Silkroad Online Forums

I just copy and paste here from silkroad official forum,i really dont know if is true or not,but worth read.


Date Sunday, 09 July 2006 194251 CDT
Topic Lineage News - All Versions

NCSOFT CORPORATION sued for $100M in a Class Action filing related to the company’s MMORPG Lineage2 San Mateo, California June 5, 2006 ? NCSOFT North America was named in a lawsuit seeking class-action status in United States District Court for the Central District of California. The lawsuit seeks $100M in exemplary and punitive relief and contends that NCSOFT CORPORATION a South Korean Company breached its contractual obligations, engaged in false advertising, and committed credit card fraud in connection with its Massive Multi-player Online Role Playing Game MMORPG Lineage 2.

The suit was brought forward by 28 year old Brian Durin, after his Lineage 2 account was terminated by NCSOFT without any justification, notification, refund, or means of recourse. The 227 page lawsuit alleges On March 12, 2006, Durin’s Lineage2 account was terminated by NCSOFT without any provision of an explanation or notification. Durin had spent over 500 hours in playing and leveling his online character in the online world of Lineage 2. His repeated attempts to solicit an answer from the company as to the reason for his account termination was met with silence.

Durin argues that NCSOFT’s actions are in violation of its own End User License Agreement EULA. Additionally, that the company violated the player-provider contract by terminating his account without providing any justification for the termination, or a method of recourse for him to pursue. He contacted NCSOFT, and PLAYNC the online billing/receivables for the company for a refund of the unused portion of his “gaming time” and was told by the company that no refund would be issued. His credit card continued to be charged for additional months even though he could not play. Refunds for the additional charges were not refunded as well. The suit claims that NCSOFT’s action surrounding it’s credit card charging process constitutes fraud.

Durin’s lawsuit further contends that he bought the game without knowing that hundreds of automated characters, referred to in the community as “bots”, were rampant throughout the online world. That these bots, referred to as a “3rd party program” within the game’s EULA, made it impossible to enjoy the game, hampered leveling a character, and was never mentioned in the companies EULA or marketing that a player would be subjected to these automated characters bots. 153 Articles of Evidence were entered with the lawsuit showing in detail that NCSOFT was fully aware that these bots were prevalent within the Lineage 2 game. Records of the Lineage2 forum site were provided showing how the company censors and deletes any topics/threads/posts related to the discussion of bots within the game’s environment.

Some articles even detail how an internal NCSOFT employee used a bot, to level their own character. An affidavit of support attesting to the allegations made in the lawsuit was attached from Ki Su Lin, a former South Korean GameMaster for NCSOFT Korea. Lin claims that NCSOFT knowing allows a certain percentage of bots to exist in Lineage2 for game economics as well as the company’s own profit based agenda. Lin states that when he started to work for the company last year, he banned every bot that was petitioned when a players sees a bot, they have the ability to petition a GameMaster online to remove the bot but was quickly told by the Head GameMaster HGM to cease with his activities.

In the ensuing 9 months of his employment he was only able to terminate nine 9 accounts for botting the process of running a bot in-game. He states that he received in excess of 2000 petitions related to botting from characters but was instructed to only investigate the petitions and not to terminate any accounts. In Lin’s affidavit, he states “NC made it clear to me that they didn’t want to ban the bots because it would mean lost revenue for them. I think that the bots make up anywhere from 30 to 40 of the community. So banning the bots would result in a 40 decrease in revenue. Everybody knew this, and accepted it.” The affidavit also states that NCSOFT engaged in deceptive practices related to preventing the proliferation of bots in Lineage 2. Lin refers back to a memo he received, “The memo said that there was to be now public acknowledgement of the botting problem.

Any public questions about bots in the game were to be answered with ‘we’re working on it.’” Lin’s account of banning players detailed, “Anytime a player started making too much noise about botting or anything like that we banned them. I thought it was unfair but that’s what we were told to do. No player was allowed to talk about bots in the forums, or name a person that was botting. When a player always petitioned us, we would call them a “pet” and sometimes we banned them because they would rally other players to petition us about bots. We really couldn’t have that.” Durin insists he never used a 3rd party program, himself as he accessed Lineage2 exclusively at Internet Cafes that have imaged drives and don’t facilitate the use of Bots in any of the games that they host on their computers.

That he never conducted himself in any type of behavior that would have resulted in an account termination. He believes his termination may be related to the dozens of petitions he sent to the online GMs everyday he played. Over eighteen 18 pages containing 211 signatures from players whose accounts have been terminated, received credit card charges, no refunds, and no explanations was entered in support of the Plaintiff’s motion seeking Class Action status. Also attached to the suit was a Motion to Subpoena the records of NCSOFT concerning its billing policies and policies related to the conduct of its GameMasters in regards to bots and account terminations and all records evidencing 3rd party programs. The suit seeks relief by 1. $100M in damages 2. Immediate investigations/banning of 3rd party programs 3. Instituting justification / refunds / redress for players The suit was served to NCSOFT by Federal Marshals at their Los Angles location on June 2, 2006. John Crittenden of Cooley Godward LLP, NCSOFT’s Attorneys issued no comment or statement concerning the suit.

can anyone get summarized the whole thing into a paragraph or less?

all i got to say is "wow" (not the game).

I can only guess one other company practicing this kind of business...

SUMMARY:



edit zomg grammer!

+1.
I read the first couple sentences, and was like, bah cant read right now.

Good read....all that matters is what JMs reaction is.....do they change or just blow it off....linking to the post on the official forums containing this would be great as well as the actual news resources if you have them.

high five*

HOLY JESUS omg if they find out about silkroad GOOD GAME JOYMAX GOOD GAME 100m HOLY JESUS

Well i think the most important of all post is below,thats is almost the same what JM is doing

Some articles even detail how an internal NCSOFT employee used a bot, to level their own character. An affidavit of support attesting to the allegations made in the lawsuit was attached from Ki Su Lin, a former South Korean GameMaster for NCSOFT Korea. Lin claims that NCSOFT knowing allows a certain percentage of bots to exist in Lineage2 for game economics as well as the company’s own profit based agenda. Lin states that when he started to work for the company last year, he banned every bot that was petitioned when a players sees a bot, they have the ability to petition a GameMaster online to remove the bot but was quickly told by the Head GameMaster HGM to cease with his activities.

In the ensuing 9 months of his employment he was only able to terminate nine 9 accounts for botting the process of running a bot in-game. He states that he received in excess of 2000 petitions related to botting from characters but was instructed to only investigate the petitions and not to terminate any accounts. In Lin’s affidavit, he states “NC made it clear to me that they didn’t want to ban the bots because it would mean lost revenue for them. I think that the bots make up anywhere from 30 to 40 of the community. So banning the bots would result in a 40 decrease in revenue. Everybody knew this, and accepted it.” The affidavit also states that NCSOFT engaged in deceptive practices related to preventing the proliferation of bots in Lineage 2. Lin refers back to a memo he received, “The memo said that there was to be now public acknowledgement of the botting problem.

I hope he wins. spending 500hr on game and making 100Mil w00t!

yeah but its mostly based on the fact of him being charged for playing the game after hes been banned

Split that 211 ways:

100M / 211 = 473,933.64 per person, still not bad.

I just wonder what the lawyer fees are?

lol I hope this is a wake up call for joynax...

dont think so

Link to the thread
http://www.silkroadonline.net/sro_board/bhboard/bh_postview.asp?ForumID=2&TopicID=8169

yeah but heres the thing, JM isnt violating their EULA, actually JM's players are

Well the only thing that matters is this paragraph,wheres say that the company know about botters,etc but didnt do anything cus that would ruin the game and over whit 40% of theyr rent,after a year the only explanation is below,JM do like NC they know the problem,say that they will do everything for ban then,but like NC they will not beacuse that would cut theyr rent almost in 50%.

Some articles even detail how an internal NCSOFT employee used a bot, to level their own character. An affidavit of support attesting to the allegations made in the lawsuit was attached from Ki Su Lin, a former South Korean GameMaster for NCSOFT Korea. Lin claims that NCSOFT knowing allows a certain percentage of bots to exist in Lineage2 for game economics as well as the company’s own profit based agenda. Lin states that when he started to work for the company last year, he banned every bot that was petitioned when a players sees a bot, they have the ability to petition a GameMaster online to remove the bot but was quickly told by the Head GameMaster HGM to cease with his activities.

In the ensuing 9 months of his employment he was only able to terminate nine 9 accounts for botting the process of running a bot in-game. He states that he received in excess of 2000 petitions related to botting from characters but was instructed to only investigate the petitions and not to terminate any accounts. In Lin’s affidavit, he states “NC made it clear to me that they didn’t want to ban the bots because it would mean lost revenue for them. I think that the bots make up anywhere from 30 to 40 of the community. So banning the bots would result in a 40 decrease in revenue. Everybody knew this, and accepted it.” The affidavit also states that NCSOFT engaged in deceptive practices related to preventing the proliferation of bots in Lineage 2. Lin refers back to a memo he received, “The memo said that there was to be now public acknowledgement of the botting problem.

Good to know this.......


I read the whole thing and wow........ this is exactly what JM is doing. I mean exactly. To them, CCFs are the ones that they have to worry about and not bots. CCFers causes them to lose money but bots increases their profit.

I doubt this kind of legal action would be taken against Joymax simply because its a "free to play game."

and oh wow...NCSoft has been through hell and back this past year...

But whether it is f2p or p2p the fact that they create revenue from selling items in game while stating their TOS that they will restrict users in the case of :

3rd party programs
Cursing
Selling Gold
etcetcetc...

This means that as a user we should obey their TOS but they must also. We provide hours of our time to play and money from our pockets. They have to provide us with a secure(safety from hackers), fair(no 3rd party progs that make a char level 24/7 like bots) and policed environement.

JM GM's are our police, tehy are our security... and honsetly they ..... suck... it is negligence at it's worst, they suck on purpose to make more money.

The more important thing to take from this case is that it will provide a preset precident for every case against gaming companies f2p or p2p.

This will fasttrack any other claims against gaming companies.

I am only one person but, as a collective, every legit player that plays SRO atm has a god given right to sue JoyMax for negligence.

If this case suceeds I guarantee you will see more just like this claim.

P.S. I am sure there are many unsatisfied ex-JM representatives floating around ready to dispell with myths and state facts regarding JoyMax especially the american based GM's for iSRO that get no real powers in game whatsoever because of similar circumstance as the Lineage situation.

*wink* *wink* [GM]Crayon

so in otherwords we could sue JM for all their worth..well lets get too it then, legit power ftw lets rock n roll..u know if we do really carry this out, you know how fun,pwnage,ownage etc silkroad would be O_O and how rich we would be? O_o

We cant really sew JM because they actually do something about the bots, goldbots that is.

well as you see, in the article above the guy got banned for no reason and he sued, also bringing up the topic of negligence. Therefore if one of us players who got banned for no reason ( i did thats why I'm not on athens anymore T_T) goes to court with that case then we can also bring up the fact that they neglect 90% of our bot reports, but the list they make is probably enough the court needs to say, "see, they ban bots, just not the ones you don't like" so id be tricky but it could work..

Big WOW. I hope this shakes up JM and other MMOPRGs as well (I guess WoW is not included in that).

as a f2p game though, I'm pretty sure Joymax has taken measures to prevent something like this from happening to them. I mean it's free to play, there's got to be some different between that and Lineage II's p2p.

And NCsoft already has a history of lawsuits but Joymax is pretty much clean, there's got to be a reason o.o;

TO JOYMAX:
SUE ALL SILK PAYING BOTTERS FOR MAD CASH.

it depends on the internal policies and whether any person who decides to sue joymax would be able to find sufficient evidence of gross neglect or purposeful neglect (purposeful is harder) to prove a case against joymax. the case mentioned above would set a precedence for other companies to be sued especially now that joymax has an office in the US, it makes it a lot easier for those in the states to take legal action against joymax.

Well Morningdew has stated many times that they are perfectly aware of the bots, that they know where they are, and they know the difference between player bots and gold bots.

And reduce their income evenmore so by scaring off the player base. I personally think there still milking the cow for all its worth and i would too if i was head director.


Main points that JM has over the offending company:

*JM do not violate their own policy

*JM do not continue to charge apon termination-hence no way to facilitate fraud

*JM do not state in their TOS & EULA that a fair playing field is guaranteed

*JM has no evidence to suggest they are proliferating the spread & use of bots.

*JM do provide answers ( whether good or Poor ) to people who attempt to grain reasoning to their percieved mis-justice. (AKA: block reason: XXXX)

All these points IF taken to court would fall through as un-amounting evidence and the case would be thrown out before the defence even had time to say "LAWL N00b!!11!"


P.S I do not think the lineage II class-action will succeed at all. Probably costing the poor so & so THOUSANDS even if they don't Counter claim. ( IF they did , im sure he would cliff it )