Allielyn
*Pony*
It has now been nearly a week hours since the banparty occurred, and I have nearly 20 emails in my inbox. While I am not in fact averse to actually addressing each appeal (because everybody ought to have a chance to at least have their case looked at, even if it is extremely unlikely to be granted; and because acting solely as judge, jury, and executioner without so much as a "hey lets hear your unlikely side of the story" isn't very nice), let me put down a few ground rules when it comes to appealing your situation.
Fact # 1 - The program that was developed by the coders/devs to work on this and fine tuned by them was specifically targeted at MacroQuest (MQ) users. It was a specialized query that works within this specialized game to detect the running of another specific program. As per each coder and dev who worked on the issue (and I've asked them each, multiple times), if it gave a positive response, we are 100% positive that the computer had MQ running in the background. Parsing programs like EQcompanion, video programs like FRAPS, and cpu-friendly programs like EQplaynice(EQPN) Do Not Trigger It.
Appeal Corollary #1 - When appealing, claiming that your computer has never had MQ installed will get your appeal ignored. Claiming that it was never active while you were playing SoD (only other EMUs) will also get your appeal ignored. Claiming that it could have been some other 3rd party program which is legal (like EQPN and EQCompanion) will get your appeal ignored.
Fact #2 - Users of MQ know that the program is impossible to miss if it is active while running SoD. For one thing (among many others) your map looks VERY different. It is impossible to have MQ running while you are logged into SoD and not know there is something wrong
Appeal Corollary #2 - When appealing, claiming that somebody else installed MQ on your computer and you didn't know it was running will get your appeal ignored.
Fact #3 - These tests were run over the course of MONTHS so that we could be certain to purge the lion's share of users in one go. This includes some pretty detailed delving (mostly by Woldaff) to make sure that we were banning the players who used it - and not just the characters that might have been lent out to the players. This also means that chances are we have multiple instances of use recorded.
Appeal Corollary #3 - When appealing, claiming that you 'only used it once' when we can see multiple uses will get your appeal thrown out and never reviewed ever again. Furthermore, claiming that you 'only used it once' isn't much of an argument anyways, because a) we don't know how much you used it before we started checking, and b) just because we only saw you once via Woldaff zone-bombing doesn't mean you weren't using it when he was offline. If you want to use the argument that it was "somebody else" on your character, please remember that a) you are responsible for things that other people do on your characters in general, and b) we did do a bit of sleuthing to be sure. That is not to say mistakes couldn't have been made; but we don't appreciate wasting our time re-addressing a problem because you had a whim to make us waste time confirming it was you. If you know who had access to your character, and can provide us with any pertinent information (when they might have been playing, what IP address they were using, etc.) it may help your appeal process go quicker.
Long story short, if and when you decide to appeal, please address the issue of
a) why MQ was running in the background while your character was online from your ip address playing SoD,
b) when/how often you are aware that MQ was running in the background while you or another person in your household was playing SoD, and
c) Why you think we should consider your appeal at all, knowing that the rules are very clear on the use of 3rd party programs by any player to gain any advantage.
d) Any external evidence to support your case (such as IP addresses of other characters you suspect caused the issue)
Again, all appeals go to [email protected] Thank you.
------------
UPDATE -- FOR ANY MQ BANS THAT OCCUR OR HAVE OCCURED AFTER NOVEMBER 2009, CLAIMING THAT IT WAS SOMEONE ELSE DOESN'T HELP YOUR CASE. The great purge of 2009 was warning enough. Saying "I left my account to PersonA for spring/summer 2010 and didn't log on SoD for that time period" is no longer an acceptable defense even if you can prove it.
Fact # 1 - The program that was developed by the coders/devs to work on this and fine tuned by them was specifically targeted at MacroQuest (MQ) users. It was a specialized query that works within this specialized game to detect the running of another specific program. As per each coder and dev who worked on the issue (and I've asked them each, multiple times), if it gave a positive response, we are 100% positive that the computer had MQ running in the background. Parsing programs like EQcompanion, video programs like FRAPS, and cpu-friendly programs like EQplaynice(EQPN) Do Not Trigger It.
Appeal Corollary #1 - When appealing, claiming that your computer has never had MQ installed will get your appeal ignored. Claiming that it was never active while you were playing SoD (only other EMUs) will also get your appeal ignored. Claiming that it could have been some other 3rd party program which is legal (like EQPN and EQCompanion) will get your appeal ignored.
Fact #2 - Users of MQ know that the program is impossible to miss if it is active while running SoD. For one thing (among many others) your map looks VERY different. It is impossible to have MQ running while you are logged into SoD and not know there is something wrong
Appeal Corollary #2 - When appealing, claiming that somebody else installed MQ on your computer and you didn't know it was running will get your appeal ignored.
Fact #3 - These tests were run over the course of MONTHS so that we could be certain to purge the lion's share of users in one go. This includes some pretty detailed delving (mostly by Woldaff) to make sure that we were banning the players who used it - and not just the characters that might have been lent out to the players. This also means that chances are we have multiple instances of use recorded.
Appeal Corollary #3 - When appealing, claiming that you 'only used it once' when we can see multiple uses will get your appeal thrown out and never reviewed ever again. Furthermore, claiming that you 'only used it once' isn't much of an argument anyways, because a) we don't know how much you used it before we started checking, and b) just because we only saw you once via Woldaff zone-bombing doesn't mean you weren't using it when he was offline. If you want to use the argument that it was "somebody else" on your character, please remember that a) you are responsible for things that other people do on your characters in general, and b) we did do a bit of sleuthing to be sure. That is not to say mistakes couldn't have been made; but we don't appreciate wasting our time re-addressing a problem because you had a whim to make us waste time confirming it was you. If you know who had access to your character, and can provide us with any pertinent information (when they might have been playing, what IP address they were using, etc.) it may help your appeal process go quicker.
Long story short, if and when you decide to appeal, please address the issue of
a) why MQ was running in the background while your character was online from your ip address playing SoD,
b) when/how often you are aware that MQ was running in the background while you or another person in your household was playing SoD, and
c) Why you think we should consider your appeal at all, knowing that the rules are very clear on the use of 3rd party programs by any player to gain any advantage.
d) Any external evidence to support your case (such as IP addresses of other characters you suspect caused the issue)
Again, all appeals go to [email protected] Thank you.
------------
UPDATE -- FOR ANY MQ BANS THAT OCCUR OR HAVE OCCURED AFTER NOVEMBER 2009, CLAIMING THAT IT WAS SOMEONE ELSE DOESN'T HELP YOUR CASE. The great purge of 2009 was warning enough. Saying "I left my account to PersonA for spring/summer 2010 and didn't log on SoD for that time period" is no longer an acceptable defense even if you can prove it.
Last edited by a moderator:
