What better way to start your day than by annihilating 16,000 botters and gold spammers from your game? Today, NCsoft did just that! Aion Community Manager Andrew "Tamat" Beegle made an announcement on the game's official forums alerting the community to today's crackdown. It's important to note that today's bans span across both NA and EU servers.

For those of you who have accounts that have been caught in today's wave of bans a Ban FAQ has also been made available.

Read the official announcement and Ban FAQ here.

It's about DAMN time, but their numbers seem endless.. I wonder if this will even put a dent in the problem?

Anyway, if it does improve the spamming I might reactivate my account.

good for them i guess, still sad to see that so many of these appear in only two months. wonder if they will keep it up and if it does any good on the full scale.

I heard they were sending out blind bans and people who hadn't botted or logged in for a few days-weeks were getting banned.

knew it was coming though i doubt people will stop qqin over it.

Originally posted by Legato89

I heard they were sending out blind bans and people who hadn't botted or logged in for a few days-weeks were getting banned.

Yeah right, and I am santa claus.... Get real mate.

Originally posted by tryklon

Originally posted by Legato89

I heard they were sending out blind bans and people who hadn't botted or logged in for a few days-weeks were getting banned.

 

Yeah right, and I am santa claus.... Get real mate.

Wouldn't be surprising, they already did that twice.

Originally posted by tryklon

Originally posted by Legato89

I heard they were sending out blind bans and people who hadn't botted or logged in for a few days-weeks were getting banned.

 

Yeah right, and I am santa claus.... Get real mate.

http://www.aionsource.com/forum/aion-discussion/75601-people-who-were-wrongfully-banned.html

Saw a few threads on this site too, but seeing as the search engine on this site is perma broken I can't search for them.

Originally posted by Vaed

It's about DAMN time, but their numbers seem endless.. I wonder if this will even put a dent in the problem?

Anyway, if it does improve the spamming I might reactivate my account.

Well, truth be told, this is really more a pr. thing.

I remember HG Spam (who is now on the Aion Team) posting in the Lineage 2 forums that they in fact banned thousands upon thousands of botters, rmt spammers, on a constant basis but that it wasn't company policy to make an announcement every time they did it.

I have no doubts that they ban bots/rmt advertisers because for a time, every time I would see a store in one of the hubs that adverrtised some gold website I would go to the site and report it. I would get two e-mails, one indicating that they were looking into it and the next indicating they were banned and that NC was looking into other players who had dealings with the banned account.

I would then check in the game and with the exception of one incident, they were always gone. With the one incident I wrote back that they were still there and within 20 minutes they were indeed gone.

But as I said, this is all perception. NC does ban and always has banned. But they didnt' always announce it or not on a regular basis.

The reaction from players is always "well if they ban, why are there always bots".

I can't really say. One example comes from one of the community managers (might have been ayase) who said that these companies are highly organized and numerous. It is always in their interest to be in a game where people are buying money or items. And it makes sense.

If I was a rmt company I would calculate how much it cost me per banned account in relation to what that banned accuont brought me and adjust my fees accordingly. It's their business to make sure they are always in game. So given that there are many of these companies and given the finite resources that any game company has, it really feels like an uphill battle.

But perhaps that really is what they have to do, when they ban they always announce it.

No doubt folks will still find things to whine about..it never fails.

With gold spam about gone, bots slowly being taken care of, a more stable Abyss, and an increase to xp to reduce the "grind", Aion is the top pvp MMO out imo. Thank god NCsoft is finally pulling through and showing the fans they truly do want to see their game continue to be successfull.

((its too bad they cant find out who was buying the kinath and ban them as well...lol))

I remember HG Spam

HGMSpam actually unbanned thousands of botters and RMTers, when people learned he was going to Aion almost the entire L2 crowd decided to skip Aion because he's awful.

He was also known for banning non-bots for reporting bots, just search google or l2blah and you can find all the info easy.

Originally posted by caalem

I remember HG Spam

 

HGMSpam actually unbanned thousands of botters and RMTers, when people learned he was going to Aion almost the entire L2 crowd decided to skip Aion because he's awful.

 

He was also known for banning non-bots for reporting bots, just search google or l2blah and you can find all the info easy.

I think the real truth is probably in that shadow area that only those on the inside might know.

So sure I can do some searching and and see examples of people being unbanned but short of then having access to him to ask him about this, I can't really have a real picture of what really happened.

I've known players in game who swore up and down that they never purchased in game money only to then in secret, when they were leaving admit to me that they did.

I can't say whether or not he was good at his job or not. But I'm old enough to know that there are going to be many systems in place as well as an accountability system. I highly doubt Spam was sitting in his office drinking a mountain dew and flipping a coin to see who would be banned, unbanned or that in either case he wouldn't have to tell anybody that he did these things.

I think gamers want everything to be cut and dried and I don't really believe it to be.

In the end I can only base my decisons on what I've seen and experienced.

Does NC ban bots? yes, since L2 I've reported many botters, same with Aion rmt advertisers and they have been banned.

Do they always get the bots? No, since L2 I have reported many botters and have noted that some of the same ones were still in the game after a week.

Does spam do a good/bad job? I can't say. For all I know he bans millions of players but tens of thousands still get through thus making it look like nothing is being done. Or, perhaps they are all sitting in their offices having no clue what to do and flipping that coin.

The only thing I know for certain is that botters/rmt companies will always be around unless game companies take a very draconian stance and just not allow direct trading between players or that players finally decide that they aren't going to purchase anymore. I highly doubt any of that will happen.

Some games they are more out in the open, but if the game is popular it will have rmt. I have often heard that WoW has none of this or very little. I find this highly inplausible given a quick internet search will find many rmt companies offering services on all servers. They have to be getting that gold somewhere.

In the end I can either jump from game to game until the bots show up or that I see the effects of rmt and then leave and go to the next game or I can just suck it up and deal with it.

I can confirm that earlier today the entrance to Panda AH had about 10 Bots outside of it, after the ban, there was only 1, however a 2nd set up shop as I watched.  

Bet the entrance will be back to full compliment within a matter of hours.

But they are defintiely trying over there at NC and right now I'll bet the newbie areas are full of "new players" leveling up

It's a rough job...but...keep it up...good work.

Let's hope this is the first step to make the game as it should be in the beginning. Call me a whiner, but there are 'couple' of things still to fix:

• No GMs
• Lack of PvE content (meaningful - loot & time wise - instances for example)
• Not much to do in PvP apart from riding fortresses
• No character customization on the skill/attribute level (stigma system is so restrictive that it's not even worth mentioning)
• Lack of UI options/UI mods.
• ...

Stuff like this seems to basically be a PR move and is a sign that even they have noticed spammers/botters are hurting their numbers. However, it's really just a token gesture to appease some of the masses. Banning doesn't work against spammers, it's just something that people like to see.

One thing i see in this post is, can you verify any of it? Past posts to current posts. Like many things today with EVERYONE having a voice. People seem to gravitate towards what they believe, proven or not. So calling someone a liar or fool is pointless. None of it can be 100% verify'd. Just like polotics and religeon. This is what corruption does ppl.....

Originally posted by tryklon

Originally posted by Legato89

I heard they were sending out blind bans and people who hadn't botted or logged in for a few days-weeks were getting banned.

 

Yeah right, and I am santa claus.... Get real mate.

I was victim to the blameless ban-
 

twice

I had to argue with them for a week to get it back the first time, the second time took them a week and half to respond.

 Why are people so shocked that Aion has turned out like this?  The client security is a joke.  For all the "keep up the good work NCSoft" types, open your eyes, this problem will never ever go away and was always going to be there, it's kids play to bot in Aion, literally.

Meaningless PR piece is meaningless.

The problem is that they blatantly ignore the blatantly obvious bots that operate in blatantly obvious locations.

Yes, it would be a bad thing if they let the bots exist in locations that aren't obvious. Obviously you miss the obvious if that's the first retort that you jumped to.

Meh.  Meh is meh.

This amounts to a slap on wrist and a pat on the head.  When they actually start doing their jobs - or hiring more people so that they have the time to do their jobs - then I'll maybe consider resubbing.

To future flame responses: lol @ your nerd rage.  This post isn't directed at anyone, so if YOU take offense, then YOU clearly need to untie your ego from your MMO.  Also, I won't be back to read your reply anyway, ergo your reply, much like your nerd rage, is meaningless.

Thanks for reading. ^_~