NCSoft Screws Up Mass-Ban
Please also read: http://www.gamexploits.com/news/aion/aion-mass-ban-not-to-do-with-bots-119.html
Today NCSoft decided to take action on RMT (2nd Market Industry) and botters and in the process IP banned nearly every gaming tunneling company. (Tunneling is used by gamers to reduce their ping “latency” in game and speed up the connection to game servers.) NCSofts plan was to IP block the power leveling companies from having access to AION but it seems the idea has back fired.
NCSoft did hit the 2nd Market Industry hard as we are hearing numbers of up to 80% suspension and ban rates on majority of the botting companies. In this huge swipe it seems that NCSoft has pulled a well known Blizzard mistake and took out many innocent gamers by hitting the tunneling sites.
Some tunneling sites are reporting a 100% IP Ban and all of their AION customers are now unable to connect to AION using their company. This has created many issues for these companies as customers are now demanding refunds or filing charge backs.
On top of all of this it seems NCSoft does not email their customers to tell them that their account has been suspended, banned or even why! If you’ve been a customer of Blizzard you know how horrible their customer service can be. It seems that NCSoft has taken it to a whole new level with this major screw up. What’s even better then that is the fact that they are deleting posts on the official forums in reference to this screw up. You can see this by all of the deleted posts and people posting about NCSoft deleting their posts.
If you are one of the unlucky people that got suspended, please contact NCSoft tech support and work with them to get your account unlocked. If you use a proxy service or tunneling company and your account was suspended or closed, then it’s a good bet that your proxy / tunneling company was hit.
Here is one response from NCSoft support:
Greetings,
Your account was deactivated as part of a larger investigation to remove Kinah sellers and advertisers. I spent about 20 minutes combing through all of your chat logs, trade logs, and various other logs that we have. After reviewing all of the evidences, I believe that there was a mix up regarding your account name in relation to another account that actually was guilty and also banned.
I have reactivated your account and made some notes on it to make certain this never happens again. You have been cleared of any association with unauthorized activities and may continue to access the AION service.
Please understand that we are doing our best to swiftly remove and bar fraudulent activity from AION to make it a better experience for everyone. I am sorry your account was caught up in our efforts to maintain a clean environment, and I apologize for any inconvenience and frustration that we have caused you.
We have reactivated your account and I hope you enjoy your time in Aion.
Sincerely,
GM Angel
So it seems people have been unbanned already, but we'll see where this goes.
IceCube