Enforced cutting back + SE’s horrible CRM

Go on a little vacation and come back to things semi-falling apart. Let’s see… what happened during and after my 4 day <away>.

- Einherjar has been cancelled due to low attendance

- Epic failure in ZNMs (so I hear)

- Limbus looking like it’ll fail soon due to low attendance

Einherjar – I’m actually upset at this being cancelled… I have a lot of fun during this short, but intense event. The rewards aren’t the greatest, but at least there are rewards. I have a feeling that the main reason attendance started to drop was that people had obtained the rewards they wanted and weren’t interested in the challenge of progressing further. Personally, I picked up my Delta Earring, but I was hoping to be able to pick up an Animator +1. I guess this means I won’t be leveling PUP anymore

Limbus – Even after moving Wednesday’s start time earlier, our attendance is still too low to actually enter and win a zone. I’m guessing Wednesday runs will be cancelled from now on and we’ll only go Saturdays. Unfortunately, I also predict that this will leads to the few remaining members to jump ship to other shells that can go more than once a week in order to get things faster. In order to save this Limbus shell, we need another 3-4 dedicated people who will show up on a regular basis, and we need them to join the shell within the next 2-3 weeks or else we’ll probably disband.

ZNMs – This is going to be rough. We’ve gone through a down period before when we lost to Tier IVs before, but going through this again is going to be bad for morale and might cause some people to give up on the event. I really hope this isn’t the case, but we probably need to do a little more recruiting to fill in the last few spots, as well as get people who do come to pay full attention to the fights.

So, looks like I’m cutting back no matter what! Sundays are now virtually free, with only Nyzul Isle as a possible evening event. Wednesday evenings should be free too since I can’t attend Dynamis due to school. Leaves a little more time for Moblin Maze Mongers.

Oh, and big thanks to Kurai for gathering people for MMM. After being shot down so completely last week, I’ve lost hope in asking people to help out in doing an event that has no obvious reward for themselves. The only two weapons in MMM that are any good are the BLU & DNC ones, at least from what I’ve seen. It’s been nearly impossible to put together a group to do it, much less to static to get the weapons. The good news is that I’ve finally got my maze to the point where I can pop the Ermine’s Tail NM, and Kurai’s maze should have the same configuration as of tonight, so all we need is some luck to get the drop.

SE’s horrible Customer Relationship Management (CRM)

Not going to say too much about the recent banning. Just the following from a business perspective

1. Insufficient QA on a product is the company’s fault
2. You do not punish your customers for bugs in your product
3. You do not treat your paying customers like criminals

The reason behind the bannings was due to a poorly designed product that was not sufficiently tested. You may take steps to correct the bug, possibly contact the people involved to further rectify the defect (such as asking them to give up their ill-gotten, similar to the early release of the “snowman” event back in 2007), but you do NOT punish your paying customers.

Any other company doing this for their product would receive a huge backlash. Let’s say Apple disables your iPhone for jailbreaking it, or disables your iTunes account and renders your music all unplayable because you installed Linux on your iPod. Or the police confiscates your phone just because you happen to witness a crime committed by them. That sort of behavior leads to backlash and in the real world, riots. If I were to run my business like this, firing customers for defects in my product, I’d be out of business in no time.

Instead, a well-run company would instead have a good ongoing relationship with their customers. If testing were to miss an issue, they should have a good enough relationship with their customers that they will be informed of the defect in a timely manner and be able to fix this. Apparently this was NOT the case since according to SE, they had investigated over a year’s worth of logs for this issue.

My response to this notice

Even though I never even heard of this exploit until after it was fixed, I think that this behavior from SE actually affects everyone in the game, not just the people involved because it sets a precedent on how SE can, and will behave.

Their own announcement says that we should submit a GM call if we discover any problems with the game system. From this incident, we also know that any incidents that may occur, SE reserves the right to go back to over a year’s worth of activity logs once they decide that that something is against their Terms of Service. What this means to you is:

1. Any activity that is questionable could get you into trouble 12 months down the road
2. You should question GMs if you engage in anything considered questionable
3. If you do not, you can be banned without warning

There are many gameplay mechanics that I think are fairly questionable and may be considered “exploiting gameplay mechanics”. For example: Powerleveling, using a level 1 character to farm marbles in MMM, dropping your hourglass in dynamis when pulling the boss, logging out during a long NM battle to reset hate, having an outside party clear out pops from a NM battle while the main alliance attacks the NM, zoning popped mobs during a battle instead of fighting them, supertanking, spamming repeatable quests for fame. All of these exploit the gameplay system in one way or another. I’m pretty sure SE did not intend for people to enter the Divine Might BC and have one person supertank all the enemies while the alliance picked them off one at a time. You might be allowed to do so right now, but maybe in 12 months, when a developer discovers what has been going on, your earring reward may result in you being banned.

My recommendation is to follow the letter of the law. You should make sure that the tactic that you are using is permitted by their terms in order to prevent problems months down the line. According to their own notice, you can do this by submitting a GM call.

So, if you decide to continue playing FFXI, better get in line and start asking questions!