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Square-Enix Bans Over 800 FFXI Accounts

Posted by Zonk on from the the-good-guys-fight-back dept.

wpoitras writes "It appears that Square-Enix is striking back at Gil Sellers in Final Fantasy Online. After what appeared to be an unscheduled server outtage, many players were kicked from the game. It doesn't actually mention gil sellers, but its pretty well accepted that monopolizing NM spawns is mostly done by gil sellers."

8 of 110 comments (clear)

  1. Silly by Altizar · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Wow, finaly a MMO company is blaming the players for caming static spawns rather than blaming themselves for having those spawns.

    And even worse, they wrote into their TOS that you can not camp any spawns or they can cancel your account.

    Static Spawn = Spawn Camping = Spawn Greifing.

    1. Re:Silly by SScorpio · · Score: 4, Interesting
      Square-Enix is not banning people over the camping of rare spawns. They are banning people over teh monolization of the static spawns through the use of Grief tatics which result is MPKs or in english players being killed in a non-PVP game (there is currently a single PVP event, but that event does not involve the static spawns).

      The main issue is that a few players who appear to be Chinese would camp this spawns 24/7 on the same characters, I don't know about you but a real player may be able to do this; however, it's unlikely they would do it for months on end. When other players would attempt to all camp the spawns, these "Gil Sellers" would do things use a puller harder monsters into a lower level section of the area to kill off the other people attempting to camp the spawns.

      Numerous people complained about these issues, and many people have left the game due to these issue. It is definately news worthy is that Square-Enix is finally doing something to combat this problem.

    2. Re:Silly by Maserati · · Score: 4, Interesting

      That's actually handled in World of Warcraft. Mobs will stop chasing you. And as a bonus, they recently took steps against an exploit involving aggroing a boss into other players. I'm not sure how that last exploit worked, something about stealthy rogues being teleported to safety. Further confusing the issue, most mobs will ignore other players while they run back to where they're supposed to be. And the toughest bosses are in instances where they belong anyway. Still, Blizzard does seem to be trying to control this kind of griefing.

      --
      Veteran, Bermuda Triangle Expeditionary Force, 1992-1951
    3. Re:Silly by SamBeckett · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Rogues could do it with vanish.
      Hunters too with feign death (maybe).
      The transporting "exploit" you mentioned involved a rogue stealthing through an instance (monsters don't stop chasing you in an instance), aggro'ing the mob and having a warlock teleport him back to the group. This effectively "skips content" and is against Blizzard's policy.

  2. good and bad by Joe+the+Lesser · · Score: 4, Interesting

    It's nice to see a MMO company actually fight back.

    Of course, FFXI is very well designed for this sort of behavior in the first place.

    --
    "I only speak the truth"
    Karma: null(Mostly affected by an unassigned variable)
  3. Few gil sellers get banned by akypoon · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I have some friends playing FFXI now. They told me on Phoenix server, the IGE employees are still doing business as usual. It seems Square only banned those gil sellers who are very, very aggressive.

    Banning 800 out of 32 servers make you wonder how many gil sellers are actually out there. Keep in mind that Square never said explicitly that how many out of the 800 are linked to gil selling activities. Players who have repeating records for MPK or using grief tactics are banning candidates as well.

    Kudo to Square-Enix PR department. Well done.

  4. Gil seller? by clean_stoner · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Am I the only one who has absolutely no idea what a Gil seller is?

    --

    Sigs are for the weak.

  5. Why not let the players decide... by $1uck · · Score: 3, Interesting

    How difficult would it be to mark some servers as "approved for IGE economy 'enhancements'" and some servers where such activity will get you banned. The MMOG company can take IGE up on its offer to share a portion of the proceeds, and sign a contract that heavily penalizes IGE (or any other group) that violates server agreements. And if no one wants to play on the servers offering the "enhancements" well then scrap it and tell IGE to get lost. But the people who don't like it don't have to play with it and the people who do will have a "safe haven" to do it in. /crazy I know give everyone what they want.