After todays (October 22nd) hotfix maintenance, Gamigo issued a statement regarding actions taken for those who abused the ArchePass in order to repeatedly get the World Boss missions (which previously awarded 50 gold; this has now been reduced to 10 gold) by using the Change Mission button. They went on record over the weekend that players who got those missions naturally would not be subject to actions (it is only applicable to those who forced getting them).
That is where there is a much wider issue though when it comes to the economy on some servers. The ArchePass is bugged and can stay “stuck” on the same set of kill quest missions. In plain english, once some of these folks got the world boss kill quests, it would stay only on that. So naturally, the abuse for some folks didn’t technically remain an abuse after awhile (except for those folks whose client was actually working, and rotating the quests – which of course required them to attempt to change that mission). That is the point that is flying way over Gamigo’s (well, the ex-Trion staff managing things) head. So guess what is going to happen? A decent percentage of folks they banned will end up being unbanned due to this technicality. The right thing to do would have been to completely disable the ArchePass system such that they could properly review it (but nope).
The end result is an excessive amount of gold (and much faster gear progression) that was never intended to be in the system this early. This is why the lack of a longer test cycle (given the fact that this ArchePass system is a butchered version of the dailies login/contract) is all on the production team (unsurprising) for green lighting it when there was also a laundry list of issues outside of it. They’ve “perma banned” over 200 accounts (which itself, is a really low number) as a result. I still have my doubts they have an actual detailed procedure in place for dealing with account actions (like how that data is reviewed, how a determination is made, and how appeals are handled especially when that action was initiated via some automated process) since it was normally a scattershot approach when these ex-Trion folks handled it when Trion was still solvent.
I’ll use my old example of what happens when Blizzard’s Warden process flags an account. While they have never divulged their actual internal process, it does boil down to a process similar to the following: that flagged account is reviewed by their security group (and relevant data pulled). If an actual account action is recommended where is it a permanent suspension, that information is reviewed separately by multiple people where they individually give a yes or no (removing any subjectivity in the process). That also serves as a documentation trail that can be used for the appeal process. Blizzard of course is big enough where they have the people resources to have this sort of procedure in place. But it still takes time when it comes to determining actual permanent suspensions and when it comes to the appeals process (unless the data is so overwhelming to begin with).
Unchained players were banned utilizing automated metrics (what one can refer to as “unbiased”) since there is almost no way Gamigo has the resources during launch week to have actual human eyeballs on that data. They acknowledged they automatically did it using world boss kill numbers and banned all of those accounts. So they are going to have to manually go through whatever appeals they get (and it is obvious everyone who did get actioned will be filing appeals) and checking the logs to see if there was excessive use of the mission change function (refer to what I wrote above though regarding the ArchePass bug).
At least one content creator/streamer has already been unbanned. Think about just how fast that all happened though. They went straight to the head of the support line. This is a prime example of preferential treatment because of how quickly Gamigo looked at this appeal and overturned the ban (while there are still folks who put in a support ticket from launch for other issues, and are still waiting for a response). It’s nothing new (since some bigger streamers would sometimes be in the queue at 2K and magically get into game quickly).
This is why I was skeptical when Khrolan mentioned having a “zero tolerance” policy when it came to botting, gold selling, (and by extension, exploitive actions). Bans were often times easily overturned during the Trion days. So you have some players who hedged their bets when it comes to abusing game mechanics/bugs because they know from prior experience, that there is a higher probability of getting that banned overturned (and keeping all of the gains). But leaving the ArchePass in place until todays maintenance, was a dumb decision (that is par for the course though with these ex-Trion personnel now handling the game for Gamigo).
