Banned for no reason (Zenimax, why no response?)

Kaoticsekurityub17_ESO

Judging by the MASSIVE amount of people posting about getting banned for nothing, I am going to assume they are already looking into this. Regardless, there is still no response or new moderator threat on this issue. I am on hour 2 of waiting on a call from tech support.

Harvest

My boyfriend was banned yesterday and did nothing wrong. He appealed and his ban has just been lifted and an apology given.

It's not enough, we feel. The accusation alone is a slap in the face for loyal players like ourselves who play games with nothing but integrity and do NOT hack.

They claimed there was a "flaw in their process of finding the offending players" and thanks to our appeal they were able to review his account. It's such a weird, off-putting way to handle this, to blanket ban accounts without even checking them. We still have NO clue why he was targeted as an offender or even what the heck "duping" is and they gave no explanation. This is so absurd and insulting. If this is how they handle things, It makes us not even want to play this game.

doggie

Sounds like he accidently duped a item(duplicating items), the servers were recently taken down because of this problem and they've probably just banned everyone who have duped items with a script. But the problem is that it's easy to dupe by accident. If you take items out of a guild bank there is a chance to dupe it.

krilleyy95

The idiots (Yes, ZOS) should really automatically put in a reason for the ban. Almost every other online game does this.

Shaie

Ah, now I understand a little bit. There have been problems with the bank, especially for those who had purchased upgrades. They pushed a patch to fix it within the last 48 hours (for EU & NA) and what I think happened is that all accounts which experienced some sort of bank problems (and possibly even all accounts with bank upgrades) were blanket banned so that each could be checked for occurrences of duping or any other potentially profitable behaviour engaged in by the player.

"Duping" is the intentional duplication of an item by a player, usually in order to create more of something rare or much desired by other players so that the item(s) can be sold to earn the player more in-game currencies (and possibly sold for real cash as well). It is known that the bank was bugged & losing gold, items & purchased expansion slots, but what also became known was that the bank bug would also duplicate rare materials as well. There was a person who posted here on the forums that not only had he found this bug, he'd figured out how to replicate it AND he had been using the duplicated materials to create armor & weapons for his character. This is known as exploiting or exploiting a dupe.

I am in NO WAY stating, suggesting or insinuating that your boyfriend did any such things, but trying to explain what may have happened. I'm also not in any way attempting to excuse such behaviour... I don't feel that Zenimax's way of "kill them first & sort the bodies out later" is in any way an appropriate procedure to follow when bugs, dupes & exploits have occurred. Basically on their end, the same procedures have to be followed - they have to check each & every account to ensure that the player was honest, then restore the account, make apologies & possibly even grant boons of some sort (probably extension of free game time) to those who were found to be honest. However, checking each account & banning those who deserve it while leaving all who were affected yet did not profit from the exploits unknowing of the fact that their accounts were checked is the proper way of doing it. It's really not in ANY company's best interest to continually *** off a loyal customer base within the first 30 days of the offering as Zenimax has done.

Glad to hear that his account was restored & hopefully the OP's account will also be restored soon.

Jim_McMasterub17_ESO

Okay, I don't want to disparage here; but first off.

The game is in serious need of fixing, & these continual "Massive amounts of people banned" & "My boyfriend was banned for no reason" come off as hollow at best, *** at worst.

I know over twenty people playing this game now; who have been since before day one, not a single ban; much less an unwarranted one.
You are acting like people are getting banned left-right-& center for no reason whatsoever.

Stay away from changes to your client, CALL CS if you get an unwarranted flag on your account or ban...

Personally, I think you're misinformed; potentially by your 'boyfriend'

but I've always been the suspicious type... My favorite shirt as a kid said

..& ya know what else?

...I don't even think you HAVE any candy in that van mister.

omega_x1_ub17_ESO

Greeting ####,

After reviewing your case, we've lifted the ban on your account. As it turns out, during the course of removing players that were exploiting a bug in the game, we inadvertently banned the accounts of a number of players we now believe to be innocent. We'd like to apologize for the inconvenience and thank you for filing an appeal. As more players contacted us with appeals, we were able to quickly identify the flaw in our process identify the innocent players (such as yourself) and we were able to lift the bans relatively quickly.

The reason you don't hear any of us complaining anymore is because the massive unwarranted bans have been lifted.

Thanks for your support and contribution to the community.

Laerian

In before the trolls we had to endure last night mock of your situation.

Follow the appeal procedure. described here http://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/discussion/82424/recent-actions-against-exploiters-appealing-a-ban#latest

Maybe you can get some sort of compensation and speed the process with the phone call. I don't speak english so I didn't have the pleasure of been waiting 4 hours on hold.

If you are innocent you should receive an answer like this:

"Greetings Adventurer,

After reviewing your case, we've lifted the ban on your account. As it turns out, during the course of removing players that were exploiting a bug in the game, we inadvertently banned the accounts of a number of players we now believe to be innocent. We'd like to apologize for the inconvenience and thank you for filing an appeal. As more players contacted us with appeals, we were able to quickly identify the flaw in our process identify the innocent players (such as yourself) and we were able to lift the bans relatively quickly.
Thanks"

/edit

You could check your account every hour because in my case the ban was lifted in like 4 hours and the mail took around 12 hours to arrive.

Harvest

Jim_McMasterub17_ESO wrote: »

Okay, I don't want to disparage here; but first off.

The game is in serious need of fixing, & these continual "Massive amounts of people banned" & "My boyfriend was banned for no reason" come off as hollow at best, *** at worst.

I know over twenty people playing this game now; who have been since before day one, not a single ban; much less an unwarranted one.
You are acting like people are getting banned left-right-& center for no reason whatsoever.

Stay away from changes to your client, CALL CS if you get an unwarranted flag on your account or ban...

Personally, I think you're misinformed; potentially by your 'boyfriend'

but I've always been the suspicious type... My favorite shirt as a kid said

..& ya know what else?

...I don't even think you HAVE any candy in that van mister.

Maybe you're the misinformed party here, as there were plenty of people getting banned in a large amount due to this problem.

We did get the account re-activated and an apology was made for the confusion. Like I stated in my post. No "hollow bs" about it... You'd be a little disparaged if it happened to you, no doubt.

There was no duping on our account whatsoever, and we don't even have a guild bank nor have we ever used one. Were only 2 players in 1 guild, (you need 10 to have a guild bank.)

Your post comes off as pretty "hollow BS" and I'm not sure why you'd choose to be so cynical and insulting to someone who's here to help fix or report a problem. Really, if you want to help, please help. If your motivation is to insult someone's integrity and intelligence, perhaps send me (or my 'boyfriend') a tell in game and we can chat about your nifty t-shirt and sardonic attitude there. Peace.

kestrel_mpb16_ESO

All of the theories are just that. ZOS hasn't even confirmed why these accounts were banned beyond a vague suggestion it related to the guild banking duping exploit.

Problems with that, many of the people subsequently unbanned haven't used a guild bank, some aren't even in a guild. It wasn't limited to those with banking bugs related to lost inventory and lost inventory space. Nor was everyone who experienced those bugs banned. There appears to be no true underlying thread, though people have speculated about hirelings, trades, guild member activity, ingame mail to friends, and so forth. It's ridiculous that innocent players have to speculate about what might have made them look guilty because ZOS won't admit to the scope of their own mistake.

imjanko

Jim_McMasterub17_ESO wrote: »

Okay, I don't want to disparage here; but first off.

The game is in serious need of fixing, & these continual "Massive amounts of people banned" & "My boyfriend was banned for no reason" come off as hollow at best, *** at worst.

I know over twenty people playing this game now; who have been since before day one, not a single ban; much less an unwarranted one.
You are acting like people are getting banned left-right-& center for no reason whatsoever.

Stay away from changes to your client, CALL CS if you get an unwarranted flag on your account or ban...

Personally, I think you're misinformed; potentially by your 'boyfriend'

but I've always been the suspicious type... My favorite shirt as a kid said

..& ya know what else?

...I don't even think you HAVE any candy in that van mister.

Thee sheer number of this type of DB coment laasst night, along with being banned for no reason was pretty irritating to say the least.

My "apology email" said the same thing:

"After reviewing your case, we've lifted the ban on your account. As it turns out, during the course of removing players that were exploiting a bug in the game, we inadvertently banned the accounts of a number of players we now believe to be innocent. We'd like to apologize for the inconvenience and thank you for filing an appeal. As more players contacted us with appeals, we were able to quickly identify the flaw in our process identify the innocent players (such as yourself) and we were able to lift the bans relatively quickly."

So, yeah, I hope karma is a real thing, and of those arrogant, self-righteous people accusing everyone that had been banned last night of lying or cheating get banned in the next wave of crap.

MissyJ

kestrel_mpb16_ESO wrote: »

All of the theories are just that. ZOS hasn't even confirmed why these accounts were banned beyond a vague suggestion it related to the guild banking duping exploit.

Problems with that, many of the people subsequently unbanned haven't used a guild bank, some aren't even in a guild. It wasn't limited to those with banking bugs related to lost inventory and lost inventory space. Nor was everyone who experienced those bugs banned. There appears to be no true underlying thread, though people have speculated about hirelings, trades, guild member activity, ingame mail to friends, and so forth. It's ridiculous that innocent players have to speculate about what might have made them look guilty because ZOS won't admit to the scope of their own mistake.

This is indeed the problem. I have seen so many assumptions flying around, and so far the only one that seems to be a plausible one in my case is that I received 3xexplorer pack mails (triplicates), from which I have taken the attachments of only one of them out of the mailbox. I haven't had any bank/inventory bugs, I haven't used any guildbank, I haven't traded with any players. I have received a single purple item in the mail from a guildy (and some provisioning recipes from others including my bf), and I have no way of knowing if that item is somehow related to duping (it's a drop item and not crafted). I have a single hireling on my main and have received a single mail from that once a day for like 5 days or so. And as of yet I still have no idea how to cheat in games like these and have no interest in doing so. I just wanna be able to make sure that I don't get accused of some wrong doing again - especially wrong doing that I had never even heard of before my suspension. In this case: duping.
It is frustrating not knowing what was the reason for my ban in the first place. Yes I have had my account restored, but I don't know if I actually unintentionally did something that got me banned (which would be nice to know so I could watch out for that in the future) or if it was just some fluke accident that someone hit a ban button on my account (along with a lot of other innocent players). Several ppl in the forums have stated that Zenimax has claimed that this wasn't an automated mass ban but a manually performed one (but I have yet to find where this was originally announced). Apparently they "fixed the issue that caused the inadvertently banning of innocent players", but is it something that we as players can help prevent from happening again or what?

Harvest

kestrel_mpb16_ESO wrote: »

All of the theories are just that. ZOS hasn't even confirmed why these accounts were banned beyond a vague suggestion it related to the guild banking duping exploit.

Problems with that, many of the people subsequently unbanned haven't used a guild bank, some aren't even in a guild. It wasn't limited to those with banking bugs related to lost inventory and lost inventory space. Nor was everyone who experienced those bugs banned. There appears to be no true underlying thread, though people have speculated about hirelings, trades, guild member activity, ingame mail to friends, and so forth. It's ridiculous that innocent players have to speculate about what might have made them look guilty because ZOS won't admit to the scope of their own mistake.

Very well said. That was my thought on it, and the reason we were so upset. We've both played as beta testers for over 10 years now, contributing massive amounts of feedback to help many games improve and run smoothly. It's insulting that we were lumped into the category of "hacker" so fluidly and thoughtlessly.

This has happened before on occasion in other new games directly post beta. But in other games where one of us has been "inadvertently" banned, along with a sincere apology, we receive an equally sincere explanation of why it happened and what fail-safes will be put in place to keep it from recurring. ZOS simply re-activated the account as if to say, "oopsie! have a nice day!"