Players who have been banned by mistake, how long did it take to get unbanned?

[Landylil]

I'm not sure if this is a server chat question or a rant question, but I'm not wanting to rant or flame. My duo partner got banned for RMT, on a trade that used resources we gathered 100% in-game over the past couple of years of playing. He at no point has ever done real money trading or trades outside the forum/EC tunnel. It seemed like it would be a quick thing to unban, since I assumed our assets were trackable, but it's been about 2 weeks now.

For people who have been mistakenly banned for RMT, how long did it take for your case to be reviewed and overturned? His ban is essentially a ban on me too, game isn't the same without my partner. We're starting to wonder if we're just going to be a casualty of the server attempting to clean up, or if the staff are just that thorough, that it will take this long to see that our pp and items have been associated to our accounts for years.

Thanks,
Shazz

[Sajan]

It depends on who did the actual ban. The GMs do not overturn each others bans. I believe Sirken has reviewed all of his ban appeals. Rogean is generally busy with a lot of things on his plate but he will get around to them. And Aussie is gone to work for a couple of weeks at a time between his playtimes. Have patience and the latter two will get around to your friend.

[Landylil]

Thank you Sajan, I believe Aussie did the ban, which explains why things got quiet on their end. We'll keep the faith. Didn't expect such a legitimate response, and it is greatly appreciated.

[Erati]

just make sure your friend has logs and information around the 'tainted transaction' that involved RMT.

If he can explain and clear his name as to why he was doing a trade that involved RMT plat then he will get unbanned.

Just need to make sure he presents all the information surrounding the transaction he has

[Swish]

Make a new account in the meantime if you're getting the itch...its better than no P99 at all :p

[GreldorEQ]

just make sure your friend has logs and information around the 'tainted transaction' that involved RMT.

If he can explain and clear his name as to why he was doing a trade that involved RMT plat then he will get unbanned.

Just need to make sure he presents all the information surrounding the transaction he has

This is completely backwards imo. I don't understand why someone would ever need to keep logs of everything they do for fear of a ban. The more innocent people that are hooked by something like the recent RMT ban, the more worried other innocent players should be while putting their time in on this server.

[Erati]

This is completely backwards imo. I don't understand why someone would ever need to keep logs of everything they do for fear of a ban. The more innocent people that are hooked by something like the recent RMT ban, the more worried other innocent players should be while putting their time in on this server.

well its a free server so theres only so much they can do in terms of catching RMT

we are very lucky they even spend this much time policing cheating, all they ask the 'innocents' to do is simply have your logs running ( which is changing 1 line of text in the .ini file from FALSE to TRUE and you have logs 24/7)

I agree it kinda sucks guilty til proven innocent but at the same time it is not that difficult to prove innocence if you are indeed INNOCENT.

[GreldorEQ]

all they ask the 'innocents' to do is simply have your logs running ( which is changing 1 line of text in the .ini file from FALSE to TRUE and you have logs 24/7)

I agree with you on everything but this. They do not ask us to keep logging on in an appropriately public way that new people would notice. I think if it were added to the Getting Started Guide, it could help people like the OP and others who may have been wrongfully targetted by a ban.

[Sajan]

This is completely backwards imo. I don't understand why someone would ever need to keep logs of everything they do for fear of a ban. The more innocent people that are hooked by something like the recent RMT ban, the more worried other innocent players should be while putting their time in on this server.

If you know someone who is willing to comb through miles of logs for hours upon hours, with no pay, before issuing widespread RMT bans like the one mentioned here, you should have that person shoot the staff a guide application.

On the flip side, it takes a couple of minutes to locate your EQ folder and permanently turn logs on and/or use the search command within said logs to locate evidence.

[Erati]

I agree with you on everything but this. They do not ask us to keep logging on in an appropriately public way that new people would notice. I think if it were added to the Getting Started Guide, it could help people like the OP and others who may have been wrongfully targetted by a ban.

of course they do not ask of this bc the majority of the players are not affected by such things like mistaken RMT bans

however

if you find yourself staying here for a long time it is not that difficult to protect your time investment by having your logs running. They are very useful for many things like simple spawn timers, keeping track of fun stuff said in guildchat and EC trading ..... like the above poster said, literally takes a few seconds to have them running 24/7.

[Landylil]

Sorry at work, didn't expect the thread to take off. I personally never really thought of running logs outside of maybe helping ahungry at some point. I'll have to setup logs to run whenever we're online, this just isn't something we expected to happen. I'd like to argue that the burden of proof should be on the accuser, but I can't argue that this server we love so much is free, and that it helps the staff if we can keep track of our transactions.

I figure once they get the time to review the case it'll be easy for them to see either way, but it will help with future issues. If somehow they can't his purchase was legitimate I'll be very surprised.


*editing to reply to Swish*
We had just used all of our resources from the past few years of on and off playing, pp and fungi tunic, to purchase torpor for his shaman so we could slay harder. Making a new toon won't scratch that itch =)

[Lemiddar]

I agree with you on everything but this. They do not ask us to keep logging on in an appropriately public way that new people would notice. I think if it were added to the Getting Started Guide, it could help people like the OP and others who may have been wrongfully targetted by a ban.

Yeah, I had no idea staff wanted us to log. I guess I was fortunate to have my ban quickly overturned despite never logging.

[HippoNipple]

Sorry at work, didn't expect the thread to take off. I personally never really thought of running logs outside of maybe helping ahungry at some point. I'll have to setup logs to run whenever we're online, this just isn't something we expected to happen. I'd like to argue that the burden of proof should be on the accuser, but I can't argue that this server we love so much is free, and that it helps the staff if we can keep track of our transactions.

I figure once they get the time to review the case it'll be easy for them to see either way, but it will help with future issues. If somehow they can't his purchase was legitimate I'll be very surprised.


*editing to reply to Swish*
We had just used all of our resources from the past few years of on and off playing, pp and fungi tunic, to purchase torpor for his shaman so we could slay harder. Making a new toon won't scratch that itch =)

You should join Red, Holocaust will give you torpor and fungi tunics as you hit level 60 by week 2.

[salimoneus]

I've seen it take a month or two for investigations to complete, but I'm sure there are some who have waited longer. It mostly depends on the circumstances.

Unfortunately that's just the way it is sometimes, there are a limited number of people who have the ability to do these investigations, and they only have so much time they can volunteer. I would just try to be patient, if you are truly innocent I'm sure it will all get hashed out.

[skipdog]

I find your 'I'm absolutely positive that my friend could NEVER IN HIS LIFE get involved in RMT' attitude adorable.

[Landylil]

I find your 'I'm absolutely positive that my friend could NEVER IN HIS LIFE get involved in RMT' attitude adorable.

I mean, I was present for the man's wedding. Known him for over a decade. Farmed the plat with him slaying Seafury's and wore the Fungi tunic we used in the trade for the good part of a year. I'd say it's safe to say that when I found the person selling torpor, told my buddy to contact him, helped with the negotiations, and then celebrated by slaying things with him after he learned torpor... that he didn't RMT it =)

My guess is that the person selling Torpor was associated with RMT, and my buddy got banned for trading with him in EC using our legitimate resources. We had no way of knowing the guy wasn't legit. We gave 35k pp + a fungi we've owned for a year and a half for Torpor, then he immediately learned Torpor.

I'm actually curious how us logging it would have helped, the trade was a market value trade, we might have even slightly overpaid for it. It's not like the guy gave us something for free or super cheap. They had a record of us making the trade, it's not like some stranger handed us a 90k item for free.

[Clasick]

They had a record of us making the trade, it's not like some stranger handed us a 90k item for free.

So how did you do the transaction together ? I think the trade window only opens up with one person last I checked. If it was your buddy that did the trade you will never have any way knowing for sure if he traded torpor for pp or not. In other words it just your buddies word agains the server GM's at this point and you posting here will make 0 diffrence.

[Landylil]

So how did you do the transaction together ? I think the trade window only opens up with one person last I checked. If it was your buddy that did the trade you will never have any way knowing for sure if he traded torpor for pp or not. In other words it just your buddies word agains the server GM's at this point and you posting here will make 0 diffrence.

Actually in the ban they mention 35,000pp + Fungi for the torpor. It's actually documented by the GM who did the ban, they have a record of the trade.

Our guess (since he got banned) is that the Torpor was a product of RMT, and we bought the Torpor without knowing the previous owner used real money for it.

Also I didn't post here to get an unban, I posted to see how long it generally takes to be unbanned, which was answered by the first reply. I'll probably update the thread when he's unbanned. Would give at least 1 data point for how long the process might take.

[Swish]

*editing to reply to Swish*
We had just used all of our resources from the past few years of on and off playing, pp and fungi tunic, to purchase torpor for his shaman so we could slay harder. Making a new toon won't scratch that itch =)

True, but it never hurts to have a pocket cleric/druid/wizard etc while you wait... just a thought :)

[Sirken]

ahh yes. that rare moment in time when people are happy to be banned by sirks

:D

[Landylil]

ahh yes. that rare moment in time when people are happy to be banned by sirks

:D

Save us Sirken. Reban him and unban, there are Imps that must be slain.

[Aussie]

I banned ~180 of the last RMT wave.

As previously mentioned, only the investigating staff member can overturn those bans.

I think I currently only have about 4/5 outstanding bans. All of these are ones where I have had to request logs from further up the chain due to players not having logs, or not being able to access those specific logs myself.

To answer the question however, *generally* you will see a turn around of less then 7 days.

My work schedule also really sucks, as also previously mentioned so that can blow out at times too :(

[Llodd]

I banned ~180 of the last RMT wave.

As previously mentioned, only the investigating staff member can overturn those bans.

I think I currently only have about 4/5 outstanding bans. All of these are ones where I have had to request logs from further up the chain due to players not having logs, or not being able to access those specific logs myself.

To answer the question however, *generally* you will see a turn around of less then 7 days.

My work schedule also really sucks, as also previously mentioned so that can blow out at times too :(

This happened to a guildie. If you dont have logs on then it gets tough. You have to then try and get logs from anyone you can that might have evidence to exonerate you. If you can't find that then well... shit. Pretty much screwed.

[Landylil]

Just wanted to say thanks for all of the advice and info in the thread. Lesson from this is to make sure you have logs enabled. It's a quick change in the eqclient.ini file, and I think would have helped the guide/gm's resolve the issue sooner if we had been keeping logs.

From the wiki:

Edit your EQClient.INI file, located in the EverQuest directory, to turn logging on automatically at boot-up.
Open the eqclient.ini file in a text editor such as Notepad.
Find the line in the Defaults section that says Log=FALSE and
change it to say Log=TRUE.
Save the file.
Next time you boot up, your log file will automatically turn on.

[Eunomia]

I've seen people petition in game to document cross server (Blue to Red, Red to Blue) trades. That is better recorded in the Petition section of the forum.

Petition your first trade in the Petition / Exploit section. I will move it to resolved. You will continue to update that single thread with additional trades you would like documented.

If you get caught in a ban net resulting from one of the trades, you have easy access to link the trade information to us.

You can do this with any trade you think may look suspicious to us at some point in time.

[Castcalm]

What about transfers between two characters that you own? For example, I used my friend's abandoned cleric to farm myself a bag of evil eye and a light burlap sack, then had my friend login and hand them to me. I play with /logs on but there was no transaction there, just him handing me bags.

[Merekai]

Took me less than 12 hours to get unbanned from the time I made my forum petition after trying to log in and finding out I had eaten a ban. Course I also have logs always on, so that helped.

Chev

[Calabee]

can i get unbanned?

[Cecily]

I've seen people petition in game to document cross server (Blue to Red, Red to Blue) trades. That is better recorded in the Petition section of the forum.

Petition your first trade in the Petition / Exploit section. I will move it to resolved. You will continue to update that single thread with additional trades you would like documented.

If you get caught in a ban net resulting from one of the trades, you have easy access to link the trade information to us.

You can do this with any trade you think may look suspicious to us at some point in time.

Thank you for the answer, Eunomia.

[Victorio]

Edit: Fixed