Silkroad Online Forums

To whom it may concern,

I want to begin by saying that I understand that many of the problems that plague iSRO are the direct result of having an understaffed moderation team. In light of this, please acknowledge that my comments and suggestions are not intended as insults, but as constructive criticism from the view of a Joymax customer.

I have decided to publicly post this message in order to provide the best possible suggestions from the community and myself. I will apologize in advance for my slightly bias opinion, but through a year and several months of playing, I can safely say that it is a very common opinion held by legitimate players.

First order of business is in regards to the botting problem. I understand that you have done many bot bans in the past, and will surely do them in the future. However, I believe that the problem lyes not in the amount of bot bans but in the actual fashion in which you ban the bots.

Simply banning bots periodically has proven ineffective thus far. It must be apparent to you that every time you execute these bans that the infestation grows larger. If you care for an example, gold bot spammers - in your software i might add - report a drop in price in the past few months of approximately 2 dollars and 50 cents in American currency. I am sure you are aware of the laws of supply in demand, and it is not hard to deduce that this is in direct result of the amount of bots being large enough to support a lower price per million gold.

Frankly, I have grown tired of your generic responses to the problem. I understand that it is in part to the demand of the community, but the enforcers, you, have not done enough. You could do a survey on customer service, and I will personally guarantee that the vast majority of the legitimate community will claim that joymax has not done enough to address the problem.

We dont care if your trying, though we may show respect for your care in the matter, but we most importantly care if there are results. The results speak for themselves, the bot problem is worse than ever, and the economy has completely crashed. Actions speak louder than words. Customer satisfaction is at a low, and if management cares what the community says, theyll begin to change how things are done. Since I love so dearly to give examples, I will give you this

When I was level 42, the sos 3 full blue spear I purchased cost me 16m gold on the Athens server. Now, it goes for nearly 30m. I think my point is very clear through this example.

If you need further proof, examine my typical day of SRO grinding. I begin first in Hotan by purchasing pots and other necessities, following this i exit the town at the west gate and head through karakoram to the dark Caves. Not 10 meters upon exiting the gate, I come upon a group of gold bots that I have noticed there for several weeks going completely unchecked by the moderation team. Next, making my way through the spiders of karakoram I notice more bots, stuck on various objects and clumping in clusters as they kill mobs. I finally, after making my way through the forest of bots come to my usual training area. I discover my first target but it is promptly stolen by a player blatantly using a bot. I then run around for nearly a minute searching for another thing to kill, because there are 10 bots every 10 meters. This process repeats in infinite loops throughout my grinding session while my pet, premium, and sp ticket slowly tick away. It is hard to grind at level 78 when .01 comes at every 3 kills, and I doubt very much that I will have it in me to grind to 90 upon the arrival of the cap if this process continues.

I think many legitimate players will find this story all too familiar, because it is the story of every person who hand grinds every day until they reach 80.

So in conclusion, I propose that you beg your superiors for an increased GM presence in game. If 1 GM simply took 10 min in every server, he or she could singal handedly ban hundreds of bots by simply walking through a training area. Is this too much to ask of you?

It is sad to think that the appearance of a GM in the game becomes an event every time it occurs because it is so incredibly rare to see a Joymax Official. It is no wonder that people try to murder the GMs, youve become uniques. I have never, between 1 and 78, encountered, seen, spoken too, or have been helped in game by anyone from the moderation team. I am not the exception to the community, the VAST majority of players share this experience, and we are outraged that with the money we pay we get such poor support. We could so easily take our business else ware, such as to World of Warcraft which might I add half of my friends have already switched to. Would you like to know what they told me when I asked them why? They said its because of how incredibly poor the customer service is in game in regards to bots and people violating the policy signed when each account was created.

So I ask you to provide results and not updates on what your doing. I would like to meet my first GM in game and see my training area populated by friendly legitimate hand grinders and not botting jerks.

GM presence would eliminate* many of the problems that are in this game. There are certain people in servers like my own that publicly admit to botting, and credit card fraud. Not only that, but some of these people are pedifiles and criminals. Having a GM that actually plays the game would help eliminate these very disturbing problems, and would vastly improve customer satisfaction.

I ask that you do something instead of claiming that you hope you can improve conditions in the future. Let us see more gms, more bans of crude corrupt guilds and unions, and the control of the botting and gold botting problems.

Please, before you respond to this, thoroughly examine your thoughts on the subject as I have taken my time to write this very thought-out request.

Thank you,

Respectfully,
A Joymax Customer

Not only that, but some of these people are pedifiles and criminals. Having a GM that actually plays the game would help eliminate these very disturbing problems, and would vastly improve customer satisfaction.

I got to pvp a GA in Cabal yesterday >.>

Only time you ever get to see what seems to be a GM in sro .. is those automated server inspection messages ... sad.

And why you think they are not more in games ...Its becose They be hunted like a animal evry time..Olmost All want to kill a GM.

good comments, thanks guys.

Oh heres a summary.

Im basically saying that the bot problem could be brought to a minimal if there was a GM presence. Ive never seen a GM or talked to one in the year and a half ive played and that is truly sad. I'm also saying that if these gms played the game they'd be able to catch alot more of these CCFers, scamers, and botters who publicly admit on globals to what they've done.

but thats wayyyy to condensed to cover what I really said, just try to take your time to read it, I think its worth it.

Instead of stating the obvious sp .. why are you never constructive?

There are what 12 gm's ? if they hired like 2-3 more .. that would make it like a ratio of 1 GM a server. Now if they did this .. they could have a GM logged on 24/7 runnign around doin his thing .. or just standing afk in town.

For me ... it would be more than enough to see a GM in person in town. Only tiem I ever saw a GM was on Troy this time last year he was running around Jangan south with 845670394865830 people tracing him. So let's say he stands in town. Stand there for an hour or so .. people will come see .. get bored and leave .. Eventually people will lose intrest .. problem solved.

Yet they are stubborn, come AT MOST once a 1/4 of a year on a random server. Or they make themselves known when for example Fable duped gold. Quite sad. And they seriously can't give us the we are bust malaraky ... they have extra GM's now ... you can't tell me all of them work 24/7 like MD claims to do. Disgraceful really....

Instead of stating the obvious sp .. why are you never constructive?

There are what 12 gm's ? if they hired like 2-3 more .. that would make it like a ratio of 1 GM a server. Now if they did this .. they could have a GM logged on 24/7 runnign around doin his thing .. or just standing afk in town.

For me ... it would be more than enough to see a GM in person in town. Only tiem I ever saw a GM was on Troy this time last year he was running around Jangan south with 845670394865830 people tracing him. So let's say he stands in town. Stand there for an hour or so .. people will come see .. get bored and leave .. Eventually people will lose intrest .. problem solved.

Yet they are stubborn, come AT MOST once a 1/4 of a year on a random server. Or they make themselves known when for example Fable duped gold. Quite sad. And they seriously can't give us the we are bust malaraky ... they have extra GM's now ... you can't tell me all of them work 24/7 like MD claims to do. Disgraceful really....

yea true people will lose intrest but be always new ppl who comes and want to see the GMs and hunt them ..But I belive they work hard and you see the have a massive ban list...if they dont do nothing .be no list at all ,no uppdate,no euro and so on.. really they work hard...

I believe GMs should have a banning attack.

So if the GM is doing a ban run, people will be too scared to crowd the poor GM in fears of being accidentally clicked on and banned

More like, GM should ban them all, but on their client they see a message ONLY to them like a pop up; "You've been banned for 5 minutes; this is a scare tatic!!!!!". and lyke, freak everyone out xD.

Offtopic @ Bluey: Your avatar is pretty/cute .

Blackfox, nobody is arguing that they don't work hard. The DO work hard, but the problem is that they are understaffed, especially with the opening of their 21st server. 12 gms cannot efficiently and effectively cover that many servers, moderation of 3k users per server is nearly impossible with that amount - and the results show it. They can only do one of those massive bans every half year about, and impressive as it is to ban nearly half the server (average of about 1,300 users per 3,000 user server), it is apparent real problem is that there are that many violators in the first place. What they are doing is NOT working, something needs to be changed.