I wish SEGA did this when Phantasy Star Online was around, it ruined the game.

The ban hammer needs to come down more often.

But Jim! These poor sods will just vaporise upon contact with the sun!

Or is that Vampires I'm thinking of?

Square bans lots of people with every update... this is really nothing special. Most of the time they ban RMT'ers (real money traders), i.e. gil-sellers.

One of the big things with gil-buying and dupe exploits like this in FFXI is that it completely ruins the economy of the game. Some people might be thinking "lol in-game economy?" but there is an economy, and cheaters fucking destroy it. Good riddance.

I say at least 20% of those people will commit suicide. Now we just watch and wait...

That's too bad. I think if you can find an exploit, you have every right to use it. Square should have made sure the exploit wasn't there in the first place.

Good riddance. If you exploit and hurt a game's economy to get an unfair advantage over others, you deserve to see years of your gaming deleted for your arrogance and selfishness

Beside,s I totally understand Square's stance. The last time someone found an exploit in ff11 was right at Chains of promathia launch.

You could buy gear at the new areas for less than they cost to vendor elsewhere because of a price written wrong in the code. before Square was able to patch it a few people caught winds and completely DESTROYED the ff11 economy for the next 2-3 years with billions of instantly generated gil

This goes far, far beyond cheating = banning. This is clearly an exploit that has been around for months. If Square had done their job at all, they would have noticed and stopped this within weeks.

EVERY online multiplayer game has bugs and glitches, and players will exploit them when they find them. Square has made more than a few fuck-ups here, but its the players - their most hardcore players, the ones paying Square money every freakin month for several years - who are taking all the blame.

Punishment would be removing all illicit items (obviously), and perhaps stripping some players of gold or items, or even levels; things they can regain. Suspensions are a good option too, of course, and bans are a last resort for bad repeat offenders. Its just a game, not the end of the world. This is not punishment, this is bullshit.

To make a point, millions of people do still play this game.

How can EXPLOITING a GLITCH ever be right? It's a glitch. You're exploiting it. There's really nothing to it. I dunno about the punishment, but I just don't understand how some people think it's ok to exploit glitch.

Copy and pasted from my comment over on crunshii's blog.

When you exploit something, even if its not technically your fault you will be the one blamed for it. It's called cheating. Even if its in a game. Real world example. Go to Vegas and cheat at one of their games and see what happens to you when they find out. Its no different than what happened here. You get your ass thrown the fuck out and never allowed back. And don't tell me they didn't know what they were doing, people playing for a while knew exactly what was going on. This is coming from a former 3 year WOW veteran. Does it suck? Yes it does. Is it the end of the world? I hope to God not.

it is, however, square enix's responsibility to take into account EVERY FUCKING REPORT THEY GET OF A BUG, and atleast quarentine that area or some shit.

Square enix fucked up by not keeping tabs on what was going on, and ignoring the reports that were coming in for so long.

I have every respect for Squeenix for banning so many people for doing something that ruins the game for other people. Takes a lot of guts to say, 'you did wrong, now we don't want you in the game, we don't want your money any more' to so many people.

And from what I can tell, they fixed the exploit pretty soon after it was reported.

lols @ RAB, did you get banned son?

I think it's amazing, serves the tools right. If you cheat you deserve everything you get!

I find it kind of funny that people blame SE for them cheating and dealing with the consequences. I remember this class I had in college that taught me about "External Locus of Control" which basically means you're too much of a sissy to take responsibility for your actions and see it better to blame someone or something else.

Definition of "Exploit": to use selfishly for one's own ends

I agree with kama. For those so quick to judge ponder this:

The glitch was in place for 1.5 years, was reported and ignored being marked as "working as intended"

Players who originally discovered the glitch spread the mechanics of the glitch to others and it was perpetuated. Some of the original authors of the glitch are still walking around in full gear they acquired from their dup activities. Others who participated once in a "Shout Party" got perm banned and lost their hard earned accounts. The banning was very inconsistent and no matter how you ponder it there was no logic to who was banned and who wasn't given a few obvious choices of blatant cheating.

FFXI has lost a core set of players who were the leaders of the community who and had vast knowledge to share about the game.

Square Enix thrives on presenting gameplay that challenges the players to use their intuition to figure out how to progress through the game. Because of this there is a constant motivation to push the limits of the game. Some fights require that certain members of an alliance log out or dissolve alliance for various reasons. It is common practice. My point is that there are gray areas. It is not always black and white.

The fault here needs to be shared. The players as well as Square Enix need to own up to their responsibility. When you look at the list of those that lost their toons you see some that fully deserved perm, they are known cheats and the game will be better off without them. But there are others that surrendered to temptation/pier pressure and had flawless record prior to that. Still others because of lanquage barriers, for example, were unaware of what was happening and received perm bans.

This glitch was a phenomenon in that it was around so long that it became the norm. I'm from a small town and there is a law that says you will be jailed if you wear your hat inside a public establishment. Its not enforced so everyone does it. Similarly, there are alot of common practices in FFXI that SE ignores.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not condoning the exploitation of this glitch. My concern is the severity of the punishment to 100s of ffxi players who are/were passionate about the game and had flawless records with exception to this glitch. I am also outraged at SE's lack of accountability in this unfortunate incident.

I believe they have managed to alienate their customer base and this just may be the demise of the game.

To all those who have been perma banned and temp banned I would think hard about sinking your time and money into a MMO that is declining because of the poor business tactics used by its originators.