[EQ2] 50,000 Characters Banned 12/20/06

[frott]

Considering how much cash someone can make with even 2 weeks of using this, I'd not say that they'd "lose revenue" over killing 50,000 chars and potentially forcing people to repurchase the game.

[Aethn Anvel]

Originally Posted by Utnayan

It's 50,000 characters not 50,000 accounts. There is a big difference there.

With that said, I think more people should be giving EQ2 a shot after the EoF expansion anyway. They have made some good progress on a lot of my beefs. Character animations, engine performance, content, art style, story progression/quest progression.

Just don't use this as a PR stunt to get more subs. Right now they can start doing it based on the mertis of the EoF expansion as far as I am concerned. It's a damn good expansion.

A reasonable guess to the banning of these accounts, which I hope they did, given the max number of characters one can have on each account would most likely mean anywhere from 6,250 to about 10,000.

Gonna give props to UT on this one. He always said he would post positive if is saw positive but frankly I thought it was a BS smokescreen. But he came through and posted as promised. I have a bit more respect for you now UT, although we disagree alot, you have lived up to your promise.

[Szlia]

Originally Posted by Lyrical

Personally, I love the content in Eof, but hate the combat changes. For instance, I can solo 68 heroics old world, but new world, heroics at 63 bring me to the brink of death every fight.

I have never played EQ2, but I am pretty sure that, as always, once you gear up and skill up and get extension specific abbilities, etc, you will be able to perform in the new content just as well as you did in the old one. That's like... how things go in the world of MMORPGs.

[Kazgrim]

b) banning 50,000 characters didnt close down the game, so all of you naysayers that keep stating time and time again that "10 people play EQ2 and thats it", I think think that if they can ban 50,000 characters and still have a population to turn a profit, that EQ2 is doing very well in terms and subscriptions and growing every day.

This is pure bollocks and what I was referring to as shill/fanboism.

Naysayers saying the game only has 10 people? Nice strawman, where the hell did this come from? When you pull these kind of arguments out of your ass so you can spin it around to claim "No sir-ee! EQ2 is doing very well in terms and subscriptions and growing every day", what the fuck. You better have been paid to post drivel like that.

The quote from Scott is fine and so has his responses been, giving props where props are due, fine with me. It's the original posters PR spin that I'm leery of.

1) Nobody has ever claimed EQ2 only had 10 players. The game (and scott can correct) has somewhere between 175k-225k or so subscribers, give or take the logistics behind the AAP.
2) 50k characters could mean as few as 10k accounts or less. I'd guess it's considerably more but trumpeting 50k character ban's as some sort of correlation to the games subscriber population is weak sauce.
3) the whole ploy was a strawman argument and came across as weak PR spin. Not the post from Scott, the post from Aethn Anvel.

[Braen]

Originally Posted by Utnayan

Nah I always said if SOE came out with a decent product I would give them props for it. EQ2's EOF expansion was a nice step in the right direction, and I can tell the change in scheduling/production that was passed down from the top worked well here. Hopefully they are on the right track now to continue their new method of design/business.

What server do you play on Ut?

[GrobbeeTrull]

How do you ban a character but leave the account open for play?

[Utnayan]

Originally Posted by Braen

What server do you play on Ut?

I am on permafrost. A fae of course Only level 7 or 8... I only play casually these days.

[Aethn Anvel]

Originally Posted by GrobbeeTrull

How do you ban a character but leave the account open for play?

Exactly what I asked on the EQ2 thread also. AS far as I know, SOE nor Blizzard or anyone else in the industry just bans characters or deletes them. The action is taken on the character, but also against the account. So hence the account is closed also.

Now, 50,000 chars is not alot in terms of accounts, true. But you can look at it both ways, 8 chars per account = 6250 accounts, as pointed out earlier. But thats can also be assumed that it was 50,000 accounts and 50,000 chars. I dont think that to be the case either.

I will speculate on the middle ground here and going to just assume there was between 10,000 and 20,000 accounts banned. That seems like a safe bet to me and realistic. That is 4-5 characters per account.

[Kodylan]

Originally Posted by Kazgrim

The line between paid shill and raving fanboi is hard to spot OP. Definitely blurring the line there.

Posts like this are getting really old.

[Hozz]

Originally Posted by Ikia

Impressive, good job at getting rid of the problem children. I am impressed they did that considering it likely cost them a good chunk of revenue.

Yeah me too. Props to them though.

[Arbitrary]

Originally Posted by Kodylan

Posts like this are getting really old.

That and "banning is just a ploy to increase box sales."

[Ahnkosis]

Originally Posted by Utnayan

I am on permafrost. A fae of course Only level 7 or 8... I only play casually these days.

Thats like...really casual. Do you play for less than an hour at a time? I started the trial and before I knew it, I was level 9 or 10. (Of course, I spent a good 4-5 hours doing that.)

[frott]

Originally Posted by Arbitrary

That and "banning is just a ploy to increase box sales."

Nobody said that in the thread, what was said was "GOSH IM SO SURPRISED THEY'D DO THIS WHEN THEY LOSE REVENUE LOR LOR LOR," which isn't the case.

Banning isn't a ploy to increase box sales, banning doesn't necessarily reduce revenues, banning can potentially increase revenues when people repurchase.

Pretty simple!

50,000 characters is clearly a number higher than the number of accounts removed, that is, some accounts that were banned had more than 1 character on it. It seems obvious that the 50,000 number is derived from the number of characters that were caught being naughty, which has nothing to do with # of accounts or # of characters on an account. How many people are behind the 50,000? Probably way less, when you consider organized botting.

How many of those people were *really* handicapped kids puffing into a straw to slay teh dragon? I'm sure some.

You can't exactly ignore the PR move behind this, but my first question is why would you ever let 50,000 banned characters clog the ranking site in the first place. Grats for cleaning up your poopy?

[Arbitrary]

I was only pointing out another statement that is becomming increasingly common and needs to die. It wasn't necessarily about something said in this thread.

[Warrik]

Originally Posted by Broham

Indeed impressive. Although it's funny that Blizzard doesn't really get this much praise when they do their clean-up runs.

I just might have to give EQ2 a shot though, there has been so much praise for them on these boards recently, and well, WoW is starting to get boring for me =p

Blizzard has almot 8 million subs, so when they ban 50k, its not as much of a big deal as when EQ2 does, who has roughly 400k(ish) subs.