Bots and suspensions

fotia · April 2014

I'm not sure I understand how my husband and so many other people had their accounts suspended for no good reason what so ever, yet, bots are farming every named in the game to the point where you can't even get a hit on one and gold sellers spam us to death. Why are the people that aren't doing anything wrong getting the suspensions and the rest run the game?

Evenio · April 2014

Contact support if you feel it isn't warranted. To be honest, they must've had a good reason, and if it isn't a legit ban, they will rectify it.

And they are banning gold sellers and botters by the thousands, it just takes time for all those different ''gold'' selling companies to lose interest, which they will once they start losing big chunks of money by having to re-purchase accounts.

And I do not doubt for a second there's probably a group of players who are indeed buying gold, or get their accounts phished.

TLDR: Contact support. ^^

fotia · April 2014

They did rectify it, they removed the suspensions the same way they applied them. Without an email or msg, no one knows why they were suspended and then they just reinstated everyone like 10 hours later. We all contacted support multiple times and never heard from anyone. My point was that all these people that didn't do anything got banned and the bots and gold sellers DID NOT.

Harkrider · April 2014

fotia wrote: »

They did rectify it, they removed the suspensions the same way they applied them. Without an email or msg, no one knows why they were suspended and then they just reinstated everyone like 10 hours later. We all contacted support multiple times and never heard from anyone. My point was that all these people that didn't do anything got banned and the bots and gold sellers DID NOT.

I'm not sure you'll receive a satisfactory answer on a support forum.

The system is broken. That's really all that can be said.

Fenbrae · April 2014

Because there are auto-ban bots in play who like to ban the innocent.

If you send too many mails? Probably a gold seller, autoban.
If you send too much money around? Probably a gold seller, autoban.
If you fall through the world? That's a lot of data, must be spam, autoban.
If you stand around a public dungeon boss too long because you just can't get credit for the kill? Must be a botter, autoban.

So yeah, there is no good reason why it happens. The people who implemented the autoban bots just made a mistake.

Evenio · April 2014

fotia wrote: »

They did rectify it, they removed the suspensions the same way they applied them. Without an email or msg, no one knows why they were suspended and then they just reinstated everyone like 10 hours later. We all contacted support multiple times and never heard from anyone. My point was that all these people that didn't do anything got banned and the bots and gold sellers DID NOT.

Hmm, that's strange. There are a couple of posts whose people's accounts got reinstated through an e-mail and that it was a mistake or something along those lines.

And bots and gold sellers do get banned, I got 8 of them banned yesterday, personally. The problem is that it's multiple companies with probably 1000+ accounts shared between them, and at the moment they keep re-purchasing game accounts to keep on spamming/botting. ZOS is banning them, but the companies are still trying to find ways to prevent that from happening. All I can say is we should have patience, and when time passes, the less gold spammers and botters we shall see.

Rhoric · April 2014

I have reported 4 gold sellers that mailed me. All you can do is contact support. And they wouldn't be able to handle that on the forums cause of privacy issues.

Perseas · April 2014

Fenbrae wrote: »

Because there are auto-ban bots in play who like to ban the innocent.

If you send too many mails? Probably a gold seller, autoban.
If you send too much money around? Probably a gold seller, autoban.
If you fall through the world? That's a lot of data, must be spam, autoban.
If you stand around a public dungeon boss too long because you just can't get credit for the kill? Must be a botter, autoban.

So yeah, there is no good reason why it happens. The people who implemented the autoban bots just made a mistake.

we have a huge number of people in the forums, banned or suspended, without a reason (they claim) and if you enter ANY DUNGEON, there up to 10-20 bots per dungeon farming! Is it strange that the autoban is not working on them? And only normal players get banned?

steven_shidiwenb16_ESO · April 2014

Bots and gold sellers DO GET BANNED, just more pop up when old ones get banned. You really think they just ignore all the bots and gold sellers? LOOOOOOL sorry this entire thread makes my brain cells die.

Laerania_ESO · April 2014

Fenbrae wrote: »

Because there are auto-ban bots in play who like to ban the innocent.

If you send too many mails? Probably a gold seller, autoban.
If you send too much money around? Probably a gold seller, autoban.
If you fall through the world? That's a lot of data, must be spam, autoban.
If you stand around a public dungeon boss too long because you just can't get credit for the kill? Must be a botter, autoban.

So yeah, there is no good reason why it happens. The people who implemented the autoban bots just made a mistake.

None of the above, as you can see here it's clearly stated that it was not automated.

Besides that, as you can see here, the bans were supposedly due to "item duping bug" which now is known that is related to the guild bank.

Well, I have not joined in any guild yet and I was banned, not only me but other users have claimed the same. We are talking about something that can be checked easily.

I don't need to repeat the list you can find in my previous post list but, in short, I don't apply for any of the possible reasons for being banned and I've seen other users in the same situation.

My account and others were restored but I'm still thinking about this issue. This doesn't make any sense.

By the way, forum accounts were banned too (my main still is) so there should be people who can't post on forums.

Lox · April 2014

fotia wrote: »

They did rectify it, they removed the suspensions the same way they applied them. Without an email or msg, no one knows why they were suspended and then they just reinstated everyone like 10 hours later. We all contacted support multiple times and never heard from anyone. My point was that all these people that didn't do anything got banned and the bots and gold sellers DID NOT.

Any proof of that? I suspect not.

Just because there are still gold sellers / spammers around does not mean that there aren't ones getting banned. No system is perfect.

dahl.lucas_ESO · April 2014

really, who knows the truth. I am sure there are some people getting banned that really have not done anything but there has to be SOMETHING that led to it. Also, not doubting the OP here, but people who buy the gold, get banned will also come running here to complain taking the "i did nothing, I'm innocent" approach. Maybe an angry attempt into hurting the games reputation? this is the internet, take everything within questioning.

starkerealm · April 2014

dahl.lucas_ESO wrote: »

really, who knows the truth. I am sure there are some people getting banned that really have not done anything but there has to be SOMETHING that led to it. Also, not doubting the OP here, but people who buy the gold, get banned will also come running here to complain taking the "i did nothing, I'm innocent" approach. Maybe an angry attempt into hurting the games reputation? this is the internet, take everything within questioning.

Yeah, but the botters and gold spammers tend to do it in broken English. I find it hard to believe that the moment these bans started going out, the gold spammers suddenly developed fluency in one of the most idiosyncratic languages on the planet.

Ryudar · April 2014

There ARE people here getting banned for doing nothing. My friend has been banned right after he fell through the game world and used /stuck. It teleported him to a wayshrine he hadn't discovered yet. The game began to lag horribly and so he tried disconnecting. And that's when he got suspended.
That seems to be enough reason for the automatic Anti-Cheat system to ban him.

Bugs leading to people getting banned IS NOT ACCEPTABLE!

Every person who willingful commits actions against the terms of agreement has to be banned. But innocent players who did nothing wrong must be allowed to play again.

Tickets are open, we even talked with the phone support who promised to "give the case to the proper department".

Oberon70 · April 2014

The only thing I don't like is the silence from the Developers and also they advised they where working on something new for stopping the gold farmers. I have an add on to filter them out but they are getting around and I have been playing MMOs since wow launched day 1 - and this is one this game has a serious problem with the gold farmers. They didn't want to do Auction houses because of the gold farmers but hey they found another way to make heaps of money and to plaque the game. - I am sorry to hear so many people got banned and right at easter.

fromtesonlineb16_ESO · April 2014

fotia wrote: »

I'm not sure I understand how my husband and so many other people had their accounts suspended for no good reason what so ever, yet, bots are farming every named in the game to the point where you can't even get a hit on one and gold sellers spam us to death. Why are the people that aren't doing anything wrong getting the suspensions and the rest run the game?

You may have seen my post just now, a friend of mine was caught up in this and raised a ticket within minutes of his being kicked from the game. He got an e-mail in reply about an hour ago clearing him and he has his account back.

I really hope everyone who was wrongly targeted yesterday gets quickly back as well.

He's fuming at what happened, as no doubt is everyone else, his main anger is that Zenimax haven't told him on what basis this grossly negligent accusation was made against him in the first place: given he wasn't in a guild with a bank it was inconceivable that he was involved in duping.

Miezi · April 2014

Too add to the idiocy at hand, the most "amusing" part about all this crap is that today - after my friend's account was silently unbanned - he got more gold seller spam in a couple of hours playing already than all the days before.

ZOS, get your *** together, you obviously failed hard in whatever you tried to achieve; well, assuming that what happened wasn't your goal, that is...

On another note, the ZOS support is stupid enough to only unban my friend's game account while ignoring the ban of his forum account - wtf, god, throw some brain at them, please ! The funny part is that without being allowed to logon into the website he not even able to cancel his subscription, which I consider breaking consumer laws aplenty.

And yes, that's why he's not posting himself here. If he ever will again anyways, afterall "discussion of bans isn't allowed in our forums". Yeah... but shutting up the customer base like this while having a support team that cannot cope with the crap that the technicians cause will only lead to this game dieing before it even started. Especially since the 30 days are purchased with the game and cannot just be taken away at will without legitimate reasons or a refund of the game's purchase price.

Belrim · April 2014

Bots dont seem to get banned. Still seeing them *everywhere*. Always a number of ppl standing near dungeon boss spawn-points, usually facing away. Then, before i even realize that the boss spawns, WHAM BAM, they nuke it down.

VABarn · April 2014

What blows me away is this is a mega server... how can a GM not be logged in 24/7 on one "mega" server and just monitor chat in the newbie zone/first major city for gold spam and the first few dungeons for bots? Sure, there are zone shards, but I would imagine that they could figure out how to monitor all the shards at once (is chat even sharded?)...I mean, come on.... its not like it would take a lot of man power to alleviate this problem.

Belrim · April 2014

VABarn wrote: »

What blows me away is this is a mega server... how can a GM not be logged in 24/7 on one "mega" server and just monitor chat in the newbie zone/first major city for gold spam and the first few dungeons for bots? Sure, there are zone shards, but I would imagine that they could figure out how to monitor all the shards at once (is chat even sharded?)...I mean, come on.... its not like it would take a lot of man power to alleviate this problem.

My gold is on the bet "they dont have GM's"

crush83 · April 2014

Belrim wrote: »

My gold is on the bet "they dont have GM's"

This is what it boils down to. Zenimax has undoubtedly outsourced their Customer Support which is why it is so beyond terrible. In game support is non-existent.

This is a common trend in games and companies in general. They outsource all support to overseas companies who don't care or understand the product they are supporting.

The reality is it wouldn't be tough for GMs to make the rounds on the dungeons every 15 minutes or so, and ban the OBVIOUS botters. They can't do that though since there ARE NO GMS.