[...]

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  [...]
  
• Flagrant Account Sharing
  
  • To clarify, it is not against our terms of service for any player to have multiple accounts. It IS however against the rules to share the login information of an account with others, as that opens the account up to being compromised, to potential fraudulent activity, and other exploitative behavior. We take the security of individual accounts very seriously, and if an account is being regularly claimed as “compromised”, it will likely be permanently closed.
    

  [...]

can you please specify this?

will an account be flagged, by just the usage on different computers and locations, even with using the security key?

of course this is not the majority of people doing so, but i know some on business travels, using different computers, depending on the location and playing swtor from different hotels. that can't be a ban reason.

can you please specify this?

will an account be flagged, by just the usage on different computers and locations, even with using the security key?

of course this is not the majority of people doing so, but i know some on business travels, using different computers, depending on the location and playing swtor from different hotels. that can't be a ban reason.

Yes, I also use my wife’s PC sometimes and her mine.

can you please specify this?

will an account be flagged, by just the usage on different computers and locations, even with using the security key?

of course this is not the majority of people doing so, but i know some on business travels, using different computers, depending on the location and playing swtor from different hotels. that can't be a ban reason.

Due to my business travels and due to living in several EU countries I frequently had this issue. My accound was suspended quite a few times due to suspicious activity as they called it. I always had to call support and clarify the thing. However for some time now it was ok, with no issues, I am living in my home country again so it seems fine now. Its quite easy since I play on a laptop so it must be funny for them to see me play from different IP addresses during the week.

• Flagrant Account Sharing
  
  • To clarify, it is not against our terms of service for any player to have multiple accounts. It IS however against the rules to share the login information of an account with others, as that opens the account up to being compromised, to potential fraudulent activity, and other exploitative behavior. We take the security of individual accounts very seriously, and if an account is being regularly claimed as “compromised”, it will likely be permanently closed.
    

   

  [*]Botting, Harassment, Exploiting

 

This is one important part you have to hinder. It is not as lucrative as before. In the past it was very profitable to do all kinds of boosting to accounts, but now that swtor is not so popular these services are on a decline. However, this is exactly what the cheaters are using, the fact that noone wants the top spots so its easy to get them (its also questionable why someone would get a kick of being top 3 in a game thats losing popularity ). I know of a few accounts that were still sold for sums of 500-1000 euro recently. I am not sure if you will be able to figure them out, but what you should also consider (when it comes to these false requests from Customer service) is to hinder the change of the account name. When a person buys an account they try to change the account name (forum name), they come up with all kinds of issues, what mostly work is abuse! They claim they are being harrased and abuse and want their name changed so people do not know its them on forums. So they get a purchased account and a new name to it!

The requests for CS are not only a source of cheating in PVP but mainly in PVE like getting stuff from CS to craft and profit in the game.

[*] Exploiting

As a result of the evidence that we collected, ten accounts have been banned entirely. A separate ten accounts have been given lengthy suspensions, and a handful of others have been given lengthy suspensions with full PvP rating and token wipes.

Just as a reminder, we know that there are places online where players can buy cheating services. Many of these services use exploitative behavior, such as the examples listed above. We want to stress that any involvement with these services will greatly increase the likelihood of action being taken against your account.

There will be another monthly report towards the end of April.

Until next time…

[/color]

Exploiting. Can it be more clear re Exploiting as using outside Macro set up programs. Is this considered Exploiting or not. Please clarify.

Exploiting. Can it be more clear re Exploiting as using outside Macro set up programs. Is this considered Exploiting or not. Please clarify.

First of all, please add

into your post to quote Mike.

 

Second, exploits are pretty obvious. Its everything that is not the normal use of the game. Like you mentioned macros, those are not allowed. The reason is that macro programs send out much more actions to the server, which in the end may cause side effects and damages. Its obvious that the game expects to receive normal commands or keystrokes from a player. If someone sets a macro, which clicks or hits 10 keys in 1 second then its more work for the server. If many people set such a macro it will have consequences.

 

Just play the game, like you are supposed to, then you wont exploit

a friend of my friend didnt do it. so ridiculous!!!

/jk

Hey All,

 

Apologies for the power outage delay, here’s a recap of our latest actions. After looking into several different accounts that we saw suspicious activity on, we found evidence of a number of different Terms of Service violations including:

 

 

• Win Trading
  
• Flagrant Account Sharing
  
  • To clarify, it is not against our terms of service for any player to have multiple accounts. It IS however against the rules to share the login information of an account with others, as that opens the account up to being compromised, to potential fraudulent activity, and other exploitative behavior. We take the security of individual accounts very seriously, and if an account is being regularly claimed as “compromised”, it will likely be permanently closed.
    

   

   

  [*]Defrauding Customer Support

  • We have built systems to help players who have accidentally deleted an item or a character, who did not receive an honestly-earned reward, or who have had their accounts genuinely compromised. We look at restoration requests on a case by case basis, the vast majority of them are legitimate, and we will continue to grant those that are. Requesting that an item, character, or account be restored is not a guarantee that it will happen, and we have found instances in which it is obvious that fraudulent requests are being made. Please do not make fraudulent restoration requests. We can see when this is happening, we will not process them, and we will be increasing actions taken against accounts that do this going forward.
    

   

   

  [*]Botting, Harassment, Exploiting

 

As a result of the evidence that we collected, ten accounts have been banned entirely. A separate ten accounts have been given lengthy suspensions, and a handful of others have been given lengthy suspensions with full PvP rating and token wipes.

 

Just as a reminder, we know that there are places online where players can buy cheating services. Many of these services use exploitative behavior, such as the examples listed above. We want to stress that any involvement with these services will greatly increase the likelihood of action being taken against your account.

 

There will be another monthly report towards the end of April.

 

Until next time…

 

Yet you havent reseted wintraders in team ranked who queued 5-18 games against their friends made a view of a real fight which was fake and secured their top 96 spots. As i wrote in this thread http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=962380

I feel like at this point in the games life cycle, they just need to have a zero tolerance policy for win trading, exploiting, anything against the TOS, etc. Current and former offenders will just use another account while they wait out the ban period on their main account. Ban the account permanently.

My only educated guess why BW doesn't do this is that it will result in lost revenue from those accounts. However, consider this: Is the revenue from a handful of accounts worth driving away your entire Ranked PVP community that are also generating revenue?

A simple analogy to maybe but this into better perspective:

It's like letting obnoxious disruptive customers, that berate and steal from your most loyal customers, continue to come to your restaurant because they are a paying customers. How long before the loyal customers no longer come to your establishment and instead spend their money elsewhere because you can't refuse service to troublemakers?

They do and also did perma ban people.

That is absolutely false. They restored 90% of the people they initially caught in s10. It same the same exact **** they did in s9. Same ****, different day.

The problem was that these specific wintraders knew their way around. They knew how to approach the perma ban with swtor disputes and somehow got back. Now they seem to really mean it and Mike is really doing a great job!

Many of these guys sent emails to Musco, Keith and account disputes en masse. Some even tried to get in contact with influencers and other employees within BW who might play with them in-game (collusion) to get themselves restored. It worked.

While I'm certainly enjoying the transparency and the renewed focus on zero tolerance, we have to wait and see if these people will be restored and if they will move to restore the vast majority of them after s11 ends.

I will remain unsubbed just as I have been for a long time now until I see action (that stays in place, mind you), not just words on a screen, so that ranked is as fair as possible and its other kinks that cheaters and wintraders take advantage of are worked out.

10... it's light !

That’s 10 accounts banned permanently.

10 account with lengthy bans

And others with rewards taken away.

So 20+ accounts

Hey All,

 

Apologies for the power outage delay, here’s a recap of our latest actions. After looking into several different accounts that we saw suspicious activity on, we found evidence of a number of different Terms of Service violations including:

 

 

• Win Trading
  
• Flagrant Account Sharing
  
  • To clarify, it is not against our terms of service for any player to have multiple accounts. It IS however against the rules to share the login information of an account with others, as that opens the account up to being compromised, to potential fraudulent activity, and other exploitative behavior. We take the security of individual accounts very seriously, and if an account is being regularly claimed as “compromised”, it will likely be permanently closed.
    

   

   

  [*]Defrauding Customer Support

  • We have built systems to help players who have accidentally deleted an item or a character, who did not receive an honestly-earned reward, or who have had their accounts genuinely compromised. We look at restoration requests on a case by case basis, the vast majority of them are legitimate, and we will continue to grant those that are. Requesting that an item, character, or account be restored is not a guarantee that it will happen, and we have found instances in which it is obvious that fraudulent requests are being made. Please do not make fraudulent restoration requests. We can see when this is happening, we will not process them, and we will be increasing actions taken against accounts that do this going forward.
    

   

   

  [*]Botting, Harassment, Exploiting

 

As a result of the evidence that we collected, ten accounts have been banned entirely. A separate ten accounts have been given lengthy suspensions, and a handful of others have been given lengthy suspensions with full PvP rating and token wipes.

 

Just as a reminder, we know that there are places online where players can buy cheating services. Many of these services use exploitative behavior, such as the examples listed above. We want to stress that any involvement with these services will greatly increase the likelihood of action being taken against your account.

 

There will be another monthly report towards the end of April.

 

Until next time…

 

Mike🅱️,

I’ve mentioned this before and even made a thread, http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=962242

Can we please have an easier and more streamlined way to report cheating

While I'm certainly enjoying the transparency and the renewed focus on zero tolerance, we have to wait and see if these people will be restored and if they will move to restore the vast majority of them after s11 ends.

Yes, people have been restored in the past, as I said, I really do not know how they did it, since from experience it was not possible. They must have had some tricks on how to approach this, some people mentioned some escalation via paypal or some bank threats, I dunno, hard to say, there are ways that it could have really worked that way but we will never know. I am pretty sure that Keith and Eric wouldnt allow such things just like that.

Nevertheless I also like how it is going right now and hope they will keep at it until we really have a fair ranked environment.

First of all, please add

into your post to quote Mike.

 

Second, exploits are pretty obvious. Its everything that is not the normal use of the game. Like you mentioned macros, those are not allowed. The reason is that macro programs send out much more actions to the server, which in the end may cause side effects and damages. Its obvious that the game expects to receive normal commands or keystrokes from a player. If someone sets a macro, which clicks or hits 10 keys in 1 second then its more work for the server. If many people set such a macro it will have consequences.

 

Just play the game, like you are supposed to, then you wont exploit

 

I don't use Macros. But in some Ranked games I do get incredible lag and my MS from 60 goes to a 1000.

It was interesting to note that these lags happened when certain player/s are in a game who interesting was also doing a high amount of DPS, 30% to the second and about 40% more to me which I was third and I died, lived less.

Hence my suspicious that some are using Macros.

 

Personally I do not like Marcros cause of the flexibility they take out, but I do imagine with rotations they do make life easier for those that use them.

 

The Macros argument goes as long as the time when we had 8vs8.... And there never was a clear reply about it.

I think you did a good job there. Abusing the system should be banned permanently. Account-sharing isn't abusing or manipulating the system and I've never experienced people getting suspended for sharing accounts. The opposite was the case in most games. Account-sharing or selling is a market for players to own things that they did not or could not earn. You have to seperate, people that share accounts aren't exploiters or abusers or how you call it: win traders. Giving my data to my friend doesn't make me a bad guy. It doesn't make me an abuser or exploiter and it doesn't make my friend an abuser if he keeps my account or even gives it to his friend. Well and if you ever took a look into another game you will see real fast that it's some people's job to earn things in a game and sell them to make profit of it. And I don't know why this is a topic that is linked on the pvp section. I don't wanna call out how many pve players sharing accounts or even exploited things in the past and I can't remember a single one being permanently suspended for it. I don't think you managed this correctly or had a proper solution for the whole situation, but at least you had a solution I guess. You wanted to show the community that you did something and you def did something. But last words, I know bioware is owning all of these accounts and nobody else but I just wanted to give my opinion about this since it seems like every fool is allowed to do it here.

thanks

While these actions are welcome and needed I think their direct effect will be the reduction of participation as ranked seems to have been infested by cheating and exploiting and the players who abused the system are more numerous than initially thought might stop queing...

So far I have not seen a decrease in pops on DM. I even got a lot of pops on Tulak Hord, so from my experience the ranked scene is growing xD

Yes, people have been restored in the past, as I said, I really do not know how they did it, since from experience it was not possible. They must have had some tricks on how to approach this, some people mentioned some escalation via paypal or some bank threats, I dunno, hard to say, there are ways that it could have really worked that way but we will never know. I am pretty sure that Keith and Eric wouldnt allow such things just like that.

 

Nevertheless I also like how it is going right now and hope they will keep at it until we really have a fair ranked environment.

Yes, that was a method I heard on swtor discords as well. While I don't find Musco that much responsible for these shenanigans since he's just the devs' errand boy, Keith certainly has some skin in the the game since this was running rampant under his watch, and so do the other producers that preceded him.

Since that initial post I made, I know someone personally affected by this and received a perma ban. Well deserved, but there's still a lot more that needs to be done. There's others who wintraded or conspired with others to in s10 and still running around with their flairs and titles. Please continue with the retroactive sanctions until you get virtually all of them, Mike.

I think you did a good job there. Abusing the system should be banned permanently. Account-sharing isn't abusing or manipulating the system and I've never experienced people getting suspended for sharing accounts. The opposite was the case in most games. Account-sharing or selling is a market for players to own things that they did not or could not earn. You have to seperate, people that share accounts aren't exploiters or abusers or how you call it: win traders. Giving my data to my friend doesn't make me a bad guy. It doesn't make me an abuser or exploiter and it doesn't make my friend an abuser if he keeps my account or even gives it to his friend. Well and if you ever took a look into another game you will see real fast that it's some people's job to earn things in a game and sell them to make profit of it. And I don't know why this is a topic that is linked on the pvp section. I don't wanna call out how many pve players sharing accounts or even exploited things in the past and I can't remember a single one being permanently suspended for it. I don't think you managed this correctly or had a proper solution for the whole situation, but at least you had a solution I guess. You wanted to show the community that you did something and you def did something. But last words, I know bioware is owning all of these accounts and nobody else but I just wanted to give my opinion about this since it seems like every fool is allowed to do it here.

 

thanks

Actually, it does. For one thing it's very clearly against the ToS.

For another, it's a way that players profit (often in real currency) at the expense of the game.

Rather than subbing for years to build up characters, purchase cartel coins to unlock style collections, purchase cartel coins to purchase style items, etc., a person participating in account sharing/selling steals this revenue from the game for their own benefit. This isn't a thrift shop.

Giving my data to my friend doesn't make me a bad guy. It doesn't make me an abuser or exploiter and it doesn't make my friend an abuser if he keeps my account or even gives it to his friend.

This is definitely against the ToS. The real question is why would you give your account data to someone else. Commonly this is done so that the person for example boosts your account, or farms something etc. basically slave work from which this person profits. In case of PVP a person can pay someone so that he plays with his account and gets gold rating on his toons for example, thats why its in the PVP section. I have seen this even on live twitch streams. Can you name any "normal" circumstance where it would be really necessary to give someone your login data?