Salvage Dupes!?
Obviously a more personal entry.
This is my post from BG for anyone curious about my status.
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I was LM-17'd as well. I'm fairly sure that anyone receiving either message will be told it's a full ban if you try the call center (just a hunch though). Which leads me to ask how do you get a 3-day suspension only? Everyone that has called with 17 got 'perma' when they asked call center, and LM-11 is obvious perma. So where are the temps?
I think it's the "intent" that gets you in trouble in this situation. I was fairly good at making sure it was only discussed outside the confines of the game with the people I chose to explain it to, but obviously when you're in the run and someone has to give directions, everyone can't act innocent in chat-log. Even using this only maybe 4 times over about a 4 month span and receiving nothing (just to help), I think the number of times you used it and the amount of you received was irrelevant to SE in this instance.
At this point I feel a slight bit of relief ironically. Of course I don't know if it's really perma or whatnot I don't know how these things work, but I've very relieved to find that likely I'm the only one in LS hit. There would be a great deal of guilt associated with this if something I said or did led to friend's account being closed. I can really deal if it's just myself being locked out.
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As far as this morality issue and cheating, I see this more of just a calculated risk sort of thing. If you're honest with yourself and know that you had intent to use this, you had to know it was 'cheating', or at least violated the "spirit" of the game. While SE really defines what is legit vs. what is cheating and this may not always make sense, I don't see this case being that gray an area. From a player perspective, it was a calculated risk and I/others got burned on it.
From SE's perspective, I think you cannot simply let this one go without at least something happening. I'm sure that as people who have worked very hard to make the game what it is, their creation, they want to see it clean. Whether what they did was too harsh or not harsh enough is up for debate, but I don't think it was outrageous or anything. I personally think bans are to send a message. I know a lot of other sketchy borderline glitches to outright glitches that aren't 3rd party related (aka just programming errors or oversights like this one was) and if I do end up back in 3 days, there's no way in hell I'm going to use them even if I know them. Bans are a good way to deter people from this sort of thing.
I sympathize with those who received the LM-11/17 in the sense that I feel that many players log on to escape reality, if only for a short time. One of the cornerstones of reality/real life is the rule of law - that cutting corners and doing things contrary to what's on a piece of paper (like ToS) results in consequences. Perhaps this just reinforces the notion that, at times, the game and life can follow similar parallels.
Finally, for those riding the morality train, I would definitely score this as a victory in the sense that the community is generally 'cleaner' without players like myself in it. But I'll just finish by playing a little devil's advocate and ask isn't everything just a bit more interesting when someone/some group is pushing against SE's intentions? =P
Cheers
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I will of course still handle any comments.
To those of you who have also been hit, I can empathize, but just realize this is a game and the point is to have fun. Leaving the game by force should not be a tramatic experience - a little emoing is probably expected but in the end I think you'll find that moving on is not all too difficult. To those praising SE and want to laugh or lecture me here, I'll actually field those comments as genuinely and forthcoming as I can be. For every action there is a consequence and sometimes they don't go in your favor.
Happy gaming!
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