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| leetcheese - TEST Director |
On top of my busy work schedule, my 4-year old computer finally died last night. But what I heard through the forums (hat tip to
Rakshasa Taisab) I visit was just too good to not write about. A Test Alliance Please Ignore director was recently banned for botting. This bit of intelligence is confirmed because the pilot in question,
leetcheese,
posted the information on Kugutsumen:
"A 3 weeks ago, I received a 14 day ban on all of my accounts for allegedly botting. Like anyone else, I petitioned this ban, received a response saying 'Sorry, we say you were botting, so it still stands.' Whatever, only one more week, I thought. I found out that some guy, Anthie, a member of my alliance that I had never interacted with before, had petitioned one of my characters after he had killed and podded it. Fast forward to the end of my ban, two days ago. I excitedly log into my accounts, to update skill queues and do my other duties as TEST's military director. I was actually pretty excited to play eve.
"I logged in my main. Hovered over my wallet, expecting to see the money that I left on the character, or at the worst a zero balance. Nope. Negative 6.9 BILLION ISK. At least all my assets were there. Today, I logged into another alt that I was training towards a Leviathan. It's balance was at negative 5B isk and all of my assets were removed. I had activated that account using the 4 hour activation for unsubbed account as my subscription lapsed during the ban, expecting to plex my character with one of the PLEX I thought I had stored on that account. NOPE. All of my assets were removed. I had 3 shield mods, the drake I was in space with, and an Ibis. Now CCP had not only banned me for two weeks, but had removed between 11 and 16 billion isk from my accounts. Two of my accounts are unusable, as with a negative balance a player cannot:
Upgrade a clone.
Purchase insurance.
Create a contract.
Receive a contract.
Participate in a station trade.
"Essentially, they removed my ability to play the game. I could try manually ratting up that isk in sanctums, averaging 40 million isk an hour, but that would take me 172.5 hours, or 4.3 regular 40 hour work-weeks of nonstop ratting. Just to free one character from the shackles of a secondary punishment I received AFTER the ban."
Ouch! While I don't remember this information from CCP Sreeg's presentation at FanFest, others are pointing out that the security chief did say that the punishments could increase if the current ban plan is insufficient to deter players from botting. Treating ISK gained through botting is one way to do that. Is that the punishment going forward? Or will that punishment only occur for those who involved in very large cheats? Time will tell.
