game.

But...

It sucks to be called a cheater by email 10 pm in the morning.

I've never been called anything at 10pm in the morning and I am gravely concerned that if I were to be called something at such a time the universe might fold in upon itself.

[Natashaelle]

Less than 1% is significantly more than 1% of people who actually currently play.

A VERY good point ... +1

any idea of % of active players affected ??

[Psyker]

Still reading, but did want to clarify: there was an exploit in the summoning chamber, but it has been fixed with today's patch. We are also reviewing our exploit suspension process in detail. Thanks for your patience and very sorry for the inconvenience!

I'm very happy to see that this is being reviewed. Is there any chance that the policies of posting on the forums and questioning why someone was banned will also be reviewed? I think much of the animosity that was created over this unfortunate situation could have been avoided if people felt like they could at least ask questions without having their posts deleted.

[stoolcannon]

You seriously care if a game company questions your "integrity"?

Turbine screwed up big-time, yes...

But it's just a game...



But it was obviously a mass-mailer... If you knew you didn't cheat, you knew it was a mistake... You threw a tantrum over a IT error, and you gave the company very little time to respond...

I'm sorry no one was up at 3:00 am who knew anything about the problem...

Yes, whoever was deleting threads (correctly), maybe should have called and woken up a big dog... That's a tough call to make.

BREAKING NEWS: Admin IP check reveals Tolero is posting under a second account!

[Thrudh]

Here are a few hints:

(1) You don't automate a process until you know the process is good.
(2) Once you automate it, you let it do it's thing early in the business day when your best and maximum staff is available to fix the errors that will (100%) become apparent once it is automated
(3) Only after the automated process has proven to be stable and have a very low error/false positive rate do you think about running it 15 minutes --after-- you dismiss your support staff. If it is a process which potentially ticks off thousands of paying users and prevents them from accessing the services they have already paid for -- you think really, really, really hard about whether you need to move out of that early morning slot.

If you need someone in software development management who understand these kinds of things -- feel free to contact me.

This I will agree with.

[Chai]

No cover up? The 8 page thread I have saved on my desktop begs to differ. There is a HUGE difference between some technical/human error that leads to some unfortunate event and Tubine coming out and saying 'oops here's 100TP" and what happened here.

When someone comes out and admits a mistake thats not a cover up. A cover up would be if they internally realized they messed up, but just went with it anyhow because the damage was already done, which didnt happen.

So what do you think is acceptable payback?


Just think back at what happened here for a little context:

Turbine created a live event to celebrate halloween, it had its ups and downs but overall those who liked it had fun. This was weeks ago, people have since moved on. Suddenly, these people are getting emails calling them exploiters ( let's face it, that's exactly what the email said). This email gave absolutely no reason an hve many people a direct ban. Think about it, a ban is the ultimate punishment in an MMO, Turbine's customers were told to their face that they are cheaters and don't deserve to be able to play.

Turbine has historically never been specific on bans. Guild level exploits and XP exploits were called just that, but they dont go "hey man we got evidence right here that you were doing this, that, and the other thing."


Again, errors happen, if right after these emails went out someone made a post saying 'oopsie', it wouldn't be bad, but nooo! Someone made a legitimate thread about the issue and there were a full 8 pages dedicated to trying to figure out what happened. There was no sharing of exploits, namecalling, flaming or trolling (not any more than your average thread) then all of a sudden HULK-SMASH!!!!!!!!! The thread disappears with no explanation and Tolero starts making posts vanish righ and left (many VERY legitimate ones) and here only posts are very rude saying something along the lines of "I told you before don't make me say it again, shut up".

There were 8 full pages of moaning, threatening legal procedures, name calling, and heresay. Most of that had nothing to do with "figuring out what happened". It all had to do with "jumping to conclusions".

So you say you dont believe that this is a coding error with an automated reactionary response tool, however, what you are mad at here is that the emails went out really early and there should have been a human being around to deal with the response. An automated ban hammer tool explains why there wasnt a human around to get on their knees and beg forgiveness for the sheiststorm they started.


As I said, I have the whole original thread saved, there's nothing wrong with it. Any competent team would have made a post satin "interesting, I personally don't know but will look into it, please keep discussion civil". Deleting a thread with no explanation IS NOT THE WAY TO GO!

You clearly understand that a quantity based arguement doesnt work here right, because there is more than one thread, and most if not all of them are just people over reacting as usual. No one wants to plow through the 95% of the credibility issue based ePeen waving to get to the legitimate 5% that was real actionable feedback.


You've now insulted your players, then forced them to shut up with no explanation, that's taking a bad situation ad driving it off a cliff. Go to tentonhammer or massively, there are forum threads already created and people who don't even play DDO now know about Turbine's fubar.

They gave them an explanation and a statement. I realize this happened during bankers hours, but as I stated before, this fully supports what you deny - that an automation caused the error.


The appropriate response SHOULD have been a post in the original thread. Given that hulk-smash was the approach taken, the OP in this thread should have been very different. Turbine needs to come out and say they screwed up big time not that there was a glitch. 100TP is irrelevant, any TP is irrelevant because all that says is we will insult you, ban you, make you shut up and all we have to do is grow 100TP at you and all is fine, all is not fine

Ill ask the same question again. What do you feel is reasonable compensation for this? Everyone wants to pee and moan about what happened. But in a complaint letter scenario, the best thing you can possibly do is to talk about what you feel is approapriate compensation to make things right. No one wants to do this, because they clearly understand that it will negate a perfectly good moaning opportunity.


I don't read the OP as an apology, I read it as an explanation... There should be a game-wide bonus of some sort, Turbine needs to admit they dropped the ball and try to side with it's players, turn this ridiculous event into something fun for players

I read it as an admission of a mistake, which all the moaners demanded, but is clearly not good enough after the fact.


As I see it now, it doesn't look like they give a shut about us

Thumbs getting tired, puting phone down... :P

I will also say this again even though I stated it many times earlier today. The people who are REALLY offended about this are figuring out what they are going to do with all this spare time they now have due to no longer playing DDO. The rest of us are just crying wolf, and will be content to continue to log in daily afterward and play the game.

If I REALLY felt they didnt care, I wouldnt play DDO. Yes, I do feel it is THAT simple. Quite a few people already dropped the game over this issue. They are the ones I will actually believe when they say they were really offended about this whole thing happening the way it did.

[stoolcannon]

When someone comes out and admits a mistake thats not a cover up. A cover up would be if they internally realized they messed up, but just went with it anyhow because the damage was already done, which didnt happen.

So what do you think is acceptable payback?



Turbine has historically never been specific on bans. Guild level exploits and XP exploits were called just that, but they dont go "hey man we got evidence right here that you were doing this, that, and the other thing."



There were 8 full pages of moaning, threatening legal procedures, name calling, and heresay. Most of that had nothing to do with "figuring out what happened". It all had to do with "jumping to conclusions".

So you say you dont believe that this is a coding error with an automated reactionary response tool, however, what you are mad at here is that the emails went out really early and there should have been a human being around to deal with the response. An automated ban hammer tool explains why there wasnt a human around to get on their knees and beg forgiveness for the sheiststorm they started.



You clearly understand that a quantity based arguement doesnt work here right, because there is more than one thread, and most if not all of them are just people over reacting as usual. No one wants to plow through the 95% of the credibility issue based ePeen waving to get to the legitimate 5% that was real actionable feedback.



They gave them an explanation and a statement. I realize this happened during bankers hours, but as I stated before, this fully supports what you deny - that an automation caused the error.



Ill ask the same question again. What do you feel is reasonable compensation for this? Everyone wants to pee and moan about what happened. But in a complaint letter scenario, the best thing you can possibly do is to talk about what you feel is approapriate compensation to make things right. No one wants to do this, because they clearly understand that it will negate a perfectly good moaning opportunity.



I read it as an admission of a mistake, which all the moaners demanded, but is clearly not good enough after the fact.



I will also say this again even though I stated it many times earlier today. The people who are REALLY offended about this are figuring out what they are going to do with all this spare time they now have due to no longer playing DDO. The rest of us are just crying wolf, and will be content to continue to log in daily afterward and play the game.

If I REALLY felt they didnt care, I wouldnt play DDO. Yes, I do feel it is THAT simple. Quite a few people already dropped the game over this issue. They are the ones I will actually believe when they say they were really offended about this whole thing happening the way it did.

This does not come easily considering I am a huge proponent of the veritable wall-o-text but

tl/dr/fwi

[~Cereals_Alt]

If you think about it, 100 TP equals 20% of the monthly allotment of TP for a VIP account...a VIP gets 500 TP/month or ~16.67 TP/day or ~1.39 TP/hour...as such, 100 TP is equivalent to ~6 days or rather ~72 hours worth of VIP TP...or in monetary terms ($15 * 20%) $3 worth of VIP TP...

Just saying...a little bit of perspective goes a long way...

Da Riggler....

Perspective is a funny thing because the way I see it you can buy 420 turbine points for $6.50 ~ $6.50/420TP= .015¢/1TPx100TP= $1.55 (standard rounding practices used in all calculations.)

[Memnir]

BREAKING NEWS: Admin IP check reveals Tolero is posting under a second account!Well, this whole thread originated as a Cube post... just sayin'. ;)
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[Culver.Civello]

I'm just glad things have been fixed.

[Bindox]

Dear Turbine,

As somebody who works in a customer facing role for the world's largest IT organisation, providing a service not too dissimilar to what you provide us, I find your dealing with this matter completely unprofessional.

You've clearly done no quality checks to ensure the system you use to allocate bans is correct, and furthermore, you've written basically (if the figures of 'less than 1% of the population' are correct) at least 10,000 banning or warning emails (based from the fact that you yourselves discussed at the back end of last year how DDO had now hit over 1,000,000 accounts) - that's right, 1% may not sound like much with your spin, but in actuality, it's a lot.

There's clearly a tendency on your behalf to completely discredit the intelligence of the average DDO gamer, a large proportion of which are probably more intelligent than the idiots that are responsible for providing the systems that mistakedly banned a large number of my non-exploiting guildies in the initial case. DDO is a service that is paid for by money, and as such, the fact that you do not take this seriously (100 turbine points equates to what, around $2 compensation?) says that we cannot take you seriously.

I find your behaviour to the DDO population not only insulting, but unprofessional, and your public response in nothing short of laughable. Personally, if I ever sent such an email to a client regarding their misuse of one of the systems we provide them mistakedly, I would get reprimanded, and it is likely the client would withdraw their support for the service my organisation was providing.

Regards,
An unhappy gamer

(P.S. Let's see how long it takes for this post to get 'censorted')


"Mistakedly", "censorted", run-on sentences? How can I take you seriously? :D

[grodon9999]

You seriously care if a game company questions your "integrity"?


Any question of your integrity can be considered an insult.

Do I care? A little, some people value their honor more than I do so I understand them getting upset. Personally I just wanted to know what I was being accused of.

[Eladiun]

any Question Of Your Integrity Can Be Considered An Insult.

Do I Care? A Little, Some People Value Their Honor More Than I Do So I Understand Them Getting Upset. Personally I Just Wanted To Know What I Was Being Accused Of.


Wwjwd

[stoolcannon]

I'm letting my love of sarcasm sweep me away here.

I'm glad Turbine has responded. I believe the response was a bit disingenuous but it's a response nonetheless and they have retained my business for at least one more month.

I'd like to see a gesture a bit better than 100TP though.

DOUBLE XP WEEKEND and I'm happy as the proverbial pig in excrement.

[Anthios888]

Perspective is a funny thing because the way I see it you can buy 420 turbine points for $6.50 ~ $6.50/420TP= .015¢/1TPx100TP= $1.55 (standard rounding practices used in all calculations.)

Or, many of us only buy the 5000 TP packages when they go on sale for 6900 points or better. Making 100 turbine points $.72 ...

[Mobeius]

Still reading, but did want to clarify: there was an exploit in the summoning chamber, but it has been fixed with today's patch. We are also reviewing our exploit suspension process in detail. Thanks for your patience and very sorry for the inconvenience!

Well since it is fixed can you tell us what it was? All I can see in the notes really potentially concerning this is...

■The spectral dragon will no longer occasionally go braindead, and will now always die at 0 hitpoints.


Unless it had something to do with level 15's in wrong instance or somehow overloading instances with more players.

I just cant see it other than the "braindead" dragon and somehow exploiting that aspect.

[Aeolwind]

You might consider some perspective as well. I personally didn't get irritated by anything to do with "the game" but rather the fact that my integrity was questioned when I didn't do anything wrong. Some people abide by a set of principles and take them seriously.

The game doesn't mean squat in the grand scheme of my life but I don't like being called a cheater whether I'm playing skee-ball at chuck-e-cheese or the stock market.

I take being honest seriously.

This sums it up pretty well for myself as well. Woulda come across a lot better for me with "Hey, this is what happened, we have listing of your involvement, can you provide any input?". Even a form letter for responses so it could be categorized woulda been nicer than what we got hit with.

[Yeric]

You called me a cheat. Then a person I will not forgive came on the forums with all capital letters and called me and others a liar and a cheat. I am a 58 year old MAN. I do not lie. I do not cheat. I have watched and guarded my behaviour all my adult life as to not be a liar and a cheat.

You called me a cheat. I am an honest player. Casual, but I am here everyday.

You called me a cheat. There is no amount of tp that can compensate me for the harm you did.

You called me a cheat. I do not sense any real emotion in your apology Tolero. I do believe you need to get somebody up here who can.

[rest]

Well, this whole thread originated as a Cube post... just sayin'. ;)
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Everyone knows that the cube is just a cover for when T&T have to do exceptionally mean/unpopular things and don't want the flack associated with it. So for my part I hold tolero and tarrant BOTH accountable for EVERYTHING the cube does in ADDITION to the things they do under their regular guises. Maybe that's why I have such disdain for them both.

[Chai]

One account has very little meaning to a game as large as DDO. Our only real recourse to a grievance is to leave which doesn't affect them that much.

Stirring up a big sh!t-storm of nerd-rage gets the message across. If people hadn't flipped out I doubt Turbine would have done anything about this.

It sure does get the message accross.

The message of course being that they can peeve people as much as they want, and those people will riot on the forums, but they will not stop paying into the system.

If the message was that if you treat us like this, we will play something else, then they would actually have to evaluate how they do things. As it stands now, be prepared for more of the same.

Oh wait, didnt mass bannings where people claimed to not know why they were banned already happen like three or four other times in DDO history? :p

[Eladiun]

somehow overloading instances with more players.



From everything I have read elsewhere this was likely the one.

[Tirkan]

I, personally, am offended by this. Not enough to ragequit, but certainly offended enough to dig up phone numbers and consider calling random people at Turbine to complain.

I will keep playing.

I will reconsider my plans to spend money on Turbine.

I would like, as I said before, a personally written email - not a form letter or mass mailer - that apologizes directly to me for calling me an exploiter. I would like an explanation in that letter about how it happened, why it happened, and what Turbine is doing to make sure it never happens again.

Other than that, the Turbine points are a non-issue to me. 100 TP isn't worth anything to Turbine as a company, and it's not worth anything to me.

I am irritated, considerably so. Especially in a game environment where people -daily- do things that I consider exploiting, tell me how to do it, and then get mad when I refuse to do so. I'm not going to glitch my client to get no fail UMD. I'm not going to use /stuck to get back up on top of the mountain in Tempest Spine.

If I see something that I regard as an 'exploit,' I'm not going to do it. I recognize that Turbine may have ideas about what is and is not an exploit that I do not share, but in that case, when I get an infraction/warning/ban message regarding my exploitation, I would greatly appreciate being told what it is that I was doing that is an exploit...so I can not do it again. I don't appreciate being told 'you know what you did,' because if I did, I wouldn't be asking about it.

[Trillea]

So what do you think is acceptable payback?
Changing ban policy to have specific information as to why you are being banned. If an offence is not worth giving the details on, it is not worth a ban.


Turbine has historically never been specific on bans. Guild level exploits and XP exploits were called just that, but they dont go "hey man we got evidence right here that you were doing this, that, and the other thing."
This policy is wrong. All bans should give specific details of accusations, and they should have a phone number for appeals instead of having to go through their horribly slow email processes.


There were 8 full pages of moaning, threatening legal procedures, name calling, and heresay. Most of that had nothing to do with "figuring out what happened". It all had to do with "jumping to conclusions".

So you say you dont believe that this is a coding error with an automated reactionary response tool, however, what you are mad at here is that the emails went out really early and there should have been a human being around to deal with the response. An automated ban hammer tool explains why there wasnt a human around to get on their knees and beg forgiveness for the sheiststorm they started.
Bans, being the most severe punishment that an MMO can give short of legal action, SHOULD NEVER BE AUTOMATED. PERIOD.


You clearly understand that a quantity based arguement doesnt work here right, because there is more than one thread, and most if not all of them are just people over reacting as usual. No one wants to plow through the 95% of the credibility issue based ePeen waving to get to the legitimate 5% that was real actionable feedback.



They gave them an explanation and a statement. I realize this happened during bankers hours, but as I stated before, this fully supports what you deny - that an automation caused the error.
See above note.


Ill ask the same question again. What do you feel is reasonable compensation for this? Everyone wants to pee and moan about what happened. But in a complaint letter scenario, the best thing you can possibly do is to talk about what you feel is approapriate compensation to make things right. No one wants to do this, because they clearly understand that it will negate a perfectly good moaning opportunity.
I want a policy change - all ban emails should have a detailed explanation of why you are being banned. Appeals should be able to be made over the phone, with 24 hour support. MMOs in general should offer support 24x7 due to their very nature.


I read it as an admission of a mistake, which all the moaners demanded, but is clearly not good enough after the fact.
Agreed, it is not enough.


I will also say this again even though I stated it many times earlier today. The people who are REALLY offended about this are figuring out what they are going to do with all this spare time they now have due to no longer playing DDO. The rest of us are just crying wolf, and will be content to continue to log in daily afterward and play the game.

If I REALLY felt they didnt care, I wouldnt play DDO. Yes, I do feel it is THAT simple. Quite a few people already dropped the game over this issue. They are the ones I will actually believe when they say they were really offended about this whole thing happening the way it did.

Notes in GREEN. Turbine, I hope that you see this. Banning should NEVER be automated, nor should banning EVER happen without a detailed reason why. Ban appeals should be able to be made over the phone, and your account support phone number should be able to do this 24x7.

[Barazon]

Any accounts that were temporarily banned as a result of this issue will have their account access restored and will be credited 100 Turbine Points. Any accounts that received warnings will have those warnings removed from their record.

Was there any other category? If there was a violation that started the entire investigation, were some accounts banned permanently (as opposed to temporary bans or warnings), and the rest of us just caught up in the net, through some sort of "guilt by association" program?

[stoolcannon]

Or, many of us only buy the 5000 TP packages when they go on sale for 6900 points or better. Making 100 turbine points $.72 ...

Isn't it strange how sometimes perspective needs a little perspective? :)

[stainer]

Notes in GREEN. Turbine, I hope that you see this. Banning should NEVER be automated, nor should banning EVER happen without a detailed reason why. Ban appeals should be able to be made over the phone, and your account support phone number should be able to do this 24x7.

You really, really believe that people were banned by an automated process NINE days after the event? Really? You really, really believe that? Come on? Really?

[Andora]

You seriously care if a game company questions your "integrity"?

Turbine screwed up big-time, yes...

But it's just a game...



But it was obviously a mass-mailer... If you knew you didn't cheat, you knew it was a mistake... You threw a tantrum over a IT error, and you gave the company very little time to respond...

I'm sorry no one was up at 3:00 am who knew anything about the problem...

Yes, whoever was deleting threads (correctly), maybe should have called and woken up a big dog... That's a tough call to make.

Shame on you. I understand that you like pvp on the forums but you go to far. Some hold honour close at all times, in a game and in real life. Yes, it is just a game. Why do YOU care if someone is upset? Why are YOU trolling this and egging others on. Who are you to decide how others should feel. Reported for trolling a sensitive subject just to get your jollies.

[wildemage]

You really, really believe that people were banned by an automated process NINE days after the event? Really? You really, really believe that? Come on? Really?

Not for one **** minute.

[Trillea]

You really, really believe that people were banned by an automated process NINE days after the event? Really? You really, really believe that? Come on? Really?

Yes, I believe that it took 9 days for someone to come up with a broken data comber.

[Lorz]

Tolero...Turbine...thank you for fessing up and correcting this.

As i stated in my emails..i dont mind paying the price for any infraction or rule i break.

But i could not for the life of me figure out what i had done....

Anyways...nice to know im not crazy....Insane yes....crazy no :)

/and i dont have a DDO problem....i can quit anytime i want.....I mean ...it wasnt like i went out and made a F2P account and didnt run it up to lvl 4.....i mean really :)

[Chai]

You called me a cheat. Then a person I will not forgive came on the forums with all capital letters and called me and others a liar and a cheat. I am a 58 year old MAN. I do not lie. I do not cheat. I have watched and guarded my behaviour all my adult life as to not be a liar and a cheat.

You called me a cheat. I am an honest player. Casual, but I am here everyday.

You called me a cheat. There is no amount of tp that can compensate me for the harm you did.

You called me a cheat. I do not sense any real emotion in your apology Tolero. I do believe you need to get somebody up here who can.

I admit that sucks, but we are still here discussing this, and not figuring out what we are all going to do with this new free time on our hands, due to not playing DDO any longer.

If mistakenly being called a cheat is that offensive, and no appology will suffice, if you continue to log in daily, what does that mean?

[stoolcannon]

Was there any other category? If there was a violation that started the entire investigation, were some accounts banned permanently (as opposed to temporary bans or warnings), and the rest of us just caught up in the net, through some sort of "guilt by association" program?

No one will ever know apparently since the policy is to not disclose any information to the community or banned players.


You really, really believe that people were banned by an automated process NINE days after the event? Really? You really, really believe that? Come on? Really?

I don't. I don't think it was an accident at all. At best I think it was half way between accidental and by design in that they intended to run a wide sweeping automated program and ban or warn people with no indication of why other than a vague reference to an exploit. The only thing that may not have been intentional was the sheer volume of players they banned or warned.

I think groundswell of nerdrage prompted a half assed apology otherwise we would have gotten none at all.