General Discussion

Two days ago I was banned for multiboxing (I play 9 sorcs, 1 chanter and 1 templar). I painstaking leveled them up to 30+ (no group xp bonus so its one heck of a grind).  (Better said I was banned because of the automated system or reports of people confusing multiboxing with botting).

Surprisingly most people confuse multiboxing with botting so I get about ten people a day who come up to me and say /reported or some bot comment.

Everyone on Zikel that sees knows for a fact I have never botted (I always control my characters 100% of the time).

I reviewed the EULA and didn't break it in the slightest amount. Also my 9 year old sons account was banned so my guess is they took the /autoreporthunting that people did and matched it to my IP and IP banned the whole block of accounts.

So my question is, has anyone else had any experience with Ncsoft customer support that got more than a generic auto reply, its very obvious that the replies are just canned messages and they are not actually reading what I sent them.

Another though is has anyone consider a class action lawsuit against NCSOFT.  The way I look at it is they banned 12 copies of my collectors edition accounts without any reason. So we are near the $1000 range there (not to mention subscriptions).  I feel the only way I could get these accounts back is to make them actually check their logs and see I didn't do anything but since they don't even read the emails I send them or take my calls I am not sure any other way to get the point across.

No matter what you think on multiboxing or not. You could be next. They could ban you for any reason (ie: a guild that doesn't like you gets its members to /autoreporthunting on you etc). And since they don't actually check the logs you would get banned (which I know for a fact they did because if they did they would see I did nothing wrong).

-=Administrator Comment=-

We've taken a second look at this particular case and have found the suspected use of 3rd party software to be an absolute. Without breaching confidentiality or giving away any secrets, our GMs personally monitored these accounts and we've spent a great deal of time since then determining that these accounts were not banned in error.

You should go cry to your mom.. not on forum.

 1. Email is the wrong way to go about this... if you are serious about possible legal action and want satisfaction.

2. If it was me, I would write them a letter, detailing the issue and that I wanted it fixed... and send it CERTIFIED MAIL to their corporate office. Be polite for now... You ought to get something back from them quickly. Sending it certified will be a line in the sand... a clear signal (to them) you are keeping a paper trail and could take it further. Anything else they could say they never got it.

I'm not sure I appreciate what multi-boxing is... or why you would do it? Who needs 9 toons of the same or similiar... unless you intend to sell them at some point...which in case I have no pity for you and you can rot in hell!

I've read the user agreement too...and there is a clause that speaks of the 'spirit of the rules'... I suspect there is more that is bannable than what is written down.

I MB all the time in WoW and had many talks with GM's. It sounded like from their letter that you failed to talk to a GM directly during game. That is a sure sign of a bot and you will never be able to get the account back. It is a mystery how you posted still...unless Forum accounts are not linked with game accounts as in other games.

From this statement in their reply...they tried to talk to you in game....over and over. Why did you not reply?????

The character failed repeated verification attempts and was also verified exhibiting only possible through the use of a 3rd party program. We were also able to verify consistent participation with other characters also having failed the repeated verification process.

Talking to a bot is the only 100% sure way to catch them. If they do not reply, but continue to play, ban the ever loving crap out of them. (GM can use 'hello' in many languages'. 

 Tsaer - Thanks for the advice I will try that.

No I didn't plan on selling them (if I did I wouldn't have named them  all the same name or similar). I did it mostly because I can have fun when I play by myself or when my kids are around they can grab a character and we can all play together but when they are not I can still keep leveling them up at a decent pace. Example I was running fire temple by myself (not a big deal but overall was having a good time with it).

Easy, same reason why most of us multibox- to be your own one man army.

Without seeing his setup, I'll just go by the usual generic one like I would since I got plenty of machines and keyboards laying around and how I would do it...

First and foremost, macro EVERYTHING on your keyboards so they do whats necessary when necessary so you are limited to what you actually have to do (Really helps).  After doing that, its obvious what he's doing....

He sends his templar in to agro something/a group/whatever and controls his clearic to keep the templar alive.  Then he simply hits '1' or whatever macro key on all his sorc accounts to mow down the mob like its nothing and from what I understand, sorc can do some serious damage.

Obviously, might not be ideal for PVP and such, but in PVE, it can be VERY brutal.

 So in big you are a 40 years old man playing 9 sorcerer most likely using keyclone, you got caught and now you come cry on these forum about injustice.

Sound more like 14 than 40 to me.

 Zanara - They never sent me any tells. I have them all up on thier own monitors and aion is much harder to multibox than wow so I have to always switch to the computer that the character is on.  I always had the chat visible so would have seen it at some point. So I know they are just going off from autoreports.

They banned me when I was in the middle of a fight in abyss (my chars against the four level 40+ which were beating me down pretty good).

If you read thier email closely you can tell they didn't even read mine or look into it. Its just clearly an automated form letter.

Not that I'm defending anyone here... but it's entirely possible NC did no such thing with verfication. There has been such incredible customer pressure to get rid of the bots... they may have just banned him on autoreports alone. It's easy to say they asked you... unless you have all your game time from start to ban on tape- how would you prove they lied?

harsh

 This is exactly why I run 6 screens, one client per.

I'm sorry you got banned for multi-boxing, if everything was legit. I hope everything works out.

In other news.............NCSoft banned someone they thought was a Bot !!!!!!!!! Woooooooooo

lol you want 9 sorcs.....WHY????

but about people accusing, lol get this: i play as GREEN obviously and my roomated plays with the name GREENS and the other day we were questin in BC and some guy accuses me of botting, even tho we were both having a conversation with him. just cause our names were almost the same?/??

sooo ya people are dumb is what im tryin to say

To the OP, you might check http://www.dual-boxing.com/ , they may have aion boxers there that have went throiugh this.

In WoW, there were bans, but in all cases it was that the boxer did not own all accounts.

It was always something My account + my son, girlfriend etc account, which would be bannable.

Also, Blizzard GMs have stated over and over boxing is fine.

Finally you might check with Tim on http://www.justin.tv/multiboxing , he boxes 5-10 in WoW and broadcast it. Look up guy named moortv (or something like that), on that site too, he was broadcasting his multiboxing in Aion.

Hope all this helps. I know the incredible effort needed in multiboxing and hate to see this happen. I was lucky, only GMs I ever delt with knew what boxing was and never gave me problems.

Since there is an option for multiboxing in the launcher i doubt you would have gotten banned for that. The problem is controlling multiple accounts with the same computer. I don't know how you did that and i honestly don't care but it seems to me like it's the core issue here.

Many other games (such as WoW) have officially said Multiboxing is ok. The problem is ignornace. I dont mean that in a bad way, but people do not understand how you can control 5, 10...whatever toons at one time without cheating.

You can google multiboxing or check dual-boxing.com, both have lots of info.

Basically, automation=ban

Multiboxing is NOT automation. We control 100% of the actions of all toons at all time.

Simply put, when we press 1 (for example) on our main, all toons perform that action.

So, it I play 5 chanters and 1 is bound to holy fire, then all my chanters cast holy fire when I press 1

Autonation on the other hand is my chanters casting spell while I am in kitchen making a sandwidge.

Hope that helps explain

I'm pretty sure the game was intended to be played by paying customers that stay within the bounds of the written service agreement.  And no, not everyone can multibox...most kids can't even afford to buy the necessary hardware, forget about the software and subscription fees.  Your brazen statements and unfounded allegations are a testament to why some people multibox to begin with: because they don't have to play with ignorant players such as yourself.

 One of the biggest problems with multiboxing is handling when you're reported.

I'm also on dual-boxing.com and have boxed several games including WoW, DAOC, AoC, RoM, etc.

If you get reported, a GM typically will contact ONE of your toons.......and it RARELY is the main toon.

I've even been teleported on only one of my toons to another location where I was confronted by a GM.  When I said "what happened?" with my alt toon, the GM simply stated, "Thank you for responding, sorry for the disruption", and put my alt back with my others.

I believe they intentionally do this because if you fail to respond to their whisper, but your character is moving around, then you're considered to be automated. 

If you're a software boxer (which the OP is (he says he's not in his response, but did in a previous post), and are running more than one client per computer, then your screen gets mighty hard to read or see the text as it comes up on your screen.

WoW had some nice addons where it would "forward" your tells/whispers to your main characters, unfortunately, Aion does not have this option.

I haven't been contacted yet by a GM, but I know I have been reported easily dozens of times.   But, I just periodically scan my screens to check for whispers, and no ban stick so far.

 Its going to be hard for you to find much support on this. Many of us have been on the recieving end of farmers controlling 60 mages with 2 people in L2. someone boxing 2 characters I don't mind but when your running 9 sorcerers its just for easy kills. If you was boxing 9 characters all diferent classes I would say your a rebel and deserve account back but your running 9 sorcerers thats just to insta gib anyone you run into. Thats not skill at all.

 MMmmm. Can I have a Sandwidge?

 Wait, you spent $1000 to play one video game ?  You probably could've bought yourself some sort of life with that money.