Greetings Norrath,
My name is Rich Schmelter and I am the Customer Service Manager for EverQuest, EverQuest II, and EverQuest Online Adventures. Some of you may remember me as "Greeblen Dah Ogah", server GM for Terris-Thule.
Since I am posting this on the EverQuest forums, I will keep the topics generalized to issues faced by the EverQuest community, though the applications of the policies you will find here are used in EQ II and EQOA and also apply to other situations like exploiting bugs or game mechanics to gain something unintended by development.
As many of you are aware, SOE has a privacy policy that prohibits us from talking to anyone other then the account holder regarding the specific disciplinary actions taken on an account with anyone but the account holder. But, since we often receive a lot of confusion regarding how we handle these situations from customers, I wanted to take a moment or two to clarify some things regarding how Customer Service handles accounts that are caught cheating through the use of 3rd party programs, commonly referred to as "hacking".
Now on to the meat and potatoes of the post...
First off, let me clarify that the use of
any 3rd party program to alter game play is against our policies and can result in disciplinary action taken on your account, regardless of whether you used it once or a million times. (hackers, consider yourself warned)
Our policies regarding this are in place to ensure all our customers have a fun, safe, and fair gaming environment, and it is our job to enforce them. We take this matter very seriously and actively address it on a daily basis.
Unfortunately, there are many different ways to circumvent game mechanics (i.e. cheat) by using 3rd party programs, some of which have greater impact on PvP servers. Some are easy to detect, some are more difficult. Warping, ghost hacking, duping items, accessing areas without proper flagging, and automated/unattended game play are all examples of things that are players that are cheating with these programs are able to do.
I'm not going to get into specifics or discuss
how we know when someone is cheating in this manner as I don't want to tip off any cheaters on how to avoid detection. Rest assured though that our development teams have given us some excellent tools to identify when this is happening and who is doing it and they are actively improving those detection and documentation tools as well as addressing the issues that allow people to cheat. Unfortunately, cheating has been a persistent issue for a very long time and is a constant battle between the hacking community and CS/Dev. It's an age old story: Boy hacks/cheats. Boy gets caught by CS and banned. Boy uses Girlfriend's account to cheat more. CS Bans Girlfriends account. Boy loses girl. Boy gets new account and new Girlfriend. Wash, rinse, repeat. Some of the things we do to prevent this have a greater affect then others, but the bottom line is that we spend a great deal of time removing accounts that cheat from the game in order to keep things fair and fun for our loyal customers that want to enjoy the world of Norrath the way it was meant to be played in.
Let me talk a minute about Benefit of the Doubt and the process that happens when someone is suspected of cheating. When someone reports another customer for hacking or any other SOE policy violation, we cannot simply take one person's word over another as this would lead to endless griefing between feuding players. We give them the benefit of the doubt and consider them innocent until proven guilty. Our staff must investigate the matter thoroughly and find the appropriate proof that the accused account did in fact cheat. This can take some time to accomplish but it is a necessary step and we do appreciate your patience in this area greatly. We then must document what really happened and evaluate what disciplinary action is most appropriate for that policy violation.
If you've ever had Jury Duty, then some of this may sound familiar.
- Person commits crime (player hacks)
- Police catch criminal (GM finds the hacker)
- Lawyers document the crime and take the case to court (GM prepares documentation of what exactly the player did and goes to their supervisor or manager)
- Judge rules on the case (CS Management reviews GM documentation and account history and determines what punishment fits the crime)
There was a recent post by our EverQuest Producer that briefly discussed the consequences currently being applied to hackers (
http://forums.station.sony.com/eq/p...topic_id=128084) After reading responses to that thread, I wanted to clarify a bit more of the disciplinary actions an account that is confirmed as hacking receives.
An account caught / confirmed of hacking in all cases has all benefits of the hacking removed. This can include removing individual items/coin, character rollbacks, character wipes, and character deletion. Which ever is most appropriate to the specific situation.
In the Producer's post, it is stated that a first offense of hacking will result in a suspension. I saw a lot of negative comments regarding this, but while this is generally the case, we do ban accounts for first offenses of hacking when appropriate.
We evaluate each account on a case by case basis and the decision to suspend or ban an account (first offense or not) is affected by the frequency and severity of the policy violation (hacking in this case) and the account history. If the severity or frequency of the hacking warrants it, we will ban an account on a first offense. If the account has previously been suspended or if the customer has previously been suspended or banned on another account they own, the account may very well be banned on a first offense. If a customer has multiple accounts and is hacking on one, he may receive disciplinary action on all of his accounts as those accounts could have received benefits of his hacking on the one. Again, there are many factors we must take into consideration, but we investigate thoroughly and do apply appropriate disciplinary action to accounts and customers that violate our policies.
I want to state that
benefitting from use of 3rd party programs is considered just as bad as using them yourself and you will receive the same discipline as if you used them. This means that if you are in a group where another person is using a hack to kill a raid mob, you are just as guilty as they are as you are gaining the same benefits from the cheating. If you are in a group and you see something fishy going on, it is in your best interest and the best interest of the game and the community to leave the group and report that person to Customer Service so we may investigate. Please also remember that you are responsible for any policy violations committed on your account and it is your responsibility to keep your account information secure. If you share your account info (or someone else gains it somehow) and that person uses your account to hack, your account will receive disciplinary action appropriate for the actions taken by it.
Hacking is an issue that greatly affects the community and is one that both Customer Service and Development are well aware of and actively addressing. We often receive petitions from the community identifying suspicious behavior (which we appreciate greatly). As 3rd party programs change and hackers adapt to our efforts, we counter with new tools, prevention methods, and procedures. Accounts that are hacking are investigated and disciplined daily. In fact, just last night, Customer Service finished a large investigation on EverQuest servers and we banned 212 accounts. Yes, you read that right, we banned two hundred and twelve accounts that were caught and confirmed to be hacking. These types of investigations are ongoing so expect to see more of these types of actions in the future.
I hope you found this post informative and that I have answered questions and eased concerns about this topic.
For more information on how Customer Service is addressing hacking and other related issues, please visit
http://stationsupport.wordpress.com/ and read the latest blog entry by the Executive Director of Customer Service, Brad "Mutato" Wilcox.
