Rain is a very small clan (in terms of amount of players), so when one player poofs on us, it's very obvious that something is up. After a 2-week hiatus, we finally got back in touch with one of our members, Cody, with the newly-added shoutbox here at our blog (at the bottom of the page).
With his account, payed10000fold: if you try to click to see his profile, it's access denied. So, what happened, you may ask? After finally talking to Cody, we realized that his account was banned for billing fraud. Now, anyone that knows him also knows that he regularly buys a lot of AP to spam FCs - so what changed? Apparently a deal went down wherein he was offered large quantities of AP recharged on his account for him for rare items. As most people that see a good deal, he took the offer and proceeded to play the FCs with this AP he aquired. Through the FC, he acquired more rares that this buyer bought back for more AP. A couple days later, his account was banned for billing fruad since the payment (via credit card) bounced.
So, what does this story have anything to do with anything? Here is where I started asking around, and THIS is what was the huge surprise. The player that traded with Cody, using the names Cuddle and Dazed, has done this before. I was ASTOUNDED to find out that this player has used this method MULTIPLE TIMES on different players, and YET IS STILL AROUND. Just how competent is Aeria if this one player could use the SAME trick multiple times and get away with it?
They seem to have no problem banning multiple accounts that were recharged this way and scammed. The sad part is that the GM team has realized this is occuring, yet CLAIM that without solid evidence, they can't do anything. Do you know what they consider SOLID evidence? Screenshots of the chat. With their AMAZING GM tools, they could easily check their database to see where these items from the AP frauds were going. Even checking some of these scammed players' AP history, you would see a hugely different recharge pattern and card number than usual. The GMs would rather ban these accounts that have been frauded instead of going for the root of the problem.
Maybe it could be even more simple. You may or may not have seen two new players by the names RainingAutumn and FreezingWinter who seem to be exploding with AP, and came out of nowhere. How hard would it be to check these insta-rich players' in-game recharge history? Players don't show up with large amounts of expensive gear overnight, unless they spammed AP. Where is all this money coming from? Are our GMs even trying to do something about this? I mean, there are players like Fifi that are just screwing around with rules 'cause its fun, but then there are also malicious players like these - and the GMs still don't seem to be able to take action. Just how competent are our GMs?
All I can do is hope that most of you who read this are now more well-informed and will spread it amongst your guildies and friends. When another player offers to buy your items with AP recharged on your account, maybe you should consider this issue. And I would definitely not trade with Cuddle/Dazed. Also remember to enable chat logs so that you can at least fall back on those.
~Pearz
With his account, payed10000fold: if you try to click to see his profile, it's access denied. So, what happened, you may ask? After finally talking to Cody, we realized that his account was banned for billing fraud. Now, anyone that knows him also knows that he regularly buys a lot of AP to spam FCs - so what changed? Apparently a deal went down wherein he was offered large quantities of AP recharged on his account for him for rare items. As most people that see a good deal, he took the offer and proceeded to play the FCs with this AP he aquired. Through the FC, he acquired more rares that this buyer bought back for more AP. A couple days later, his account was banned for billing fruad since the payment (via credit card) bounced.
So, what does this story have anything to do with anything? Here is where I started asking around, and THIS is what was the huge surprise. The player that traded with Cody, using the names Cuddle and Dazed, has done this before. I was ASTOUNDED to find out that this player has used this method MULTIPLE TIMES on different players, and YET IS STILL AROUND. Just how competent is Aeria if this one player could use the SAME trick multiple times and get away with it?
They seem to have no problem banning multiple accounts that were recharged this way and scammed. The sad part is that the GM team has realized this is occuring, yet CLAIM that without solid evidence, they can't do anything. Do you know what they consider SOLID evidence? Screenshots of the chat. With their AMAZING GM tools, they could easily check their database to see where these items from the AP frauds were going. Even checking some of these scammed players' AP history, you would see a hugely different recharge pattern and card number than usual. The GMs would rather ban these accounts that have been frauded instead of going for the root of the problem.
Maybe it could be even more simple. You may or may not have seen two new players by the names RainingAutumn and FreezingWinter who seem to be exploding with AP, and came out of nowhere. How hard would it be to check these insta-rich players' in-game recharge history? Players don't show up with large amounts of expensive gear overnight, unless they spammed AP. Where is all this money coming from? Are our GMs even trying to do something about this? I mean, there are players like Fifi that are just screwing around with rules 'cause its fun, but then there are also malicious players like these - and the GMs still don't seem to be able to take action. Just how competent are our GMs?
All I can do is hope that most of you who read this are now more well-informed and will spread it amongst your guildies and friends. When another player offers to buy your items with AP recharged on your account, maybe you should consider this issue. And I would definitely not trade with Cuddle/Dazed. Also remember to enable chat logs so that you can at least fall back on those.
~Pearz
