Babz, get back on vent, I'll be here a lil longer before I have to go out of town for a few days. I was down hiding in the officer channel.
On topic: Account sharing has always been common and quite normal in RoM- while always being technically against the ToS. I've spoken to some of the old GM's from Frogster about it years ago, but never to any of the new folk from GF.
The attitude the old GM's had was that it's "at your own risk" behavior. They didn't care if you did it, but if someone you shared with was banned for hacking or duping or whatever, you'd better not complain to them about being banned along with them. It was understood that generally, if that occurred, you would usually be able to prove you weren't the miscreant and get a perma ban lifted, but not always.
I've never heard, until today, of someone being banned FOR account sharing. In the recent guild interview with The Pit, unless I'm unusually confused, he himself said he didn't give a *bleeped* if we do it, but we better not cry to anyone if bans happen due to account sharers being hackers. The obvious corollary being: share accounts all you want, just don't share them with botters or dupers- which is just common sense.
This is a weird situation for me, let's just put it that way.
I have known Babz forever. She was in Noto for years, and she followed me to Heretic. I have never seen her participate in any behavior which could be classified even as an exploit, never mind hacking or botting. She's had a hard row to hoe with RoM over the years- she had to level a whole new toon on Palenque a few years ago because her original toon was quest-bug-locked on the Morrock line. Instead of having someone nice get on the server to unlock her, like GF did this week for people, she was told she was just out of luck. All of the diamonds she spent on that account, on mounts and other bound items, were lost, and she had to completely reroll. That's how the toon named Nerf was born. She even petitioned Frogster for a name change on that toon, and was denied. So not only did they refuse to help her with the broken chain quest, they added insult to injury by denying her a simple request.
Despite all that, she still kept playing.
After Noto went down on Palenque, instead of giving up like, lets be honest, a lot of people did, she came with me to Reni and started all over- again. More dias spent, more time invested. Her toon Xbabzx on Reni is level capped and endgame geared- she did all that work and spent all that money herself.
I know that anytime someone who's banned gets on the forums to complain that their ban is unfair, most of us think... mhmmm. Whatever, honey. In this case- I'm sorry. I've known Babz forever, and she's as clean as they come. If account sharing is a sin worthy of a permaban, well, pretty much 50% or more of the population deserves a permaban. It's especially odd to me, considering that the AH on Reni is still filled with duped Proofs of Myth.
I fully support GameForge's efforts to clean up the RoM community. I believe we need policing. I believe in permabans. I don't believe this one is deserved, and I wish I could see inside the heads of Support. Sometimes justice isn't as just as we could hope for.
Babz has suffered a lot because Frogster was asleep at the switch, and until recently, GameForge was as well. It seems to me that this is the ultimate in collateral damage. She has invested probably thousands of dollars, and definitely thousands of hours, in this game. She is their ideal customer- she pays, and she plays. She doesn't exploit, dupe or hack. She's innocent- of everything but breaking a rule that both Frogster and GameForge have repeatedly told us, by their actions if nothing else, is one they don't enforce on purpose.
If they plan on enforcing a ban on the innocent variety of account sharing, it would be nice for them to explicitly let us know that. Heddin's thread is different, I think- we can all see what he was doing was exploitative and even botting- being away from the keyboard and killing mobs is indefensibly gaining power afk- which was explained to us in detail as being bannable, back in the Swag days. I understand why he's angry, but I think this is something totally different.
I support policing, I support cleaning up this game- but I do hope that GameForge can find a way to sort the sheep from the goats, instead of indiscriminately banning people based on what they think, versus what they know.
In conclusion, Babz: I don't want you to go. I understand why you want to, but if you can get this straightened out, please reconsider. You are loved and will be missed, immensely. GameForge needs every player they can get to play RoM, and they need to balance that with needing to clean up the mess that was left in the wake of years of mismanagement.
Runes of Magic Gameplay Discussions »
Rogues, the new scouts with hide!
(Sep 24th 2013, 9:10pm)
