On Sunday, July 5th, at about 10pm Central Time, Vice Dynamis was well on its way to crushing a run of Dynamis - San D'oria. Although the AF2 drops had been something of a disappointment, and we'd garnered only a single 100 piece, we had still generated well over 200 more currency in bronze and generated over 2 million gil for each of the co-sponsors, Andraana and Arkanethered. The offshoot of our endgame LS, Paradigm, had opened up shouting to the public for its dynamis and seen a great deal of success. Our last run saw us crush Dynamis - Valkurm -- not a trivial zone -- drawing the maximum of 36 entrants. We felt like we were really accomplishing something. Here, we were in the midst of a large pull following our killing of the boss.
Over vent, I hear Miori's voice. "I'm crashing", she says, annoyed. Crashes used to be a common occurrence for her in dynamis, when she was running FFXI on an older, cheaper computer that wasn't really built for gaming. It could handle xp parties and simpler tasks, but larger events like dynamis and einherjar would choke it. She'd bought a new computer a few weeks back, though, and it ran the game like a dream. She could run around in Dynamis as though she were still in her Mog House, she said.
As we were in the midst of a fight, we acknowledged her and told her to get back on ASAP.
A bit later - it couldn't have been more than a minute - her voice registers over Vent. "I can't log back in," she says. "I'm LM-17'd"
"What?!" about four of us exclaim, simultaneously.
"I'm fucking LM-17'd!" she says, the traces of panic evident in her voice. "I can't log back in!"
"You're WHAT?!" we exclaim again.
LM-17 is the game's code for an account that has been banned. Our memories of its appearance are all-too-vivid, our shell's leadership (myself included) consisting of some of the remnants of a shell that was decimated by the 1/22 bans for duping.
Except then, there was a reason. Why on earth would they ban Miori? She's about the cleanest character imaginable.
We tried to tell her not to worry. Those in our linkshell who browse the BG forums assured her that there had been a rash of bannings lately stemming from credit card charge backs - almost all had been reversed rather quickly.
The event ends and everyone goes to sleep hoping for the best.
The next day - today, I guess, though it feels like it's been longer than that - she contacts POL's customer support via their online chat. After over an hour of waiting...
...she is told that the account has been banned due to connection with RMT activities.
They thought, and apparently still think, that her character - that she spent over six years working on, that she met her husband on, that she slaved on through thick and thin, good and bad, was a fucking RMT.
She filed a complaint, which triggers an "escalation of the investigation" surrounding her account, whatever that means.
Sometimes the word "Bullshit" is such an unbelievable understatement.
Why would anyone think this of her?
A thread at Zam.com - apparently the newly skinned allakhazam - gave some possible insight. A player posted a message telling a remarkably similar story. He had been banned for RMT, he had never RMT'd...
...and the only thing he could think of that may have triggered the action is that he has 15 gardening mules on his account that he uses to make gil.
One thing that did happen quite a bit on Miori's account was gardening. I myself had introduced Andraana to the profits of gardening a few years back. You get a few mules, you load them with flowerpots, you feed them seeds, you feed the plants crystals as they grow, and you sell off the results, getting gil aplenty with minimal effort.
I myself have twelve gardening mules, on which I grow Platinum Nuggets by planting tree cuttings, and feeding them light crystals x2 per plant. It nets me sufficient nuggets to garner around 800k in profits every two weeks.
Andraana's operation was much larger. He has 15 mules on his main, 15 mules on Ashke, an account inherited from a friend who quit the game, and 15 mules on Miori, all of which were used to grow Ice Ore, which also produces a byproduct of Platinum Leaves, which NPC for very substantial gil.
Miori is, of course, Andraana's real life wife. They met via the game and have been together five years, with twins girls that just turned two.
With 45 mules gardening non-stop he earned maybe 6 to 7 million gil per month. Almost every bit of which was used to fund his Relic, a horn that is currently at Stage 3, currently has all of the currency to upgrade to Stage 4 (he is just missing the attestation), and has a decent amount of the currency required to upgrade to Stage 5, the completed Gjallarhorn. He's been working at it on and off for years. Countless hours of planting, feeding, distributing, and selling off harvests have gone into that bloody thing.
And now his wife has been banned because the Special Fucking Task Force can't tell the fucking difference between someone who's gardening for their own profits and a motherfucking RMT.
It's always possible, of course, for the ban to be reversed. Any rational person looking at the setup they have couldn't possibly conclude that they are an RMT operation.
Andraana was able to call up the POL help desk and speak to someone on the group that handles banning complaints. He explained that he was calling on his wife's behalf and gave the guy he talked to her information.
In chatting with the guy, without being prompted, he was able to pull Andraana's own POL ID up and listed it as "another account that was involved" in the RMT-related activity.
Andraana was able to explain that that was his account, that the account that had been banned was his wife's, and that neither of them had ever been involved in any RMT. A cursory glance of Andraana's character - and the Stage 3 Relic horn and mass quantity of Silverpieces on it - should easily show that that was where the vast majority of the gardening proceeds wound up.
At the very least, Andraana was able to get his comments amended to her complaint.
Why Miori was banned but Andraana and Ashke were not touched remains a mystery.
I sent the following note to the Special Task Force via their email form on the POL web site:
Please take note of the very quickly growing litany of furious customers who have been caught up in your most recent round of mass bannings. A relevant thread on zam.com should be trivial to find.
It appears that the only crimes of a substantial number of the victims of your latest bannings involved nothing more than having multiple gardening mules. For this you suspected them of being involved somehow in RMT.
It seems obvious that you guys have screwed up in a massive way.
Can you imagine the negative publicity that will result when it becomes widely known that your company is routinely banning users, many of whom have been playing this game for 6+ years, who have committed no violation of your terms of service whatsoever? With the pending release of Final Fantasy XIV, I would think that such publicity would very much be of concern.
This offense of yours requires immediate acknowledgment and action.
Beware gardeners. S/E is apparently so fucking incompetent that they can't tell the difference between you and RMT.
